The Illinois Parables

(Deborah Stratman, US 2016, 60 min., 16mm)

Rochester Premiere| Filmmaker in Person. An experimental documentary made up of regional vignettes about faith, force, technology, and exodus. Eleven chapters relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism, and resistance—all occurring in Illinois. The state is a convenient structural ruse, its histories becoming allegories to explore how humans are shaped by conviction and ideology. The film uses reenactment, archival footage, observational shooting, intertitles, and voiceover to tell its stories, and it is an extension of Stratman’s previous works in which she questions foundational American tenets.

Discussion with filmmaker Deborah Stratman will follow the screening.

Sponsored by the Film and Media Studies Program and the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester.