SHARON LOCKHART - PINE FLAT

Sharon Lockhart‘s fifth film, Pine Flat (2005), is set in a small, rural village in the foothills of California‘s Sierra Nevada Mountains. The film employs seasonal activities to address the experience of American childhood through the resident youths of Pine Flat. More than just an anthropological look at youth, Pine Flat is an exquisite, meditative portrait that takes advantage of a specific location – a self-contained village on the edge of the wilderness – to look at a place through its progeny.

Shot over the course of two and a half years, the artist observed the children, immersing herself in their milieu and noting the complexity manifest in their behaviors and interactions. Her masterful cinematography takes advantage of the stunning landscape of the southern Sierras to depict the close relationship the children have with their natural surroundings. By dispensing with a professional film crew and operating the camera herself, Lockhart has achieved an intimacy with her subjects that has allowed a unique perspective into the lives of rural America, and into a world that is both far from and intimately connected to the urban systems that defi ne contemporary American life.

Pine Flat expands on Lockhart’s fondness for long takes and static compositions, consisting of two parts that are sixty minutes in duration. Part one features six shots of individuals performing quotidian tasks, such as waiting for the bus, hunting or reading a book, while the second half of the fi lm shows six shots of groups of children engaged in activities such as swimming in a creek, playing on a swing, and walking in the snow. The two halves of Pine Flat are joined by a ten-minute filmic intermission with a musical recording by one of the children in the film. Together, the thirteen segments create a singular film as complex as it is spare, as endearing as it is demanding.

Sharon Lockhart was born in Norwood, Massachusetts, in 1964. The American artist and filmmaker studied in California, at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been displayed at numerous group and solo shows around the world, and her fi lms have been screened in the U.S., Europe and Japan. She spent the fi rst half of 2000 as a DAAD artist in residence in Berlin. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Southern California‘s School of Fine Arts. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Pine Flat (2005, 16mm, color, 138’)

The Pine Flat screenings are an initiative of desire productions within the framework of the Documentary FilmPlatform ZONE and the A LOOK APART section of Flanders International Filmfestival in Gent. The PINE FLAT screenings are organised in association with MuHKA media,  argos, La Cambre and SMAK.

The Ecran d’Art series is a monthly screening of artists’ film and/or video jointly organised by argos and Cinema Arenberg, in collaboration with La Cambre Academy .