7:00-8:30 pm Opening reception in the museum

Image: Egill Sæbjörnsson, Various Projections (For a Two-by-Four, a Stone and a Bucket), 2007 video projection, mixed media and sound, © Egill Sæbjörnsson, courtesy of the artist, Berlin.

Join us for this casual gallery talk with Erin Kane, formerly SMoCA's associate curator, about the history of video art and its current global explosion. She will discuss the vast variety of approaches to video, using examples from SMoCA's summer exhibitions.

Kane worked at D'AmelioTerras gallery, New York, and managed a private collection of video art before working at SMoCA from 2003-05. She received her M.A. in post-war and contemporary art from Sotheby's Institute, London, and completed her B.A. in art history at Ohio State University, Columbus.

Meet in the Museum lobby. Free.

Image: Torgeir Husevaag, Freeze Out, 2005, performance documentation, © Torgeir Husevaag, courtesy of the artist, Oslo. Photo: Torgeir Husevaag

Looking for a cool escape from the summer heat? Join film critic Colin Boyd for a double-feature screening of Scandinavian films, in conjunction with the exhibition Contemporary Scandinavian Art. Boyd will introduce Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 masterpiece The Seventh Seal, followed by Danish director Lone Sherfig’s 2001 comedy Italian for Beginners. Boyd is film critic for ABC-15 and College Times and is a contributing writer for Las Vegas City Life.

See his website www.bigpictureradio.com for reviews and interviews. Co-sponsored by the Phoenix Film Foundation and Phoenix Film Festival. Complementary snacks and cash bar. Stage 2 Theater. $15 members; $18 nonmembers; call 480-994-ARTS for tickets.

Starring Max von Sydow, The Seventh Seal is Bergman’s allegorical, existentialist breakthrough film. Set in medieval Sweden, the film focuses on a medieval knight who returns from the Crusades across a plague-ridden landscape, to challenge Death to a game of chess. This classic won the 1957 Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the 1958 Grand Prix International du Film d’Avant-garde, the 1959 Finnish Film Journalists Award and the Nastro d’Argento (silver ribbon) for Best Director of a foreign film by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists in 1961.

(96 minutes; subtitled; Allan Ekelund; Ingmar Bergman, director).

Don’t be fooled by the title: Lone Sherfig’s Italian for Beginners isn’t a language primer but rather an unforgettable romantic comedy. It broke box office records for a Danish-language film in Denmark and won a Silver Bear for Best Director award at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival. This amusing story follows six, lonely thirty-something singles from Copenhagen who travel together to Venice to study Italian. Sherfig belongs to the Dogme 95 film movement and is a champion of cinéma vérité.

(97 minutes; subtitled; Ib Tardini, DR V/Marianne Mortizen, Gert Duve Skovlund, 2001; Lone Sherfig, director).

Egill Sæbjörnsson, Various Projections (For a Two-by-Four, a Stone and a Bucket), 2007 video projection, mixed media and sound, © Egill Sæbjörnsson, courtesy of the artist, Berlin.

Discover ways to use contemporary art to enhance your teaching by downloading lesson plans created by SMoCA's education department which use SMoCA’s exhibitions as a springboard for interdisciplinary learning in many K-12 subjects.

Top: Torgeir Husevaag, Outcome 3 (Interactions), 2007, pen and ink on paper,
100 x 80.5 centimeters (39.4 x 31.7 inches), © Torgeir Husevaag, courtesy of the artist, Oslo.
Right: Torgeir Husevaag, Chronological Stack, 2007, ceramic poker chips and plastic, © Torgeir Husevaag, courtesy of the arist, Oslo.

As always there are Free Exhibition tours of Contemporary Scandinavian Art and the other exhibitions on view led by SMoCA docents: every Thursday at 1:30 pm and by appointment. Call 480-874-4641.