J. Makary – Special Event – Jurors Screening

Wednesday, April 6, 5:15 PM

J. Makary
J. Makary’s films have screened at AIFVF, ICA Philadelphia, Slought Foundation, Mana Contemporary, Satellite Miami, SPACES Cleveland, Spring/Break Art Show, Human Resources LA, and the American Dance Festival. At the heart of her practice is what she calls “feral editing,” a cutting style that uses dance-based, choreographic strategies to shape narrative and documentary footage with a bit of wildness and play. Originally trained as a journalist, she earned an MFA in film at Temple University in 2013.

In 2014, Makary was named a Pew Fellow in the Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has been an artist in residence at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, and RAIR Philly, where she worked with staff and heavy machinery to create giant clouds of demolition dust that became the main characters in a film about environmental change. During her 5 years in Los Angeles, she worked as a producer on artist-led film and video projects commissioned by SFMoMA, the Barnes Foundation, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and ran Mother Ditch, a platform for experimental film artists. A former editor of the feminist film journal Another Gaze, Makary is currently pursuing her PhD in Art History/Film and Media Studies at Stanford University.

Doosan, Sea-Doo (2019)
Shot at an industrial recycling plant in Philadelphia, Doosan, Sea-Doo (2019) sets the aesthetic processes of low-wage labor against formal studies of dust, the plant’s ample and oppressive by-product.

This Is Where Wool Comes From (2016)
Using human performers and charged mise-en-scène elements, This Is Where Wool Comes From (2016) takes the physical vocabulary of sheep shearing as the basis for a dance of aggression and tenderness.

MALIBU (2018 – 2022, WIP)
A one-year longitudinal study on 16mm film, MALIBU documents changes to the physical landscape following the devastating Woolsey Fire of November 2018.