The Illinois Parables

January 11, 2017 · The Pilot Light · 7:30 p.m.

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Note: The Illinois Parables will screen with William Randall’s Methane Ghosts.

“…conveys a unique and precious kind of knowledge.” — A.O. Scott, New York Times

An experimental documentary comprised of regional vignettes about faith, force, technology, and exodus. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism and resistance, all occurring somewhere in the state of Illinois. The state is a convenient structural ruse, allowing its histories to become allegories that explore how we’re shaped by conviction and ideology.

The Parables consider what might constitute a liturgical form. Not a sermon, but a form that questions what morality catalyzes, and what belief might teach us about nationhood. In our desire to explain the unknown, who or what do we end up blaming or endorsing?

“…does nothing by the numbers, constantly redefining its approach.” — Nick Pinkerton, Film Comment

“…at once an experimental documentary, a work of historical excavation and an insistently moral ideological critique. — Manohla Dargis, New York Times

About the Filmmaker

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker interested in landscapes and systems. Much of her work points to the relationships between physical environments and human struggles for power and control that play out on the land. Recent projects have addressed freedom, expansionism, surveillance, sonic warfare, public speech, ghosts, sinkholes, levitation, propagation, orthoptera, raptors, comets and faith. She has exhibited internationally at venues including MoMA NY, Centre Pompidou, Hammer Museum, Mercer Union, Witte de With, the Whitney Biennial and festivals including Sundance, Viennale, CPH/DOX, Oberhausen, Ann Arbor, Full Frame, Rotterdam and Berlinale. Stratman is the recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim and USA Collins fellowships, a Creative Capital grant and an Alpert Award. She lives in Chicago where she teaches at the University of Illinois.