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Full text of "San Francisco Cinematheque Program Notes"

San Francisco Cinenatheque 
1984 Program Notes 



*l 



From the collection of the 



Prejinger 
^ V Jjibrary 



b t 



San Francisco, California 
2007 



JANUARY 19, I98I; 

"THINGS ARE MORE LIKE THEY ARE NOW THAN TKEY EVER \VERE BEFORE": 

THE BEAT ERA 

The 50 '3 was a time of H-bomb3, witch hunts and Cold War 
hysteria. It also provided the fertile ground for an explosion of 
growth in American art. l^^hlle Kerouac was loading the Beat poets 
to a rejection of America's white Protestant underpinnings, the new 
cinema was struggling to assert itself. Middle-class complacency 
was answered by anger and a Bohemian life of freedom and romance. 
Today, in the face of rearmament and Reagan's Big Stick policy, 
these films of the Beat Era and thf early 60'3 have the immediacy 
of a deja-vu that has been brought Into focus by our disturbing 
entry into I98I4.. 

PROGRAM: Beat (Chris Maclalne, 6 mln . ) ; Doomshow (Ray Wlsnlewskl, 
10 min. ) ; Aleph (Wallace Berman , 15 mln, ) ; The End (Chris 
Maclalne, 35 mln) ; Thp iilpater, the Delinquent and the 
Square (19 mln . ) . 

Tonight's program features a newly reconstructed print of 
The End by Chris Maclalne. This print was made from the original 
picture and sound printing rolls, rediscovered by J.J. Murphy 
in I9QI at W.A. Palmer Labs (Maclaine's film laboratory). 

Maclalne was a poet who came to San Francisco as a student at 
the University of California. For 114. years, from I9I4.7 to I960, 
he wrote poetry, publishing his own and others' works In such 
magazines as Contour, Beatitude and Golden Goose . He was an eccen- 
tric and colorful figured Using Artaud as a model he assumed the 
pose of enlightened madman whose work showed a mystical, almost 
messianic fervor. l-Ihen The End premiered it was met with almost 
total hostility. J.J. Murphy quotes Larry Jordan in Film Culture 
#70-71 as saying that 

"They didn't have lyrical qualities. They weren't 
psychodramas - they didn't come out of Maya Deren 
and they weren't cinepoems - they didn't come out 
of Belson. And they weren't poems, the way Brough- 
ton'3 early works were. They were harbingers of 
doom, very personal. They were ahead of their time." 

Maclalne died in 1975. He spent the last 6 years of his life 
committed to Sunnyacros Convalescent Hospital, the victim of 
methedrine abuse and his own demons of despair. 

Also Included in tonight's program are: 

Doomshow by Ray Wisnlewski, c. 1961, 10 min. In a letter to the 
r-limmakers' Cooperative, NYC, "Dear Bill, I lost Doomshow Tuesday 
evening on the 'D' train .. .Maybe it's better that way: "goomshow , 
was there ever a Doomshow ? Let it lie, wherever it is, jammed up 
someone's vein, say, dead, and dead it might LIVE as myth. Yours 
truly, Ray Wisnlewski." (The film has since been found.) 



Aleph by Wallace Berman, 1965, 15 min . Originally made In 8mni and 
then Dlown ap to l6mm, the film is a densly packed collision of 
fleeting Images. Every frame is -hand-painted with Hebraic images 
and letters, evoking a sense of Kabalistic mystery shared with 
his collages, frescoes and sculptures. 

The Delinquent, the Hipster and the Square , 1959, 19min . Produced 
by CBS, this is a kinescope of a live TV show dwelling on the evils 
of beatnik living and the dangers they pose for the boy next door. 
It Includes a performance by the Max Roach Quintet. "An hilarious 
satire of exaggerated adolescent style." Print courtesy of Craig 
Baldwin. 



CIRCUMSTANCES 

SURROUNDIXG... 

NEW AND SELECTED PILMS OF GARY ADKTNS 

SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE AT NEWSPACE 
JANUARY 21, 19 84 

PROGRAM ; 

UNDER THE MACHINES OF FIRE (1981) 
CONFIGURATIONS UNTO THEMSELVES (1983) 
CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING... (19 83) 
EUCALYPTUS (1978) 
CANTS FROM NATURAL HISTORY WORKS (19 75) 

UNDER THE MACHINES OF FIRE (1981) 16mm. Color. Sound. 23 minutes. 

Upon first looking out... Under the influence of social forces... 
Reflecting on human conditions .. .Surreal visions of threat... In 
shadows of daily existence, ,. Images gathered outside and then 
brought home., .As children held with innocence .. ,A possible 
translation occurs ,, ,Towards new affirmations, A Travelog 
Parade of exploding tropical landscapes; satellite cloud patterns; 
industrial pig iron light; naval ships and toy models; ruins of 
ancient civilizations; mastodons and Chinatown; lionel trains; 
oaxaca liqhtf; rnd punta banda waves; Sn^m. diary entries; and 
kodachrome roses in a backyard with Gail, 'Sweep the garden, any size* 
Filmed in Oaxaca, Yucatan, Baja - Mexico, San Diego, S,F, § Chi. 79-81 



CONFIGURATIONS UNTO THEMSELVES (1983) 16mm. Color. Silent. 11 minutes. 

CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING... (1983) 16mm. Color, Silent. 19 minutes. 

***** 

EUCALYPTUS (1978) 16mm. Color. Silent. 7 minutes. 

",,.a poetic film about a turtle, eucalyptus nuts and oriental 
landscape painting. The nuts and the turtle are metaphorically 
identified in terms of having shells. Finally, the editing pinpoints 
a mountain in one of the landscape pictures. It's contour suggests 
the trutle's shell, recalling the ancient cosraological belief that 
the world is but a turtle balanced on infinite tiers of progressively 

larger turtles. Humorously, Adkins turns the mountain upside down 

a typical plight of turtles. I suspect that this film may merit a 
complicated symbolic interpretation, How<iver, the clear, elegant 
poetic analogies Adkins is able to suggest betweetn the disparate 
objects in the film are more than enough to sustain my interest," 

Noel Carroll - SOHO NEWS, 1979 



CANTS FROM NATURAL HISTORY WORKS (1975) 16inm, Color. Sound. 14 minutes. 

Ip cants from natural history works the original storv is by 

Jorge Luis Borges , frorr the book, Lnbvrinths . The snoken voice is 

generously read by filmmaker Michael Guccione. 

A Parable of the Endless Recurrence. A dream that deliberntely 

attempts to exhaust its possibilities and borders on its own narody; 

the duplication of space and the memory of time. In the 

recognition of a caged leopard. An image of human thought. 

The apparent contradictions of illusion, Dante dying in Rochester. 



The Foundation for An in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bav Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film 

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, I98I4. 
MOLLIS FRAMFTON 
THE MAGELLAN CYCLE 

Tiger Balm , 1972, 10 mln . 

Tha Straits of Magellan , 1977, 52 min . 

Magellan's First Dreain (Matrix), 1972, 25 min. 

"Hollla Frampton is currently at work on a leviathan work entitled 
Magellan . Almost as if to hyperbolize the prime axiom of the 
structural film, the overall shape of this serial work is so 
complex (as opposed to being the "impression" one would be left 
with) that it would require several pages to describe Just the 
matrices governing the relationships among the several hundred 
parts of the work. Initially conceived with a running time of 
nine hours, thirty-six minutes, the work Itself will eventually 
run thirty-six hours and be seen over a period of one year and 
four days, 

"Although the structure of the overall work has been guided by 
mathematical formulations, the individual films (parts), themselves, 
seem in no way to resemble the formulaic "structural" film. The 
difference between these recent films and the presumed "structural" 
aspects of Frampton 's own earlier work involves the complexity 
of the schemes used to generate the formal deployment of elements. 
In his older films, for instance, the "structures," and even the 
a priori schemes which generated them, were visible , that is, 
recoverable to varying degrees by the spectator. Tn the films of 
Magellan , this Is no longer the caae ; the output of the a priori 
schemes has become so large, so complex, that the "structures" 
they generate are no longer seen, are no longer retrievable. A»d 
though the "seasonal films" of Straits of Magellan inrolre what 
Frawpton has oallad "situations In which nature la very clearly 
l»ltatl«g art," these filna utilize a scientific technology 
which all»w8 art to formally Imitate nature ... Juat as a luap of 
coal praaenta to ua nothing of its complex arrangomont of earbon 
chains, these films simply appear , while any systematic formulas 
which may have generated them do not. 

" Magellan announces a major development which becomes significant, 
not in relation to the myth of "structural film," but in view of 
the achievements of Frampton 's past work and the recent history 
of avant-garde film. The received wisdom about Frampton pro- 
claims his Interest in Intellectual structures, in scientific and 
mathematical formulas for generating works. Frampton has been 
contrasted with Snow: the former engaging in the construction of 
an intellectual space, the latter exploring the dialectics of 
plastic space. Such an opposition obscures a major aspect of 
Frampton' 8 work which underpinned many of his early films and 



which, with the films of Magal Ian , has become a dominant concern: 
the development of an opia tomology of vision. In the earlier films, 
this took the form of apporcapnive strategies which highlighted 
the relation between perception and modes of cognition in the 
spectator. With Magellan , Prampton has at last succeeded in the 
total merging of intellectual apace with the space of the world. 
The paradoxical is achieved by the dynamic welding of presumed 
dualities; forms are created where once it was presumed boundaries 
existed. " 

Bruc« Jenkins 

Wide Angle Vol. 2, No. 3, 1978 



The Foundatioo for Art in Ci n em a 

CINEMATHEQUE 

Th« Bav Area snowcasa tor personal ana avani-^roe film 

ROBERT !r"L3C" R~T?.CS?"CTIVZ 
MARCH 29,1934 

The San Francisco Cinematheque presents a three part retrospective of the 
films of Robert Nelson, native San Franciscan, v/hose work in the 1960s in 
collaboration with Funk Artists William Wiley and Robert Hudson, composer 
Steve Reich, and San Francisco Mime Troupe Director, Ron Davis, established 
his reputation as an original voice in San Francisco's "hipster cinema". 

Reflecting and encouraging an irrevercuice for polite middleclass values via 
an ironic, playful, and unrelenting "un-uptight sense of humor", Xelson and 
his SF Art Institute cohorts mirrored the transforming climate of the post- 
beat/prepsychedelic 60s. Collective imagination infused the films, and the 
artists' offhanded approach to process allowed the idiosynchratic nature of 
the works to reign free and expressive. 'With Nelson, art values and enter- 
tainment values collide ecstatically. 

"-(Nelson) has long been recognized (along with Bruce Conner, the Kuchar 
Brothers and a few others) as the avant-garde cinema's most potent comic 
filmmaker... nearly all Nelson's films develop one form of humor or another. 
This along with his improvisational methods, his connection with the SF .Art 
Institute, and the Eastern influences on his work have made hin a representative 
of what's usually thought of as an essential element of 'West Coast Filmmaking'." 

-Scott MacDonald 

The conclusion of this three part presentation of Nelson's work will be a 
screening of Suite California: Stops and Passes (Parts I and II) on May 3. 

"... I'd say that everybody knew something Nvas going on, but nobody I 
knew imagined what would actually happen in the 60s explosion. . . 
many of the people v/ho were already in the art scene, who were just a 
little bit older, kept some distance. They'd already formed their ovm 
alternate lifestyles. To the extent that their lives overlapped with 
what ^\as happening in the mid- '60s, they were a part of it, but they 

were already there when it exploded I'd seen a few avant- garde films, 

so I already knew you could do anything you wanted." -R.N. 

THE AWFUL BACKLASH (196?) U min Soundtrack by Nelson 

"Bill Allan came over to my hovise one day, at about the time that Blondino \vas 
nearly finished, and said that we should make a film about a fishing reel 
backlash. He fishes all the time and the idea came to him while casting... 
I'm really happy with this movie and I think that it's nearly perfect. I 
showed it a lot in Europe last year, and some people over there thought it 
was a put-on but it isn't, others hated it because it is so boring. I usually 
feel very good when I see it." -R.N. 

THE OFF-HAND JAPE (196?) 9 min Soundtracic by Nelson and William T. Wiley 

"...I've always felt good about this film because it's beyond criticism. 
No one can say it's awful, no matter what elaborate reasons they construct, 



without talking about what's good in the fiL-n. If it's truly av.i'ul. rr.en 
it's just ri^ht. because that's exactly what v.'e had in nund. If you can't 
enjoy that kind of awfulness. "hat's another ir<atter,.. and I'd have to say 
'that's your problem because, after all. there are plenty of other lends of 
awfulness that you really do enjoy, and YOU know it!'..." R.N. 

BLEU SHUT ''-r7C! 33 "lin Soundtrack by Nelson v/ith William Wiley 

" Bleu Shut 13 a prime example of the participatory film, a form which emerged 
at the ena of the 1960s out of extensions of the structural film. . . The 
participatory films follow the direction established by the structural cinema 
in finding corollaries for the conscious mind..." P. A. Sitney, Visionary Film 

"...You can see a boat in a harbor and have one reaction to it, walk around 
and see the name and have a different reaction. The boat feels one way if it's 
called Mary Jane; it feels another way if it's called The Weekender. It loote 
different. For me those names, and the kitsch mentality they reflect are ap- 
pealing and repulsive. Since you can feel both ways about them, there's an 
edge and that edge appeals to me. . . The clock came out of my own arduous 
struggle to sit through a lot of independent movies. I often have a powerful 
urge to look back to see how much is left on the reel, ViTien I succumb, the reel 
always looks huge! I put the clock up there so that no one would have to turn 
around." -R.N. 

DEEP W;STUH:I ^197'+) 6 mln 

"Nelson calls Deep Westum a 'death film'. Dr. Samuel West, an Oakland dentist 
who was an early supporter and collector of Wiley, Geis, Hudson, et al, h^ad 
died shortly before the film \vas made. 'Nothing ^vas spelled out,' Nelson says, 
'but it was in all our minds at the time' . Deep Westum is a memorial gesture 
and a meditation on mortality. .A.t the same time, it pays tribute to the en- 
dviring ties and personal affection that have characterized the work of Nelson, 
Wiley and their friends. And this friendship is, in great measure, the subject 
of their work." -J. Hoberman 

HAMLET ACT Cl982) 21 min Screenplay by Joe Chang 
-Docu-Drama style (Hamlet as a video camera- person) 



The Foufloation for An in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bay Area snowcase tor oersonai and avant-^aroe rilm 



R03EHT :.'ELSON P.ETROSPECTI'.'Z 

MARCH 22, 1984 

The San Francisco Cinematheque presents a three part retrospecrive 
of the filns of Roberr Melson, native San Franciscan, vhose work 
in the i950s in collaboration with Funk Artists /.'illiam iviley and 
Robert Hudson, composer Steve Reich, and San Francisco Mime Troupe 
Director, Ron Davis, established his reputation as an original voice 
in San Francisco's "hipster cinema". 

Reflecting and encouraging an irreverance for polite middleclass 
values via an ironic, playful, and unrelenting "un-uptight sense 
of humor", ^'elson and his SF Art Institute cohorts mirrored the 
transforming climate of the postbeat/prepsychedelic 60s. Collective 
imagination infused the films, and the artists' offhanded approach 
to process allowed the idiosynchratic nature of the works to reign 
free and expressive, '.vith Nelson, art values and entertainm.enr collide 
ecstatically. 

"-(Nelson) has long been recognized (along with Bruce Connor, the 
Kuchar Brothers and a few others) as the avantgarde cinema's most 
potent comic filmmaker. . .nearly all Nelson's films develop one form 
of humor or another. This along with his im.provisational methods, 
his connection with the SF Art Institute, and the Eastern influences 
on his work have made him a representative of what's usually thought 
of as an essential element of 'West Coast Filmmaking'."- Scott Macdonaic 

The Cinematheque is proud to present three evenings of Nelson's works. 
On March 29 the program will include The Awful Backlash , The Off- 
Handed T^oe , Bleu Shut , Deep Ives turn , and Hamlet Act . On May 3 
Suite '^'alif ornia ; Stops and Passes i Parrs I and II) will be screenea. 

" You're not aloof or remote or superior. You just feel 

submerged. In a way you're safe because you're invulnerable 
because you know what the things you're involved with represent 
and you know what they are, and you know the absurdity and 
meaninglessness of them..." -R.N. 

PLASTIC HAIRCUT (1963) 15 min. 

"Bill Wiley, Ron Davis, Robert Hudson and m.yself got excited about 
the idea of making a film together. I had made two home movies before 
this time using a borrowed camera, so I was the technical expert. 
None of us knew anything about making movies at that time, but we all 
knew about art (namely, that it had something to do with having a 
good time)..." -R.N. 



DEM /:atehmelo::s 1965) i: -m. 



. >v t 



,-e all had a rcod ti~e running arouna -ne ;-'.i3sicn Zistricr ar.d 
Potrero Hill District busting up waterr.elons , shoving off, ana having 
fun. A few weeks later, v.-hen I had the fil~ roughly edirsd, I ran i. 
silent for Ron and Saul and a few people a- the :-:ir.e Troupe. There -:^s 
deadly silence and it looked awful. Everyone was en-.oarrassed for ~e 
and didn't know what to say. I faked it by saying that i- was good an- 
I told them not to worry... the track (by Steve Reich) has helped z'r.e 
film a lot." 

"....T.y view was that stereotypes in themselves can't say anything, 
they obscure rather than reveal. To present them blatantly, in a cents 
that rr.ade them confrontational, seem.ed to me a way of being bold and 
daring... and a way of creating a lure for racist projections... the 
film is about being on a razor line." -R.N. 

HOT LEATHERETTE (1967) 5*1 min. 

"... I think this is a pretty good rr.ovie, ~aybe just a shade -oo rric;: 
I showed it in Mill Valley one night and it made a girl puke , the 
second best compliment that I've ever gotten for my movies)." -R.;;. 

GRATEFUL DEAD (1967) 1^ min. 

"...overnight the whole scene was born. From my point of view it was 
almost instantaneous. Old icons were tumbling and floating downstream; 
other gods were disappearing over the horizon. It was an astounding 
continual shock and people came- young people, bigger crowds, still 
bigger crowds- all dancing in the streets, and taking acid and being 
transformed by it."- R.N. 

"...Nelson jams (on optical printer) with the rock group/Concert 
footage of The Dead manipulated-presented using various modes: color 
positive and negative, mirror printing, loop printing, various forms 
of stepped and stop motion, blurring swish pans, frenetic zoom.ing. 
This is accompanied by a jaggedly rhythmic sound collage of Dead music 
The sounds and images move (with considerable dexterity) in and ou- 
of rhythmic synchronization." Scott MacDonald 

THE GREAT BLONDINO (1967) 41 min. 

"...We didn't have any ideas or script. V7e just had characters... 
the rest we just made up as we went along. Mostly, we just worked 
out simple visual ideas and took a lot of shots of Wiley's paintings 
and constructions. The form of the movie was made up at the editing 
table..." -R.N. 

"...Blondino is a long never-resolved dialogue between it's protagonis 
inner and outer worlds, between film as material and film as represen- 
tation, between art and entertainment... he (Nelson) was able to 
orchestrate Blondino 's elements into a grand summation of a 20 year 
cycle in San Francisco avante-garde filmmaking... developed through 
the separate work of Peterson and Broughton, the films of Christopher 
MacLaine and those of Ron Rice, and (the style) was to reach an apogee 
with The Great Blondino . Thus exhausted, the picaresque mode itself 
was eclipsed in San Francisco by a style of psychedelic abstraction." 

- J. Hoberman 



The Foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film 

§^i;I«^MI!^^2i2^j__THE_SILENT_FILN^A_PAIULLEL_H 
Programmed by Jon DiBenedetto. 



Animation is usually overlooked when considering the 
early silent film. A particular focus of this program 
of obscure works is the characteristic reflexity of early 
animation which often .included the animator's presence, 
the animator as the magician in the cinema, and the 
technical trasition from paper to eel-animation. 
The program will include the premier of two films by 
Emile Cohl recently released in America. 

Tonights show will include : Drame Chez Les Fantoces , 
(1906) and The man in the moan . (1907) Emile Cohl; Sure - 
locked homes , (1926) Otto Mesmer; The voice of the night- 
ingale , (1923) Vladidslas Starevitc; Max and Merit z (1920) 
Wilhelm Bush; Down where the limburger blows (1917), Bray 
Studios featuring the Katzen jammer Kids ; Willi's nightmare 
(1926), Paul Perofs: Princess Nicotine (1909) J, Stuart 
Blackton; Adam raises cain (1920) Tony Sarg; Animated 
hair cartoon ; A.W.0.L. , and other films. 



There will be a short intermission. 



SUNDAY APRIL 1, 7:30 p.m. at S.F. ART INSTITUTE, 



The Foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film 



New College Gallery- 
Saturday 7 April 1984 



NO FAMILY PICTURES Film and Music by James Irwin 

(1983) 2 2m in/S 8 mm/col or/sound 



This is a personal, at times an expressive film concerned 
with film education and its effect on the relationship 
between women and media. 



"Cameras are boxes for transporting appearances", writes 
John Berger in Another Way of Telling . "The photographer 
chooses the event he photographs. This choice can be 
thought of as a cultural construction." 

What do the appearances in this film mean to you? 



Various manipulations of the image: (a) the filmmaker is 
always present (b) film is a physical, pliable medium. 



I try to understand the equipment available to me and 
use it to its fullest, rather than envision a result and 
spend money on fulfilling that vision. My choice to use 
S8mm is for economic, political and aesthetic reasons 
tied inseparably together. Except for the printing and 
a short section of sound transfer, all the film and music 
work was done in my small studio using reasonably modest 
tools. 

Therefore the film is itself an example of the low-cost, 
small-format media it implicitly advocates. 



- J.I. 



The Foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bay Area sncwcase for personal ana avant-garde fiinn 



"The film is there and you are here. You're equal. It's neither 
fascism nor entertainment."- Michael Snow 

The San Francisco Cinematheque presents T^chael Snow's monumental work 

LA REGION CENTRALE , 1970-71, 190 min. , sound 

The following notes are excerpted from Snow's discussion of the film in 
Form and Structtire in Recent Film published by the Vancouver Art Gallery. 

"Standard Time had the germ of the idea. ^Vhen I saw what happened with the 
continuous circular, horizontal pans I realized there was alot to be done 
with it. If properly orchestrated it can do some powerful physical-psychic 
things. It can really move you around. If you become completely involved in 
the reality of these circular movements it's 'you' who is spinning surrounded 
with everything, or conversely, you who are a stationary centre and it's all 
revolving around you. But on the screen it's the centre which is never seen, 
which is mysterious. One of the titles I considered using \\'as !?43210T234?! 
[and adaptation of a sculpture title] by which I meant that as you move down 
in dimensions you approach zero and in this film, La Region Centrale that 
zero point is the absolute centre, Nirvanic zero, being the ecstatic centre of 
a complete sphere. You see, the camera moves around an invisible point completely 
in 360 degrees, not only horizontally but in 'every' direction and on every 
plane of a sphere. Not only does it move in predirected orbits and spirals but 
it itself also turns, rolls and spins. So that there are circles within circles 
and cycles within cycles. Evenually there's no gravity. The film is a cosmic strip 

... In various philosophies and religions there has often been the suggestion, 
sometimes the dogma, that transcendence would be a fusion of opposites. In 
Back and Forth there's the possiblity of such a fusion being achieved by 
velocity. I've said before, and perhaps I can quote myself, ' New York Eve and 
Ear Control is philosophy. Wavelength is metaphysics an d Back and Forth^ is 
physics. ' By the last I mean the conversion of matter into energy. E=mc~. 
La Region continues this but it becomes simultaneously micro and macro, cosmic- 
planetary as well as atomic. Totality is achieved in terms of cycles rather than 
action and reaction. It's 'above' that. 

...In my films I've tried to racike something happen that couldn't happen in any 
other way so that there is something special about the experience that comes 
from the possibilities of the medium. If it seems worthwhile to make art works at 
all which is sometimes questionable you'd better do something that adds to the 
world, not in a material sense but that as an experience has some distinction to 
it. At the same time the films are not coercive, they're objective." M.S. 1972 



The Foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film 
Saturday, May 5, 1984 

"Muzak and Other Evidence" 
Films by Scott Stark 

Circus Animal - 1983, 3 Super 8 Projectors, Sound 

Made with Mary Schneberger. When you pay to see a film you are 
essentially paying for a product, which is the privilege of seeing 
through the camera's point of view. In this piece the camera/point 
of view becomes purely a commercial product which can be purchased 
like any other product. 

Hotel Cartograph - 1983, 16mm Color Sound 

A study of an urban environment in an exploratory manner. The film 
is one shot only, using a 16mm synch sound rig with the camera 
mounted on a movable cart. Cartograph = cart + graph, or the 
creation of a graph/graphic image using movement; also, cartography, 
the art of map making. Theoretically one could partially reconstruct 
the layout of the building using the film as a map or score. 

Muzak and Other Evidence - 1984, Super 8 Color Sound 

I once had a science teacher who talked about how we rely more 
heavily on visual information than oral information. "If you saw a 
duck that made a noise like a train," he said, "you'd say 'Hey, that 
duck sounds like a train' rather than 'Hey, that train looks like a 
duck." 

Third in a series of three, this film involves the gathering of 
evidence for a sociological statement. The film is deconstructed 
into its elements and attempts to examine both the process of 
recording the information and the information itself. Key concerns 
include the effect of sound on visuals and the use of the components 
of the film - sound, light, color - as artifacts. 

In Anticipation of the Circuitous Disappearance of the Umbrella Man 
Involving the Evocation and Deliniation of the Threshold of Density 
- 1983, 16mm Color Silent 

A formal study of the relationship between film and the object being 
filmed. An emotional event contextualized for meaning/ statement, and 
pushed beyond the point of comprehension, pushed to the wall(paper) . 
Searching for the point where a threshold of comprehension exists. 

Thanks to Patricia Powers, Jim O'Brien, Chris Sanborn, Mary 
Schneberger, Jun Jalbuena, Mike Krewer. 



The Foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film 

May 5, 1984 

Films by Sharon Greytak 

Some Pleasure on the Level of the Source - 1982, 15mm Color Sound 

Psychical formations, images of memory, etc., become the tangible 
deviants of censorship. When sync sound is heard momentarily before 
the image is seen, sound functions as narration or commentary. When 
picture and sound are in unison, sound works as description. The 
dissolve in film has historically been a signifier for transition. I 
use the image of a young girl to point out minute detail in a 
developmental process. The filmic act, as well as culturally imposed 
acts, are questioned by focusing on a perception of an occurrence or 
transition that would normally go unseen. I am interested in the 
formation and transmittance of shifting content during that moment 
within the film; how meaning can be exploited and/or heightened 
(heightened meaning being new meaning or another meaning) . This 
leads back to censorship where a supposed understanding or 
relationship between the filtered down fragments manage to form; 
posing as complete thought. 

Czechoslovakian Woman - 1982, 16mm Black & White Sound 

The manipulation of filming photographs of such cultural content is 
an outward gesture of the desire to understand an incident by means 
of the scrutinization of isolated detail . This melancholy act 
results in a futile attempt to draw limitless information or to 
reconcile with a past since one can never be close enough to that 
photograph/ situation as depicted. 

The Living Room - 1983, 16mm Color Sound 
No notes available. 

Notes by S.G. 



CITr?'ATHKQUS 
San Francisco Mav 10 iS'^U. 



(bovs) 198^ 2 minutes b/w Melanie Shopa 

Satire b: a usu. tonical literary composition holding up 

human or individual vices, folly, abuses, or shortcomings to censure by 
means of ridicule, irony or other methods sometLmes with an intent to 
bring about improvement. 

Thought Transference 199^ 10 minutes colour ^Hexandra rronigsmann 
"Another way of communication." 



April 8^ USA 1954 3 minutes colour Thomas Tellander 

"A diary. " 



YUFU in the first position 197B 10 minutes David Ronce 

"A bicycle ride between success and failure. Idealogical measurement fo: 

the usefullness of each." 



Forum I98I 8 minutes b/w Alexandra JConigsmann 

"Four empty rooms; building up and down in Germany." 

> 

Mololoo: 1984 b/w 4 minutes Lars Erik "erg 

flight and sound' 

thought = ^^^" • 

INTEPyiSSION 

B.L.T. 1982 10 minutes (installation) Thomas Tellander/ Melanie Shopa 

Next 1984 6 minutes Knut Wilhelm 

"The pigs of today are the pork chops of tomorrow" (graffiti statement) 

" an evolutionary chase on concrete." 



I am not . . . 1984 ^4-5 seconds Alexandra Konigsmann 

"... a machine." 



Falling Apart 1984 5 minutes Thomas Tellander 

" See what I mean." 



(There will be a reception in the courtyard following the program.) 




May 17, 1984 
THE SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE 
presents 
a MERRY, JOYFUL, MEMORIAL TRIBUTE 



iiiii"""'' 



to 




HOLLIS FRAMPTON 



1936 



1984 



Films this evening: 

Short Films 1975, #3 , by Stan Brakhage / 16mm /color /silent /2 min. 

A portrait of H.F. and of the animal traditionally likened to persons 
of high intellect. 

Information 1966 / silent / 4 min. / "Hypothetical 'first film' 
for a synthetic tradition constructed from scratch on reasonable 
principles, given: 1) camera; 2) rawstock; 3) a single bare light- 
bulb. I admit to having made a number of splices." - H.F. 

Manual of Arms / 1966 / silent / 17 min. / "Coxirtly dances with 
friends and lovers in the form of a 14-part drill for the camera, 
incorporating physiognomic & locomotor evidence related to the 
lens by 13 artists and an historian, namely: C. Andre, B. Brown, 
R. Castoro, L. Childs, B. Goldensohn, R. Huot, E. Lloyd, L. Lozano, 
L. Meyer, L. Poons, M. Snow, m. Steinbrecher, T. Tharp, J. Weiland." 

- H.F. 

Lemon (for Robert Huot) / 1969 / silent / 7-1/2 min. / color 
"As a voluptuous lemon is devoured by the same light that reveals 
it, its image passes from the spatial rhetoric of illusion into the 
spatial grammar of the graphic arts." - H.F. 

carrots & Peas / 1969 / 5-1/2 min. / soiand /color / "A 'tradi- 
tional* side-dish of mixed vegetables inhabits a succession of 
•traditional* art-styles. The sumptuous, sometimes tiresome para- 
dox of the static image in film, is rudely presented in the form 
of an art historian's slide-lecture... for which genre of discourse 
the spoken commentary is of about average relevance to the images." 

- H.F. 

Hapax Legomena III [ Critical Mass ] / 1971 / 25-1/2 min. / sound/ b/w 
"As a work of art I think [CRITICAL MASS] is quite vmiversal and 
deals with all quarrels (those between men and women, or. men and 
men, or women and women, or children, or war.) It- is war!... It 
is one of the most delicate and clear statements of~Tnter-hiiman re- 
lationships and the difficulties of • them that I have ever seen. It 
is very funny, and rather obviously so. It is a magic film in that 
you can enjoy it,, with greater and greater appreciation, each time 
you look at it.' Most esthetic experiences are not enjoyable on 
the sixrface. You have to look at them a nxomber of times before you 
are able to fully enjoy them, but this one stands up at once, and 
again and again, and is amazingly clear." - Stan Brakhage 



**■- - INTERMISSION - 




Gloria (from the Magellan cycle) / 1980 / silent / 8 min. / color 
H.F. had a grandmother whose companionship and spiritual spunk helped 
sustain his childhood trials. This film offers an objectification 
of his feelings and thoughts for her. 

Otherwise unexplained Fires 1977 / silent / 18 min. / color 
Filmed m large part durxng H.F.'s lecture-screening tour in the 
Bay Area: visit (s) to the Musee Mechanique, Land's End, the Cliff 
House. The S.F. fog is proclaimed, as also are the cypress trees 
that line parts of our local beach. A visit to the Brakhage Colo- 
rado residence provided images of chickens/roosters.. 

Winter Solstice (from the Magellan cycle) 1974 / silent / 33 min. 

/ color 

" Magellan . . . Initially conceived with a running time of nine 
hours, thirty-six minutes, the work itself will eventually run 
thirty-six hours and be seen over a period of one year and four 
days . 

"Although the structure of the overall work has been guided by 
mathematical formulations, the individual (parts), themselves, 
seem in no way to resemble the formulaic "structxiral" film. . . In 
the films of Magellan . . . the output of the a priori schemes has 
become so large, so complex, that the "struct\u-es" they generate 
are no longer seen, are no longer retrievable. . . the "seasonal 
films" of Straits of Magellan involve what Frampton has called 
' situations in which nature is very clearly imitating art.'... 

"A film like Autumnal Equinox or Summer Solstice is no less 
'systematic' than the films of Frampton 's earlier period; it is 
simply less metrical, less concerned with duration as a prime com- 
positional component. This shift from the metric to the rhythmic 
undercuts the kinds of anticipation structiores or timing devices 
which operated in several of Frampton 's previous works. Instead 
of 'baring the device' of the dialectic of temporal engagement 
( memory /ant icipat ion ) , the recent films go one step fxirther in 
suspending the elements and representational aspects. And as the 
key to these films no longer entails a discernable generative 
principle or a priori scheme, what becomes foregrounded is the 
act of perception... 

" Magellan . . . . announces a major development... in view of the 
achievements of Frampton 's past work and the recent history of 
avant-garde film. . . A dominant concern: the development of an 
epistemology of vision. In [Frampton' s] earlier films, this took 
the form of apperceptive strategies which highlighted the relation 
between perception and modes of cognition in the spectator. With 
Magellan , Frampton has at last succeeded in the total, merging of 
intellectual space with the space of the world. The paradoxical 
is achieved by the dynamic welding of presumed. dualities; forms 
are created where once it was presumed boundaries^ existed." * , 



* Bruce Jenkins, wide Angle magazine. Vol. 2, No. 3, .1978: 
"Frampton Uhstructured - Notes for a metacritical history, " 

pp. 22-27;^-i|X;: --fr^^xg: ■:.>:,^. ,^^^ •: ; ,.. ,..;^..k2^:•v-Ki.-H^^^3v^?5•;>V^*^i• 




June 7 San Francisco Cinematheque 

DIFFERENT PLACES/BAD PLACES 

A selection of films by (mostly) women. 



A Setting: 



Clever men build cities, Clever women 

topple them. 

Beautiful, these clever women. But they 

are owls, they are kites. 

Women have long tongues. Stairways 

to ruin. 

Disorder is not sent down from Heaven, 

But bred by these women. 

from The Book of Songs (Shih Ching) , 
a Confucian classic. 

"If women have a role to play,... it is only in assuming a negative 
function: reject everything finite, definite, structured, loaded 
with meaning, in the existing state of society. Such an attitude 
places women on the side of the explosion of social codes: with 
revolutionary movements." 

Julia Kristeva, from an interview with 
Xaviere Gauthier in Tel Quel #58 

"...woman has sex organs just about everywhere. She experiences 
pleasure almost everywhere. . .The geography of her pleasure is 
much more diversified, more multiple in its differences, more 
complex, more subtle, tham is imagined — in an imaginary (system). 
centered a bit too much on one and the same. 

"She" is infinitely other in herself. That is undoubtedly the 
reason she is called temperamental, incomprehensible, perturbed, 
capricious — not to mention her language in which "she" goes off in 
all directions and in which "he" is unable to discern the coherence 
of any meaning. Contradictory words seem a little crazy to the 
logic of reason, and inaudible for him who listens with ready-made 
grids, a code prepared in advance. In her statements — at least when 
she dares to speak out — woman retouches herself constantly." 

Luce Irigaray, Ce_ Sexe qui n'en est 
pas un (This sex which isn't one), 
, ■ 1977. 

"For analysis has a way of failing to participate in the very spirit 
which it would analyse, and therefore not involving itself in an 
ironic self-contradiction, but in a violation and negation of that 
to which it is attempting to do justice." 

Zen and the Comic Spirit , by Conrad Hyers . 



DIFFERENT PLACES/BAD PLACES 



All of the films being shown tonight are somehow concerned with speaking, 
and speaking from the "outside". They resist or reject any conventional rela- 
tionship to language and domninant culture, and to a fixed form or structure. 
They assume the legitimacy of their own voices? 

A question is posed: Is this the voice of the women with long tongues, of 
negativity, of narcissism, or of something else? 



Linda Peckham, UNTITLED, 1984, 10 minutes 

The feminine voice is not the transparency of a consciousness. It is che 
irresponsible focal point of these events, where the moments of concealing 
and revealing are dislocated as reference for memory and narrative. 

-L. Peckham 

Lee Sokol, AQUI SE LP HALLA (Here You Will Find It), 1982, 18 minutes 

Aqui Se Lo Halla juxtaposes both sensual and violent footage of Mexico 
with a 40 year old Mexican's poignant account of a youthful passion. It 
works through a series of doublings: a woman uses a man to talk with a 
particularly "feminine" sensitivity about women and the possibility of a 
heterosexuality of differences. 

-L. Thornton 

Su Friedrich, SCAR TISSUE, 1980, 6 minutes 

I wanted to notate as precisely as I could the essential rhythms and 
emotions of the environment, while undermining its essence; to build slowly 
from a quietly threatening atmosphere to one in which there is no possible 
contact between the men and the women, where the urge to get somewhere 
destroys the need to understand the meaning of the journey. It concerns the 
chaste being chased, the chaser being captured, the captivating being captive, 
the chaste being powerless, the captor being impotent tho powerful. 

-S. Friedrich 



Lawrence Sheinfeld, HOW I GOT HERE, 1984, 14^^ minutes 

How _!_ Got Here is another of my arguments for making efficiency and 
expediency the twin pillars of a new, truly American aesthetic. This is the 
cheap fraud refined, so as to be cheaper. Rather than apologizing for our lack 
of a past such as we believe we would like to have had, and rather than, 
in all glum earnestness, setting about to recreate such a past in a convincing 
way, we must learn to represent our desire for that past. If the past is 
everything we haven't got, then the desire for it will prompt frantic efforts 
to achieve by any means possible the singular moment of absolute rest which is 
our sham past. 

-L. Sheinfeld 



Su Friedrich, BUT NO ONE, 1982, 9 minute s 

In the dream, I was unable to act according to my good conscience. When I 
awoke, the women were still outside my window, hard at work. On a walk through the 
city, I saw the men tearing down and building up the world. Meanwhile, fish were 
being killed for my evening meal. 

-S. Friedrich 



Leslie Thornton an excerpt from PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL, 1984, 20 minutes 

A room overstuffed with the detritus of culture is the setting in which the young 
Peggy and Fred "learn to talk". They scramble over the surfaces of meaning like little 
imperfect recording machines, getting everything wrong, with a feeling and conviction 
that is both marvelous and frightening. The children are being inscribed into the 
Symbolic Order, he alienated from himself, but not language, she from language, 
but not herself. He builds their house and she looks for their voice. 



(Note: This is an autonomous seguence from a feature length work-in-progress.) 

L. Thornton 



Films programmed and notes prepared by Leslie Thornton 



The Foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bav Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film 
Saturday, June 8, 1984 

Brakhage ; The Roman Numeral Series 
ana other Films 

This evening's program will be only the second time that the Roman 
Numeral Series has been shown in sequence, and in its entirety"] Tn 
the United States. 

Roman Numeral Series I-IX , 1979-80, 16mm color/silent, 48 min. 

"This begins a new series of films which would ordinarily be 
called 'abstract', 'non-objective', 'non-representational', etc. I 
cannot tolerate any of those terms and, in fact, had to struggle 
against all such historical concepts to proceed with my work. Midst 
creative process, the sound ' imagnostic ' kept ringing in my ears. It 
seems to be an enjambment of Latin and Greek; but Charlton T. Lewis' 
'Elementary Latin Dictionary' gives me (via Guy Davenport) 
'image' ... Sanskrit=AIC= ' like ' , GNOSIS 'knowledge', GNOSTIC=AGNOSCO= 
'to recognize/to know' and the happier IMAGINOUSUS 'full of fancies'/ 
'fantasies', illustrated by Catullus' singular use (perhaps creation 
of the term?) in the line 'His mind solidly filled with 'fancies of a 
girl'. Even though exhausted by this etymological pursuit, and 
despite my prejudice against taking on 'foreign airs' of tongue, 
'Imagnostic' keeps singing in my head and escaping my lips in 
conversation." - S.B. 

The following films have only recently been released through the 
Canyon Cinema Supplement. 

Wedlock House; An Intercourse , 1959, 16mm, color/silent, 11 min. 

"The first months of marriage, with moments of mutual awareness, 
frightening understandings, lovemaking." - Cinema 16 

Angels ' , 1971, 16mm, color/silent, 2 min. 

"This then the property of many angels." - S.B. 

Door , 1971, 16mm, color/silent, 2 min. 

"This the only all-inclusive autobiography I've yet managed; and as 
I'm still alive, it is to be understood as a metaphor which defines 
the limits of expectation." - S.B. 

Fox Fire Child Watch , 1971, 16mm, color/silent, 3 rain. 

"Ken, Flo, and Nisi Jacobs in the Syracuse Airport: this is what you 
might call baby-sitting in the swamp." - S.B. 

The Peaceable Kingdom , 1971, 16ram, color/silent, 8 min. 

"This film, one of the most perfect it has ever been given to me to 
make, was inspired by the series of paintings of the same title by 
Edward Hicks." - S.B. 



San Francisco Cinematheque 
June 10, 198^ 



POETS ON FILMi FRANK O'HARA 

The Last Clean Shirt . Film by Alfred Leslie. Subtitles by- 
Frank O'Hara. Song "The Last Clean Shirt" by Jerry Lieber 
and Mike Stoller. Original black-&-white version, 1964, 
destroyed by fire in 1966; present red-&-white version 
printed by the filmmaker in 1970. ^5 minutes. 



Intermission 



USAi Poetryi Frank O'Hara . The 11th in a series of filmed 
interviews and readings, produced & directed by Richard 
Moore for KQED-TV and National Educational Television. 
Photographed and edited by Philip Green. Filmed in 16 mm. 
at O'Hara' s apartment and Alfred Leslie's studio in New 
York, March 5. 1966. First televised on September 1, 1966. 
15 minutes. 

Frank O'Hara: Second Edition . From unused footage for USA» 
Poetry , produced by Gordon G.A. Craig and edited by Peter 
Kunz for the American Poetry Archive and Resource Center 
at the Poetry Center, San Francisco State University. 
1975. 35 minutes. 



"Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if 
they don't need poetry bully for them, I like the movies 
too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, 
of the American poets, are better than the movies." 

— Frank O'Hara, from Personismt 
A Manifesto , 1959. 

"To most people reality is a confirmation of their expectations. 
Some part of an artist's practice should be to consciously 
try to add alternatives to what others think they see. Pull 
My Daisy and The Last Clean Shirt are the best known of my 
films that explore that ideaT'' 

— Alfred Leslie 
Amherst, Mass. 1984 



Notes 

The Last Clean Shirt 

"The first of its three parts has a young Negro get into an open 
car with a young white woman, set an alarm clock at 12i00, and then 
start driving around the city. The camera is in the back of the car 
so you can see the couple of the ordinary city sights. She talks 
continuously in a made-up language — similar to the Bergmanese in 
The Silence . At 12i07, they're still riding and she's still talking. 
(By this time, the audience was booing.) The car drives on, passes 
a church where a loud speaker is blaring something about 'Ashes to 
ashes'. Around 12:10, the car is back at its starting place; and 
while the couple is getting out, a man's voice on the soundtrack 
sings "They put the last clean shirt on my poor brother Bill.' Fin. 

Part two repeats the whole thing exactly as we saw and heard it the 
first time -- except it is accompanied by subtitles indicating what 
the woman is saying. Her continuous patter reads like e.e. cummings 
under the influence of Gracie Allen. Once again the car and its 
passengers return to the starting point and "the last clean shirt 
on my poor brother Bill." Fin — again (with so much applause on the 
sound track that it almost drowned out the booing of the real audience) . 
Part three shows exactly the same visuals from 12 o'clock on, but 
with new subtitles, this time revealing what the main is thinking 
while the woman chatters on. And his stream of consciousness winds 
up with an expression of hatred for that "last clean shirt* song..." 

— review of the premiere of The Last Clean Shirt 
at the 1964 New York Film Festival, by Philip 
T. Hartung, The Commonweal . October 23, 196^4-. 



Finally in Sweden, March 1962, during a preposterous ride in the back seat of a 
convertible, the combination of the wind, the motor roar, the Swedish language, 
and my already faulty hearing produced what turned out to be the final notes for 
The Last Clean Shirt . I made a rough draft of the film in October 1 962 on returning 
from Europe, using as its basil the car. ride, A Life and Time, and the outline of a 
scene I had written for Mr. 2. ' ' ' <''" ■•" ' ' ■" ' . ' • ; -' V " ' • 

In 1965 Shirt was filmed. In the first days' shooting the camera was focused and 
tied and left to operate independently in the back seat of a convertible. In the 
second shooting I tied the camera to the knees of a friend who was then strapped 
into the back of a station wagon. Knowing what the camera would see at that angle 
and position, I simply drove around looking for things to shoot through the rear 
view mirror of the car. When something. looked right L yelled, •■*'Shoot",' and the 
camera would be turned on. '^■' ^' '-''•"(•>.,.• ■'..■■,:.i<,. -y . -j* .r,«ui:i,;. .. ; 

Later I was given the use of a record called The Last Clean Shirt, vo-itten, pro- , 
duced, and released by Jerry Lieber and Mike StoUer. Because I liked it so much 
and because the music and lyrics had so much to do with the ideas in the film, I 
named the film after the song;'-' -^^y''"^^u >'^- ^^\''- -Hf I {..■•rm ■<':■': , . 



When the composite print was complete, I screened it for Frank O'Hara to see if 
we could work out a way for him to write the sub-titles for what would be reels two 
and three. O'Hara and I had considered doing a few things earlier; an animated 
film based on an idea of Joe LeSeur's called Messy Lives, an animation of some 
poems, and also the staging of a pornographic tape of mine called The Flower Girls. 
None of these had ever worked out because the production time seemed too im- 
mense to coordinate with our respective work schedules. But this project seemed 
measurable, and we worked out this method of collaboration. O'Hara would write 
whatever he wanted. I would adapt the transfer, the timing, and the word and 
letter spacing of the sub-titles on the screen. I could also repeat any line or lines as 
frequently as I wanted, as long as they remained in the original sequence. 

I burned the titles in at Titra, and a complete version of the film was screened. at 

the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco in the summer of 1964. The showing 

there was the only sympathetic viewing of the film I have ever known of. More usual 

was the hissing, booing, slow clapping, and foot stamping that greeted the film at 

1 the New York and London Film Festivals. ' ' i. ...'..■ ^w 

A description of the London screening appears in a very complete and sympa- 
thetic review by Philip French in an issue of Encounter magazine, 1964. A piece 
about the film in the Catholic Film Review saw the film as a search for truth, and 
eventually the film won an award in Bergamo, Italy. It then was ignored. 

ITS LOSS: -. ';-" ' 

Two years later, on October 16, 1966, a few months after Frank O'Hara's death, 
my studio and its entire contents were destroyed in a disastrous fire that took the 
lives of twelve firemen. But the fire, destroying everything else, apparently did not 
burn all of my films. They looked to be safe and intact since they were in a steel 
cabinet that was supposed to be fire resistant. The entire cabinet was visible from 
the street, jammed into a. corner of the building. I tried to get a cherry picker to 
pluck it out. Not only was I unable to borrow one from any private person or from 
any city or state department. I was unable to get assistance of any kind to get any- 
thing out. Despite one week of endless telephone calls to all the museums in New 
York and to countless friends and acquaintances, I got no help. Finally, the build- 
ing was knocked down into rubble and the cabinet with the film merged with the 
rest of the brick and fire trajh. Fortunately, while they were carting away the debris, 

a few reels fell out of the cabinet and I was able to get them and save them. Also 
fortunately, at least regarding The Last Clean Shirt, a print of the film was in the 
Bergamo Archive, and a 35mm negative was still with the lab. The sub-title slugs 
had remained with Titra in New Jersey, but the time sheets with the valuable mea- 
surements of screen time were gone, as were all of the out-takes, original 16mm 
negative, and other film documents. But a new print could be made if 1 could get 
the measurements for the sub-titles from the Bergamo copy., I wrote Bergamo re- 
questing help with this and got no reply, ■lui.v, ';,;., , I;;. I • , I. 

•■' :.-■'''■■'■,:{' . .:.-■"? ,■.. , . - ■I,:. ;,- . 

ITSRECOVERY: •■.■■,»,..■••>:. 

In 1970, Kynaston McShine asked for a complete print of the film for the Infor- 
mation Show he was putting on at the Museum of Modem Art in New York. Want- 
ing a complete version of the film he assisted me in what turned out to be an almost 
comic struggle with the Bergamo Archive to get their cooperation. It seemed they 
would only help us for a price. In order to get their help we would have to find and 
send them a print of a film they wanted for their collection. But we were unable to 
get the film they wanted. It took months of overseas calls, letters, telegrams, and 
finally arm twisting to get the material we needed; It could certainly never have 
been accomplished without the help of both Kyna«ton McShine and the Museum of 
Modern Art; • • ■' .ri ,.■■ ..• . . 



Finally, having the measurements for the sub-titles* 1 was able to make a com- 
plete print. But this new print was not identical to the original. I did incorporate 
into it one change. Because of the poor quality of the 35mm negative I had at the 
lab, I made the new print up in red and white rather than in black and white. The 
red made up for the thinness of the 35mm negative, by shortening the tonal range 
and by giving the eye different expectations. Color works differently than black and 
white in its expression of dark and light. Like Rubens, who used vermillion ' and 
brown to express the darkest force, I used a reddish brown instead of black. ' 
' I still have the other shreds of film I saved from the rubble. I believe they are 
part of the picture track of the work print of the other film I had made in collabora- 
tion with Frank O'Hara called Philosophy in the Bedroom (1966) . This is a film of 
three people in bed making love. O'Hara 's sub-titles tell us what happens immedi- 
ately after the people leave the bed, and an on-screen character's monologue tells us 
what happened to them before they got into bed, and before we see them on the 

iscreen. The picture was shot on 8mm black and white film with sync sound. A 
16mm color master was struck off of that, and then a 35mm negative was made 
from that master. A complete composite print, with music by Jerry Lieber and Mike 
Stoller (a three minute composition repeated for one hour), was screened at a 
number of places, including the Museum of Modem Art in New York, thanks to the 

icourtesy and care of Willard Van Dyke; • ; ' 

— Alfred Leslie, from notes for A Tribute to Antholoa:y 
Film Archives' Avantgarde Film Preservation Program , 
The Museiim of Modern Art, New York, October 19. 1977. 



USA I Poetryt Frank O'Hara 
Frank O'Harat Second Edition 

Scenes are shot in O'Hara' s floor- through apartment at 791 Broadway 
and Leslie's studio further down on the Lower East Side. (The studio 
is the same one that burned in October of 1966.) Leslie & O'Hara 
are discussing the script for Philosophy in the Bedroom , later 
entitled Act & Portrait . O'Hara's prose text for the film is included 
in Selected Plays (Full Court, 1978). The voice-over is that of 
Richard Moore. The tabby cat's name was Boris. The assemblage over 
O'Hara' s desk with with Bendiga Nuestra Casa in it is by Joe 
Brainard (not Larry Rivers as the titles suggest). The large action 
painting behind O'Hara & Leslie in the last sequence is by Michael 
Goldberg, and the multi-bulbed lamp is by Larry Rivers. The "Jim" 
that phones to relate his experience with a "flashing bolt" is 
the poet Jim Brodey. The audio portion of the reading, of "Having 
a Coke with You" is reproduced on Biting Off the Tongue of a Corpse 
(LP, Giorno Poetry Systems, 1975). 

(Program Notes compiled by Bill Berkson) 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Steve Bassett of the American 
Poetry Archive for making this screening of the film Frank O'Harai 
Second Edition possible; to the Indiana University Audio-Visual 
Center for USAi Poetrvi Frank O'Hara t and to Alfred Leslie and 
Jonas Mekas for The Last Clean Shirt. 



San Francisco Cinematheque 
June 16, 1984 

GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM (1981) 
THE TIES THAT BIND (1984) 

By Su Friedrich 



The text of GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM is a succession of fourteen dreams taken from 
eight years of my journals. I chose to work with dreams that were the most troubling 
to me, that expressed my deepest anxieties and longings, or that had forced a sudden 
awareness about a nagging problem. Since anything repeated often enough tends to lose 
its mysterious ritual power, I hoped that I might exorcise certain personal obsessions 
while using a language that was direct enough to allow others to recognize their own 
demons ( assuming that our desire for attachment and our fear of it can be equally 
demonic) . 

I also respect those dreams that can create an uncanny confusion between what was 
dreamt and what was done "in real life". Some of the dreams seemed so plausible, but 
were physically impossible. Somehow, these metaphors had more credibility or impact 
than do most real experiences. In general, I am more concerned with finding ways to 
integrate the (harsh) wisdom of dreams into my life than I am in analysing the struc- 
ture and function of dreams through any given system (Freudian, Jungian, etc). 



5h£ NAf A vERy 
ACTIVE I MAGiK/ATiOhJ 



"^^HtJU^r CAUiJT"- 



TO fAV SH£J ON 
SOMESODyi 

HiTu^r. 




Let me state very simply that, in making THE TIES THAT BIND, I had no intention 
of creating a general portrait of all Germans, or of all German women, nor did I 
intend to explain the origins of the war or of Nazism. The film began as a personal 
investigation of my own mother's life before and during the war, primarily from 
age 10 to 28. I was often tempted to extend the film beyond the parameters of her 
own stories, but I decided against that; I wanted to stay close to her text and work 
within the confines of a single life. Since the war has engendered such a wide range 
of material, which often takes such a broad, "objective", view of the events, I was 
interested in taking a more subjective and "limited" approach. Moreover, it would be 
ludicrous to presume objectivity when working with material about my mother (although 
I tried hard to maintain my scepticism throughout the project) . 

I restricted my found footage of Germany to that of Ulm, which I acquired on a trip 
in 1982. Even though nothing in the images distinguishes them as shots of Ulm, it was 
important for me to know that it was her hometown rather than just "images of war". 
In particular, the shot of the Nazi banner strung across the road forced me to admit 
and imagine the Nazi presence in her daily life much more than if I had used the 
familiar propaganda footage of marches, etc. Similarly, all the footage of contemporary 
Germany (of Dachau, the Berlin Wall, etc.) was shot by me during the same trip; I just 
didn't want to depend on anyone else's view of the sites. 



I juxtaposed images of my mother in her current life with stories of her past largely 
because those experiences still haunt her terribly, and because I can't separate who 
she is now from who she became because of Nazism and the war. But beyond that, it 
seemed to create a conversation between the images, which I made, and the sound, which 
she made. 

From the inception of the project, I tried to learn more about Nazi and pre-Nazi 
Germany. Despite being 75% German-American and learning quite generally about the war 
in school and through the mass media, I was surprised at how little I knew of the 
details. I also understand now that my own shame at the legacy of the Germans kept me 
from finding out more about the war when I was younger. The more I learn, the more 
questions I find, and I think that making this film was just the beginning of a long 
process of uncovering German history for myself. 

I was committed to investigating the areas of German complicity and resistance, 
independent of my mother's accounts. Memory is a tricky thing, and moreso when one is 
forced to recall (by a persistent daughter) an experience as traumatic as a war (and 
one as fraught with guilt and silence as World War Two) . I learned a new patience in 
talking with her when I finally understood that sometimes the truth gets let out slowly, 
in small batches, and that that doesn't make it less of a truth. But I also did alot 



that my mother was 1. ' ^'"^"^ "°^^^ ^i— but the ;esnir °"" '°""'^ ^^^^ to 
-est She coula :::errL^^^^^ ^"°" - ^--nt t'h': .:t:; a\\°,"^^^t ^' '''''^' 

I began the film thinking of h. '^' "' 

popular image of all rlZ, ^"^ ^^ ^ relatively cour;,ao 

end, I understood tha?sTe" '' ^^--^^ly complicito°3 ,nTim '^'"°"' ^'"^" ^^^ 
person would do who • 'n't aT^ courageous, but within the fim"; °%^"'°"i- ^" the 
That led to a most uraen^ ^ '° ^"^ °f "'artyrdom or orL .°^ "^" ^"^ ethical 

conscientious person do r \"".''°" '°' '"e: How much can 11^'"' ^""'° "distance. 
society in which eJenthi"".' °' ^"°"P actions) when nrf. f/"^ ordinary-but- 

^ite unsafe? She Inherxted W^" ^^^'^^" ^^^tholic "A?yan") f '''' ^ ^^^^°-^^ 
Chancelor h^h ok ""edited the Nazis; she was n „ ^ ' ^^ Potentially 

But it :as a fuH: e!f" ^V'''' ^" '''' ' ^^e fllj^.L^ ^'^" "^"^ -^ -de 
independently "^ '"'°""' terrorist state bv the time.h ' '^'"" ^^'^^ different. 

So I found myself wonH ""^^ "^"^ ^°°"^^ ^° ^^t 

-"ore, knowing that I !n f. "^ °^^^ ^"^ °^er: if j had h ■ 

from this saL dil. "^'^ Probably die for it^ife ^^^" "^^' ^°"ld I have resist- 
^ear of guaranteed "'r^^:^^" °- -" demonstrate, lea'^'t" '"'r^"^ °"^^ " ^-roLm 

can't answer that quest lo" -' °' '""^- ^^^ ^^en I ^ut ' I ?f -""^^ ^^^"^ without 
the hook; it Hus^ ^"estion. it certainly doesn't l«i myself m her place, i 

-St people are so'afr^r: °" '^ '°°' ^^^^ ^e^.'ottl^llTT -^"^ °^'^^ ^^^^^^ °« 

It seems that oftenihen' e'o P'^"'^^^' ^° confront such ex'tr""' "r'^" '^<^-- 
much more readily to devisinf ^" '^^^'^ ^ith terrorism t^"/^^"'"^ violence, 
to formulating an Tf^Tl ^ ^^""^Pe routes (whether n^^^K.' ^^^ ^^"^ their wiles 
I do know that ^hat'd^na^r: °PP°3ition. i don't kL^ entire^e'^h^'.r ^'^^^^^^^ ^^- 
to Naei policy. ^ ^ -Levant to current Am^rLl^'^l t^L^^^ 'T 

•c- -^■'■i--i.i_a as It was 

Su Friedrich 
P-s Seve 1 ^^^' "'"^^'^ 

"an, .Hanks to .esue Thornton ,o. au .„ ,,, 

' "-IP ^n .akin, this show possible. 



Jerry Wentz and Gary Doberman 
San Francisco Cinematheaue / June 21, 1984 



Domicile / 1977, Gary Doberman, Ih min 

"Think of a couple of things like they say: 'Limits are what any 
of us are inside of ...', 'Verse consists of a constant and a 
variant ..." Already the v;orld is here, truly, and anyone who 
has ever had experience of actual confinement — jail, hospital, 
body, army — common to human state can't really be patient with 
any assumption that we need to do it to ourselves... 

"[However] [t]he artist has specific responsibility in that he or 
she is often in a territory of hitherto inacknowledged signi- 
ficance - . • 

"In this film there is a simple accessible constant v/hich you 
will have no difficulty in recognizing. There is an eaually 
apparent variable. So your question — to phrase it poorly — 
might be, what is it that is being measured here?. 

"The materials of this film are personal, comfortably so. Nothing 
in that way distorted or untoward. But the choices of the art- 
ist are both crucial and defining, and there is evident attention 
to v/hat he has called boundaries. One is also impressed that 
there is such confident articulation of resources particular 
to film, marked technical skill — 'without which nothing.'" 

— Robert Creely, 

Was That a Real Poem 
and other Essays 

Marks of Reference , 1980, Gary Doberman, ll^s min 

"As I said, but wish to imprint, Marks of Reference is one of 
your very greatest films to m.e , Gary — a breakthrough for 
for my comprehension of your work over these 'inner rectangles' 
for yfeors in your films ... " Stan Brakhage. 

Water Marks , 1981, Jerry Wentz, 41 min 

An autobiographical film in v/hich the filmmaker, during a trip 

home to visit his family, recalls the religious atmosphere 

(Fundamentalism) that he grev; up in. Memories of childhood 

in subtitles are juxtaposed in contrast with images and sounds 

of his relatives, the family dogs, religious television programs, 

and "created environments" of allegorical significance. 

A finely balanced sense of the tragic and the comic weaves 

the dimensions of sound, image, and word. The multi-layered 

story that unfolds reveals religion's stke in the electronic 

media. 



The Foundation for An in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film 

Thursday, September 20, 1984: 
THE FILMS OF KURT KREN -- With Kren in person 



"Kubelka's reputation outside Europe is vast compared with that of his fellow 
Austrian Kurt Kren. But for European film-makers the work of Kren has had a 
more significant influence. Unlike Kubelka, who has snent much of his time in 
the U.S.A., Kren remained in Europe and has made films consistently since 1957, 
to date completing about thirty 16mm works. Again compared with Kubelka, his 
work is more involved and varied, initiating a wider variety of formal issues 
and basic philosophical questions. There are broadly three phases in his work. 
The first is highly systemic; the second, beginning about 1964, is no less 
formal, but works in relationship to the Material-Actions of Otto Muehl and 
Gunter Brus, bringing a new set of issues not easily relatable to his formal 
notions; and the third starts around 1967, where the formal notions are again 
dominant but often combined with a more expressive or provocative content. As 
his work continues to develop in tune with current directions, he should not 
simply be seen in his historical role." 

— Malcolm Le Grice, Abstract Film and Beyond (1977) 

PROGRAM : 

"3/60-Trees In Autumn", b&w, opt. sound, 5 min. 
"6/64-Mama and Papa (M.-A. Muehl)", color, sil., 4 min. 
"8/64-ANA(Action Brus)", b&w sil., 3 min. 
"10/65-67-Selfmutilation (Action Brus)", b&w sil., 6 min. 
"15/67-TV" b&w, sil., 5 min. 
"24/70-Western", col., sil., 3 min. 
"31/75-Asylum", col., sil., 9 min. 
"32/76-An W + B", col., sil., 7 min. 
"33/77-No Danube", col., sil., 9 min. 
"36/78-Rischart", col., sil., 3 min. 
"37/78-Tree Again", col., sil., 4 min. 
"38/79-Sentimental Punk", col., sil., 4 min. 
"39/81-Which Way To CA?",b&w, sil., 3 min. 
"40/81-Breakfast im Gr-uen", b&w, sil., 3 min. 
"41/82-Getting Warm", col., sil., 3 min. 
"42/83-No Film", b&w, sil., h min. 

Discussion 

"16/67-September 20th", b&w, sil., 10 min. 



Kurt Kren's original scores for many of the films shown tonight will be on display 
on the Lecture Hall walls. 



The Foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film 
NEW FILMS BY WILLIE VARELA 



September 27, 1984 

Order of Program: 

LIGHT JOURNALS 1-5 16mm, color, silent, 20 min. 

NO LEFT TURN Super 8, color, silent, 25 min. 

***Intennission*** 

PUSH PULL Super 8, color, silent, 5 min, 

FOREST LAWN Super 8, B & W, sound, 3 min. 

IN THE FLESH Super 8, color, sound, 3 min. 

THE PERFECT NINE Super 8, B & W, sound, 3 min. 

5TH & MARKET Super 8, B & W, sound, 3 min. 

LOSS OF NERVE Super 8, B & W, sound, 3 min. 

JAMES BROUGHTON Super 8, color, sound, 7 min. 

GEORGE KUCHAR Super 8, color, sound, 7 min. 

The LIGHT JOURNALS were shot and edited between 1976 and 1979. They were originally 
shot in Super 8 and later blown up to 16mm. These films are records of daily life 
observed and commented on, and are not meant to be seen as anything more - or less. Rather, 
the task of trying to enter into the flow of spontaneous events, into life as it exists 
in front of you, is a difficult one. The motivating force behind the making of this kind 
of film is to render the light that strikes objects and people in an interesting, engaging, 
and even compelling way. For me, the challenge in making this kind of film is to take 
material that is inherently very personal and would seem to concern only the maker, and 
elevate it into something that will have meaning to others. While the problems of working 
with sensuous, "beautiful" images (especially in today's artistic/political climate) might 
appear to be insurmountable, the opening up of daily experience seems to me to still be 
a worthwhile undertaking. In these films, the desire to investigate the world in order 
to create a new "world" on film was the overriding concern. 

t 

NO LEFT TURN is a Super 8 film that was shot in 1982 and part of 1983. It was made 
for the purpose of coming to grips visually with a new environment (in this case, San 
Francisco). I moved here from El Paso in the summer of 1982 and immediately began 
shooting film as a way to feel more at ease in a new place. Of course, I also initially 
found the city visually stimulating. However, as shooting progressed, I began asking 
myself if I was really learning anything about San Francisco just by shooting film of it. 
In a sense, I was still really just a tourist, and would remain so for a while longer. 
Gradually, I realized that I was shooting events that had meaning for me, but that soipehow 
seemed to be more charged because of the new environment. NO LEFT TURN, then, is as 
much a film about me as it is about San Francisco. The surface has been scratched, with 
truth still an elusive goal. 

In PUSH PULL, there is an attempt to define and extend the tensions that arise 
from juxtaposing abstract and representational images. The inspiration for this film 
came from the handpainted films of Stan Brakhage. However, what I tried to do here was 
to ground the film in that technique and then insert straightforward imagery to create 
a new wrinkle. FOREST LAWN is a deliberately vulgar and mocking gesture aimed at the 
antiseptic "packaging" of death that Forest Lawn cemetery stands for. IN THE FLESH 
is a film about the (dis)embodiment of erotic desire. By deliberately not showing faces 
but only parts of two bodies, the skin, hair, and the light that defines the contours 
of these bodies become the focus of the film, and a balance between the pornographic 



and erotic imagination is attempted. In THE PERFECT NINE, a public event is scrutinized 
and subjectively recorded and commented upon. The occasion was a promotional appearance 
by Marine Jaman, the dancer and actress who did the dancing for Jennifer Beals in the 
movie "Flashdance". I attended this event at Macy's downtown more out of curiosity 
than anything else. I waS' interested in seeing how an individual who was largely responsible 
for the mammoth success of a commercial movie would cope with having to perform in a 
department store in order to promote a line of clothing, all because she was not credited 
in the film and therefore denied mass recognition. 5TH & MARKET is also a record of a 
public event, of a sort, in that the life that centers around the 5th and Market area 
downtown is as much a "spectacle" as the Macy's promotion, only the actors in this drama 
are not acting but simply living out their lives in a highly visible, "public" manner. 
The film is largely edited in the camera and the soundtrack is of a black wOman preacher 
who is seen at the beginning of the film and again towards the end.^ LOSS OF NERVE is again 
a record of a public event, in this case a Mark Pauline performance 'that was held in 
September of 1983 as part of an urban art exhibition that was being sponsored by New Langton 

Arts, then 80 Langton. What initially attracted me to filming this "performance" of 
industrial machines was the highly sensational istic manner in which Pauline and his 
associates at Survival Research Laboratories were promoting this event. Pauline had 
been hyping this event in the local press as a possibly dangerous happening, dangerous 
at least to the spectators. One especially provocative piece had appeared in the Music 
Calendar of Spet. '83 wherein Pauline had strongly hinted that anyone who attended this 
event might be in serious danger of getting hurt, and that he simply was not going to 
be responsible if anything went wrong. Admittedly I was attracted as much by the 
possibility and thrill of danger as being just plain curious. In the end, Pauline 
turned out to be just another poseur, a true "show biz" personality in that he had 
manipulated the media in such a skillful way only to mount a gratuitously menacing 
event, one in which he exerted such precise and complete control over his machines that 
wery little was actually left to chance. In a piece that appeared in the Sunday Pink 
Section of this past June announcing yet another performance, Pauline admitted that he 
and his partners were in such control of their violent, menacing machines that nothing 
could possibly go wrong. The only thing he didn't say was that this was a show "for 
the whole family". Ironically, the film makes the event look more exciting than it 
really was. The last two films are portraits of James Broughton and George Kuchar, 
respectively. Poet/filmmaker James Broughton reads some recent poems and filmmaker 
George Kuchar relates various childhood traumas, including his obsession with the 
"lean people". 



-Willie Varela 
September 1984 



The Foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film 

THE OTHER SIDE: EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE CINEMA -- 
3.960-1980 - Program II 

POLA?ro/YnGOSIAVIA 

Text-Door (197ii), 2 mln . , b/w; Tea-Spoon (1976), 2 min., b/w; 
Match-boT (197^). ^ nln., b/vr--all by Wolclech Bruszewakt 

"What I do l3 nothing else than setting traps fron yhat exists . 
I try to set the traps on *"he borderline of <"he ' spiritual ' and 
the 'material', of 'what we know and think of and 'what there is.'" 

(rt.5. in Film as Film catalogue, 1979) 

30 Sound Situations (1975), 10 min., b/w, by Ryszard Wasko 

Wasko'3 30 Sound Situations is precisely what its title tells us it 
will be. The film was shot in one day in Lodz, ir March, 1975. The 
artist himself appears in each scene and claps two pieces of wood 
carefully in the same way in thirty different settings. Each clapping 
is conditioned by Its surroundlng3--including other sounds and the 
position of the mlcrophone--yet there are no dramatic peaks, no high 
points. The film and Wasko intentionally pass from one sound sit- 
uation to another, presenting the viewer with an alternative way of 
constructing film. 

Straight Line /Steven s-Duke (I96I4.), 8 min., b/w; The Morning Of A Faun 
(1963), (J min., b/w--by Tomislav Gotovac 

Straight Llne/Stevens-Duke was shot with a camera fixed on a tripod 
at the head of a tram, behind its driver. The camera's loirney 
through Belgrade--past people, houses, trees, boulevards, cars and 
trucks — is repeated a number of times, as Is Ellington's accompanying 
"Creole Love Call". The Morning Of A Faun consists of three scenes. 
The first is a long shot, taken from a fixed camera position, peer- 
ing onto the terrace of a surgical ward of a hospital. Patients are 

seen resting, relaxing, in behaviour which looks eccentric and 
comic. In the film's second brief section, the camera zooms toward 
a plaster wall In need of repair. And in the last and longest scene, 
Gotovac films the intersection of a square — its small chapel, parked 
car, and streets — with a constantly zooming camera. If these three 
scenes seem enigmatic, Gotovac compounds this with his sound-track. 
As in other of his films, this one opens with the music of Glenn 
Miller and hla big-band tunes. The terrace scene is accompanied by 
the sound-track from a section of Godard's Vlvre Sa Vie . The cracked 
wall sequence is silent, while the treet scene incorporates part of 
the sound-track .from Hollywood's The Time Machine . 

(over) 



THE OTHER SIDE: POLAND /YUGOSLAVIA 



F orwards-Backwards Piano (1977), l8 min., color; Two Times In One 
Space (1.976-Vv), 12mln., b/w--b7 Ivan Ladislav Galeta 

Fo rward3-Backward3 Piano is a delightful surprise in the way it 
takes classical music as material for an experinent in sound. 
Concert pianists Fred Dosek plays Chopin's Waltz #2, opus oIi., at 
a grand piano four times. The first version is played and heard as 
written by Chopin. The other three are manipulated by pianist, 
filmmaker, or both. Prior to each playing, the version is announced 
in writing, e.g. the words "version 2", written backwards, signal 
that the piece will be filmed in reverse. Dosek presents an equally 
dignified performance with each manipulation of *-he Chopin, which 
makes all the more humorous the Iconoclastic way Galeta subver-^s 
the romantic score. 

Two Times In One Space Is a domestic comedy which plays with film 
space. Gale'-a selected a segment of the 1969 film In The Kitchen , 
directed by Nikola Sto.ianovic , project-ed two identical prints, and 
superimposed them with a 2li.0-frame, "-en-second '"ime delay between 
the two. As Galeta's film opens, the family is eatingat a table. 
After ten seconds, the second ' layer ' of images appears. The woman 
walks over and removes a white sheet from a doorway; the son and 
husband are preparing for bed; the wife prepares food; her husband 
awkwardly lends a hand. An erotic situation develops on the opposite 
balcony, followed by an apparent suicide. Finally, the husband 
pulls down a black shade. The film winds down to one layer of 
images and ends. 

The House (1977), 8 min., color, by Radoslav Vladich 

The protective spaces Vladich films are those of his own house with 
parents, wife and child. Each room in the house has its own char- 
acter; each is handled on film in a different way. In "Mother's Room" 
we are given shots of a woman's hands sewing and of a man playing 
accordion. Family pictures are proudly displayed. A panning camera 
with short, Jerkincr movements presents the sitting room, while the 
room where the child of the house sleeps is filmed from the floor. 
We are treated to close-ups of foods In the pantry and, finally, 
stills of the family which lead to the dining room. Seen through 
Vladlch's camera, the house is presented as a warm and comforting 
place full of love. 



The Other Side : European Avant-Garde Cinema 1960-1980 was curatod 
by Reglna Cornwell and aponsored by the American Federation of the 
Arts. Program notes were by Cornwell (Catalogues are available 
for $3.00). Future programs in the aeries will be: West Germany 
(co-sponsored with the Goethe Institute), Nov. 1; Hungary , Nov. ki 
France/Italy , Nov. 15. Five other programs from the Initial series 
will be shown at the Pacific Film Archive (call 6l4.2-li4.i2 for details). 



The Foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. 

THE OTHER SIDE ; 

EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE CINEMA, 1960-1980 

PROGRAM III: WEST GERMANY 

Lutz Monmartz: Selbatachusse ( Self-Shooting ) , 1967, 7 minutes. 

Self-S hooting parodies the preoccupation with the self-reflexive 
in cinema. Mommartz plays both subject and object. Holding his 
camera in every possible position, he shoots himself: above his 
head, in front of himself at arm's length, behind, below, at 
various awkward and distorting angles. He joins his camera antics 
with a potpourri of program music, to both heighten and lighten 
his parody. 

Dore 0. Nekes: Lawale , 1969, 30 minutes. 

Lawale stands out as something of a departure from O's other 
films . The domestic air is here, but most of the film is shot 
in a brieht, harsh, cold and extremelv peti-^ bourgeois home. 
T'he compositions tend to be angular, formal and tableau-like, 
the scenes dominated by women. Dore herself is present, 
sometimes pushed to the side as she strueeles for some kind of 
Identity in this speechless atmosphere. 

Vlado Kristl: Italienisches Capriecio , 1969, 30 minutes. 

Krlstl presents us with capricious events within the Italian 
landscape: a man, fully clothed, dives into the sea; people 
stop at the roadside to clean their car windows as "MILIT'A'R" 
appears, is spoken and sung; people appear to be listening 
hard, one man with an ear to the ground. Sound is distorted, 
and seems at times to run backward. The f ully-clothed diver 
emerges from the water, undresses, neatly places his clothes on 
the sand, and lies beside them, then dresses and returns to 
the water. At one point, sounds of drilling drown out what 
needs to be heard. Near the end, someone speaking in German 
asks: "Are you in the military? Answer! Answer!" But no 
one does, 

Klaus Wyborny: Dallas Texa3--After the Goldrush , 1970/71, 
35 minutes. 

The hyphenated title actually represents two films, the first 
done in 1970 and the second in 1971. In the 35 minute screening, 
the two are divided by leader, separately titled, and repeated. 
Wyborny presents us with two narrative fragments which use the 
same location, but are shot at different angles and with different 
players (a small car backs partially into t'if frame, where it 
remains; a man is seen running toward a cabin; the door opens 
and we see, from extreme lone shot, a man falling inside) frcir 
which the viewer infers a love triangle involving one woman and 
two men. 



The houndation tor Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. 

THE OTHER SIDE; EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE CINEMA 

1960-1980 

PROGRAM V: ERANCE/ITALY 

La Petite Fllle ( The Little Girl ) by Pascal Auger, 1980, 11 m^n. 

Pascal Auger Is associated with the Paris Film Co-op, and his 
The Little Girl Illustrates one kind of filmic research with which 
the group is Taentified. Her Auger plays with time through the 
vehicle of a child at play, manipulating real time for his own 
cinematic reconstruction of it. Auger edits the Images of the 
little girl in the sand in short back-and-forth bursts of past and 

present motions, thus distorting her gestures. Each of the chili's 
movements seems to be a struggle because of the exaggerations of 
the edltincr, but each is finally executed, and the little zirl 
moves on to her next action. The process is then repeated, over 
and over. 

Tosca by Dominique Noguez, 1978, 20 mln. 

For his film, Noguez takes part of the second act of Puccini's 
opera and works within a static frame, calling attention to the 
offscreen space in which action is Implied via the use of arias 
from the opera. On the edges of a banquet table, we see a man's 
hands and occasionally, a woman's. Tosca, with back to camera, 
is pleading with Scarpla, who is eating and drinking. W© never 
see their faces. Finally there is a scurry back and forth across 
the screen: Tosca has left with Scarpla In pursuit, yet the camera 
does not move or follow them. Later, they return: he Is seen 
taking paper from the table, and Tosca 's hand stealthily picks up 
the knife. There is a violent scuffle as the table moves while 
the camera remains still. The screen Is black for a considerable 
time. Finally we glimpse light from a burning candle, and the 
film ends. 

Per Brautigam, Die Komodlantln und Per Zuhalter ( The Bridegroom, 
the Comedienne and the Pimp J by Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle 
Hulllet, 1960, 23 mln, featuring Werner Paaablnder 

The Bridegroom opens on graffiti on the wall of a Munich post 
office : "stupid old Gormany/l hate It over here/l hope I can go 
home soon/Patrlcla," over which are auperlmpoaed the credits, 
followed by a four-minute moving camera shot through Munich's 
red-light district at night, accompanied by a Bach oratorio. 
The second part is a Ferdinand Bruckner play. The Sickness of 
Youth, shot In a single take lasting ten minutes"; The stark stage, 
which has a Mao quotation scrawled on Ita back wall and la filmed 
in long shot, la the scene of abrupt melodramatic entrances and 
exits. The third part, Inspired by a newspaper article about a 



romance between an ex-proat Itute and a Black man. Includes a 
chase, a wedding, recitations from John of the Cross, a murder, 
and more Bach. 

La Verlflca Incerta , by Glanfranco Baruchello, 196[t., I4.5 mln., 
with Alberto arifl. 

La Verlflca Incerta Is a witty montage made exclusively of several 
dozen Hollywood Cinemascope films which appear squeezed or elon- 
gated on the screen. Genres are mixed, chases mismatched as the 
film moves at a rapid pace, disorderly yet creating its own kind 
of order by relying on classical Hollywood film editing. What 
results is a kind of "greative geography" -- as Lev Kuleshov, 
Soviet director and one of the pioneers of montage, called it -- 
in which relationships that haven't previously existed can be 
constructed simply by Juxtaposing strips of film. 



The foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. 
FILMS OP BRUCE CONNER -- November l8, I98I4. 



Televialon Aaaaaatn a tton (8mm Installation), filmed In 1963 and 196l|. 
on Ibmm; final 100' film reduced to 8mm, and seven copies spliced 
head to tall on one reel. 

Ten Second Film (1965), l6mra, 10 sec, b&w, silent 

Permian Strata (1969), l6mm, I4. mln., b&w, sound 

Mongoloid (1978), 16mm, I4. mln., b&w, sound 

America Is Waiting (198I), l6mm, 3iniln., b&w, sound 

A Movie (1958), l6ram, 12 mln., b&w, sound 

Report (1963-1967), l6mra, 13 mln., b&w, sound 

Take The 5? 10 To Dreamland (I976), l6mm, SslO mln., b&w, sound 

Valse Trlste (1979), l6mm, 5 mln., b&w, sound 

Intermission 

Breakaway (1966), l6mm, 5 mln., b&w, sound 

Vivian (196[|.), l6mm, 3 mln., b&w, sound 

The White Rose (1967), l6mm, 7 mln., b&w, sound 

Marilyn Times Five (1968-73), l6mm, 13 mln., b&w, sound 

Looking For Mushrooms (1960-1963), 100' l6mm original reduced to 
0mm, projected at 5 f.p. s. 

Easter Morning (1967), filmed In 8mm. "All of the multiple exposures 
and editing created In sequence on the original film. Only 
a few frames were removed before this final copy was made. "--B.C. 
Projected at 5 f.p.s. 
Music for the above two films la IN "C" by Terry Riley. 

"Like dreams, Conner's films reawaken memories of past movie experiences, 
those films which form our sense of narrative expectation In film. The 
Inexorable chase of A MOVIE, the Incessant repetition of what we do not 
want to see In REPORT, the Incomprehensible force of the Atomic Bomb In 
CROSSROADS, and the elusive feelings and logic conjured by the Images of 
TAKE THE 5:10 TO DREAMLAND, are all structured as films dreaming about 
fllmfl. Their structure has the Ineluctable logic of dreams as they 
rush elllptically to their conclusion. Finally Conner's films are his 
theory of the film experience, his montage is directed toward the material 
of film composition and the feeling of his (our) being PO«"""f, ^^z ,*^« ,^ 
demon of film's past and the collective memory of its iconography (Images) 

--John Hanhardt 



I omm 



The Foundation for An in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bav Area showcase for oersonal and avani-garOe film 

Saturday, December 1, 1984 
Ken Jacobs' im, tqm, THE PITER'S SC'^ 
115 min. B&W/coior silent 1969 



~his is ' nega-wc''-; cf the American avanT-;:2:-de cinema. in '■ -- , Jacob- ': road- 
ens, resurrects and expands upon an anc ienr-ear I y film, extracting from it 
form and life-potential such as only the rare artist can — proving, as 
it is said, that it takes an artist to see (then make) a I iving art. From a 
playful black and white 1905 vintage Billy Bitzer film, wonderous passages 
are laid bare via Jacobs' magic use of re-framings, re-piayings, re-photog- 
raphy. A present tense is opened that mines the "score" that was, here, the 
original brief film. Perhaps without realization consciously, Jacobs' divine 
sense of drama has given Tom true manner of autobiographic fo I low-throughs 
of love of detail. A lost animal (a pig) embodies here the living muse of 
one man's cinema, personally re-hatched and effervesced with complete adora- 
tion. Worlds within worlds are born of meaningful emulsion-grain vignertes 
and tapestries of the unexpected — a celebration of the heroic "chase". 
The film's single color passage quietly blasts us in our seats. 

- Ga i I Cam hi 

"Original 1905 film shot and probably directed by G. W. "Billy" Bitzer, res- 
cued via a paper print filed for copyright purposes with the Library of 
Congress. It is most reverently examined here, absolutely loved, with a new 
movie, almost as a side effect, coming into being. 

"Ghosts! Cine-recordings of the vivacious doings o* persons long dead. The 
preservation of their memory ceases at the edges of the frame... The staging 
and cutting is pre-Gri f f I th. Seven Infinitely complex cine-tapestries com- 
prise the original film, and the style Is not primitive, not uncinematic 
but the cleanest, inspired indication of a path of cinematic deve ioprnenr whose 
value has only recently been rediscovered. My camera closes in, only to 
betrer ascertain the infinite richness (playing with fate, taking advantage 
of the loop-character of all movies, recalling with variations some visual 
complexes again and again for particular savoring), searching out incongru- 
ities in the story-telling (a person, confused, suddenly looks out of an 
delighting in the whole bizarre human phenoiTiena of story- 
g itself and this within the fantasy of reading any bygone time out of 
the visual crudities of film: dream within a dream! 



+ _ I 1 : -« ; -I IX 

lOltlll — 



"And then I wanted to show the actual present of film, just to begin to indi- 
cate its energy. A train of images passes like enough ii:'.d different enough 
to imply to the mind that its eyes are seeing an arm lift, or a door close; 
1 wanted to "bring to the surface" that mul ti -rhythmic collision-contesting 
of dark and light two-dimensional force-areas struggling edge to edge for 
identity of shape... to get Into the amoebic grain pattern itself - a chemical 
dispersion pattern unique to each frame, each cold st I I I . . . st irred fo life 
by a successive 16-24 f.p.s. pattering on our retinas, the teeming energies 
elicited (the grains!) then collaborating, unknowingly and ironlcaily, to 
form the a I ways-poignant-because-a Iways-past-i I I usion." 

- Ken Jacobs 



The Foundation tor Art iii Cinema 



CINEMATHEQUE 

The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. 



•WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SEX?" : Films from Car^yon Cinema. 
Thursday, December 6 1984. 3:00, S.F. Art Institute Auditorium. 



The title for this program comes from the fact that sexually 
explicit avant-garde filmwork after 1976 is rare. In the days 
when Rob and Laura Petrie slept in separate beds, the avant-garde 
was one of the few places to see graphic sexuality treated with 
any intelligence. But as early as I966 Andrew Sarris could claim 
that "relaxed censorship is depriving the avant-garde of its 
raison d'etre . " 

Now we have Joan Collins in Playboy , Miss America in Pent - 
house , every other TV movie is about incest or prostitution, and 
home video pornography is a booming business. As if in reaction, 
the avant-garde is looking pretty chaste. 

There must be reasons for this. There is a welcome increase 
in awareness of sexual exploitation, for instance, and few people 
dare to be misunderstood in the arena of sexual politics. Exhibi- 
tion venues have become more middle-class, many festivals reject- 
ing work they feel to be unsuitable for the kiddies. But the 
avant-garde has usually ignored, or purposefully antagonized, such 
concerns. The question remains: whatever happened to sex? 

Clues may be found in these films. Thev were chosen because 
they deal explicitly with sex (not eroticism), and/or because of 
their attendant commentary on male/female relationships. Two 
threads run through most of them. 

One is obfuscation. All of them, in one way or another, em- 
ploy distancing devices, shields behind which the artists hide. 
Three are animation works, two use found footage not of the artist' 
making, one secretly spies on people, and one isolates body parts, 
depersonalizing them. None has solved the problem of confronting 
sex head-on. 

The second thread is that most of these films say less about 
sex than about the way media represents it. Despite changes in 
superficial attitudes, sex remains a highly personal and emotion- 
ally volatile activity. Rarely is it presented plainly, honestly, 
and without manipulation. 

Perhaps the flurry of explicitness from 1970 to 1975 took 
this graphic-yet-distanced strategy as far as it could go. It may 
be that the next step - personal sexual films without obfuscation 
- requires more daring, and involves more risks, than most film- 
makers and audiences are prepared for. We shall see. 

Dangling Participle (1970) I8min, b&w, snd. By Standish 
Lawder . Culled from sex-education films of the 1950' s, it is both 
hilarious and discomforting. It shows the sexual education The 
Beaver was getting at school as Ward fondled June's pearls at 
home. In other words, it makes clear why a "sexual revolution" 
was inevitable. 

Home on the Range (1973) 3tnin, col, snd. By Darrell Forney. 
An odd little work, anticipating video-projection "home entertain- 



ment centers". A treat for dog lovers. 

N ear the Big Chakra (1972) 17min, col, sil. 3y Anne Severson. 
Contemplative shots of 37 female genitals, from babies xc senior 
citizens. The casual aloofness of the film is fascinating, yet 
problematic, a condition giving it a charged presence. Though 
pudenda is what sexual difference is all about, one feels after- 
wards that the film has nothing to do with sex. 

The Secrete of Life (1971) 15min, col, snd. 3y Victor Fac- 
cinto. Part II of Faccinto's "Video Vic" series, it is funny, 
mean-spirited, inventive and infuriating all at the same time. 
He has obvious psycho-sexual anxieties which he parades before 
us, his often horrified viewers-cum-analysts , 

Keep Bright the Devil's Doorknob (1978) ^min, col, snd. 5y 
Richard Beveridge. As Brakhage did with autopsies in The Act of 
Seeing With One's Own Eyes , Beveridge does with pornography: he 
excerpts the most appalling and intense moments, out of context, 
and strings them together. It makes one long for Dick Powell and 
Ruby Keeler. 

Crocus (1971) 7min, col, snd. By Suzan Pitt. As the married 
couple in this animated film are about to make love, their baby 
cries for a drink of water. The mother tends to it as the father 
pouts, and you wonder why more filmmakers don't show that sex is 
inseparable from the rest of life. 

Voyeuristic Tendencies (1983) 17min, b&w, snd. By Dominic 
Angerame . Possibly the sexiest film in the program by virtue of 
what it doesn't portray, and a perfect sex film for the 1980's. 
We are teased, cajoled, lured and finally snubbed as we learn one 
possible answer to what has happened to sex: it has been subsumed 
in our society's current confusion between artifice and reality. 

James Irwin 
Guest Curator 



["he Foundation lor Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. 

BLACK-AMERICAN FOLK ARTISTS ON FILM 
(FILMMAKERS WILL BE PRESENT) 

THE ANGEL THAT STANDS BY ME (1983) Produced by Allie Light and Irving Saraf, 28 min. 

Minnie Evans is the embodiment of the visionary artist. She is an 88-year old 
Black painter of Wilmington, North Carolina, who has created a world of mythic animals, 
religious symbols, and natural beauty. ANGEL... concludes Light and Saraf's series 
on American Folk Artists (Visions of Paradise) . Each artist in the series was self 
taught, comes from a different ethnic backround and began pursuing their art late in 
life. 

Allie Light taught in the Woman's Studies department at San Francisco State and 
taught Screenwriting at both State and City College. She has been working in film for 
the last seven years. Irving Saraf headed the film department at KQED and worked at 
the Saul Zaentz Company for ten years where he designed their Film Center. 

Light and Saraf have collaborated for the last ten years and have produced seven 
award winning documentaries. The two Bay Area filmmakers are currently developing 
a feature to be shot on location in the Four Corners area in Utah. 

TCHUBA... MEANS RAIN (1981) Produced by Kathryn Golden and Ashley James, limin. 

An introductory film on Cape Verdean history and culture. The island archipelago 
nation is located 360 miles off the northwest coast of Africa. The film was funded by a 
grant from the Polaroid Foundation. 

AMERICAN TREASURE: THE FOLK ART OF JOAQUIM MIGUEL ALMEIDA (1984) Produced by Kathryn 

Golden and Ashley James, 30min. PREMIERE 

AMERICAN TREASURE... is a portrait of an extraordinary 86-year old artist, Joaquim 
Miguel Almeida. Yet, it also tells the story of a people (Cape-Verdean-Americans) as 
we look at Joaquim's art work and listen to his memories. Joaquim learned to carve 
the model whaling boats and packet vessels in Cape Verde. His art is inspired by the 
poetry and folklore of Cape-Verdean-Americans, the first black people to immigrate to tl" 
United States voluntarily. It was filmed entirely in the historic old whaling port of 
New Bedford, Massachusetts. American Treasure is a Film Arts Foundation sponsored 
project, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Arts and 
Humanities Council . 

Kathryn Golden has produced three films: Majestic Theatre , Niqhtsplay , and The 
PASSIVE EARTH . She is currently collaborating with Ashley James at Searchlight Films on 
the next film in their Cape-Verdean-American series. 

Ashley James is currently directing and producing The Vertigo Tour - a documentary 
on jazz pianist Ran Blake and his compositions for and fascination with Hitchcock's 
Vertigo . He is also directing a film on the late jazz musician Earl Fatha Hines. His 
past award winning credits include Booker , The Case of the Legless Veteran , Fade-Out , 
Zack. and Ancestors. 



iFilm Arts Foundation 

346 Ninth Street — Second Floor. San Franci.sco. California 94103 
Administrative Offices 415-552-8760 • Editing Facility 41 5-552-6350 



The Foundation for Art in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The Bav Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film 

THE FILMS OF SAUL LEVINE — Part 1 

December 13th, 1984 
Personal Appearance 

Chicago Reds and Blues (1973) l6inin from S-8mm orig., S.-'-Zz. min. , color 

A pun on commxinists and music, the title i_3 the film. The words red and 
blue alternately flash on the upper and lower portions of the screen at 
variable intervals. V;hen held on the screen, the word seems to become its 
color and in the end actually intercut with colored leader; when flashed 
intermittantly, both words appear to be on the screen simultaneously, 
making a strobe-like effect on the ceiling and the floor of the room. The 
minimal nature of the film seems to be a joke, a response to the simplistic 
demands to unite art and politics, form and content often made on politically 
active artists. described by 

Mar.jprie Keller 

new Left Notes (1968-76) l6mm from regular 8mm orig., 28 min., color 

We are given a unique viewpoint of an active participant (Saul was the 
editor of New Left Notes the SDS journal) in. the civil rights movement. 
Two subjects take up most of the film 1) the protest rallies in numerous east 
coast locations, in particular centering on a young woman activist who 
funstions as a catalyst for both public, and private activities depicted, 
and 2) the film medium itself most apparent by the volatile attack on 
film editing via the very visible splice line bar between almost every 
other frame. A sort of fallout occurs from this visceral undermining of 
the medium in that we see grain patterns, color flicker, and flare outs as 
an integral part of the story- telling apparatus. It appears as if Levine 
wants us to see the unrest of the sixties as a call to the self-examinaticn 
of not only our relationship to politics but most imperatively to ourselves. 
No conclusions are made, but observations and reflections combine into the 
"notes" format to make viewing the film an experience akin to pondering the 
philosopher's stone. We see, we experience, and we go onward, ever onward. 
AUthough the film was left unfinished, its release in 1983 (The concern of 
Marjorie Keller and Bill Brand who brought about the reg. 8mm ta.l6.mm blowup 
and preservation of the film) strikes a most strident note as we as a nation 
face Ray Gun and all of the conservative death trip that he encompasses. 

described by 
Bruce Posner. 

notes of an Early Fall (1976-77) S-8mm sound, 38 min., color 

A film about displacement and if it seems as if I was obsessed with sound 
in making this film, I wasi Using a single system S-8mm camera and a sound 
projector to edit, I solved the mystery of expanding the range of the 
material by counting up 18 frames when I'd make a cut (something I don't 
have too much trouble doing.) That no seasonal Fall is depicted is a clue 
as to how to read the film. In exploring the gaps, the holes of the material, 
spin offs were subject and object division, fall in the history of western 
philosophy, the discrepancy in light and sound waves... With my films I am 
seeking/finding new formal sophistication rooted in real attempts to 
illuminate the world. comments made by 

Saul after screening 
San Francisco Art Inst 
December 11th, 1984 



The Big Stick (1968-72),, l6mm from regular 8mm orig, , 13^/2 min. , black & white 



UNFINISHED BUSINESS: WHO IS TELLING YOU WHAT TIME IT IS? THE BIG STICK A 

MOLECULE WHICH IS CERTAINLY ROBUST ENOUGH TO HANG AROUND FOR YEARS— 

RUSSIAN AIJIERICAN INTERCOURSE, CASUAL AND NECESSARY^-UNREACTIVE , UNPRODUCTI^/E , 

AND LOADED WITH MALARIAL UNDERSTANDING PACKED FOR THE FUTURE, COMPLEX, SLOW IN 

BURSTING, FRIESHTED: BUT JUST NOW, IN THIS TROUGH OF EVENTS WAITING AU-^OST 

IMMOBILE IN HISTDRY, NOT GREASED TO SLIP TO THE BRAIN, NOT CLEAN IN SHAPE 

LIKE THE TRANSCENDENTAL WHIZZ KIDS, BUT TRUNCATED, DELICACT IN FURY, THE 

SHAPE OF A SKYLINE APPROACH ING 

A BOMB CRATER. THERE ARE 

EXPLOSIONS ON THE HORIZON, THERE 

IS NO PLACE TO TURN. THE. 

GUILLOTINES BEGIN TO SOUND LIKE 

MACHINE GUNS. THE MOTION 

PICTURING OF THE PAST MAY PAUSE 

FOR THE FORMAL, THE DRAMATICAL, 

OR THE RHETORICAL EMPHASIS, FOR. 

REFLECTION. BUT NOT FOR THOSE 

HEADS AND BODIES TUMBLING THROUGH 

THE FRAMES LIKE GRAINS IN A 

BARREL. SAUL, YOU WERE SHOCKED 

THAT I WOULD WANT TO LOOK AT THE 

FILM FRAIffi BY FRAME, WITH THE 

EXHORTANT POWER TO ROAM, IN SOME 

STOPPED MOMENT, AFRAID MAYBE THAT 

THE ARCHITECTURE ERECTED IN THE 

SPACE BLTWEEN THE FRAMES WOULD 

RATTLE DOWN TO SUFFOCATE ME IN. 

PLASTIC DR (unclear Ed.) 

FILLING A SPACE ONTOLOGICALLY 
ffiDRTLING IB(IMOBII£ IN THE SKY AND 
THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEAVE THE BODY 
AND CONTEMPLATE THE BLOW ABOUT 
TO LAND. 

described bjr 
Dan Bamett 




1 he Foundation tor An in Cinema 

CINEMATHEQUE 

The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. 

THE FILMS OF SAUL LEVINE -- Part 2 
December 15. I98I4. 

The Notes are an expanding collection of nine films that move 
between their source In personal history and their manifestation 
In visual constructs. The material from which they come Is the 
casual, dally activity of those around the filmmaker and the 
fllrmnaker himself, being filmed by a responsive, Improvlsatlonal 
camera eye, educated In the "palette" of film emulsions. By 
their range of Imagery, a sense that all the activity surrounding 
the flmraaker la potential art, not because of the privileged 
genius of the artist for living or seeing life, but out of the 
sense that there la no "lofty subject" - all life la worthy of 
consideration . " 

Marjorle Keller 

Note One , 1967, 8mm, b^ mln . "As the only note entirely In B&W, 
Note One atanda as the purest example of Levlne's drive to sculpt 
simple Tight Into an Image. The figures of his parents emerge 
from the grainy darkness Into the Intimate space of home. The 
Intensity of the grain fights the Images and often overpowers 
them, making a ahadowplay that lends an aura of the ephemeral to 
the figures theraaelves . . .The restive gaze of the camera, 09ntem- 
platlng the Sabbath evening as the shawl Is donned and the candles 
are lit, carries with It a reverence for the unmanlpulated Image- 
as-document that the later Notes bely. It Is fitting as the first 
Illustrating the contextual and formal sources for the later films, 

-Marjorle Keller 

Note to Coleen . 197i4., 8mm, 5 mln. "...Perhaps Note to Coleen Is 
an oracle, giving all answers to all questions, for to me It spoke 
of the meaning of language, the economics of millimeter, the 
Ideology of Image ... the art fair throws Into especial relief the 
problems of popular vs. elitist arts, the cul-de-sac of the 
filmmaker trying to be at once political and artistic revolu- 
tionary without Incurring the wrath of comrades on either side." 

-B. Ruby Rich 

Not Even a Note , 1978, 2^ mln. 

On the Spot , 1973 » 28 mln. 

Near Sight , 1977-78, 2 mln. 

Arrested; Breaking Time, Part 2 , 1977-82, 8mra, 8 mln. "While It 
la part of the series of rilms titled Breaking Time , this film 
evokes Levlne's earlier series The Notes , especially Note to Patl . 
The silent poetry of winter and thaw, shovelling snow, people 
made large and small through the Intercutting of close ups and 



long shots, movomert and stlllrosa croatod through fast cutting - 
all are similar to strategies from his earlier work. In this film, 
a large Marlboro billboard with a running bull is used to further 
these themes by minlscullzlng the men who are painting it, and 
making metaphorical enlargements of houses, rivers, and even the 
reflection of the filmmaker himself." - Marjorle Keller 

A Few Tunes Going Out: Part • 1 : Boppin g the Great Wall of China Blue , 
1979, S-8, 7 mln. 

Part 2; Groove to Groove , 1979, S-8, 12 mln. 

A Brennan Soil Columbusns Medina , 1981;, 13 mln, 

" A Few Tunes Going Out is a set of meditations on the relationship 
of film to music. Eevlne Is an ardent fan of American blues and 
Jazz, and In these films combines a love of the wall of blues 
with the structure of avant-garde Jazz. Both films plaj with the 
edge which Joins and separates film and music. Translation, "bi- 
llngualism," and visual onomatopoeia are the motives that keep 
the Interpenetrablllty of image and sound going. 

"Bopping the Great Wall of China Blue is a triple portrait of the 
blues aisc Jockey May Kramer, the filmmaker Dan Barnett, and Levine 
himself. It is cut rapidly between May talking, Dan editing a 
film at a Steenbeck and "bopping" down the steps of the Great 
Wall while listening to a portable radio, and Saul delivering 
pasterles, smoking, and hack coughing. Shots of an astronaut 
floating in space, clouds, and Chinese women performing slow 
motion exercises expand the portraits' domains. The work of 
delivery and its required knocking on doors becomes music through 
the editing. . .The metaphorical unity of the characters of Levine 's 
world, in v^lch China is both ''red" and "blue" (aa Chicago was 
for him ten years earlier), la affirmed, as always, in the editing." 

" Groove to Groove continues this kind of portraiture, concentrating 
on May Kramer and Levine, and develops the "bl-llngual" paradigm 
of film and music. . .Through the l8 frame disjunction between 
sound and image necessary in cutting single-system Super 8mm 
sound film, splices are made before we hear the sound of the 
splicer, voices are heard before we see the speaker. A series 
of Jokes told in English and Yiddish about language and mis- 
understandings created by, in the first case, English and in the 
second instance, by the naming of Jewish holidays, affirms the 
film's themes of translation." - Marjorle Keller 

Star Film , 1968-71, 15 mln. Recently reprinted, this la a lat 
answer print. "Repatition was a feature in the creation of the 
two other films shown. The first waa an untitled work which 
Levine refers to, aa "the Star Film": it's a l6mm film in which 
handprinted stars are placed on a fllmstrlp that has been stained 
and tinted. The shifts in color and in resonance make the film 
particularly attractive: at tlmoa, as when green stains and stars 
appear on a pale pink tint, it la a ravishing visual experience." 

-Daryl Chin 
Soho Weekly News