Big As Life: An American History of 8mm Films
October 7, 14, 21, 28; November 4, 11, 18; December 2, 9,16; ongoing through December 2000
One of the most exciting artistic developments in American cinema of the last fifty years has been the growing vitality of a moving-image-making movement parallel to but far removed from all other kinds of films and videos. Unnamed, critically unrecognized, and generally unassuming in intent, this often miraculously inventive movement comprises the countless films and videotapes made with modest 8mm (regular 8mm film, Super 8mm film, and Video 8) technical facilities.
Big As Life 1999: Moving Out
With this second year of the Museum's large-scale retrospective, focus shifts
from films that explore the private, intimate worlds of 8mm filmmakers to
works that use small-gauge filmmaking to interact with the world. Big as
Life's fourth season begins with three group programs which highlight short
films by several of the key filmmakers from the retrospective's first year-and-a-half,
in addition to introducing films by a number of makers whose work will figure
prominently in the months to come. With few exceptions, the works selected
are screened in their original formats.
Big As Life: An American History of 8mm Films was co-organized by Jytte Jensen, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Video, The Museum of Modern Art, and Steve Anker, Director, San Francisco Cinematheque. The program is accompanied by a catalogue, edited by Albert Kilchesty, that includes original essays by and source materials from artists, critics, and other professionals, and complete filmographies of the artists included in this two-year retrospective. Please note: Program screenings are held in The Time Warner Screening Room; seating is limited to fifty. Tickets are available at the Lobby Information Desk on a first-come, first-served basis, and are included in the price of Museum admission. After 5:30 p.m., tickets are free.
Thursday, October 7, 6:00:
Mysterious Barricades. 1987. USA. Peter Herwitz. 8 min.
Desert. 1976. USA. Stan Brakhage. 11 min.
Looking for Mushrooms. 1965. USA. Bruce Conner. 11 min.
Lyrics. 1983. USA. Marjorie Keller. 9 min
Last Gasp. 1981. USA. Jacalyn White. 18 min.
don't walk. 1991. USA. Karine Albano. 5 min.
Recuerdos de flores muertas. 1982. USA. Willie Varela. 5 min.
Herwitz's Mysterious Barricades suggests the ephemeral memory, as fleeting
glimpses of the world struggle to be seen through physical effects created
by the filmmaker directly on the film. Brakhage's Desert is a miragelike
evocation of this immaterial, wide-open space in the American Southwest.
Conner's Looking For Mushrooms is a somnambulistic, outsider view of a lush
foreign culture; Keller's Lyrics offers wistful reminders of past experiences
while traveling in San Francisco. White's Last Gasp is a wonderfully ironic
reflection of the humanizing limits of Super-8 technology, as she desperately
attempts to document San Francisco's Telegraph Hill. Albano's don't walk
makes the simple journey across a city street a palpable psychodrama. Varela's
Recuerdos de las flores muertes is a haunted synch-sound portrait of an
El Paso desert cemetery.
Total running time 67 min. TWR
Thursday, October 14, 6:00:
Prayer Wheel. 1987. USA. Jerry Orr. 3 min.
Pond. 1984. USA. Jerry Orr. 10 min.
Aristotle. 1976. USA. Storm de Hirsh. 4 min.
Mount Sopris and the Cattle Creek Anticline. 1992. USA. James Otis. 6 min.
Red in Blue Letters. 1983. USA. Gail Currey. 12 min.
1st Window. 1964. USA. Ken Jacobs. 3 min.
MoMA. 1950s. USA. (Mr. E). 5 min.
Acceleration. 1993. USA. Scott Stark. 10 min.
Ode to Communism. 1980. USA. Greg Sharits. 16 min.
Orr's near-static Pond and Prayer Wheel present rural landscapes as nuance
fields for contemplation; Jacobs's First Window is a dazzling balletic breaking-up
of the cinematic frame; Mr. E's MoMA creates new sculptural spaces originally
experienced in this Museum's hallowed galleries; Otis's Mount Sopris and
the Cattle Creek Anticline is a hyperreal vision of the dramatic alterations
of mountain light and atmosphere; Currey's Red in Blue Letters weaves images
recorded by the filmmaker from contrasting settings into a delightful and
mysterious conundrum of rhyming forms and colors; De Hirsch's Aristotle
is a succinctly percussive appreciation of the visual rhythms of a country
stream; Stark's Acceleration uses the Super8 cartridge in unorthodox ways
to create a flow of activity on a subway platform; and Sharits's Ode to
Communism uses the single-frame potentials of his camera to portray city
streets with lightning speed. Total running time 63 min. TWR
Thursday, October 21, 6:00:
Chinese Family Home Movie. 1950s. USA. Unknown. 8 min.
Note One. 1968. USA. Saul Levine. 6 min.
Family Dinners. 1995. USA. James Otis. 5 min.
Antonia. 1967-69. USA. Bruce Conner. 10 min.
In the Company of Women. Part 1. 1985. USA. Jacalyn White. 10 min.
Mom. 1983. USA. George Kuchar. 15 min.
Peggy's Blue Skylight. 1973. USA. Joyce Wieland. 11 min.
Shadows of the Son. 1996. USA. silt. 7 min.
A program of transgressive "home movies," stretching the definition
as well as consciously playing with the implications of the genre. These
home movies serve as vehicles for personal stories and at the same time
register, document, and comment on actions. Stylistically the program encompasses
fast-motion, sound, and silent pieces; the works are similar only in (re)defining
home-movie characteristics (such as jittery, disjointed, grainy imagery)
in varying reflexive, self-conscious manners. Total running time 82 min.
TWR
Thursday, October 28, 6:00:
Me and Ruby Fruit. 1989. USA. Sadie Benning. 4 min.
Jollies. 1990. USA. Sadie Benning. 11 min.
Living in the World (excerpt). 1985. USA. Joe Gibbons. 30 min.
Unauthorized Access. 1993. USA. Scott Stark. 30 min.
Benning's Hi8 videos are internalized meditations on the intersection of
privacy and libido, whereas Gibbons's spontaneously shot diary Living in
the World also plays with multiple personae and the perspective of an (un)reliable
narrator. The claustrophobic feel of Gibbons's work is carried to an extreme
in Stark's investigation of "Big Brother" paranoia, in which the
physical closeness of a depersonalized, first-person camera frantically
pursues its subjects. Total running time 75 min. TWR
Thursday, November 4, 6:00.
Films by Bob Branaman. 1960-63. USA. 25 min.
Diary Footage. 1993-94. USA. Greg Pierce. 15 min.
Diary (Part 1). USA. 1979. Robert Huot. 27 min.
Untitled No. 6. 1975. USA. Greg Sharitz. 13 min.
These four filmmakers use their regular and Super-8 cameras as notebooks,
filming daily activities spontaneously while remaining sensitive to the
intimate nature of the small-gauge aesthetic. Sharits and Branaman turn
the streets of San Francisco and New York into labyrinths of formal investigation;
Pierce and Huot convey the pulse of daily rural life through vignettes recording
country routines and gatherings. Total running time 80 min. TWR
Thursday, November 11, 6:00:
Marjorie Keller Program:
The Web. 1977. USA. Marjorie Keller. 10 min.
Film Notebook, Part 1 (For Saul). 1975. USA. Marjorie Keller. 12 min.
Turtle. 1969. USA. Marjorie Keller. 2 min.
By 2's and 3's: Women. 1974. USA. Marjorie Keller. 8 min.
Misconception. 1973. USA. Marjorie Keller. 40 min.
Big As Life pays tribute to the late Marjorie Keller with a program of her
lyrical regular 8mm films and her major Super-8mm sound essay Misconception.
Keller's early regular 8mm films often crossed over into the notebook or
diary mode and were marked by a remarkable delicacy of composition and editing
that brought out the fragility of her subjects. Misconception is a raw and
unsettling synch-sound portrait of a young couple's fantasies and reflections
on the impending birth of their first child. Total running time 72 min.
TWR
Thursday, November 18, 6:00:
Richard Lerman Transducer Film Series:
# 10 Copper Strip Alone. 1984. USA. Richard Lerman. 3 min.
# 12 On Board the SS Edgerton w/ Brass Screen Tube, a Blue Ribbon Microphone
and a Copper Screen. 1984. USA. Richard Lerman. 10 min.
# 20 Two Square Microphones in the Same Month. 1985. USA. Richard Lerman.
5 min.
# 25 St. Johns Harbor & Port Kerwin. 1986. USA. Richard Lerman. 11 min.
# 33 Sunrise at Yuraygir Nat'l Park. 1986. USA. Richard Lerman. 3 min.
# 48 A Red-Earth Microphone by Mona Higuchi. 1988. USA. Richard Lerman.
8 min.
# 56 Pisaq w/Amplified Thorns and Wind. 1988. USA. Richard Lerman. 4 min.
Dom. 1979. USA. Andrej Zdravic. 20 min.
The many-splendored relation between sound and image-and the struggle in
the viewer's brain to connect them-are investigated by the use of the transducer,
a device that records sounds far away from the image or picks up inherent
sound qualities we can't normally hear. Lerman often works in one long take
and creates astonishing, minimalistic mystery gems. Dom, which means home
in Zdravic's native Slovenian, is an amalgam of rooms and buildings that
have particular meaning for the filmmaker. The sense of dread and even horror
lends an uncanny twist to the meaning of home. Total running time 64 min.
TWR
Thursday, December 2:
O Places! O Trees!. 1997. James Otis. 12 min
Light Pharmacy. Parts I-III. 1987. Albert Gabriel Nigrin. 5 min
Colored Rain. 1974. Willie Varela. 3 min
Ghost Town. 1974. Willie Varela 3 min
Moondance II. 1974-79. Willie Varela 4 min
A Neon Crescent. 1974-76. Willie Varela 3 min
Reaching for the Moon 1974-79. Willie Varela 4 min
Curse. 1978. Renata Breth. 6 min
Epiphany. 1978. Renata Breth. 5 min
Citations. 1979. Renata Breth. 6 min
A program of films which weave images taken from the world into mysterious
tapestries of movement and light. Some, as in the films by Willie Varela
and Albert Gabriel Nigrin, revel in the rhythms that light--reflected from
the moon, puddles, rainbows, or filtering through abandoned structures--can
create with the 8mm lens. James Otis uses basic features of the Super-8
camera to magically animate natural landscapes with a throbbing sense of
space unseeable with the naked eye. Renata Breth combines many kinds of
imagery through subtle montage into intricate little puzzles contemplating
social rituals and daily activities.
Thursday, Dec 9:
Three Adaptation Studies. 1970. Vito Acconci. . 9min.
Black Out. 1971. John Baldessari. 3min.
Ice Cubes Sliding. 1974. John Baldessari. 3min.
New York City Post Card Painting. 1971. John Baldessari. 3min.
Prowl. 1989. Albert Kilchesty. 3.5min.
Untitled. c.1975. Lee Krugman. 2.5min.
Near Site. 1977-78. Saul Levine. 1.75min.
Daffodils. 1979-81. Katrina Martin. 2.5min.
Piano Funnel. 1983. Micheal Snow. 3min.
Hair Brush. 1976. Gail Vachon. 10min.
Songs 17 & 18. 1965. Stan Brakhage. 8min.
Song 28. 1969. Stan Brakhage.. 4min.
Song 29. 1969. Stan Brakhage. 4min.
An American Poem. 1987. Andrea Kirsch. 4 min
Crazy. 1987. Scott Stark. 3 min
Malevitch at the Guggenheim. 1974-76. Storm De Hirsch. 5 min
Punching Flowers. 1976. Joe Gibbons. 3 min.
Portrait of Pamela. 1974. Diana Barrie. 3 min
Waterglass. 1984. Melanie Berry. 3 min
This collection of twenty films by fifteen filmmakers work within the boundaries
of the given, manufactured length of unrecorded camera film (usually 2 1/2
to 4 1/2 minutes) to concentrate and contain improvised responses to what
is in front of the camera's lens. Films range from performative actions
by Vito Acconci and John Baldessari, portraits by Andrea Kirsch, Saul Levine
and Lee Krugman, and image-sound conundrums by Michael Snow and Scott Stark,
to simple portrayals of place by Katrina Martin and Gail Vachon. Included
will be the first repeat screenings of films in the series by Diana Barrie
and Melanie Berry.
Thursday, Dec 16:
The Sky Socialist. 1964-66. Ken Jacobs. 90 min
A rare screening, with music chosen by the filmmaker, of Ken Jacobs' lyrical
and exquisite paean to the Brooklyn Bridge, its creator, and lower Manhattan's
enchanting cobblestone streets as still seen during the early 1960s.
