Lauded artist celebrates shared memories thru stage project in new doc
On Thursday, January 9th, at the Emerson Center for the Arts & Culture, the Bozeman Doc Series continues its sixth season with the Montana premiere of the critically acclaimed new documentary, Our Time Machine. The film screens at 7pm.
Forty-three-year-old Maleonn is one of China’s most influential conceptual artists today. His father, Ma Ke, was the artistic director of the Shanghai Chinese Opera Theater. After being humiliated and forbidden from working for a decade during the Cultural Revolution, Ma Ke immersed himself in theater. The mysterious excitement of Ma Ke’s creative world inspired the young Maleonn, but his father’s absences stoked early feelings of resentment.
When Ma Ke is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Maleonn pours everything into an ambitious new theater project: a visually stunning time-travel adventure told with human-sized puppets. At the play’s heart are autobiographical scenes inspired by Maleonn’s memories with his father. He hopes this will bring them together both artistically and personally. As Ma Ke’s memory fades, Maleonn races against time to mount the show before his father’s memories are lost forever.
Our Time Machine world premiered this fall at the Tribeca Film Festival to widespread critical acclaim and has gone on to screen at major festivals around the world.
“An uplifting celebration…an elegant, focused piece of storytelling.” – Screen Daily
“Sun and Chiang strike a tricky balance between a high-stakes making-of documentary and an intimate, observational family portrait, but Maleonn is such a thoughtful, sensitive, brilliant subject that the film is compelling no matter where on the creative spectrum they find him.” – Variety
“Fascinating… emotional… Intriguingly grounds the creative process in the specificity of individual experience.” – Hollywood Reporter
“Uplifting… A profound and poetic film.” – Indie NYC
Single admission to Our Time Machine is $10, or $8 for students. Tickets are available at the door or in advance at Cactus Records and Movie Lovers, as well as the Doc Series website. Visit www.bozemandocseries.org to purchase Season Passes or 7-film punch cards, and to view trailers for upcoming films.
This biweekly documentary screening series is curated by award-winning filmmaker Jason Burlage. The Doc Series brings brand new films from around the world to the Emerson’s Crawford Theater and will continue through April. •