Cynthia Madansky

TREYF —“unkosher” in Yiddish— is an unorthodox documentary by and about two Jewish lesbians who met and fell in love at a Passover “seder”. With personal narration, real and imagined educational films, and haunting imagery, filmmakers Alisa Lebow and Cynthia Madansky examine the Jewish identity of their upbringings and its impact on their lives.

ḤARAM is an essay film portraying the urgent contemporary situation at the Haram Al Sharif/ Noble Sanctuary in the Old City of Jerusalem reflecting on the growing Temple Mount Faithful movement whose goal is to build the Jewish Third Temple on this holy landscape and in turn to assert Jewish sovereignty over this holy Muslim site.

Alex and José, is a 16mm single channel projection that explores gender, movement and form.

VIVA ÁGUA is a meditation on the philosophical work entitled ÁGUA VIVA written by Clarice Lispector in 1973. The film reflects on Lispector’s interior experimental monologue on the “instant-now” of time, the discomforts of language which are “beyond thought” and the harmonious dissonant reminders and remainders of that “sometime what is seen is ineffable.”

A video-verité manifesto made with self-identified gender outlaw, author and activist, Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014). Raw and confrontational, this videotape asks its audience to examine their assumptions about the "nature" of gender, challenging any nead certainties and calling for more sensitivity and awareness of the human rights and dignity of trans people.

Dear features the interior world of two teenage Chinese girls in New York City, whose diary entries reveal their concerns related to growing up as immigrants amidst the ever-gentrifying landscape of Chinatown.

This experimental video breaks the many silences surrounding lesbians and AIDS. Interweaving the voices of two friends, Internal Combustion reflects on the often unspoken tensions within this epidemic of survival and power and mourning and loss .

Elle is an experimental dance film shot in a semi industrial landscape in Brooklyn reflecting on every day movements of falling and getting up.

A contemporary interpretation of an unrealized script entitled Women, written by Soviet director Esfir Shub.

A sparing and minimal travelogue of Istanbul. A foreigner meditates on the unraveling of a relationship while moving from hotel room to hotel room. In a city simultaneously devoted to Islam and secular nationalism, she finds refuge in the frailty and severity of the rituals of devotion.

Still Life gazes unflinchingly at the violence of war, observing the eerie architecture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip collapsed under Israeli occupation. This portrait provides brutal witness to how government sanctioned destruction metes upon structures of home and State. Unlike the mediated images of current warfare, Still Life examines the effects of the destruction of Occupation through the details of cinematic landscapes and its inherent inhabitants. In its relentless questioning reaffirmed with a unique and unremitting soundtrack by composer Zeena Parkins, Still Life forces us to focus on details of devastation.

If Not is a meditation on love, inspired by If Not, Winter by Sappho, translated by Anne Carson. Filmed in Ephesus and Brooklyn.

White Sands is a 3 screen projection 16mm film installation which reflects on the visible and invisible manifestations of the nuclear fuel chain on the land, air, water and people of New Mexico.

AA is a portrait of the dream diaries of Russian avant garde feminist poet and photographer Anna Alchuk.

Subjectively capturing the spirit of contemporary Athens, Madansky turns to Greek anarchist poet Katerina Gogou as a source of inspiration. The relationship between cinematic form and language is questioned using performance as a guiding force, accompanied by a striking soundtrack by longtime collaborator and contemporary harp pioneer Zeena Parkins.

Anna, Pina, Teresa reinterprets the pivotal scene in Rossellini’s “Roma Città Aperta” where Anna Magnani, who plays the character Pina, (based on the story of Teresa Gullace,) is murdered on the streets of Rome by the Fascist police. This scene is characterized by three movements performed by Magnani — resistance, running and falling. Filmed in the Sala Scherma at Foro Italico in Rome (Mussolini’s fencing studio designed by Moretti) Anna, Pina, Teresa examines the contemporary and historical dynamics between an urban Fascist space and movements of resistance.

Bubble is a short film performed by Zeena Parkins and the Plastic Girls, Eleanor Hullihan and Erin Cornell in a public park in Brooklyn, NY.

Sites Unseen is a 3 channel 16mm projection of the Jewish cemetary in Warsaw, a photograph of a great Aunt who died in Treblinka, and my late grandmother eating her morning cornflakes.

The PSA Project is a series of 15 videos that speak out against the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the act of war.

Flowers for LH reflects on the last play written by Lorraine Hansberry entitled What Use Are Flowers?

1+8 is a dynamic eight-screen video installation about Turkey and her eight neighbors based on the feature film of the same name directed by Cynthia Madansky and Angelika Brudniak. Each screen features life on both sides of the border, from Armenia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Nakchivan [Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan] to Syria.

A story about a woman descending into mental illness.

Featuring Turkish dancer Idil Kemer, Cynthia Madansky integrates performances of everyday movements and gestures as a direct response to the devastation brought about by the state-sponsored urban renewal project in downtown Istanbul.

“Past Perfect” is a spirited meditation on the elusiveness and inaccessibility of (Jewish) history as conveyed through sightseeing tours of “Jewish” Poland, a grandmother’s recollection of life in America during War II, and memoir-like “last moments” of a great aunt believed to have died in Treblinka. Shot almost entirely in contemporary Poland, “Past Perfect” lyrically portrays the relentless yet ultimately futile attempt to resuscitate a history literally gone up in smoke.