THE PROPOSAL
The Film
Known as “the artist among architects,” Luis Barragán is among the world’s most celebrated architects of the 20th century. Upon his death in 1988, much of his work was locked away in a Swiss bunker, hidden from the world’s view. In an attempt to resurrect Barragán’s life and art, boundary redefining artist Jill Magid creates a daring proposition that becomes a fascinating artwork in itself—a high-wire act of negotiation that explores how far an artist will go to democratize access to art.
Limited Edition Blu-ray & DVD
Buy & Rent on VOD
Trailer
Screenings
| 5/24/19 | New York, NY | IFC Center | |
| 5/31/19 | Los Angeles, CA | Monica Film Center | |
| 5/31/19 | Pasadena, CA | Playhouse 7 | |
| 6/7/19 | Hartford, CT | Real Art Ways | |
| 6/7/19 | Irvine, CA | Westpark | |
| 6/14/19 | Chicago, IL | Gene Siskel Film Center | |
| 6/14/19 | Santa Fe, NM | CCA | |
| 6/14/19 | Columbus, OH | Gateway Film Center | |
| 6/15/19 | Miami, FL | O Cinema | |
| 6/21/19 | Phoenix, AZ | Valley Art | |
| 6/21/19 | Ashland, OR | Varsity | |
| 6/21/19 | Portland, OR | Living Room Theaters | |
| 6/21/19 | Louisville, KY | Speed Museum | |
| 6/21/19 | Washington, DC | West End | |
| 6/21/19 | Larkspur, CA | The Lark | |
| 6/27/19 | Hudson, NY | Time and Space | |
| 6/28/19 | Philly, PA | Ritz Bourse | |
| 7/5/19 | New York, NY | New Plaza Cinema | |
| 7/5/19 | Lincoln, NE | Mary Riepma Ross Center | |
| 7/5/19 | San Diego, CA | Media Arts Center / Digital Gym | |
| 7/5/19 | Atlanta, GA | The Plaza | |
| 7/12/19 | Portland, ME | Portland Museum | |
| 7/12/19 | Omaha, NE | Film Streams | |
| 8/17/19 | Seattle, WA | Northwest Film Forum | |
| 9/10/19 | Cleveland, OH | Cleveland Museum of Art |
Press
“Captivatingly wily. ‘The Proposal’ meditates on the meaning of artistic legacy. Most of all, it shines an ingeniously media-savvy spotlight on Barragán’s work.”
—Jeannette Catsoulis, THE NEW YORK TIMES – Critic’s Pick
“A thoughtful, elegantly hypnotic exploration of ownership, access, and moral responsibility. “A multi-layered and thought-provoking work of art.”
“Magid’s inspired response to a complex situation makes for an intriguing and approachable film.”
—Allan Hunter, SCREEN INTERNATIONAL
“The documentary doesn’t bring closure to her fight for Barragán’s archive, but it will work its way under a viewer’s skin and leave them with persistent ideas to consider.”
—Dan Schindel, HYPERALLERGIC
With its measured pacing and haunting ambience, Magid’s hypnotic film is an engaging examination of artistry, diplomacy, and posterity at a crossroads.”
—Manuel Betancourt, REMEZCLA
“Beguiling. An unforgettable consideration of who should have ownership of an artist’s legacy.”
—Stephen Saito, MOVEABLE FEST
“Magid disarms with her intimate use of her voice, relaying her correspondence with Zanco where her earnest requests are met with gently condescending responses, bringing a knowing grin to anyone who’s had to deal with a bureaucracy operating with empty diplomacy to avoid true interaction, and when combined with the slight sense of aesthetic abstraction, she gorgeously conveys the inherently personal nature of her quest and the sense that what she’s after is far more intangible than just some boxes of photographs and drawings. However, even if it’s the fear of being forgotten that drives her, she’s made a film in THE PROPOSAL that’s impossible to shake.”
—Stephen Saito, MOVEABLE FEST
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About the Filmmakers
Jill Magid, Director
American artist and writer Jill Magid’s work is deeply ingrained in her lived experience, exploring and blurring the boundaries between art and life. Through her performance-based practice, Magid has initiated intimate relations with a number of organizations and structures of authority. She explores the emotional, philosophical and legal tensions between the individual and ‘protective’ institutions, such as intelligence agencies or the police. To work alongside or within large organizations, Magid makes use of institutional quirks, systemic loopholes that allow her to make contact with people ‘on the inside’. Her work tends to be characterized by the dynamics of seduction, the resulting narratives often taking the form of a love story. It is typical of Magid’s practice that she follows the rules of engagement with an institution to the letter – sometimes to the point of absurdity.
With solo exhibitions at institutions around the world including MUAC, Mexico City: Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Berkeley Museum of Art, California; Tate Liverpool; the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; Yvon Lambert, Paris and New York; Gagosian Gallery, New York; and the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Netherlands, Magid has received awards from the Fonds Voor Beeldende Kunsten, the Netherland-American Foundation Fellowship Fulbright Grant, and most recently the 2017 Calder Prize. Magid has participated in Manifesta, the Liverpool, Bucharest, Singapore, Incheon, Gothenburg, Oslo and Performa Biennials. She is an Associate of the Art, Design and the Public Domain program at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, and was a 2013-15 fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. An adjunct teacher at Cooper Union, Magid is the author of four novellas. Her work is included the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Fundacion Jumex, and the Walker Art Center, among others.
Jarred Alterman, Producer and Cinematographer
Jarred Alterman is a New York-based documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, who won best cinematography at Tribeca Film Festival for CONTEMPORARY COLOR, a multi-cam David Byrne concert/doc film directed by the Ross Bros. He has worked in music, art, and dance related projects for over two decades, including Charles Atlas and Merce Cunningham Dance Co. He has recently lensed two Sundance premieres: Project X, a film by the Academy Award-winning director, Laura Poitras (CITIZENFOUR) and BISBEE’ 17 by Robert Greene. His first feature, CONVENTO, has played all over the world and won a special jury prize at IFFB.
Charlotte Cook, Producer
Charlotte Cook is a producer, curator, and writer from London, based in New York. Charlotte is a Co-Founder and Executive Producer of Field of Vision, a film unit that commissions filmmakers and artists to make short form, episodic and feature length creative visual journalism. Prior to Field of Vision, she was the Director of Programming at Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival. In addition to her work at Field of Vision, Charlotte is currently a programmer at CPH:DOX and recently produced the films OUR NEW PRESIDENT (Sundance ‘18) and THE GOSPEL OF EUREKA (SXSW ‘18).
Laura Coxson, Producer
Laura Coxson is an NYC-based documentary producer. Her film, IRIS (2015), premiered at the 2014 New York Film Festival, was released by Magnolia Pictures and has grossed almost $2 million theatrically. She was an archival producer for a 2016 National Geographic TV series I Am Rebel Executive Produced by Doug Liman. Coxson produced THE LOVE WE MAKE (2012) with Paul McCartney for Showtime; MUHAMMAD AND LARRY (2009) for ESPN’s 30 for 30 series; and a Documentary Yearbook piece for the 81st Academy Awards. She previously worked for Janus films, notably on the theatrical release of THE GREAT BEAUTY (2013 Academy Award Winner- Foreign Language Film) as well as a July 4, 2014 re-release of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT. In 2010, the IFC’s “Stranger than Fiction” chose her as one of the “Top 20 People Under 40” working in Film. Most recently, she produced CHEF FLYNN which premiered at Sundance and the Berlinale.
FIELD OF VISION
Launched in September 2015 at the New York Film Festival, Field of Vision is led by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras and curator & producer Charlotte Cook and is a filmmaker-driven documentary unit that commissions and creates original short-form, episodic, and feature-length nonfiction films about developing and ongoing stories around the globe.
Work created by Field of Vision has been featured at major international film festivals, including Sundance, Cannes, SXSW, and Rotterdam, and has received the Best Short Form Series award at the International Documentary Association, a number of festival Grand Jury Prizes for Short Documentary, and a News and Documentary Emmy nomination. In addition, Field of Vision won the Webby Award for Online Film & Video – News & Politics: Series. Field of Vision is a unit of First Look Media.
Hannah Buck, Editor
Hannah Buck is a New York-based editor who received her BA in Media Arts from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. She has worked as an editor on the award-winning feature AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY (Sundance, 2012), the impressionistic documentary TRIPTYCH (PBS, 2015), and 195 LEWIS (Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2016). In 2014, she was awarded a MacDowell Colony Residency Fellowship to edit Memories of a Penitent Heart and in 2015 was a fellow at the Sundance Edit and Story Lab.
T. Griffin, Composer
T. Griffin has composed scores for over 40 feature length films, and dozens of live and multimedia projects. Notable titles include the Academy-Award nominated LIFE, ANIMATED and multiple festival award winners QUEST, THE OVERNIGHTERS, and WELCOME TO LEITH as well as the recently Oscar Shortlisted ONE OF US. He has composed and toured live film/music events with filmmakers including Sam Green, Jem Cohen, Brent Green and Esther Robinson. These shows have toured internationally and been presented by The Barbican, BAM Next Wave, The Walker Art Center, The Melt Down Festival, Big Ears Festival, and dozens of other festivals and museums. Besides his work as a film composer and solo artist he has worked as a player and/or producer with luminaries of the independent music world including Patti Smith, Vic Chesnutt, Mary Margaret O’Hara and members of The Ex, Dirty Three, Fugazi, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. He was a fellow at the Sundance Composers’ Lab in 2008, and has twice been nominated for Cinema Eye Honors for Original Music Score. He is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Laura Poitras, Executive Producer
Laura Poitras is a filmmaker and journalist. Her film CITIZENFOUR won an Oscar for best documentary, as well as awards from BAFTA, Independent Spirit Awards, and the Directors Guild of America. The first film in her post-9/11 trilogy, MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY, was nominated for an Oscar. The second film, THE OATH, was nominated for two Emmys. Her reporting on NSA surveillance received the George Polk Award for National Security journalism, and shared in the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service. Her most recent film, Risk premiered at the Cannes film festival in May 2016. She recently exhibited her first solo museum show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Contact Information
For booking inquiries, please contact:
Andrew Carlin
Oscilloscope Laboratories
630-445-1215
andrew@oscilloscope.net
For press inquiries, please contact:
Sydney Tanigawa
212-219-4029 ext. 41
Sydney@Oscilloscope.net
For all other inquiries, please contact:
info@oscilloscope.net
Oscilloscope Laboratories – 2019