From: Freya (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Mar 26 2006 - 07:17:43 PST
Which made me want to ask the question: What is there
in the way of pre-war queer underground cinema?
I was also suprised to see no mention of Jean Cocteau
in this context.
In a way I'm not sure it's that people don't take the
fact that film makers such as Kenneth Anger were queer
and had a queer outlook and aesthethic seriously, it
is perhaps that to a certain extent that they don't
care because the films are such great works of art
that they often trancend those kind of barriers even.
That is surely a great achievement to create art that
are not just great queer films but great films
generally.
I probably don't explain myself too well here, as I
have to rush out to the supermarket, but hopefully you
can work out what I mean! :)
love
Freya
--- Chuck Kleinhans <email suppressed> wrote:
> Beyond Warhol, Smith, and Anger:
> The Significance of Postwar Queer Underground
> Cinema, 1950-1968
>
> A Conference at the University of Chicago, April
> 7-8, 2006
>
> The Conference is free and open to the public.
>
> It will be held at the
> Film Studies Center Auditorium
> Cobb Hall, Room 307
> 5811 South Ellis Avenue
> University of Chicago
>
> Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), Jack Smith’s
> Flaming
> Creatures (1963), and Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls
> (1966) are
> widely regarded as some of the most important and
> influential
> films of postwar underground cinema. But cinema
> studies has
> only recently begun to take seriously the fact that
> Anger,
> Smith, and Warhol were gay filmmakers whose films
> developed a
> queer aesthetic to explore questions of queer
> subjectivity and
> world-making. Moreover, the field has still barely
> registered
> the fact that they were not just brilliant auteurs
> but were
> enmeshed in and influenced by a larger circle of
> mostly New
> York-based queer filmmakers, performers, writers,
> and artists.
>
> At this conference we aim to map the contours and
> assess the
> significance of this wider cultural formation, which
> we call
> postwar queer underground cinema. This cinema
> largely
> developed in the 1950s and 60s in the ferment of New
> York’s
> East Village, the scene of complex interactions,
> collaborations, and conflicts between mostly gay or
> bisexual
> male filmmakers and mostly heterosexual but
> resolutely
> anti-heteronormative female filmmakers and between
> white and
> Puerto Rican bohemian, queer, and street cultures.
> Speakers
> will explore the work, interrelationships, and
> influence of
> Marie Menken, Willard Maas and Ben Moore, Barbara
> Rubin, José
> Rodriguez-Soltero, Gregory Markopoulos, Mario
> Montez, Naomi
> Levine, Shirley Clarke, Charles Boultenhouse, Parker
> Tyler,
> and Ken Jacobs, among others, as well as Anger,
> Smith, and
> Warhol. We will also explore their relationship to
> other
> queer underground theater and arts scenes and to the
> queer
> and/or Puerto Rican worlds of the East Village, as
> well as the
> transnational circulation and formation of postwar
> queer
> aesthetics. Throughout, we will consider the
> implications for
> our understanding of the postwar avant-garde of
> taking
> seriously the role of queer subjectivity and
> world-making in
> its formation.
>
> Organized by the University of Chicago Lesbian and
> Gay Studies
> Project in cooperation with the Committee on Cinema
> and Media
> Studies, Experimental Film Club and Film Studies
> Center.
>
> ***FRIDAY, APRIL 7***
>
> 4:30-5:45 pm: The Queer Underground as a Cultural
> Formation
> --George Chauncey (Chicago): Introduction: The Queer
> Underground as Cultural Formation
> --Stephen Bottoms (Leeds): From Off-Off Broadway to
> Underground Cinema
>
> Break for Dinner.
>
> 7-9 pm: Special Conference Screening and Live
> Performance
> “The Life of Juanita Castro”
>
> ***SATURDAY, APRIL 8***
>
> 9:30-10 am: Registration & Coffee
>
> 10-11:45 am: Formative Encounters
> --Ron Gregg (Chicago): Welcome & Introduction.
> --Juan Suárez (Murcia, Spain): Puerto Ricans, the
> East Village
> and the Queer Underground
> --Tom Gunning (Chicago): Incandescent Images Burning
> through
> the Celluloid Closet
>
> 12-1 pm: Break for Lunch
>
> 1-3 pm: The Queerness of the Women’s Avant Garde
> --Lauren Rabinovitz (Iowa): The Queer Underground,
> Shirley
> Clarke and Portrait of Jason (1967)
> --Ron Gregg (Chicago): Barbara Rubin, Christmas on
> Earth
> (1963), and Cultural Revolution in the 1960s
> --Leanne Gilbertson (Rochester): Out of Place! in
> Time:
> Reclaiming Female Agency in the 1960s Avant-Gardes
> of Warhol’s
> Factory and Judson Memorial Church
>
> 3:15-5 pm: The New York Underground and the
> Transnational
> Formation of a Queer Aesthetic
> --Marc Siegel (Free University, Berlin/UCLA): VIVA
> la
> différence! The American Underground Goes to Europe
> --Tom Waugh (Concordia): Underground, Closet and
> Periphery:
> McLaren, Jutra and Montreal
>
> 5:15-6:15 pm: Round table on the Significance of
> the Queer
> Underground
> B. Ruby Rich (UC-Santa Cruz) and others.
>
> 6:15-7 pm: Reception
>
> For more information on this and other events,
> please call
> 773.702.8596 or visit the Film Studies Center
> Website at
> www.filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
>
>
>
__________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
> <email suppressed>.
>
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__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.