KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS CULTURE Chronicles of Experience THE MIMESIS DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL SHOWCASES NON-TRADITIONAL DOCUMENTARIES. BY CLAIRE DUNCOMBE The Mimesis Documentary Festival returns to Boulder’s Dairy Arts Center and streaming screens everywhere for its third year, from Tuesday, August 2, through Sunday, August 7. The fi lm festival, which focuses on the ar- tistic potential of documentation, will offer six days of screenings as well as immersive, installation-based pieces and workshops with established fi lmmakers. The goal of Mimesis has been to create a “platform that can really serve artists” by expanding their audience and professional connections, says Eric Coombs Esmail, di- rector of the Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media at the University of Colorado Boulder. In 2020, Mimesis at- tracted international viewership through virtual programming. Now in their second year of hosting both in-person and virtual events, organizers hope Mimesis will foster community both at home and away and continue a legacy of avant-garde fi lmmaking along the Front Range. This year’s lineup includes an opening- night presentation of Emma Baiada and Nicolas Snyder’s debut feature, Song of Salt; the work of 2022 Artist-in-Focus Iva Radi- vojevic; and 63 projects chosen from open submissions in categories such as docufi c- tion, documentary arts, emerging/student, ethnographic, experimental and traditional. As fi lmmakers themselves, Esmail and fes- tival director Curt Heiner know how diffi cult it can be to get people to view one’s work, es- pecially when it involves “underrepresented subject matter and more artistic avenues of documentary expression,” Esmail says. Mimesis showcases nonfi ction media that 14 treats documentation as an artistic impulse rather than a genre. Some Mimesis fi lms mix fact with fi ction, while others include personal narratives alongside journalistic reporting. Some are fi lms that occur inside installations and require audience partici- pation, and some are created through a traditional documentary lens. “We’re always experiencing the world,” Esmail says. “Artists fi nd ways to share that experience with others.” Esmail, Heiner and their community of committed artists and educators believe that “documentary” shouldn’t be a term solely associated with journalistic report- ing, but one that refl ects the myriad ways artists chronicle experience. As alternative documentary and experimental-cinema en- thusiasts, they’ve mobilized around sharing such work for years. Some of their projects include Process Reversal, a nonprofi t orga- nization that aspires to make photochemical fi lmmaking affordable for artists, and the Brakhage Center for Media Arts, which hosts the annual Brakhage Center Symposium. They’ve also been involved with screenings at Denver DIY spaces, the Denver Film Fes- tival and the Denver Art Museum. The idea for Mimesis was fi rst thrown around in 2019; the inaugural fest was held the following year, with the pandemic ac- celerating the process and even bolstering attendance through its virtual platform, as it made the festival accessible to people across the country and abroad. “The pandemic ended up helping us more than hurting us,” Heiner notes. “We were able to reach a lot more people than we would have [during an in-person event]. People were a lot more open to trying new things.” Boulder has a history of supporting ex- perimental and non-traditional fi lmmaking, Esmail says. Between CU’s current Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts program and its former Rocky Mountain Film Center, which began offering degrees in fi lmmaking and critical studies in 1989, there’s a “strong appetite” for avant-garde work, he adds. But “even with the broad history that we have, the scene is relatively unknown” to many outside of it, Heiner says. “There is still a necessity for hosting a festival like this, to realize the history and connections. There’s still a lot of work to be done.” Esmail and Heiner believe that art that’s considered fringe today could very well become mainstream tomorrow. Esmail cites the current popularity of documentary fi lms on streaming sites like Netfl ix: Those pieces often mix journalism with artistic cinema — elements such as striking videography or narrative lines with fi ctional elements. “People have been experimenting with these [techniques] for decades and gen- erations,” he points out. “Questioning what documentary actually is, what counts as fact, experiencing other ways of pushing the form and investigating what’s possible.” Mimesis supports this exploration by pri- oritizing open submissions and operating as a nonprofi t project of the Center for Documen- tary and Ethnographic Media. Its nonprofi t status, along with contributions from donors such as CU’s College of Media, Communica- tion and Information and the departments of Anthropology and Critical Media Practices, help minimize the importance of revenue often generated by more mainstream content, Esmail and Heiner explain. The open submission process is also meant to encourage artistic dialogue and create connections between fi lmmakers. Still from Song of Salt, Emma Baiada and Nicolas Snyder’s debut feature. “We both have our fi lm degrees from CU,” Esmail says of himself and Heiner. “We defi nitely did not have opportunities like this. It can be very cold when you’re trying to get your foot in the door.” Even if applicants don’t get into the pro- gram, they receive free virtual access to the festival and can follow up with the program- mers who spent time watching their fi lms. Those programmers include Esmail’s research assistant, Ph.D. student Nima Bahrehmand; Sarah Biagini, a media artist and lecturer in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts; Luiza Parvu, a documentary editor with a long and varied career; and Heiner, who provides an addi- tional vote on fi lms when needed. All of the 200 to 300 annual Mimesis fi lm submissions are watched at least twice by multiple people and are then discussed to see which make the cut; the process takes about six months. And after fi lms are chosen, they’re divided into categories that help am- plify their themes. “New aspects get brought out when they’re paired with other things,” Heiner explains. Some of this year’s Documentary Blocks, which are composed of a few different fi lms, have titles such as The Body Keeps the Score, Birthmarks, Upstream, An Acute Presence and Grid Cell. They cover topics such as personhood viewed through the body, love, familial legacy, rivers and their relation to power structures, and the inequities of the justice system. “Our fi lms usually range from covering labor organizations to politics to the body, feminism, medical rights, human rights,” Esmail says. “We often have fi lms that chal- lenge violence — institutional or systemic. We always have a strong showing of work that’s concerned with the environment, that addresses the causes of climate change.” The opening-night fi lm, Song of Salt, depicts the struggles and celebrations of a mining town on the outskirts of Death Valley. The feature portrays a microcosm of today’s rural America with dignity, allowing the complexities of the population’s individual lives to dispel common stereotypes. Heiner says that Song of Salt stood out to all the programmers with its layers of meaning and cinematography. This year’s Artist-in-Focus, Iva Radivo- jevic, was chosen to screen her latest work, Aleph, on August 5 and to host a master class the following morning. Aleph refl ects on the experiences of protagonists from ten differ- ent countries as they explore the depths of connection, clarity and understanding. Her master class, called “Secret Cinema,” will focus on questions of dream logic and the role of myths within fi lms. She will also screen Gaàda, a “process” fi lm assembled from some of Aleph’s pre- production footage that will give “insight into the process of working on a large-scale feature- length fi lm across borders,” Esmail says. All of the fi lms grouped within the Docu- mentary Arts category move “beyond the edges of a single screen” and bring “art into the space of physical life versus a theater,” says Esmail. The ten immersive perfor- mances mix fi lm and other media. In Caves, by Carlos Isabel García, the audience will get to experience spelunking; in Little Pakistan — Future Histories, the audience will use i- doc technology to interact with the storyline. And Convergence, by Ama Gisèle, includes elements of modern dance. Both Heiner and Esmail hope Mimesis can serve as a link in a chain of avant-garde documentary creation, bringing the un- known to wider audiences. “We’d like to connect to more of Denver’s immersive scene to branch out from aca- demia and connect more with the general public,” Heiner concludes. Mimesis Documentary Festival, August 2-7, various Boulder locations, $30-$100, mimesisfestival.org. JULY 28-AUGUST 3, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com COURTESY MIMESIS DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL
