Blurb here by Stephen Broomer:
“For the past year, I’ve been working on digital restorations of Josephine Massarella’s films. Many of you in the experimental film community might have known Josie for two remarkable films she made in the last five years of her life: Light Study (2013) and 165708 (2017), both of which gained a good deal of festival play; or you might have simply known her as one of the most selfless, supportive voices in experimental film’s social media community. I entered the experimental filmmaking world at the same time that Josie was re-entering it after almost two decades away from it, and we became friendly allies as people who were mutually concerned with creating supportive exchanges in the arts, and who shared certain aesthetic sensibilities and technological interests. Whenever we met and talked, we mostly talked about technology. I wish I’d had more opportunities to talk to Josie.
Now I feel I’ve spent most of 2023 talking to Josie! In addition to the eight films of hers that were in circulation, we were able to recover four early films of hers. With the help of Josephine’s family and her friend Derek Jenkins, and with advice from Mark Loeser, and with the tireless efforts of my brother Geoffrey (who produced the disc), we’ve been able to put together what I feel is an effective career survey of Josie’s work, in the form of a new blu-ray disc release from Black Zero. It is a survey that represents (sadly too late for Josie to see it) the most substantial critical response her work has ever received. This is achieved in large part through the contributions of an international group of artists and writers, who offer optional running commentaries throughout the main program. Those commentators are Madeleine Wall, Irene Bindi, Cristina Álvarez López, Elena Duque, Jacqueline Valencia, Christine Lucy Latimer, Ela Bittencourt, and me. To make a case for Josephine Massarella’s work is long overdue: the transit in her work from patient, durational films about sisterhood and labour to dizzyingly kinetic pastoral visions of the earth, is deserving of further study and discussion. I hope this disc moves us in that direction.
Available now from Black Zero. www.blackzero.ca” Pick up a copy at Black Zero.
Josephine Massarella: Green Dreams (blu-ray trailer) from Black Zero on Vimeo.
jacqueline valencia 