KESSELGARTEN

Gardens, immigrants & unruly public space

Two film programs AUGUST 23rd & SEPTEMBER 10th (rain date September 13th) at 8pm

KESSELGARTEN: Yiddish slang for any noisy, chaotic, confusing situation or “ruckus.” It originates from the Eastern-European-accented pronunciation of “Castle Garden”, America’s first official immigrant depot, located on the southern tip of Manhattan from 1855 to 1890.

KESSELGARTEN is screening series that probes the relationships between immigrant communities and green, unruly urban spaces, here in NYC, and interrogates the definition of a garden: both as a serene place for communion with nature, and as a public space of encounter, contest, labor & urban reclamation, spaces that are continuously remade by their communities.

Sunday, August 23 : “Josephine the Singer or the Mouse People” by Zoe Beloff with short films from the collection of the Film-Maker’s Coop. A retelling of Franz Kafka’s last short story staged in the gardens of the Lower East Side, with performers drawn from different walks of life: a puppeteer, a cantor, a shoe repair man, older people who still remember Yiddish but young people too, like a girl recently arrived from Dagestan. Beloff’s portrait of the descendants of the “mouse people” explores the labor of memory of an oppressed people and the function of every day art in bringing communities together.

Organized by Zoe Beloff and Mina Mattes in collaboration with Matt Mckinzie and the Film-Maker’s Co-op. In conjunction with Zoe’s exhibition, Life Forgotten at City Lore,  with support from LMCC and the New York State Council for the Arts.