Catalogue > At random

"Threshold Songs," by Natalia Almada and Peter Gizzi is part of "The Tangier 8," a film-poetry project that took place in Tangier, Morocco in June 2009. Working under tight time constraints-they had just four days to film, four days for sound, and four days for editing, the artists took inspiration from the city of Tangier-its history, architecture, people, politics, as well as from each other, to produce these short film-poems.

Natalia Almada- Born in 1974 in Mexico. She graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and shares her time between Mexico City and Brooklyn, New York. Her directing credits include All Water Has a Perfect Memory, an experimental short film; Al Otro Lado, her award winning debut feature documentary about immigration, drug trafficking and corrido music; and her most recent film, EL GENERAL, a family memoir and portrait of Mexico past and present which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and won the best documentary director award. Her films have been shown at The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Biennial, as well as at several film festivals around the world. She has received support for her work from numerous foundations including The Creative Capital Foundation, The Tribeca Film Institute, The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, PBS and others. Almada is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow. 2) Peter Gizzi- Born in 1959 in Massachusetts. Gizzi attended Brown University, NYC and SUNY Buffalo. His books include The Outernationale (Wesleyan, 2007), Some Values of Landscape and Weather (Wesleyan, 2003), Artificial Heart (Burning Deck, 1998), and Periplum (Avec Books, 1992). In 2004 Salt Publishing of England reprinted an expanded edition of his first book as Periplum and other poems 1987-92. He has also published several limited-edition chapbooks, folios, and artist books. His work has been translated into numerous languages and anthologized here and abroad. His honors include the Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets (1994) and fellowships in poetry from The Fund for Poetry (1993), The Rex Foundation (1993), Howard Foundation (1998), The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (1999), and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2005).