Viewfinder Virtual Film Series: Leslie Thornton on Surviving August 5, 2021, at 5:30 p.m. ET

Washington, D.C - Join the Smithsonian American Art Museum for an engaging virtual lecture with award-winning filmmaker Leslie Thornton. Learn how Thornton, with her decades-long episodic film epic Peggy and Fred in Hell (1983–2015), secured a place of reverence in cinema history. Enjoy a special screening of the series’ most well-known video, Peggy and Fred in Kansas (11 mins, 1987). In this short piece, viewers are introduced to the protagonists

as young children, responding to a post-apocalyptic Earth that has forced them into hiding. They live among the debris of their former society and rely on tune-in radio signals for glimpses into another world. Following the screening, Thornton and Saisha Grayson, time based media curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, reflect on how this avant-garde film classic resonates with renewed urgency for audiences in 2021, after a year of contemplating a threatening environment “out there” via media consumption while at home. They will be joined by Natalie Bell, curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, who is organizing the Thornton retrospective that opens there this October. 

This program is part of Viewfinder: Women’s Film and Video from the Smithsonian, a monthly virtual film screening and conversation series sponsored by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, Because of Her Story. This first sequence of selected works reflects on interiority—a particularly timely topic during this global pandemic.

Visit WomensHistory.si.edu for more information about upcoming events in this film screening series.

Location: Online

Tickets: Free; Registration Required via Zoom

Link: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DdM-BxTHSXy7w2zBaf0Lvw

About the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is home to one of the most significant and inclusive collections of American art in the world. Its artworks reveal America’s rich artistic and cultural history from the colonial period to today. The museum’s main building is located at Eighth and G streets N.W., above the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail station, and is open 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Its Renwick Gallery, a branch museum dedicated to contemporary craft and decorative arts, is located on Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. and is open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday Admission is free. Follow the museum on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Smithsonian information: (202) 633-1000. Museum information (recorded): (202) 633-7970. Website: americanart.si.edu.