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Shezad Dawood. Piercing Brightness

Society Materials 14 May 2015 10:55 (UTC +04:00)
YARAT Contemporary Art Centre is pleased to invite you to attend the second session of YARAT Film Club
Shezad Dawood. Piercing Brightness

YARAT Contemporary Art Centre is pleased to invite you to attend the second session of YARAT Film Club at 19:00 on 16th May 2015. YARAT Film Club aims to become an informal meeting point for the viewing and discussion of contemporary art videos and films.

This time the club will host a screening of Shezad Dawood's feature film Piercing Brightness. Dawood will be in attendance and will be answering your questions after the screening. This event was organised in partnership with British Council, Azerbaijan.

Piercing Brightness (2013)

Piercing Brightness is a science fiction film directed by internationally acclaimed artist Shezad Dawood. The film utilises science fiction as a backdrop from which to contest fixed notions of race, migration and identity. The plot interweaves elements of documentary, within a character-driven narrative involving the different and changing communities in Preston, in the North of England, and points to Lancashire's position as having the highest UFO sighting rate and the fastest growing Mainland Chinese population in the UK. The film combines digital and analogue processes, high production values and low-fi aesthetics to tell a story through both its narrative and distortions of time brought about by experiments with the various formats used. The story begins with Jiang and Shin, a young Chinese boy and girl, who land in a spacecraft outside Preston. They have been sent on a mission to retrieve the 'Glorious 100' - agents who were sent to this planet millennia ago to study.

Shezad Dawood (b.1974), graduated from Central St Martin's and the Royal College of Art, and completed a PhD at Leeds Metropolitan University. Dawood works across film, painting and sculpture to juxtapose discrete systems of image, language, site and multiple narratives, using the editing process as a method to explore meanings and forms between film and painting. His practice often involves collaboration, working with groups and individuals across different territories to physically and conceptually map out far-reaching lines of enquiry.

Recent international exhibitions include: Taipei Biennial (2014), Marrakech Biennial (2014) MACBA Barcelona (2014), MoMA PS1 (2014), Witte de With (2013), Modern Art Oxford (2012), Busan Biennale (2010), Tate Britain (2009), and the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). Recent projects include: Feature film Piercing Brightness (2013), a solo exhibition at Parasol Unit, London, Leeds Art Gallery (2014) and at OCAT Xi'an, China (2014). Shezad is a Jarman Award nominee (2012) and one of the winners of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize (2011). He currently lives and works in London, where he is Research Fellow in Experimental Media at the University of Westminster.

Venue:

YARAT Contemporary Art Centre Bayil District (near the National Flag square), Baku, Azerbaijan. 16th May 2015

Time: 19:00

Films will be screened in English with simultaneous translation into Azerbaijani.

Admission: Free

For more information: [email protected]

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