Acclaimed Filmmaker Jodie Mack To Host Surprise Screening of Her New Film This Thursday, Jan. 24

On Thursday, Jan. 24, The University of Tampa will welcome filmmaker Jodie Mack for the Florida premiere of her new feature, The Grand Bizarre, as part of FLEX FEST ’19. The film, which premiered at Locarno Film Festival, will be projected in 16mm at UT’s Black Box Studio, followed by a Q-and-A with Mack and FLEX organizers. The event will being at 8 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Mack is an internationally acclaimed experimental filmmaker whose kinetic, handmade films use collage to explore the relationship between graphic cinema and storytelling. Long renowned for her short films, The Grand Bizarre extends Mack’s cinematic manipulations of fabric, paper and light into an ambitious 60-minute film.

Her 16mm films have screened at many of world cinema’s top venues, including the New York Film Festival, The Museum of Modern Art, the Toronto Film Festival, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, BFI London, the National Gallery of Art and Times Square. Her work has been featured in publications including Artforum, The New York Times and Senses of Cinema, and in 2014, she was featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”

She is an associate professor of film studies at Dartmouth College and a 2018-2019 Film Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University.

Mack is a graduate of St. Petersburg’s Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School and studied film at University of Florida. In 2004, she helped found The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival (FLEX) in Gainesville. This annual event, dedicated to new visions in cinema, soon became one of North America’s premiere showcases for experimental short film. After more than a decade of screenings, FLEX went on hiatus following its 2015 festival.

This year, former FLEX member and current UT faculty Warren Cockerham revived it in its new home of Tampa, with most screenings happening on UT’s campus. FLEX FEST ’19 will run from Feb. 6–10 and feature 12 programs of experimental short films and video and two programs of multi-projector expanded cinema in competition.

UT's Black Box Studio is located at 611 UT University Drive, Cass Building Room 133. For more information on the festival, go to www.flexfest.org or contact flexfestflorida@gmail.com.