Abraham Ravett's recent films are now on a new dvd entitled PIYUT I-V. Contains Notes For A Polish Jew (2012), From Prague to Poland (2010), What My Father Would Have Seen In Poland (2010), Non-Aryan (2009) and Trepches (2009).

Echo Park Film Center: Abraham Ravett
Saturday, September 8, 2012, 20h
Echo Park Film Center
1200 N. Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, California USA

Abraham Ravett will present a program of recent and previously made films. The screening includes three films that reflect the complexities of filial relationships; the lingering impact of the Holocaust, and with Horse/Kappa/House, the Japanese rural landscape is presented as a space of loss, memory and collective history.

Programme:
- The March (1999)
- Horse/Kappa/House (1995)
- Tziporah (2007)
- Notes for a Polish Jew (2012) (on DVD)

History, Memory, Return
Abraham Ravett, Baba Hillman, Michael Rice
Wednesday June 13, 20h
Les Voûtes
19 rue des Frigos 75013 Paris

This programme focuses on the concepts of memory and return, proposes to introduce the films of three artists from Amherst and Massachusetts through varied works combining two projections, performance and found footage. How does the body experience memory? How does memory become body experience? How do we decipher or do we interpret the visible and invisible maps that memory, landscape and return draw on the body?

Abraham Ravett was born in 1947 in Poland, grew up in Israel and moved to New York in 1955. He lives and makes films in Amherst three decades. He received first prize at the Venice Biennale and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. His films were shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Image Forum in Tokyo, the Anthology Film Archives in New York, Scratch Projection, the San Francisco Cinematheque, and the LA Forum.

Baba Hillman grew up in Venezuela, Mexico and Japan. Her films were shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles at the Anthology Film Archives in New York, ICAIC (Havana), the Rencontres Paris, Berlin, and the European Media Art Festival (Osnabruck).

Michael Rice is a young filmmaker who works in Amherst. His films will be screened in France for the first time.

Nomadic Archive: Abraham Ravett presents the Works of Tom Joslin
Saturday, June 2, 19:30h
UnionDocs
322 Union Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Abraham Ravett in attendance for screening and discussion.

Abraham Ravett will screen and discuss two of Tom Joslin’s works: Blackstar: Autobiography of a Close Friend from 1976, and the posthumously assembled work The Architecture of Mountains (2010).

Ravett writes the following about the project: Before he left for LA in 1981 to pursue a career in Hollywood, documentry filmmaker Tom Joslin completed an innovated and to this day, historically significant film called Blackstar: Autobiography of a Close Friend (1976, 85 minutes, color, sound, 16mm). It was one of the first autobiographical, diary format films that addressed the issue of gay identity and coming out to one’s family. It’s a beautifully made film, formally inventive, and still resonates on many fronts.

When Tom passed away from AIDS, he left all his video tapes from another autobiographical project he had been shooting in LA to a former student named Peter Friedman who in turn, found the resources to construct the much acclaimed film, Silverlake Life: the View from Here.

Prior to leaving Hampshire College in 1980, Tom was working on another film inspired by Jose Argüelles book, The Transformative Vision: Reflections on the Nature and History of Human Expression. Shot in sync and MOS on 16mm, the footage reflects Tom’s interest in perception, human consciousness, and signaled his evolving interest in fusing non-fiction, experimental and dramatic genres. All the original materials for this unfinished film were stored at the LA home of Ken Levin another former Hampshire College student who along with several other students, worked with Tom on this project, which he called The Architecture of Mountains (62 minutes).

An evening with Abraham Ravett
Tuesday April 3rd, 19h
Mount Holyoke College's Art Building, room 320
50 College Street • South Hadley, Massachusetts 01075

A selection of films by American filmmaker Abraham Ravett.

Programme;

- A Calming Breeze (1984, 17 min., color, silent, 16mm)
A look at my son's birth and the rite of circumcision.
- Toncia (1986, 13 min., color, sound, 16mm)
In one continuous, twelve minute take, the filmmaker talks with his mother about her daughter who was killed in Auschwitz.
- Jack Haber (1987, 15 min., b&w, silent, 16mm)
Jack Haber is a film about unheralded lives. Utilizing film material found and purchased in an antique shop, the filmmaker speculates on the life of one, Jack Haber.
- The Visit (2003, 8 min., 16mm, silent)
A child's awakening.
- Tziporah (2007, 7 min, silent, 16mm)
Tziporah is the Hebrew word for bird. This is another cinematic response to grief and loss.