From: Weekly Listing (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Sep 20 2008 - 08:18:43 PDT
Part 2 of 2: This week [September 20 - 28, 2008] in avant garde cinema
----------------------------
9/25
Berlin, Germany: Directors Lounge
http://www.richfilm.de/DL2006.html
21:00 (9pm), Scala, Friedrichstr. 112A, 10117 Berlin-Mitte
ZWISCHEN | STADT | RAUM - SCREENING
zwischen | stadt | raum - video by Klaus W. Eisenlohr and Johann
Zeitler. -**- This is a film about public space, its visual exploration
and with statements of inhabitants of Gropiusstadt about Gropiusstadt.
It will be presented as three channel video projection. "in-between |
city | space" was premiered in March this year in Gropiusstadt with much
success and was well received by the press. This is the first time it is
being presented to a larger audience in the city center of Berlin. -**-
The art works' theme focuses on perceptions: the perceptions made by
inhabitants, by local citizens, but also the perceptions conceived by
the artists. In their work, the artists ask about the constructions and
the representations of urban space. When does public space exist? How do
people see, reflect on and use public space? How have architecture and
the social constructions of modernist public space influenced daily
life, senses and human bodies? Which kind of interventions would have a
positive impact on common perceptions? -**- "In this video work, the
people of Gropiusstadt are given a voice: inhabitants from divers
backgrounds talk critically, but also positively, about their
surrounding and they show their bonds to the quarter they live in. These
reflections are being complemented with the perceptions of the artists.
(...) They met a lot of people and asked them: 'How do you perceive the
public space in Gropiusstadt? Do you like the design of the green zones?
How did the area change since you moved in? Where do you feel safe, and
where insecure?' And they asked youths, when they met in the street:
'What are your activities when being outdoors? Do you have specific
meeting points? Do you have special places you feel like they are yours?
Where do you 'hang out'? Where are things happening?" (Walter 02/078,
Gropiusstadt Magazine) -**- "The whole world in one quarter: Albeit the
demographic changes, Gropiusstadt still is a quarter with a strong
identification of its inhabitants. (...) Not only the
libanese-palestinian-turkish-algerian rap team is avowing to this city
scape South of the city center of Berlin but also a German youth in his
favorite kebap shop: 'Gropius? That's a beautiful area. You can't say
our area. It is a downright quarter. Gropius is downright. The term
Heimat may be complicated, but openness is a term, people in
Gropiusstadt can agree on." (die tageszeitung, 03-03-2008, Uwe Rada)
9/25
Brookline, Massachusetts: Balagan Experimental Film/Video Series
http://www.coolidge.org/balagan/
7:30PM, Coolidge Corner Theatre - 290 Harvard St.
PSYCHEDELIC CINEMA LIGHT SHOW FILMS (1967-1969) WITH LIVE MUSIC
The infamous and eye-popping vintage 1960's Boston Tea Party Light Show
Films (shot & directed by Ken Brown) return with a dazzling live
psychedelic musical arrangement performed by New York and Boston
luminaries. It is high time for a proper Boston screening celebration of
the absolutely unique image world of filmmaker, photographer, cartoonist
and designer Ken Brown. For over thirty years Brown has been making
stunning experimental films, animations and music videos. For three
years in the late 60's in Boston, Ken Brown was the resident filmmaker
for the ultra-psychedelic Cinemateque and Rock Club - the Boston Tea
Party. Between 1967 and 1969 he produced hundreds of Super-8mm works
loaded with staggering superimpositions and startling visual dimensions
for this infamous Boston Light Show.
9/25
Chicago, Illinois: Conversations at the Edge
http://myspace.com/conversationsattheedge
6pm, 164 N. State St.
EYES WIDE OPEN: VIDEOS BY DANI LEVENTHAL
Dani Leventhal in person! At once tender and savage, Dani Leventhal's
astonishing video diaries reveal the transcendent beauty and pain of
daily life. In the award-winning DRAFT 9 (2003), Leventhal cuts between
skinned animals, well-fed pets, her grandfather's Holocaust-tattooed
arm, and her own romantic liaisons to create, in the words of critic
Genevieve Yue, "something that is extraordinarily immediate, both fresh
and painful, hard to watch and yet impossible not to watch." In SHOW AND
TELL IN THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY (2007), Leventhal juxtaposes bucolic
shots of farm life with tales of sexual harassment and sick chickens
while living and working in Israel; in 9 MINUTES OF KAUNAUS (2007), she
captures the fantasies of a wide-eyed boy whose older brother serves in
the Israeli army. Also on the program: PICNIC (w/Steve Reinke, 2006) and
3 PARTS FOR TODAY (2007). Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. 2003—07,
Dani Leventhal, various countries, Beta SP video, ca 65 min.
9/25
Reading, Pennsylvania: Berks Filmmakers
http://www.berksfilmmakers.org
7:30, Albright College
OPEN SCREENING
Bring your own films, tapes or DVDs; all works wil be screened
9/25
san francisco ca 94110: artists' television access
http://www.atasite.org
8pm, 992 valencia
HOW WE FIGHT PROGRAM 1: IRAQI SHORT FILMS/PRESENTED BY KINO21
Thursday, September 25, 2008. 8PM $6 HOW WE FIGHT Program 1: Iraqi Short
Films presented by kino21 Iraqi Short Films ?by Mauro Andrizzi
(Argentina, 2008, 94 min) Iraqi Short Films by Mauro Andrizzi "Iraqi
Short Films" by Mauro Andrizzi » More images kino21's series, How We
Fight, presents international works that explore soldiering and depict
the experience of war from the point of view of those on the ground.
From Argentina, Russia, Iraq, Germany, France, Holland and the U.S.,
several of these films are US premieres. On Thursday, September 25 we
begin with Iraqi Short Films, a brand new compilation of videos shot in
battle by soldiers and militia members in Iraq. Subsequent programs
include video diaries of the battlefield and pre- or post-combat
rumination, extended observational portraits and interview-based works.
There are depictions of Russian conscripts in Chechnya, PKK rebels in
the mountains of Iraq, American veterans returned from Vietnam, and
mercenaries and peacekeepers stationed across the globe, from Bosnia to
Rwanda, from the Middle East to the USA. "Methodological, well-targeted
propaganda or unbridled outbursts, these images, in their own myopic,
implacable, rough ways, relate the conflict. […]The daily life of a
warrior captured in the harsh brutality of a visor made into a lens,
without the relief of a counter shot."—Jean-Pierre Rehm, FID Marseille
Iraqi Short Films by Argentine director Mauro Andrizzi is a compilation
of short videos shot in the midst of war, whether by US or British
soldiers, Iraqi militia members, or corporate workers. These are not
"films" per se. They are a mix of slices of life recorded on video (many
shot while firing on the enemy or being fired upon), pithy propaganda
pieces, and soldiers' visions of war as music video. They are crudely
shot fragments, some rife with raw fear, some gloating over momentary
victory. Filmed mainly as records, for friends, family, or fellow
fighters, and at one point or another put on the web or on local
television, the pieces were culled by Andrizzi over several months.
Ranging from the banal to the intense, from the shocking to the darkly
humorous, Andrizzi's compilation depicts war as experienced,
articulated, and vividly imagined by those actually fighting and dying
in it. His addition of a handful of texts, from Mark Twain to C. Wright
Mills to Dick Cheney, and sporadic manipulation of a few images suggests
a bleak vision of this war's inexorable chaos and horror. But it is a
vision that combines the responsibility to look with critical empathy,
analysis and a desire to comprehend some of its impact. How We Fight:
Conscripts, Mercenaries, Terrorists and Peacekeeprs is presented with
the generous support of the Potrero Nuevo Fund of the Tides Foundation,
the LEF Foundation, and Goethe Institut San Francisco.
--------------------------
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2008
--------------------------
9/26
Antwerp: Muhka_media
http://www.diagonalthoughts.com
20:00, Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerpen
THE ORDER OF THINGS: DIS/ORDER, ON AXIOMS AND IMAGES
THE ORDER OF THINGS Film program in the context of the exhibition with
the same title at MuHKA, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (11th
September 2008 > 4th January 2009). Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and
María Palacios Cruz. # 26.09.2008: THE ORDER OF THINGS 3 DIS/ORDER On
Axioms and Images A series of films that explore the conceptual space of
"compilation films" at the same time that they question the conventional
ordering principles of montage. How does meaning result from a linear
organization of images? Is there such a thing as a logic of chance? Does
every random succession of film bits imply a unity, an order within
chaos, a secret route to the imagination? Is narrative, as Hollis
Frampton suggested in his so-called "Brakhage's theorem", a fixed axiom
in cinema? : "For any finite series of shots ('film') whatsoever there
exists in real time a rational narrative, such that every term in the
series, together with its position, duration, partition and reference
shall be perfectly and entirely accounted for". 20:00 Thom Andersen &
Malcolm Brodwick — ——- 1966-67, 16mm, colour, sound, 11' Images from the
rock 'n' roll world of the 1960's, organized according to a
predetermined structure. A sequence of picture-sound equations with
randomly chosen terms: vertically, it is completely structured,
horizontally, it is completely random. « A pastiche of cinematography, a
parody of montage ». With this film Thom Andersen demonstrates the power
of a rule as a constructing principle, thus undermining the conventional
codes of montage and documentary filmmaking. The result is a stimulating
mosaic that ignores the urge for representation and topic information,
but instead, as crystallization of an era, tends towards the functioning
of the human memory. Morgan Fisher ( ) 2003, 16mm, colour/b&w, silent,
21' A film that originates in Morgan Fisher's fascination with inserts:
close-ups of newspaper headlines, letters and similar sorts of
significant details that have to be included for the sake of clarity in
narrative films, indispensable and marginal at the same time. With () –
the title is a reference to — ——- by Thom Andersen and Malcolm Brodwick
– Fisher has made a film entirely composed of inserts, as a way of
making them visible and releasing them from their ungrateful
instrumental role. The shots, extracted from a variety of films, were
organized according to an arbitrary (and never explained) rule. Freed
from their servitude to stories, the inserts are given a new freedom, as
components of a fictitious array, an organizational model that attempts
to escape the linearity of cinema: like an arrangement in space, which
is scanned in time. Norbert Pfaffenbichler Mosaik Mécanique 2007, 35mm,
b/w, sound, 9'30" The third part of Pfaffenbichler's 'Notes on Film'
series, which borrows its title from a combination of Fernand Leger's
Ballet Mecanique and Peter Kubelka's Mosaik in Vertrauen. All the shots
of the slapstick comedy A Film Johnnie (USA, 1914) are shown
simultaneously in a symmetrical grid, one after the other. Each scene,
from one cut to the next, from the first to the last frame, is looped.
Spatialization takes the place of temporality, synchronism that of
chronology. A polyrhythmic kaleidoscope is produced as a result
(reflected in Bernhard Lang's music), tearing the audience back and
forth between an analytic way of seeing rhythmic patterns and the
impulse to (re)construct a plot. Christoph Girardet Random Cuts 1993,
video, colour, sound, 3'20" This video work is composed of 12 film
clips, each 1.6 seconds long, cut and mounted according to a certain
mathematical principle. The images show "cuts" of a cockfight, a samurai
duel, a cartoon battle – signs of aggression, which simply flashed up in
the original material, gradually reveal their violent content. As the
segments unfold in 12 consecutive phases, a certain logic is formed.
Everything is assigned its place, and order is re-established. Lenka
Clayton Qaeda Quality Question Quickly Quickly Quiet 2002, video,
colour, sound, 20' Lenka Clayton's work is an exploration and
interrogation of the "natural" order of things. Using organising systems
and interventions to disrupt accepted modes of language and behaviour,
she questions the authority of all forms of documentation as a referent
of the original events. The concept for this 'mash up' video is a simple
one: Clayton took the 4100 words from George W. Bush's infamous 'Axis of
Evil' speech and edited them in alphabetical order. The result is a
powerful dissection of the posturing, rhetoric and obsessions dominating
the post 9/11 American politics. ** 65' 22:30 Hollis Frampton Zorns
Lemma 1970, 16mm, colour, sound, 60' Zorns Lemma is arguably the
veritable master piece of American filmmaker Hollis Frampton. It
combines a number of intellectual and aesthetic issues that Frampton had
already explored in his earlier films and photographic work, especially
his fascination with epistemology and set theory – the title is a
reference to mathematician Max Zorn's equivalent to the Axiom of Choice.
The film is structured according to an axiomatic system, expressed both
in ontological and structural codes. The central part consists of images
of words, assembled in alphabetical order – a reference to the
Encyclopedic movement and the arbitrary tendency to categorize the World
on the basis of the first letter of the object name. The ideograms
gradually make place for arbitrary images, as a result of which an
ingenious game between language and image is installed, inciting the
audience to dismantle the control structures and discover the logic of
chance. ** 60'
9/26
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Film Archive
http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa
7pm, 24 Quincy Street
FELLOW TRAVELER: THE CINEMA OF WARREN SONBERT
Fellow Traveler: The Cinema of Warren Sonbert September 26 – September
28 A Concerto (Program One) Friday September 26 at 7pm Carriage Trade is
arguably Sonbert's magnum opus—in a literal sense, as this is Sonbert's
longest film, but also as the first full emergence of his montage-based
style. His next two films, Rude Awakening and Divided Loyalties, show
the filmmaker experimenting with varying subject and tone while
exploring a similar editing strategy. Later, Sonbert would describe
these three films as fitting together like the movements of a concerto:
"first movement setting the scene and longest in time and investigation;
the second movement a dark melancholy adagio; the third a breezy rondo
to clear if not quite dispel the heavy air, gracious, with a
let's-get-on-with-life feeling." Carriage Trade US 1972, 16mm, silent,
color, 61 min. Rude Awakening US 1976, 16mm, silent, color, 36 min.
Divided Loyalties US 1978, 16mm, silent, color, 22 min. Queer Sonbert
(Program Two) Saturday September 27 at 7pm Amphetamine was Sonbert's
first film, a mini-epic of drugs and sex (in order both of importance
and of appearance onscreen) that finds him squarely under the spell of
Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol, and similarly grounded in an innate and
insightful understanding of form. Noblesse Oblige and Short Fuse are the
two of Sonbert's later films with the greatest emphasis on queer
culture, with prominent place given to footage of the San Francisco
riots that followed Dan White's acquittal for the George Moscone and
Harvey Milk assassinations, and ACT UP demonstrations, respectively.
Sonbert expert Jon Gartenberg has described Whiplash as "an elegiac
meditation on his own mortality." Amphetamine Directed by Warren
Sonbert and Wendy Appel. US 1966, 16mm, b/w, 10 min. Noblesse Oblige US
1981, 16mm, silent, color, 25 min. Short Fuse US 1992, 16mm, color, 37
min. Whiplash US 1995/97, 16mm, color, 20 min. Sonbert and 1960s New
York (Program Three) Sunday September 28 at 3pm Sonbert's early films
offer fascinating insight into both his emergent cinema and the postwar
New York art scene. "Several of [Sonbert's] earliest films, made while a
teenage denizen of the glitzy Warholian artworld, enact cool-eyed
subcultural observations on the private rituals of budding Superstars."
- Paul Arthur Where Did Our Love Go? US 1966, 16mm, color, 15 min. Hall
of Mirrors US 1966, 16mm, color, 8 min. Truth Serum US 1967, 16mm,
silent (orig. sound), color, 15 min. The Bad and the Beautiful US 1967,
16mm, color, 34 min. Holiday US 1968, 16mm, silent (orig. sound), color,
15 min. "What kind of editing has Sonbert discovered?" (Program Four)
Sunday September 28 at 8pm Critic and scholar Fred Camper asked the
(rhetorical) question that gives this program its title. The Tuxedo
Theatre marks the beginnings of Sonbert's montage style; it is a kind of
"dress rehearsal" for Carriage Trade. After the somewhat more formalist
films of the 1970s, the subsequent decade saw Sonbert continuing to
expand his ability to vary subject matter and tone within his trademark
montage structure, a structure to which Sonbert would add music
beginning with Friendly Witness, his first sound film in twenty years.
The Tuxedo Theatre US 1968, 16mm, silent, color, 21 min. The Cup and the
Lip US 1986, 16mm, silent, color, 21 min. Honor and Obey US 1988,
16mm, silent, color, 21 min. Friendly Witness US 1989, 16mm, color, 30
min.
9/26
Columbus, Ohio: Wexner Center for the Arts
http://www.wexarts.org
see gallery hours below, 1871 N. High St. (Performance Space)
PHIL SOLOMON: TWO INSTALLATIONS
Phil Solomon: Two Installations Friday, September 26 – Wednesday,
October 1 Wexner Center Performance Space In advance of filmmaker Phil
Solomon's Wexner Center appearance on October 1, two captivating new
installation works will be presented in the Performance Space during
regular gallery hours. [Fri, Sat 11am-8pm; Sun, Tue, Wed 11am-6pm]
Featured will be the world premiere of "EMPIRE", a high-definition,
surround-sound installation. Could there be a connection with the film
titled Empire currently on view in the Wexner Center's Andy Warhol
exhibition? You'll have to stop by and find out. The second
installation, American Falls, is a looped 30-minute preview version of a
larger, epic "cine-mural" that Solomon is creating as an installation
for the rotunda at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC for
autumn 2009. Inspired by Frederic Church's sublime painting Niagara
(part of the Corcoran's permanent collection) and the WPA Arts Project
murals of the 1930s, the mesmerizing American Falls employs Solomon's
astonishing cinematic techniques to create an expressively treated,
poetic vision of American history in constant motion. Solomon has said
that "my project American Falls is ultimately one of great hope,
stemming from a life-long love for this American experiment of ours...
but it is also necessitated by my deepest concern for its present and
future directions." Admission to the installations is included with any
same-day film, performance, or Warhol exhibition ticket.
9/26
Kansas City, Missouri: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
http://www.nelson-atkins.org
7:00 p.m., 4525 Oak Street
ELECTROMEDIASCOPE
"Opening Networks," web-based artwork curated by Patrick Clancy and Gwen
Widmer. Other programs in series were on Sept. 12 and 19. Scalable City,
Sheldon Brown, Director of the Experimental Game Lab (USA), 2007, 4:04
min., cinematic output from multiuser computer game environment.
Scalable City sets a database of cultural objects into play with
algorithmic gestures and user interaction. Multiple forms are produced
such as computer games, digital prints and cinematic trailers. Drift,
Carl Burton (USA), 2007, 10 min., experimental animation reinterpreting
and incorporating simulations of different kinds of scientific
visualizations inspired by light microscopy. Spectropia, Toni Dove
(USA), 2007, 25 min., documentation of a cinema-scale interactive film
performed as a "scratchable" movie by video DJs acting as improvisers
who are playing the movie as "instrument." Additional artworks streamed
from the Internet, TBA, will also be presented as part of this evening's
program.
9/26
Los Angeles, California: Redcat
http://www.redcat.org/
8:30 pm, 631 W 2nd St.
HALLUCINOGENIC CALIFORNIA: THE ALTERNATE WORLDS OF CRAIG BALDWIN AND
DAMON PACKARD
Two of California's most notorious underground filmmakers unleash a pair
of deliriously subversive visions of Los Angeles culture—past and
present—as poverty-row sci-fi thrillers. Bricolage wizard Craig Baldwin,
of Tribulation 99 (1991) fame, takes his culture-jamming to a new orbit
with Mock Up On Mu (2008, 109 min., color and b/w). This new work is a
frenzied collage narrative following the far-flung exploits of L. Ron
Hubbard, master of the Empire of Mu (aka the moon) in the year 2019, as
he schemes with and against Marjorie Cameron, Jack Parsons and Aleister
Crowley to make havoc on the terrestrial homeland. Baldwin's twisting
plot uses B-movies, self-help infomercials, pulp serials, aerospace
promo films and otherworldly footage shot by Baldwin to spin an
allegorical yarn of subterranean cults, government secrecy, and the
co-opting of utopian visions by the military. Mock Up on Mu is preceded
by Damon Packard's SpaceDisco One (2007, 42 min. The director, writer
and star of the paranoid freakout Reflections of Evil (2002), Packard
(who also plays L. Ron Hubbard in Baldwin's film) gives a frightening
and hilarious depiction of Los Angeles as an Orwellian land of split
realities: placid suburban routines under invisible but inextricable
mind control. In person: Craig Baldwin, Damon Packard
9/26
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Jefferson Presents...
http://www.geocities.com/jeffersonpresents
9pm, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Annex Studio (yellow carriage house behind the big yellow house), 3600 Fifth Ave
FILMS OF DEAN SNIDER
----------------THE FILMS OF DEAN SNIDER------------------- More heard
of than seen outside San Francisco, the films of Dean Snider (1949-1994)
are formally playful and richly possessed of character. Ultra-short and
often self-mocking, Snider's abounding catalog is a bit confusing and
almost always funny. Hard to compare with any other filmmaker, Snider's
subversive stance and sardonic sense of humor enlivened his varied,
quixotic films and real-life antics. He once staged a coup in the
projection booth of the San Francisco Cinematheque, forcing a show of
local films on the audience. On another occasion, with fellow
cinema-activist Steve Schmidt, Snider literally hijacked an entire
Cinematheque audience by bus and delivered them to a screening at the No
Nothing Cinema, a now-legendary film/performance venue that he
co-founded. Snider was known to pay a dollar to viewers who attended his
shows, and as a judge at the Ann Arbor Film Festival he gave each and
every festival-rejected filmmaker $3 of his prize money, igniting
debate. Indisputably important and certainly overlooked, these films are
nothing short of a revelation. "During his relatively short lifespan,
Snider produced literally hundreds of films. Beyond filmmaking, his
gadfly outbursts and philosophical provocations helped spark controversy
and stimulate conceptual filmic border-crossings…. Film theorist Janice
Crystal-Lipzin said of Dean's films, 'Why, the titles are longer than
the films!' – no doubt referring to HEY!, a single frame of a bale of
hay." –V. Vale and Marian Wallace, RESEARCHPUBS.COM- This program
contains 17 of Snider's 16mm and 35mm works, none of which are in
distribution. A limited edition DVD set of Dean's work will also be
available at all shows.------ Organized and presented by Douglas
Katelus.
9/26
san francisco ca 94110: artists' television access
http://www.atasite.org
8pm, 992 valencia
SCARY COW FILM CO-OP PRESNTS:IRAN (IS NOT THE PROBLEM)
Friday, September 26, 2008. 8PM $6 Scary Cow film co-op presnts: IRAN
(is not the problem) IRAN (is not the problem) is a new feature length
film responding to the failure of the American mass media to provide the
public with relevant and accurate information about the standoff between
the US and Iran, as happened before with the lead up to the invasion of
Iraq. We have heard that Iran is a nuclear menace in defiance of the
international community, bent on "wiping Israel off the map", supporting
terrorism, and unwilling to negotiate. This documentary disputes these
claims as they are presented to us and puts them in the context of
present and historical US /IRAN relation. It looks at the struggle for
democracy inside Iran, the consequences of the current escalation and
the potential US and/or Israeli attack, and suggests some alternatives
to consider. This 79 minute documentary features Antonia Juhasz (The
Bu$h Agenda), Larry Everest (Oil, Power, and Empire), and other
activists and Iranian-Americans. There are differences of opinion
between many of the voices in this film, but all agree that a war would
be unjustified. See the trailer at www.iranisnottheproblem.org Filmmaker
Info: Produced by Aaron Newman, an independent film-maker and part of
the Scary Cow film co-op in San Francisco. He is an
anti-imperialism/pro-democracy activist, founder of the SF Chomsky Book
Club, and a member of Hands Off Iran. Reviews: "After years of working
on Iran and Middle East politics, this is perhaps the most engrossing
and easily digestible film Ive ever come across. A phenomenal
educational tool that explains often misunderstood and complex issues in
US-Iranian relations." - Sanaz Meshkinpour, Middle East Program
Coordinator, Global Exchange "I have watched it twice, and am deeply
impressed with how much crucial historical context it provides in an
engaging and accessible manner, combining archival footage with incisive
analysis from interviews by US-based activists and scholars...I consider
"IRAN (is not the problem)" to be an invaluable tool for raising our
collective consciousness around the deeper reasons driving military
aggression, for combating our lethal national amnesia in relation to
Iran, for inspiring discussion, reflection and action, and for
empowering citizens to better understand the present in light of the
past."-Zara Zimbardo, Fellowship of Reconciliation, National Council
----------------------------
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2008
----------------------------
9/27
Braddock, Pennsylvania: "mobile" New Nothing Cinema
after dark... , 1212 Maple Way, Braddock PA (in the empty lot next door)
FILMS OF DEAN SNIDER
----------------THE FILMS OF DEAN SNIDER------------------- More heard
of than seen outside San Francisco, the films of Dean Snider (1949-1994)
are formally playful and richly possessed of character. Ultra-short and
often self-mocking, Snider's abounding catalog is a bit confusing and
almost always funny. Hard to compare with any other filmmaker, Snider's
subversive stance and sardonic sense of humor enlivened his varied,
quixotic films and real-life antics. He once staged a coup in the
projection booth of the San Francisco Cinematheque, forcing a show of
local films on the audience. On another occasion, with fellow
cinema-activist Steve Schmidt, Snider literally hijacked an entire
Cinematheque audience by bus and delivered them to a screening at the No
Nothing Cinema, a now-legendary film/performance venue that he
co-founded. Snider was known to pay a dollar to viewers who attended his
shows, and as a judge at the Ann Arbor Film Festival he gave each and
every festival-rejected filmmaker $3 of his prize money, igniting
debate. Indisputably important and certainly overlooked, these films are
nothing short of a revelation. "During his relatively short lifespan,
Snider produced literally hundreds of films. Beyond filmmaking, his
gadfly outbursts and philosophical provocations helped spark controversy
and stimulate conceptual filmic border-crossings…. Film theorist Janice
Crystal-Lipzin said of Dean's films, 'Why, the titles are longer than
the films!' – no doubt referring to HEY!, a single frame of a bale of
hay." –V. Vale and Marian Wallace, RESEARCHPUBS.COM- This program
contains 17 of Snider's 16mm and 35mm works, none of which are in
distribution. A limited edition DVD set of Dean's work will also be
available at all shows.------ Organized and presented by Douglas
Katelus. email me for more info, email suppressed
9/27
Brooklyn, New York: UnionDocs
http://www.uniondocs.org
7 PM, 322 Union Ave. ( Williamsburg)
XY CHROMOSOME PROJECT #3 BY LYNNE SACHS & MARK STREET
"Garden of Verses: An Evening of Cinematic Seeds & Mordant Vines" 10
Short Films by Mark Street & Lynne Sachs From archival snips of an
educational film on the weather to cine poems in full blossom, New York
film "avant-gardeners" Mark Street and Lynne Sachs create their 3rd XY
CHROMOSOME PROJECT for Union Docs Bodega Series. This program of 10
short films on both single and double screen gleans audio-visual crops
from the dust of the filmmakers' fertile and fallow imaginations. In
this avalanche of visual ruminations on nature's topsy-turvy shakeup of
our lives, Street and Sachs ponder a city child's tentative excavation
of the urban forest, winter wheat, and the great American deluge of the
21st Century (so far). (72 minutes)
9/27
Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Filmmakers
http://www.chicagofilmmakers.org/
8:00pm, Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
CHICAGO'S OWN: AIJO
With Filmmakers Hart Ginsburg and Dave Schmudde in Person! Aijo, (Dir.
Hart Ginsburg & Dave Schmudde, 48 min., 2006) meaning love in Japanese,
looks at this often-ignored necessity. The film begins its mysterious
rollercoaster journey with the filmmaker searching for the meaning of
love; from the subway in Tokyo to a beach in Chicago. Combining various
elements of film and documentary, Aijo creates a unique and
unforgettable cinematic experience. Michael Eschenbach, of the Somewhat
North of Boston Film Festival, writes, "Aijo allows people to have their
own personal catharsis right on camera. It seems very simplistic by
design but it gets deeper and deeper as you go."
9/27
Cleveland, OHIO: Cleveland Cinematheque
http://www.cia.edu/cinematheque.html
5:15 pm, The Cleveland Institute of Art, 11141 East Bulevard
TUAREG - BRUCE CHECEFSKY
TUAREG USA, 2008, Bruce Checefsky Bruce Checefsky's 7-min. Tuareg (USA,
2008, DVD), the latest visually-stunning, b&w, abstract photogram-film
by the director of CIA's Reinberger Galleries. Show Times Sep 27 (Sat) -
5:15PM Sep 28 (Sun) - 4:45PM
9/27
San Francisco, California: Other Cinema
http://www.othercinema.com/
8:30pm, 992 Valencia Street
GREEN/LOZANO + DEUTSCH + MCINNIS + RIVERS +
Ever committed to artist-projects around "sense of place" we're
featuring Sam Green and Carrie Lozano, who present The Biggest Shopping
Mall in the World, an incredible journey to an eerily empty Chinese
architectural White Elephant. ALSO: Katherin McInnis' Disaster Drills, a
scale-shifting short on the Bay Area Floodwater Model, Salise Hughes'
(in person) reworking of the New Orleans' Katrina residue, Enid Blader's
personal commentary on the early Imperial Valley flood, and Roger
Deutsch's own fluid montage of personal road movies. PLUS Laida
Lertxundi's (in person) 16mm Footnotes to a House of Love, Andrew
Wilson's Transcendent Power and the Mirrored Rhombus Prism, and the West
Coast premiere of Ben Rivers' Ah, Liberty!, a sublime cine-poem on
living close to nature.
--------------------------
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2008
--------------------------
9/28
Braddock, Pennsylvania: Anthology Film Archives
http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/
7:30pm, 32 Second Ave
FILMS OF DEAN SNIDER
THE FILMS OF DEAN SNIDER More heard of than seen on this coast, or
outside San Francisco in general, the films of Dean Snider (1949-1994)
are formally playful and richly possessed of character. Ultra-short and
often self-mocking, Snider's abounding catalog is a bit confusing and
almost always funny. Hard to compare with any other filmmaker, Snider's
subversive stance and sardonic sense of humor enlivened his varied,
quixotic films and real-life antics. He once staged a coup in the
projection booth of the San Francisco Cinematheque, forcing a show of
local films on the audience. On another occasion, with fellow
cinema-activist Steve Schmidt, Snider literally hijacked an entire
Cinematheque audience by bus and delivered them to a screening at the No
Nothing Cinema, a now-legendary film/performance venue that he
co-founded. Snider was known to pay a dollar to viewers who attended his
shows, and as a judge at the Ann Arbor Film Festival he gave each and
every festival-rejected filmmaker $3 of his prize money, igniting
debate. Indisputably important and certainly overlooked, these films are
nothing short of a revelation. ----------------------------------------
"During his relatively short lifespan, Snider produced literally
hundreds of films. Beyond filmmaking, his gadfly outbursts and
philosophical provocations helped spark controversy and stimulate
conceptual filmic border-crossings…. Film theorist Janice Crystal-Lipzin
said of Dean's films, 'Why, the titles are longer than the films!' – no
doubt referring to HEY!, a single frame of a bale of hay." –V. Vale and
Marian Wallace, RESEARCHPUBS.COM-------- --------Organized and presented
by Douglas Katelus.
9/28
Brooklyn, New York: UnionDocs
http://www.uniondocs.org
7 PM, 322 Union Ave. ( Williamsburg)
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT DIRECTED BY MARK STREET
In Hidden in Plain Sight, Mark Street travels to four different
continents-Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. Searching in urban
landscapes (Dakar, Hanoi, Marseille, and Santiago), he uncovers traces
of the leftist political figures Ho Chi Minh and Salvador Allende.
Interspersing his own filmed images of these locales with captions
containing historical details and writings by political and literary
figures, the film is a meditation on perception. Mark structures his
film in the first-person, placing himself squarely in the center of the
journey. He takes refuge behind the lens, which observes the smallest
details and rituals in these locales, and he intercuts scenes of daily
life between the four continents. Throughout the film, he incorporates
captions that reveal his own tentative emotional and physical
relationship to his surrounding environments. These visual observations
are underscored with a richly textured sound design, incorporating an
amalgam of local urban noises, a soulful original score, and voices from
the past including Allende's radio speech as his presidential palace was
being attacked in 1973. Hidden in Plain Sight is a poignant meditation
on discovering his own position within a more global historical and
geographical continuum. (63 min.) " Provocative. . . . Engaging. . . .
Street leaves us with the very real sense that you take your
possibilities and limitations with you wherever you go." -Los Angeles
Times " [A] sweet and powerful look into the future of narrative cinema.
Considering the current trend of exploring the documentary nature of
scripted film [Street] is in the right place at the right time. Look for
him in the future." -Ron Wilkinson
9/28
Los Angeles, California: Filmforum
http://www.lafilmforum.org/
7:00 pm, Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. at Las Palmas
FILMFORUM PRESENTS "MOCK UP ON MU," BY CRAIG BALDWIN
Mock Up On Mu (2008, 109 min., color and b/w), by Craig Baldwin, is a
frenzied collage narrative using B-movies, self-help infomercials, pulp
serials, aerospace promo films and otherworldly footage shot by Baldwin
to spin an allegorical yarn of subterranean cults, government secrecy,
and the co-opting of utopian visions by the military. (Note: Baldwin
will not be present at this screening.) General admission $10,
students/seniors $6, free for Filmforum members. The Egyptian Theatre
has a validation stamp for the Hollywood & Highland complex. Park 4
hours for $2 with validation.
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__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.