Archives of Anonymous Labor

Contact Details:
Phone: 8058934903
Email: info@carseywolf.ucsb.edu
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**Events may have been canceled or postponed. Please contact the venue to confirm the event.
Date & Time
Thu, Feb 20 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Address (map)
University of California, Santa Barbara
Venue (website)
Pollock Theater
This program juxtaposes five very different visions of anonymity and labor in the history of global filmmaking, from silent-era absurd comedy to 1970s radical political cinema. We open on a playful note with a German satire about the gender politics of film editing. When a Film Cutter Dawdles (1925) spotlights the uncredited creativity of female editors whose vital authorship remains largely anonymous. The image of domestic work takes center stage in the next two incomplete fragments. The Kitchen Maid’s Dream (1907) depicts a woman’s surreal fantasy that she can dismember her own limbs to finish her endless housework. A young soldier’s daily toils are time-stamped by the recurring image of a clock in The Assistant’s Hours (1915?), but there are no solid clues as to this film’s year, country, or key players. Shifting from mundane labor to militant rebellion, farmers in The Field (1977) till the land as an exercise of resistance against settler colonial domination. Cowboy (1973) furiously dismantles Hollywood clichés, adopting radical montage to unsettle the racist tropes that run roughshod through the Western genre. The stakes of archiving anonymous labor in film history have never felt more urgent. Whether uncredited, invisible, overly palpable, or violently displaced, the specters of anonymous labor energize today’s uprisings for liberation, pleasure, and social change.
Following the screening, curators Maggie Hennefeld and Michelle Baroody will join moderator Patrice Petro (Dick Wolf Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center) to discuss the films and their curation process.
A light reception will follow the event, which is presented as part of the Carsey-Wolf Center annual conference Anonymous Labor in Film and Media.