This week (2-25-96) in avant garde cinema
Scott Stark
* Sunday, February 25: The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man at
Anthology Film Archives (New York): Photographed and directed
by Ron Rice (1963), restored/preserved by Taylor Mead (1982).
"The film describes, poetically, a way of living. The film
is a protest which is violent, childish, and sincere-a protest
against an industrial world based on the cycle of production
and consumption."-Albert Moravia, Rome L'Espresso.
* Sunday, February 25 at ATA (San Francisco): OFF THE WIRE: FREE
TV IN A THEATER ENVIRONMENT: Tonight features Truth Serum, the
slow moving long attention span videozine, produced by
Fletcher Fleudujon. Included is Episode 1 Hard Times A close
look at the art of skateboarding featuring one of the most
aggressive skateboarders ever captured on tape; Episode 2 is
a music 'zine featuring some local bands such as the
Loudmouths, The Men's Club and a whole host of surprises.
Episode 3 is a journey to the desert art festival Burning Man.
A plethera of music, art, and ritual. FREE! FREE! FREE!
* Sunday, February 25: Unshelved Films from the Filmmakers Coop
(Backstreet Edition) at Walking Picture Palace (at Context,
New York city): program notes unavailable
* Sunday, February 25: UNDERGROUND UNEARTHED! at SF Cinematheque
(San Francisco): a chance to see famed but still underground
classic (and some recent) avant-garde films, FREE! Today at
5:30: Serene Velocity by Ernie Gehr and Fog Line by Larry
Gottheim.
* Sunday, February 25: The Second Coming by Jack Walsh at SF
Cinematheque (San Francisco): San Francisco filmmaker (Working
Class Chronicle) and producer ("Living Room Festival") Jack
Walsh premieres his first narrative film, The Second Coming,
a bi-racial, gay teen's coming of age story set in the shadow
of a Fundamentalist takeover of the U.S. government. Also,
Walsh's earlier award winning Present Tense.
* Sunday, February 25: Loud Music/Silent Film at the Knitting
Factory (New York): "Salome", "Fall of the House of Usher" and
"Meshes of the Afternoon" with new music by Christina Wheeler
& Andrea Parkins
* Sunday, February 25: BLACK KITES and HELLO PHOTO at filmforum
(Los Angeles): Jo Andres' BLACK KITES (26min., 1995)
juxtaposes claustraphobic, finely-crafted tableaux with
entries from a journal, choreographer/experimentalist Jo
Andres recreates the interior life of a woman artist living
through the 1992 siege of Sarajevo. Nina Davenport's HELLO
PHOTO (55min., 1995) is a woman's journey into India filmed
in the direct cinema tradition of anthropoligist Robert
Gardner: sacred cows in the streets, tourists marveling at
erotic sculptures, the surrealism of the Indian film industry,
nostalgic rituals, and the omnipresence of a gaze looking back
at the camera.
* Tuesday, February 27: The imagined, the longed-for, the
conquered, and the sublime at PFA (Berkeley, CA): Joseph
Cornell's exquisite By Night With Torch and Spear (19??, 9.5
mins, Silent @16fps), moves forward, backwards, and upside
down, between an exotic world of tribes and the industry of
a steel foundry. In On Cannibalism (1994, 6 mins), Fatimah
Tobing Roy uses her parents' Indonesian heritage as a starting
point to examine exploration and displacement. Using a
collection of what artist Roddy Bogawa terms "pre-images" of
the landscape, The Imagined, The Longed-for, The Conquered,
and the Sublime (1994, 8 mins) charts different constructions
of the land, from the exotic to the mythical. In Work and Days
(1969, 12 mins, Silent, B&W), a film found by Hollis Frampton
in a junk shop, the making of a vegetable garden "blossoms
into overarching metaphor." Mark Street literally reshapes
images from pornographic films, and together with poetry by
Anaïs Nin, shifts our reading of Blue Movie (1995, 5 mins).
Julie Murray describes her Anathema (1995, 6 mins): "Doubt
is a shadow cast upon the doctor and his assistants who,
through ritualized posturing, admit themselves to the arena
of abject violence and inherit the disease they believe to
be death." Ken Jacobs's The Doctor's Dream (1978, 23 mins,
B&W) revealingly reworks a TV movie. In (Dung Smoke Enters the
Palace) (1989, 16 mins, 16mm and video simultaneously), Leslie
Thornton shifts between the play of Peggy and Fred,
turn-of-the-century footage of foundries, and NASA moon
shots.--Kathy Geritz
* Tuesday, February 27: Jack Smith Premiere at Scratch
Projections (Paris, France): "Overstimulated" 1960 7'; "Normal
Love" 1963 60'. Presentation par Jerry Tartaglia de deux films
restaures de Jack Smith, l'une des plus grandes figures du
cinema underground americain qui dans ses performances
reutilisaient des pans de films. Normal Love a ete realise
apres Flaming Creatures et rend hommage aux nombreux monstres
du cinema des annees 30.
* Wednesday, February 28: No More Sweets for You: new films and
videos about being alone at Hallwalls (Buffalo, New York):
Sexily complicated, formally hybrid, and politically
incorrect, the new film and video shorts of this program
unfold the fantasies, trauma and schizophrenia of soloness.
In an era of corporate grunge, queer commodification,
empowerment politics and right-wing cyborgs, how do the
unassimilated survive without being smashed, named or forced
to participate? This all-girl collection of shorts reflects
the daily questioning of a cultural rewards system whose
privileges are all to clear for those who refuse its terms.
Works by Nancy Andrews, Kristen Stroltmonn, Laura Nix, Jeanine
Oleson, Leah Gilliam, Hellen Mirra, Elisabeth Subrin, Sadie
Benning and Cecilia Dougherty.
* Wednesday, February 28: Visual Fission: UCB Documentaries at
PFA (Berkeley, CA): This evening's work showcases new
documentaries from UC Berkeley students in Film, Anthropology,
and Visual Studies. While excerpts from longer works, Pan
Francisco and Re-labeling Death, employ an anthropological
structure, Real Love and Every Age Has Its Myths aggressively
challenge documentary conventions. A single man's habitat is
the subject of a comic investigation, Home Alone, and the
nostalgic Home traverses the terrain between past and present.
Listening to Myself is a close-up point of view piece that
literally invites one into the home and head of the maker;
Through the Secret Window plays with fractured memories of a
childhood reality/fantasy. Finally, Haveahandout mixes still
photography, poetry, and straightforward documentary style
to craft compelling portraits of panhandlers.--Jennifer
Paige
* Wednesday, February 28: THE PIONEERS: MARIE MENKEN at
Cinematheque Ontario (Toronto, Ontario, Canada): New York City
painter, collage artist and filmmaker Marie Menken made little
films of extraordinary grace and vitality. Her expressive
hand-held camera work and attention to details of light,
colour, texture, form and rhythm give her short visual poems
a unique quality that's at once simple, direct and complete.
Most often her vision is a joyous one studying the physical
world around her and capturing its essence through the eye
of the camera. Her images sing and her films entice the viewer
to enter her welcoming world. GLIMPSE OF THE GARDEN USA 1957
5 minutes 16 mm; HURRY! HURRY! USA 1957 3 minutes 16 mm; EYE
MUSIC IN RED MAJOR USA 1961 5.5 minutes silent 16 mm;
ARABESQUE FOR KENNETH ANGER USA 1961 4 minutes 16 mm; GO-GO-GO
USA 1962-64 11.5 minutes silent 16 mm; MOONPLAY USA c. 1962
5 minutes 16 mm; MOOD MONDRIAN USA c. 1962 5.5 minutes silent
16 mm; NOTEBOOK USA 1962-63 10 minutes silent 16 mm;
EXCURSIONS USA c. 1962 5 minutes silent 16 mm; LIGHTS USA 1965
6.5 minutes silent 16 mm
* Wednesday, February 28: Maya Deren at Pompidou Center's Cinema
du Musee in Paris: retrospective continues, with Maya
Deren/Alexander Hammid Films to Films (presented by
Alain-Alcide Sudre): Hammid, "Aimless Walk", 1930, 9'; Deren,
"Meshes of the Afternoon", 1943, 14'; Deren, "The Divine
Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti", 1947-1951, 54'; Kline and
Hammid, "The Forgotten Village", 1940, 68'
* Thursday, February 29: Sidney Peterson at Pompidou Center's
Cinema du Musee in Paris: Personal American cinema from the
forties: Sidney Peterson "The Cage", 1947, 25'; "The Petrified
Dog", 1947, 19'; "Mr. Frenhofer and the Minotaur", 1949, 21';
"The Lead Shoes", 1949, 18'
* Thursday, February 29: Cinema Meets Psychoanalysis: Pabst's
Secrets of a Soul and more at SF Cinematheque (San Francisco):
an exploration of the encounter between psychoanalysis and
cinema in which psychoanalysis becomes the actual subject of
film. G.W. Pabst's Secrets of a Soul (1926), made with Freud's
colleague Karl Abraham, presents a case study of phobia,
repression and compulsion, and is the first film that
represented psychoanalysis as treatment. Followed by later
work, also commenting on psychoanalysis.
* Thursday, February 29: Films by Ernie Gehr and Andrew Noren at
Berks (Reading, Pennsylvania): Two wonderful films by two of
the best formalists of the avant-garde. SIDE/WALK/SHUTTLE
(1991, 41 min.) by Ernie Gehr - inspired by the visual and
gravitational possibilities discovered in an outdoor glass
elevator in San Francisco. Gehr "gives us an expansive view
of the relationship between architecture, city streets ... the
medium of cinema and patterns of thought." - Fred Camper; and
IMAGINARY LIGHT (1995, 31 min.) by Andrew Noren - he called
it his "backyard Buddah-impersonation, watching 'it' flow";
a lyrical high-contrast black and white time-lapse study of
the filmmaker's house and garden.
* Friday, March 1: recently preserved andy warhol films at
Anthology Film Archives (New York): recently preserved andy
warhol films & nbc news archive programs; details to be
announced
* Friday, March 1: Maya Deren Colloquium at Pompidou Center's
Cinema du Musee in Paris: 10am: presentation by Jean-Michel
Bouhours 10:15: Alain-Alcide Sudre (professor at the
University of Montpellier, co-founder of the Avignon Archives
of Experimental Film): "The double life of Maya Deren, between
artistic committment and 'wild mystic'". 11am: projection of
"At Land" and "Meshes of the Afternoon" 11:30: Patrick de Haas
(professor at the University of Paris I, experimental film
historian, author of "Integral Cinema, on painting and cinema
in the 1920s"), "Is there a relationship between Maya Deren
and French surrealism?" 2:30: Dominique Chateau (professor
of esthetics at the University of Paris I): "The question of
editing in the films of Maya Deren". 3pm: projection of
"Ritual in Transfigured Time" 3:15: Annette Michelson
(professor at New York University, editor of the revue
'October' and author of numerous studies of the Russian and
American avant-garde): "On 'An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form
and Film': Deren theoretician". 4pm: projection of "The Divine
Horsemen", documentary on Vodoun: images shot by Maya Deren
and edited later by Teiji and Cherel Ito. 5pm: Jean Rouch
(filmmaker and ethnologist): "Maya Deren; from experimental
cinema to ethnographic cinema". 6pm: projection of Jean
Rouch's "Les Maitres Fous", 1955, 29'
* Friday, March 1: TALK SHOW with Johnny White at Chicago
Filmmakers (Chicago): a "Performedia Event": TALK SHOW with
Johnny White is the best ninety minutes of television you'll
ever spend without a monitor! Showcasing local artists and
promoting exhibitions from around the city, TALK SHOW WITH
JOHNNY WHITE introduces bands, painters, filmmakers, and more
to audiences in a television format stage play. Words alone
could not adequately describe the roller coaster ride that
is TALK SHOW, hosted by the love child of Carol Burnett and
David Letterman, yes, that's Johnny White -- in person!
* Friday, March 1: Zoe Beloff at Total Mobile Home (San
Francisco): an intimate screening of Beloff's films and
digital works
* Friday-Sunday, March 1-3: SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER
STORY, PLUS: A short history of Barbie Commercials at Edison
Electric (Vancouver, British Columbia): Carpenterís rise to
stardom and untimely death from a heart attack due to anorexia
and bulimia. Using Barbie dolls as characters, Karenís face
is sanded and puttied to portray her weight loss, while faces
of family members are similarly distorted to visualize the
sinister family structure playing into Karenís illness. Video
footage played through television backgrounds, and brilliant
collisions of documentary and fiction, lend to the layered
meanings of this film. Haynes juxtaposes this American dream
gone wrong with the bubble gum soundtrack of the Carpenterís
pop music. While this sing-along audio resonates in the
viewerís mind, it ultimately led to litigation by the
Carpenter family, preventing this film from ever being
released.
* Friday through Sunday, March 1-3: The Hemp Revolution at
Chicago Filmmakers (Chicago): Australian filmmaker Anthony
Clarke shows how government (especially American government)
drug policies, in order to demonize marijuana, have turned
it into an industry dominated by organized crime and violence,
"feeding billions of dollars into the worst black market on
the planet." THE HEMP REVOLUTION explores the plant's
fascinating history, its thousands of uses, its intense
controversy and its modern potential to solve environmental
and social problems.
* Saturday, March 2: Essential Cinema: Hollis Frampton at
Anthology Film Archives (New York): Zorns Lemma ( 1970) 60
minutes. "Zorns Lemma is a major poetic work. Created and put
together by a very clear eye head, this original and complex
abstract work moves beyond the letters of the alphabet, beyond
words and beyond Freud. If you don't understand it the first
time you see it, don't despair, see it again! When you finally
'get it,' a small light, possibly a candle, will light itself
inside your forehead."- Ernie Gehr.
* Saturday, March 2: Alps at Anthology Film Archives (New York):
At a cottage on the Alps near Salzburg. 10 days. Each of the
nine filmmakers have 200 feet of color film available, a total
running time of 5min 28sec, which comes to 7874 frames. Each
shot is from a chance point of view. The driving force is
individual interpretation and inspiration based the preceding
shot of the other filmmaker. Shooting in the sense of "Instant
Composing." The entire editing took place within the cam era.
Also GROWING SILENTLY, film portrait of Monika von Boch
(1915-1993) Artist and Photographer, Saarland, Germany, by
Vanessa van Houten/Andreas Froeba. Filmic mosaic of a living
Artist, her work as well as her way of seeing and philosophy
of life.
* Saturday, March 2: Chick Strand at Pompidou Center's Cinema du
Musee in Paris: Chick Strand, between experimental cinema and
ethnographic cinema: "Angel Blue Sweet Wings", 1966, 3';
"Waterfall", 1967, 3'; "Mosori Monika", 1970, 20'; "Cosas de
Mi Vida", 1976, 25'; "Elasticity", 1976, 25'; "Guacamole",
1976, 10'; "Mujer de Milfuegos (Woman of a Thousand Fires)",
1976, 15'; "Cartoon le Mousse", 1979, 15'
* Saturday, March 2: Good Sister/Bad Sister + more at Other
Cinema (San Francisco): For International Women's Month, this
SISPICS show debuts Lia Johnson's way-smart GS/BS, a
triangulation of the 60s radicalism of Weather Underground
fugutive Katherine Power and the 90s feminism of rock musician
Courtney Love, as mediated by one Linda Carol, who is both
Love's mother and Power's therapist. PLUS Helen Stickler's
sex-worker drama Queen Mercy, Jennifer Gentile's Isabella
Holding a Pot of Basil, Sikay Tang's My Idol, Mari Kono's
Black Eulogy and Carolyn Coolie and Rachel Mayeri's Bird Cage
Wedding Cake.
* Saturday and Sunday, March 2-3: Art for Teachers of Children
at Filmforum (Los Angeles): Jennifer Montgomery's
controversial autobiographical and disquieting slant on
underage sex. The director's seemingly cinema-verite style
deliberately downplays the outre subject matter, leaving
viewers to decide what is meant by the "age of consent."
* Sunday, March 3: Daughter(s) Of Extermination: Sequel
to/Continuation of at SF Cinematheque (San Francisco): Reg.
8mm: Saved From Extinction" - Pulled together by YOU! The
second program of 8mm celluloid gore and glory. Program
includes: Trailer for "Reg. 8mm: Saved From Extinction"; The
Producer, smoker from the 1920s; shorter version of Before
Gentrification Hit with urban track (Ohio Players); Half of
a Lasse Braun Film (1970s); Double and Triple Images Shot
Around Town (S.F.) In The Early '80s (sound by Buzzcocks);
Mexican Home Movie Footage with appropriate text and Mexican
Blues... Free films to the first 25 patrons. (TC)
* Sunday, March 3: Chick Strand at Pompidou Center's Cinema du
Musee in Paris: Chick Strand, between experimental cinema and
ethnographic cinema: "Fever Dream", 1979, 7'; "Soft Fiction",
1979, 54'; "Artificial Paradise", 1986, 12'30"
Ongoing Events
* February 29-April 7: Gregory Markopoulos Retrospective at
Whitney Museum of American Art (New York)
* Through March 3: Kurt Kren Retrospective at Wiener Secession
(Vienna, Austria)
Let us know about your screening of avant garde film and video!
--
Scott Stark
sst...@sirius.com
Flicker: http://www.sirius.com/~sstark/