From: Thomas Beard (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Mar 05 2009 - 15:38:34 PST
Light Industry
220 36th Street, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, New York
http://www.lightindustry.org
Stormy Weather
Curated by Saul Levine and Rebecca Meyers
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 at 7:30pm
An excavation. A recent Boston transplant and a veteran city dweller who has
been making and programming films in Beantown for over forty years provide a
glimpse into the rich, varied, and little told histories of experimental
cinema in Boston, the same town that "has come to be recognized as the
fountainhead of American documentary filmmaking" (Scott MacDonald).
Marked by two distinct periods of concentrated activity, these histories
have been equally impacted by the transient nature of a region organized
around academic institutions‹to and from which students, teachers, and
artists come and go‹and the community and organizations forged by longtime
residents who claim Boston as their home.
It's the 1960s. Saul Levine, a student at Boston University, is making films
alongside classmates Tom Chomont and Andy Meyer. Chomont and Bruce Conner
are both making and programming films, organizing avant-garde screenings
around the city. Fred Camper and friends begin the MIT Film Society in 1965.
A lot of stuff is in the air.
A decade later. Boston is the locus of small gauge activity. Toni Treadway
and Bob Brodsky begin working together to advocate for and preserve the
Super-8 format and Steve Anker curates films for the Boston Film and Video
Foundation's cinematheque. The Massachusetts College of Art Film Society
begins the regular programming that continues today. In the mid 70s and into
the 80s there is a flurry of activity‹Anne Robertson, Joe Gibbons, Dan
Barnett, and Mark Lapore are actively making films; Mark McElhatten programs
at BFVF (and then Cambridge's Brattle theater), around the time that Luther
Price, Nina Fonoroff, Pelle Lowe, and many others‹most of them passing
through Mass Art‹begin their careers.
The films selected for this program share more than the geographic location
in which they were produced. Perhaps in some way connected to Fonoroff's
observation that Boston practitioners work[ed] "at the margins of the art
world," these films have been described as edgy, gritty, raw, messy,
difficult. Their intensity derives from bold formal concerns, from acute
representations of psychological states and inner landscapes‹this is a
deeply personal, expressive cinema. Stormy.
An Early Clue to the New Direction, Andrew Meyer, 16mm, 1966, 28 mins
Oblivion, Tom Chomont, 16mm, 1969, 4 mins
Untitled, Marjorie Keller, 8mm, 1971, 8 mins
Tenent, Dan Barnett, 16mm, 1977, 5 mins
Big Story, Nina Fonoroff, 16mm, 1984, 10 mins
Apologies, Anne Robertson, S8mm, 1990, 17 mins
Earthly Possesssions, Pelle Lowe, S8mm, 1992, 23 mins
Saul Levine adopted the medium of 8mm film in the 1960s and began using the
camera to record his daily life, out of which he developed his art. Over the
years, he has created a body of work that is, first and foremost, a
collection of "cine-poems." Saul's films have screened throughout the United
States and Europe. He has been featured in solo shows at the New York Film
Festival and the Rotterdam Film Festival. In addition, he is also
influential as a teacher at MassArt and programmer at MassArt Film Society
(Boston). He holds an MFA from the Chicago Art Institute, where he studied
with Stan Brakhage. Levine is widely considered the master of small gauge
(8mm) filmmaking in America, and he also works with 16mm film, video, sound,
and performance art.
Rebecca Meyers is a filmmaker and programmer living in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where she works at the Harvard Film Archive. Her films have
screened internationally at festivals and in curated exhibitions such as
Media City, Images, the London International Film Festival, "Bringing to
Light" at the San Francisco Cinematheque, and "White Shadows: Stories and
Polar Visions" at the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of Trento,
Italy. Rebecca holds an MFA from the University of Iowa in Film/Video
Production. During her time in the Midwest she worked on the gone but not
forgotten THAW Festival of Film, Video, and Digital Media in Iowa City, Iowa
and co-curated Chicago's Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival.
Tickets - $7, available at door.
About Light Industry
Light Industry is a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New
York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has
begun as a series of events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each organized
by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry
draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in
New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid
film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and
lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of
time-based media and foster an ongoing dialogue amongst a wide range of
artists and audiences within the city.
About Industry City
Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is home to a
cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a
regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square
feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now
includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at
competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number of low-cost
studios for artists in need of reasonably priced space. This program was
conceived in response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New
York City and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial
redevelopment--one that does not displace artists, workers, local residents
or industry but instead builds a sustainable community in a context that
integrates cultural and industrial production. For more information:
http://www.industrycityartproject.org
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.