Strangely Ordinary This Devotion

A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the zeitgeist in their own backyard, the artists' short films are the culmination of a year-long residency project.

A Hand in Two Ways (Fisted), is a looping meditation on night as space of mysterious energetic transmissions. Animals, human bodies, children, ritual and performance are investigated as zones of conflict, desire and a visceral movement that is more felt than seen.

The third part of a trilogy regarding "feral domesticity," following "Strangely Ordinary This Devotion" (2017) and "Come Coyote" (2019). "Future from Inside" is a meditation on the environment, domestic space, queer desire, and magic.

Come Coyote is the second chapter in the trilogy, Strangely Ordinary This Devotion (SOTD) by Dani and Sheilah ReStack. Come Coyote continues their investigation of climate change, queer desire, motherhood, reproduction and collaboration.

The Grandmother recites the Mourners' Kaddish over her granddaughter.

Opening with jarring violence, Dani Leventhal’s Tin Pressed proceeds to negotiate a balancing act between the bewildering tonal variances of daily life—with all of its unnamable and enchantingly fragmented specifics—and the gravitational urge to construct both private and shared narratives. The world discovered through these images revolves around multiple centers. The camera’s odd equanimity feels both generous and dangerous. Leventhal’s deft oscillation between elision and inclusion reveals a brief but vast taxonomy of beauty, peace, longing, and terror.—Jeremy Hoevenaar

Sister City channels moments of paradoxical experience--of being a superhero or being for sale--into reverberant conduits, articulating a nature divided by panes of glass or suspended in watery solitudes. Each shift begets a kind of origin story: one encounter traces the specific azure of a James Turrell installation to a pet shop jellyfish, in another, a modern-day putto purifies a horrific tale by blowing bubbles in a tub. Sister City, like water, seeks its own level; cresting and displacing continuous bursts of life spiritualized, succulent, and ultimately alone. -Deirtra Thompson

Subtitled "The Refusenik," "The Zealot," and "The Father," this video takes us on a journey where Germans, Turks, Israelis, Palestinians, fathers, grandmothers, daughters, and animals are together for 13 minutes.

In this piece Dani Restack recounts to camera her experiences of living and working in Israel, the fabled land of milk and honey of childhood lessons. With time spent in a metal factory and a battery farm for chickens, her harrowing tale includes stories of sexual harassment and sick birds. Against this background, there are idyllic images of bees and flowers, cows and calves, intimate caresses, dead birds. Every thing is worthy of Dani's gaze, and is transformed by the encounter, becoming more human or sacred, and we are closer to the pain and beauty of being alive.

In Dani Leventhal’s Platonic, geometric specters twirl in space; pet cats foam at the mouth; a little boy mistakes his junkie dad for a superhero; and a confused adolescent worries he has sired a centaur.

16mm to video. Five 16mm black and white silent films transferred to video and projected onto eighteen foot long vellum banners. A fan blows the vellum which makes the projections spill onto the walls and floor. There is one unifying sound track of peeper frogs (Pseudacris crucifer) singing their mating call.

Inside a Lithuanian synagogue, young Domas Darguzs regales the filmmaker with a whispered, wide-eyed account of mythical events, while the film cross-cuts to images of a goat farm. Kid brother of a Isreali soldier, Domas’ stories are part fantasy, part hopeful ruminations of a courageous, young mind interrupted only by an impatient adult.

Material is presented as short scenes: documentation of the quotidian, interviews, on-camera monologues, and performative or expressive shots that are constructed. So the material, while mostly generated as a diary, is heterogeneous enough to include just about any kind of footage. At one point, a baby cries inconsolably, in another, a boy in a baseball uniform is playing Bach while his mother sits next to him putting on mascara. The 18 minute video montage of impressions has a cumulative effect, accessed and read differently depending on the mental connections the viewer makes.

A film by Dani Restack

In Dani’s Leventhal’s latest video we are invited along on a house visit with a familial group. There’s trash in the garden, guns on the sofa, and martial arts in the living room. A photo session records a young woman throwing punches at a man, playacting for the camera, but sweating anyway.

In Shayne's Rectangle, Dani Leventhal's moving and mysterious prayer for healing, a horse farm and a casual poolside dissection are the nodes between which a series of patiently taken sharp turns maneuver through moods both intimate and detached. The camera pursues, observes, offers, reflects, and is reflected. Things clear and things indistinct interact rhythmically, resonantly, producing a volatile and haunting visual prosody. -- Jeremy Hoevenaar