ATA: Diaries, notes, & sketches: Dicky Bahto & Mona Varichon

This program presents recent video works by Dicky Bahto and Mona Varichon that variously utilize diary film making, found imagery/sounds, and collaborations with their parents.

Mark Toscano of Los Angeles Filmforum says of Bahto’s films: “His varied and complex engagement with moving image and photographic media is steeped in a deeply felt humanity and empathy, manifesting through his inspired photographic eye and frequently direct interaction with and appreciation of the material vitality of film and cinema. His films achieve heightened emotional states of great intimacy and poetry, often channeling the uniquely aleatory qualities of film to carry a sensuality and spirituality hovering in the space between loving depiction and vaporous abstraction.”

Marion Vasseur Raluy says of Varichon’s: “Her works – whose approach can be compared to that of fan art – are certainly tributes to various personalities that she admires, from her mother to Assa Traoré. In this alternation between popular public figures and anonymous individuals, she tries to understand their motivations and desires by revealing their mechanisms of struggle as well as their political opinions. From English to French, from the private to the public sphere, or even social networks, M. Varichon produces video collages that make it possible to ‘make people speak’ and ‘make them hear’ differently. In this way she is reviving a heritage that has partly disappeared: that of beginning with the voices of others rather than her own.”