Porto Summer School on Art & Cinema 2025
Technology/Transformation
June 30th to July 4th
July 3rd
21:15, Sessão de Cinema + Q&A
Hacked Circuit + Last Things, Deborah Stratman
Batalha Centro de Cinema
Conversation at the end between Deborah Stratman and Daniel Ribas
Hacked Circuit
Doc, 2014, 15’
A single-shot, choreographed portrait of the Foley process, revealing multiple layers of fabrication and imposition. The circular camera path moves us inside and back out of a Foley stage in Burbank, CA. While portraying sound artists at work, typically invisible support mechanisms of filmmaking are exposed, as are, by extension and quotation, governmental violations of individual privacy.
Last Things
Doc/Fic, 2023, 50’
Evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks and various future others. The geo-biosphere is introduced as a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.
Artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman creates works that investigate questions of power, control, and belief, exploring how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. She sees sound as the ultimate multifunctional tool and time as supernatural.
Her recent projects have addressed themes such as freedom, surveillance, public speech, sinkholes, levitation, orthoptera, birds of prey, comets, evolution, extinction, exodus, sisterhood, and faith.
Stratman’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as MoMA (NY), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Hammer Museum (LA), Witte de With (Rotterdam), PS1 (NY), Tabakalera (San Sebastián), Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), Yerba Buena Center (SF), MCA (Chicago), and the Whitney Biennial (NY). She has also developed site-specific projects in collaboration with institutions such as the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Temporary Services, Hallwalls, Mercer Union, and Ballroom Marfa.
Her films have been widely screened at festivals and conferences including Sundance, Viennale, Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Oberhausen, True/False, TIFF, Locarno, Rotterdam, Flaherty, and Docs Kingdom.
She has received support from Fulbright, Guggenheim, and USA Collins Fellowships, as well as the Alpert Award, Sundance Art of Nonfiction Award, Graham Foundation, Harpo Foundation, and Wexner Center for the Arts.
She currently lives in Chicago, where she teaches at the University of Illinois.
