Outsider Art Film Screenings

Fridays – Outsider Art Film Screenings
Friday, February 22, 29, March 7, 21, 28 7:30pm
By donation, tea/coffee served.  Popular and lesser known films profiling a range of outsider artists and their work.  Check out the films and stay for the discussion.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston – February 22
This is the story of talented and tormented Daniel Johnston, a manic-depressive genius singer/ songwriter/ artist, revealed in this portrait of madness, creativity and love.

Who is Bozo Texino? ? February 29
Chronicles the search for the source of a ubiquitous and mythic rail graffiti– a simple sketch of a character with an infinity-shaped hat and the scrawled moniker, ?Bozo Texino?– a drawing seen on railcars for over 80 years. Shooting over a 16-year period, Bill Daniel rode freights across the West carrying a Super-8 sound camera and a 16mm Bolex. During his quest he discovered the roots of a folkloric tradition that has gone mostly unnoticed for a century.

The Quilts of Gees Bend -March 7
After the Civil War, freed slaves founded an all-black community at Gees Bend, Alabama, nearly isolated from the surrounding world. Town?s women developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American and African American quilts, but with a geometric simplicity reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art. The women passed their skills and aesthetic down through at least six generations to the present. The “Quilts of Gee’s Bend” exhibition has received international acclaim, since showing at the Whitney Museum of American Art and 12 other museums.

Al Neil: A Portrait + Mudflats Living – March 21
Following up from last year’s Al Neil retrospective in Vancouver, we reintroduce David Rimmer’s (1979) documentary about the musician, poet, sculptor and ‘shaman’; virtually an institution in West Coast art mythology. Neil inspired many artists … Whether he is a recluse, mystic or Dadaist is only of historical concern.
The film is paired with another period piece, Mudflats Living (1972 NFB), revealing life from the inside of an artistic community, living as squatters in the mudflats area in North Vancouver.

In the Realms of the Unreal – March 28
A repeat screening of this beautiful documentary (Jessica Yu, 2004) about Henry Darger, a reclusive visionary artist/writer who worked for more than six decades on an enormous book project. The manuscript includes original drawings, some beautiful, some beautiful and violent, and an “In the Realms of the Unreal” epic.
(originally scheduled for February 15)