FotoFest 2016 Biennial @ MFAH Film: Life-Raft Earth

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will screen recent films addressing the timely environmental theme of the FotoFest 2016 Biennial, with guest speakers and discussions planned.

Life-Raft Earth

Directed by Robert Frank
1969
USA
37 minutes
16mm

Presented by filmmaker/editor Laura Israel.

Whole Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand and his friend Hugh Romney (aka Wavy Gravy) asked photographer Robert Frank to document “The Hunger Show,” a weeklong fast staged by the Portola Institute in California. This “happening” was designed to make the problem of world hunger and malnutrition a personal matter for participants and observers.

Life-Raft Earth records the October 1969 event, which took place in a parking lot in Hayward, California. A fascinating time capsule, this short film is shown in a newly restored 16mm print created with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Laura Israel, Frank’s longtime editor, introduces the screening.

About the Presenter
Laura Israel started editing award-winning commercials and music videos while a film student at New York University. She formed the editorial company Assemblage and worked on projects involving David Byrne, Ziggy Marley, New Order, Lou Reed, Keith Richards, Patti Smith, and Sonic Youth, among others.

Windfall, her directorial debut, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won top prize at Doc NYC. A New York Times Critic’s Pick, the paper called it “urgent, informative, and artfully assembled,” and Israel was named in Filmmaker Magazine’s 2011 “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Don’t Blink – Robert Frank premiered in the main slate of the 2015 New York Film Festival. Included as one of Artforum’s top 10 films of 2015 as well as one of Film Comment’s top 10 unreleased films, Don’t Blink also screened at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival.