Video Mundi at the Chicago Cultural Center
Tuesday, March 4 to Sunday, March 9, 2003


Video Mundi is a showcase of video art and short films brought to Chicago from around the world. This is a refresher course for anyone who has not traveled throughout the US and the world over the past two years to see all this work. Eight curators are coming to Chicago with one 70 to 90–minute program of work they love. There are two shows each evening at the Chicago Cultural Center from Tuesday to Friday and repeat shows on the weekend at Heaven Gallery and Discount Cinema in Wicker Park. There are two additional youth screenings for the Chicago arts programs Gallery 37 and Street-Level Youth Media consisting of one piece from each curator’s show that we thought would screen well with high school and grade school students.

The three US curators are Andrea Grover, Astria Suparak, and Abina Manning. Andrea runs the Houston microcinema Aurora Picture Show and has served on juries for many film festivals. Astria Suparak is an independent curator who has organized shows for the NY Underground and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City. Abina Manning was the festival director for Pandaemonium in London and currently is Associate Director of the Video Data Bank here in Chicago. From Canada, Alex MacKenzie is festival director for the Vancouver Underground Film Festival and runs the Blinding Light!! Cinema in Vancouver, a showcase for experimental video and film. Ximena Cuevas, the award-winning video artist, is bringing a show from Mexico City. From Europe, Elena de la Vara is coming from L’Alternativa, the experimental video and film festival in Barcelona, and Uli Wegenast, a programmer from the Stuttgart Filmwinter in Germany, will also be presenting a show. Jan Schuijren, an independent curator and former curator for the collection of the Netherlands Media Art Institute, is coming from Amsterdam.

The organizers of Video Mundi are Jim Finn and Butcher Walsh. Jim Finn is a video artist whose work has screened internationally. In 2001, he organized the 16mm festival Out of the Vault at the Chicago Cultural Center out of films from the now-closed collection at the Harold Washington Library. Butcher Walsh is co-founder of the Aurora Picture Show, a microcinema in Houston, and is a film/video graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Video Mundi was made possible with the assistance of the City of Chicago, the Goethe Institut Inter Nationes Chicago. the Consulate General of the Netherlands, the Canadian Consulate, and the Cervantes Institute of Chicago. The curators and artists were all paid fees and those who attended were able to eat for free because of the generous donations of Heartland Cafe, Lula Cafe, Leo’s Lunchroom, La Creperie, Bite Cafe, Chicago Diner, Jinx, and Flying Saucer. The program book was printed by Dexterity Press, and the poster was designed by Dean DeMatteis and printed by Crosshair Press. In short, without all this support and the help of loads of volunteers the festival would not have happened. We are very grateful.