From: weekly listing (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Feb 17 2007 - 09:21:40 PST
This week [February 17 - 25, 2007] in avant garde cinema (part 2 of 2)
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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007
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2/22
Chicago, Illinois: Conversations at the Edge
http://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/
6 pm, 164 N. State St.
SALLA TYKKÄ: FILMS & VIDEOS
SALLA TYKKÄ IN PERSON! Disquieting and seductive, the work of Finnish
photographer and filmmaker Salla Tykkä mines the edges of experience
with the language of our personal and collective dreams. Tykkä..s dense
symbolic landscapes reimagine Hollywood conventions as dreamlike rites
of passage fraught with danger and possibility--a shirtless young woman
boxes a much larger man in POWER (1999); a Tippi Hedren look-a-like is
pulled underwater in ZOO (2006); and a woman travels into a mysterious
cavern in CAVE (2003). Also on the program: THRILLER (2001); LASSO
(2000); BITCH: PORTRAIT OF THE HAPPY ONE (1997); and MY HATE IS USELESS
(1996); among others. Co-presented by CATE and SAIC..s Photographic
Graduate Committee on Visiting Artists. (1996-2006, Salla Tykkä,
Finland, various formats, ca. 100 min.).
2/22
New York, New York: Anthology Film Archives
http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/
7:00 & 9:30, 32 Second Avenue (at Second Street)
FISCHLI AND WEISS PROGRAM
Dir: Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Swiss artists Peter Fischli and
David Weiss have, since the late 1970s, collaborated in producing
cunning, devious and very funny works that play with our expectations of
the everyday. In a wide variety of formats, including photography,
video, film, installation, and sculpture, Fischli and Weiss have found a
way to consistently amuse and surprise viewers with their dedication to
the banal and mundane aspects of life. In their work - which has
included sculptures constructed from cocktail sausages, installations
painstakingly refabricating left-over construction materials, and the
hysterically never-ending film, THE WAY THINGS GO, which follows a
perpetual-motion machine made up of the contents of their studio -
everyday objects take on an unexpectedly lifelike quality: they balance
on each other, play off each other and collide into one another with a
witty intelligence. Tonight's program presents a selection of their
cinematic output. . THE POINT OF LEAST RESISTANCE / DER GERINGSTE
WIDERSTAND. 1981, 30 minutes, Super-8 transferred to video, color. A
bear and a rat are out to make a lot of money - with art. They find a
corpse in a gallery and, hoping it will prove to be a means of access to
the worlds of culture, action and finance, they take it along with them.
However the desired effect is not forthcoming and they become involved
in questions and observations on the subject of art and crime. "Mining
both art and artlessness, THE LEAST RESISTENCE [and its companion-piece,
THE RIGHT WAY] are key moments in the early work of the artists, from
which many of the themes that recur in their practice begin to unfold.
The artists, disguised as animals, parody both the art world -
specifically 1980s Los Angeles - and the wilderness." -Tate Modern. THE
RIGHT WAY / DER RECHTE WEG. 1983, 55 minutes, 16mm transferred to video,
sound. In THE RIGHT WAY a bear and a rat - the artists reusing the
costumes from their film THE POINT OF LEAST RESISTANCE - explore dark
forests, treacherous ravines and snow-swept glaciers. With no real aim
in mind, the bear and the rat bungle along in a folk tale of their own
devising, wondering what they should do and where they should go,
enjoying nature together, foraging for sustenance, getting lost,
squabbling, joking and making music along the way. Both monumental and
intimate, serious and hilarious, THE RIGHT WAY suggests how any way -
whether straight, crooked or both - may be made into the right one. THE
WAY THINGS GO / DER LAUF DER DINGE. 1987, 30 minutes, 16mm, color.
Distributed by First Run/Icarus Films. Inside a warehouse, a precarious
70-100 foot-long structure has been constructed using various items.
When set in motion, a chain reaction ensues. Fire, water, and the laws
of gravity and of chemistry determine the life-cycle of objects - of
things. The film enacts a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism
and art, improbability and precision.
2/22
New York, New York: Anthology Film Archives
http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/
8:00, 32 Second Avenue (at Second Street)
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS
Dir: Clive Holden. This calendar continues the 8-month screening series
of Canadian artists' film and video organized by Anthology and The
Images Festival, Toronto. Many of the works to be screened will be New
York City and U.S. premieres, while others have rarely screened in New
York since they were first produced. To celebrate the occasion, a
monograph featuring essays, stills, descriptions and interviews has been
published and will be freely available. In addition, many of the artists
will be with us to present their programs. . Following our successful
spotlights on Philip Hoffman, Leslie Peters, Robert Lee and Barbara
Sternberg, this season focuses on three stellar artists: the activist
Richard Fung, the poet Clive Holden, and Super-8 stalwart John Porter.
Richard Fung will be paired with a program of shorts while Clive Holden
and John Porter will each have two evenings devoted to their own work.
The shorts program in January features pieces by artists reflecting on
the U.S.A. including Arthur Lipsett, Joyce Wieland, Richard Kerr, Gilles
Groulx and John Price. Look for our final two shorts programs in April
2007. The Images Festival is Canada's largest annual event devoted
exclusively to independent and experimental film, video, installation,
live performance and new media. The 20th edition of the Images Festival
runs April 5-14, 2007 in Toronto, Canada. For more information please
visit: www.imagesfestival.com. Organized by Scott Berry, Chris Kennedy
and Jeremy Rigsby (The Images Festival) and Andrew Lampert (Anthology
Film Archives). This series generously supported by the Canada Council
for the Arts, Media Arts Section and the Canadian Consulate General of
New York City. NYC PREMIERE - CLIVE HOLDEN IN PERSON!. Clive Holden.
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS. 2004, 90 minutes, 35mm. Music by
John K. Samson, Jason Tait & Christine Fellows. Clive Holden's haunting
short films and texts are set to music in this exquisite feature-length
film-cycle, which explores feelings of transience, loss and longing for
a place to call home…The overall effect is of a mystery-shrouded journey
that accumulates emotional impact with locomotive force. Holden's ideas
are infused with a deep sense of place, and explore distance and
remoteness as both a physical and an emotional experience…As a
first-generation Canadian born of Irish immigrants, Holden's past is
full of memories of traveling across the country. "Without even trying
to do it I ended up living all over the country. A sense of place is
important to everyone, but for an immigrant the search for place is
really important. I think that's why the trains work so well. It's
powerful, searching." Notes by Chris Gehman.
2/22
San Francisco, California: Artists Television Access
http://www.atasite.org/
8pm, 992 Valencia St.
SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE (AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION)
Hugo Ball Room Labs has taken the crisp new DVD version of the French
film and dubbed in Ken Knabb's translation as read by Dore Bowen, making
it possible for you, as a mono-lingual American, to attend to the
complex interaction of text and montage. Guy Debord (1931-1994) was the
most influential figure in the Situationist International, the small
experimental group that played a key role in provoking the May 1968
revolt in France. The Society of the Spectacle (1973) is Debord's film
adaptation of his own 1967 book of the same name. As passages from the
book are read in voiceover the text is illuminated, via direct
illustration or various types of ironic contrast, by clips from Russian
and Hollywood features (including Potemkin, Ten Days That Shook the
World, Johnny Guitar, Mr. Arkadin, etc.), TV commercials, softcore porn,
and news and documentary footage, including glimpses of Spain 1936,
Hungary '56, Watts '65, France '68 and other revolts of the past.
Intertitle quotes from Marx, Machiavelli, Clausewitz or Tocqueville
occasionally break the flow. Presented in association with Kino21 and
the Bureau of Public Secrets http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord.films
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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2007
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2/23
Berlin, Germany: NewYorkRioToyko
http://nyrt.net
8PM, NewYorkRioToyko e.V., Eberswalderstr. 4, 10437 Berlin
70CM
Film Screening curated by Diana Arce. Premiere: in NewYorkRioToyko.
Other Screenings: March 7 and 8, 2007, 10PM. Ex'N'Pop, Potsdamerstr.
157, 10783 Berlin-Shoeneberg. The average westerner requires 70
centimeters of personal space in front of them. NewYorkRioTokyo e.V. and
Ex'N'Pop are proud to present films exploring the domain of
psychological personal space. 70cm includes works from internationally
renown as well as up and coming artists: Diana Arce (USA), Bill Brand
(USA), Sari Carel (Israel), Joel Devalcourt (USA), Joseph Dwyer (USA),
Anne Haydock (USA), Jennifer Myers (USA), Corinna Schnitt (Germany), and
Vanessa Woods (USA). Website: http://www.visualosmosis.com/70cm
2/23
Kansas City, Missouri: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
http://www.nelson-atkins.org
7:00 p.m., 4525 Oak Street
ELECTROMEDIASCOPE
Pop Music and Consumer Culture, Although the dialog between contemporary
art, mass media and popular culture does initiate revitalizing processes
within different forms of cultural expression, recent technological,
socio-economic and political developments are impacting all aspects of
contemporary life, and human behavior and experience are becoming less
diversified as culture becomes increasingly corporate, totalized and
reductive. Independent experimental production by artists that address
these issues and new forms of communication between individuals and
groups are emerging as an alternative creative economy whose critical
discourses and projects contribute to the diversity of contemporary
global life. –Patrick Clancy, CHAIN, Jem Cohen (USA), 2004, 99 min.,
16mm film shown on video.
2/23
London, England: Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/film
7pm, Bankside, SE1
ROBERT BEAVERS: MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED: 1
Robert Beavers' 18-film cycle "My Hand Outstretched to the Winged
Distance and Sightless Measure" will be shown in its entirety over three
days. EARLY MONTHLY SEGMENTS (1968-70/2002, 33 min) Early Monthly
Segments, filmed when Beavers was 18 and 19 years old, now forms the
opening to his film cycle, "My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance
and Sightless Measure." It is a highly stylized work of
self-portraiture, depicting filmmaker and companion Gregory J.
Markopoulos in their Swiss apartment. The film functions as a diary,
capturing aspects of home life with precise attention to detail,
documenting the familiar with great love and transforming objects and
ordinary personal effects into a highly-charged work of homoeroticism.
(Susan Oxtoby, Toronto International Film Festival) WINGED DIALOGUE
(1967/2000) and PLAN OF BRUSSELS (1968/2000, 21 min) Winged Dialogue
details with growing clarity the desperate beauty and sexuality of the
body animated by its soul, essence blindly reaching out, touching, in
brilliant patterns through and beyond those of the vanishing images,
expressed vividly in the after-image on the mind, on the soul's eye.
(Tom Chomont, a note on Winged Dialogue) Shedding all traces of
narrative, Beavers filmed himself in a hotel room, both at his work desk
and lying naked on the bed, while in rapid rhythmic cutting, and
sometimes in superimposition, the phantasmagoria of people he met in
Brussels and images from the streets flood his mind. (P. Adams Sitney,
Film Comment)
2/23
London, England: Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/film
9pm, Bankside, SE1
ROBERT BEAVERS: MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED: 2
THE COUNT OF DAYS (1969/2001, 21 min) The film is seen as though upon
and through the structure of its spiritual partitions. One might say
that there are three elements or levels to the images: narrative,
descriptive or analytic, and abstract. The Count of Days is not an
account so much as an accounting of the essence of the days in which
three separate persons are related at points … a penetration through the
masks and habits of these days to reveal the nature of the charade and
the arena in which it is enacted. (Tom Chomont, Film Culture) PALINODE
(1970/2001, 21 min) In Palinode a disk-shaped matte continually shifting
in and out of focus alternately blocks part of the image or contains it.
Its respiratory rhythm matches operatic fragments of Wladimir Vogel's
'Wagadu', as the camera studies a middle-aged male singer in Zurich,
singing, eating, window shopping, meeting a young girl. The filmmaker
told himself, "Don't let yourself know what that film is about while you
are making it." (P. Adams Sitney, Film Comment)
2/23
Ottawa, Ontario: Club SAW
http://sawvideo.com/sawvideo/clubsawx.php
7:30pm, 67 Nicholas Street (at Daly Avenue)
WINTERS OF DISCONTENT
Presented by the Available Light Screening Collective. "Hockey is part
of life in Canada. Thousands play it, millions follow it, and millions
more surely try their best to avoid it altogether. But if they do, their
disregard must be purposeful, one of conscious escape, for hockey's
evidences are everywhere... in Canada, hockey is one of winter's
expectations" (Ken Dryden and Roy MacGregor, HOME GAME). Hockey has
often been employed as a symbol of national unity, an indicator of
Canadian values, and an instrument of foreign policy. To question or
renounce our common assumptions is one way to become conscious of what
might have been automatically and habitually accepted before. Such is
the case with hockey, as the power of the sport's imagery in the
national imagination is difficult to deny. WINTERS OF DISCONTENT brings
together two revisionist video-essays about the undercurrents of
Canada's national game. Curator and artist Brett Kashmere will be in
attendance to introduce and discuss the program. Works include: (1)
VALERY'S ANKLE by Brett Kashmere (33 minutes, DV, 2006). "Valery's
Ankle" explodes the spectacle of hockey violence and its representation
in North American media -- from Eddie Shore's vicious, career-ending hit
on Ace Bailey, to Bobby Clarke's pre-emptive smashing of Valery
Kharlamov's ankle, to Todd Bertuzzi's revenge assault on Steve Moore,
the film uncovers a disturbing history of unforetold and abject Canadian
behaviour. (2) DEATH BY POPCORN: THE TRAGEDY OF THE WINNIPEG JETS by
l'Atelier National du Manitoba (61 minutes, DV, 2006). Peppered with
action-packed cameos by Winnipeg All-Stars Dale Hawerchuk, Burton
Cummings, Teemu Selanne, Billy Van, and a recent interview with the man
who sent the Jets straight into the jaws of death by throwing a
cataclysmic box of popcorn onto the ice in Game 6 of the 1990 Stanley
Cup playoffs, "Death by Popcorn" follows the ill-fated Jets through
their many travails with "arch-enemies" Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton
Oilers, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, and many other agents of Winnipeg
annihiliation. Sadness on ice!" The program will also include COLONEL
CANUCK by Jake Kennedy (2:25 minutes, DV, 2003). Admission: $5 or $3
students & unwaged. For further info please contact Phil Rose at
email suppressed
2/23
Prague, Czech Republic: Skolska 28 Gallery
http://www.skolska28.cz/en/index.php
7pm, at ul. Skolská 28, P-1
FILMS BY SCOTT STARK
16mm films and more by U.S. film/video artist Scott Stark. Progam to
include: I'll Walk with God (1994, color/sound, 8:00); Chromesthetic
Response (1987, color/sound, 5:00); The Sound of His Face (1988,
color/sound, 5:00); Hotel Cartograph (1983, color/sound, 11:00); Air
(1986, color/silent, 9:00); Back in the Saddle Again (1997,
black/white/sound, 8:00); Satrapy (1989, color/sound, 13:00); Angel
Beach (2001, color/silent, 18:00). Plus additional digital and/or
super-8 films. Series of presentations by American film artists in the
Czech Republic. Curated by Henry Hills.
2/23
Providence, RI: Magic Lantern
http://magiclanterncinema.com/
MIDNIGHT!, 204 South Main Street
MAGIC LANTERN PRESENTS "THE LAST REFUGE FOR THE SENSES, OR NOISE HIPPIES
AGAINST ALL WAR (THE PROVIDENCE SHOW)"
LIVE SOUND! FILMMAKERS IN PERSON! PROVIDENCE REPRESENT! Run a female
artists' collective, brew your own absinthe, attend an
anti-gentrification community board meeting, wheatpaste signs protesting
the war(s), and then lose yourself in what may very well be the Last
Refuge for the Senses. A new breed of noise/post-psychedelia has sprung
up as the only rational response to an increasingly alienating form of
global capitalism, in an increasingly violent-and-joyless politicized
existence – this new media responds with a Chaos of Sound and Light that
seeks to overwhelm you but stops before you're lost, its Kind Hippie
Heart beating out a space for you to occupy and own. From your favorite
Rhode Island filmmakers, we've got Group Trance Rituals, Direct
Dumpster-Dive Animation, History Seen Through the Eyes of Bats, Live
Soundtracks, Cut-Up Eyeballs, Single Frame Collectives, Puppet Chaos,
Analog Transcendence, and So Much More. Featuring music by Lighting
Bolt, Mystery Brinkman, Carly Ptak (Nautical Almanac), the Shirelles vs
the Suicidal Tendencies, Joe Grimm (the Wind-Up Bird), and Dave Lifrieri
(Manbeard). These nine films represent the true cinema of deliverance,
the theater of Psychic Hearts and Radical Love. FEATURING: Black and
White Trypps Number Three by Ben Russell (11:30, 35mm, 2007), Paranoia
Trilogy Part One: The Chemical Bath by Xander Marro (6:00, 16mm, 2001),
Scream Tone by Jo Dery (3:00, 16mm, 2002), Echoes of Bats and Men by Jo
Dery (7:00, 16mm, 2005), The Red and the Blue Gods by Ben Russell (8:00,
16mm, live sound, 2005), 01/06 by Mat Brinkman and Xander Marro (13:00,
16mm, 2006), The Great Exodus by Jo Dery (6:30, 16mm, 2005), L'Eye by
Xander Marro (2:00, 16mm, 2004), Third Annual Roggabogga by Leif
Goldberg and Ara Peterson (6:30, 16mm, 2002), TRT 63:30, $5
2/23
San Francisco, California: Studio 27
http://www.studio27.org
9 p.m., 689 Bryant Street (at 5th Street)
ORAL ACTION
Studio 27 presents an evening of avant-garde films and videos that focus
on orality. Many of these works expand our everyday understanding of
orality through an exploration of: speaking/singing, the spoken/the
written, consumption/expulsion, the mouth as liminal zone between
outside and inside, aurality/orality, the relation of the mouth to other
parts of the body, fetishes and fantasies, oral antics, and the mouth as
an organ of eating, communication, expressive performance, and erogenous
zone of pleasure. Some of the work points to the utopian potential of
becoming orally active, expanding our understanding of communication and
connectivity. Films and videos by: Michelle Beck, David Blatherwick,
Asil Bothun, Jorge Calvo, Andreas Gedin, Melissa Grey, Anne Haydock,
Guri Guri Henriksen, Kerri Kieser, Ane Lan, Isabelle Mairiaux, Markuz
Saito, Tom Sherman, Gruppo Sinestetico. Admission is free! Total running
time: 1 hour, 11 minutes
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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2007
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2/24
Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Filmmakers
http://www.chicagofilmmakers.org/
8:00pm, Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
CHICAGO OWN: AT HOME AND BEYOND
Select Filmmakers in Person! Cousin Kasyte (2006) by Stashu Kybartas. In
a journey to post-Soviet Lithuania, the filmmaker discovers his father's
cousin, Kasyte Pukeviciene, living a life little changed from the time
when his grandfather immigrated to America. This emotional reunion is
refracted through recollections of childhood memories of the Cold War
and the effect of history on time, space, and memory. Glass House
(2005), by Chi-Jang Yin, is an experimental documentary that examines
the creative process of a modern architect building a home from glass
and concrete for his own family. Adele Friedman's Christian and Michael
(2006) and Marietta (2006) were filmed in the apartments of longtime
friends in Vienna, Austria. Friedman's portrait films are as much about
the places people inhabit as they are about the people themselves. Here,
Christian and Michael's modern decor, in color, contrasts with the older
style of Marietta, Christian's mother, shot in black and white. Random
Sampling #3 (2006) by Paul Lloyd Sargent. Sargent combines fleeting,
inconspicuous moments shot in the Humboldt Park neighborhood with sound
clips from the more than 600 audio cassette tape fragments he's found in
the area to create a very personal and idiosyncratic "portrait" of a
Chicago community. surface/sound (2006), by Milan Bobysud, is an
abstract study attempting to map the structure of memory.
2/24
Houston, Texas: Aurora Picture Show
http://www.aurorapictureshow.org
8pm, 800 Aurora St.
JORDAN BIREN: “FROM MY MOTHER’S FAMILY TO MY MOTHER’S HOUSE” AND
“INSPIRED ENVELOPES OF SPACE”
Steve Seid, of the Pacific Film Archive describes the work of media
artist Jordan Biren as, "subtle works combining a naturalistic pictorial
sense and text, either inscribed in the image or recited." "The now
brittle, now effusive language often operates as a direct challenge to
the droll moving images." For his first program, Biren will present
three videos of his own work, combining his imagery—subtle filmic homage
to the likes of Chris Marker, David Lynch and Thomas Kinkade—with his
texts, in a pastiche of colliding remembrances. Films include My
Mother's Family, From Here Home and My Mother's House. On Sunday, Biren
will present works from William Jones and Janie Geiser, in addition to
his own piece Stellbar.
2/24
London, England: Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/film
12pm, Bankside, SE1
ROBERT BEAVERS: MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED: 3
DIMINISHED FRAME (1970/2001, 24 min) There is in Diminished Frame a
balance between a sense of the past seen in the views of West Berlin,
filmed in black & white and a sense of the present in which I film
myself showing how the colour is being created by placing filters in the
camera's aperture. It is the space of the city and of the filmmaker. I
searched for signs of war's aftermath and a few moments of ordinary
existence. (Robert Beavers) STILL LIGHT (1970/2001, 25 min) The first
half of the film explores delicate nuances of lighting, colour and depth
as Beavers shoots the face of a young man in various locales on the
Greek island of Hydra, using a variety of customized masks and filters.
The man's face remains constant throughout, surrounded by iconic
elements in the landscape, like a pulsating Renaissance portrait. Still
Light's second half was shot in the London flat of art critic Nigel
Gosling. The two halves of Still Light bring to mind any number of
structuralist binarisms: youth and age, creation and criticism, action
and reflection, living landscape and mummified text. (Ed Halter, New
York Press)
2/24
London, England: Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/film
2pm, Bankside, SE1
ROBERT BEAVERS: MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED: 4
FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF ... (1971/1998, 48 min) From the Notebook of … was
shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da Vinci's
notebooks and Paul Valéry's essay on da Vinci's process. These two
elements suggest an implicit comparison between the treatment of space
in Renaissance art and the moving image. The film marks a critical
development in the artist's work in that he repeatedly employs a series
of rapid pans and upward tilts along the city's buildings or facades,
often integrating glimpses of his own face. As Beavers notes in his
writing on the film, the camera movements are tied to the filmmakers'
presence and suggest his investigating gaze. (Henriette Huldisch,
Whitney Museum of American Art) THE PAINTING (1972/1999, 13 min) The
Painting intercuts shots of traffic navigating the old-world remnants of
downtown Bern, Switzerland, with details from a 15th-century altarpiece,
The Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus. The painting shows the calm, near-naked
saint in a peaceful landscape, a frozen moment before four horses tear
his body to pieces while an audience of soigné nobles looks on; in the
movie's revised version, Beavers gives it a comparably rarefied
psychodramatic jolt, juxtaposing shots of Gregory Markopoulos, bisected
by shafts of light, with a torn photo of himself and the recurring image
of a shattered windowpane. (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice)
2/24
London, England: Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/film
5pm, Bankside, SE1
ROBERT BEAVERS: MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED: 5
WORK DONE (1972/1999, 22 min) Bracing in its simplicity, Work Done was
shot in Florence and the Alps, and celebrates an archaic Europe.
Contemplating a stone vault cooled by blocks of ice or the hand
stitching of a massive tome or the frying of a local delicacy, Beavers
considers human activities without dwelling on human protagonists. Like
many of Beavers' films, Work Done is based on a series of textural or
transformative equivalences: the workshop and the field, the book and
the forest, the mound of cobblestones and a distant mountain. (J.
Hoberman, The Village Voice) RUSKIN (1975/1997, 45 min) Ruskin visits
the sites of John Ruskin's work: London, the Alps and, above all,
Venice, where the camera's attention to masonry and the interaction of
architecture and water mimics the author's descriptive analysis of the
"stones" of the city. The sound of pages turning and the image of a
book, Ruskin's 'Unto This Last', forcibly remind us that a poet's
perceptions, and in this case his political economy, are preserved and
reawakened through acts of reading and writing. (P. Adams Sitney, Film
Comment) Ruskin will be shown in a brand new print. The preservation of
this film has been made possible by the generosity of Cineric Inc. and
The Guild of St. George.
2/24
New York, New York: Anthology Film Archives
http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/
5:00, 32 Second Avenue (at Second Street)
HUOT PROGRAM 1
Dir: Robert Huot. "Some painters and sculptors approach our art with a
kind of chauvinistic arrogance. Their use of film…is fundamentally
exploitative. Robert Huot has been one of the most inventive and
rigorous of the younger generation of radical painters. He brings the
same attributes to film, along with an inquisitiveness that is by no
means cautious. He tries, not to exploit film, but to find out what film
is. Huot's films will seem 'simple' to many. In fact he is doing basic
work that we filmmakers ought to have done for ourselves decades ago,
work that is both an addition and a reproach to film art." -Hollis
Frampton. Robert Huot is part of that long tradition of visual artists
who have explored cinema as an extension of their accomplishments in
other media. By the mid-1960s, Huot had become a recognized painter in
New York and was moving from abstract-expressionist work into minimal
and conceptual art-making (see Huot's website - www.roberthuot.com - for
reproductions of his paintings). He was also being drawn toward film;
indeed, some of his "Spring Line" paintings (1966) were organized into
long strips arranged in modules. His friendship with Hollis Frampton,
whom he had met through Carl Andre during the winter of 1964, was
contributing to this new interest. The first result was a series of
films made by working directly on the filmstrip (SCRATCH was made by
scratching black leader; SPRAY, by spray painting clear leader). Then
came several minimal/conceptual films that worked with photographed
imagery. By the end of the sixties, Huot was fed up with art-world
politics, and decided to move to a farm in central New York State. He
began documenting his new life in what became a remarkable series of
diary paintings and diary films, which continued into the mid-1980s. In
recent years, Huot has focused on painting, though he has continued to
make short films, including a series of sometimes amusing, sometimes
creepy erotic films. . PROGRAM 1. FROM LOOPS (1967, 6 minutes, 16mm,
b&w, silent). A two-projector work in which two filmstrips with holes
punched in them are superimposed but projected at different speeds. RED
STOCKINGS (1969, 3 minutes, 16mm, color, silent). A single frame of
photographed imagery (you'll need to stay alert to see it) embedded
within eye-bending red. &. ROLLS: 1971. 1972, 100 minutes, 16mm,
b&w/color, silent. Huot's second diary film can be understood as a
response to Frampton's ZORNS LEMMA (in the final section of Frampton's
film, Huot is the man we see walking across the field - part of Huot's
farm - with a woman and a dog). ROLLS: 1971 is rigorously organized so
that thirteen 100-foot, single-take images are regularly intercut with
heavily edited montages in which one-second bits of each of the
single-takes is seen in juxtaposition with one-second moments from each
of the others. ROLLS: 1971 is at once a record of Huot's exploration of
film composition and editing, and of his new life on the farm (and of
the final year of his marriage with Twyla Tharp, which included the
arrival of their son, Jesse).
2/24
New York, New York: Anthology Film Archives
http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/
8:00, 32 Second Avenue (at Second Street)
HUOT PROGRAM 2
Dir: Robert Huot. THIRD ONE-YEAR MOVIE - 1972. 1973, 70 minutes, 16mm,
b&w/color, silent. Huot's third diary is a self-portrait of a man
beginning a new phase of his life, working to balance his work as an
artist and filmmaker, as a college professor, as a farmer confronting
the basics (one of the motifs of the film is Huot and Hollis Frampton
slaughtering and butchering a bull), and as a father, a friend, and a
lover. Organized so as to evoke the daily round of life and the seasonal
cycle, the film suggests both the pleasures of life and the struggle to
responsibly fulfill a range of personal and ideological commitments.
With: BLACK AND WHITE FILM (1969, 12.5 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent).
Camera: Hollis Frampton. Performer: Sheila Raj. "A nude woman is
revealed, and then obliterates herself entirely, in extreme slow-motion.
This film is 'about' painting. Outside of painting itself, it is the
only really intense criticism I have ever seen." -Hollis Frampton.
EROTIC TRILOGY (1980, 11 minutes, Super-8mm, b&w/color, sound). Three
erotic vignettes, two of them involving Huot and artist Carol Kinne, all
of which originally appeared in the early Super-8 diaries.
2/24
New York, New York: Millennium Film Workshop
http://www.millenniumfilm.org/
8pm- Saturday evening, 66 East 4th Street (Between Bowery and Second Ave.)
ART/NEW YORK- PROGRAM # 2 OF 3- PAUL TSCHINKEL'S NAN GOLDIN- IN MY LIFE/
CINDY SHERMAN
ART/new york, a video series on contemporary art, was begun in 1979.
PAUL TSCHINKEL is the creator, producer and director of ART/new york.
NAN GOLDIN- In My Life (28 min.-1997) This program features work of the
one of the major photographers of the latter part of the 20th century.
Seen in Goldin's compelling mid-career retrospective at the Whitney
Museum of American Art which featured work culled from a period spanning
more than 25 years of taking pictures. Organized by Whitney curator
ELIZABETH SUSSMAN and selected byt Nan Goldin and her life-long friend
and colleague DAVID ARMSTRONG, the exhibition tells the moving tale of
Nan Goldin's life. Included are interviews with Nan Goldin and MARVIN
HOFFMAN, curator and a director of LOOKOUT in New York. CINDY SHERMAN
(28 min.-2002) CINDY SHERMAN creates innovative work that explores the
place of women in society. With photographs she takes of herself, in
which she inpersonates various fictitious characters, she shows us the
numerous roles women play in our world. She depicts women as housewife,
sex symbol, lover, seductress, victim, monster and more and makes us
wonder about our perceptions. Over the past 25 years, she has produced a
body of work that depicts the female persona as seen through the filter
of the media. Her work has received much aclaim and has been exhibited
and collected widely. This program covers Sherman's first show of color
photographs at Metro Pictures in 1981 and a 2000 show, also at Metro
Pictures. Included is a rare 1981 interview with Sherman and recent
interviews with HELENE WINTER, he dealer and PETER SCHJELDAHL, art
critic for the NEW YORKER magazine,
2/24
San Francisco, California: Other Cinema
http://www.othercinema.com/
8:30pm, 992 Valencia Street
AN EVENING WITH JEM COHEN
Our season kicks off with an extraordinary event: a in-person appearance
by the legendary small-gauge master, Mr. Jem Cohen. Based in NYC, Jem
comes out to the Coast for a very rare visit and personal exchange with
enthusiasts of his first-person camerawork, "thriving on the collision
between documentary, narrative, and experimental approaches." In the
show's opening half, he will share a selection of his poetic works -
several on celluloid! - that rhapsodize on the lives and musics of
Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and others. The
anchor of the show is Jem's exquisite Super 8-shot meditation on history
and memory in Eastern Europe, Buried in Light. Special admission: $7.
-------------------------
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2007
-------------------------
2/25
Houston, Texas: Aurora Picture Show
http://www.aurorapictureshow.org
3pm, 800 Aurora St.
JORDAN BIREN: “FROM MY MOTHER’S FAMILY TO MY MOTHER’S HOUSE” AND
“INSPIRED ENVELOPES OF SPACE”
Steve Seid, of the Pacific Film Archive describes the work of media
artist Jordan Biren as, "subtle works combining a naturalistic pictorial
sense and text, either inscribed in the image or recited." "The now
brittle, now effusive language often operates as a direct challenge to
the droll moving images." For his first program, Biren will present
three videos of his own work, combining his imagery—subtle filmic homage
to the likes of Chris Marker, David Lynch and Thomas Kinkade—with his
texts, in a pastiche of colliding remembrances. Films include My
Mother's Family, From Here Home and My Mother's House. On Sunday, Biren
will present works from William Jones and Janie Geiser, in addition to
his own piece Stellbar.
2/25
London, England: Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/film
12pm, Bankside, SE1
ROBERT BEAVERS: MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED: 6
SOTIROS (1976-78/1996, 25 min) In Sotiros, there is an unspoken dialogue
and a seen dialogue. The first is held between the intertitles and the
images; the second is moved by the tripod and by the emotions of the
filmmaker. Both dialogues are interwoven with the sunlight's movement as
it circles the room, touching each wall and corner, detached and
intimate. (Robert Beavers) AMOR (1980, 15 min) Amor is an exquisite
lyric, shot in Rome and at the natural theatre of Salzburg. The
recurring sounds of cutting cloth, hands clapping, hammering, and
tapping underline the associations of the montage of short camera
movements, which bring together the making of a suit, the restoration of
a building, and details of a figure, presumably Beavers himself,
standing in the natural theatre in a new suit, making a series of hand
movements and gestures. A handsomely designed Italian banknote suggests
the aesthetic economy of the film: the tailoring, trimming, and
chiselling point to the editing of the film itself. (P. Adams Sitney,
Film Comment)
2/25
London, England: Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/film
2pm, Bankside, SE1
ROBERT BEAVERS: MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED: 7
?????? (Efpsychi) (1983/1996, 20 min) The details of the young actor's
face – his eyes, eyebrows, earlobe, chin, etc. – are set opposite the
old buildings in the market quarter of Athens, where every street is
named after a classic ancient Greek playwright. In this setting of
intense stillness, sometimes interrupted by sudden sounds and movements
in the streets, he speaks a single word, "teleftea", meaning the last
(one), and as he repeats this word, it moves differently each time
across his face and gains another sense from one scene to the next,
suggesting the uncanny proximity of eroticism, the sacred and chance.
(Robert Beavers) WINGSEED (1985, 15 min) A seed which floats in the air,
a whirligig, a love charm. This magnificent landscape, both hot and dry,
is far from sterile; rather, the heat and dryness produce a distinct
type of life, seen in the perfect forms of the wild grass and seed pods,
the herds of goats as well as in the naked figure. The torso, in itself,
and more, the image which it creates in this light. The sounds of the
shepherd's signals and the flute's phrase are heard. And the goats'
bells. Imagine the bell's clapper moving from side to side with the
goat's movements like the quick side-to-side camera movements, which
increase in pace and reach a vibrant ostinato. (Robert Beavers) THE
HEDGE THEATRE (1986-90/2002, 19 min) Beavers shot The Hedge Theatre in
Rome in the 1980s. It is an intimate film inspired by the Baroque
architecture and stone carvings of Francesco Borromini and "St. Martin
and the Beggar," a painting by the Sienese painter Il Sassetta. Beavers'
montage contrasts the sensuous softness of winter light with the lush
green growth brought by spring rains. Each shot and each source of sound
is steeped in meaning and placed within the film's structure with
exacting skill to build a poetic relationship between image and sound.
(Susan Oxtoby, Toronto International Film Festival)
2/25
London, England: Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/film
5pm, Bankside, SE1
ROBERT BEAVERS: MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED: 8
THE STOAS (1991-97, 22 min) The title refers to the colonnades that led
to the shady groves of the ancient Lyceum, here remembered in shots of
industrial arcades, bathed in golden morning light, as quietly empty of
human figures as Atget's survey photos. The rest of the film presents
luscious shots of a wooded stream and hazy glen, portrayed with the
careful composition of 19th century landscape painting. An ineffable,
unnameable immanence flows through the images of The Stoas, a kind of
presence of the human soul expressed through the sympathetic absence of
the human figure. (Ed Halter, New York Press) THE GROUND (1993-2001, 20
min) What lives in the space between the stones, in the space cupped
between my hand and my chest? Filmmaker/stonemason. A tower or ruin of
remembrance. With each swing of the hammer I cut into the image and the
sound rises from the chisel. A rhythm, marked by repetition, and
animated by variation; strokes of hammer and fist, resounding in
dialogue. In this space which the film creates, emptiness gains a
contour strong enough for the spectator to see more than the image – a
space permitting vision in addition to sight. (Robert Beavers)
2/25
New York, New York: Anthology Film Archives
http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/
8:00, 32 Second Avenue (at Second Street)
HUOT PROGRAM 3
Dir: Robert Huot. FADES AND CLOSE-UPS (1978, 7 minutes, Super-8mm, b&w,
sound). An intimate, collaborative portrait of two lovers, Huot and
artist Carol Kinne. SUPER-8 DIARY 1979. 1980, 60-minute excerpt of
200-minute film, Super-8mm, color, sound. Huot's first Super-8 diary
film continues many of the motifs of the earlier diaries, but with the
high-spiritedness of a man now entirely at home in his world and with a
newfound exuberance about Super-8 filmmaking: "Convenience, Lower Cost,
Good Sound Quality, and Demystified Image: or, Why I Like Super-8" was
the title of a piece Huot contributed to THE CINEMANEWS (no. 81: 2-6),
soon after he finished SUPER-8 DIARY 1979. The film is segmented into
half-hour modules. HOLLIS FRAMPTON 1936-84 (1984, 9 minutes, Super-8mm,
color, sound). An elegy to Frampton, filmed at Frampton's funeral in
Buffalo in 1984. SOUND MOVIE (1972/2005, 10 minutes, DVD, color, sound).
Returning to a roll of film of Twyla Tharp walking through the woods,
shot in 1972 (and included in THIRD ONE-YEAR MOVIE), Huot finished a
project that was conceived in the early 1970s, but put on hold because
of his complicated feelings about Tharp at the time of their divorce.
2/25
San Francisco, California: San Francisco Cinematheque
http://www.sfcinematheque.org
7:30 pm, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 701 Mission st. at 3rd st.
STARTING IN SAN FRANCISCO/ GOING ON CURATED AND PRESENTED BY CHARLES
BOONE
Our city is widely recognized as a significant pad from which flights of
artistic discovery have long been launched. These works by recent San
Francisco Art Institute graduates demonstrate ongoing pursuits of
exploration and excellence, showing clearly the broad range of
investigation and viewpoint Bay Area creativity represents. Taeko
Horigome's Facing the Dragon explores personal intimacy, plus both tough
control—and radical loosening—of her processes. Minyong Jang's newest
work, The Breath, looks inventively at quiet beauties of the natural
world. Joshua Kanies' Zen of John Muir and Scar lyrically focus on our
planet, but are concerned with man's relationship to it. In Rue
Vaugirard, L'Amour Physique, Matthew Swiezynski patiently expands time
in his observations of quotidian minutiae mediated by technology.
Finally, Christina Battle explores filmic tactility in her 35mm works
Hysteria, Traveling With Eyes Closed Tight, The Distance Between Here
and There, and Migration. (Charles Boone)
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__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.