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SAN FRANCISCO
CINEMATHEQUE
From the collection of the
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San Francisco, California
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San Francisco Cinematheque
2000 Program Notes
San Francisco Cinematheque
145 Ninth Street
Suite 240
San Francisco, California
94110
Telephone: 415.552.1990
Facsimile: 415.552.2067
Email: sfc@sfcinematheque.org
www.sfcinematheque.org
cover image © Greta Snider: Flight, 1 997
SAN FRANCISCO
CINEMATHEQUE
Staff. 2000
Director
Steve Anker
Artistic Co-Director
Irina Leimbacher
Office Manager
Steve Polta
Library and Archive
Christine Metropoulos
Webmaster
Cynthia Arnott- White
Design
Oona Nelson
Program Note Book Producers
Dennis Hanlon
Kim Miskowicz
Guest Curators and Co-Curators
Claire Bain
Bill Berkson
Charles Boone
Christian Bruno
Nathaniel Dorsky
Kathy Geritz
Co-Presenters
Lyn Hejinian
Ken Paul Rosenthal
San Francisco Art Institute 8 Millimeter Film Festival
Leslie Scalapino
Konrad Steiner
Astria Suparak
Acustica International SF 2000
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
City Lights Bookstore
Film Arts Foundation
New Nothing Cinema
Other Cinema
Pacific Film Archive
Program Note Writers
Poetry Center
Pro Helvetia, the Arts Council of Switzerland
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Walter/McBean Gallery, SFAI
Claire Bain
Charles Boone
David Connor
Kathy Geritz
Program Note Editors/Coordinators
Irina Leimbacher
David Michalak
Smith Patrick
Konrad Steiner
Steve Polta
Jenny Rogers
Board of Directors. 2000
Alison Austin
Kerri Condron
Elise Hurwitz
Julia Segrove-Jaurigui
Mary Tsiongas
Kathleen Tyner
Richard Winchell
SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE
2000 PROGRAM NOTES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
RITES OF PASSAGE: Final Short Film And Video Program Of Bay Area Now 2000 1
JAMES BENNING'S 11X14 1
SMALL WINDOWS: A Celebration of Regular 8mm Films, Program One 2
SMALL WINDOWS: A Celebration of Regular 8mm Films, Program Two 4
EXCAVATING SPACE TO REDEEM TIME: The Films of Richard Dindo, Program One 5
MAESTRO OF POVERTY ROW: Two by Edgar G. Ulmer 6
EXCAVATING SPACE TO REDEEM TIME: The Films of Richard Dindo, Program Two 7
EXCAVATING SPACE TO REDEEM TIME: The Films of Richard Dindo, Program Three 8
DISQUIETING EPIPHANIES: Jay Rosenblatt's King of the Jews + Erin Sax' Jerusalem Syndrome 8
A MEMORIAL TRIBUTE TO RUDY BURCKHARDT 1
ARTICULATED IMAGES: Recent Films by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill 1 1
WORD TO IMAGE: Cinema Inspired by Poems 12
SEEING HAITI THROUGH LEFANM1 SELA VI 1 6
FROM CINE-POVERA TO CINE-SPOLVERARE: Sound Film Propositions 18
by Recoder and McClure
ELLIPTICAL TALES: Recent Work by Stephanie Barber and Naomi Uman 19
LAWRENCE JORDAN: A Mosaic of Personal Selections, Program One 21
LAWRENCE JORDAN: A Mosaic of Personal Selections, Program Two 22
LAWRENCE JORDAN: A Mosaic of Personal Selections, Program Three 22
LAWRENCE JORDAN: A Mosaic of Personal Selections, Program Four 23
DYED LIGHT: New by Stan Brakhage 24
GOSHOGAOKA BY SHARON LOCKHART 26
'66 FRAMES: Life in the Sixties Underground 28
AN EVENING WITH TRINH T. MINH-HA 30
AN EVENING WITH MATTIAS MULLER 3 1
AN EVENING WITH GAD HOLLANDER 33
3 rd ANNUAL TEXTURE OF THE GESTURE: A Celebration of Hand-Processed Films 35
FROM DARKNESS LIGHT: The Transfigured Spaces of Jim Jennings 36
BREAKING POINTS: New Experimental Films 38
WHEN THE SPIRIT MOVES: Live Music for New Films 40
DE PROFUNDIS: An Evening with Lawrence Brose 4 1
J. HOBERMAN ON JACK SMITH 42
ARTISTS AT WORK: The Day Job 43
RITUAL OBSESSIONS: Three Nights of Luther Price, Program One: Home, Sweet Home 44
RITUAL OBSESSIONS: Three Nights of Luther Price, Program Two: Body Fluid 47
RITUAL OBSESSIONS: Three Nights of Luther Price, Program Three: "Tell me a secret..." 48
ETHER/ORE: An Evening with Phil Solomon 50
SOUNDS OF ALL KINDS: From Dada to Now 5 1
BLOOD SAUSAGE: A Rooftop Screening/Reception 52
CENTER FOR THE ARTS SEASON OPENER: New Film and Video by Local Makers 53
REANIMATOR: The Videos of Rodney Ascher 54
MOTIVES FOR MAYHEM: The Kinetic World of Abigail Child, Program One 56
MOTIVES FOR MAYHEM: The Kinetic World of Abigail Child, Program Two 57
MOTIVES FOR MAYHEM: The Kinetic World of Abigail Child, Program Three 58
THERESA HAK KYUNG CHA' S EX1LEE 59
GLIMPSES OF STORIES THAT REFUSE TO BE TOLD: New Work by Women of the Chicago
Art Institute 61
JAMES BENNING ' S EL VALLEY CENTRO 6 1
TREE— LINE AND OTHERS BY GUNVOR NELSON 63
VERY HARD WORK YOU'RE ASKING ME TO DO: The Cinema of Gregg Biermann 64
JUST GET ME OUT OF HERE: New Films and Videos by Timoleon Wilkins and Jeremy Coleman 65
SOME KIND OF LOVING TOUR: All Night Long with Miranda July and Astria Suparak 66
OPEN HOUSE PARTY 67
AN HOMAGE TO SIDNEY PETERSON 68
FROM TITO-MA TERIAL TO ANDY HARDY: Recent Films from Austria 70
ZOE BELOFF' S SHADO W LAND OR LIGHT FROM THE OTHER SIDE 7 1
BODY PARTS: A Multi-Screen Performance by Victor Faccinto 72
BETWEEN VISIONS: An Intermedia Commentary 73
PETER ADAIR'S THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE WITH PIE FIGHT '69 76
ALEXANDER DOVZHENKO'S^RS£M4Z. 77
GASH AND NEW UNDERGROUND SHORTS 78
THE PERSONAL LANDSCAPE: New Films by Peter Hutton, Mark Lapore and Jeanne Liotta 79
APPENDIX: PERSONAL APPEARANCES g
INDEX OF TITLES 83
INDEX OF ARTISTS g7
San Francisco Cinematheque
JAMES BENNING'S 11x14
James Benning In Person
Sunday, January 30, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
For over twenty-five years, James Benning has been making films of the American landscape which
simultaneously explore issues of representation, meaning, geography and ideology. A film of great subtlety and
precise formal construction, 11x14 fuses the impulses of narrative convention with formal exploration, revealing,
through meticulous photography and elegant rhythmic construction, the paradoxical interrelationship between these
generally competing strains of cinematic expression. One of the top ten films of the seventies according to J.
Hoberman, James Benning' s 11x14 is "a laconic mosaic of single-shot sequences, each offering some sort of
sound/image pun or paradox. At once a crypto-narrative with an abstract, peekaboo storyline and fractured,
painterly study of the midwestern landscape, 11x14 points toward the creation of a new, nonliterary but populist
cinema."
11x14 (1976); 16mm, color, sound, 83 minutes, print from the maker
"At last, the first Midwest film. With a brilliant eye, formed by the past ten years of pop and minimalist
painting and by the experience of the Midwest which is the source of the iconography of much of that painting,
Benning has made an American landscape film, a landscape first dominated, then submerged, by the highways and
powerlines which connect it. Its characters are cars, trains, and planes. They take their fix at the filling station;
their reading matter is billboards and signs.
"The film was shot with a camera fixed on a tripod. There are a few pans, a few shots from moving
vehicles. Benning used a wide-angle 10mm lens throughout, which produces a flattened space in which one is,
paradoxically, more aware of depth. The color (the stock is Ektachrome commercial) was very carefully controlled
in the lab and is incredibly vivid: blues, reds, yellows, greens. Shots take anywhere from a few seconds to 1 1
minutes. The film was nearly completely scripted and choreographed before the shooting. The sound is
meticulously post-synced so that gradually one becomes aware that it is more than 'true.' Most of the framings are
symmetrical with the camera at a 90-degree angle to the horizon line. The space is remade in some way within each
shot.
"The time is traveling time, that peculiarly slowed down and distanced time, slowed down regardless of
the speed at which one is moving, when there is nothing to do but look and listen, when images and sounds are
'noticed.'
"Benning calls 11x14 a narrative. It is, in the sense that a narrative is a kind of traveling. There is a
complex of connections between the shots and also a group of people who appear sporadically throughout. But
with the kind of cool, goofy irony which shapes all of the film, Benning allows almost no information about the
people to reach us through the space. Their faces are blocked by window frames; their voices are covered with
noises. Even their sex is ambivalent. And this ambivalence — an ambivalence about how images are to be
read — pervades every aspect of the film. A loading and then vacuuming out of meaning occurs in almost every
shot. Almost every shot has some unexpected turning. There's a lot to look at, and it's really something to see."
(Amy Taubin)
Hopefully, the film teaches you how to watch the film. (JB)
2000 Program Notes
SMALL WINDOWS
A Celebration of Regular 8mm Films!
Program One
Saturday, February 5, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Regular 8mm filmmaking has truly been an underground activity since Kodak terminated the production of 8mm
film stock in 1993. Recently, however, with the "discovery" of film manufacturers in the Czech Republic and
other European countries, revived American availability through John Schwind, and the easy access to high-quality
equipment in the format, Regular 8mm filmmaking is currently enjoying an international rebirth. The San
Francisco Art Institute's 8mm Film Festival was juried by students from Total Small Gauge classes taught by
Janis Crystal Lipzin and Steve Anker and includes two eclectic programs which demonstrate the importance of
Regular 8mm as a site of historical documentation (sides of history which would otherwise be unseen) as well as a
medium for artistic expression. Included in both nights are films made especially for this festival, other recent
works and newly discovered vintage films made decades ago. All films will be shown in their original Regular
8mm format
Song 1 (1964) by Stan Brakhage; 8mm, color, silent, 4 minutes
A portrait of a beautiful woman. (SB)
Song 4 (1964) by Stan Brakhage; 8mm, color, silent, 4 minutes
A round-about three girls playing with a ball... hand-painted over photo image. (SB)
Song 13 (1965) by Stan Brakhage; 8mm, color, silent, 4 minutes
A travel song of scenes and horizontals. (SB)
Untitled #6 (1975) by Greg Sharits; 8mm, color, silent, 10 minutes
Nothing But... Part 1 (1979) by Phil Weisman; 8mm, b&w, silent, 10 minutes
Go Home Movie (1999) by Chun-Hui Wu; 8mm, b&w, 10 minutes
Go Home Movie is a tribute to home movie making without any filming in a home environment; an 8mm
film without using an 8mm camera. (CHW)
Corners (1988) by Scott Stark; 8mm, color, silent, 4 minutes
Corners was made by spooling 6-7 foot sections of Regular 8mm movie film into 35mm still camera
cartridges, and then shooting it with a still camera. The images, which originally covered the width of the entire
16mm (unslit) original, were split in half and were viewed twice. (SS)
Intermission
Found in Auto (1999) by Susan Barron; unslit 8mm, b&w, 3 minutes
A 10-year friendship spawned many a road trip, which was to us a beacon for an inexpensive freedom.
The photographs were taken by Regina, given to me undeveloped after her funeral. (SB)
Jamie's Portrait (1999) by David Heatley; unslit 8mm, color, silent, 3 minutes
Rhythmic portrait of a friend working in 4/4. (DH)
Windy (1980s- 1999) by Bill Baldewicz; unslit 8mm, color, 4 minutes
Windy combines my interest in alternative energy with my interest in photography. (BB)
9 Cats When I Was 7 (1999) by Robbie Land; 8mm, color, 6 minutes
9 Cats When I Was 7 is a transition from one thought to another. (RL)
News From North Carolina (1985) by Tom Whiteside; 8mm, color, 3.5 minutes
News is an original 50 ft. Kodachrome reel hand-printed from stills of television "static," with the
horizontal scan turned on its side. (TW)
San Francisco Cinematheque
Psychic (1999) by Hans Michaud; 8mm, color, 6.5 minutes
The rhythms of Psychic are brought to the forefront due to the extremely slow shoot/project frame-rate.
Another rhythm is at work: the relatively quick darkening of the light due to it being shot during late dusk.
Inversion (1999) by Steve Polta; 8mm, color, silent, 10 minutes
This film contains residue of an uncontrolled test of a new camera bought under dubious circumstances.
Years later the representational product of this encounter was disregarded in favor of the worlds and spaces between
(many the product of mistrust or misuse of the new machine). (SP)
1933 (1999) by Brian Frye; 8mm, b&w, sound, 10 minutes
...and yet our place in this grand and terrible theatre is that of the humblest spectator, participants only
insofar as the spectacle demands its audience. If men speak and act in the most wonderful satire, yet their gods are
ironical in their silence, and the laughter which hails this bitterest irony is our own. (BF)
Amerika (1937) anonymous; 8mm, b&w, silent, 6 minutes
A found home movie shot at several Nazi rallies in New York.
SMALL WINDOWS
A Celebration of Regular 8mm Films!
Program Two
Sunday, February 6, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
see above for series overview
Note One (1968) by Saul Levine; 8mm, b&w, 6.5 minutes
A study in grey and white of my parents. An evening film. (SL)
Note to Pati (1969) by Saul Levine; 8mm, color, 8 minutes
Note on snowstorm in February-March '69. The restoration of the landscape. Begun to show friends on
west coast violent beauty of this period. . . The principal birds in the film are the blue jay and the crow, both
beautiful, smart and ruthless. (SL)
Lost Note (1969-1974) by Saul Levine; 8mm, color, 10.5 minutes
Walk (1985) and Train Ride (1986) by Michael Mideke; 8mm, color, 6 minutes
Camera rolls masterfully composed using multiple exposures. (MM)
Taka and Ako (1966) by Takahiko Iimura; 8mm, b&w, 13 minutes
A rapid cutting of images from Taka and Ako's photo albums from birth to youth which were shot
separately and superimposed with their live images. The film was made to commemorate the occasion of their
marriage and was shown at the celebration party. (TI)
By 2's and 3's: Women (1974) by Marjorie Keller; 8mm, color, 9.5 minutes
American landscape with women. A tense portrait of one friend and one not. (MK)
Intermission
Home Movie Reel #1 (ca. 1950s) anonymous; 8mm, color, 25 minutes
The first of three amazing found home movie reels. This reel documents the lives of a Chinese-American
family in the Bay Area during the 1950s.
Untitled Cameraroll (1999) by Jamie Peterson; 8mm, color, sound, 4 minutes
Three weeks in Italy condensed into four minutes. (JP)
2000 Program Notes
Vermont Wedding (1999) by David Heatley; 8mm, color, 5 minutes
I feel more comfortable saying that I discovered this film rather than saying that I created it. It was shot
originally as a home movie using a single frame process usually reserved for my unslit 8mm work. After slitting
the film and projecting it, I found its qualities to be surprisingly artistic. (DH)
Home Movie Reel #3 (circa 1 960s) anonymous; 8mm, color, 4 minutes
Home Movie Reel #2 (circa 1960s) anonymous, 8mm, color, 6 minutes
Reels two and three come from the Orgone Film Archive in Pittsburg, PA. These two films both show
birthday parties believed to be shot around the same time period in this country. There is, however, a stark
contrast between the two reels.
Print of the Zapruder Film (1964) by Abraham Zapruder; 8mm, b&w, 40 seconds
This is NOT the original film of President Kennedy's assassination. It is a black and white home movie
which reproduces a segment of the historical home movie shot by Abraham Zapruder. For comprehensive notes on
the actual Zapruder film, please see Keith Sanborn's article in the Big as Life MOMA catalogue.
EXCAVATING SPACE TO REDEEM TIME
The Films of Richard Dindo
Program One: Griiningers Fall
Presented with Pro Helvetia, the Arts Council of Switzerland and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Thursday, February 10, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
"I don 't try to immortalize the present, I try to draw memories into the present. Again and again my films focus
on people who are already dead... My films revolve around absence. That is my subject " — Richard Dindo
Cinematheque, in conjunction with Pro Helvetia, the Arts Council of Switzerland, presents three recent films by
Richard Dindo, one of Europe's best-known documentary filmmakers. Marked by his interest in the intersection of
individual and social histories, his films explore the reconstitution of the past through the use of historical texts
and an almost obsessive exploration of space. Using testimony, written or spoken, as his point of departure, his
camera insistently investigates and fixes the actual spaces of events, seeking invisible scars to reveal and redeem a
past now buried in the wake of time's passage. Dindo has said that his films often focus on "politically
committed people and rebels who have experienced repeated defeats. Grieving is an integral part of remembering."
The three films selected here each focus on extremely different figures, each of whom lost a battle waged against an
unjust or repressive society: the Swiss police chief Griininger who saves a number of Jews and is subsequently
tried and condemned for his actions; the revolutionary Che Guevara who returns to Bolivia to fight his last guerilla
war; and the poete maudit Arthur Rimbaud who rejects his family, the social order and ultimately his own writing
and Europe.
Griiningers Fall (The Griininger Case) (1997); 35mm, color, sound, 100 minutes
As Police Chief of the small Swiss city of St. Gallen, Paul Griininger followed his conscience and
falsified the papers of several hundred Austrian Jews who were fleeing Austria after Switzerland had officially
closed its borders. Set in the very courtroom where, in 1940, Griininger was tried and condemned for his "illegal"
actions, Griininger 's Fall interweaves the testimonies of policemen, border guards and many former refugees, who
came from various parts of Europe, the United States and Latin America to participate in the film. A strong
indictment of Swiss policies during the war, the film explores the legacy of and contemporary reactions to the
former Police Chief who died a broken man in 1972 for having placed his convictions above his official duties as
representative of the State.
Today considered Switzerland's most important documentary filmmaker, Richard Dindo was born in
Zurich in 1944, the fifth child of second-generation Italian immigrants. He left school at the age of fifteen, and
San Francisco Cinematheque
four years later tried to apply to the Berlin Film School. Because he didn't meet the admission requirements, he
wasn't allowed to take the entrance exam. In 1966 he moved to Paris where he spent most of his time attending
screenings at the Cinematheque Francaise and reading books on cinema, literature and history — it was there that he
educated himself in the history of film and filmmaking. In 1970 he returned to Zurich and made his first film,
Repetition. Most of his early films deal with specifically Swiss subjects, though always from the point of view of
those who are political or social outsiders. He now lives and works between Zurich and Paris and has seventeen
films to his credit.
Richard Dindo Filmography:
Repetition (1970); Dialogue (1971); Naive Painters in Eastern Switzerland (1972); The Swiss in the Spanish
Civil War (1973); The Execution of the Traitor Ernst S. (1976); Raimon (1977); Songs Against Fear (1977);
Hans Staub, Photojournalist (1978); Climent Moreau, Commercial Artist (197 S); Max Frisch, Journal I-IIJ
(1981); Max Haufler, The Mute (1983); 'El Suizo' (1985); A Love in Spain (1985); Dani, Michi, Renato &
Max (1987); Arthur Rimbaud, A Biography (1991); Charlotte (1992); Life or Theatre (1992); Ernesto Che
Guevara: The Bolivian Diary (1994); The Griininger Case (1997); Genet in Chatila (1999)
MAESTRO OF POVERTY ROW
Two by Edgar G. Ulmer
Sunday, February 13, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
"Nobody ever made good films faster or for less money than Edgar G. Ulmer. . . That Ulmer could communicate a
strong visual style and personality with the meager means so often available to him is close to miraculous." (Peter
Bogdanovich, Kings of the B 's)
"I really am looking for absolution for all the things I had to do for money's sake." (EGU)
For the first time in a decade, we pay tribute to low-budget cross-genre king, Edgar G. Ulmer. Whether working
on Yiddish musicals (Green Fields), horror star-vehicles (The Black Cat) or Bargain Basement noir quickies
(Detour), this former assistant to Murnau invested all of his films with visual style and wit. Bluebeard (1944), a
noir period piece, stars John Carradine as a crazed woman-strangling puppeteer in 19 th century Paris; St. Benny the
Dip (1951) is an upbeat melodrama about three con men who masquerade as priests.
Bluebeard (1944); 16mm, b&w, sound, 75 minutes, print from Kit Parker Films
St. Benny the Dip (1951); 16mm, b&w, sound, 90 minutes, print from Em Gee Films
"Ulmer worked on the lowest depths of Poverty Row, far beyond the pale of the B film into the seventh
circle of the Z picture, shooting his films in dingy studios on makeshift sets, on lightening-swift schedules
(Detour is rumored to have taken a mere four days). If it is possible that severe limitation of means can stimulate
poetry, or that adversity might breed a tenacious reserve of inner feeling... then neither Piet Mondrian nor
Alexander Solzhenitsyn have anything on Edgar G. Ulmer. Ulmer transformed his camera into a precise instrument
of feeling, and his convulsive abstractions of screen space intensify that feeling by investing it with particular
gestures of light, shadow, form, and motion that define his own director's soul, and none other.
"Far more than any other film director, Ulmer represents the primacy of the visual over the narrative, the
ineffable ability of the camera to transcend the most trivial foolishness and make images that defy the lame literary
content of the dramatic material." (Myron Meisel, Kings oftheB's)
2000 Program Notes
Edgar G. Ulmer Filmography:
People on Sunday {Menschen am Sonntag) (with Robert Siodmak, 1929); Mister Broadway (1933); Damaged
Lives (1933); The Black Cat (1934); Thunder Over Texas (1934); From Nine to Nine (1935); Natalka Poltavka
(1937); Green Fields {Greene Felde) (with Jacob Ben-Ami, 1937); The Singing Blacksmith (Yankel Bern
Schmidt) (1938); Cossacks Across the Danube (Zaporosh Sa Dunayem) (1939); The Light Ahead {Die
Klatsche) (1939); The Marriage Broker {Americaner Schadcheri) (1939); Moon Over Harlem (1939);
Tomorrow We Live (1942); My Son the Hero (1943); Girls in Chains (1943); Isle of Forgotten Sins (1943);
Jive Junction (1943); Bluebeard (1944); Strange Illusion {Out of Sight) (1945); Club Havana (1946); Detour
(1946); The Wife of Monte Cristo (1946); Her Sister's Secret (1946); The Strange Woman (1946); Carnegie
Hall (1947); Ruthless (1948); Tfte P/rates of Capri (1949); Captain Sirocco (1949); Tfce Man From P/a/irt X
(1951); St. Benny the Dip (1951); Babes in Baghdad (1952); Murder Is My Beat (1955); The Naked Dawn
(1955); Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957); 7%e Perjurer (1957); Hannibal (1960); TAc Amazing Transparent Man
(I960); Beyond the Time Barrier (1960); Z. 'Atlantide (1961); TAe Caverw (1965)
EXCAVATING SPACE TO REDEEM TIME
The Films of Richard Dindo
Program Two: Ernesto Che Guevara, The Bolivian Diary
Richard Dindo In Person
Presented in collaboration with Pro Helvetia, the Arts Council of Switzerland
Thursday, February 17, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
see February 10 for series overview,
Ernesto Che Guevara: The Bolivian Diary (1994); 35mm, color, sound, 94 minutes, print from Winstar
Taking Che Guevara's diary during his Bolivian campaign (1966-67) as his starting point, Dindo places his camera
in the very spaces where Che traveled, fought and ultimately died. Juxtaposing the mute and virtually empty
landscapes with the moving and sometimes bitter testimony of the diary (read in voiceover by the late filmmaker,
Robert Kramer), Dindo also intercuts bits of recently discovered archival footage and interviews with colleagues and
Bolivian villagers. The film is both a testament to Che Guevara's tenacity and a demystification of the failure of
someone who would become a legend for an entire generation.
San Francisco Cinematheque
EXCAVATING SPACE TO REDEEM TIME
The Films of Richard Dindo
Program Three: Arthur Rimbaud, A Biography
Richard Dindo In Person
Presented in collaboration with Pro Helvetia, the Arts Council of Switzerland
Sunday, February 20, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
see February 10 for series overview
Arthur Rimbaud, A Biography (1991); 35mm, color, sound, 145 minutes, print courtesy of Pro Helvetia
Rimbaud is unique in Dindo' s oeuvre, for here he incorporates actors as his witnesses to the life and death
of the great poet. We see and hear his mother and sister, his school mentor, the poet and lover Verlaine, an
employer in Aden and a Swiss business associate speak of their relationships with Rimbaud in the very places
where they shared his life (his homes in Charleville, Paris, London, Marseille, Aden, Harare). Rimbaud himself is
present only through the wound of his absence, made visible through the images of the places he inhabited, the
voices of those who knew him, and excerpts from his poems and letters.
DISQUIETING EPIPHANIES
Jay Rosenblatt's King of the Jews + Erin Sax' Jerusalem Syndrome
Jay Rosenblatt and Erin Sax In Person
Thursday, February 24, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Tonight San Francisco Cinematheque presents the Bay Area premieres of two unusual new works examining
religious convictions and spiritual epiphanies. King of the Jews, Jay Rosenblatt's newest work, is a lyrical,
provocative and deeply personal film which examines both Rosenblatt's uneasy relationship to Christ as a Jewish
child growing up in Brooklyn — a relationship based on terror and mistrust — and the roots of Christian anti-
Semitism. Using home-movies, found footage, and excerpts from films depicting the life of Christ, it explores
inter-religious misunderstanding and hatred, as well as their transcendence. Erin Sax returns to Cinematheque to
present Jerusalem Syndrome, a complex documentary portrayal of this holy city and the extreme expressions of
religiosity and mystical experience to which it sometimes gives rise. Each year numerous visitors have spiritual
experiences resulting in personality changes and convictions that they are, or are in direct contact with, God. The
film examines this phenomenon labeled the Jerusalem Syndrome by the Israeli psychiatric community from the
perspective of those in the midst of its "spell" and in the context of the city's long history of mystical accounts.
King of the Jews (2000) by Jay Rosenblatt; 16mm, color, sound, 18 minutes, print from the maker
In what has become his multi-textural signature style, Rosenblatt combines home-movies, educational
and historical found footage, and religious imagery from varying film sources to create a highly stylized
meditation on the equal profundity of fear based in a religious context and of spiritual transcendence.
Three distinct sections evolve into a broad thematic scope. Beginning with a personal narration over
home-movie and educational footage is an exploration of the socio-cultural context of Rosenblatt's fear, as a young
Jewish boy, of Jesus Christ. Part two employs a reflexive documentary strategy including academic and historical
texts with disturbing holocaust imagery for an examination of the roots of anti-Semitism. Finally, a barrage of
"arcane religious footage" culminates in an extended montage which beckons a reflection from the viewer on
spirituality.
2000 Program Notes
This finale of ambiguous, reappropriated imagery comes to have "a specific meaning as opposed to if it
were shown first or second. [The viewer] comes to see Jesus as a Jew being crucified, not Jesus as a Christian."
This open-ended "reappropriation of Jesus" intends to evoke "spiritual feelings for the viewer and his/her own
relationship to Jesus."
The inspiration for this film, Rosenblatt said, came from "not being afraid of Jesus anymore, and getting
to his teachings, getting past the filters. I wanted to go back to who Jesus was, not what he became... [he was]
used in such destructive ways... words were put in his mouth. I wanted to go back to the basic ideas of his
teachings which I think are right on — love and forgiveness being the centerpiece. I say this at the risk of sounding
born again." (quotes from an interview with Jay Rosenblatt by Smith Patrick)
Jay Rosenblatt Filmography:
Doubt (1981); Blood Test (1985); Paris X2 (1988); Brain in the Desert (co-directed with Jennifer Frame, 1990);
Short of Breath (1990); The Smell of Burning Ants (1994); Period Piece (co-directed with Jennifer Frame,
1996);
Human Remains (1998); a pregnant moment (co-directed with Jennifer Frame, 1999); drop (co-directed with
Dina Ciraulo, 1999); RESTRICTED (1999); King of the Jews (2000)
Jerusalem Syndrome (1998) by Erin Sax; video, color, sound, 52 minutes, tape from the maker
"Each year about a hundred tourists and pilgrims visiting Jerusalem suffer from a bizarre psychiatric
disturbance. Individuals report having powerful mystical and religious experiences which cause extreme changes in
their personality, behavior and lifestyle. Some acquire super-human strength, begin speaking in unknown tongues,
or run naked through he streets of the city in order to purify themselves from all physical attachments. Many
become convinced that they are the Messiah, the Virgin Mary or King David, and as a result are hospitalized in
psychiatric institutions. Diagnosed in 1980, this phenomenon has come to be recognized by the Israeli psychiatric
community as the Jerusalem Syndrome.
"Looking from the inside out, the film Jerusalem Syndrome examines this phenomenon from the
perspective of six individuals in the midst of its 'spell.' The work questions the possible causes for the epidemic,
the treatment of the Syndrome as a modern day psychosis in the face of Jerusalem's long history of mystical
accounts, and ultimately the criteria society uses to determine if a holy experience is real. In combination with a
full force immersion into the heart of the city's mania in its many form of religious expression, Jerusalem
Syndrome is a complex portrayal of one of the world's most holy landscapes and the curious lines that divide
religion and science, faith and madness." (ES)
The subjects of Erin Sax' Jerusalem Syndrome are so deeply entwined in religious experience, as to
maintain that they are incarnations of Biblical figures. Sax's study goes into the heart of Jerusalem, to the Old
City and its infamous components, including the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock, to explore the sacred
sites of three major religions — Judaism, Islam, and Christianity — and to the worshipers who find themselves
inextricably connected to these surroundings. Interviews with international believers who have relocated to the
holiest of cities attest to the omnipotent power of religion and its boundless reach, and to the extremes of
conviction. Observations extend beyond the walls of Jerusalem to the surrounding countryside and to the Jordan
River where euphoric worshippers are baptized in the holiest of waters.
Equally engaging are the segues between interviews of ambient imagery, including historical sites,
vendors, ceremonious devotees, tourists, and local inhabitants engaged in the mundane, deftly edited to create a
dynamic collage of the city. These segments capture the quality of frenetic energy which permeates the city and
impacts the psyches of its people.
Erin Sax Filmography:
Receiving Sally (1993); Each Evening (1993); Seven of Worlds (1994); Jerusalem Syndrome (1998)
Program Notes written by Smith Patrick
San Francisco Cinematheque
A MEMORIAL TRIBUTE TO RUDY BURCKHARDT
Bill Berkson and Nathaniel Dorsky In Person
Sunday, February 27, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
"The great filmmaker, photographer and painter Rudy Burckhardt died on August 1, 1999, in Maine at 85 years of
age. Bom in Basel, Switzerland, he came to New York in 1935 and made it his home as well as the hero of most
of his works. Burckhardt filmed what he liked and let you see it that way, too. The power is formal and
sympathetic, never editorialized — though the films are as much edited as shot. Sensations of the obvious or
commonplace are lifted sky high. With what Edwin Denby called 'a visual grandeur he keeps as light as it is in
fact,' Burckhardt shows what's livable and true in everyday life." (Bill Berkson)
"Rudy Burckhardt showed his first two films in 1937. He has made more than fifty since, few longer than half an
hour, all minimal budget. From the start they have been personal, unmistakably his. Their influence on other
filmmakers has been described as mainly toward unpretentiousness. Unpretentious they are. Their subject matter is
like that of amateur 'family' movies — short documentaries of unimportant sights anyone could find, or silent-
screen type comedies with friends for actors. The photography is objective, the images are ordinary facts, the style
is direct and clear. The films look simple, but they are not elementary for a moment. The great pleasure they offer
is to see with Burckhardt's eye. The difficulty is seeing the large, unexpected image fast enough — the subject, the
environment, the light that unites and spreads so to speak beyond them. The images are full of fun, wit, and
humor; they also catch live people and places during moments of unconscious beauty and even grandeur. The live
light in them is memorable. Burckhardt keeps catching the personal grace of young women, each a different
individual; children, men, animals, plants, landscapes, buildings — he keeps catching their individuality, both
beautiful and funny in their own unconscious gestures. Burckhardt improvises all this with a very light touch. The
films look as if anybody could have done it; gradually you discover the sophisticated variety, the wealth of
imagination and sympathy." (Edwin Denby)
"Rudy was a natural cosmopolitan. Wherever he found himself he disappeared effortlessly into the crowd, wearing
his inbred sophistication like a suit off a rack. Blending high-born European manners with a streetwise democratic
spirit, Rudy was a constellation of oxymorons: a Swiss Walt Whitman wired into the free-flowing electric charge
of the metropolis, but incapable of overstatement; a multitalented artist, connected to virtually every major figure
of the New York School, but curiously indifferent to the fate of his own work." (Robert Storr, Artforum,
November 1999)
Tonight's program, curated by Bill Berkson and Nathaniel Dorsky, will also include slides of Burckhardt's still
photography and paintings.
On Aesthetics (1999); 16mm, color, sound, print from The Film-Makers' Cooperative
What Mozart Saw on Mulberry Street (1956); 16mm, b&w, 6 minutes, print from The Film-Makers'
Cooperative
Filmed with Joseph Cornell, edited by Burckhardt to the slow movement of a Mozart piano sonata. A
plaster bust of Mozart in a small shop surveys the goings-on in the street — children playing, an old man wrapped
in thought, a cat slinking by in a parking lot. The mood is melancholy.
Eastside Summer (1959); 16mm, color, sound, 11 minutes, print from Jacob Buickhardt
Avenues A, B, C, D between Houston and 14 th Street, before the poets moved there. Small shops,
storefront churches, teeming life in the street and on fire escapes, Tompkins Square Park and shopping for bargains
on 14 th Street. With piano music, Functional, by Thelonius Monk.
Millions in Business as Usual (1961); 16mm, color, sound, 15 minutes, print from Jacob Burckhardt
A piano sonata by Josef Haydn and New York City. The first, allegro movement is choreographed by
midtown crowds, crossing every which way, often barely avoiding collision. For the long, slow second movement
we see quiet, stately buildings, their columns, cornices, portals and ornaments, with only the camera providing
movement at times. The very fast, final part is in color, around Times Square, the movement speeded up and
frantic.
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2000 Program Notes
Caterpillar (1973); 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes, print from The Film-Makers' Cooperative
Looking down at nature's small works in the woods and fields of Maine, then up at the sky, and down
again at the goings-on of a caterpillar that turned out to be an inchworm. Bird sounds recorded on a summer's
dawn by Jacob Burckhardt.
Julie (1980); 16mm, b&w, sound, print from Jacob Burckhardt
Night Fantasies (1990); 16mm, color, sound, 23 minutes, print from The Film-Makers' Cooperative
ARTICULATED IMAGES
Recent Films by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill
Arthur and Corinne Cantrill In Person
Thursday, March 2, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Australian filmmaking team Arthur and Corinne Cantrill return to our shores for the first time in five years to
present a selection of their recent work. The Cantrills have been making films for over thirty-five years and for
the last thirty have published Cantrill 's Filmnotes, Australia's premiere journal of international experimental film
and video. Tonight's program features North American premieres of films completed in the last decade which
combine rigorous formal investigation with sensual appreciation of the world and of film. The program includes
examples of rotoscoped works, recent small format nature studies, and a quartet of lush three-color separation
films which pointilistically manipulate conventions of color, motion and filmic registration.
This program has four new 3 -color separation films (three of which are shot on high-contrast black and white
negative which results in high color saturation), a rotoscoped/optical printer work, and some of our recent Super 8
work enlarged to 16mm. (Arthur & Corinne Cantrill)
Myself When Fourteen (1989); 16mm, color, sound, 19 minutes, print from the makers
A collaboration with Ivor Cantrill, son of the filmmakers. He rotoscoped two shots of himself running, filmed in
Oklahoma in 1974 on high contrast black and white negative. The highly colored rotoscoped footage was reworked
on the optical printer, intermingling it with negative and positive of the original footage. On one level, it is an
analysis of movement in found footage, and on another it is an investigation of the ways the human face is read and
recognized. The sound is Ivor speaking about being fourteen, and commenting on the making of the film, with an
electronic music composition by Chris Knowles.
Ivor Cantrill has autism, and the film benefits from his pre-occupation with repetition, detail and color.
Articulated Image (1996); 16mm, color, silent, 3 minutes, print from the makers
A discontinuous frame-by- frame film of a banana palm lit by a decorative lead-light window, "articulated"
by black frames alternating with the image.
Airey's Inlet (1997); 16mm, color, stereo sound on audio cassette, 6 minutes, print from the makers
A discontinuous frame-by-frame film (mainly two frames image/two frames black) of a coastal scene with
a lighthouse, intercut with a painting of the same landscape by Ivor Cantrill.
City of Chromatic Dissolution (1999); 16mm, color, stereo sound on audio cassette, 17 minutes, print from the
makers
Melbourne cityscapes — the separation and superimposition of the three colors is evident in the pedestrian
and motor traffic activity, and also in the moving clouds reflected in the mirror-facaded "invisible" office
buildings. The film is accompanied by layers of city sounds and glass played with a violin bow, electronically
altered.
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Ivor Paints ArfArf (1998); 16mm, color, sound on audio cassette, 6 minutes, print from the makers
In the garden, Ivor Cantrill paints a group portrait of the Melbourne abstract sound poetry group, Arf Arf.
A white canvas fills with colors and the faces of the group, looking more substantial than the artist who is
rendered in transparent primary layers. The sounds are Arf Arf performing on an occasion when the artist
participated with vocalization and violin improvisation.
Garden of Chromatic Disturbance (1999); 16mm, color, stereo sound on audio cassette, 15 minutes, print from
the makers
Does color exist where there is no light? The garden as site for color research — chromatic aberrations,
measured against a Kodak color card, play around repeated shots of brick walls, objects on a table, paintings and a
female figure. As if the camera is recording color in the absence of light, zones of the image readily incline to
blackness, as shots are repeated with varying color balances and densities. Stark black and white negative
fragments from the original separations are intercut with the color.
City of Chromatic Intensity (1999); 16mm, color, stereo sound on audio cassette, 5 minutes, print from the
makers
Will color exist when there is no one left to see it? The high-contrast color separation, which, unlike
regular color film, is not attempting to reproduce human color perception, renders the city in stark, saturated hues,
contrasting with deep shadow zones. Fragments of black and white negative indicate the source of the color. The
sound suggests audio relics of past demolitions, driving of massive foundations, the juggernaut of modem
construction practice.
Illuminations of the Mundane — Spring (1997); 16mm, color, silent, 17 minutes, print from the makers
Brief, ambiguous details of obliquely lit objects and patches of textured light, with wind-blown shadows,
in the house and garden.
Program Notes written by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill
WORD TO IMAGE
Cinema Inspired by Poems
Curated and Presented by Konrad Steiner
Sunday, March 5, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
Cinema is used here in a response to poetry. These tapes and films were chosen out of the American experimental
tradition to exemplify various techniques of marrying the two arts. Poetry as the art of utterance and cinema the
art of showing, both whole in their own, don't easily make a good couple. But these film and videomakers have
taken up the challenge anyway by responding to the spirit and letter of the poet, creating an original cinematic
writing. Cinema and language meet head on, not unified as in conventional film, but remaining distinct and
dancing, stepping on toes, wooing each other with the charms of mouth and eye and mind. You'll see images'
own syntax shuffled, blended, chafing and dovetailing with language; you'll hear and read poets' work while
seeing and hearing filmmakers' work. It's like having two extra senses!
"To write 'purely visual perception' is to write a meaningless phrase. Obviously. Because every time we want to
make words do a real job of transference, every time we want to make them express something other than words,
they align themselves in such a way as to cancel each other out. This, no doubt, is what gives life so much
charm. Because it is by no means a matter of awareness, but of vision, of simply seeing. Simply! And the only
field of vision that occasionally allows one merely to see, that doesn't always insist on being misunderstood, that
sometimes allows its followers to ignore everything in it that is not appearance, is the inner field." (Samuel
Beckett, Le Monde et lepantalon, 1945)
How can you possibly combine film and poetry? Films are chosen here that solve the problem in various ways.
Many of the pieces tonight started as poems. Some ended up as one. Some use a recording of the author's
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2000 Program Notes
reading. Others use text on screen and modulate your reading through its presentation are images that can
illuminate aspects of a poem, but not be the poem, and have their own integrity. What is their relationship?
Either, Or, But, Not, Both
One motive for these works is the challenge of making verbal language and visual gesture hang together
organically. These films respect the integrity of their medium by avoiding pat equivalences and the
conceptualization that results from too-literal renderings. The interest here is in bringing the separate realms of
word and image into contact. What's evoked, what readings are motivated that would otherwise not occur, taking
place as illustration, irony, counterpoint, mood, metaphor, rhythm, etc? These are the modes of interaction
between the poem aspect and the film aspect of the poem-films shown in this program — there are two things, and
the experience of the two is one thing.
Most of the films in this program took existing poems as their starting point. The integrity of the text in a film
distinguishes it from montage and acts to acknowledge the independence of the two. We can see that these are
images that can illuminate aspects of a poem, but not the poem, and have their own integrity. What is their
relationship?
"The poem-film is showing what the filmmaker thought the poem meant?"
"It provides a reading of the poem."
"It shows the artist interpreting the poem."
"It shows a response to the poem."
"The tape affects the meaning of the poem."
"It means what the poem means."
"The tape is a completely new work."
I think the highest success of this form depends on showing the possibilities of meaning instead of the determined
meaning. Interpreting the poem happens, so it is very tricky. The idea is to keep caught up to experience. The
poet Robert Grenier said at a reading of his I attended years ago that a translation has to be as real as the original,
and the original, if it is worth translating, has to be as real as experience, which is a moving among the potentials
for significance and symbolism without translation. (Well, okay, I don't know if he said all that, but that's what I
got out of it.) This logic only works if you see that reading as experience, though the conventional wisdom is that
the text you read is a kind of delivery system for a message. Conversely, experience is reading. Think about it.
Watching these films is like watching someone reading, but of course, you too are reading. Watch yourself read
the city landscape as you go home tonight.
Anyway, how can a film present the "facts" of the poem without distorting them to present a favored message? If
you were the filmmaker how could you begin with something that's already complete? Do you parallel or
complement the text? How do you add without taking away?
Songs of Degrees: With a Valentine and As to How Much (1990) by Peter Herwitz; 16mm, color, sound on
cassette, 5 minutes, print from the maker
Poetry and cinema are too different to work together without music. Of course "music" meant in the
broadest sense, not just the acoustic sense. Whenever we talk about melody, rhythm, harmony, dissonance,
phrasing, cadence, tempo: these are musical concepts and perceptions. These kinds of intuitions and distinctions
manifest in both words and image work, and serve as the basis for the joinery in the films and tapes shown here
tonight. The existence of music makes it possible for images and words to communicate with each other. Peter
Herwitz speaks directly to this in what he says about his films to readings by Louis Zukovsky:
"The first work is a repetition of the words 'Hear her clear mirror care his error. In her care is clear' each
time presented with different line breaks and different emphasis. It is ambiguous and very precise at the same time
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San Francisco Cinematheque
and above all strikes me as music — like a thoroughbass in baroque music. The images and other sounds I added
seemed like an upper voice — more open and more melodic in relation to this basic repetition.
"The second poem is a bit more 'atmospheric' but seems to me to be above all about degrees, limitations in
describing an image — tentative yet again very precise, which is what I sought to achieve in similar 'possibilities'
for creating an image on film.
"...I find Zukovsky to be above all about music and the choice of words almost meant to work in terms
of musical structure first and foremost. He almost always uses very specific language despite the fact that the
meanings are 'indeterminate.'
" The miracle of so-called 'objectivism' is that very specific words and images are used by the poets to
create an endless series of possibilities for seeing the world.... And as a filmmaker I find this kind of writing to
be truly a mirror of the way montage works — the space between Zukovsky 's words creates the meaning as it does
in montage — the challenge of a filmmaker is both to present and attempt to answer a series of questions raised by
his/her choice of imagery and the spaces between them." (PH)
Under a Broad Gray Sky (1995) by Thad Povey; 16mm, color, sound, 5 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
Thad Povey takes the prose poem by Baudelaire ("We've Each Our Own Chimera") but (in this version)
rendered into spoken English, a description of toil, and in Under a Broad Gray Sky puts it next to images of rustic
labor and repose. Does the poem describe what we're seeing or not? Do the images belie exaggeration in the
lyric? The bold grotesqueness of the description is at odds with the handsome people, the quotidian scenes,
almost. Are these people not within reach of that futility Baudelaire describes? The film is so efficient in making
you wonder about these questions, using very conventional means. There is a gentle weaving of three strands: the
images shown, the text heard, and the images of the text seen in the mind. Notice also beneath this are the sounds
that also play with a sense of illustration and echo, a cut sometimes changing the meaning of a sound.
Waterworx (1986) by Rick Hancox; 16mm, color, sound, 6 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
Rick Hancox 's film Waterworx gives us some pictures to wonder about. You have a chance to make up
something or not. Then you see them again, with the subtitles and subtleties of Wallace Stevens' enigmatic
poem, "A Clear Day and No Memories." The images as you saw them are now torqued by your having to read
and by what you read. As they move towards one another, watch what happens to your mind.
"What I find most impressive about Waterworx is Hancox's ability to fuse Stevens' poem and his own
imagery and sound, not only without doing damage to the poem, but so that the film provides an effective reading
of it.... The clear, empty vistas of the film (empty of action, of people) reflect those of the poem, and yet both are
haunted by the presence of the poetic mind in its process of forming what we are experiencing." (Scott
MacDonald, Afterimage)
Video Haikai by Marcus Nascimento; video, 8 minutes
Brazilian Marcus Nascimento has borrowed from my beloved Japanese linked poetry form haikai to create
his enigmatic sequence of virtuoso video effects woven among the words of his short verse statements. Video
Haikai 's text hovers around inside its images coming from and receding into them, teasing the highly processed
imagery and sound to answer the meaning of the poems. The images respond coyly and remain delightfully
independent.
What Happened to Kerouac? (excerpts) by Nathaniel Dorsky; video transfer, 8 minutes, tape from Nathaniel
Dorsky
Anytime we look at a shot of something we can consider how explicitly showing something is implicitly
pointing out how to view it, showing what to see about it. Similarly, the diction, rhyme, intonation of a phrase
implies an attitude to take towards the subject or speaker or what aspect of that is in focus. This double
(implicit/explicit) expression of what is said and how it is said can be the basis of a contrapuntal relationship
between image and word. The poem and the montage induce implicit and explicit readings of each other.
In the feature length documentary What Happened to Kerouac? Nathaniel Dorsky edited three sequences
to recordings of Kerouac reading his poems. The first sequence is somewhat illustrative of the text, as if just
getting to know the poet. Each successive interpolation reaches deeper into the source of the poems. The final
poem is a perfect example of "counterpoint-illustration." The montage floats along with the voice together and
independent, not in illustration of the words, but the meanings.
Intermission
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2000 Program Notes
Prefaces (1981) by Abigail Child; 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
Prefaces, Abby Child's intense sound- image-shrapnel, inaugurates her Is This What You Were Born For?
series. Child's film is unique in this collection. It's a film in which you might say, "There's no poem there."
But consider it the simplest: the poem is the soundtrack, which makes it the most extreme: the film tracks the
poem exactly. Child is also a published poet associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group.
Kino Da! (1981) by Henry Hills; 16mm, color, sound, 4 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
Henry Hill's film Kino Da! starts with the simplest relation of word to image, the "talking head" shot.
In this case a portrait of a San Francisco poet Jack Hirschman. The "poem" is composed of the speech of the man,
that speech emerges as poetry in a continuum from street sounds to language(s) through nonsense as the sound and
image slip and skip. It exists somewhere between a document and a created event.
What's On? (1997) by Martha Colbum; 16mm, color, sound, 2 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
What's On? is a list poem. It's like Martha Colburn's sarcastic TV Guide. The sound and image run
parallel and lead each other and alternate that lead so quickly that you only ever get about one in three of the jokes
in there.
"A Hyper-Fire Telespazzumentary rendered in orgiastic collage animation, Media Mush and freaky live
chunks. Brats, Boobs, Snot-Based Game Shows, First Lady Baboon attacks, cross-dressing amputees, stress,
estrogen and more spew and mutate. With Telesmashing Chaos poetry soundtrack by 99 Hooker and video game
samples by Naval Cassidy. Blasting you into HELL-A-VISION!" (MC)
Photoheliograph (1997) by Jim Flannery; 16mm, color, sound, 12 minutes, print from the maker
In Jim Flannery's Photoheliograph, film splits the poem into text and sound. Harry Crosby's
originating poem from 1928 is a non-linear graphic poem, and Flannery takes what is an instantaneous poem and
projects it into time. This "translation" might just as well be considered a "rendition" as a response. Here's his
description:
"If I describe the poem, perhaps this will indicate what I considered 'adaptable' in it: it is a 5X10 grid of
the repeated word 'black', in the center of which, (actually, replacing what would have been the twenty-third
'black' and reducing the number of 'blacks' to forty-nine) is the word 'SUN.' As to the title: a (photo)heliograph is
variously: (a) a signaling device by which a coded message may be sent via the reflected image of the sun; (b) a
photoengraving (lithograph); (c) a 'sun print' or 'Rayogram'; (d) a telescope adapted for solar photography. In
short: either a device for observing or reflecting the sun, or the matter resulting from exposure to the sun.
"A great deal of what (I think) 'goes on' in this poem is included by allusion, assembled in the mind of
the reader as a 'rationale' for the juxtaposition of these three words, in this arrangement. Crosby relies on the
reader's knowledge of: (a) his other work and (b) sotericism in general to give it some meaning beyond the simple
visual pun of 'an image of the sun' (itself a rather simpler, naive/folk-etymological reading of the title); in
adapting the poem, I attempted to use materials and processes which would point an allusive reading in roughly
the same directions as (I believe) Crosby's intentions were (for example, the original color image which was
manipulated throughout the film was a photograph of the planet Saturn, one of several 'black suns'), but I am
equally dependent on the viewer's participation/previous knowledge — and I equally intended for it to be 'readable'
in a closely analogous fashion as 'the same' visual pun. There are forty-nine instances of my voice saying the
word 'black' (those separate recordings having been put through a variety of manipulations)... and there are forty-
nine instances if the initial visual image (again, having been put though an analogous series of manipulations)....
"The words that make up the poem, as one would speak them — 'black SUN' — semantically connote the
'negative' image, the black/circle/eclipse/inversion/nigredo image which is usually invoked by the phrase. As one
experiences the poem 'visually,' however, one sees SUN surrounded by black — that is, the 'positive' image of the
light-bearing sun against a black field. The second half of the film reflects this oscillation between two views in
the flicker of the black matte: it should be noted that the composite image in the second half is produced in the
perceptual apparatus of the viewer, not in the production of the image — the black is 'always' there, the color is
'always' there, the combination of color/color is 'never' actually on the filmstrip. At a larger structural level, the
film is again split in two parts, one 'positive' and one 'negative': in the first half, the black matte obscures the
colored image; in the second, the colored image obscures the matte.
"One characteristic of the poem which interested me was its rejection of the temporal vector. Poetry, in
its assumption of being embodied in a speaking voice, is based upon progress through time; but Crosby's poem is
perceived in its entirety, in a single moment. To make a film of this poem is to (perversely) restore the temporal
dimension to it. It was important to me, first, to maintain the two-dimensional quality of the poem, to make a
screen which — at one level of detail, at any rate — insists upon the surface of the screen as the medium, avoiding
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any hint of illusionistic depth (how much more perverse it would have been to add 'two' dimensions to the
poem!). So the film concentrates, at the larger scale, on what might be considered 'still' images (the black screen,
the unmoving circle) on a 'flat', two-dimensional surface. And second, to somehow maintain the 'all-at-onceness'
of the poem, given the constant shifting of small details, and the determinate duration of the film." (JF)
First Hymn to the Night — Novalis (1994) by Stan Brakhage; 16mm, color, silent, 3 minutes, print from Canyon
Cinema
Brakhage' s First Hymn to the Night — Novalis reaches for the root of the language of the poet. Not whole
poems, only phrases are etched between hand-painted sections. Etching alternated with painting, in a call and
response form. The poet's words chosen evoke also Brakhage's well-known sense of closed-eye vision, or perhaps
that inner vision to which Beckett referred.
"This is a hand-painted film whose emotionally referential shapes and colors are interwoven with words
(in English) from the first Hymn to the Night by the late 18 th century mystic poet Freidrich Phillip von
Hardenberg, whose pen name was Novalis. The pieces of text which I've used are as follows: 'the universally
gladdening light ... As inmost soul ... it is breathed by the stars ... by stone ... by sucking plant ... multiform
beast ... and by (you). I turn aside to Holy Night ... I seek to blend with ashes. Night opens in us ... infinite
eyes ... blessed love.'" (SB)
Program Notes written by Konrad Steiner
SEEING HAITI THROUGH LAFANMI SELAVI
Lee Flynn and Caitlin Manning In Person
Thursday, March 9, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Producer/Director Lee Flynn and Co-Director/Cinematographer Caitlin Manning present the premier of their new
documentary shot in Haiti in 1998 and 1999. Lafanmi Selavi (The Family is Life) is a center for street children
started by former President Aristide in the capital, Port-au-Prince. As five children tell of their lives on the streets,
a narrative emerges of their personal voyages from the streets to the center where they have found shelter and,
often, new hope. Using interviews and footage shot in Port-au-Prince, Aristide' s home and in rural areas, the
children, their teachers and Aristide tell a moving story of the complexities of living in a country deeply affected
by colonization, military rule, and the global economy. This beautifully filmed documentary shows Haiti and its
people living in a culture of resistance and hope — a perspective rarely explored by the media.
Lafanmi Selavi (2000) by Lee Flynn and Caitlin Manning; video, color, sound, 60 minutes, tape from the makers
Lafanmi Selavi tells of the lives of five former street children who now live at the center and juxtaposes
these lives with current street children. The children at the center, most of whom are politically sophisticated and
articulate, tell their stories in poignant, poetic words. Out of the mouths of these children, their teachers, and their
families, one can hear a multi-dimensional narrative emerging about contemporary issues in Haiti, including the
economy, politics, class discrimination and the experience of living with extreme poverty. The children also
describe their former lives before coming to Lafanmi, as we accompany them to the slums where they lived as
street children and learn about their means of survival. One girl at Lafanmi, Nerland, visits her mother who was
unable to feed and educate her. As Nerland arrives at her mother's house, she sees that her mother is using her last
five pieces of coal to cook the day's beans and rice — the end of her food supply. Nerland's pain of separation and
concern about her less fortunate brothers and sisters is obvious. Jeremie, a young journalist interested in children's
rights, takes us to the penitentiary where young children are imprisoned simply because they were alone on the
streets. Monique tells her story of losing her parents on the "Jeremie" ferry when she left for a few minutes to go
to the bathroom and returned to find the ferry left without her, eventually capsizing. Her parents were among the
1000 drowned. She survived during the coup for four years living in the "cafeteria," the headquarters of the most
violent leaders of the coup. Lolo explains how his growth was stunted while he lived on the streets, not only
because he couldn't eat but also because he was so unhappy. Now tall, healthy, and robust, he takes us back to his
old street haunts and interviews his pals who are still on the streets.
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2000 Program Notes
Lafanmi Selavi informs the viewer of the difficulty of progress as violent interruptions set back the
"project" at Lafanmi. A teenage boy, Ti Frere, describes a terrifying ordeal during the coup when the military set
fire to the center, resulting in the death of seven children. When the fire department arrived eight hours later, the
children were told, "you set the fire, you go back inside." Ti Frere and the director of Lafanmi describe the
precariousness of existence because of the always present threats of violence, and, sadly, another attack on Lafanmi
in July 1999. The attack by opponents of Aristide was designed to discredit Aristide's work with the children.
After the attack, in September 1 999, Lafanmi was forced to suspend its live-in program, though the Montessori
school is still intact, thereby allowing the children to remain in residence at the center. Also intact is Radyo
Timoun, a children's radio station which broadcasts to all of Haiti's nine provinces.
Personal interviews with Aristide are intertwined throughout the documentary and reveal his unwavering
passion and devotion for all of Haiti's children. His optimism is even more remarkable as it is juxtaposed with
scenes of overt poverty and military violence: as he states, "When they talk about Haiti it's too often 'Oh, a sad
country, misery.' When as a matter of fact it's one of the richest countries in the world from the cultural point of
view, in the sense that our culture brings the fact of human being, of hope, of resistance, of dignity." Aristide also
speaks of the challenges of creating a self-sufficient environment for the future of the children and all of Haiti's
poor within the parameters of accepting aid without giving away Haiti's natural resources.
Lafanmi Selavi is important and timely. Former President Aristide will soon be announcing his intention
to run for president in the elections held in November 2000 and, if elected, he will begin his term in January of
2001. The documentary offers an insight to the Haitian people and their remarkable spirit as well as the
complexities of progress.
In spite of colonization, brutalization, military rule, corrupt leaders, violence, and abject poverty, Lafanmi
Selavi tells the story of the spirit, dignity, and sense of hope of the Haitian people; in particular, the children of
Haiti and the desire and intent of many Haitians to create a better world for all children. Aristide's love and
devotion for all of Haiti's children and his extreme optimism against all odds show the viewer a side of Aristide
the media has largely left unexplored. The people in the documentary are complex and multi-dimensional. The
documentary's perspective is counter-hegemonic as a form of resistance to negative images typically produced
about Haiti, especially in the United States. Lafanmi Selavi will deeply affect the viewer's often unexamined
relation to the images of poverty and victimization and enable them to see beyond media misinformation into the
complexity and contradictions of this remarkable country. (LF)
Lee Flynn, Producer and Director
Lafanmi Selavi is Flynn's second documentary. Her first documentary See Me — Five Young Latinas examines the
lives of five young, poor Latina immigrants as they discuss discrimination, gang life, and their hopes and dreams
for the future. It dispels the assumptions that only the poor immigrate and that the "new" life in the United States
is always superior. See Me was shown at all the major Latino Film Festivals in the U.S., as well as the Havana
International Film Festival in Cuba. It won the best female filmmaker award at the Marin Latino Film Festival in
1998. Lee is an anthropologist whose interests are in foregrounding power imbalances, racism, and de-exoticizing
the other.
Caitlin Manning, Cinematographer and Co-Director
Manning received her MFA in film production from San Francisco State in 1990. She has worked as Director of
Photography on a number of award-winning films and documentaries. Manning teaches at Film Arts Foundation,
the Academy of Art College, and the SF State Cinema Department. She has lectured and screened her work at
Stanford University, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Berkeley. In 1987 she produced and directed Stripped Bare, a
controversial documentary on striptease dancers addressing issues about the sex industry from the perspectives of
the workers. Other work includes Brazilian Dreams (1989), a video documentary on social movements in Brazil,
and Noah's Ark (1994), a documentary about the Zapatista convention held in the Mexican jungle in August 1994.
In March 1995, the Center for the Arts held a retrospective of Manning's work.
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San Francisco Cinematheque
FROM CINE-POVERA TO C IN E- S P O LVERARE
Sound Film Propositions by Recoder and McClure
Luis A. Recoder and Bruce McClure in Person
Sunday, March 12, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
In the in between of the instants that constitute the movies, Recoder and McClure have chosen to demonstrate that
the experience of both the optical and audio surface of the sound film stubbornly defies the project of limits. The
shutter blankets the room in darkness, but vision persists; the ear, meanwhile, is served an uninterrupted stream of
energy. The evening's program is presented as a series of "propositions," a form adopted by Recoder for this
edition of "Cine-Povera." McClure's "Cine-Spolverare" suggests the reprise of or return to the themes of the recent
past, dusty but not totally jejune. Like a taffy pull they seek to transform the material from a "somewhat sticky,
side-whiskered affair to a glistening crystal ribbon" composed of stripes of different colors. Facing the sea these
custodians of cinema would be back to back, but their work will not be presented in that way. Instead, Recoder
and McClure have decided to propose a series of sound film documentaries to be positioned on a table criss-
crossed by a weaving of adjectival rubrics: Conceptual Films, Process Films, Appropriation Films, Performance
Films, Accumulation Films, Readymade Films, Film Nouveaux... positioned provisionally for the appreciation of
the senses of hearing and seeing.
Indeterminate Focus (1999) by Bruce McClure; 16mm, color, sound, 12 minutes, from the maker
Four hundred feet is what it measures, but not without a few spins; and in this way I have laid it
out — aiming it — putting down the emulsion of colored inks. The single perforated ribbon with a rhythm of
sprocket holes implying frames is the solid substance to be bored by the rotating cutting instrument. Projected,
the shutter minces its way through time making succotash (fr. Narragansett, msiquatash, lit. fragments). The
nascent still life, colored vegetables to be arranged on a table top turned on edge, are, however, stopped by border
guards, two stainless steel sentinels who insist on still another private screening. Their presence within the
trajectory of light defines four intervals where the plane of focus can be positioned all of them casually referred to
as being out-of-focus. Their influence is called upon to liberate light from the tyranny of the rectangle freeing the
vegetable still life to levitate from the screen.
Silver Recovery (2000) by Luis Recoder; 16mm, b&w, sound, 12 minutes, from the maker
Concept of "silent cinema": only after the emergence of "sound cinema" is there something like a prior
history of cinema characterized in and through its muteness. The task is to recover the supposed "silent cinemas"
as the muffling of cinematic sonority. What becomes "silenced," though not completely inarticulate, is thus
displaced within the picture: silent pictures picturing sounds. The residual projected frame, evidence of cinema's
sonorous dislocation.
Superincumbent (2000) by Bruce McClure; 16mm, color, sound, approx. 36 minutes, from the maker
Genetically speaking, some species are said to be better suited for survival; genotypes in the context of
the cellular milieu give rise to the phenotype, remembering always that, regardless of the dominant or recessive
nature of the gene, blending inheritance does not occur. Sudden inheritable changes, gene mutations, represent
modifications at specific sites along the deoxyribonucleic acid. These alterations lead to the origin of alleles,
alternative forms of a gene, changing the actual morphology of the chromosome by modifying its size or shape.
The most common cause of congenital defects in humans can be attributed to chromosome anomalies, and an
understanding of the nature of chromosome aberrations and their genetic consequences in a variety of plant and
animal species can lead us to approach intelligently the problems which they present for human society. The
centromere is identified, and its drift is observed as inversions, both paracentric and pericentric,
translocations — shifts and reciprocal, duplications and deletions occur. An unplanned change in a complex system
is certainly more apt to produce a harmful effect than one which shows foresight or planning. And spontaneous
mutation is a random, unplanned event which leads to a genetic alteration without any regard for the consequences.
Variable Density (1999) by Luis Recoder; 16mm, b&w, sound, approx. 12 minutes, from the maker
What the picture doesn't show — and perhaps never will — is located some twenty-six frames prior to its
appearance on the screen: sound. The picture/sound separation is a technical factor to be technically reconstituted
as a synch-event. But let us take up this technological determinism in an unanticipated commentary of an unseen
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2000 Program Notes
sight towards a sight seen. Sound: prior to, a priori, in advance of — sound as always already liberated from the
picture precisely (thanks to) the blindfold/earfold of an interval wedged in the apparatus.
Heterogene (2000) by Bruce McClure; 16mm, b&w, sound, 14 minutes, from the maker
Centaurs, griffins, sphinxes — various animals in combination, grotesque deviants so ugly as to frighten
people; exciting horror by their wickedness and cruelty take shape in the darkness. Reviewed at 24 fjps, found
footage provides the time and place for the convening of an optical soundtrack and drafting ink. The ambassador,
however, is noticeably absent, leaving the voice of the moralist waving from behind the obscurant's attempt to
sweep things under the rug.
Program Notes written by Luis A. Recoder and Bruce McClure
ELLIPTICAL TALES
Recent Work By Stephanie Barber and Naomi Uman
Stephanie Barber and Naomi Uman In Person
Thursday, March 16, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Tonight Cinematheque brings together two of the most original and provocative young women filmmakers
working in the United States today. Stephanie Barber, who lives and works in Milwaukee, uses manipulated
found footage and sounds, animation and hand-processing, to make delicate puzzle-like films which intrigue and
delight, pieces which, "like music, function as emotional landscapes, implied occurrences or scantily clad stories."
(sb) Her work was recently featured in the New York Museum of Modem Art's Cineprobe series, metronome just
won a Juror's Choice award at the recent Black Maria Film Festival and Cinematheque and the Pacific Film
Archive have included her work in their 1999 and 2000 programs of new experimental work at the San Francisco
International Film Festival. Naomi Uman lives and works in Los Angeles and Mexico City where she shoots,
hand processes and edits her hand-made films as well as teaching filmmaking. Ranging from poetic documentaries
to intricately manipulated found footage, her work has also won several awards: Leche won a Golden Spire at last
year's San Francisco International Film Festival, and removed received a Juror's Citation award this year's Black
Maria Film Festival.
angus mustang (1996) by Stephanie Barber; 16mm, color, sound, 6 minutes, print from the maker
angus mustang is a film paralleling different travels, the physicality of travel pointed to most clearly in
the soundtrack and the pacing of the film, the whooshing by of images and then, also, i am playing with the travel
of ideas, the parallels which connect the women in this film (Japanese women picking cherry blossoms, women by
niagara falls, ubiquitous sleeping beauty) as counter-balanced by the (torn) male doctor and all serenaded by a song
of parallel travels, (sb)
woman stabbed to death (1996) by Stephanie Barber; 16mm, b&w, sound, 4 minutes, print from the maker
taking its title from a headline on the kitty genovese murder, woman stabbed to death is an all too jovial
trot through the paranoia infested waters of radio, the warnings and hilarity, caustic with a sing-a-long lure — set
against a loop of familiar (and frightening) images, the film is fairly straight forward, it treats blithely the theme of
fear, in which i am more interested here than genocide or communal alienation, (sb)
a little present (for my friend columbus the explorer) (1996) by Stephanie Barber; 16mm, color, sound, 4
minutes, print from the maker
though obviously a pun on Christopher columbus, fireworks, and exploration, a little present is actually a
gift for my friend theresa columbus, the playwright and explorer, (sb)
pornfilm (1998) by Stephanie Barber; 16mm, color, sound, 4 minutes, print from the maker
something like how easily intimacy is dissuaded, i am interested here in the stuttering, clumsy pacing — a
shaky toy on last legs which is released and exalted by even more toy-like revelry, (sb)
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San Francisco Cinematheque
they invented machines (1997) by Stephanie Barber; 16mm, color, sound, 7 minutes, print from the maker
they invented machines is for me a very complicated film, the film is thinking about colonialism,
entertainment (their inherent connection to each other) and love, the images are mostly taken from disney (land,
world?) rides where one is shown people from far away lands, the soundtrack about halfway through suggests the
idea of love ("they have love here") which can (must?) then be thought of in the context of this same wonder and
possession, amusement, the film ends with a series of flights, (sb)
flower, the boy, the librarian (1997) by Stephanie Barber; 16mm, color, sound, 6 minutes, print from the maker
this is a classic love story with the soundtrack changing from a subterfuge of mantra-esque chanting, to a
sensible narrator in a matter of minutes, (sb)
metronome (1998) by Stephanie Barber; 16mm, color, sound, 1 1 minutes, print from the maker
metronome is a film about the loss of love, possible loss of limbs, the radio play soundtrack is off-set by
the intractable images of "spaces." the former seems to balance between kitsch and true heart-rending emotion and
the latter references the asceticism of seventies minimalism (in film) with the impenetrable intellectualism
becoming increasingly moving as the film progresses, (sb)
shipfilm (1998) by Stephanie Barber; 16mm, b&w, silent, 4 minutes, print from the maker
this is probably the most heartbreaking film i have made, the pacing is romantic and simple, haiku-esque
pauses and inclusions, with the words contrasting this poetry with their factual, disinterested narration, and that
narration is a simple statement of failure, one which lies, not in any action, but in the pre-thought to that action,
in the hope or faith one holds in oneself, one's knowledge or abilities, (sb)
Intermission
Leche (1998) by Naomi Uman; 16mm, b&w, sound, 30 minutes, print from the maker
Made with the most rudimentary tools of filmmaking, Leche is a black and white film which examines
details of the lives of a rural Mexican family. The film was hand-processed in buckets to dry on the clothesline.
(NU)
Private Movie (2000) by Naomi Uman; 16mm, b&w, sound, 5 minutes, print from the maker
Private Movie is a few stops along the journey home. (NU)
removed (1999) by Naomi Uman; 16mm, color, sound, 6.5 minutes, print from the maker
Using a piece of found porn from the seventies, bleach and nail polish, the filmmaker has made a new
film in which the woman is present only as a hole, an empty animated space. (NU)
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2000 Program Notes
LAWRENCE JORDAN
A Mosaic of Personal Selections, Program One
Lawrence Jordan In Person
Co-presented with the San Francisco Art Institute and Film Arts Foundation
Sunday, March 19, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
"Larry Jordan's animated films are among the most beautiful short films made today... His content is subtle, his
technique is perfect, his personal style unmistakable." (Jonas Mekas)
"A dream of buzzing spheres that resonate in a universe of colliding time zones... The Disney Dimension is many
light years away from the Dark Matter illuminated by the Metaphysical Magician of Petaluma." (George Kuchar)
Lawrence Jordan retired from the Faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute last May after thirty years of
distinguished teaching. Jordan inspired literally hundreds of aspiring filmmakers, and he has been a pivotal figure
in the blossoming of Bay Area personal or avant-garde cinema since relocating here in 1955. San Francisco
Cinematheque celebrates the life work of this unique artist with four programs drawn from his body of 40 films,
selected by himself, his long-time colleague George Kuchar and Cinematheque curator Steve Anker.
The Old House, Passing (1967); 16mm, b&w, sound, 45 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
A young man, a woman and their daughter become magnetically involved with the past life and tragedy
of a woman whom they have never met before but at whose house they arrive. They spend the night, while the
ghost of the house walks. The actions of the young couple and their child on the following day parallel events in
the old woman's past: the death of her own daughter and the unexplained disappearance of her husband. The
climax is reached when the young couple finds evidence that the woman's husband died by accident in the attic of
the old house years ago.
A requiem sequence: the young family in a graveyard, observed by the released ghost of the dead man.
Generally speaking, the plot is of secondary importance to the mood of the film, and the emotions of the
characters. This mood is not intended to scare, but to deal with a theme of spirit-drama — in actuality, and as nearly
as possible to render the feeling of the filmmaker on the subject of supernatural events.
I send this film into the world with my love and blessings to those who will
really find it, as we who conspired and labored in it did. The film is but a fragment
of our story, destroyed and reborn in the cutting. It is the memory of a time when
four of us entered the gyre that is the making of a film, and this 'memory' keeps
shifting. (LJ)
"If you want to be entertained, and if poetry bores you, then The Old House, Passing is not for you. This
is a difficult non-entertainment film that will only offer itself to those who are willing to give themselves. It is
pure cinematic poetry. The powerful evocations of the dark forces in our lives are unfolded and displayed with
absolute surety and absolute artistry. . . and the word for that is 'masterpiece.'" (Robert Nelson)
The Apparition (1976); 16mm, color, sound, 50 minutes, print from the maker
My exact intention is to present an imaginary story against a background of reality. This is somewhat
different from "shooting on location." Locations in many films are often doctored to suit the purposes of the
script. I hoped to present a picture (in the background) of how things really looked in the early or mid-70s in San
Francisco and Northern California (narrowed, admittedly, to the dimension of the foreground story). I believe the
film achieves this purpose; at least its directness does not have the feel of "sameness" that so many Hollywood
"location" films have. My intention with the story is simple in content, more complex in structure of presentation:
I am interested in a man struggling to place himself in love and in commercial filmmaking, while at the same time
suffering the affliction and discovery of being haunted by a former incarnation of himself. Structurally, this
film — like about one-fifth of the films now coming from the studios — is a film cut elliptically because it did not
work in a straight line as called for in the script. (LJ)
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San Francisco Cinematheque
LAWRENCE JORDAN
A Mosaic of Personal Selections, Program Two
Lawrence Jordan In Person
Co-presented with the Pacific Film Archive and Film Arts Foundation
Tuesday, March 21, 2000 — Pacific Film Archive — 7:30 pm
see March 19 for series overview
Duo Concertantes (1964); 16mm, color, sound, print from the maker
Our Lady of the Sphere (1969); 16mm, color, sound, print from The Pacific Film Archive
Orb (1973); 16mm, color, sound, print from the Pacific Film Archive
Once Upon A Time (1974); 16mm color, sound, print from the maker
Masquerade (1981); 16mm color, sound, print from the maker
The Visible Compendium (1991); 16mm color, sound, print from the maker
LAWRENCE JORDAN
A Mosaic of Personal Selections, Program Three
Lawrence Jordan In Person
Co-presented with the San Francisco Art Institute and Film Arts Foundation
Thursday, March 23, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
see March 19 above for series overview,
Visions of a City (1957/1978) 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes, print from the maker
I resurrected this film from neglected oblivion because, on viewing it in 1978, I found that it was one of
those rare films that I have always deplored the scarcity of: documents of how it really looked in a certain place in
a certain year. I also liked the mirror imagery and the subtle increase in tempo of the film to its conclusion. All
images were taken from the various reflective surfaces of the city, and the original intention — the trapping of man
on this impersonal surface — seems both relevant and at the same time unimportant to me, in perspective. I am
also pleased that there exists this filmic portrait of the poet McClure as he really looked in 1957, in San Francisco.
(LJ)
Sophie's Place (1986); 16mm, color, sound, 86 minutes, print from the maker
A culmination of five years' work. Full hand-painted cut-out animation. Totally unplanned, unrehearsed
development of scenes under the camera, yet with more "continuity" than any of my previous animations, while
meditating on some phase of my life. I call it an "alchemical autobiography." The film begins in a paradisiacal
garden. It then proceeds to the inside of the Mosque of St. Sophia. More and more the film develops into
episodes centering around one form or another of Sophia, an early Greek and Gnostic embodiment of spiritual
wisdom. She is seen emanating light waves and symbolic objects. (But I must emphasize that I do not know the
exact significance of any of the symbols in the film any more than I know the meaning of my dreams, nor do I
know the meaning of the episodes. I hope that they — they symbols and the episodes — set off poetic associations in
the viewer. I mean them to be entirely open to the viewer's own interpretation.) (LJ)
"The use of moving balloons and the way in which Jordan's objects are continually transforming
themselves suggest that the film can be seen as a journey. Not, however, a linear journey across space... Rather, a
journey that progresses spatially and temporarily in all directions at once: sideways, up and down, outward and
inward, and also forward and backward in time. Movements within one tableau frequently change direction and
22
2000 Program Notes
type; an object drifting across the frame suddenly alternates with another object in a rapid-fire flicker. The
inevitable march forward in time is frequently framed by a background of old engraving, which evokes a past so
idealized and so utterly other than the life we know that it suggests a simultaneous nostalgia for the past and
awareness that the past cannot be recaptured." (Fred Camper, The Chicago Reader)
LAWRENCE JORDAN
A Mosaic of Personal Selections, Program Four
Lawrence Jordan In Person
Co-presented with the San Francisco Art Institute and Film Arts Foundation
Sunday, March 26, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
see March 19 for series overview
The H.D. Trilogy Film:
The Black Oud (1992); 16mm, b&w, sound, 45 minutes, print from the maker
The Grove (1993); 16mm, b&w, sound, 45 minutes, print from the maker
Star of Day (1994); 16mm, b&w, sound, 25 minutes, print from the maker
"Larry Jordan's H.D. Trilogy Film is a wonderful, rich film experience that combines the filmmaker's
images of the women he loves with Hilda Doolittle's* long poem Hermetic Definitions, 1960. Rather than trying
to dramatize H.D.'s last major work, which would be impossible, Jordan provides a series of images of the poet
Joanna McClure as she journeys through ancient ruins, primitive Mediterranean villages, and other places that
inspired H.D. The combination of images, Joanna McClure' s reading of the poem, and the traditional music of the
Mediterranean result in a captivating film experience.
"Jordan planned this work around the visual cues found in H.D.'s writings. Jordan says, 'The poem
provided a source of image modality. It determined how the shots would be taken, how the style in which the
photography of Ms. McClure would occur... The bottom line is that the film's premise is to trace life in general,
but real, actually occurring life, not fictional life.' He said McClure would represent many if not all women,
especially those who are no longer young.
"One theme of the poem is romance blossoming for the poet who is getting older — Why did you come to
trouble my decline? I am old (I was old till you came)... The reddest rose unfolds, (which is ridiculous in this
time, this place, unseemly, impossible, even slightly scandalous). The film expresses this theme in a universal
way. Again, Jordan says, 'the film's concerns are not so much with 'incident' as with 'aspect.' In what aspect do
we find the central character? Is she in despair (internally, since her face shows nothing of it)? Or is she in a later-
life ascendancy? Actually, her existential interface with her immediate surroundings and with her deepest thoughts
(the poem) form the film's deepest resonances. The visual aspect of the film, the picture on the screen, represents
an interface with life's surroundings, the 'present'. The soundtrack, specifically the poem, represents the past — her
thoughts and reflections, her timeless inner modality, or her past life experiences.
"Jordan's manner of showing the present is to observe McClure doing hundreds of things a traveler might
do on a trip to Europe. We see her in the streets of Rome, visiting a temple of Hephaestus in Athens, basking in
the sun and the wind of the Mediterranean, simply putting on make-up, riding in a train in England (part 2), or
walking in the streets of a fourteenth century Italian town (part 3). Just as important: we do not see her with the
filmmaker except once in part 1 as he passes behind her in the mirror with the camera. Throughout the rest of the
film she is alone in her thoughts. Even the filmmaker's single self-reflexive appearance seems to make no change
in her meditations. What makes these images special is the filmmaker's subjective way of looking at his central
character. There is a sense of intimacy in the visuals suggesting that a muse inspires the artist to create this loving
portrait. Since Jordan says most of the actions in the film were not planned, it seems he subconsciously chose the
most romantic locations, and the best camera angles and lighting situations. On occasion he even filmed unusual
incidental images of McClure, including her reflection in windows and mirrors.
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"The film was shot in black and white with a 16mm spring wound Bell and Howell camera. Sepia color
was added to the film by the processing laboratory.
"The candid quality of the images enriches H.D.'s crystalline, intensely personal lines. To achieve this
documentary look Jordan says he limited his directing chores to simple instructions; he would tell Joanna to sit at
a table and pour out a glass of wine, to open books, to walk in a certain direction. He says he rarely made changes
in the places used in the film. One change he did make was to put a rose in the niche in a wall, an image
suggested by the poem. Jordan sees the visuals as a portrait of Joanna McClure's life during the years 1990
through 1992. The few fictitious elements added to the film were imposed on Joanna's activities in order to relate
her real-life experiences to H.D.'s , as the filmmaker was already severely under H.D.'s spell throughout the
filming.
"When the project was begun Jordan wanted to discover if a film could show that Hermetic Definitions
was as great a poem as he felt it to be. The result of this personal experiment is a film that is sensitive enough to
enhance Hilda Doolittle's poem without overpowering it. Hopefully the literary world will discover this film and
agree with the importance McClure and Jordan give to H.D.'s work." (Karl Cohen)
'Hilda Doolittle, who always signed herself "H.D.", was born and raised in Pennsylvania, though she
spent her adult life among the literary circles of England and Europe. She is known as an "imagist" poet, and her
career, which includes numerous books of poetry and a number of densely poetic novels, is closely associated with
her mentor Ezra Pound, though her writing style is not. For a time she acted in films. She was married and had
one daughter. She was devoted to Sigmund Freud, was analyzed by him in 1933-34, and wrote Tribute to Freud,
which was published in 1956. Hermetic Definitions was her last major poem, consisting of three parts: Red Rose
& A Beggar, Grove of Academe, and Star of Day. She died in 1961 at the age 77.
DYED LIGHT
New by Stan Brakhage
Thursday, March 30, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Stan Brakhage' s newest short films include some of his finest hand-colored work made to date. With remarkable
range, control and nuance of expression, Brakhage continues to deepen his ability to create meaningful lightplays
of rhythm and texture awash with cinematic color without the use of recorded imagery. Tonight's program, drawn
from a large group of recent releases, was curated by Steve Anker.
The Earthsong of the Cricket (1999); 16mm, color, silent, 3 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
This is a hand-painted work whose shapes are scratched on black leader filled with varieties of color: the
resultant shapes tend to suggest insect-like movements, a rub of bent-lines together suggesting the electric hind
legs of the cricket, whose movements engender (thru elaborate step-printing) quick pullbacks within frames of the
film, so contrived as to create visual agitron lines within the zoom-like effect whose rhythm approximates a
cricket's repetitive sound. This effect is echoed ephemerally later in the film as it nears its end of muted pull-down
shapes and approximations of the earth-clod-likenesses and/or autumnal leaf-likenesses which begin the film. (SB)
Cricket Requiem (1999); 16mm, color, silent, 3 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
Cricket Requiem is a hand-painted and elaborately step-printed film which juxtaposes bent, sometimes
saw-tooth, scratch shapes that multiply, colored in pastels, on a white field juxtaposed with emerging, and
sometimes retreating, bi-pack imagery of the faintest imaginable lines (solarized lines) etched in brown-black. This
interplay continues until the latter imagery begins to dominate with increasing recurrence. Then suddenly mere's a
vibrant mix of thick black lines (which is "echoed" once again near end of film) that alters the increasingly colored
bent lines and their thin-stringy accompaniment, with rhythms which suggest a stately and emphatic end. (SB)
The Birds of Paradise (1999); 16mm, color, silent, 3 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
This is a hand-painted work which involves a variety of colors applied within gouged and scratched
shapes which approximate both swift shifts of bird-shape (legs, beaks and feather-spreads especially) and the Bird
of Paradise flower-form as well, the former tending to metamorphose into the latter across the course of the work.
(SB)
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2000 Program Notes
The Lion and the Zebra Make God's Raw Jewels (1999); 16mm, color, silent, 6 minutes, print from Canyon
Cinema
This film is a hand-painted combination of shapes which suggest, as appropriately colored, jungle, open
veldt, horizontals of grasses, shag-shape yellow of lion's mane, the black & white stripes of the zebra, the eyes,
the teeth, the tearing open into raw blood-red meat and curve of bone. Nonetheless the film is in no sense an
animation work but rather a collection of mostly un-nameable shapes which gather round this recognizable
iconography and visually dominate the image which repeats its, thus, ephemeral chase-and-catch increasingly
closer, finally obliterating all but the "jewels," the multiple coloring, referred to in the title. (SB)
Coupling (1999); 16mm, color, silent, 4.5 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
This hand-painted and elaborately step-printed work (involving Positives and Negatives of original
painted source material in combination, as well as superimpositions filmed at 24 fps and at 48 fps) is a very
organic be-seeming darkly colored work (blood and rust reds mixed with off-greens), as if microscopic images of
connective (and other) cells and/or threads of internal muscles were caught in a "dance" (i.e. contrapuntal varieties-
of-rhythm increasingly coordinated) ultimately suggestive of sex. The forms of the work also vaguely metaphor
male and female exterior nudity coupling. The evolution of the work is almost purely rhythmic, as increased
tempos, in ever more complex interaction, evolve to coordinated climax and brief aftermath. (SB)
The Dark Tower (1999); 16mm, color, silent, 2.5 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
This hand-painted step-printed film begins with streaks of glare light and vibrantly colored forms
apparently in the sky for inasmuch as there appears, frame center, the tapered shape of a tower, a silhouette as it
were against the backdrop of the flaring sky. As this shape of tower disappears, the conflagration of scratches and
paints seems grounded and takes on the semblance of a battle of knights, their lances, horses, et al., often against a
scattering of star-like flecks until finally the silhouette of the tower reappears as if much closer, certainly thicker
and straight-sided. The film finishes as textures which tend to suggest an entrance into the textured walls of the
tower, textures and stars intermingled with what may well seem chain-mail as well. (SB)
Worm and Web Love (1999); 16mm, color, silent, print from Canyon Cinema
Worm and Web Love begins with bracketed light, a throbbing worm in the sand and sea foam mixed with
grass and oceanic detritus, soon superimposed upon the dark blue-toned face of a man, then a woman, each seen,
then on, through superimpositions of drifting smoke and the back-lit stark grid of a spider's web. The obvious
affections of the man and woman, their clear display of love, is metaphored in these tenuous superimpositions,
culminating in the frantic movements of the spider itself and the dance of joy of the features of the couple in
loving resolution. (SB)
Intermission
The Persian Series 1,2 & 6 (1999); 16mm, color, silent, 9 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
1) This hand-painted and elaborately step-printed work begins with a flourish of reds and yellows and
purples in palpable fruit-like shapes interspersed by darkness, then becomes lit lightning-like by sharp multiply-
colored twigs-of-shape, all resolving into shapes of decay. (SB)
2) Multiple thrusts and then retractions of oranges, reds, blues, and the flickering, almost black, textural
dissolves suggesting an amalgam approaching script. (SB)
6) Orange, red, yellow, pink, blue, green. Great coloration: variety of colors, abstract swirls. Slows down,
through serious bright. Not my favorite Persian, but a good counterpart to other abstractions. (SB)
(...) Reel 5 (1998); 16mm, color, sound, 12 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
This work is in five reels (numbered, but called "reels" so that they don't take on the connotations of
"Parts" — thus each simply a part of the "trail" of colored scratches, white scratches [on black & white leader] which
suggest, to me, a passage.) The third "reel" combines these scratches with some motion picture film, mostly of the
ocean. The fifth "reel" is the only one with a soundtrack; but of course that makes the whole work a "SOUND
film" because the audio track must be turned-on from the beginning. (SB)
"Brakhage's new series of scratch-and-stain films, known as (...) or ellipses, are, among other things, a
visual analogue to Abstract Expressionism. The onrushing imagery and the spatial conundrums it creates evoke not
only Pollock but also the work of Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and even Mark Rothko — that is Pollock et
al., at 24 frames per second. Eschewing the camera, Brakhage scrapes away the film emulsion to create a thicket (or
sometimes a spider's web) of white lines and rich, chemical colors. Some segments of the original footage appear
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to have been printed on negative stock or perhaps solarized — so that the blue and pink lines are inscribed on a
white field. In any case, (...) is a cosmos. Rich without being ingratiating, the effect is one of rhythmic
conflagration.
"A second twenty-minute reel is more staccato — mad chicken-scratch calligraphy fluttering out of a yellow
void, sketchy lightning bolts or fireworks interrupted by a sudden field of turquoise. The third and shortest section
reintroduces camera-derived imagery and, minimal as it may be (sunlight shimmering on water, seagull wheeling
in the sky), it's still a shock to see 'something.' Brakhage continues to play with surfaces, layering the image with
scratch bursts and soft-focus superimpositions, sentiment arrives with representation." (J. Hoberman)
Reel #5 of (...) is composed of scratch-imagery edited to the music of "Flocking" by James Tenney. The
music is allowed to play for about 2.5 minutes accompanied only by black leader: then there is a sudden flare of
pure white which begins to flicker with negative-colored ephemeral shapes, until finally the music and a fulsome
mass of scratched images are accompanying each other.
At times a distinctly different quality of colored image appears and continues for a while (non-orange
negative photography of painted film as well as picture images, altogether unrecognizable, un-nameable). The
audio-visual aesthetic is such that there are very few absolute synchronizations between image and sound, but
rather music "echoing" visual or visuals cut into the rhythmic patterns of previous music, so that the two "go
along" together interweaving without either dominating the other (which is the principal reason the music is
allowed at beginning to establish its aesthetic in the mind of the listener before he or she is expected to follow the
development of visual patterns): both audio and visual end at the same time, bringing some sense of closure to the
event of the film. (SB)
Moilsome Toilsome (1999); 16mm, color, sound, 5.5 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
This is a photographed filmic searching-for-whales, the camerawork and editing attempting to
approximate something of the rubbing up against water of the whale, of the surface foam and the hard coils of
water through which it swims, of the gray-greens and blacks of its environment. And then suddenly there is the
vision of many whales rolling, breeching, twisting and turning in various play with each other, a mother and baby
slapping fins together, so forth. This film is about the identification with the world of the whale and the
experience of seeing, then (at the distance of being human), many killer whales in glimpses of our given sights of
them. (SB)
GOSHOGAOKA BY SHARON LOCKHART
Sharon Lockhart In Person
Co-Presented with SFAPs Walter/McBean Gallery
Saturday, April 1, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
Los Angeles-based Sharon Lockhart' s still photographs have been exhibited throughout the world and a selection
of these, along with her film, Goshogaoka, are included in this year's Whitney Biennial. In conjunction with her
photographic installation at the McBean/Walter Gallery (on view March 17- April 15), Cinematheque will co-
present the Bay Area premiere of Goshogaoka, a rigorous celebration both of cinema and the un-choreographed
rhythms of a Japanese women's basketball team: "Goshogaoka deals with truth, beauty (consider the framing and
the image), and the idea that a collection of individuals behaving synchronously creates something more, a new
entity — the group." (Laurence Kardish, Curator, The Museum of Modern Art, for Sundance Film Festival
Catalogue)
Lockhart's earlier Khalil, Shaun: A Woman Under the Influence showed at Cinematheque in March 1998.
Goshogaoka (1997); 16mm, color, sound, 63 minutes, print from Blum & Poe Gallery
Without any knowledge of the Japanese language, Lockhart left for Japan in the Fall of 1996, with an
Asian Cultural Council grant, to undertake a three-month residency in Ibaraki prefecture (a small suburb an hour
and a half north of Tokyo). Within walking distance from her studio she found Goshogaoka, a junior high school
with a girls' basketball team. Lockhart attended the training sessions that took place indoors, in a large hall
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curiously marked by a double function. The lines drawn on its floor identify it as a basketball court, but the red
curtains in the background indicate the presence of a stage. When the girls practice, the arrangement of the theatre
is reversed: they are in the space reserved for seating, looking away from the stage. Yet, the positioning of
Lockhart's camera assigns us, as spectators of the film Goshogaoka, an imaginary seat within that hollowed-out
auditorium, while subverting the direction of our vision. The object of our attention should be neither the red
curtains, nor the hope that, once open, these curtains will reveal a spectacle. Our attention should be focused on
what is in front of them. Or should it?
Some of the "action" (the team's practice) also takes place behind our backs as we are trapped in the
passive position of film spectators; we cannot turn around. Lockhart has placed her camera in the rear of the
auditorium and, once there, stubbornly refuses to move it, or even to play with the lenses: the framing remains
exactly the same during the sixty-three minutes of the film. From Ozu Yasujiro to Kitano Takeshi, from Andy
Warhol to James Benning, from Yvonne Rainer to Chantal Akerman, static framing has a powerful history. Yet,
while watching the first few minutes of Goshogaoka, it is another minimal-structural film that came to my mind,
Michael Snow's Wavelength. Snow's film is based not on the absence of camera movement, but on a continuous
zoom of forty-five minutes. Using means that at first appear to be radically different, Wavelength and Goshogaoka
carefully frustrate the viewer in her/his expectations of a reverse angle shot. A portion of the "narrative space,"
whose actual surface we cannot gauge, will remain hidden from us, kept off-screen. The red curtains at the visible
end of the auditorium have an almost sadistic function: spectator, beware, you will not see what you want to see.
For a viewing subject's natural desire is, when faced with a curtain, to lift it up, and when contemplating a space,
to explore all its comers, front, back, port, starboard. Or is it?
Lacan uses the Greek fable of rivalry between Zeuxis and Parrhasios to decipher the desiring gaze.
Parrhasios wins the contest because the illusion created by his painting is stronger:
If one wishes to deceive a man, what one presents to him is the painting of a veil,
that is to say something that incites him to ask what is behind it... What was at
issue [in Parrhasios' painting] was certainly a trompe I'oeil (deceiving the eye). A
triumph of the gaze over the eye. (Jacques Lacan, Four Concepts of Psychoanalysis)
So the veil will never be lifted, yet we keep gazing at it, and it becomes a metaphor of the apparatus that
blocks our view in the film. By concealing the imaginary depth that might lurk behind them, these curtains
function as an abutment for the gaze. It is impossible to go further; there is no geometrical perspective, no
vanishing point, that is to say, no place for the subject. In Renaissance perspective, all the lines eventually meet,
so the space seems to be ordered by the subject's perception, a construction on which traditional Western
metaphysics rest. The classical form of representation involves one or several figure(s) in the foreground, while in
the background a window brings chiaroscuro light into the kitchen or parlor, which then opens onto a distant,
misty landscape (as in Flemish paintings) or onto a field of snow in which a little boy is playing with his sled (as
in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane). A representational field without depth of space subverts this arrangement, and the
subject is left suspended, so to speak, over a sea of signifiers she/he doesn't master. Similar to the still photograph
at the end of Wavelength, Goshogaoka'' % curtains flatten the space, but also weave a dialectic between cinema and
photography, a long time concern in Lockhart's work. The initial image (a mock "establishing shot," since it
establishes nothing but itself) is held like a still, and this is (along with the final shot) the only moment in the
film in which the non-diegetic sound is heard: Michael Webster's delicate, discreet, almost environmental music.
Similar to the static images in James Benning's One Way Boogie Woogie, the illusion of stillness in
Goshogaoka is destroyed by a lateral movement coming from off-screen. The girls enter the frame, running from
the left, very close to the camera, first in silence, then with the loud beat of their running shoes, creating an effect
of surprise, almost of aggression. The girls run in a circle whose center is approximately in the middle of the
visible space, so we get to see them, at a distance, as they pass by the curtains. We see twenty-four teenagers, of
similar height and figure, uniformly dressed in gray T-shirts and black shorts, most of them with the same haircut.
The effect is of serial, repetitive femininity. As they perform calisthenics, their melodic, high-pitched voices can be
heard, chanting in unison. I have no idea what they are saying (it sounds like some form of counting), but what
fascinates me is the haunting, ritualistic aspect of the chant: a deeper voice (probably belonging to an older girl,
the captain of the team, even though she looks the same as the others) launches a solo line, and the chorus
responds, as in a Gregorian Mass.
The film is composed of six one-shot sequences of roughly ten minutes each, separated by black fade-
outs. In the first sequence the whole team is introduced. In the second, the girls line up in two rows, so compact
that the leader of each row completely hides the others; it is only when they start to run that one discovers that,
behind each girl, there is another one, and another, etc. In addition to playing on the deceiving relationship
between surface and depth, this moment, made possible only by the extreme resemblance between the girls, is
mildly disquieting. In the third sequence, the girls appear in front of the camera, alone or in pairs, some wearing a
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red top, others a blue one, and perform exercises of skill with a basketball, and now we are able to observe the
individual differences among them. Some are slightly taller, others have a bit of baby fat, some have cropped hair,
others don a ponytail. Also, in contradistinction to the well-oiled machine of their performance as a group, some
of the girls, ever so slightly, make mistakes, do the wrong gesture, miss the ball. We love them for it.
This doesn't last. The fourth sequence begins with one girl facing the camera alone, while in the
background two others seem to be in deep concentration performing a drill together. The space that was at first
almost empty, gradually fills up with pairs of girls in red and blue, like dots materializing on a computer screen,
the only sound being that of the balls thrown from one pair of palms to the other. Then, as the balls are no longer
thrown but passed, the exercise ends in absolute silence. Here, the interplay between the individual and the group
is expressed in purely formal terms, as an arrangement of visual and musical patterns, as a mode of ordering
disparate series of objects, colors and sounds. In fact, it was by listening to Japanese compositions that John Cage
realized that silence was music's ultimate truth.
The fifth and sixth sequences are spent in relative silence, accompanied by a short piece of Webster's
music and other discreet noises, such as the low shuffle of feet and the rustle of nylon fabric as the girls walk
about in a meditative state. We see the stunning spectacle of the girls wearing dark green sweat suits as they line
up against the red curtains. By then, we have realized that the framing isn't going to change, that whatever
surprises are in store will come from within. As we wonder how dependent on a traditional grammar of reverse
angle shots our narrative pleasures are, we have to find another way of looking — reach a certain void in us, suspend
judgment, find beauty in the figures created by the girls as we would in a flower arrangement. So we take a step
back and enjoy the spectacle like small mouthfuls of warm sake, savoring each drop, each moment. Now the girls
are massaging each other, their bodies are covered from shoulder to toe: there is no eroticism here, no sensuality,
simply a task to be accomplished, and yet in the way they touch each other I feel warmth, friendship, peace. The
space created by the film is one which is not structured by the male gaze. As in Chantal Akerman's fixed long
takes, Goshogaokd's lack of vanishing point, of perspective, of depth, contribute to an absence of hierarchy. Our
gaze is free to move laterally, rather than lured to go deeper and deeper (a male sexual metaphor if any) into the
field. The effect created is that of a female Utopia, in which, for a brief moment in their lives, young girls are free
to exist as minds and bodies without being turned into sexual commodities. (Berenice Reynaud)
'66 FRAMES
Life in the Sixties Underground
Gordon Ball In Person
Co-Presented with City Lights Bookstore
Sunday, April 2, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
Gordon Ball's recently published memoirs, '66 Frames, is an insider's chronicle of life in the communal,
psychedelic Sixties, focusing especially on Ball's close friendships with Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, Andy
Warhol and other key players in New York's exploding Underground Art scene. Ball's own filmmaking began in
1966 when Jonas Mekas gave him a Regular-8mm movie camera when the filmmaker/critic was on a college visit.
Tonight Ball will make a two-part presentation: 4:00pm, at City Lights, he will read from '66 Frames and show
slides of his diaristic photographs; and 7:30 pm, at SFAI — for his first Cinematheque appearance since May
1982 — he will also read and show several films.
Georgia (1966); 16mm, color, silent, 4 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
"A perfect one poem of a film — within its short time limit, it contains much of the beauty of the night
and the sensuality of women... perhaps even 'THE' woman one sometimes sees dancing in the night, but never
touches in the flesh. Dreamlike, beautiful — its brevity compacts its power and renders it haunting." (William
Trotter)
"Georgia is a good example of a new genre of film that has been developing lately, that is, a portrait
film. In some cases, like those of Brakhage, Warhol or Markopolous, there is an attempt at an objective portrait of
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a man or woman; in other cases, like in the case of Georgia, the portrait becomes completely personalized,
poetically transposed; it may not be as multifaceted as, say, Brakhage's portrait of McClure, but an inspired
portrait nevertheless, in the vein of a single-minded lyrical love poem." (Jonas Mekas)
Prunes (1966); 8mm, color, silent, 20 minutes, print from the maker
A "collage of daily scenes of campus life." Literally, my first film: shot with the Revere camera Jonas
brought me on his visit to Davidson College. Personal, intimate, single-framed. All screenings were in dormitory
corridors (one, on a classmate's bare chest) and small living rooms decades ago until last spring, when Prunes
premiered at Anthology Film Archives. Tonight's showing is its west coast premiere. (GB)
Millbrook (1984); 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
For aeons it's been the human family around a fire constructing and refiguring basic myths: our earliest
family or tribal "movie." So Millbrook recounts a mythical true story, a life-changing event told against fire,
emblem of consumption and renewal: In the enormous forested estate once used by Timothy Leary, a young couple
lose individual identity, merge with decaying leaves and are consumed by maggots as the entire universe
undergoes entropy, revive as it regenerates and are saved from death by a mysterious familiar stranger. (GB)
Mexican Jail Footage (1980); 16mm, color, sound, 18 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
Paranoid surreptitious in-jail camera held in this prisoner's hands documents daily events and posturings
of 25 gringos (and Mexican jailmates) arrested at Puerto Vallarta 1968 without charge. Was there Mexico, D.F. —
Washington, D.C. collusion behind this roundup from Yelapa ferryboats, private town houses and palm-roofed
wall-less jungle huts? It took place during national polarization (of youth culture, official culture) in the U.S.;
older U.S. tourists in Mexico were shocked to find more New Generation they thought they'd left behind, and
official Mexico was already paranoid in the face of Olympics six months later (where police would shoot 108
people). Narration's a dense web of comedy, horror, and Kafkaesque grotesque behind a succession of raw sunlit
images of comely youths imprisoned, male and female. (GB)
"Mexican Jail Footage reminds me of standing by the tracks and watching a train go by — it is so strong,
it lasts so long, and it is over so quickly." (Tom Whiteside)
"I can't forget this film." (Robert Frank)
"Mexican Jail Footage is the best jail film I've ever seen." (Jonas Mekas)
On '66 Frames by Gordon Ball
"From city and country communes, underground and avant-garde film and photography, Gordon Ball has been
marvelously placed as participant and observer of many extraordinary art situations." (Allen Ginsberg)
"This book made me want to take acid and have sex with lots of people. It also made me want to stay up all night
in the company of my genius friends in the mid-sixties in New York's Lower East Side. It also made me grateful
for not being twenty and living in a war-wracked, generation-tom, paranoid world. Gordon Ball writes with
compassion and nostalgia about a unique and nearly indescribable epoch." (Andrei Codrescu)
" '66 Frames is a beautifully written book which captures the spirit of those times better than any other book I
know." (Stan Brakhage)
"...a unique perspective on a much analyzed but still elusive period — when one awoke every day feeling as if
personal revelation and cultural revolution were fully attainable. Ball's youthful intelligence and enthusiasm, and
his willingness to labor for little money in musty lofts and tenement apartments, put him at the epicenter of New
York's downtown film/art/poetry/music scene. He kept excellent notes." (Amy Taubin)
"A picaresque memoir... in which the young Southern innocent sets forth in all his whiteness to find himself
among visionary New York poets and other flaming creatures of the 1960s." (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
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Biography: Gordon Ball
Gordon Ball (born Paterson, New Jersey, grew up Tokyo, Japan) began work in film when given a regular 8mm
movie camera by Jonas Mekas on a 1966 college visit; worked for Mekas and Film-Makers' Cooperative in New
York 1966-67, a period detailed in Ball's '66 Frames (Coffee House Press, 1999); hitchhiked across U.S. and
Mexico to live in jungle-sea-mountain village; was arrested without charge entering Puerto Vallarta at times of
gringo hippie federale round-up, and shot what would become Mexican Jail Footage from the inside. Returning to
U.S., worked several years as manager of small farm retreat for artists and poets established by Allen Ginsberg,
with whom he'd work on books and photography over coming decades; made Farm Diary (1968-1969), available
through Film-Makers' Cooperative. Entering graduate school University of North Carolina Chapel Hill 1973 he
told his life story under a magnolia tree on Franklin Street summer 1977; made film elegies Father Movie (1978)
one year after father's death and Enthusiasm (1980) five year's after mother's; shot Millbrook (1985), a recapturing
of personal psychedelic experience at Timothy Leary's upstate redoubt; taught 2 summers (1986 and 1988). In
1980 he adopted a phrase from Yeats, "technical sincerity", as touchstone for his first-person filmmaking: "Fine or
rough, heavy or ethereal, there is always at base an unregretful uncompromising heart and consciousness. It is
negligent of all but its own earnest rhythmic awareness: and that, after all may be what we were looking for — what
one person and no other can give us." In recent years he's exhibited and published some of the many photographs
he took of Ginsberg and Beat colleagues over three decades. He teaches literature, composition, and film in the
Department of English and Fine Arts, VMI, Lexington, Virginia.
AN EVENING WITH TRINH T. MINH-HA
Trinh T. Minh-ha in Person
Co-presented with The Poetry Center
Thursday, April 6, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Trinh T. Minh-ha, in her unique and beautifully composed film-works {A Tale of Love, Shoot for the Contents,
Reassemblage, Naked Spaces — Living is Round and Surname Viet Given Name Nam), is a lyricist of the first
order, an imaginative seer and thinker whose art radically remakes narrative modes of filmmaking by invoking and
then reinventing the tools of the anthropologist, the poet, the political witness, the visual artist and the musical
composer. Tonight we offer a rare chance to hear Trinh T. Minh-ha read from her written work, including Drawn
from African Dwellings (in collaboration with Jean-Paul Bourdier) and Cinema Interval, which is new from
Routledge. Sections of her film shot in West Africa, Naked Spaces — Living is Round, will be screened alongside
the readings.
AN EVENING WITH MATTHIAS MULLER
From The Memo Book to The Phoenix Tapes
Matthias Miiller in person
Sunday, April 9, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
Over the past fifteen years or so, Matthias Miiller has emerged as one of the most prolific and accomplished
filmmakers on the avant-garde scene today. Reviewing his recent films, one is impressed not only by their
sophistication, but also by their striking thematic and stylistic diversity. Miiller still seems to approach
filmmaking with the restlessness of a child prodigy. Where a film like The Memo Book will speak the poetic
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2000 Program Notes
language of a Brakhage, Baillie or Anger with amazing fluency, a piece like Home Stories (1990) or The Phoenix
Tapes will adopt a completely different idiom, with no loss of expressive range. Fitting Miiller's work into some
prefabricated category is a difficult, if not impossible task, and the shopworn modern/postmodern labels offer no
help at all. If we persist in trying to locate some underlying unity among these pieces, we eventually find
ourselves running into some practically universal themes; Miiller's work, one is tempted to say, seems to be most
deeply concerned with the capacity of art to impose form on human experience. Perhaps what is distinctive about
Miiller's work, though, consists in its refusal to take that relationship for granted. In each of the pieces presented
tonight, Miiller exhibits a keen, and often visceral awareness of the limitations of orderly systems, including his
own. For Miiller, the aspiration to orderliness is an all-too-human impulse — necessary, but always tragically
incomplete. And yet Miiller's energies seem to be inexorably drawn towards those points of weakness, to the stress
fractures running through the forms we use to contain the uncontainable. Just where a regulatory system threatens
to collapse under the pressure of its own ambitions, Miiller will discover the forces that drive his art.
Aus der Feme (The Memo Book) (1989); 16mm, color, sound, 28 minutes
The film begins with an image of binding. Scattered evidence — letters, photographs, loose-leaf
pages — are gathered up and tied into stiff bundles. Mike Hoolboom's voice-over initially suggests that this will
be a work of mourning, an artist's attempt to express a loss that may, in the end, remain inexpressible. The Memo
Book (Aus der Feme, or "from afar") was inspired by an unexpected discovery. A friend stumbled across some
footage of one of Miiller's former lovers who had recently died of AIDS. This recovered reel provides Miiller's
piece with both a literal and metaphorical point of departure. But the question that The Memo Book asks is not
how are films like memory, an analogy which is at least as old as cinema itself — but far more radically — how are
films like bodies? Miiller never lets us forget that film has distinctly skin-like properties. It can be scratched,
weathered, aged, scarred, and most importantly, eroticized. Since Andre Bazin declared that photography is a
modern form of mummification, we have become accustomed to thinking about cinema as a sort of funeral rite.
Driven by the real urgency of loss, however, Miiller's The Memo Book will travel along very different associational
paths: a shot of an exposed, beating heart suddenly narrows the distance between bodies and machines; images of
gratings, manhole covers and sewage drains imbue streets and buildings with an almost organic anatomy; a
spinning fan evokes both a living respiratory system and the Maltese cross of the film projector. As images of
silhouettes and shadows continue to accumulate throughout the film, we eventually begin to wonder if bodies, like
films, might also function as temporary receptacles for the absorption and reflection of light. The middle
sequence, "Jardim Botanico," brings these chains together in the somewhat unassuming figure of the leaf. Shots
of a loamy forest floor give way to hand-processed images which themselves resemble decaying leaves, and the
dream sequence as a whole concludes with a shot of a young man whose shoulder is tattooed with a leaf-like
symbol. Miiller here presents us with three organized systems designed to capture and transform light — skin,
leaves and cinema. Once superimposed, these systems become difficult to separate out again. One is reminded of
physicist David Bohm's suggestion that trees tend to problematize our accepted distinctions between organic and
inorganic matter. Out of this confrontation with the finality of death, Miiller seems to have responded in an
entirely unexpected way. Rejecting conventionalized forms of mourning and memorialization, Miiller instead
allows himself to be recaptivated by the ineffable mysteries of life.
Vacancy (1998); 16mm, color, sound, 15 minutes
Like The Memo Book, Vacancy is a film concerned with the ways in which organized systems tend to
break down. Situating itself somewhere between documentary and diary, Vacancy traces the rise and fall of
Brasilia, a city intended to become a Utopia on earth. Vacancy, like The Memo Book, begins by announcing the
triumph of gravity. Overshadowed by their history, the old cities languish, disintegrate and disappear. The film
goes on to speak in multiple voices: home movies from the city's engineers are woven into Miiller's personal
reveries. While the manifest subject of the film is the inevitability of loss, recurring images of textures and
surfaces start to offer a counterpoint to these mournful notes. We watch city workers carefully cleaning a stark,
white wall — is it an act of folly or a gesture of love? Brasilia clearly emerges as a monument to the failure of
abstraction, but Miiller's film further insinuates that there might have been another desire at work here all along,
beside and beneath the city's quixotic struggle with gravity. The aim of the modernist structure is not simply to
direct the gaze skyward, but to provide a vantage point from which one might better re-view the earth. A path
worn into the grass, that is, will only begin to look like the line of a hand when it can be viewed from some place
high above. Miiller's sensual overhead shots of the Brazilian savanna create a potent contradiction, suggesting that
the modem longing for transcendence has always contained an equal and opposite desire for ecstatic return.
Paradoxically, Miiller appears to be suggesting that the urge to rise above the earth contains something more than
just a desire for disembodiment and control; indeed, it is possible that abstraction and eroticism might actually
name two sides of a single movement.
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The Phoenix Tapes (1999); video, color, sound, 45 minutes
Moving from the psychology of modern architecture to the architecture of modem psychology, Muller's
latest piece offers a tour-de-force analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's cinema. Made in collaboration with video artist,
Christoph Giradet, and sound artist, Dirk Schaefer, The Phoenix Tapes consist entirely of reprocessed footage from
the Hitchcock canon. The tapes are divided into six separate movements: "Rutland," "Burden of Proof,"
"Derailed," "Why Don't You Love Me?," "Bedroom" and "Necrologue." Muller's nonce taxonomy strongly
echoes Barthes's Michelet, an eccentric biography which is subdivided into categories like "Michelet, Eater of
History," "Death-as-Sleep and Death-as-Sun," and "The Ultra-Sex." For Barthes as well as for Miiller, all
taxonomic systems are temporary contrivances, and they should cease to exist after their present labors have come
to an end.
The first segment, "Rutland," takes up where Vacancy leaves off. A collage of Hitchcock's extreme long
shots — many of them totally uninhabited — becomes a meditation on the structures of modern paranoia. The next
sequence exposes the obverse side of that logic by interrogating the economy of the close-up. Framed by these
two quintessentially modern paradigms — all-encompassing structures versus the trivial part-object which must find
its place within them — Muller's analysis insists that Hitchcock's cinema was never really about people at all.
"Derailed" extends that critique by exploring some analogies between Hitchcock's cinema and train travel. With
just a few images of stunning precision and clarity, Miiller reveals that both technologies are built around a
fundamental paradox: a stasis in movement, a linear movement which simultaneously requires a circular return.
These circles become particularly vicious in Hitchcock's cinema, and the last three segments of The Phoenix Tapes
provide ample documentation of those mechanisms' destructive power. The final sequence, "Necrologue," evokes
another great modernist meditation on mobility and stasis, Chris Marker's La Jetee. The Phoenix Tapes, like
Marker's film, suggests that cinema, from its very inception, has always functioned as a time machine, and that
desire, memory and loss have ever since remained inextricably bound to the systems of their own alienation.
Program Notes written by David Conner
Thanks to Jay Rosenblatt, John Turk and ResFestfor the use of their Beta deck.
AN EVENING WITH GAD HOLLANDER
Gad Hollander In Person
Co-Presented with The Poetry Center
Thursday, April 13, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Gad Hollander is a poet and filmmaker born in Jerusalem, raised in Queens and now living in London. His latest
book of poetry (and first to be published in the US), Walserian Waltzes, is an extraordinary hall-of-mirrors poem-
in-prose revolving around the figure of Robert Walser, the great Swiss-German writer of "minimal" fictions whose
work stood behind Kafka and others. Along with a reading from the latter, we present his Diary of a Sane Man.
"This poet-tumed-filmmaker's first feature-length film (made on a budget for a 15-minute short, using borrowed
equipment and scavenged, odds-and-ends stock) is a serendipitous blend of art and irony, philosophic reflection,
double-edged nonsense, improvisation, mythology, and the music of Johann Sebastian" (Melissa Drier). The
author of several works of poetry, Hollander has also directed Mnemosyne (1985), Background Music (Orphic)
(1986), Euripides ' Movies (1987) and is currently finishing his latest, Postpalaver.
Walserian Waltzes; Avec Books, Penngrove CA, 1999
"Walserian Waltzes is neither a biography of Robert Walser, nor a Kafka-in-Queens type of displacement.
It is closer to what Borges does with Don Quixote in "Pierre Menard, Author of Quixote." This Robert Walser
is/is not Robert Walser, and the oscillation between the two figures makes for a breathtaking tour de force."
(Rosemarie Waldrop)
"Gad Hollander's Walserian Waltzes is a sequence of meditations on madness, writing, death, and
identity. Focusing on a character split between the first-person singular pronoun and his own name — a character
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2000 Program Notes
who may or may not be dead and may or may not be insane, a character whose goal is to become a 'self-made
failure' — Hollander skillfully leads us to contemplate the paradoxical trajectories of language, the subjective and
objective worlds it seems to create and destroy. Anyone looking for fiction that combines the compressed and
elusive qualities of poetry with the abstract resonances of philosophy will find Walserian Waltzes a richly
satisfying experience." (Stephen-Paul Martin)
Diary of a Sane Man (1990); 16mm, color, sound, 85 minutes, print from the British Film Institute
A Fair Description of Diary of a Sane Man:
A PLOT OF LAND
Sara & her grandad walk through the landscapes and the camera follows. My preference
would have been to remain silent, to stare at the pictures without the intrusion of sound, to let the
film play itself out in the forbidden zone of pretentiousness. The plot of land on which the little
girl & her grandad are walking is the plot for the film, the earth itself, and its sub-plot is woven
into a selection of Bach's Goldberg Variations. In one of the previous versions the narrator called
the place "never-never land," but this was patently false and consequently had to be erased. Sara
spots Venus strolling through the landscape, an agent provocateur from the country of myth. A
film-maker, thinly disguised as himself, wants to make a film about Venus, changes the latter to
Aphrodite and submits his idea to a committee of producers. Judging from the narrator's
descriptions it's not surprising that the film-maker is rejected, though what is surprising is the
committee's violent reactions to his ideas and his subsequent "fall" into the very movie he's
describing. We are now about ten minutes into the film and find ourselves more or less where we
started. Any viewer who at this point expects a plot development to carry him along will find
himself sinking fast. We have heard the theme and the first of the Goldberg Variations, of which
there are thirty. But before we go on with the musical sub-plot we are introduced to Antonin
Artaud.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
What Artaud and I have in common is that we both love the Marx Brothers, whose
anarchy he described as "poetic and dreamlike." I don't know what he thought of Bach. He appears
to the filmmaker as a woman and says, "I want to attempt a terrible feminine." I think Bach must
have been "funny," in the sense of insane, beyond reason, and sacred. But that's history. Artaud is
also history, but closer. He died the year I was bom, so there's a sense of personal responsibility
in the matter. Every time I work on something which passes for art, a voice from inside the work
says: "There ought to be a law against society." There is such a law and Antonin Artaud
articulated it in his poetry.
THE MARX BROTHERS & BACH
The film has more in common with the Marx Brothers than with Godard, Pasolini, or
any other arthouse film-maker. In fact, Diary of a Sane Man is an imitation of a Marxist movie
but with the priorities reversed: instead of full frontal anarchy with musical interludes, the film
shows full frontal music with comic interpolations. Anyone who goes to see a Marx Brothers
movie for its plot, or listens to Bach for a "religious experience" is a total schmuck and would be
best advised not to bother with this film.
MURDERING TIME
The murder of time is not a crime but an art, though some would regard it as a kind of
dream. The difference is academic. But in any event, it's not what we'd call a story. Time-murder
as "film" involves a succession of images and sounds, but above all requires the collusion of an
audience.
They left the cinema with the taste of time in their mouths, as if each had nibbled a
little portion off its flesh. They went to the movies for the rest of their lives and on each occasion
chewed off a bit more of time's body. Sometimes these morsels were good and sometimes not,
but it was always difficult to predict what any particular duration would taste like. Toward the end
of it, time had retained exactly the same proportions as when they had first encountered it. They
asked themselves, "Where did all that time go?" Had they gone to see Diary of a Sane Man early
on in life they would have realized that time could not be digested, that it went nowhere except in
and out of the body's holes. (Gad Hollander)
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San Francisco Cinematheque
Gad Hollander Filmography
Mnemosyne (1985); Background Music (Orphic) (1986); Euripides' Movies (1987); Diary of a Sane Man (1990);
Postpalaver (in-progress)
Gad Hollander Bibliography
Page (1979); Figures of Speech (1987); Video Residua (Orphic) (1987); Sleep, Memory (1985/ 1988);
The Palaver (1998); Walserian Waltzes (1999)
3 rd ANNUAL TEXTURE OF THE GESTURE
A Celebration of Hand-Processed Films
Curated and Presented by Ken Paul Rosenthal
Sunday, April 16, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
"The look of hand-processed movie film is pure Shake 'n Bake. This process is not for those who prefer the film
surface with a smooth polished complexion. Instead, oozing mounds of crusty chemical infections will bleach,
bleed and belch all over your perfect Kodak moments. Sometimes the film will become a crumbling arctic ice floe:
image chunks will skate and reposition themselves like bad buoys or Pollackesque life preservers. Or it will
resemble a fly strip stuck with half-buzzed guts draining and staining the length of the film. YES! The colors
remind me of smashing gypsy moth caterpillars with a hammer as a child in New Jersey. I never knew what color
innards would spill out. I'd expect chocolate and out would come lime green. Hand-processing is just like that. It's
the flavor of the moment. Even black and white can look like Walt Disney puking."
from 'Antidote for a Virtual World' by KPR
2000: A Space Odd-essay (2000)
Performance by Film Boy
Silence (2000) by Troy DeRego; Super 8mm, color, sound, 3 minutes, print from the maker
An exploration of what silence means and what it looks like. (TD)
Archaeology of Memory (1993) by Gary Popovidi; 16mm, color, sound, 13 minutes, print from the maker
A cine poem unfolding in a sensual series of evolving myths, sexuality, gender formations, spirituality
and death. Beginning with film emulsion scratches and ticks of sound, the film explodes in vibrant colors and
multiple image layers accompanied by a musique concrete score composed by Randall Smith. (GP)
Mermaids and Pickles (1999) by Trixie Sweetvittles; 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes, print from the maker
A humorous expression of love for the slimy and the salty that explores the beauty of spontaneity and
happy accidents. (TS)
Degree Zero (1999) by Te-shun Tseng; Super 8mm dual-projection, color, sound, 3 minutes, print from the maker
A graphic celebration of certain gestures of modern dance and different textures of the film medium. (TT)
The Shape of the Gaze (2000) by Mai'a Cybelle Carpenter; 16mm, color, silent, 7 minutes, print from the
maker
A hand-processed and optically printed film which implicates the viewer in the gazes operating between the
lesbian filmmaker and her self-identified butch subjects. (MCC)
Paws (1992) by Moira Joseph; Super 8mm, color, sound, 3 minutes, print from the maker
A hand-processed and dyed hallucinatory macro study of a cat. (MJ)
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2000 Program Notes
Passing Through (1998) by Karyn Sandlos; screened as video, b&w, sound, 12 minutes, tape from the maker
Events occurring on the streets of a small town in rural Canada provide a loose structure for this experimental
narrative, in which the present moment is a story of having been this way before. (KS)
Intermission
Archaeopteryx Dreaming (2000) by silt; 16mm, b&w, silent, 8 minutes, print from the makers
A fourth dimensional fossil record of the plumed serpent Archaeopteryx Lithographica ("ancient wing from the
printing stone")- (silt)
Vagus (2000) by David Duhig; 16mm, color, sound, 7 minutes, print from the maker
A multi-layered introspective journey that colorfully wanders through the eye of the beholder. (DD)
Untitled (1991) by Justin Walsh; Super 8mm, b&w, silent, 1.5 minutes, print from the maker
A hand-contact-printed experiment using 16mm academy leader, slug film from Gunsmoke and footage of a
train in Pittsburgh, PA. (JW)
Diggins (1993) by Christian Bruno and Natalija Vekic; Super 8mm dual-projection, color, sound, 3 minutes, print
from the makers
Somewhere outside Nevada City... two movie cameras and a hit of ecstasy... synchronicities soon revealed
in the afternoon's unplanned shooting. (CB and NV)
Exercise (2000) by Jessica Gidal; Super 8mm, b&w, sound, 3.5 minutes, print from the maker
Playfully woven images of a body's consistency, squishy tension, loft, suspension and ultimate giddy
acceptance of gravity's pull are underscored by the hammers and gongs of gamelan music. (JG)
The Light in Our Lizard Bellies (1999) by Sarah Abbot; 16mm, b&w, sound, 8 minutes, print from the maker
The intensities that discombobulate us as we go through change and face parts of ourselves previously
denied or unknown are reflected through a single dancer and the random exposure effects of hand-processing. (SA)
Suehos Liquidos (1999) by Nat Swope; Super 8mm, color, silent, 3 minutes, print from the maker
A rhythmic, dream-like montage culled from everyday images. (NS)
Transmission from the Turn of the 2(f Century (2000) by Ghen Dennis; Super 8mm, b&w, sound, 1.5 minutes,
print from the maker
These optically printed Kodachrome images of conduits and the travelers within them — telegraphic wires and
anatomical tunnels playing host to radio reception scans and tiny biological tourists — hastily describe breakdowns
at the points of contact in our age of virtual arrival and departure. (GD)
Yes, I Said Yes, I Will, Yes (1999) by Phil Solomon; 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes, print from the maker
The title is, of course, borrowed from the last lines of Molly Bloom's monologue where, after reviewing
all the lovers of her life, she comes home to Bloom in a swooning affirmation. After remaining a bachelor for over
40 years, I finally found a dancing partner. This film was made in a couple of days, and projected outdoors at our
wedding. Dedicated to my partner in life, Melinda Barlow. (PS)
This program is lovingly dedicated to two former students from my 'Celluloid Sandbox ' class: Jessica
Gidal and Troy DeRego, whose very first films, Exercise and Silence are being screened tonight. Their
work reminds me that film is fundamentally not about recording pictures, but dancing with stillness, and
manipulating a novel posture for the heart. And that making love for one's self is a reason to make film...
xoxokpr
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San Francisco Cinematheque
FROM DARKNESS LIGHT
The Transfigured Spaces of Jim Jennings
Jim Jennings In Person
Thursday, April 27, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
New York filmmaker Jim Jennings has been making lyrical, contemplative films since the early 1970s, several of
which have screened at Cinematheque. Combining an abstract and richly textural exploration of space (the two-
dimensional space of the frame as well as the three-dimensional space seen 'through' it) with the poetic evocation
of place (in and around New York, Mexico, Rome, San Francisco), Jennings' films are always delicate and
delightful adventures in seeing. In the subtle and suspenseful interplays of light and dark, flatness and depth, the
abstract and the manifest, Jennings' camera transforms the banal into the sublime and us along with it. Tonight's
screening will include films made over two decades, and his most recent work, Miracle on 34' Street, will be
screened as part of "Breaking Points," our program at the 43 rd San Francisco International Film Festival on Sunday
April 30 at the Kabuki Theatre at 7:15 pm.
Wallstreet (1980); 16mm, b&w, silent, 6 minutes, print from the Film-Makers' Cooperative
"Shot at high noon in New York's financial district, Wallstreet is much like a vertical tickertape, charting
the existence of typical office workers. The film's elongated shadows suggest these workers' depersonalized, neuter,
nearly uniform lives, which flow by without any solid or stable element that might provide definition."
(Karen Treanor)
The School of Athens (1997); 16mm, b&w, silent, 14 minutes, print from the Film-Makers' Cooperative
"...we enter the absolute monumental. Raphael's wildly passionate painting has shaken Jennings to the
core. Fiercely sexual, tumultuous, his filming of the painting rages on without thought of onlookers; cadenced
timing and concerns with proportions out of the question. The film is monstrous, reckless and I couldn't admire it
more." (Ken Jacobs)
Shades (1983); 16mm, b&w, silent, 6 minutes, print from the Film-Makers' Cooperative
City structures balanced in filmic structures. (JJ)
Silvercup (1998); 16mm, b&w, silent, 12 minutes, print from the maker
The first time I remember going to Long Island City was in 1973 to take a hack license exam. What I
remember of the bridge and fringes of subway lines above me was oppression. About twenty years later I found
myself back there thrilled by the compositions I was making with a still camera and eventually made The Elevated
with some of the photographs I took. Often last Winter and Spring I again went back there and ended up
expressing a tenderness I felt by making this film. (JJ)
San Cristobal (1983); 16mm, b&w, silent, 8 minutes, print from the maker
A place foreign to me transfigured by me. (JJ)
Painting the Town (1998); 16mm, b&w, silent, 10 minutes, print from the maker
Last autumn on a series of weekend nights I went to "The Crossroads of the World" with a camera and a
tape recording of an Opera I love. I played the Opera and shot film for hours at a time. Later in the editing room, I
removed what merely documented and braided the sublime. (JJ)
Bye Bye Bob (1990); 16mm, b&w, sound, 10 minutes, print from the maker
The morning commute across the bridge becomes a requiem which ends as the procession goes
underground. In memory of Bob Fleischner. (Soundtrack from "Enchanted" by George Shearing and the
Montgomery Brothers.) (JJ)
Leaves (1975); 16mm, b&w, silent, 8 minutes, print from the maker
The writing between the leaves. (J J)
"But there is more... A variety of detail inhabits Jennings' simple format. Foreground is played off
background. It creates a tension..." (Noel Carroll)
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2000 Program Notes
Poems of Rome (1997); 16mm, color, silent, 7 minutes, print from the maker
I jumped a tram in Rome and rode it to the end of the line. On the way, a shadow on a wall caught my
eye. The next morning I went back to the shadow on the wall and made this film. (JJ)
Intrigue (1998); 16mm, color, silent, 14 minutes, print from the maker
Surrounded by strangers under the El in Brighton, Brooklyn I submerge myself through the lens of the
camera into a childlike world of colors separated from objects, floating to the surface and escaping, as day turns to
night and estrangement gives way to emptiness. (JJ)
BREAKING POINTS
New Experimental Films
A Program of Experimental Film Co-Presented by the 43 rd San Francisco International Film Festival,
Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco Cinematheque.
Curated by Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz and Irina Leimbacher
Jim Jennings, Alfonso Alvarez and Ellen Ugelstad in Person
April 30, 2000 — AMC Kabuki Theatre — 7:15 pm
An image can be a fragile thing. Just as extreme experiences can provoke extreme emotions — reverence, despair,
withdrawal — an image can rupture, fragment, break apart to release reverberating associations. Tonight's program
of new experimental films made by both emerging and internationally renowned artists includes a variety of works
which explore — and explode — the limits of film's capacity to represent change, memory and the large and small
mysteries of human experience.
Muktikara (1999) by Jeanne Liotta; 16mm, color, silent, 12 minutes, print from the maker
Taken from the Sanskrit word for "gentle gazing brings liberation," Muktikara is a haunting cinematic
meditation on a subtly shifting landscape.
Flip Film (1999) by Alfonso Alvarez & Ellen Ugelstad; 16mm, b&w, sound, 1 minute, print from the makers
Still images of an urban landscape break into motion in Alfonso Alvarez and Ellen Ugelstad's lively
animation.
letters, notes (2000) by Stephanie Barber; 16mm, color, silent, 4 minutes, print from the maker
Comprised of discarded notes and photos, Stephanie Barber's deceptively simple film conjures up
forgotten lives and abandoned narratives.
Domain (1999) by Julie Murray; 16mm, color, sound, 6 minutes, print from the maker
Children's 3-D toys and insects are the subjects of Julie Murray's look at the violence inherent in the very
notion of motion. (Music: "Three Landscapes for Peter Wyer" by Jed Destree, performed by Margaret Lengtan on
her CD "The Art of the Toy Piano" © Point Music/Universal 1997)
Miracle on 34 1 Street (2000) by Jim Jennings; 16mm, b&w, silent, 13 minutes, print from the maker
Lush black and white shadows of a bustling New York sidewalk fracture the screen into surprising
abstract patterns of light and dark.
The March (1999) by Abraham Ravett; 16mm, color, sound, 25 minutes, print from the maker
Beginning in 1986, Abraham Ravett repeatedly interviewed his mother about the 1945 "Death March"
from Auschwitz. Her fragmented, incomplete memories make up this emotional document, which is as much
about the need to forget as the need to know.
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San Francisco Cinematheque
Twilight Psalm II: Walking Distance (2000) by Phil Solomon; 16mm, color, sound, 23 minutes, print from the
maker
Phil Solomon imagines his film as from the Bronze Age, "a time when images were smelted and boiled
rather than merely taken." In it, barely discemable figures and unstable landscapes are freed from the tyranny of the
realistic to float in the realm of the unconscious.
Founded by two Bay Area filmmakers in 1961, San Francisco Cinematheque is one of the oldest showcases for
non-commercial, personal and experimental film in the United States. Striving to make experimental film and
video a part of the larger cultural landscape, Cinematheque presents seventy programs each year, with artists
present at many of the screenings, publishes Program Notes and a journal, Cinematograph, and regularly
collaborates with a number of other arts organizations. For more information or to become a member, give us a
call at 415.558.8129.
The Pacific Film Archive is one of the world's most important film archives, film studies centers and exhibitors
of film art. Their exhibition program offers a wide variety of world cinema from its earliest days through the
present, highlighted by prints of exceptional quality, with different public screenings almost every night of the
year. They have one of the finest archival programs devoted to the preservation of experimental film. For more
information or to become a member, call 510.642.1412.
Program Notes written by Kathy Geritz and Irina Leimbacher
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2000 Program Notes
WHEN THE SPIRIT MOVES
Live Music for New Films
David Michalak and Reel Change in Person
Thursday, May 4, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
After thirty years of 16mm filmmaking, David Michalak has formed a soundtrack trio called Reel Change featuring
Andrew Voight, Joe Sabella and the filmmaker. Tonight's program showcases the Trio's live music for David's
recent works, including the explosive and radiant Firefly (2000); the music honeycombs of Regenbogen (1999); and
the world premiere of a new score for the rarely screened Fall of the House of Usher, a 1928 version of the Poe
story by Melville Webber and James Sibley Watson. Also included: the demonic Not Quite Right (1987), with
new live soundtrack; Start Talking (1995), a personal tribute; and When the Spirit Moves (1999), a color saturated
fairy tale that explores the ancient myth of the Keeper of the Forest and Her care for an Evolving Creature (in
digital stereo). Musical guest Tom Nunn will join Reel Change playing homemade instruments he calls "bugs." A
champagne reception and chat with the filmmaker follows the show.
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San Francisco Cinematheque
DE PROFUNDIS
An Evening with Lawrence Brose
Lawrence Brose In Person
Thursday, May 11, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
De Profundis is a mesmerizing and seductive investigation of Oscar Wilde's project of transgressive aesthetics.
Incorporating home movies from the 1920s and early gay male erotica along with images from Radical Faerie
gatherings, queer pagan rituals, radical drag performances and images of confinement, the film sets up a haunting
investigation of queemess, masculinity, history and sexuality. The film employs experimental hand and alternative
chemical processing techniques to alter the original images. The transformed footage addresses the fixed framing of
masculinity while questioning concepts of redemption, contamination and transgression set against critical
readings of Wilde and of contemporary gay culture. These images are buttressed against a soundtrack composed of
Wilde aphorisms, a score by Frederic Rzewski (written specifically for the film) and multi-tracked interviews with
diverse contemporary gay men.
De Profundis (1997); 16mm, color, sound, 65 minutes, print from themaker
Why did I do Wilde? First to try to recapture and examine the transgressive aesthetics of Oscar Wilde and
to address the new conservatism in the Gay Community. That conservatism was in part consolidating around the
policing of sex, monitoring behavior and disassociating the marginal quality and power of queemess in the name
of political activism (or at least expedience). The other reason is that I am interested in how people today use
language to define their own identity (often unself-consciously and without any critical analysis) and how this
relates back to the last century when much of this language developed. And finally, to explore a broader range of
deviant gender behavior and sexualities that can be seen at work in various trajectories from Wilde's imprisonment
in 1895.
...Wilde was imprisoned in the year of the birth of cinema so I wanted to address cinema in its infancy,
and the earliest images of cinema are home movies. I have also found this to be true of early gay erotica and
muscle boy movies like the Athletic Models Guild films. I wanted to tease out other readings of these home
movie images I acquired of men and boys on a boat — the boat acting as a container just as the framing and
language are containers. I also wanted to take something private (home movies and porn) and make it
public — continuing the friction between those two arenas. Think about it, what is "coming out" but an act of
revealing, to exhibit, to make public. This is also the impulse of cinema — it desires a public arena.
I also want to address the idea of fragmentation. Laura U. Marks, in an article in Cinemas entitled
"Loving a Disappearing Image," raises an issue dealing with identification with a cinematic image which is always
disappearing from our view. She writes, "To have an aging body, as we all do, raises the question of why we are
compelled to identify with images of wholeness... what is it like to identify with an image that is disintegrating?"
I have created a cinema that presents a partial image, that continues to disperse, that resists a wholeness. Perhaps
this is what is essentially queer about the film — not the desire for completeness or wholeness but to revel in the
uncertainties of fragments. (LB, "Why I Did Wilde," Voices, September 1998)
An Individual Desires Solution (1986/1991); 16mm, color, sound, 16 minutes, print from the maker
A structural cinepoem concerning the mystery of death through the struggle for answers and survival of
my boyfriend Kevin, who passed away on my birthday in Sussex, England. Before Kevin died he asked me to
redefine the acronym AIDS as An Individual Desires Solution — hence the title. (LB)
"This haunting short film uses titles whose silent-movie roots are further enhanced by the piano on the
soundtrack. Brose's nickelodeon gestures suggest a yearning for a time before aging, disease, and death replaced
youth and hope. In this manner, his films' self-consciousness is more than simply a masturbatory device; it is an
evocative metaphor that helps us to unveil what the camera, reacting to the filmmaker's pain, often obscures." (Jan
Stuart, Film Comment, December 1987)
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2000 Program Notes
J. HOBERMAN ON JACK SMITH
J. Hoberman In Person
May 13-18, 2000 —Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 8:00 pm
Vanguard filmmaker, radical photographer, seminal performance artist, queer aesthete, first amendment martyr,
underground renaissance man: Jack Smith maintained an intense, lifelong rapture conjured from the tarnished magic
of a '30s and '40s Hollywood that had come to camp out on the movie set of his own mind. The extemalization of
the moldy glamour, which obsessed him from adolescence, enabled him to both exoticize and humanize a
conservative American culture enamored with progress and bruised in its formation by economic speculation and
cold war.
J. Hoberman is the Senior Film Critic at The Village Voice, author of numerous books of film criticism, and a
former Guggenheim fellow. As a Wattis Film/Video Artist-in-Residence at Yerba Buena, he will present four
programs on the life and work of vanguard filmmaker, performance artist, queer aesthete and underground
Renaissance man, Jack Smith.
This series is a co-presentation of YBC's Film/Video department and "In Conversation" program, in collaboration
with San Francisco Cinematheque. (Program descriptions adapted from writings by Hoberman and Jerry Tartaglia.)
Saturday, May 13, 8 p.m.
The making and unmaking of Flaming Creatures.
Hoberman presents an annotated screening of Jack Smith's opus, Flaming Creatures (1963, 45 minutes, 16mm),
which proved to be the most incendiary avant-garde film ever made in America; the story of how it came to be and
what became of it.
Sunday, May 14, 1 p.m.
"The Perfect Film Appositeness of MM and VS"
This matinee double-bill features Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's The Devil is a Woman (1936, 83
minutes, 35mm) and Maria Montez in John Rawlins' Arabian Nights (1942); plus excerpts from Universal horrors.
Flaming Creatures is a film that owed everything and nothing to Hollywood. The everything included Jack
Smith's admiration of von Sternberg and obsession with Maria Montez, as explicated in his writings.
Tuesday, May 16, 8 p.m.
The complete Normal Love
Jack Smith began production on a sumptuously full-color, ironically heterosexual and avowedly "commercial"
follow-up to Flaming Creatures after the latter' s sensational premiere; he then "abandoned" this follow-up feature
after Flaming Creatures was banned in New York. The extant footage has been preserved and assembled in
accordance with Smith's journal notes. The musical accompaniment was culled from Smith's record collection by
archivist Jerry Tartaglia, who restored the film on behalf of the Plaster Foundation. (1963-1964, 105 minutes,
16mm). Followed by The Yellow Footage: Normal Love addendum reel (1963-64, 20 minutes, 16mm)
Thursday, May 18, 8 p.m.
"Jack Smith in Performance"
Although Smith's theater pieces constituted his most significant work of the 70s and later, few were recorded.
Fortunately it is possible to sequence a slide show documenting his inimitable 1977 staging of Ibsen's Ghosts, and
someone once did bring a Sony portapak to the Plaster Foundation... Tonight's program features Midnight at the
Plaster Foundation (c.1970, 20 minutes, video) and The Secret of Rented Island (1977/1997, 80 minutes, video).
(Thanks to Vidipix for restoration of Midnight at the Plaster Foundation and to Edward Leffingwell for sequencing
The Secret of Rented Island, with production assistance from the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS.)
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San Francisco Cinematheque
ARTISTS AT WORK: The Day Job
Curated and Presented by Claire Bain
Gail Camhi, Alfred Hernandez, Pelle Lowe and Ken Paul Rosenthal In Person
Thursday, May 25, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
My inspiration for this show was an essay by filmmaker Nina Fonoroff published in Big As Life: An American
History of 8mm Films, the catalog for the Cinematheque and NY MoMA retrospective of the same title. It is
appropriate that many Super 8mm films have as their subject matter issues of economic survival — how one's
identity is defined by one's participation in a set of obligatory social rituals such as family functions or, even more
bindingly, one's job. In these films labor is treated as an extension of personal life, and the two are posited as part
of a continuum, rather than diametrically opposed. Super 8mm filmmakers can thus redeem the onerous activity of
earning their daily bread, as the shit job becomes a suitable subject for filmic exploration.
In these works I see hope for dignity in the face of the struggle to simply function as we are meant to: as creative
beings. This is not to say that we should complacently accept our plight as artists living in a blind society which
does not see the necessity of art as an element of human survival; it is to say that we can prevail even when we
must divert our time and energy to pursuits that do not, in and of themselves, fulfill us.
Smoke (1995-96) by Pelle Lowe; Super 8mm, color, sound, 25 minutes, print from the maker
A horribly beautiful examination of the invasive procedures of questioning people who are seeking work,
financial assistance or entry into this society. Against the setting of people pouring underground into transit and
smoke flowing into the sky, actual questions from employment, assistance and immigration applications provide a
glaring indication of the presumption of power and negation of dignity by the inquirers, their authority resting
simply on the fact that they are the ones who provide livelihood. A sky is filled with industrial waste, creating a
gorgeous sunset possessing a dark beauty similar to that of the atomic bomb explosion in Bruce Conner's
Crossroads.
Living in the World, Part I (1985) by Joe Gibbons; Super 8mm transferred to video, color, sound, 14 minutes,
tape from the maker
With a small gauge Gibbons tells a big, sharp-edged story wrapped in hilarity that's too close to the brink
for comfort. Like Pelle Lowe, he uses Super 8mm to create a grand visual depiction of a story. To me, Joe
Gibbons is the James Stewart of experimental film. Appearing as himself, he creates a screen persona that's rich
with immediacy and crazily compelling. In this, the first part of his masterful opus on functioning in society, he
deals with his dreary job and his dinner.
Coffee Break (1976) by Gail Camhi; 16mm, color, silent, 15 minutes, print from the maker
A real-time portrait of the filmmaker and work mates from the payroll office of a university in upstate
NY. This is a beautifully touching look at a group of women workers, whose ages span 2 generations, as they
touch base with their humanity on a break at work. Some of them could be your mother. And the beautiful bored
Camhi sits at center, passing the minutes over a fluorescent-lit last supper with its chalices of coffee, newspaper
scrolls and cigarette censors.
Intermission
Work Art Work (2000) by Alfred Hernandez; video, color, sound, 5 minutes, tape from the maker
Left to the devices and the tools of a fabric librarian, Hernandez created books, Polaroid photos, drawings,
storyboards and more in the back room of an SF interior design firm when he wasn't helping consultants choose
expensive fabrics. This video montage takes a rhythmic look at the products of his labor.
At Photo Motion, San Francisco (1987) by Ken Paul Rosenthal; Super 8mm, silent, 3 minutes, print from the
maker (camera by C Bain)
After closing time at the 1-hour photo store, Ken Rosenthal directed this beautiful silvery self-portrait
in which his body intersects with sunlit reflections on the floor, turning the carpet which customers usually
traverse into a figurative canvas of light, giving new meaning to the name "Photo Motion."
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2000 Program Notes
At Such a Business, San Francisco (1994) by Ken Paul Rosenthal; Super 8mm, sound, 3 minutes, print from
the maker
While the staff and management are in the next room discussing Rosenthal's dismissal from his job, he
finally gives in to an urge he's had for the duration of his employment at this children's clothing and toy store.
Unemployment Portrayal (1974-83) by Saul Levine; 8mm blown up to 16mm, color, silent, 4 minutes, print
from Canyon Cinema
Waiting in line for unemployment-
red star
red
purple
key words
catch the phrases
the money Chase
the search for security
disappearing and reappearing children
shop windows of the married life
buy the by — could you afford it?
Wait
We must move forward
inflation will destroy
this country
If we don't
-Claire Bain
V el Richards' Lunchtime Office Ergonomics Seminar (1992) by Claire Bain; video, color, sound, 20 minutes,
tape from the maker
A document of Bain's alter-ego, Vel Richards, giving a presentation complete with slides and Super 8
film on good posture in her office. The attendees are as interesting to watch as Vel as they carefully observe the
performance. On location at a brown-bag lunch seminar with coworkers (engineers, geologists, drafts people and
secretarial workers) at an environmental engineering firm in SF. Videotaped by my supervisor, Liem Le.
Program Notes written by Claire Bain
RITUAL OBSESSIONS
Three Nights of Luther Price
Program One: Home, Sweet Home
Luther Price in Person
Thursday, June 1, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
"I want to make true films. I don't care if it hurts me... people exploit each other anyway. If you
exploit yourself you leave no room to be exploited by someone else... No one can hurt me; no one
can say anything about me because I've already said it. I've already given them the dirt. We
always have the ability to redeem ourselves... " (Luther Price)
In tonight's program, Luther Price (a.k.a. Tom Rhoads) performs an invasive surgical procedure on sentimentalized
notions of home and childhood. Of course, one might well wonder what could possibly be left to extract from this
cultural corpse. After decades of artistic assault, our Norman Rockwell mythology has been so thoroughly
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deconstructed and dissected that any artist revisiting this territory now runs the risk of simply replacing one set of
cliches with another. If Price does manage to develop an original approach to these themes, it is because his critical
objects are not just Home, Family and Mother, but the tortured, torturing relations that have been established
between those idealized categories and the brute, material facts of a very specific life history: Price's own.
Price's medium, in this respect, becomes a substantial part of his message. Working almost exclusively in the
Super-8 format, Price reappropriates the technology which has traditionally functioned to monitor, maintain and
reinforce the symbolic linkages between homes and Home. The home movie, Price reminds us, occupies the nexus
in which the absolutely particular and the depressingly stereotypical intersect. In its compulsive documentation of
private rites of passage — births, first steps, first words, birthdays, weddings, etc. — the home movie always contains
a latent imperative to frame those events in such a way that their uniqueness will be all but completely absorbed
into the generic, instantly recognizable codes of "normality." On one level, Price's films are about the impossibility
of sustaining that compulsory illusion, of keeping the real-life, everyday horrors of family life safely and
permanently out of camera range. Too intimate, too personal and too candid, these works always show us far more
than we would ever want to see. But Price's films ultimately take this impulse to self-exposure one crucial step
further. Although each of these pieces displays the hallmarks of the "personal" or "diaristic" film — the family
photographs, the shots of the artist himself, his neighborhood, his room — what they actually "reveal" is nothing
that could be said to belong to Price alone. On the contrary, in the place where we would expect to find the Dark
Family Secret exposed, Price gives us only an accumulation of banal, stultifyingly familiar objects: talking dolls,
store-bought birthday cakes, songs by the Carpenters. Imbuing these kitsch artifacts with an aura of nameless dread,
Price comes as close as any filmmaker ever has to achieving a true sense of the uncanny.
As Freud has defined it, "the uncanny" refers not only to feelings of disconcerting familiarity or "un-homeliness"
but also to those moments when we begin to suspect that "automatic, mechanical processes are at work, concealed
beneath the ordinary appearance of animation." In Price's films, these two senses converge as the intimacies of the
domestic sphere are consistently aligned with repetition, automatism and mass-produced sentimentality. The horror
that Price's films force us to confront emerges precisely at this point of collapse. No longer is the home envisioned
as a place of refuge from the dehumanizing demands of the outside world, but as the site in which those demands
are most forcibly and inescapably implanted.
Home (1990-1999) by Luther Price; Super 8mm, b&w, sound, 13 minutes, print from the maker
Family photos are here subjected to a dispassionate, almost forensic analysis. The circles of light and dark
which select certain subjects for special attention or effacement recall the graphically similar techniques used in
newspaper or history book photographs, as though a future assassin's face were being picked out of a grade-school
class picture or an innocent victim's identity were being carefully protected. The voice belongs to Price's mother.
Deeply ingrained with inflections specific to class and region, her voice seems to speak the local against the
general, the embodied against the anonymous. As the recorded fragments repeat, however, a discomforting
phenomenological shift occurs. The very tonal elements which had initially served to anchor the voice in a
distinctive body and personality gradually begin float away from those moorings, like the "boat" whose ownership
seems to be so much in question. Divested of all intention and meaning, the words become blunt instruments,
drumming against the ear with an indifferent, too-predictable rhythm.
Green (1988) by Tom Rhoads; Super 8mm, color, sound, 36 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
One hesitates to apply the threadbare label of "camp" to any of Price/ Rhoads' works since they seem to
exhibit very little of the arch detachment or knowingness that we generally associate with that term, at least after
Warhol. In Green, however, Rhoads' allusions to this distinctly gay tradition of black humor are obvious and
unmistakable. The film begins with an interminable shot of a dead blackbird as Peggy Lee (or is it Rosemary
Clooney?) warbles "Let There Be Love" on the soundtrack. If the shot bears more than a passing resemblance to
the credit sequence of John Waters' Desperate Living, it is undoubtedly because both filmmakers were drawing on
the same source — Robert Aldrich's 1962 classic of domestic/maternal horror, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Later in the film, we can make out the distorted strains of Baby Jane Hudson/Bette Davis's anthem to failed
Oedipalization, "I've Written a Letter to Daddy;" only this time, there's nothing funny about it.
Rhoads understands that the camp appeal of Aldrich's film is inseparable from its underlying terrors.
Paralyzed in a car accident, Blanche/Crawford has been reduced to a state of infantile dependence and sister Jane,
driven mad by jealousy and unchecked narcissism, becomes the worst mother in the world. Fertilized by this
scenario, tropes of paralysis and immobility seem to sprout up everywhere in Green, from the ubiquitous plastic
flowers to the frozen poses of hysterical elation struck by Rhoads' silver-painted drag queen. The soundtrack also
includes fragments from Art Linkletter's creepy kitschfest, Kids Say the Darndest Things (also an inspiration for
Waters' early short, The Diane Linkletter Story). At one point, Linkletter advises one of his young victims to ask
his mother about "the time when you were a baby:" "She'll tell you, you couldn't walk, you couldn't talk... All
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2000 Program Notes
you could say was 'Waa-waa!'" The sanctified image of the mother-child bond once again begins to take on the
qualities of mute horror, and mother-love inexorably gives rise to monstrous visions. The concluding images of
butterflies trapped in celluloid seems to be a tip-of-the-hat to Stan Brakhage's famous experiment, Mothlight, but
in light of the nightmares that have come before it, Rhoads' images of arrested flight here seem to point to
something far more sinister.
run (1994) by Luther Price; Super 8mm, color, sound, 13 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
By itself, run might be viewed as a fairly straightforward, film-schoolish exercise in formalist
experimentation; juxtaposed with Green, the film seems to invite another, more challenging interpretation. The
title itself seems to hover somewhere between the constative and the imperative, referring perhaps to the objective
"run" of the film through the projector or, alternatively, to some more ominous command to run from an unnamed
or unnamable threat. Viewed from this perspective, the film's dominant imagery of birds begins to take on a
similarly ambiguous set of connotations. According to what one might call the Richard Bach Effect, birds
generally tend to evoke cloying, card-shop notions of freedom and transcendence. In Price's film, by contrast, these
shots have been cut apart and retaped together with an obsessiveness bordering on the pathological. Dismembered
and reassembled in this way, this imagery becomes saturated with immanent violence. Instead of bringing to mind
soft-focus images of soaring escape, these primitive, stuttering shots now begin to recall the murderous undertones
of Etienne- Jules Marey's 1882 "camera-gun" — a device originally designed to capture and dissect the movement of
birds in flight. One might also think of the stuffed birds in the Bates Motel — those sentinels which prefigure the
abrupt and violent end to Marion Crane's own desperate flight from home. Even in his most high-flown, formalist
moments, it would seem, Price stages the inevitable fall back to earth. . . the clipping of wings.
Mother (1988-98) by Luther Price; Super 8mm, color, sound, 25 minutes, print from the maker
There is a famous moment in Camera Lucida in which Roland Barthes gives his reasons for not
reproducing the "Winter Garden Photograph" of his mother, even though he has already said that this is the central
image from which he will "derive" all Photography. "It exists only for me," Barthes declares; "For you it would be
nothing but an indifferent picture, one of the thousand manifestations of the 'ordinary'; it cannot in any way
constitute the visible object of a science; it cannot establish an objectivity, in the positive sense of the term; at
most it would interest your studium: period, clothes, photogeny; but in it, for you, no wound."
The long, "objective-looking" shots of Mother invert Barthes' logic in order to take the measure of these
distances: not only the distance between what this person means for the filmmaker and what she means for us, but
also the temporal and emotional distances which separate mother from son, age from youth and Motherhood from
the fallible, all too human women who find themselves occupying that role.
Res hat ions (2000) by Luther Price; Super 8mm, b&w, sound, 10 minutes, print from the maker
The image track of Resitations closely resembles that of Home: family photos again provide the bulk of
the film's subject matter, and similar visual devices are used to examine the working-class trappings of Price's
childhood. We can only assume that the voice on the soundtrack also belongs to Price's mother, as it does in the
earlier film. This time, she is reading from a collection of religious poetry while impossibly sentimental
music — of the sort that one would only expect to hear in nineteenth century melodramas or, with a more ironic
cast, in Warner Brothers cartoons — plays in the background. The "uplifting" homilies offered by these poems
border on the grotesque. With sing-song rhyme schemes and plodding metric feet, these bits of doggerel verse
become the spiritual equivalent of cellophane-wrapped snack cakes — mass-produced confections whose sugary
sweetness quickly turns the stomach. As Price depicts it here, the maternal "care of the soul" finally resembles
nothing so much as a prolonged regimen of force-feeding.
Program Notes written by David Conner
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San Francisco Cinematheque
RITUAL OBSESSIONS
Three Nights of Luther Price
Program Two: Body Fluid
Luther Price in Person
Saturday, June 3, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
see June 1 for series overview
A preliminary word of caution: the films in this evening's program are among the most graphic and disturbing in
Price's oeuvre. Price's use of sensational imagery, however, is never intended solely to shock. These works
might best be viewed as ruthless, but often deeply personal meditations on the culture of overexposure. With
many of these films, Price seems concerned to raise a question which very few "abject" artists have been willing to
confront so directly: in an age when psychic and physical suffering has become the primary stock and trade of
American culture, from tabloid television to ultraviolent art, what are the consequences for our collective capacity
to experience something like "empathy?" Generously viewed, these films seem to constitute a desperate attempt to
restore a lost dimension of moral horror to the spectacles of bodily horror that now confront us on a daily basis.
Ungenerously viewed, they might appear as the morbid symptoms of a much larger crisis. Perhaps the primary
strength of these films consists in the way that they so stubbornly occupy that contradiction, leaving its resolution
— if there is one — entirely up to the viewer.
Yellow Goodbye (1999); Super 8mm, color, sound on cassette tape, 10 minutes
Providing some brief respite from the evening's more grueling selections, this film offers a comparatively
innocuous tribute to the Beat films of the late '50s and early '60s. A mini-anthology of three shorter works, the
sequences that make up this triptych were originally titled, in order, Girl, Rex is the Dog and Yellow Goodbye.
#5 (2000?); Super 8mm, color, sound on cassette tape
Even after it's been abstracted to the point of near unrecognizability, footage of a tumor removal cannot
become anything other than what it is. Or can it? With this short film, Price again stages the tension between the
abstract and the abject. The primary subject of this work seems to be the rude intrusion, the thing which emerges
suddenly and unaccountably to ruin the conditions of aesthetic experience.
Meat Situation 04 (1997); Super 8mm, color, sound on cassette tape, 4 minutes
In 1985, during a trip to Nicaragua, Price (then known as Brigk) was accidentally shot at close range by
one of his own bodyguards. After eleven days close to death in a Nicaraguan hospital, Price was eventually able to
return to the U.S. where, for the next two months, he underwent a long and difficult recuperation at Massachusetts
General. His 1992 performance piece, Meat, dealt with these experiences by using viscerally charged images and
objects (surgical procedures, raw and rotting meat) within a highly ritualized context. This film represents a partial
return to this performance piece and, at a further remove, to the trauma that inspired it.
Juxtaposing clips from surgical supply videos with grisly close-ups of lacerated and diseased flesh, Price
attempts to pry open the logic which sustains institutional indifference. Clothing designed to protect (and, in a
couple of grimly funny instances, to prettify) becomes a metaphor for the attempt to keep the realities of pain and
sickness at a safe distance. Price brings those suppressed realities right up to the surface and practically dares us to
look away.
Eruption-Erection (1989); Super 8mm, b&w, sound, 10 minutes
This film could be described as a two-part study of the autism of religious kitsch. The first half makes a
hilarious contribution to Price's ever-expanding repertoire of images of bodily penetration. To coin a pun no more
vulgar than the film itself, it is an image of a decidedly retarded eroticism. The second half recasts the pop rituals
of Christian evangelism as another form of self-absorbed, arrested development. Never has the topic of infantile
self-satisfaction been handled with such intelligence.
Meat Blue 03 (1999); Super 8mm, color, sound
This film offers another variation on a few of Price's favorite themes: surgery, the materiality of the flesh,
and the banalities of disposable culture. The restaged performance piece that we glimpse through filmed and
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2000 Program Notes
videotaped fragments bears a strong resemblance to the Materialaktions of Viennese artists Gunter Brus and Otto
Muehl. Like these mid-sixties performance artists, Price stages the body in extremis, reducing the perceptible
differences between human flesh and the "flesh of the world" to a minimum. The lip-synching sequence depicts
the performer's relation to canned pop sentiment as another form of bodily infiltration — less gruesome, perhaps,
but no less disconcerting. Recurring shots of sutures and gaping wounds begin to suggest blunt parallels between
surgical procedures and Price's own cinematic practice: taking up bits of discarded refuse and stitching them back
together again, Price's film exposes a covert complicity between violence and salvation.
Ritual 629 (1990-1999); Super 8mm, color, sound on cassette tape, 15 minutes
In the tradition of Sodom, Price here fires another exploding bullet at the "positive image" school of gay
filmmaking. Like the obsessive characters in Dennis Cooper's novels, Price searches for beauty in the most
mortifying visions of corporeal violation. Price's film seems to document the same paradox that critic Earl
Jackson has witnessed in Cooper's fiction: "the persistence of obsessive metaphysical gestures within a radically
demystified world."
I'll Cry Tomorrow, Parts 1 and 2 (2000); Super 8mm, color, sound on film and cassette tape, 20 minutes
Perhaps because these two films are among Price's most personal works, they are also, in many respects,
the most difficult to watch. Both films were made during his sister's long and ultimately fatal illness, and they
seem to represent an intensely private attempt to come to terms with a loved one's mortality. But there is nothing
maudlin about either film. One gets the sense that Price is here struggling to create a new language for loss, one
forged in reaction to the expressions of trite sentimentality that are always lying in wait for these experiences.
Dead Ringer (2000); Super 8mm, color, sound on cassette tape, 3 minutes
When Price was a child, he and his sister would make audio recordings of old Hollywood movies on
television, and they would listen to their favorites (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Mildred Pierce, Imitation of
Life) as they were going to sleep at night. This film presents a strange and dreamlike meditation on this
interweaving of childhood memories with cinematic fantasies. Without sound, the two halves of this diptych
seem to occupy the same ethereal space — some private floating archive of half-remembered events and emotions, at
once real and unreal.
Program Notes written by David Conner
RITUAL OBSESSIONS
Three Nights of Luther Price
Program Three: "Tell Me a Secret/Give Me a Kiss"
Luther Price in Person
Sunday, June 4, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
see June I for series overview
This third and final program in our retrospective presents a selection of some of Price/Rhoads' best-known works.
Longer and denser than most of his other pieces, these films come as close to "epic" status as Price's resolutely
anti-epic sensibility will allow. They also demonstrate Price's compulsive talent for bricolage. Although their
reliance on found footage varies widely (Sodom, for instance, is composed entirely of found material; Warm Broth
uses it only sparingly), these films all respond to the bricoleur's impulse to construct coherent systems out of the
random detritus of everyday life.
From this perspective, it is tempting to describe these works as typically "postmodern." Price seems to be
occupying the position which prophet/critic Jean Baudrillard has described as "the state of terror proper to the
schizophrenic: too great a proximity of everything, the unclean promiscuity of everything which touches, invests
and penetrates without resistance, with no halo of private protection, not even his own body, to protect him
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anymore." But with these films, Price seems to be doing much more than simply repeating the familiar
symptoms of the postmodern condition: the breakup of the unitary sign, the erosion of public/private boundaries,
the escalating "frenzy of the visible." For Price, all of this has already taken place, and there's little point in
dwelling on it. Where postmodern art has been characterized by its obsessive concerns over meaning, Price seems
far more captivated by the expressive possibilities of sensation. Price's materials are not so much codes as affects:
textures, intensities, and memory-images so precisely defined that they eventually begin to achieve something akin
to the density and mobility of words.
Sodom (1994); double projection Super 8mm, color, sound on cassette tape, 18 minutes
"Sodom, like the best art-making, is essentially ineffable. Its effect is visceral. It hits somewhere in the
solar plexus, that nebulous area where emotional and physical sensations converge. Its overall tone is sad. It
seems to be an elegy in which there is tremendous compassion and tenderness. This can be read, for example, in
the exquisite shots of the face of the blond youth as he is being fucked — a mix of pleasure and pain, yearning and
enduring. Sodom seems an elegy... but to what?" (Michael Wallin)
Bottle Can (1993); Super 8mm, b&w, sound, 20 minutes
Reviewing one of Nikola Tesla's turn-of-the-century demonstrations of his famous coil, one awestruck
journalist wrote: "Who could remain unimpressed in the face of the weird, waving glowing tubes and the
mysterious voice issuing from the midst of an electrostatic field?" In 1920, at the beginning of America's radio
boom, Thomas Edison announced that he was at work on an "apparatus designed to enable those who have left this
earth to communicate with those of us who are still on the earth." Two years after the Sputnik launch in 1957,
Arthur C. Clarke opined that satellite communications would provide the means "to conquer the world without
anyone noticing."
Bottle Can picks up this mystical thread in the history of American technophilia and explores the ways in
which high-tech visions, ethereal voices, and dreams of "leaving the earth" have become powerfully intermingled
in our cultural imagination. The soundtrack appears to have been taken from a subliminal weight-loss tape, and
the bulk of the found footage depicts rocket launches, space walks and other feats of gravity-defiance. Outer and
inner space change places as the film's fever-dream of total control unravels and finally implodes.
Me Gut No Dog DOG (1995); Super 8mm screened on video, color, sound, 46 minutes
"Perhaps Price's most disquieting film, Me Gut No Dog DOG is a sharp-edged social satire, ...focusing
on the military, but also targeting American values and society more generally. A variety of images including
marching soldiers, a walking dog (printed in reverse), explicit gay sex, young men and women goofing around and
a businessman are drawn together to create a devastating portrait of American life." (Patrick Friel)
Warm Broth (1988) by Tom Rhoads; Super 8mm, color, sound, 30 minutes
Already recognized as a classic of contemporary avant-garde cinema, Warm Broth also deserves a place
alongside Matthias Miiller's Alpsee as one of the most sophisticated and incisive films about queer childhood ever
produced. The film is a meditation on the riddle of sexual origins, but Rhoads refuses to accept any of the easy
Oedipal answers. In fact, the film's curiosity seems entirely focused on the play of surfaces: the seductive sheen of
ribbon candies, Fire King coffee mugs, Melmac dishware, Fisher-Price toys. When the clues to sexual "secrets" do
break the surface of the film — in the form of naughty words stenciled on floral print wallpaper, or brief glimpses of
The Act itself — they immediately fade away again, like the after-images of a flashbulb pop. To what register of
significance do these "revelations" belong? Do they wield more power or threat than the image of a melting
fudgesicle? Than the inviting, fleecy texture of a Chanel-inspired topcoat? Only a dyed-in-the-wool fairy would
have the nerve to ask such impertinent, trivializing questions, and yet these are the mysteries that seem to fascinate
Price the most. Like the doll which keeps making nagging demands but leaves no room for any response, Price
asks "deep" questions without really wanting to know the answers.
i
Program Notes written by David Conner unless otherwise noted
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2000 Program Notes
ETHER/ORE
An Evening with Phil Solomon
Phil Solomon in Person
Thursday, June 8, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Cinematheque is proud to close its thirty-ninth season with a rare visit from Colorado-based filmmaker Phil
Solomon. Solomon's films combine intense chemical treatment of emulsive surfaces and meticulous optical
printing to achieve amazing and paradoxical fusions of pure shimmering light and unbelievable mineral density.
Surfaces bubble and boil and appear as violently roiling cauldrons of molten material, within which images and
events struggle for recognition, emerging as fragments of long-forgotten fables and repressed bits of ancient
collective memories. Tonight's program is Solomon's personal selection, which includes new work, collaborations
with Stan Brakhage, an older gem and previews of some works-in-progress. (Steve Polta)
Part I: Works with Stan Brakhage
Concrescence (1995); 16mm, color, silent, 3 minutes, print from Phil Solomon
"'Concrescence' is the name for the process in which the universe of many things acquires an individual
unity in a determined relegation of each item of the 'many' to its subordination in the constitution of the novel
'one'... An actual occasion is analyzable. The analysis discloses operations transforming entities which are
individually alien into components of a complex which is discreetly one. The term 'feeling' will be used as the
generic description of such operations. We thus say that an actual occasion is a concrescence effected by a process
of feelings." (Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality)
Seasons... (1998-2000); 16mm, color, silent, 20 minutes, print from Phil Solomon
Brakhage's frame by frame hand carvings and etchings directly into the film emulsion are illuminated by
Solomon's optical printing, then edited by Solomon into a seasonal cycle of several movements, beginning with
"Summer" (a trio for Sun, Earth, and Ocean) and ending in "Spring" (carvings and hand painting combined into
bloom). Seasons... is finally a hymn to sun/light throughout the year's cycle.
This film is to be considered part of a larger umbrella work by Brakhage entitled "... ". Seasons... is
inspired by the colors and textures found in the woodcuts of Hokusai and Hiroshige and the playful sense of forms
dancing in space from the film works of Robert Breer and Len Lye. Special thanks to Philip Rowe, who first
pointed out to me the "seasonal" implications of my initial test roll. In memoriam, Gabriella Langendorff. It was
her favorite. (PS)
Part II: One from the Heart
What's Out Tonight is Lost (1983); 16mm, color, silent, 8 minutes, print from the maker
"Adopting its title from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, What 's Out Tonight is Lost is an elegiac
film sifting through the unrecoverable. The film is a reflecting pool where vision breaks up. The home we
recognize is swallowed in the brume, the light barely penetrates; and the yellow school bus steals us away,
delivering us into new clouds, embracing fear. The film has a surface of cracked porcelain and intaglio: the allergic
childhood skin of cracks and bruises. This is a film of transubstantiations, the discorporation of human forms into
embers. Air looms and blossoms into solidity and nearness... I hear it breathing..." (Mark McElhatten)
A cha-cha in the fog as the school bus departs, the lighthouse remains in disrepair. (PS)
Part III: The Twilight Psalms
The Twilight Psalms (1999-2001) is a series of short visual tone poems, a personal history of the Twentieth
Century at closing time. Inspired by the series from Rod Serling, Binghamton, NY. (PS)
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Twilight Psalm I: "The Lateness of the Hour"; 16mm, color, silent, 8 minutes, print from the maker
A little Nachtmusik, a deep blue overture to the series. Breathing in the cool night airs, breathing out a
children's
song; then whispering a prayer for a night of easeful sleep. My blue attempt at a sequel to Rose Hobart.
For Joseph Cornell swinging in the dark, and for Mark Lapore, who came back just to help a friend
breathe a little easier. (PS)
Twilight Psalm II: "Walking Distance"; 16mm, color, sound, 23 minutes, print from the maker
Imagine one of those rusted medieval film cans surviving centuries, a long lost Biograph/Star, a
Griffith/Melies co-production, but this time a two-reeler left to us from, say, the Bronze Age, a time when images
were smelted and boiled rather than merely taken, when they poured down like silver, not be to fixed and washed,
mind you, but free to reform and coagulate into unstable, temporary molds, mere holding patterns of faces, places,
and things, shape-shifting according to whim, need, the uncanny or the inevitable... Walking Distance is a Golden
Book tale of horizontals and verticals, a cinema of ether and ore. ..as I lay dying.
Inspired by Kiefer and Ryder, dedicated to Stan Brakhage. (PS)
Yes, I Said Yes, I Will, Yes (1999); 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes (and the rest of my life), print from the
maker
For Melinda, in celebration of our honeymoon in the "Golden State." (PS)
SOUNDS OF ALL KINDS
From Dada to Now
Curated and Presented by Charles Boone
Co-Presented with Acustica International SF 2000 and the San Francisco Art Institute
Sunday, September 24, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 8 pm
Artists in widely diverse disciplines have long concerned — and continue to concern — themselves with sound as
both medium and subject. This fact is particularly notable in an art community such as ours at the San Francisco
Art Institute. Film, video, performance, installation, writing, pure sound... even painting; these are all areas where
sounds of all kinds have provided both inspiration and material itself.
Completed Portrait of Picasso by Gertrude Stein
Ursonata by Kurt Schwitters
Klange/Sounds by Wassily Kandinsky
Gertrude Stein's "If I Told Him," is a poem, of course; but when read aloud — as it must be — it is
immediately recognized as a work of verbal, sonic cubism. Dada artists who gathered at Zurich's Cafe Voltaire
wasted no time in mixing together all manner of texts in their "simultaneous poems," of which "The Admiral
Looks for a House to Rent," is a classic example. Kurt Schwitters labored for ten years on his Ursonate, but made
clear that performers might interpret his text in imaginative ways; perhaps this is the reason he left few instructions
for its realization. Wassily Kandinsky' s interest in connections among the arts is clearly shown in highly
suggestive texts he wrote early in the century. These bring together sounds, colors, and images in ways that hint at
the idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total/collective work of art.
Son of Metropolis San Francisco by Charles Amirkhanian
Charles Amirkhanian' s Son of Metropolis San Francisco was conceived as a musical Horspiel — an
experimental "earplay" on tape for radio broadcast or concert performance — and was inspired by the ambiance of the
city itself as well as its surroundings. It is a condensation of Metropolis San Francisco (1986), and is a bit more
than twenty-five minutes in duration. Rather than more stereotypical San Francisco sounds — cable cars, for
instance — various nature sounds dominate the piece. Included as well are human sounds which reflect the cultural
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2000 Program Notes
diversity of this place. The composer sought to create a strongly subjective, idiosyncratic, reflective piece, more
spiritual in nature than documentary. The work was commissioned by Klaus Sch5ning for Studio 3 Horspiel of the
West German Radio. Charles Amirkhanian has been a conspicuous presence on the Bay Area scene for more than
three decades, as composer, concert presenter and leader of significant regional arts organizations.
Mercy (1989) by Abigail Child; 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes, print from the maker
The intense sonic profiles of Abigail Child's film and video work match equally the quirky brilliance of
its visual images. She frequently collaborates with musicians whose ingenuity matches her own; in this film, with
vocalist Shelley Hirsch. Mercy, the final work in a seven-film series, Is This What You Were Born For?, features
all — or almost all — found imagery. In it, one sees and hears the sharp cuts and hot juxtapositions that keep
Child's work on the brink of the mind and its viewers themselves on the edges of their chairs. Child says, "Mercy
is encyclopedic ephemera, exploring visions of technology and romantic invention, dissecting the game mass
media plays with our private perceptions. It is about how one processes materiality, how it gets investigated, how
it gets cut apart, how something else (inevitably) comes up." Plan to greet the artist when she is in town for three
screenings of work: October 12, 14 and 15. Check the Cinematheque calendar for details.
Conversations with a Light Bulb by Laetitia Sonami
The sounds in Laetitia Sonami's composition mostly derive from digital documents translated as sound
within whose thick textures the composer had discovered unexpected voices and rhythms. Since these sounds have
lives of their own, her real-time gestural control of them is relatively minimal. Instead, her gestures more often
guide other elements such as breathing and the flickering of light bulbs, thus elevating light to the role of silent
musical partner. Sonami says that her interest in light bulbs as familiar yet "mystical" objects is paired with the
expanded use of light as a new medium of data transmission. She believes that century twenty-one will be the
century of light. Be sure to catch her installation in the SFAI faculty exhibition in the Walter McBean Gallery.
French-bom Laetitia Sonami is a faculty member at the Art Institute and at San Francisco State University. Her
works can be heard on such labels as Nonesuch, Tellus, Music and Arts Program of America, and (soon to be
released) Lovely Music.
Program Notes written by Charles Boone unless otherwise noted
BLOOD SAUSAGE
A Rooftop Screening/Reception
Curated and Presented by Michael Rosas-Walsh
Sunday, October 1, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 8pm
This show will not be a bore. It can't be; it is atop the roof of the San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall.
Cinematheque proudly begins this calendar with this film event under the stars. There will be some classics by
Robert Nelson, George Kuchar, Rock Ross, Dean Snider, Michael Rudnick and Toney Merrit, some of which were
filmed on the roof where your behinds will be sitting. The rest of the program will be a celebration of new works
by such artists as: Portia Cobb, Diane Kitchen, Rock Ross, Marian Wallace, Matt McCormick, William Z.
Richard, Diane Frisbee, George Andrews and more. There will be a beer and wine reception following the event.
Bring your blanket and enjoy live entertainment under the moonlight before and after the program. And yes, you
can smoke on the roof. (Michael Rosas- Walsh)
Art School Remembered by Michael Rudnick; 1 .5 minutes
New Nothing Dad by MRW; 1 .5 minutes
Dr. Quantum's Malfunctioning Satellite by George Andrews; 2.5 minutes
'Til My Head Caves In by Rock Ross; 4 minutes
Bored Members by Dean Snider; 3 minutes
Destroy All Intellectuals/Intellectuals Strike Back by Dean Snider; 3.5 minutes
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Welcome to the House of Raven by Toney Merritt; 4 minutes
Raw by MRW; 4 minutes
Nectar of the Cyclops by Rock Ross; 12 minutes
Golly Golly Zoom by RW2; 4 minutes
Football Film by Dan Janos and Cameron Shaw; 3 minutes
Reel Change
Hot Leatherette by Robert Nelson; 4 minutes
Psycho Porpoise by Rock Ross; 3 minutes
Notch by Diane Kitchen; 8 minutes
250 Summer by William Z. Richard; 4 minutes
Sincerely, Joe P. Bear by Matt McCormick; 7 minutes
Xperiencing Xpressing My Paralysis by Diane J. Frisbee; 4 minutes
You Are Christine Dietrich by Michael Rudnick; 4.5 minutes
The Oneers by George Kuchar; 10 minutes
Format Change
Music To Strip By by Marian Wallace; 4 minutes
Snapshots by George Kuchar; 5 minutes
A very special thanks to Liz Keim & the Exploratorium for the use of their Xenon projector.
Electric piano entertainment by WILL.
CENTER FOR THE ARTS SEASON OPENER
New Film and Video by Local Makers and Long-Time Friends
Thursday, October 5, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Join us tonight for a screening/reception to help inaugurate our seventh season at the Yerba Buena Gardens Center
for the Arts (a location we have inhabited since the Center's opening). Featured are films, videos and film
performances by Bay Area artists familiar to many of you from Cinematheque screenings over the years. All
dispense with traditional narrative structure, yet each in their own way is very much a lyricist of their chosen
medium. And as you will see, many stretch the boundaries of traditional presentation.
interval Oakland '99 (2000) by Steve Polta; Super 8mm, silent, 3 minutes
A floating glob of light, undulating, breaking apart, grabs little blobs of light in it, disperses, coalesces
and dances: a suggestion of constant energy to be experienced directly. This film is not a translation. (SP)
silt Interlude 1: Ouroboros (1999); 35mm, color, silent, infinite loop
The molting of a python spliced head to tail. The "original" loop, (silt)
Focal Length (1999-2000) by Luis Recoder; white light, sound @ 24 fps, 8 minutes
From hand-held camera to hand-held celluloid, physical and/or chemical processes, the hand stretches by
the length of the arm and extends its prehensile body to greet the historical materialism of craft-based media. A
handling of the frame signaling against currents of intermittency; the organic shadow cast in the throw to recast the
beast trembling in its cage. (LR)
Homecomings (2000) by Irina Leimbacher; video, color, sound, 10 minutes
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2000 Program Notes
silt Interlude 2: lost footage from the paranaturalists (c. 1934); 35mm, color, silent, 1 minute
A recently uncovered example of angiographic film (an emulsion made entirely of plant extracts)
attributed to members of the California Society of Paranaturalists. (silt)
Be Like Them (2000) by Thad Povey; 16mm double projection; live music written and performed by Ramona the
Pest: guitars and vocals by Valerie Esway, guitar by Lucio Menegon, 3 minutes
"In the volume of those alien voices, sending out their significant messages." (Lyrics by Valerie Esway)
Consumption and conformity as gross multi-national products. (TP)
Awake, But Dreaming (2000) by Kerry Laitala; 16mm, stereo sound on CD, 8 minutes
Une Fois Habitee (Once Inhabited) (1992-99) by Sandra Davis; 16mm, color, sound, 6.5 minute
Some particular spaces inhabited a while ago. Looking back at the Parisian courtyard, looking at the
ladies at the villa, looking into the secrets of the chapel of the delinquents. Light sculpts space; shadow describes
form. (SD)
silt Interlude 3: Pinhole #1 (1999); Super 8mm and 35mm, 1 minute
Hand-made, hand-cranked pinhole cameras housing light without glass, shutters or frames, (silt)
Off the Track (2000) by Lynn Kirby; 3-screen digital video, color, sound, 8 minutes
REANIMATOR
The Videos of Rodney Ascher
Rodney Ascher in Person
Sunday, October 8, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
Applying energetic montage techniques and a strong graphic sensibility to materials freely appropriated from
popular culture, San Francisco video artist Rodney Ascher creates playful and perverse pieces in a variety of genres.
While flirting with the conventions of commercial production, these works consistently apply an appreciative irony
towards their subjects. To be screened: the sock-puppet prison drama The True Story of Crime: X Equals X (co-
made with Syd Garron); Somebody Goofed (also with Garron), a brilliant reinterpretation of Jack T. Chick's
apocalyptic religious comic-strip series; a new installment in the ongoing documentary The Collectors and others.
Ascher will present a personal selection of related works, including Eric Kistel's Thank God Tommy Made it Back
All Right. (Steve Polta)
King of the Monsters by Rodney Ascher and Syd Garron; video, color, sound, tape from the makers
This is what you get when you give two geeks the keys to a mid-level post-production facility for the
weekend.
The True History of Crime: X Equals X by Rodney Ascher; video, b&w, sound, tape from the maker
First (and last, if you don't count the rarely screened A Man Punched Another Man in the Face)
segment of a projected series of crime-themed docu-dramas meant to trace the evolution of wrongdoing through the
ages. Gritty and factual expose of the tragic consequences of prison overcrowding, glamorization of serial killers,
or a mirror held up to society? You be the judge.
The Triumph of Victory — A Great Fall by Rodney Ascher; video, color, sound, tape from the maker
Ok, so there's this new Bruce Willis movie coming out, right? And in it he discovers that he's
somehow immune to injury, and as Samuel Jackson (sporting a frizzy new hairdo) points out, it has a sort of
mystical ramification. Anyhow, the producers commissioned a few different people to create short films about
other "unbreakable" folks throughout history for the movie's website. In an overambitious folly, I elected to
dramatize this improbable but true story from WWII.
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Thank God Tommy Made it Back All Right by Erik Kistel; video, color, sound, tape from the maker
Millions of innocent children wait in line to see the "Master of Subconsciousness." A subliminal
warning from Mr. K.
The Collectors (a work in progress) by Rodney Ascher; video, color, sound, tape from the maker
This one's still in progress so if you have any constructive advice (or phone numbers of especially
ardent collector-types) feel free to share. A rough and ready portrait of a selection of especially driven collectors
and why people get so attached to inanimate objects anyway. Featuring an amazing score by Elise Malmberg.
Buddha Bar by Rodney Ascher; video, color, sound, tape from the maker
An improvised tribute to the Chinatown watering hole using the proprietary technique of
Reanimation© and a disposable camera.
Bar B Bar by Marco Porsia; video, color, sound, tape from the maker
An old friend's similarly themed ode to a homey dive in Toronto. Filmmakers around the world
united around their love of the hard stuff.
Alfred by Rodney Ascher; video, color, sound, tape from the maker
Another Reanimation mini-epic. Music by and featuring... who else?... Alfred. Originally for the
band's website. A meditation on the isolation of the individual within the group, the mystery of other peoples'
(even good friends') inner worlds, good stiff drinks and traffic safety. Popular in France.
Beware of Slips and Falls; 16mm screened on video, color, sound, tape courtesy of Oddball Film and Video
"In which our heroine suffers the many indignities arising from on-the-job carelessness."
Safety-man by Rodney Ascher and Syd Garron; video, color, sound, tape from the makers
Failed Saturday Night Live submission — a day in the life of universal symbols as featured on
"Warning" graphics and signs. Also contains drinking and probably the catchiest theme song of the evening.
Innerspace Dental Commander by Syd Garron and Eric Henry; video, color, sound, tape from the makers
"DJ Qbert's world-renowned tumtabilism matched beat for beat with cosmic animation. Not
recommended for viewers with sensitive teeth. One chapter in their amazing long form adaptation of the album
Wavetwisters, available soon on DVD."
Something to Take to Heart; 16mm screened on video, b&w, sound, tape courtesy of Oddball Film and Video
"Do you know why there is a moon, boys and girls?"
Somebody Goofed by Rodney Ascher and Syd Garron; video, color, sound, tape from the makers
A perversely faithful adaptation of Jack T. Chick's timeless morality play. 3 strangers, 2 points of
view, 1 terrible mistake. Watch the film and then take stock of your own life. Haveyow goofed?
Krazy for Krispy Kreme by Louisa Van Leer and Rodney Ascher; video, color, sound, tape from the makers
'Kause we were into Krispy Kreme when Krispy Kreme wasn't kool.
A Cold-Blooded Look at Your Last 60,000,000,000,000 Years! by The Institute for True Purpose Technology;
35mm filmstrip screened as video, tape from the maker
Perhaps the most controversial filmstrip of our times. The Institute unveils the true source of human
suffering, confusion and chaos. Apparently these guys are big fans of Somebody Goofed, so watch the oblique tie-
in. This Chicago Underground Film Festival Fund award winner is not recommended for persons who have not
yet reached OT II. Beep!
Interstitial slides created with the capable assistance of Ms. Trisha Golubev and Mr. Len Borrusco from an old
R&S idea.
Program Notes written by Rodney Ascher
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2000 Program Notes
MOTIVES FOR MAYHEM
The Kinetic World of Abigail Child, Program One
Abigail Child in Person
Co-Presented with ATA's Other Cinema
Thursday, October 12, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
With the release of her video Below the New: A Russian Chronicle and film Surface NOISE, Abigail Child
confirms her position as one of the leading avant-garde filmmakers of this generation. A practicing theorist and
poet as well as film and video maker, Child has re-defined montage in particularly contemporary terms, drawing
on and extending the work of such masters as Vertov, Eisenstein, Conner and Lye. Her seven-part rapid-fire
exploration of sound and image Is This What You Were Born For? remains one of the cornerstone achievements in
independent cinema of the past twenty years. (Steve Anker)
"I began as a documentarian and moved into more experimental work by the late 1970s out of a sense of the
politics of poetic forms and an aesthetic predilection towards invention. My films extend the avant-garde and
montage traditions of Eisenstein and Vertov, as well as the surrealist traditions of Buhuel and Breton in an
attempt to examine, critique and play with and within the social realities of our era. In addition to these stylists
from early in the century, my influences include the postwar films of Bruce Conner, Stan Brakhage and the under-
recognized Len Lye. These works support my commitment to wit, clarity and an investigation of the daily. " (AC)
Peripeteia I (1977); 16mm, color, silent, 10 minutes, print from the maker
Navigation spiraling sunwards. Exploring the movement of forest and body, seeking the larger pattern of
my digressive attendance. Filmed in the Oregon coastal rain forest, fall. (AC)
Ornamentals (1979); 16mm, color, silent, 10 minutes, print from the maker
Ornamentals brings together the two compositional processes, using footage gathered over many years,
organized along the color spectrum in a structure of expansion. The concern is abstraction, surfacing representation,
increasing connotation through what repeats in time and what is seen — shocks stretched on impressions' edge to
undermine habit. The film was crucial to my understanding of composition, to my desire for an encyclopedic
construction (the world out there) and reaffirmed my allegiance to rhythm, specifically the rhythm of mind. (AC)
Shiver (1991); video, color, sound, 5 minutes, tape from the maker
Music composition: Dcue Mori: Performing musicians: Catherine Jauniaux (vocals), Zeena Parkins (accordion),
Hahn Rowe (violin), Dcue Mori (percussion).
Shiver is part two of 8 Million, a video album combining documentary and narrative elements: short
songs chart erotic tales in an urban topology. There are "8 million stories in the Naked City" and these are some of
them, circa the early 1990s. (AC)
"Abigail Child competes with Nam June Paik in this cacophonic storm of images in which experimental
music and eroticism swirl about each other." (World Wide Video Festival, 1992)
Prefaces (1981); 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
"Like Ornamentals, Prefaces is an abstract work which plays with formalist elements in a wide range of
images on color and negative stock. The rapid-fire crosscutting of the images is extended to the construction of the
soundtrack, which is also a dense panoply of fragments. What results is an impressive musique concrete
composition, a collage of 'female' sounds interwoven with others: snippets from vocal music, conversations,
poetry reading, etc. Child plays with memory, not only her own and the world's, but also cinema's: its
conventions, polarizations (man/woman) and hierarchization of images." (Robert Hilferty, New York Native)
Below the New: A Russian Chronicle (1999); video, color, sound, 30 minutes, tape from the maker
Combining video diary footage and archival material, Below the New: A Russian Chronicle documents
daily life and Russian and Soviet myth to portray the changes over the last decade. Intimate and historical, the
work rhythmically combines sound and image to explore the intersection between personal and collective memory.
(AC)
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"It would be interesting to compare Below the New with Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera.
Apart from a shared taste for a montage that takes into account the internal logic of the pictures, the latter depicts a
world dazed by Utopia and eager for a brighter future, whereas the former shows a nation whose conscience seems
to be incurably riveted on the past." (Bertrand Bacque, Visions du Nyon Documentary Festival Catalogue)
MOTIVES FOR MAYHEM
The Kinetic World of Abigail Child, Program Two
Abigail Child in Person
Co-Presented with ATA's Other Cinema
Saturday, October 14, 2000 — Artists ' Television Access — 8:30 pm
see October 12 series overview
Game (1972); 16mm, b&w, sound, print from the maker
Mutiny (1982); 16mm, color, sound, 11 minutes, print from the maker
"This movie is a new kind of classic, it has invented once and for all the machine-gun sound of
explosives and composed sentences with speeded-up speech and wild singing, laughter, hardly all understandable,
with violins screeching like falling bombs and a Hispanic grind dance... There are tender closeups in interviews
with women, and marvelous documents of dancers, street performers, all races and styles. These are brave and
straight-talking people; this is a feminist film, and it is important." (Anne Robertson, X-Dream)
B/Side (1996); 16mm, color, sound, 38 minutes, print from the maker
"...few of the films, experimental or otherwise, display the visual confidence and sociopolitical torque of
Abigail Child's meditation on homelessness, B/Side, which is as modest and resonant as most alternative film is
jejune." (Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice)
"B/Side shows the other side of Reaganomics. Abigail Child combines documentary with fiction and
smart wit in a poetic montage to present a complicated and heartfelt portrait of colonialism at home. These events
take place only a mile from Wall Street. The public is forced to look, even as the position of the camera changes.
Sometimes the camera is the bystander, at other moments it is the perspective of the homeless themselves." (The
Daily, Rotterdam Film Festival)
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2000 Program Notes
MOTIVES FOR MAYHEM
The Kinetic World of Abigail Child, Program Three
Abigail Child in Person
Co-Presented with ATA's Other Cinema
Sunday, October 15, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
see October 12 for series overview
Perils (1986); 16mm, b&w, sound, 5 minutes, print from the maker
An homage to silent films: the clash of ambiguous innocence and unsophisticated villainy. Seduction,
revenge, jealousy, combat. The isolation and dramatization of emotions through the isolation (camera) and
dramatization (editing) of gesture. I had long conceived of a film composed only of reaction shots in which all
causality was erased. What would be left would be the resonant voluptuous suggestions of history and the human
face. Perils is a first translation of these ideas. (AC)
Cast: Diane Torr, Sally Shivers, Plauto, Elion Sacker.
Sound Improvisations: Charles Noyes and Christian Marclay.
Covert Action (1984); 16 mm, b&w, sound, 10 minutes, print from the maker
"Covert Action disrupts the rhythm of remembrance by subverting the institution of the home movie. It
loops footage of two heterosexual couples on holiday: embracing, touching, stroking, playing leapfrog, awkwardly
arranging their bodies and posturing for the camera eye. The effect is a kind of choreographed dislocation dance, a
man with one woman, then another, two women together. Child subverts the truncated language of conventional
narrative cinema by interjecting title cards a la silent cinema as ironic counterpoint (THE WHOLE LUMPISH
QUESTION OF B'S PAST or HE HAD TO BE ELIMINATED) and uses a dialogue between two poets, Carta
Harryman and Steve Benson, to confound any hypothesis regarding the footage. A sexual politic steeped in
deception, a story only half revealed." (Madeline Leskin)
"Here rupture and repetition comprise the structuring principle. The film explodes in your face: it drives
on until its final image, a summation of its prehistory, history and future — a tree being uprooted. What could be a
more apt metaphor for the contemporary crisis in narrativity and sexuality?" (Robert Hilferty, New York Native)
Mayhem (1987); 16mm, b&w, sound, 20 minutes, print from the maker
Characters from Perils reappear, this time in a film noir setting, soap opera thrillers and Mexican comic
books generating the action. Perversely and equally inspired by de Sade's Justine and Vertov's sentences about the
satiric detective advertisement, Mayhem is my attempt to create a film in which Sound is the Character and to do
so focusing on sexuality and the erotic. Not so much to undo the entrapment (we fear what we desire; we desire
what we fear), but to frame fate, show up the rotation, upset the common, and incline our contradictions toward
satisfaction, albeit conscious. (AC)
Cast: Diane Torr, Ela Troyano, Plauto, Elion Sacker, Rex West.
Additional sound: Christian Marclay, Charles Noyes, Zeena Parkins, Shelley Hirsch.
Mercy (1989); 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes, print from the maker
Mercy, the last in the series, Is This What You Were Born For?, is encyclopedic ephemera, exploring
public visions of technological and romantic invention, dissecting the game mass media plays with our private
perceptions. (AC)
Surface NOISE (2000); 16mm, color, sound, 20 minutes, print from the maker
Found footage exploring public and private space, organized formally as a sonata, centered around work
and issues of class: the divisions between home and public, owners and workers.
Sound montage created by A. Child with additional recording: Zeena Parkins (synthesizer), Christian Marclay
(turntables), Shelley Hirsch (vocals) and Jim Black (drums).
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San Francisco Cinematheque
THERESA HAK KYUNG CHA'S EXILEE
An Installation for Super 8mm, Video and Sound
Made possible through the assistance of the Berkeley Art Museum
Sunday, October 22, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 and 9 pm
The late Korean-bom Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's body of film, video and installation has only recently begun to be
appreciated. Cha's delicate and profound installation, Exilee, which will be presented twice tonight, was featured in
CCAC's Searchlight exhibition last fall and will be included in a major retrospective of her work at the Berkeley
Art Museum.
Exilee (1980); installation incorporating video and Super 8mm, color, sound, 50 minutes, from the Berkeley Art
Museum
"A meditative, lyrical exploration of time, Exilee draws on the distinguishing characteristics of its two
mediums, Super 8mm film and video. In the differences between the rhythm of the editing, the scale of the
images, the quality and sources of the light, as well as the relationship between image and sound, Cha's recurring
concern with the theme of displacement emerges. Characteristically, the title itself plays with language, suggesting
both an exiled person and the act of living in exile." (Kathy Geritz, San Francisco Asian American Film Festival,
1995)
"Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's film and video installation, Exilee, uses repetition, fades and real and
metaphorical afterimages to allude to the fundamental role that memory plays in our consciousness. Exilee is
complex, interweaving historical, linguistic, spiritual and personal dimensions of memory into a single resonant
work. Cha alludes to Japan's efforts during its colonial administration of Korea to expunge the nation's memory of
its language and customs; simultaneously, she imbeds her own personal experience of exile and memory into its
larger historical and cognitive framework to evoke a sensation of how voluntary and involuntary memories (e.g.
afterimages) inflect our moment-to-moment consciousness." (Lawrence Rinder and George Lakoff, "Consciousness
Art: Attending to the Quality of Experience," Searchlight: Consciousness at the Millennium)
"Through her art, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha went beyond the idea and created, within the transaction that is
viewing a work, a poetic experience. In Exilee, which draws from film history and theory as well as Cha's own
experience, we see an investigation of exile, language and image relationships, and of the functions of the
cinematic and video apparatus. Here Cha returns us to our psychological and historical selves by exploring the
construction of the image and the memory of it. The sense of time as history is transmitted in Exilee through the
time of its memory.
"Cha's life as an artist was a complex itinerary across fields of dislocation, as she moved with her family
from Korea, where she was bom, to the United States. At the University of California, Berkeley, she studied film,
conceptual and performance art and the theoretical texts informing the discourse of film studies and filmmaking in
the 1970s. A selection of Theresa Cha's art work in a variety of media was shown at the Whitney Museum in 1992
in an exhibition guest-curated by Larry Rinder of the University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University
of California, Berkeley. Rinder' s essay located Cha's work within the complex of Conceptual art making in the
Bay Area and charted a unique path which Cha forged through that place and history. . .'
"Expressed in Cha's work is a powerful sense of how ideas (theory) compose, challenge and lie at the
basis of the aesthetic text. Her writings — especially the collection of texts entitled Apparatus — Cinematographic
Apparatus: Selected Writings (1980), an assemblage of film theorists' texts as well as her own poetic
interventions — are deep reflections on the cognitive machinery of the cinematic apparatus. Cha's other seminal
book, Dictee (1982), employs poetry, prose, found texts and photography to create an artist's book that extends
beyond that genre. Both texts highlight a profound sense of ideas and self-inquiry as a means to create a
speculative deconstruction of identity and the systems that construct the self.
"Cha's concern with language and form is demonstrated in Exilee, in which the conflation of the
cinematic projection and video monitor system within the work establishes a rich dialectic in terms of image and
language strategies. The first feature of the installation is the white, freestanding wall... Cut into the wall is a
rectangle; a television monitor sits directly behind this opening. A Super 8mm film made up of two reels is
projected onto the wall, which shows through time-lapse photography subtle changes in the definition and
articulation of the composition...
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2000 Program Notes
"The videotape seen on the monitor is, like the film, shot in black and white. It opens with an extended
title sequence that plays with the word exilee. As one watches on the monitor, still images dissolve into each
other... Cha's distinctive voice-over, with its delicate, deliberate phrases in French and English, evokes a further
poetic relationship between the meanings of different languages and images. There is, in Exilee, on one level, a
tension between the film image projected onto the screen and the video image which emanates from the cathode ray
tube. Cha describes Exilee as: 'an attempt to disinherit the existing Time construct, its repetition, to make Entry
into the Absence of established continuity and chronology in Time. Within memory is the Time that is
explored'."
"In this ambitious project, Cha both acknowledges exemplary art works and, through the power of her
own art, places herself within their history — American independent film and video works that have challenged and
sought to extend and transform the image-making capacities of their medium.
"Certain paradigmatic art works describe a similar transformation of traditional genre strategies and the
creation of other aesthetic ideas. [An] example would be Marlon Riggs' Tongues Untied (1989), which employs a
variety of formal strategies as well as performative, story telling, poetic, autobiographic and historical reflections
to reground the definition of self within a gay epistemology of personal discovery and expression. Another
exemplar is Leslie Thornton's epic film and video series Peggy and Fred in Hell: The First Cycle (1984-94),
which destabilizes the authority of the recorded image with strategies employed by the artist to disrupt the
economy of the linear narrative. It is a work which creates out of a shifting catalogue of stylistic
categories — documentary, cinema verite, acted narrative and found footage — to evoke a hybrid discourse of the
histories of the media arts.
"Other exemplary texts taken from the early history of film and video include Stan Brakhage's
Anticipation of the Night (1958), which radically removed the camera from the stabilizing authority of its point of
view and created a visionary search through the optics of the camera — a quest which erased the coordinates of
representation with an abstract image field. Further, in Peter Campus' videotape, Three Transitions (1973), an
exploration of the unique manipulation and recording capabilities of the video camera and technology, the artist
constructed three self-portraits to explore the construction of the recorded image through its simulation of reality.
In Michael Snow's film Wavelength (1966-67), the camera traverses the space of a loft and gradually closes in on a
photograph on the opposite wall. The 45-minute film records the actions of its own relentless process, which
becomes an inquiry into the transcription of the filmic space and a treatment of the ambiguities of the recorded
film text.
"Each artist struggles to remake the medium into a personal form of expression tied to the signs of
language and the creation of new meanings. To recall Riggs, Campus, Brakhage, Snow and Cha is to meet Cha's
challenge to recall time and history, ourselves and our ideologies, as expressions in constant need of
remembering. . .
"Exilee and Cha's other works belong not on the edges of historical and regional art movements but more
centrally within a reexamination of the role and importance of film and video to artists in the 1970s and 1980s
working in the Conceptual Art and structural film movements. Cha's work belongs at the critical juncture where
film and video both separate and align." (John G. Hanhart, Curator, Film and Video, Whitney Museum of
American Art)
'Film program note, University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive Calendar, University of California,
Berkeley
"See "Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard" (Program Note 69), Whitney Museum of
American Art, New American Film and Video Series, 1993, which contains Rinder's essay on Cha as well as
biographical and bibliographical information on Cha and her work.
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GLIMPSES OF STORIES THAT REFUSE TO BE TOLD
New Work By Women of the Chicago Art Institute
Amie Siegel, Sarah Jane Lapp and Jenny Perlin In Person
Thursday, October 26, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Tonight we present three visually stunning and formally audacious films made by women who studied or teach at
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Siegel's The Sleepers hauntingly orchestrates a series of voyeuristic
glimpses into the windows of a Chicago night; Lapp and Perlin's Happy Are the Happy combines anecdotes told
by a variety of people living in Prague, including refugees from the former Yugoslavia and concentration camp
survivors. Part meditation on a woman's midlife search for meaning, part essay on and experiment in cinematic
form, Michele Fleming's Life/Expectancy creates a rich visual and conceptual tapestry of autobiography.
Provocative and seductive, each of these films gives us, in Fleming's words, a "glimpse of stories that refuse to be
told." (I. Leimbacher)
The Sleepers (1999) by Amie Siegel; 16mm, color, sound, 45 minutes, print from the maker
The Sleepers was shot entirely at night, using the urban architecture of distant windows to explore the
tensions between public and private, intimacy and alienation, the performative and the real, the lyrical and the
vernacular. The background of darkness is the unconscious from which the film emerges, night and privacy
holding out the promise of the erotic. The film seeks to draw attention to and investigate the real contradictions
present in film language via cinema's primary preoccupation — looking, or scopophilia. Tensions between the
violated space of the subjects and the dislocations of the constructed sound create a dialectic of desire and truth, the
push and pull of narrative longing. To watch the film is not only to become complicit with the voyeuristic act but
also to engage actively in the fulfillment of narrative and interpretation that voyeurism (and cinema) implies. All
narrative is deferral. All deferral is erotic. (AS)
Happy Are the Happy (1999) by Sarah Jane Lapp and Jenny Perlin; 16mm, color, sound, 18 minutes, print from
the makers
Life/Expectancy (1999) by Michele Fleming; 16mm, b&w, sound, 30 minutes, print from the maker
Life/Expectancy meditates on a woman's midlife search for meaning. In order to find "her own story" the woman
feels — in every cell of her body, to risk a cliche. (MF)
JAMES BENNING'S EL VALLEY CENTRO
James Benning In Person
Sunday, October 29, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
For more than twenty years, James Benning has been making films of the American landscape which combine
elegant formal compositions and structures with subtle political and social critique. His latest, El Valley Centra,
presents a portrait of California's agricultural Central Valley through thirty-five two-and-a-half-minute views, each
coupled with synchronous audio tracks but devoid of overt commentary. Seeming random at first, these elements
accumulate meaning and take on organization as the film progresses, ultimately presenting this strangely quiet yet
highly industrialized landscape as a complex nexus of social, political and environmental forces. El Valley Centro
is the first of a three-part series. Benning will return to present the second part, Los, this winter. (Steve Polta)
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2000 Program Notes
El Valley Centro (1999); 16mm, color, sound, 90 minutes, print from the maker
... a little formalism turns one away from History, but a lot brings one back to it. (Roland Barthes,
"Myth Today")
On viewing James Benning 's most recent work, it is clear that he has passed through minimalism and/or
structuralism, has been affected by it, yet has taken his work in radically new directions. One characteristic element
of minimalism was a modular approach to composition. Objects could ostensibly be arranged in many different
orders, based on fundamental formal similarities (such as size or shape), making the organization or arrangement of
semi-independent elements into a viable compositional strategy. One of Benning 's earlier works, One Way Boogie
Woogie (1977), uses the shot as a basic modular unit. While very consciously arranged for compositional effect
and thematic continuity, the one-minute duration of the film's sixty shots provides a sense of temporal
modularity, implying a kinship with the 'primary structures' of Donald Judd and Carl Andre. By adopting an
abstract formal principle with which to govern what can happen in the film, Benning gives One Way Boogie
Woogie 's aural and visual revelations a solid framework to play against, dialectically.
The frame imposed by a static camera, or a predetermined shot length, allows us to perceive human and
natural phenomena with greater clarity. But Benning 's latter-day work uses these bracketing procedures to draw
attention to other, more commonplace structures, such as those which exist in the social and political spheres.
1995 's Deseret, for example, provides a history of the state of Utah, from 1852-1992, drawn from Utah-related
stories in the New York Times. The images we see are of landscapes and manmade structures throughout Utah,
images whose stunning composition serves to draw our attention back to the frame, to what it encloses as well as
excludes. With Deseret, Benning organizes sound, image, and narration, as independent variables, into a film
whose structural integrity is in part secured by Utah itself.
But then, what is Utah? As the news articles are read in voiceover, they provide us with a concrete history
of the state. But at the same time, this history reveals the contingency of bounded borders, of what a state or a
nation is. The struggle to settle Utah was, in many ways, the imposition of an arbitrary frame — as arbitrary as a
60-second-per-shot rule or strict use of a stationary camera — except that political structures have a way of effacing
themselves, appearing self-evident. In Deseret, Benning enframes Utah in a way which asks viewers to consider the
historical enframing that is Utah itself.
With El Valley Centro, Benning again employs a modular framework which gives an overall formal shape
to his subject. Each shot is two-and-a-half minutes long, filmed from a single unmoving camera position. The
viewer encounters a series of landscape views of California's Great Central Valley. Some of the sequences contain
humans and other living beings interacting with or existing in the space depicted, while others demonstrate other
evidence of human intervention such as highways, prisons and pipelines. By presenting uninterrupted camera rolls,
Benning applies a formal principle which asks the viewer to become attuned to small, subtle changes in the
depicted scene. In El Valley Centro, Benning uses duration to invite the viewer to more fully inhabit the scene, to
attend to those spaces around us which many of us have learned to ignore. Each shot is a discreet slice of space and
time. In El Valley Centro, this modular quality provides the shots with a sense of simultaneity or presentness, as
if all of what we see and hear is happening now, within the region Benning is investigating. Some of the shots are
poignant, others are chilling, and still others are very funny, owing to Benning 's unique subversion of perceptual
expectations.
Benning 's formal framework serves to dramatize the variety of activity (labor, recreation, transportation
and the earth 's own undulating rhythms) within the Central Valley. The variety of these images seems all the more
significant since, among urban Califomians, the Central Valley (a region which provides food for one-fourth of the
U.S. population) is often unfairly perceived as an empty space, a fly-over or drive-thru zone between San Francisco
and Los Angeles. In showing us just how much there is to see, El Valley Centro extends the concerns of earlier
work, such as 11X14 (1976), Landscape Suicide (1986) and the recent Four Corners (1997), which also focus
sustained attention on U.S. locations away from major 'cultural centers,' engaging in respectful inquiry and
conferring aesthetic value where few other filmmakers have ventured.
As an examination of a space in between Benning 's title, El Valley Centro, calls to mind Michael Snow 's
1971 landscape film La Region Centrale. Snow's film relentlessly examines the central region of Canada, an
uninhabited tundra. El Valley Centro 's landscape is quite inhabited, and is very much alive. It is a center not only
of agricultural activity but home to elements vital to the status quo of business and government, such as state
prisons and undocumented immigrant labor, which are strategically kept on the periphery of public view. The
'absence' revealed at the heart of the Central Valley, then, is not an absence of human activity, as in Snow 's film,
but the apparent absence of a visible power structure, one which is shown to be legible in the landscape itself.
While Benning 's method, his unerring eye for composition, and his observational stance allow the
Central Valley to tell its own story as much as it can, El Valley Centro' % concluding sequence, which recaps and
verbally describes all that has gone before, serves to retroactively recode everything the film has shown us up to
that point, making clear the hidden political and social forces moving through the landscape. Part of the story is
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San Francisco Cinematheque
precisely what is hidden from view, and without the consideration of those objective structures which do not meet
the eye or the ear, El Valley Centro would be incomplete.
Program Notes written by Michael J. Sicinsky
Tree — Line and Others by Gunvor Nelson
Gunvor Nelson in Person
Thursday November 2, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Swedish-American filmmaker Gunvor Nelson lived in the Bay Area for over thirty years and taught at the San
Francisco Art Institute for twenty of those years. Her work and influence still resonate strongly across local
screens and around local filmmakers. For the first time since 1995, San Francisco Cinematheque welcomes this
cinematic poet in a program of her painterly and coolly sensual films, including the premier of her new video,
Tree — Line, "a minimalistic video, a kind of repetitious stammering with complex variations and locomotion."
Also included will be screenings of Nelson's richly evocative and haunting film tapestries: Light Years
Expanding, "a journey through Swedish landscape, traversing stellar distances in units of 5878 trillion miles;" Old
Digs, "an inner journey through the sights and sounds of Kristineham, Sweden as reflected in its central river;" and
pieces from another recent video work, Collected Evidence. (Steve Polta)
Tree — Line (1998); digital video, color, sound, 8 minutes, tape from the maker
Light Years Expanding (1998); 16mm, color, sound, 25 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
An extension in theme and technique of a previous film, Light Years. (GN)
"All her recent films suggest that while the distance of time makes home further, the intensity of memory
makes it richer." {Parabola)
Selections from Collected Evidence: 52 Weeks (1999); digital video; color, sound, 10 minutes, tape from the
maker
Old Digs (1992); 16mm, color, sound, 20 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
"In Nelson's cinema of evocation we shift from past to present.. .from the flat space of the film frame to
the three-dimensionality of objects. Constructed through collaging snapshots, live action footage and small
objects, and through painting on glass and photographs, Nelson's beautiful, enigmatic animations have a personal
vocabulary of the found, the made, the remembered, the imagined." (Kathy Geritz)
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2000 Program Notes
VERY HARD WORK YOU'RE ASKING ME TO DO
The Cinema of Gregg Biermann
Gregg Biermann and Ron Mazurek In Person
Sunday, November 5, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
New York/New Jersey film and video artist Gregg Biermann presents film, video and real-time music video as
performed live by electronic composer Ron Mazurek. "Attempts to reconcile representational and abstract images
and structure, Biermann' s films and videos teeter on the friendly chasm betwixt the lyrical and the structural."
(Brian Frye) Conventionally projected works to be shown include: The Hobgoblin of Little Minds, Dissonances,
Windows of Appearances and Detached Americans. Real-time video performances Piano Etude and Into Whiteness
blur the line between cine-recording and musical performance. Video sequences are triggered by a digital electronic
keyboard as played by Ron Mazurek. In this way "edits" are created and montage is improvised in the course of the
live performance.
Since my 16mm films Giants of the Sea (1992) and You Never Worry (1993), many of my movies have been
single entities comprised of a series of almost whole separate shorter movies inside. This is the result of my
approach to sequential organization of moving pictures, which is like the organizing forces of a storm, with an eye,
and torrents spinning out from the center. There isn't a perfect mathematical pattern in these compositions, but
there are distinct episodes with edges, and their currents exert force on each other — usually pushing away from a
nearest neighbor but also calling across time to another. These currents are arrived at by eliciting different kinds of
attention from the viewer (from the most base physiological response to other higher brain functions), causing a
fissure each time there is a shift. (GB)
The Hobgoblin of Little Minds (1999); video, color, sound, 8 minutes, tape from the maker
"Gregg Biermann's The Hobgoblin of Little Minds mixes abstract imagery and representational
photography to create powerful visual disruptions, the pieces seeming to spin away from each other by returning to
certain images — often banal ones such as a store sign — he suggests a mind haunted by trauma." (Fred Camper, The
Chicago Reader)
Dissonances (2000); video, color, sound, 14 minutes, tape from the maker
"In Gregg Biermann's enigmatic Dissonances... black and white stills from an airline flight suggest a
disaster (oxygen masks, passengers in crash position), as does an urban roadway once we realize it was JFK's
roadway in Dallas. Biermann denies the usual meanings: some sections are silent, and the shifting relationship
between the sound and imagery seems somehow to relate to the sense of disaster." (Fred Camper, The Chicago
Reader)
Piano Etude (2000); live electronic music/video performance with Ron Mazurek, 10 minutes
A prepared piano piece for the 21 st century in which the line between live performance and cinema
recording is blurred. Musical events as well as cinema edits are triggered live via a MIDI keyboard. Piano Etude
was conceived of first as a para-cinema performance where the music does not exist as a separate entity from the
image. In fact, we were most interested in the play of synchronous sound and image with more musical sounds
which are not bound to an image sequence. In order to give Ron some freedom to improvise I had to compose
sequences which could be played in a variety of different relationships and still work. We both like the economy
of this piece. There doesn't seem to be anything extra. (GB)
Into Whiteness (2000); live electronic music/video performance with Ron Mazurek, 8 minutes
This is the first of my collaborations with composer Ron Mazurek. The visuals were set to the music,
which was already complete when I began to work on the image. After playing with images with Ron's mostly
fixed composition we had to make adjustments in the arrangement of the images on the keys and we came up with
the convention of putting images only on the white keys, leaving more freedom for polyphony with the black
keys. We also eliminated some of the polyphony so as to make the sound/image relationships clearer. Ron has
found some interesting cinematic as well as musical events in the material. (GB)
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Window of Appearances (1996); 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes, print from the maker
In 1 992 my friend and colleague Francis Schmidt began work on a way to transfer video to film by using
the serial port on a home computer to very accurately control film camera motors. When I arrived in Chicago in
early 1994 he suggested that I create a piece on the computer and transfer it onto film. I then proceeded to create a
piece in the antiquated 1 -bit/pixel environment, in spite of the tendency for technologies to be created and
abandoned before significant works are created with them. The work is the apotheosis of the Amiga computer and a
nostalgia piece for modernism. It recalls abstract animation of the 1 920s, early computer sound experiments like
those done at Bell Telephone Labs in the 1950s and the first video game, Pong. (GB)
"With minimalist imagery generated entirely on a computer, Biermann defies the 'bigger, louder, faster'
mentality that has become the norm of computer graphic artists, in favor of simple black and white abstractions
that explore the space of the screen. When accompanied by his original composition the objects seem to be creating
sound, often to unexpectedly silly ends." (Scott Trotter, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago)
Detached Americans (1993); 16mm, color, sound, 9 minutes, print from the maker
"Young filmmakers today produce challenging work but offer their art as tentative, provisional,
incomplete, without purporting to reach conclusions. In Detached Americans, Gregg Biermann pans a San
Francisco landscape with the camera tilted sideways and adds the voice of a boy who witnessed the L.A. Riots to
create a displaced feeling." (Fred Camper, The Chicago Reader)
JUST GET ME OUT OF HERE
New Films by Timoleon VVilkins and Jeremy Coleman
Timoleon VVilkins and Jeremy Coleman in Person
Thursday, November 9, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
From mystical desert landscapes to neo-real Korean city scenes, these short poetic works by two San Francisco-
based filmmakers create a world of warmth and clarity where vibrant hues contrast with silky pastels in a common
exploration of unfamiliar territory. Tonight's program includes two San Francisco premieres: Coleman's Hankook
Trilogy, an interpretive cine-graph of Korean society and Wilkins' Chinatown Sketch, a sensuous, layered diary of
street life in San Francisco's Chinatown district. (TW & JC)
The Hankook Trilogy (1999) by Jeremy Coleman
The Hankook Trilogy is an attempt to capture the daily rhythms of Korean Society. In this sense it is a
series of films caught between modernity and traditional currents. Cheong Ju echoes like a cleaver never hitting
the block, while cell phones and pop music can be heard in the background. NE3 is a play between the rigid
geometry of neon signs and the frenzy of nightlife. 01 She Gu is a celebration of a majestic culture. It is a
culmination of joy and ecstasy to end the trilogy through Samulnoree (a traditional four instrument percussive
style of music), which leads to elation and the hope that Korean society will overcome its westernization. (JC)
Cheong Ju (1999) by Jeremy Coleman; 16mm, color, sound, 6 minutes
Named after the South Korean city that I lived in for a year, Cheong Ju is a time capsule with a
choreographed editing style that flows like a market vendor cutting fish and a child chasing pigeons in the
park. Lush in pastels, it portrays the subtle and not so subtle rhythms of daily life in a small Korean
city. (JC)
NE3 (1999) by Jeremy Coleman; 16mm, color, silent, 5.5 minutes
A play between gestured camera strokes and the harsh geometry of neon signs. (JC)
01 She Gu (1999) by Jeremy Coleman; 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes
Ol She Gu is a cinegraph of a Korean traditional drum and dance performance called Samulnoree.
Samulnoree literally translated means a four-instrument song. During the breaks in the performance the
Samulnoree group will urge the audience to sing, ol she gu!, or, "you rock!:" hence the title of the film.
(JC)
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2000 Program Notes
/, Zupt 49 (1994) by Jeremy Coleman; 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes
A hand-painted film inspired by medieval stained glass and the paintings of Chagall. Enigmatic in form,
/, Zupt 49 is a spiritual interlude. (JC)
Ecclesiastic Vibrance (1995-96) by Jeremy Coleman; 16mm, color, silent, 2.75 minutes
A hand-painted film inspired by high gothic stained glass and the discovery of a baby star cluster in the
crab nebula: a concomitant, cosmic journey through consciousness and space. (JC)
Chinatown Sketch (1998) by Timoleon Wilkins; 16mm, color, silent, 17 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
Lake of the Spirits by Timoleon Wilkins; 16mm, color, sound, 7 minutes, print from the maker
untitled camera rolls by Timoleon Wilkins
SOME KIND OF LOVING TOUR
All Night Long with Miranda July and Astria Suparak
Miranda July and Astria Suparak In Person, assisted by Zac Love
Friday, November 10, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 9 pm
With her widely shown single-channel video, Nest of Tens, featured in this year's Rotterdam Film Festival and
performance work, Love Diamond, recently presented at the Kitchen and New York Video Festival,
performance/video artist Miranda July makes her first Cinematheque appearance with excerpts from her latest
multi-media work, The Swan Tool. The Swan Tool will be preceded by a presentation by New York curator Astria
Suparak of Some Kind of Loving, the latest in July's Big Miss Moviola/ Joanie 4 Jackie compilation video series.
Some Kind of Loving: Joanie 4 Jackie Co-Star Tape #3; curated by Astria Suparak
No Place Like Home #1 by Karen Yasinsky; video, color, sound, 5 minutes
No Place Like Home #2 by Karen Yasinsky; video, color, sound, 6 minutes
Fine Lines by Jane Gang; Super 8mm screened as video, 5 minutes
Lullaby by Jennifer Reeder; video, color, sound, 1 8 minutes
pornfilm by Stephanie Barber; 16mm screened as video, color, sound, 6 minutes
Martina's Playhouse by Peggy Ahwesh; Super 8mm screened as video, color, sound, 20 minutes
Some Kind of Loving explores sexuality from its formation in childhood, through adolescence and into adulthood,
referencing psychoanalytic theory as easily as pop culture. The six works contained all variously decode desire and
address the ethics or cultural codes of healthy vs. naughty expressions of lust via pornography, voyeurism,
parent/child relationships, memories and fantasy. Techniques used include low-grade video, hand-processed Super-8
film, optical printing, stop-motion animation and manipulated found-footage.
Some kind of loving for the adolescents. And then some.
X.O.X.O.
Conditional love + withHolding. Temporality, vs. Ideal life-long, 4-ever.
Sexuality as rooted in power: 1) Initiation. 2.+ 3.) Giving vs. receiving. 4.) Keeping track. A learned behavior.
Joanie 4 Jackie, an alternative distribution network for female moviemakers, has a unique core audience of young
females. When asked to curate a videotape for J4J, I wanted to work with issues I was dealing with during those
years of unsuredness. The tension, the awkwardness in initial contact/s; wanting deeply to be desired (= Validation).
"Is this what I get for Loving you?"
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San Francisco Cinematheque
I want girls to have images of screen-sized vaginas in their own homes. To grow up with this image and be
comfortable with it.
On this videotape you will find this. And more. You will find six movies of real and fake lives. You can reminisce
or project or imagine. This is a real love story. Wear it on your sleeve, carve it in a tree. (Astria Suparak)
The Swan Tool (selected excerpts) (2001) by Miranda July; live movie
"The concept is simple, but the implications are profound. Take the premise that girls are always making
movies in their heads because they are constantly being watched. So maybe what happens when you turn the camera
on yourself and stop looking through the eyes of others is that you become your own fantasy. And other people
start to see the world the way you do, and the 'missing movies,' the stories that don't usually get told, suddenly
become available." (Ada Calhoun, The Austin Chronicle)
Combining performance, live music and projected video with direct image manipulation, The Swan Tool
is a "live movie" starring July as Lisa Cobb, a technician who is waiting to die, fall in love or win the lottery. So
what she does is this: she buries herself in her backyard. Following the self-burial she attempts to continue living
and working. But the thing in the hole won't die and she can't forget about it. Parallel to and below this is a second
movie, starring a hairy non-human form discovered by a picnicking family. These two movies evolve slowly and
eventually collide. At the point of this subtle intersection between the two halves of the split screen, there is another
collapse as the audience members become cast as characters in the story. The swan tool is the name of a tool used to
unlock the doors when women accidentally lock their babies in cars. It is this tool that Lisa Cobb misuses in an
attempt to find life on earth. (Miranda July)
...there is all this feeling and desire to connect and tell a story, but there's a huge space between that desire
and actually having support and resources. I think it takes at least one person saying, "Yes, you should do it." For
the Missing Movie Report I just went around with a camera and tape recorder and asked, "If you could make a
movie, what would it be about?" And I think if I could distribute unmade movies I would. People always ask,
"What movies are you influenced by?" and I think for me the movies that I'm influenced by are the unmade movies,
other people's desires that aren't fulfilled or realized. They're often so much more poignant than the things that
actually get processed and put in the world. (Miranda July)
WHAT HAPPENED TO BIG MISS MOVIOLA?
Magnasync/Moviola Corporation threatened to sue me if I didn't stop using their trademarked name (Moviola.)
(As it turns out they own this word). I tried to explain to them that Big Miss Moviola existed in the minds of girls
and wasn't just a website or company. But what do they care. They have chosen death again and again and the
thought of living gives them a headache now. (Miranda July)
OPEN HOUSE PARTY
Saturday, November 11, 2000 — Hunters Point Naval Shipyard — 12 to 6 pm
Save the date for the San Francisco Cinematheque Open House, Saturday Nov. 11, 2000, Noon to 6 pm. Come
and celebrate with us as we showcase our new office and preview space in picturesque Hunters Point Naval
Shipyard (Building 1 16). Potluck Barbecue outside and films in our new preview screening room.
Flight (1996) by Greta Snider; 16mm, b&w, silent, 5 minutes, print from the maker
removed (1999) by Naomi Uman; 16mm, b&w, sound, 6.5 minutes, print from the maker
Lake of the Spirits (1998) by Timoleon Wilkins; 16mm, color, sound, 7 minutes, print from the maker
The Adventure Parade (2000) by Kerry Laitala; 16mm, b&w, sound, print from the maker
A Different Kind of Green (1989) by Thad Povey; 16mm, color, sound, 6 minutes, print from the maker
OlShe Gu (1999) by Jeremy Coleman; 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes, print from the maker
Tuning the Sleeping Machine (1996) by David Sherman; 16mm, color, sound, 13 minutes, print from the maker
Ashley (1997) by Animal Charm; video, color, sound, 9 minutes, tape from the makers
Salute (1999) by Bruce Baillie; video, color, sound, tape from the maker
Don from Lake wood by Eric Saks; video, b&w, sound, tape from the maker
Barbie's Audition (1995) by Joe Gibbons; video, b&w, sound, 9 minutes, tape from the maker
Pretty Boy by Joe Gibbons; video, b&w, sound, tape from the maker
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2000 Program Notes
9 Videos by Stuart Sherman (selections) by Stuart Sherman; video, color, sound
Work (1995) by Pelle Lowe and Saul Levine; Super 8mm screened as video; color, sound, 9 minutes, tape from
the makers
Posers (2000) by Scott Stark; video, color, sound, tape from the maker
Detector (1987) by Scott Stark; Super 8mm, color, sound, 5 minutes, print from the maker
AN HOMAGE TO SIDNEY PETERSON
William Heicke In Person
Sunday, November 12, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
The death of artist, writer and filmmaker Sidney Peterson on April 24 at age 94 marked, in the words of Amos
Vogel, "the end of an era." In little more than three years, Oakland-bom Peterson helped usher in the vibrant
movement of San Francisco avant-garde filmmaking, which continues to this day, while also establishing the
teaching of personal filmmaking within a fine-art context for the first time anywhere. Working with his
"Workshop 20" students at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), Peterson co-
produced four witty and darkly surreal films between 1947 and 1949. These films will be shown tonight in honor
or his memory. Peterson's 95 th birthday would have been November 15 .
"If ever there was a time for taking inventory it was at the end of WWII. And San Francisco was a nice
place to do it in. I think it was the one urban center in the whole world where respectable old ladies gathering for
a cup of tea in a public place enjoyed being mistaken for retired Madams. It was a city hanging loose, a small
pocket edition, for a brief period, of the Vienna of Wittgenstein and Musil, and the Zurich of Tzara, the Cologne,
the Berlin, the Paris, the Hanover, the New York of Dada. They were part of the inventory. And I should add that
the local speech was characterized by a hard pronunciation of then letter r, Dryden's Liter a canina, the dog letter, a
certain sign of satirical wit.
"But why film? Was it not because it was the most contemporary medium and hence the most primitive?
With film, one might, perhaps, recommence, revise, in short, create new, larger and more inclusive images. We
were a movie generation, as later, there was to be a TV generation. Almost the entire history of the medium had
developed during one's lifetime, which stretched back to the nickelodeon, if not quite to Plateau or Lucretius, who
had once discussed images, the imagination and dreams in a way that made some think he was describing an
optical device. Nor did film mean Hollywood any more than automobile meant Detroit. We had switched to
Hillmans and MG's and, for the most abstract expressionist among us, a secondhand Jaguar. In the conic mirror I
was using, the reshuffling of film history gave a new importance to a combination of the primitive and the avant-
garde, from Melies to Dali and Buftuel and all those in between who had never stopped regarding the usable future
from its unusable past." (Sidney Peterson, The Dark of the Screen)
The Cage (1947); 16mm, b&w, sound, 25 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
The Cage was not intended to be a portrait of a schizophrenic in air-conditioned confinement. It has
about as much to do with Bufiuel/Dali as the eggcase of a female cockroach has to do with Hieronymous Bosch.
It may look like, act like, but it's not. What is involved is a complicated equation of ideas and images, the whole
point of the solution of which is that X is allowed to continue to remain X, equal to itself only. So much for the
philosophic, not to say mathematical aspect. Besides being a balanced equation, The Cage is a somewhat comic
fable and as such may be deciphered as easily as last month's bill.
...If half a century from now somebody falls off a ladder as a result of a sudden realization that the
gradual coming into focus of a plaster bust in the opening shot represents the history of art from blur to plug hat,
thus disposing in four feet of film of the absurd tradition that the aesthetic impulse is a dolled-up version of the
involitional mimicry of butterflies and shellfish, the producers of the film cannot, of course, be responsible. Such
compressions of meaning are inseparable from the non-Aristotelian position. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to
suppose that most of The Cage 's obscurities, such as they are, may be safely disregarded except by those who have
a taste for such things. I merely wish to point out that the period of incubation for an idea caught from a film (or
anything else) may be a lifetime, and it is entirely unnecessary for an audience to break out in a rash of
significations before the lights go on. (SP)
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San Francisco Cinematheque
The Petrified Dog (1948); 16mm, b&w, sound, 18 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
"In theme, [The Petrified Dog] might be called the further adventures of Alice in Wonderland. The
heroine Alice climbs out a hole in a park with her characteristic broad Victorian child's hat into a world where we
have already seen a painter working within an empty frame, a slow motion runner hardly getting anywhere, a lady
in fast motion eating her lipstick and a photographer who sets up his camera with a delayed shutter so that he can
stand on pedestals and be snapped as a statue. Into this Wonderland she crawls.... (SP)
"The events of the film are essentially disconnected. We see them in the order in which Alice,
continually blinking, turns her shutter-like gaze on them. Peterson operated the camera himself. . . He eschewed
the dynamic movements that characterize all his other films... The stasis of the camera functions organically
within the film: there is a sense that the episodes and gags are eternal, contiguous realities, not progressive events
and the camera style emphasizes the discreteness and fixity of the separate scenes..." (P. Adams Sitney, Visionary
Film)
The Lead Shoes (1949); 16mm, b&w, sound, 18 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
"It is vitally important for a full appreciation of The Lead Shoes to try and beat it at its own game — to try
to follow its many levels of meaning clear through — because only these experiences of mental defeat really open
the viewer to the film. Try as you will — and exactly as in a gambling casino — you cannot win, cannot wring a
coherent set of meanings from the film. Sidney has stacked the deck masterfully! The means, or themes, of The
Lead Shoes are deliberately edited at cross-purposes. No simple warp and woof here, but rather one of the most
masterful frays of meaning ever created — thus, one of the greatest celebrations of Mystery I have ever experienced.
"We have to realize that when we speak of Peterson's sense of comedy in film, we are up against the 'big
guns' of intentional comedy... We are up against Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and many others of that
caliber. . . We cannot view them in the same context as commercial films, but as art. That would be the whole
point, and a point which I think would amuse Sidney very much." (Stan Brakhage, Film at Wit's End)
Mr. Frenhofer and the Minotaur (1949); 16mm, b&w, sound, 21 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
"It was my decision to do a thing about the Balzac story [Le Chef-d' Oeuvre Inconnu]. Taking seriously
as the theme of the story the conflict between Pouissin's Classicism and its opposite. So as strained though my
mind it became, really, a way of exploring the conflict state in Rousseau's remark to Picasso: 'We are the two
greatest painters, you in the Egyptian manner; and I in the modem.' In a sense [I was] taking the quest for
absolute beauty in the Balzac character and contrasting that with Picassoidal Classicism, the imitation of
[Picasso's] Minitaurmachia. It was not necessarily thought out clearly as though one were writing an essay; this
was thematic material. Then the chips fell, partly again, in response to the curious limitations of doing this sort
of thing with people who were not even 'anti-actors'". (Sidney Peterson, quoted in P. Adams Sitney, Visionary
Film)
Special thanks to William Heicke, Peterson's collaborator on these films, for making an appearance tonight.
FROM TITO-MATERIAL TO ANDY HARDY
Recent Films from Austria
Thursday, November 16, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Tonight's program includes a wide range of recent films from the Austrian avant-garde, including two in 35mm.
Using lost and found footage, home movies and meticulously rephotographed images, the works are political,
personal and structural. Works screened include: Elke Groen's rephotographed Tito-Material; Lisl Ponger's
playful critique of travel movies, deja vu; Katherin Resetarits' look at deafness, Egypt; Peter Tscherkassky's
playful Outer Space; Gustav Deutsch's trenchant Mariage Blanc; Thomas Steiner's lovely Pan; Martin Arnold's
tour-de-force, Alone, Life Wastes Andy Hardy; and Siegfried Fruhauf s La Sortie. (Irina Leimbacher)
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2000 Program Notes
Tito-Material (1998) by Elke Groen; 16mm, color, 6 minutes, print from sixpackfilm
Found footage: film images which show Tito in various contexts-public appearances, with partisans,
privates shaving etc. Location of find: a destroyed cinema in Mostar 1996. However, the reconstruction which took
place in the optical printer is of course also an alternative draft to the principally narrative models. Traces of the
war are not to be found primarily on the representational level, but rather in the damage caused by debris and damp
on the material itself and in its processing. (Birgit Flos)
deja vu (1999) by Lisl Ponger; 35mm, color, 21 minutes, print from sixpackfilm
The fascinated gaze on the foreigners fixes them in pre-formed frames. Lisl Ponger follows the trail of that
gaze by taking amateur found footage material and linking it together in new ways. She summons up atmospheric
background sounds and adds a series of voices. With a subtle distance to the visual foreground, those people who
are pictured in the west as much more homogenous than they are have the word - in the diverse languages of the
'other'. They tell, untranslated, of their experiences with various forms of colonialism - whether as subjects in
their own countries or as the expelled and transformed 'foreigner'. (Christa Blumlinger)
Egypt (1997) by Kathrin Resetarits; 16mm, b&w, 10 minutes, print from sixpackfilm
Egypt is a film which is almost silent. A film about deaf mutes, or rather about their sign language, a
language which, like the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, links the symbolic terminology of words with the mimetic
and analogous representations of graphic gestures. Sober black and white scenes show how "shark," "widow,"
"Marilyn Monroe," a James Bond sequence, a Viennese song or the account of a treasure hunt undertaken by two
holidaymakers in Egypt look in the sign language. Its is a very modest indication, and introduction to an
unfamiliar way of experiencing the work, where one sees the sounds without hearing them. (Drehli Robnik)
Outer Space (1999) by Peter Tscherkassky; 35mm, b&w, 10 minutes, print from sixpackfilm
A woman, terrorized by an invisible and aggressive force, is also exposed to the audience's gaze, a
prisoner in two senses. Outer Space agitates this construction, which is prototypical for gender hierarchies and
classic cinema's viewing regime, and allows the protagonist to turn them upside down.(...) Flickering images,
everything crashes, explodes; perforations and the soundtrack are engaged in a violent struggle. (...)The story ends
in the woman's resistant gaze. (Isabella Reicher)
Mariage Blanc (1996) by Gustav Deutsch; 16mm, color, 5 minutes, print from sixpackfilm
Mariage Blanc in Morocco means a sham marriage between a Moroccan man and a European woman in
order to obtain a residence permit and thereafter the citizenship of a European country. (Gustav Deutsch)
Pan (1998) by Thomas Steiner; 16mm, color, silent, 5 minutes, print from sixpackfilm
A simulated camera movement, an endless pan in single frames over stems and trunks of leafless bushes
and trees. Acceleration, multiple exposure and overpainting cause increasing abstraction of the passing landscape to
the graphic moment of vertical lines and grids. (Gerald Weber)
Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998) by Martin Arnold; 16mm, b&w, 15 minutes, print from sixpackfilm
In Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy the ever-young Mickey Rooney together with the immortal Judy
Garland are cloned in an experimental "back-yard-musical". The staring point is a number of scenes from the days
when both the adolescents romped through the family series and Busby Berkeley musicals. These are put in a new
order and before our eyes run forwards and backwards in a "gentle adagio". Andy Hardy (M.R.), the all — American
sunny boy of the 30s and 40s returns as an oedipally destroyed teenie clone to be released from his suffering by
Betsy's (J.G.) singing and kiss. Overlay here are the melancholic musical scores from Brown, Freed and others
which will melt over the pictures (in forward and reverse) like icing sugar. (Martin Arnold)
La Sortie (1998) by Siegfried A. Fruhauf; 16mm, b&w, 6 minutes, print from sixpackfilm
The initial image-workers crossing in a factory corridor-is transformed into almost abstract black and
white surfaces and harnessed, Sisyphus-like, in a lunatic dance of repetition. Fruhauf increases the acceleration of
the striding workers in discrete steps until they are tearing along-the capacity of the film tested to its outer limits
until the final standstill-a freeze frame. (Peter Tscherkassy)
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San Francisco Cinematheque
ZOE BELOFF'S SHADOW LAND OR LIGHT FROM THE
OTHER SIDE
Stereoscopic Film, Spirit Photographs and Early Cinema
Zoe Beloff In Person
Sunday, November 19, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
Shadow Land..., a stereoscopic 16mm film, is based on the autobiography of 19 th Century medium Elizabeth
d'Esperance. It shows how one might think of a medium as a kind of "mental projector" and the phantoms as
representations of her psychic reality. While 20 th century cinema can be described as a "window onto another
world," The 19 th century conceived of specters that could cross over into our own world. Hence my decision to
photograph with a stereo camera. I will screen the film in conjunction with source material that inspired it,
including slides of spirit photographs from 1870-1915 and Louis Feuillade's Juve vs. Fantomas. (Z. Beloff)
Juve vs. Fantomas (1913) by Louis Feuillade; 16mm, b&w, silent, 64 minutes, print from The Museum of
Modern Art Circulating Film Library
"This is the second episode of the Fantomas series, Feuillade's adaptation of the serial by Pierre
Souvestre and Marcel Allain. The feature-length films are about the exploits of the mysterious master criminal
Fantomas and the efforts of the detective Juve to capture him. In this episode, Fantomas baffles his pursuers by an
ingenious method of staying under water. These films were a combination of melodrama, fantasy, and intrigue, set
in the cityscape of Paris and its suburbs and in wonderfully designed interiors. Their lyricism and fantastic
atmosphere were much admired by the Surrealists, and the films were popular all over the world." (Museum of
Modern Art, Circulating Film Library Catalog)
Shadow Land or Light From the Other Side (2000); Stereoscopic 16mm, b&w, sound, 32 minutes, print from
the maker
The title and the narrative are taken from the 1897 autobiography of Elizabeth d'Esperance, a materializing
medium who could produce full body apparitions.
Here we get inside the experience of the medium as a kind of mental "projector" conjuring up specters that
interact with the sitters at a seance. At the same time the film explores the psychological underpinnings of this
psychic projection, founded on a deep ambivalence around the role of women. The female medium was considered
an especially suitable conduit to the next world because of her "passive nature." Yet she produced phantoms that
radically transgressed her Victorian upbringing through an extraordinarily exhibitionistic sexuality. The film shows
how these phantoms can be seen as a kind of limit case of the virtual, a three-dimensional representation of psychic
reality, and relates their production to another contemporary theatricalization of the unconscious, the performances
of Charcot's hysterics.
My on-going project is an investigation into the relationship between imagination and technology. I have
become increasingly fascinated with the whole problematic of the "virtual." For the better part of a hundred years,
the moving image has been conceptualized as "a window onto another world." However, in the 1 9 th century, the
virtual was conceived of very differently. Ghost Shows, where actors interacted with projected magic lantern slides
and stereoscopic views, were enormously popular, opening up the cinematic spectacle to a third dimension that
permitted virtual images to co-exist with real objects in space.
The film traces this complex relationship between the birth of cinema and both conjuring and
mediumship. My phantoms are drawn from magic lantern slides, glass negatives and early cinema footage. Indeed
some of the scenes themselves are stereoscopic reconstructions of films from the 1890s. (ZB)
Cast:
Kate Valk, Paul Lazar, Luna Montgomery, Gen Ken Montgomery, Shelley Hirsch
Crew:
Zoe Beloff (Camera); Eric Muzzy (Lighting); Steve Demas (Lighting); John Buckley (Lighting); Jason
Benjamin (Lighting); Rhony Dostaly (Assistant Camera); Gen Ken Montgomery (Sound Effects); Paul Geluso
(Sound Engineer)
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2000 Program Notes
BODY PARTS
A Multi-Screen Performance by Victor Faccinto
Victor Faccinto in Person
Co-presented by New Nothing Cinema
Thursday, November 30, 2000 — New Nothing Cinema — 8 pm
Originally from California, Faccinto began making 16mm animated films in 1969. Local note: One of his first
completed films, Where Is It All Going? Where Did It All Come From? was awarded a prize in the first San
Francisco Erotic Film Festival in 1970. He moved to New York in 1974 and began experimenting with
alternative animation techniques. His last animated film, Book of Dead (1978), combined drawing and cutout
animation with frame-by-frame rephotography. In 1995 he began developing multi-screen projection works that
use beam-splitting mirrors and five 16mm projectors to project up to twenty simultaneous images. This new work
premiered at Millenium in New York in 1996. Tonight's program includes two early animated films from the
Video Vic Series (1970-74) and two of the most recent multi-screen projection works.
Filet of Soul (1972); 16mm, color animation, sound, 16 minutes
(Rated X)
Body Parts (1998); 16mm, multi-screen projection, 16 minutes
Eleven separate and continuously changing loops visually evolve parts of live bodies into a unified
conclusion. Sound by Rhan Small.
Video Projection; video, 10 minutes
Sound: "Don't You Think These Halls Smell Like Love?" by Rhan Small.
Video: Series of back-to-back film loops that have not yet found a place in a projection piece.
Brake I by Rhan Small; sound piece, 2-3 minutes
During the final alignments of the projectors and mirrors for the next piece.
Fast Film (1999-2000); 16mm and video, multi-screen projection, 24 minutes
Seven film loops, two film reels and a center video projection make up this fast-paced and sometimes
relentless race against time. It reaches its climax in a sixteen screen audiovisual abstraction made up of film loops
with hand-painted surfaces. Sound by Rhan Small.
Shameless (1974); 16mm, color animation, sound, 14 minutes
The fourth and final Video Vic film. (Rated XX)
Program Notes written by Victor Faccinto
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San Francisco Cinematheque
BETWEEN VISIONS
An Intermedia Commentary
Presented by Lyn Hejinian, Leslie Scalapino and Konrad Steiner
Sunday, December 3, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
Featuring readings by Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino, individually, and from their collaborative work, Sight,
and films, New York Portrait, Chapter II, by Peter Hutton; Bum Series by Konrad Steiner; and The Maltese
Cross Movement by Keewatin Dewdney
From the introduction to Sight, by Lyn Hejinian & Leslie Scalapino (Edge, 2000):
"We agreed that the form of our collaboration was to be in doubles... and that the subject, being sight, should
involve things actually seen.... Sometimes, seeing in real events we had to turn seeing up to an extreme in order
to see it; as if dreaming being suppressed were bursting out a luminous seeing in the waking state.
[...]
"Friendship would have to be not just 'being liked.' That one has to be likable, accommodating. One would have
to 'like' also— i.e. like the other— and I think only by being oneself. Not accommodating. My need for argument
in it is that you tend to view reality as wholesome; when I'm suffering you tend to alleviate to bring suffering in
the currency of the 'social,' the realm that is convivial— whereas I'm saying it's (also) apprehension itself when it's
occurring.
[...]
"The accumulation of pairings as 'extreme' sights occurs to the extent of being as if the writing's faculty, rather
than being imaginative images."
(LS)
"From the outset we agreed that for the purposes of this collaboration... the question of experiencing the world
would focus on sight— on the question of 'seeing': seeing the world, seeing something in it, and being in it as one
whose participation involved such "seeing." The thrill of acknowledgement (it is, after all, good to be alive!),
while being addressed to what we saw, was also, over and over again, in real time, addressed to each other.
[•••]
"As I look at this work now in retrospect, I see it as elaborating problems in phenomenology but not in
description, and this, given our topic, seems curious. Of course description is often phenomenological in intent-
aimed at bringing something into view, trying to replicate for (or produce in) the reader an experience of something
seen. But it seems as if our emphasis was not on the thing seen but on the coming to see. As it see it, this book
argues that the moment of coming to see is active and dialogic, and as such, dramatic."
(LH)
From Philosophical Investigations
by Ludwig Wittgenstein (Blackwell, 1953)
part II, section xi
p 193
Two uses of the word "see". The one: "What do you see there?"— "I see this" (and then a description, a drawing, a
copy). The other: "I see a likeness between these two faces"- let the person I tell this to be seeing the faces as
clearly as I do myself. The importance of this is the difference of category between the two "objects" of sight.
One might make an accurate drawing of the two faces, and another notice in the drawing the likeness which the
former did not see.
I contemplate a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it
differently. I call this experience "noticing an aspect."
[...]
pl96
"Now I am seeing this," I might say (pointing to another picture, for example). This had the form of a report of a
new perception.
72
2000 Program Notes
The expression of a change of aspect is the expression of a new perception and at the same time of the perception's
being unchanged.
[...]
p. 197
But since it is the description of a perception, it can also be called the expression of a thought-- If you are looking
at the object, you need not think of it; but if you are having the visual experience expressed by the exclamation,
you are also thinking of what you see.
Hence the flashing of an aspect on us seems half visual experience, half thought.
[...]
Now, when I know my acquaintance in a crowd, perhaps after looking in his direction for quite a while- is this is
special sort of seeing? Is it a case of both seeing and thinking? or an amalgam of the two, as I should almost like
to say?
The question is: why does one want to say this?
The possibility of "and" or "not"
Program Notes written by Konrad Steiner
"Between visions" is an expression i want to use in two senses. First in the sense that there is some gap or interval
complementary to moments of apprehension or communication. Between recognized thoughts or images a space
subsists as unacknowledged by us as water isn't by fish. This same idea could apply for the field that different
points of view lie in, without which they could never be related to one another.
This gap that makes relating possible seems ephemeral yet necessary for both perception (relating to outside) and
dialogue (relating to other). Reciprocally, from the social point of view, one's glimpse of this space (or it could be
called "mind") is achieved via perception and dialogue (or meditation and soliloquy)— though as itself it does not
require any recognition. We might only get a glimpse of "it" before the next "thought" (which might be: "i see
it") takes up our attention. That glimpse is the second sense: visions of between. The possibility of shift belies
the gap.
Mind the gap
One could play with paying attention to what one's not looking at, peripheral attention, noticing how what's seen
consists in also what's missed. There is evidence of this in noticing some aspect or remembering some detail that
shifts one's view, opinion or understanding— or in the dawning of apprehension of what someone meant hours,
days or years ago. I find this experience so fundamental that i would say that if you didn't miss anything you
wouldn't see anything, and if you didn't miss and see you couldn't say you saw or didn't see anything. Missing
and noticing seem to be on the same level, in the sense that you don't have one without the other.
Cog
The point is- by means of a kind of cognitive parallax- to throw attention on mind, not particularly on language
or cinema or on their relation, but to use those to evoke awareness of the vessel of experience, which lacks essence
(definition) and thereby is able to know (to recognize) and empathize (to resemble).
In tonight's case one of the parallax mechanisms is the presentation of excerpts from a work, Sight, which is a
record of two persons' investigation of "catching sight." Maybe "playing catch with sight" is a better phrase for
this work. When you read it, you participate in the intensity of a world without clutching at it. It is writing that
shows a teeming interface between world and mind and persons. They're able to cast glances quickly and sideways
enough to recreate these textural and evanescent characteristics of experience, at least in the reader not armchaired
by conventional "but tell me what it means" approach to reading.
Other means of parallax will be the verbal response to images (the poets' work after New York Portrait, Chapter
II) and the visual response to language (my film).
Bum Series is the start of a collaboration between Leslie Scalapino and myself where I have begun by laying down
a visual accompaniment to her reading of a section of her poem, way. As it is, scattered precise sync events are
surrounded by a looser arrangement of visual-chordal innuendo. Which events are synchronous with the text is
purely a matter of interpretation.
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San Francisco Cinematheque
The Maltese Cross Movement is a fascinating rebus of a film. The star and crescent motif shot through the film
can represent so many things. At first it is the mechanical movement in the camera/projector that slices flow in
just the right frequency and regularity for us to see motion where there is none. Then this pair goes on to be the
sun and moon, as the astronomical basis for our diurnal and calendric rhythms, they represent another kind of
intermittence and alternation. Then further to be the symbols of complementarity, one in continuous motion and
one intermittent (with the sound of the ratcheting cogs of the projector). Many images flash past as the film
teaches you various ways to read it. And as the montage gets ever more ecstatic ~ and interrupted — the text of
image, sound and their synchronization working like a rickety reality, almost ready to collapse, multivalent and
almost intelligible, like the fine structure of our own experience, the final words, "If I die tonight, tomorrow T '11
be gone" representing a joke.
(KS)
Keewatin Dewdney has a personal web site:
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/faculty/akd/akd.html
Leslie Scalapino is publisher of O Books :
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/scalapino/
http://www.obooks.com/default.htm
Lyn Hejinian is project director andeditor with Travis Ortiz of Atdos:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/hejinian/
http://www.atelos.org/index.htm
[The joke is that the mind projects its existence in such a false way that one can state/imagine the conditions of its
nonexistence. This is not a nasty joke; it is like laughing while coming. It is like seeing that you can't see the gap
without a sort of dissolution, which is like mind seeing mind only when it's not mind. It is like turning around in
front of a mirror fast enough to catch sight of the back of your head.]
PETER ADAIR'S THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE WITH
PIE FIGHT '69
Christian Bruno and Sam Green In Person
With an Introduction to Holy Ghost People by Veronica Selver
Thursday, December 7, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
An artful fusion of ethnography and cinema verit6, late filmmaker Peter Adair's {Word Is Out) vibrant first film,
The Holy Ghost People, received critical acclaim upon its release in 1967, winning that year's "New Visions" award
in the SF International Film Festival. Adair's mesmerizing film portrays the mysterious and electrifying presence of
the Holy Ghost as it swells through a West Virginian congregation over the course of an evening prayer meeting.
Christian Bruno and Sam Green's Pie Fight '69 uses original footage and first-hand reminiscences to recount the
hilarious Opening Night of the SF International Film Festival two years later when Adair's SF film collective,
Grand Central Station, made a guerilla assault on the bourgeois film world. (C. Bruno)
The Holy Ghost People (1967) by Peter Adair; 16mm, b&w, sound, 53 minutes, print from Haney Armstrong
"Peter Adair's Holy Ghost People ...is the first film by a young Califomian who went to live with a
small holy-roller church community in rural West Virginia, filming and editing his picture over a period of two-
years. This film's strength stems from Adair's compassionately discreet objectivity towards his curious human
material. After the screening, a Park Avenue psychiatrist arose to heap abuse on director Adair claiming that he
had been struggling all his life against such 'obscurantism.' He was nearly lynched by the mildly intellectual
audience which sat in enthralled silence through Adair's fascinating document. (Elliot Stein, The (London)
Financial Times')
"Adair's achievement lies not just in recording this event, but diving into it without any judgment,
implied or otherwise — what easily might have seemed a freak show... instead impresses us with the
unselfconscious raptures these 'hicks' can call their own. They're inclusive rather than hellfire-and-brimstone
74
2000 Program Notes
exclusive; individuality is valued here, with one man saying, 'I'd hate to think God made (each) man not to be
what he wanted to be.'" (Dennis Harvey, SF Bay Guardian)
"Peter Adair's filming was entirely open, and fulfills, better than any modern film I know, the basic
anthropological tenet of full disclosure of purpose. It contrasts sharply with the current cinematographic rage for
presenting scenes and postures that could never be viewed by participant observers, and which are, therefore, a
violation of the privacy of both subject and viewer. It also contrasts sharply with films in which the abnormal is
stressed without reference to the wider context in which such behavior occurs. I know nothing better than this film
for illustrating to a psychiatric audience, who habitually substitute confidentiality for the open treatment required
by anthropologists, or to those social psychologists who have relied on stooges and deception to provide their
experimental contexts, what an anthropological study can do. The people in the film are work-wom and show the
marks of malnutrition, poverty and poor medical care, and yet, on a recent showing to a very sophisticated
audience, some one on my right exclaimed: 'What beautiful people!'" (Margaret Mead)
Pie Fight '69 (2000) by Christian Bruno and Sam Green; 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes, print from the makers
In 1969, Peter Adair, along with Steven Schmidt, Jak Newman and David Himmelstein, formed Grand
Central Station, an independent production company. But with no money and no exposure, passion would only go
so far unless they made a name for themselves. The spirit of the 60's demanded a direct action, and the San
Francisco International Film Festival was just the high profile, high society event they needed as a target.
(CB and SG)
immense gratitude to Haney Armstrong for the print of The Holy Ghost People
ALEXANDER DOVZHENKO'S ARSENAL
Sunday, December 10, 2000 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30 pm
Ukranian Alexander Dovzhenko was part of a group of Soviet filmmakers during the 1920's (also including
Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Vertov) whose theory and practice radically transformed the language of
narrative cinema. Dovzhenko was a practicing poet throughout his life and his films, whose subjects range from
ancient folk myths to post-revolutionary history, are imbued with a remarkable hallucinatory visual quality and a
deep feeling for the physical and emotional character of Soviet life. Tonight is the first in a series surveying this
early pioneer's greatest achievements. Arsenal is a powerful account of the Ukraine from World War I through the
February and October revolutions, which climaxes with the suppression of the workers' revolt in 1918. (Steve
Anker)
Arsenal (1929) by Alexander Dovzhenko; 16mm, b&w, silent, 102 minutes, print from Em Gee Film Library
"The artistic audience was enthusiastic about Zvenyhora when it came out, but the general public did not
accept it because it was difficult to understand. Yet I was proud of the film and even remember boasting that I was
more like a professor of higher mathematics than an entertainer. I seemed to have forgotten why I came to the
cinema.
"Was this a betrayal of film as mass art? It was not. I did not know the rules yet and so didn't think I
was making any mistakes. I did not so much make the picture as sing it out like a songbird. I wanted to broaden
the horizons of the screen, to break away from stereotyped narrative, and to speak the language of great ideas. I
definitely overdid it.
"In my next film, Arsenal, I considerably narrowed the range of my cinematic goals. The assignment to
make a film was entirely political, set by the Party. I wrote the scenario in a fortnight, filmed and edited in six
months. In making Arsenal I had two tasks: to unmask reactionary Ukranian nationalism and chauvinism and to
be the bard of the Ukranian working class, which had accomplished the social revolution. The epic theme was
contained later in Shchors in a new stylistic form. At this time, however, I lacked the necessary theoretical
knowledge for an integrated handling of so large a theme.
"As far as I was concerned, there were no questions of style or form involved. The characters in Arsenal
were hardly individualized. They were embodiments of ideas and ideologies. I was still working in the
Zvenyhora manner, using class categories, not individuals. The grandeur of the events portrayed forced me to
compress the material. This could have been achieved by using poetic language, which seems to have become my
specialty, yet I never thought about symbols. Even when my hero was shot at point-blank range and couldn't be
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San Francisco Cinematheque
killed, I possessed enough artistic innocence to accept this as a completely natural fact. I dare say if had been
asked then what I was thinking about, I should have answered, like Courbet's to a lady's question, 'Madam, I am
not thinking — I am excited.' I worked like a soldier who slashes at the enemy with no thought of the rules of
fencing. My steps toward realism were very slow.
"Although I was not surprised by the reception Arsenal was given, I was oppressed by it. The film was
accepted with approval by the public and the Party. The writers, however, did not accept it. For betraying
"Mother Ukraine," for profaning the Ukranian nation, in other words, for depicting the Ukranian nationalists as
provincial nonentities and adventurers, my film was reviled in the press; I was boycotted for many years, and the
leadership treated me with a cool reserve that I could not comprehend. However it may be, the delegation of writers
that traveled to Moscow with a protest and a demand to ban the film was not exactly reproached by the leaders of
the country.
"Yet Arsenal was absolutely orthodox. One could determine a person's politics from his attitude toward
the film. I have well remembered this. Making the film was an important step in my life. I became wiser and
more mature and at the same time felt great pain. I realized things were far from what they could be in our society.
Life became hard." (Alexander Dovzhenko, "Autobiography," in Marco Carynnyk, ed., Alexander Dovzhenko: The
Poet as Filmmaker)
GASH AND NEW UNDERGROUND SHORTS
Giulia Frati, Darcey Leonard and Tracey MacCullion in person
Friday, December 15, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 8 pm
Tonight, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and San Francisco Cinematheque join forces to present the West Coast
premiere of Gash, a major work from emerging Boston-based filmmaker Tracey MacCullion. We begin the
program with a selection of new underground shorts, all Bay Area premieres.
Nitwit Predelik (1999) by Xan Price; video, color, sound, 8 minutes
An introduction to the deranged world of nitwit. We meet Hootus and Minoltuh on a day when they
need to do an enormous amount of licking. Drool flows and many household objects are tasted. Meanwhile, a wig
wiggles nervously in the corner.
Best Short, NY Underground Film Festival. For further adventures, visit www.nitwit.org.
Fluff (2000) by William Jones; video, color, sound, 3 minutes
Hot, nasty and vaguely disturbing, William Jones' (Finished) latest video is an oscilloscopic analysis of
narration from gay pomo film trailers.
Sadistinfectenz (1999) by Giulia Frati; 16mm, color, sound, 2 minutes
As short as it is brutal (and thus we're showing it twice in the program), this is a poetic new work from
Montreal-based Giulia Frati (here tonight in person), which illustrates a violent, obsessive need to manipulate the
feelings and senses of a virtual lover.
Chickenbitch (2000) by Daniel Hartlaub; 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes
A day turns into a nightmare, endlessly circling upon itself.
Best Short Film, CineArt Hamburg Film Festival.
Sadistinfectenz (1999) by Giulia Frati; 16mm, color, sound, 2 minutes
Lipstick and Dynamite (c.1954); 16mm, b&w, sound, 4 minutes
Vintage 16mm women's wrestling.
Ecstasy in Entropy (2000) by Nick Zedd; 16mm, b&w, sound, 15 minutes
A tawdry bunch of Marxist lapdancers debate the finer points of revolutionary theory in the latest
transgressive mess from the filmmaker you love to hate. Starring Annie Sprinkle, Brenda Bergman, Mike Diana
and Jennifer Blowdryer.
76
2000 Program Notes
Intermission
Gash (1999) by Tracey MacCullion; 16mm, color, sound, 31 minutes
A relentless, highly-charged punk trance film, Gash depicts the feral, traumatized psychic landscape of a
young girl caught between her grotesquely abusive family and the out-of-control, sexually aggressive crowd she
hangs out with on the streets of Boston. This raw, intense plunge into regressive abjection has the shattering,
uncanny power of a living nightmare and the ferocity of a fight to the death, and puts filmmaker Tracey
MacCullion on the map as one of the most exciting young talents around. (Ocularis Cinema)
"Best of 1999." (Gavin Smith, Film Comment)
A Q&A session will follow the screening with MacCullion and co-producer/actress Darcey Leonard.
Program compiled by Joel Shepard, Film/Video Curator, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
THE PERSONAL LANDSCAPE:
New films by Peter Hutton, Mark Lapore and Jeanne Liotta
Sunday, December 17, 2000 — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 7:30 pm
Our finale for 2000 includes two new films by old friends which premiered at this fall's New York Film Festival.
Peter Hutton's Time and Tide: Study of a River, Part 2 and Mark Lapore's The Glass System. These are presented
with a second look at Jeanne Liotta' s beautiful and lyrical Muktikara, which screened as a part of Cinematheque
and Pacific Film Archive's program of new experimental works at this year's San Francisco International Film
Festival.
Muktikara ( 1 999) by Jeanne Liotta; 1 6mm, color, silent, 1 1 .5 minutes, print from the maker
From the Sanskrit, "gentle gazing brings liberation," the title is also the name of a particular body of
water which is the image-subject of the film/Landscape as "inscape." Not inertly present but beckoning an active
perception; a seeing and a seeing into. (JL)
Time and Tide: Study of a River, Part 2 (2000) by Peter Hutton; 16mm, color, silent, 35 minutes, print from the
maker
The first section of the film is a reprint of a reel shot by Billy Bitzer in 1903 titled Down the Hudson for
Biograph. It chronicles in single frame time lapse a section of the river between Newburgh, New York and
Yonkers. The second section of the film was shot in 1998 and 1999 by filmmaker Peter Hutton and records
fragments of several trips up and down the Hudson River between Bayonne, New Jersey, and Albany, New York.
The filmmaker was traveling on the tugboat Gotham as it pushed (up river) and pulled (down river) the Noel
Cutler, a barge filled with 35,000 barrels of unleaded gasoline. (PH)
"In recent years filmmakers as diverse as Abbas Kiarostami, Claire Denis and Stan Brakhage have offered
extraordinary films in which landscape and seascape were paramount. It is fitting then, that Hutton, one of the
greatest living poets of the portraiture of place, has completed his first film in many years — a meditation on the
Hudson River. Combining the luminescence and formal contemplation of the Hudson Valley painters with
documentary and ecological concerns, Time and Tide extends the panoramic field of Hutton's previous Portrait of
a River. And after decades of an exclusive devotion to and mastery of reversal black and white stocks, Time and
Tide marks Hutton's inaugural foray into color negative." (Mark McElhatten, New York Film Festival)
The Glass System (2000) by Mark LaPore; 16mm, color, sound, 20 minutes, print from the maker
Shot primarily in Calcutta, The Glass System looks at life as it is played out in public. Every street
corner turned reveals activities both simple and mesmerizing: a knife sharpener on a bicycle; a tiny tightrope
walker; a hauntingly slow portrait of the darting eyes of schoolgirls on their way home; the uncompleted activities
of a young contortionist. The Glass System expresses the filmmaker's sense of yearning for a lost New York, a
place which exists in a dream where life in the streets was both complicated and fleeting. (ML)
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San Francisco Cinematheque
APPENDIX
PERSONAL APPEARANCES
Alfonzo Alvarez
Claire Bain
Nathaniel Dorsky
Daven Gee
Anne McGuire
John Muse
Steve Polta
Scott Stark
Ellen Ugelstad
1.29.00
1.29.00
1.29.00
1.29.00
1.29.00
1.29.00
1.29.00
1.29.00
1.29.00
James Benning 1 30 00
Richard Dindo 1.17,1.20.00
Jay Rosenblatt 2 24 0Q
Erin Sax
Bill Berkson
2.24.00
2.27.00
Nathaniel Dorsky • 77 00
Arthur and Corinne Cantrill
Konrad Steiner
Lee Flynn
Sharon Lockhart
3.2.00
3.5.00
3.9.00
Caitlin Manning , 9 00
Luis A. Recoder 3 12 00
Bruce McClure 3 12 00
Stephanie Barber 3 16 00
Naomi Uman 3 16 00
Lawrence Jordan 3 19> 3 21) 3 23; 3 26 Q0
4.1.00
78
2000 Program Notes
Gordon Ball 4.2.00
Trinh T. Minh-ha 4.6.00
Matthias Miiller 4.9.00
Gad Hollander 4.13.00
Ken Paul Rosenthal 4.16.00
Jim Jennings 4.27, 4.30.00
Alfonso Alvarez 4.30.00
Ellen Ugelstad 4.3.00
David Michalak and REEL CHANGE 5.4.00
Lawrence Brose 5.11.00
J. Hoberman 5.13-14, 5.16, 5.18.00
Gail Camhi 5.25.00
Alfred Hernandez 5.25.00
Pelle Lowe 5.25.00
Ken Paul Rosenthal 5.25.00
Luther Price 6.1,6.3-4.00
Phil Solomon 6.8.00
Charles Boone 9.24.00
Michael Rosas- Walsh 10.1.00
Rodney Ascher 10.8.00
Abigail Child 10.12,10.14-15.00
Sarah Jane Lapp 10.26.00
Jenny Perlin 10.26.00
Amie Siegel 10.26.00
James Benning 10.29.00
Gunvor Nelson 11.2.00
Gregg Biermann 11.5.00
Ron Mazurek 1 1 . 5 .00
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San Francisco Cinematheque
Jeremy Coleman 1 1 9 00
Timoleon Wilkins 1 1 9 00
Miranda July 1U000
Astria Suparak , , 1 00
ZoeBeloff 111900
Victor Faccinto j , -^ 00
LynHejinian 12.3.00
Leslie Scalapino 12 " 00
Konrad Steiner
12.3.00
12.7.00
12.7.00
12.15.00
Darcey Leonard 12 15 00
Christian Bruno
Sam Green
Giulia Frati
Tracy MacCullion 12 15 00
80
2000 Program Notes
INDEX OF TITLES
(...) Reel 5 (Brakhage) 25
#5 (Price) 46
9 Cats When I Was 7 (Land) 3
9 Videos by Stuart Sherman (Sherman) 67
11x14 (Benning) 2
250 Summer (Richard) 52
1 933 (Frye) 4
2000: A Space Odd-essay (Film Boy) 34
/i Cold-Blooded Look at Your Last
60,000,000,000,000 Years.' (The Institute
for True Purpose Technology) 54
A Different Kind of Green (Povey) 66
a little present (for my friend columbus the
explorer) (Barber) 19
The Adventure Parade (Laitala) 66
The Adventures of Blacky (Finley & Muse) 1
A irey's Inlet (Cantrill) 1 1
Alfred (Ascher) 54
Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (Arnold) 69
Amerika (anonymous) 4
An Individual Desires Solution (Brose) 40
angus mustang (Barber) 1 9
The Apparition (Jordan) 21
Arabian Nights (Rawlins) 41
Archaeology of Memory (Popovich) 34
Archaeopteryx Dreaming (silt) 35
Arsenal (Dovzhenko) 75
Art School Remembered (Rudnick) 5 1
Arthur Rimbaud, A Biography (Dindo) 8
Articulated Image (Cantrill) 11
As Long As It Takes (Bain) 1
As to How Much (Herwitz) 13
Ashley (Animal Charm) 66
At Photo Motion, San Francisco (Rosenthal) 42
At Such a Business, San Francisco (Rosenthal) 43
Aus der Feme (The Memo Book) (Muller) 31
Awake, But Dreaming (Laitala) 53
B
B/Side (Child) 56
Bar B Bar (Porsia) 54
Barbie's Audition (Gibbons) 66
Be Like Them (Povey) 53
Below the New: A Russian Chronicle (Child) 55
Beware of Slips and Falls (Ascher) 54
The Birds of Paradise (Brakhage) 24
The Black Oud (Jordan) 23
Bluebeard (Ulmer) 6
Body Parts (Faccinto) 71
Bored Members (Snider) 5 1
Bottle Can (Price) 48
Brake 1 (Small) 71
Buddha Bar (Ascher) 54
Bum Series (Steiner) 72, 75
By 2's and3's: Women (Keller) 4
Bye Bye Bob (Jennings) 36
The Cage (Peterson) 67
Caterpillar (Burckhardt) 1 1
Chemistries (Gee) 1
Cheong Ju (Coleman) 64
Chickenbitch (Hartlaub) 76
Chinatown Sketch (Wilkins) 65
City of Chromatic Dissolution (Cantrill) 1 1
City of Chromatic Intensity (Cantrill) 12
Coffee Break (Camhi) 42
The Collectors (Ascher) 54
Completed Portrait of Picasso (Stein) 50
Concrescence (Brakhage & Solomon) 49
Conversations with a Light Bulb (Sonami) 5 1
Corners (Stark) 3
Coupling (Brakhage) 25
Covert Action (Child) 57
Cricket Requiem (Brakhage) 24
The Dark Tower (Brakhage) 25
De Profundis (Brose) 40
Dead Ringer (Price) 47
Degree Zero (Tseng) 34
deja vu (Ponger) 69
Destroy All Intellectuals/Intellectuals Strike Back
(Snider) 51
Detached Americans (Biermann) 64
Detector (Stark) 67
The Devil is a Woman (Sternberg) 41
Diary of a Sane Man (Hollander) 33
Diggins (Bruno & Vekic) 35
Dissonances (Biermann) 63
Domain (Murray) 37
Don from Lakewood (Saks) 66
Dr. Quantum's Malfunctioning Satellite
(Andrews) 51
Duo Concertantes (Jordan) 22
The Earthsong of the Cricket (Brakhage) 24
Eastside Summer (Burckhardt) 10
Ecclesiastic Vibrance (Coleman) 65
Ecstasy in Entropy (Zedd) 76
Egypt (Resetarits) 69
El Valley Centro (Benning) 61
Ernesto Che Guevara: The Bolivian Diary
(Dindo) 7
Eruption-Erection (Price) 46
Estuary #1 (Constant Passage) (Polta) 1
Exercise (Gidal) 35
Exilee (Cha) 58
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San Francisco Cinematheque
Fall of the House of Usher (Webber & Watson) 39
Fast Film (Faccinto) 71
Filet of Soul (Faccinto) 71
Fine Lines (Gang) 65
Firefly (Michalak) 39
First Hymn to the Night — Novalis (Brakhage) 16
Flaming Creatures (Smith) 41
Flight (Snider) 66
Flip Film (Alvarez & Ugelstad) 1, 37
flower, the boy, the librarian (Barber) 20
Fluff (Jones) 76
Focal Length (Recoder) 52
Football Film (Janos & Shaw) 52
Found in Auto (Barron) 3
Ivor Paints ArfArf (Cantrill) 12
J
Jamie's Portrait (Heatley) 3
Jerusalem Syndrome (Sax) 9
Julie (Burckhardt) 1 1
Juve vs. Fantomas (Feuillade) 70
King of the Jews (Rosenblatt) 8
King of the Monsters (Ascher & Garron) 53
Kino Da! (Hills) 15
Kl&nge/Sounds (Kandinsky) 50
Krazyfor Krispy Kreme (Ascher & Van Leer) 54
Game (Child) 56
Garden of Chromatic Disturbance (Cantrill) 12
Gash (MacCullion) 77
Georgia (Ball) 28
The Glass System (Lapore) 77
Go Home Movie (Wu) 3
Golly Golly Zoom (RW2) 52
Goshogaoka (Lockhart) 26
Green (Rhoads) 44
The Grove (Jordan) 23
Gruningers Fall (The Gruninger Case) (Dindo) 5
H
The H.D. Trilogy Film (Jordan) 23
Hankook Trilogy (Coleman) 64
Happy Are the Happy (Lapp & Perlin) 60
Heterogene (McClure) 19
The Hobgoblin of Little Minds (Biermann) 63
The Holy Ghost People (Adair) 74
Home (Price) 44
Home Movie Reel #1 (anonymous) 4
Home Movie Reel #2 (anonymous) 5
Home Movie Reel #3 (anonymous) 5
Homecomings (Leimbacher) 52
Hot Leatherette (Nelson) 52
I, Zupt 49 (Coleman) 65
If I Told Him (Stein) 50
I'll Cry Tomorrow, Parts 1 and 2 (Price) 47
Illuminations of the Mundane - Spring (Cantrill)
12
in.side.out (Stark) 1
Indeterminate Focus (McClure) 18
Innerspace Dental Commander
(Garron & Henry) 54
interval Oakland '99 (Polta) 52
Into Whiteness (Biermann) 63
Intrigue (Jennings) 37
Inversion (Polta) 4
82
La Sortie (Fruhauf) 69
Lafanmi Selavi (Flynn & Manning) 16
Lake of the Spirits (Wilkins) 65, 66
The Lead Shoes (Peterson) 68
Leaves (Jennings) 36
Leche (Uman) 20
letters, notes (Barber) 37
Life/Expectancy (Fleming) 60
The Light in Our Lizard Bellies (Abbot) 35
Light Years Expanding (Nelson) 62
The Lion and the Zebra Make God's Raw Jewels
(Brakhage) 25
Lipstick and Dynamite (anonymous) 76
Living in the World, Part I (Gibbons) 42
Lost Note (Levine) 4
Lullaby (Reeder) 65
M
The Maltese Cross Movement (Dewdney) 72
The March (Ravett) 37
Mariage Blanc (Deutsch) 69
Martina's Playhouse (Ahwesh) 65
Masquerade (Jordan) 22
Mayhem (Child) 57
Me Gut No Dog DOG (Price) 48
Meat Blue 03 (Price) 46
Meat Situation 04 (Price) 46
Mercy (Child) 51, 57
Mermaids and Pickles (Sweetvittles) 34
Metronome (Barber) 20
Mexican Jail Footage (Ball) 29
Midnight at the Plaster Foundation (Smith) 4 1
Millbrook (Ball) 29
Millions in Business as Usual (Burckhardt) 10
Miracle on 34* Street (Jennings) 37
Mobius Strip (Recoder) 1
Moilsome Toilsome (Brakhage) 26
Mother (Price) 45
Mr. Frenhofer and the Minotaur (Peterson) 68
Muktikara (Liotta) 37, 77
Music To Strip By (Wallace) 52
2000 Program Notes
Mutiny (Child) 56
Myself When Fourteen (Cantrill) 1 1
N
Naked Spaces — Living is Round (Trinh) 30
NE3 (Coleman) 64
Nectar of the Cyclops (Ross) 52
New Nothing Dad (MRW) 5 1
New York Portrait, Chapter II (Hutton) 72
News From North Carolina (Whiteside) 3
Night Fantasies (Burckhardt) 1 1
Nitwit Predelik (Price) 76
No Place Like Home #1 (Yasinsky) 65
No Place Like Home #2 (Yasinsky) 65
Normal Love (Smith) 41
Not Quite Right (Michalak) 39
Notch (Kitchen) 52
Note One (Levine) 4
Note to Pati (Levine) 4
Nothing But. ..Part 1 (Weisman) 3
O
Off the Track (Kirby) 53
Ol She Gu (Coleman) 64, 66
Old Digs (Nelson) 62
The Old House, Passing (Jordan) 21
On Aesthetics (Burckhardt) 10
Once Upon A Time (Jordan) 22
Oneers, The (Kuchar) 52
Orb (Jordan) 22
Ornamentals (Child) 55
Our Lady of the Sphere (Jordan) 22
Outer Space (Tscherkassky) 69
Painting the Town (Jennings) 36
Pan (Steiner) 69
Passing Through (Sandlos) 35
Paws (Joseph) 34
Perils (Child) 57
Peripeteia I (Child) 55
The Persian Series 1 (Brakhage) 25
The Persian Series 2 (Brakhage) 25
The Persian Series 6 (Brakhage) 25
The Petrified Dog (Peterson) 68
The Phoenix Tapes (Miiller) 32
Photoheliograph (Flannery) 15
Piano Etude (Biermann) 63
Pie Fight '69 (Bruno & Green) 75
Poems of Rome (Jennings) 37
pornfilm (Barber) 19, 65
Posers (Stark) 67
Prefaces (Child) 15, 55
Pretty Boy (Gibbons) 66
Print of the Zapruder Film (Zapruder) 5
Private Movie (Uman) 20
Prunes (Ball) 29
Psychic (Michaud) 4
Psycho Porpoise (Ross) 52
R
Raw (MRW) 52
Regenbogen (Michalak) 39
Removed (Uman) 20, 66
Resitations (Price) 45
Ritual 629 (Price) 47
run (Price) 45
Sadistinfectenz (Frati) 76
Safetyman (Ascher & Garron) 54
St. Benny the Dip (Ulmer) 6
Salute (Baillie) 66
San Cristobal (Jennings) 36
The School of Athens (Jennings) 36
Seasons... (Solomon & Brakhage ) 49
The Secret of Rented Island (Smith) 41
Selections from Collected Evidence: 52 Weeks
(Nelson) 62
Shades (Jennings) 36
Shadow Land or Light From the Other Side
(Beloff) 70
Shameless (Faccinto) 71
The Shape of the Gaze (Carpenter) 34
shipfilm (Barber) 20
Shiver (Child) 55
Sight (Hejinian & Scalapino) 72
Silence (DeRego) 34
silt Interlude 1: Ouroboros (silt) 52
silt Interlude 2: lost footage from the
paranaturalists (silt) 53
silt Interlude 3: Pinhole #7 (silt) 53
Silver Recovery (Recoder) 18
Silvercup (Jennings) 36
Sincerely, Joe P. Bear (McCormick) 52
The Sleepers (Siegel) 60
Smoke (Lowe) 42
Snapshots (Kuchar) 52
Sodom (Price) 48
Some Kind of Loving: Joanie 4 Jackie Co-Star
7ape#5(Suparak)65
Somebody Goofed (Ascher & Garron) 54
Something to Take to Heart (anonymous) 54
Son of Metropolis San Francisco (Amirkhanian) 50
Song I (Brakhage) 3
Song 4 (Brakhage) 3
Song 13 (Brakhage) 3
Songs of Degrees: With a Valentine (Herwitz) 13
Sophie's Place (Jordan) 22
Star of Day (Jordan) 23
Start Talking (Michalak) 39
Suenos Liquidos (Swope) 35
Superincumbent (McClure) 18
Surface NOISE (Child) 57
The Swan Tool (July) 66
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San Francisco Cinematheque
Taka and Ako (Iimura) 4
The Telling (McGuire) 1
Thank God Tommy Made it Back All Right
(Kistel) 54
they invented machines (Barber) 20
Threading the Projector (REEL CHANGE) 39
'Til My Head Caves In (Ross) 5 1
Time and Tide: Study of a River, Part 2 (Hutton)
77
Tito-Material (Groen) 69
Train Ride (Mideke) 4
Transmission from the Turn of the 20 Jk Century
(Dennis) 35
Tree— Line (Nelson) 62
The Triumph of Victory — A Great Fall (Ascher) 53
The True History of Crime: X Equals X (Ascher)
53
Tuning the Sleeping Machine (Sherman) 66
Twilight Psalm I: "The Lateness of the Hour"
(Solomon) 50
Twilight Psalm II: "Walking Distance" (Solomon)
38,50
U
Under a Broad Gray Sky (Povey) 14
Une Fois Habitee (Once Inhabited) (Davis) 53
Unemployment Portrayal (Levine) 43
Untitled if 6 (Sharits) 3
Untitled Cameraroll (Peterson) 4
Untitled Cameraroll (Wilkins) 65
Untitled (Walsh) 35
Ursonata (Schwitters) 50
Vacancy (Miiller) 3 1
Vagus (Duhig) 35
Variable Density (Recoder) 1 8
Variations (Dorsky) 1
Vel Richards ' Lunchtime Office Ergonomics
Seminar (Bain) 43
Vermont Wedding (Heatley) 5
Video Haikai (Nascimento) 14
Video Projection (Faccinto) 71
The Visible Compendium (Jordan) 22
Visions of a City (Jordan) 22
W
Walk (Mideke) 4
Wallstreet (Jennings) 36
Warm Broth (Rhoads) 48
Waterworx (Hancox) 14
Welcome to the House of Raven (Merritt) 52
What Happened to Kerouac? (Dorsky) 14
What Mozart Saw on Mulberry Street
(Burckhardt)lO
What's On? (Colburn) 15
What's Out Tonight is Lost (Solomon) 49
When the Spirit Moves (Michalak) 39
Window of Appearances (Biermann) 64
Windy (Baldewicz) 3
woman stabbed to death (Barber) 19
Work Art Work (Hernandez) 42
Work (Levine & Lowe) 67
Worm and Web Love (Brakhage) 25
Xperiencing Xpressing My Paralysis (Frisbee) 52
Y
The Yellow Footage: Normal Love addendum reel
(Smith) 41
Yellow Goodbye (Price) 46
Yes, I Said Yes, I Will, Yes (Solomon) 35, 50
You Are Christine Dietrich (Rudnick) 52
84
2000 Program Notes
INDEX OF ARTISTS
Abbot, Sarah, 35
Adair, Peter, 74-75
Ahwesh, Peggy, 65
Alvarez, Alfonzo, 1, 37
Amirkhanian, Charles, 50-51
Andrews, George, 5 1
Animal Charm, 66
Anonymous, 4, 5, 76
Arnold, Martin, 69
Ascher, Rodney, 53-54
B
Baillie, Bruce, 66
Bain, Claire, 1, 42-43
Baldewicz, Bill, 3
Ball, Gordon, 28-30
Barber, Stephanie, 19-20, 37, 65
Barron, Susan, 3
Beloff, Zoe, 70
Benning, James, 2, 60-62
Biermann, Greg, 63-64
Boone, Charles, 50-51
Brakhage, Stan, 3, 16, 24-26, 49
Brose, Lawrence, 40
Bruno, Christian, 35, 74-75
Burckhardt, Rudy, 10-11
Camhi, Gail, 42
Cantrill, Arthur and Corinne, 1 1-12
Carpenter, Mai'a Cybelle, 34
Cha, Theresa Hak Kyung, 58-59
Child, Abigail, 15, 51, 55-57
Colburn, Martha, 15
Coleman, Jeremy, 64-65, 66
Davis, Sandra, 53
Dennis, Ghen, 35
DeRego, Troy, 34
Deutsch, Gustav, 69
Dewdney, Keewatin, 72-74
Dindo, Richard, 5-6,7,8
Dorsky, Nathaniel, 1, 14
Dovzhenko, Alexander, 75-76
Duhig, David, 35
Faccinto, Victor, 71
Feuillade, Louis, 70
Film Boy, 34
Finley, Jeanne C, 1
Flannery, Jim, 15-16
Flemming, Michele, 60
Flynn, Lee, 16-17
Frati, Giulia, 76
Frisbee, Diane J., 52
Fruhauf, Siegfried, 69
Frye, Brian, 4
Gang, Jane, 65
Garron, Syd, 53, 54
Gee, Daven, 1
Gibbons, Joe, 42, 66
Gidal, Jessica, 35
Green, Sam 74-75
Groen, Elke, 69
H
Hancox, Rick, 14
Hartlaub, Daniel, 76
Heatley, David, 3, 5
Heicke, William, 67-68
Hejinian, Lyn, 72-74
Henry, Eric, 54
Hernandez, Alfred, 42
Herwitz, Peter, 13-14
Hills, Henry, 15
Hoberman, J., 41
Hollander, Gad, 32-34
Hutton, Peter, 72-74,77
I
Iimura, Takahiko, 4
Institute for True Purpose Technology, The, 54
Janos, Dan, 52
Jennings, Jim, 36-37
Jones, William, 76
Jordan, Lawrence, 21-24
Joseph, Moira, 34
July, Miranda, 65-66
Kandinsky, Wassily, 50
Keller, Marjorie, 4
Kirby, Lynn, 53
Kitchen, Diane, 52
Kistel, Erik, 54
Kuchar, George, 52
Laitala, Kerry, 53, 66
Land, Robbie, 3
Lapore, Mark, 77
Lapp, Sarah Jane, 60
85
San Francisco Cinematheque
Leimbacher, Irina, 52
Leonard, Darcey, 76-77
Levine, Saul, 4, 43, 67
Liotta, Jeanne, 37, 77
Lockhart, Sharon, 26-28
Lowe, Pelle, 42, 67
M
MacCullion, Tracey, 76-77
Manning, Caitlin, 16-17
Mazurek, Ron, 63-64
McClure, Bruce, 18-19
McCormick, Matt, 52
McGuire, Anne, 1
Merritt, Toney, 52
Michalak, David, 39
Michaud, Hans, 4
Mideke, Michael, 4
MRW, 51, 52
Miiller, Matthias, 30-32
Murray, Julie, 37
Muse, John H., 1
N
Nascimento, Marcus, 14
Nelson, Gunvor, 62
Nelson, Robert, 52
Perlin, Jenny, 60
Peterson, Jamie, 4
Peterson, Sidney, 67-68
Polta, Steve, 1, 4, 52
Ponger, Lisl, 69
Popovich, Gary, 34
Porsia, Marco, 54
Povey, Thad, 14, 53, 66
Price, Luther, 43-48
Price, Xan, 76
Ravett, Abraham, 37
Rawlins, John, 41
Recoder, Luis, 1, 18-19, 52
Reeder, Jennifer, 65
REEL CHANGE, 39
Resetarits, Katherin, 69
Rhoads, Tom, 44-45, 48
Richard, William Z., 52
Rosenblatt, Jay, 8-9
Rosenthal, Ken Paul, 42, 43
Ross, Rock, 51, 52
Rudnick, Michael, 51, 52
RW2, 52
Saks, Eric, 66
Sandlos, Karyn, 35
Sax, Erin, 8-9
Scalapino, Leslie, 72-74
Schwitters, Kurt, 50
Sharits, Greg, 3
Shaw, Cameron, 52
Sherman, David, 66
Sherman, Stuart, 67
Siegel, Amie, 60
silt, 35, 52, 53
Small, Rhan, 71
Smith, Jack, 41
Snider, Dean, 51
Snider, Greta, 66
Solomon, Phil, 35, 38, 49-50
Sonami, Laetitia, 51
Stark, Scott, 1, 3, 67
Stein, Gertrude, 50
Steiner, Konrad, 72-74
Steiner, Thomas, 69
Sternberg, Josef von, 41
Suparak, Astria, 65-66
Sweetvittles, Trixie, 34
Swope, Nat, 35
Trinh, Minh-ha T., 30
Tscherkassky, Peter, 69
Tseng, Te-shun, 34
U
Ugelstad, Ellen, 1, 37
Ulmer, Edgar G., 6-7
Uman, Naomi, 19-20, 66
Van Leer, Louisa, 54
Vekic, Natalija, 35
W
Wallace, Marian, 52
Walsh, Justin, 35
Watson, James Sibley, 39
Webber, Melville, 39
Weisman, Phil, 3
Whiteside, Tom, 3
Wilkins, Timoleon, 64-65, 66
Wu, Chun-Hui, 3
Y,Z
Yasinsky, Karen, 65
Zapruder, Abraham, 5
Zedd, Nick, 76
86
2000 Program Notes
87
