The Illinois Parables

Synopsis

A suite of Midwestern parables that questions the historical role that belief has played in ideology and national identity. Using archive imagery, testimony, verbal and dramatic re-enactment, voiceover and on-screen text, each regional vignette relays a tale of exodus, messianism, technological breakthrough or resistance somewhere in the state of Illinois. Both deeply local and universally allegorical, The Illinois Parables sketches out a secular liturgy and hints at where the roots to the current state of US politics might lie.

Biography and Films

Deborah Stratman (Washington, D.C., 1967) is a filmmaker and an associate professor in the School of Art & Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Much of her work points to the relationships between physical environments and the human power struggles that play out on the land and address ideas of freedom, identity, control, ghosts and faith. Blurring the lines between documentary and experimental filmmaking, she mixes analogue and digital images with archive footage. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA and MoMA PS1, Centre Pompidou, Witte de With and Tabakalera, among many other art centres, and her films have been screened at festivals such as Sundance, Berlinale, CPH:DOX, True/False, Toronto, Locarno and Rotterdam.

She made her Spanish debut in 2002, when In Order Not to Be Here competed in the official section at l’Alternativa, and she has been a festival regular ever since: O’er the Land won Best Documentary in 2009 and The Illinois Parables won a Special Mention in the Feature Film section. In l'Alternativa 2017 she presented a retrospective on her work and led a _{Sonic Rambling} workshop.

Her latest feature, Last Things, is also being screened at l'Alternativa 2023 after its world premiere at Sundance and playing at the Berlinale.

Podcast