Re: Coni (Constance) Beeson - searching for 'Stamen' 16mm (1972)

From: DOMINIC ANGERAME (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jan 27 2009 - 14:45:18 PST


Canyon Cinema distributes the following films by Coni Beeson....all in 16mm format only.

Dominic Angerame

      Coni Beeson
    

    

      Health on Wheels
    

    

      Ray Andersen. Sponsored by National Testing Services. A documentation
      of health testing of 30,000 California cannery workers. A labor
      management effort using mobile testing units, a highly successful
      method for finding killer diseases.
    

    

      16mm, color/so, 15m, $45
    

    

      Holding
    

    

      Two young women in love communicate through fantasy and touching in a
      rhythmic buildup, merging time concepts. Flashes of the past blend
      with the present and future in a collage of themselves, the hills,
      the sea and their sexuality.
    

    

      16mm, color/so, 13m, $40
    

    

      The Letter
    

    

      Actress: Mary Lucas; Music: Kenneth C. Jacobs; Voices: Rosemary Bock
      and William Neil. A symbolic rape by the Devil and a renewal of self
      worth.
    

    

      16mm, color/so, 17m, $55
    

    

      The Now
    

    

      "These are my past lives when my lovers were black and my lovers were
      white, when I was male and when I was female." A reincarnation.
    

    

      16mm, color/so, 17m, $50
    

    

      Unfolding
    

    

      Heterosexual lovemaking as poetic expression.
    

    

      16mm, b&w/so, 16m, $50
    

    

      Women
    

    

      A sardonic film about the cliches laid on women.
    

    

      16mm, color/so, 13m, $40
    

    

      Freedom on the Inside
    

    

      Five San Quentin prisoners find self identity in spite of their
      surroundings.
    

    

      16mm, color/so, 30m, $90
    

    

      Firefly
    

    

      16mm, 5 minutes $20
    

    

      Lotus
    

    

      1979, 16mm, 12 minutes $30
    

--- On Fri, 1/23/09, Chuck Kleinhans <email suppressed> wrote:
From: Chuck Kleinhans <email suppressed>
Subject: Re: Coni (Constance) Beeson - searching for 'Stamen' 16mm (1972)
To: email suppressed
Date: Friday, January 23, 2009, 7:08 PM

On Jan 23, 2009, at 9:41 AM, Steve Cooke wrote:

Does anyone have an inkling of where we could start searching for aprint or video of this work?

As
I remember it, Beeson made a number of films which were distributed by
an outfit in San Francisco that offered sex education materials
(broadly defined) for educational institutions (such as med schools,
social work programs, etc.).  Her film "Touching" was a hyper
romantic depiction of lesbian sexuality (which provoked a response film
by Barbara Hammer, "Dyketactics").  I can't remember the name of
that distributor (doubtless now out of business) but some Bay Area
folks might. I believe some of that collection ended up with a Bay Area
school that offered professional training to sex therapists.
You
can do an online title search in the Kinsey Institute collection (their
stuff does not circulate) at Indiana University; and also send a query
to their media librarian.
It's hard to imagine
that those who manage her estate would be unaware of
or embarrassed by her sexual themed films which were well
known and widely circulated at the time.  She was certainly frank
in depicting sex, with a strong strain of counterculturey romanticism.
CHUCK KLEINHANS
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.