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PROGRAM NOTES
1985
77ie Foundation for Art In Cinema
Is supported In part with funds from:
National Endowment for the Arts
California Arts Council
San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund
San Francisco Foundation
From the collection of the
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PROGRAM NOTES
1985
San Francisco Cinematheque
480 Polrero A venue
San Francisco. CA 94110
(415) 558-8129
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
is supported In part with funds from:
National Endowment lor the Arts
California Arts Council
San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund
San Francisco Foundation
I
I
I
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
THE FILMS OF PETER KUBELKA
"I feel a very great need to communicate. I work
hundreds and hundreds of hours for one particular
minute in my films and I could never produce such
a minute by talking. The real statement which I
want to make in the world is my films. Everything
else is irrelevant." — Peter Kubelka, 1966
To date, six short but exquisitely realized films form the basis of
Peter Kubelka's reputation as a master of personal cinema. Personal,
for this Austrian filmmaker, involves an exploration of the medium
to express his particular sense of reality. Kubelka began working
with film in 1952 and MOSAIR IM VERTRAUEN was completed three years
later. But it was with ADEBAR (1957), SCHWECHATER (1958) and
ARNULF RAINER (1960) that Kubelka seized upon the fascinations that
have absorbed him ever since. The striking quality of these works,
what Kubelka calls his "metric films", is the play of light and its
absence, sound and its silence and the rhythms that reside therein and
between. (Knowing how difficult it is to discern a rhythm in just one
viewing, Kubelka intended these films to screened over and over again;
tonight each will be seen twice.) With UNSERS AFR1KAREISE (1965),
(whose 12 minutes " absorbed five years of Kubelka's life), he achieves
a sublime synchronization of image and sound that is as intricate as
the most complex musical composition. It also marked the first time
that Kubelka ventured away from his standard 35mm format to 16mm.
PAUSE! completes tonight's program as the filmmaker's most recent ex-
ploration of the plastics of film, as architecture for the eye and ear.
Kubelka's comments on:
ADEBAR
"ADEBAR was my second film, Until then I had only seen, outside my own
personal vision, the normal, commercial cinema, low-key cinema; and I
had a very deep dissatisfaction with what cinema was about. I was lack-
ing a satisfactory form. At that time I already had the feeling that
cinema could give me the qualities and beauties which the other arts had
been able to achieve. I saw how beautiful classic buildings were... I had
studied music and I knew about the rhythmic structures in music and I
knew about the fantastic enjoyment of time with which music grips you.
But in cinema there was nothing! When you regard the time in which films
take place (a normal, storytelling film, good or bad) it is a time which
has no form; it's very very amorphous. So I wished to create a thing
which would establish for my eyes a harmonic time as
music establishes a harmonic, rhythmic, a measured time for the ears...
I had never seen anything like that. I just had the wish to create
something which would have a rhythmic harmony for the eyes, distill out
of the amorphous, visual, outside world something harmonic."
HATER "the first film that worked with the event of the frame
SCHWEC
"This film was for me, t
movies, which means, the
which lies in the fact t
one. SCHWECHATER lasts
Or it is a negative cont
beer. That content came
film that. [The film wa
paign for Schwechater be
energy in this film. Ye
there's more visual ener
minute I have ever seen,
fact that here I broke t
which say that cinema is
projection which goes in
you could call it."
he real discovery of the fact that cinema is not
discovery of the strong side of the medium,
hat you can use these light impulses one by
one minute. The content is practically zero,
ent. There are elements of people drinking
out of the outward pressure. I was forced to
s originally commissioned as a publicity earn-
er.] The content is not at all a source of
t there is an incredible visual energy. In fact
gy in this minute than in any other filmic
Where does it come from? It comes from the
he old aesthetic, the old laws of cinema,
movement. Cinema is nothing but a rapid slide
a steady rhythm: twenty-four slides per second,
ARNULF RAINER
"Every painter tries to discover objective reality. But what is for me,
objective, may not be for you. My ARNULF RAINER is a documentary; it _is
an objective film; it is a world where there is lightning and thunder
twenty-four times a second, let's say...."
"I looked at the footage I had made of Arnulf Rainer [a painter friend
of Kubelka ' s ]... and ... about the same time in Brussels I had seen
Brakhage's ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT and noticed the similar it ie s ... I
was very impressed with what Stan did with his camera... so the movie I
subsequently made of Rainer was inspired by Stan's handling of the camera."
"[Ecstasy] means being
the laws of nature, no
being born, youth, age
and philosophers, is r
want to die, but I hav
serve under it. There
if it is just for my i
I want ecstasy. There
ways, not so subtle wa
dance ecstasy, the dri
ecstasies; then of cou
the religious, and the
With this film I was a
one get ecstasy in the
to make a rhythmic buil
exact, fast and has a
measure, harmony and b
situated outside of it, and it's a means to beat
t to be slaves of nature ... This cycle of life,
which is so idealized by so many civilizations
ejected by some, and I am one of them. I don't
e to. I don't want to age either, but I must
is a possibility to get out of all of it, even
nterior reality... I want out, I want other laws,
have been many ways to achieve ecstasy; subtle
ys ; consequential, not so consequential. The
nking ecstasies, the drug ecstasies, the art
rse the cooler ecstasies— the philosophical,
sport ecstasies. There are innumerable ones.
fter the cinematographic ecs tasy . . . Now how will
cinema? Well, what I can do in the cinema is
ding between light and sound Which is complex,
certain strength. Also, it must have exact
eat. That is one of the possibilities of cinema."
UNSERS AFRIKAREISE
"But what I wanted in AFRIKAREISE was to create a world that had the
greatest fascination on the spectator possible. This world had to be
very naturalistic, so that you could really identify and enter it.
It's, therefore, that I want a big screen for it, so you can see the
blood and the elephants and the women and the Negro flesh and the
landscapes. This was one thing. And the other thing was that I wanted
to have it so controlled as if I had painted it or made up myself and
I achieved that through this immense, immense long work of thousands
of hours cataloging the whole material practically frame by by. So
there is this continuous correspondence between sound and image. After
you see the film twelve or twenty times, then you notice that prac-
tically every optical event corresponds to the acoustic event... I never
want to make a funny scene, or a sad scene--I always... I want them very
complex, never one single feeling but many many feelings always... In
my films, there are moments where everything stands still. This is a
very important thing for me. This is in all of my films. Some films
as a whole are like that. These are moments of escape, from the burden
of existence, so to say--moments where you are not human, nor something
else— not an angel or something, but just Out , out of it, and when
nothing happens, and nothing leads to this, and this leads to nothing,
and there is no tension, and so on. This is the scene ... where the
Negroes just walk."
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
THE SHORT FILMS OF PETER GREENAWAY
WATER WRACKETS (1975, 12 min.)
"...a sober sound track describes a specific period perhaps in the Arthurian past
when ceremony counted for as much as deeds- of the tortured history of a bellicose
but religiously observant waterside community. A wrack is wreckage or a ruin or
even some vegetation cast ashore. All meanings are appropriate to the appreciation
of WATER WRACKETS, in whose text unfamiliar words abound and whose narration sounds
as much like science fiction as historical surmise. Indeed the whole strange and
haunting work may be seen as a meditation on conjecture..."
WINDOWS (1975, b min)
"...it is about people who leave a room by its window, or at least about the large
number of people who do so in a small but particular English country parish. While
dogs bark and a clavicord is played, while daylight comes and goes through a window,
statistics are read about who fell from windows in summer, how many fell into the
snow, and so on... As the filmmaker notes... statistics leave as much out as in,
and WINDOW watchers are certainly tempted to imaginatively fill in the unspoken
connecting links of this brief but illuminating report."
DEAR PHONE (1977, 17 min.)
"Telephones exert a tyranny in our everyday lives; although this cannot be denied,
their power is certainly subverted, as in the progress of the fourteen stories in
this wicked comedy that the filmmaker says masqerades as 'an oblique consideration
of narrative'... A voiceover persuasively reads these stories, but makes significant
alterations to them. The phone kiosks begin as illustrations but soon become anthro-
pomorphized as eccentric characters in their own right."
H IS FOR HOUSE (1978, 9 min.)
"...the idyllic outdoors and various voices rhyming phrases like 'half past four'
that begin with H. You must understand of course that this has to do with the
world turning counter-clockwise, and that H IS FOR HOUSE is about as sensible and
entertaining as other Dadaistic works."
A WALK THROUGH H (1978, 42min.)
"Alternately titled THE REINCARNATION OF AN ORNITHOLOGIST, this eccentric film is
based on an ornithological treatise by Tulse Luper that describes a mythical journey
through the land of H. . . a cross between a vintage Borges fiction and a Disney
True Life Adventure... a narrative without characters. The disjunction and accidental
meanings that are created are the real pleasure of the film."
Notes excerpted from the article "Contemporary British Independent Film: Voyage of
Discovery" by John Ellis, published by The Museum of Modern Art
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
December 19, 1985
SUPER-8 NEW YORK
Monster by Deborah Clarkin, 1982, 12 minutes, sound.
A figure in an overcoat and gloves is seen from behind, lurching toward a
door, as if to open it, only to be stopped by a splice in mid-lurch, followed
by a repetition of the same action again and again. Superimposed titles
tell the story of Monster coming to the door and interrupting a quiet
domestic scene. We notice that the characters' names are Mother, Father,
Baby, Brother and Monster. This implies the Monster is a member of the
family. A chain of bizarre events results in the curtains catching fire
and Father fleeing out the window. At one point Monster turns its head
slightly - it is a young woman. Monster is a quietly forceful statement
of alienation.
Clarkin 's films frequently tackle their subjects in a manner appropriate
to a feminist reading. Housework, sexual interaction, and family relations
are taken apart, reassembled, and revealed and exposed, frequently with
a twist of ironic humor.
The Scissor That Has Found Its Own Pair by Rirkrit Tiravanija, 1985, 8 minutes,
silent.
A film about the feeling which one sometimes gets — objects, people, things
are always around (in the way) when you don't need them, but can't be
found when you do. - R.T.
Rirkrit Tiravanija is a native of Bangkok, Thailand, but has lived in
Argentina, Canada, England and Chicago before settling in New York City
in 1982. Primarily an artist whose work has dealt mostly with sculptural
and installation concerns, Rirkrit has made several Super-8 films over the
past few years while at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Banff School
of Art in Alberta. He is presently a member of the Whitney Independent
Studio Program. He has exhibited work at Gallery Oboro, Montreal; the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Big on Brazil Gallery, Alberta; and
the Collective for Living Cinema in New York.
The Manhattan Love Suicides , produced and directed by Richard Kern. Soundtrack
by J.H. Thirlwell, with Nick Zedd, Bill Rice, Adrienne Altenhaus, David
Wojnarowicz, Tom Turner and Amy Turner. 1985, 35 minutes, sound.
New York City 1985 - A churning world where the realities of poverty and
sex among the desperate musicians, artists and scene makers dictates a
mutated parody of normal lifestyles. Consumed with bitterness and
hatred, the characters of M.L.S. stalk their objects of attention through
the depths of the Lower East Side. They are obsessive and selfish but
sometimes they fall in love. The results are sometimes funny, sometimes
sad, but always violent.
INTERMISSION
Revenge of the Dearest by Anthony Chase, 1985, 15 minutes, sound. Starring
John Kelly and Stacy Grabert.
A sequel to The Dagmar Onassis Story (1984) . Dagmar discards her baby to
pursue her singing career. After years of success, her filial choice begins
to haunt her.
Anthony Chase is a native South African but has lived in New York since
1983. His Super-8mm films are often screened in collaborative performances
with performance artists John Kelly and Marleen Menard and painter Huck
Snyder. He has shown films at the Limbo Lounge, the Collective for
Living Cinema and the Pyramid Club in New York. - A.C.
From Romance to Ritual by Peggy Ahwesh, 1985, 21 minutes, sound. With Margie
Strossner, Mandy Ahwesh, Renate Walker and Natalka Voslakov.
An ordering of documentary style footage that I have shot over the past
year with family and friends. The film is organized around the interlocking
themes of women's sexuality, memory, growing up and personal story telling
and how they are at odds with the dominant history. Through my camera style,
I hope to maintain the priveledged intimacy of home movies but with me
behind the camera instead of 'daddy 1 . - P. A.
Super-8 New York was guest curated by Robin Dickie, Program Director of the
Collective for Living Cinema, New York.
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
BRIDGING THE GAP : FAVORITE FILMS
FROM THE EARLY 70 ' 3
Thursday, January 17, 1985
This is the third In a series of programs based on the films
available from Canyon Cinema, one of the largest distributors
of independent films in the United States. Each program is
guest-curated by a different filmmaker, critic or scholar.
Tonight's selection was made by Charles Wright, filmmaker and,
from 1975 to 1977, co-director of the Cinematheque. These films
represent the range of style and taste in filmmaking that was
current in the Bay Area during the late sixties and early seventies.
"Somewhat less recent films that are sometimes different from
each other." - Charles Wright
STANDU? & BE COUNTED by Freude and Scott Bartlett, 1969, 3 min .
A continuous dissolve into a series of happy nude couples In various
configurations: female/male, female/female, male/male, as the
Rolling Stones sing "We Love You."
THE DIVINE MIRACLE by Daina Krumins, 1973, 5i min. "'The Divine
Miracle treads a delicate line between reverence and spoof as it
briefly portrays the agony, death, and ascension of Christ in the
vividly colored and heavily outlined style of Catholic devotional
postcards." - Edgar Daniels, Filmmakers' Newsletter
LIGHT TRAPS by Louis Hock, 1975, 10 min. A dance metered between
the tempo of 60 cycles per second of electrified gas and camera
shutter, further wrought by the manual, etched harmonics.
REGITAL TRAINING AT BULLOCK'S by Roger Darbonne, 1971, 15 min.
"The Regitel is an electronic point-of-sale cash register... I had
two goals for the film: to show (in self-teaching fashion) how to
work the wonder machine, and to develop a comfortable intimacy for
warding off any fear of 2001 gadgetry." - Roger Darbonne
BEING by William Farley, 197U--75, 10 min. The film is a comment on
contemporary culture, relationships between public information and
private consciousness and the nature of reality.
CATCHING THE ASIAN CARP by Bill Allan and Bruce Nauman, 1971,
3 min . Narration by William Allan and Robert Nelson. Both Bill
Allan and Bruce Nauman are Funk Artists.
A VISIT TO INDIANA by Curt McDowell, 1970, 10 min. "A powerful,
controversial film for discussion in senior high school language
arts and social studies classes and college courses in sociology
and psychology. Ages 16 to adult." - The Booklist , American
Library Association
KILLMAN by Herb de Grasse, 1966, 16 rain. The adventures of an
Insidious fiend, whose chief occupation is going around and killing
people. His activities are so perverse, that he even gets scared.
SUBPOENA FOR SABINA by Ed Jones, 1976, 3 rain. A filmed love letter
made public.
PASTEUR3 by Will Hindle, 1977, 22 min. "This film seemed ^o me the
ultimate portrait of an immigrant, or the Displaced Person-displaced
in nature, displaced on the continent. With this pun or metaphor
that he makes, and despite all the artifice, it seems quite natural,
it comes across as both funny and sad... How odd it is to walk
through this world and find there are things that poison you." -
Stan Brakhage
Program notes from Canyon Cinema catalog # 5
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film
Sunday, Feb. 3, 1985
"10 X 10: RECENT FILMS FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY"
EATING MANGOES (1984) by Ethan Van der Ryn [8 min., color/sound]
"EATING MANGOES is the story of an American boy coming of age in
Western Somoa. It is a film of dislocation and of the tensions
that arise therefrom. 'Tropic: turning, changing, or tending to
turn or change in a (specified) manner or in response to a
(specified) stimulus. — Webster's Dictionary'"
THREE VOICES (1983) by Lynn Kirby [4% min. , color/sound]
Part of a series of films shot from my apartment windows. As the
windows are washed and people return from work, three facets of
the same personality explore daily life and the threat of war.
diary of an autistic child/part two/the ragged edges of the hollow
(1984) by Edwin Cariati [6 min., color/silent]
master and slave lose sight of roles and embrace in copulative
ecstacy. the edges of the hollow yearn to become the matter from
which they have been released. .. .the autistic child views multiple
realities, as interchange is manifested in the hollow where light
and darkness unfold.
GORILLA GRIP (1985) by Michael Rudnick and Mike Henderson
[5 min., black & white/sound]
GORILLA GRIP is our attempt to get to the quintessence of a mean-
ingless idea. What do all opposite things have in common that
can't be explained?
TRUMPET GARDEN (1983) by Barbara Klutinis [10% min., color/sound]
An environmental portrait — a magic garden in which a woman in
black performs rituals with nature and with death.
PLEASE DON'T STOP ( work-in-progress , with slides) [6 min., color/sound]
by Stephanie Maxwell
Test footage of new cameraless animation techniques; original sound-
soundtrack. .. [about the slides]: These are hand-made slides demon-
strating techniques I am using in the completion of my film,
[about the film]: It's about time and cars...
INTERMISSION—
( over over .... over .... over )
THE BIG RED AUK (1984) by James Irwin [3 tain. , color/silent]
Experimental non-camera animation. Frenetic colors and restless
images form a back-drop for a child's cautionary fable .. .Words
written directly on the emulsion "speak." silently to the viewer
metaphorically about power, manipulation and the complicity of
all of us.
LAGOON SALON (1984) by Mark Sterne [6 min., color/sound]
LYRIC AUGER (1984) by Conrad Steiner [3 min., color/silent]
About the fragile state following the premonition of a grave
error. Sin is not involved, only that zeal of an incautious
moment. Imagine if with one word from you, one glance , the
leaves would fall from the trees.
ALONG THE WAY (1983) by Michael Wallin [20 min., color/sound]
A visual journal or diary, an experimental "travelogue", where
the signposts of interest are equally elements of architecture
and plant life as people and events. The intent is to communicate
the essential quality of "place", which is always an almalgam of
the visual and the emotioinal .. ."Things are as they are — they are
not like anything." — Robert Creeley — "No ideas but in things."
William Carlos Williams
[all descriptions provided by the filmmakers]
***Wine and cheese will be served after the screening.****
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film
The Films of Joyce Wieland
Thursday, February 7th, 198^T, 8 PM
Ms. Wieland in Person
Peggy's Blue Skylight (1965; released in 1984)
This film was shot as part of a series of regular-8 mm films
including the following titles: Larry's Recent Behavior (1963);
Patriotism Parts 1 and 2 (1964); Watersark (1964-65.)
Water Sark (1964-65)
"I decided to make a film at my kitchen table, there is nothing
like knowing my table. The high art of the housewife. You take
nd myself to it. 'The Housewife is High'.
prisms, glass, lights and my
Water Sark is a film sculpture, drawing being made while you
wait. --Joyce Wieland
and B inOntario (1967; completed in 1984)
Made in collaboration with Hollis Frampton
Sailboat (1967
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into your heart." --Joyce Wieland
1933 (1967)
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r shooting she r
ining in her cam
e street scene b
en wha t I cons id
all piece of fil
film for the ace
piece of blue st
it plus fogged
end is loop-pri
the street scene
oops. Wie land sa
t causes more qu
hat it "makes yo
film." While the
o real and o s ten
cene and white s
ub-title, it bee
o t the title of
n while the titl
action of the s
nd then resuming
action, moving i
e thing else is p
r and over , but
-dimensionality
whi te section,
en Jacobs' term,
ntion to the s tr
ed sections inco
images , equal t
e turned home
era and
e low . She
er ed the rea 1
m of the
idental footage
r ee t . . . So I
ends." The
nted ten times,
for only the
ys of her
es t ions than
u think of a
meaning of the
s ib 1 e
t r eaked
omes an image
a longer work ,
e remains
treet in fast
its speed. It
n and out of
ercei ved . No t
it is seen in
is sharply
All of these
"illusion-
ip of
rporated into
o the street
"1933. The year?The number?The title? Was it (the film) made
thenJIt's a memory! (ie. a Film). No, it's many meraories.lt 1 s so
sad and funny: the departed, departing peop le , cars , s tree t ! I t
hurries, it's gone, it's backllt's the only glimpse we have but we
can have it again. The film (of 1933?) was made in 1967. You find
out, if you didn't already know, how naming tints pure
vision." --Michael Snow
Rat Life and Diet in North Americ
Less co
i 1 lus io
and poi
Catf ood
texture
gerbi Is
f ood , f
in an i
s tory o
as the
are use
action,
episode
ncer
ns a
n tin
con
. In
for
lowe
nch
f re
oppr
d , . .
at
s. T
ned wi
nd at
g to t
centra
notes
six m
rs , eh
of wa t
vo lu ti
es s ed
.here
other
he all
th f
the
he m
t e o
for
on th
err i
er I
on a
and
some
time
egor
ilm r
same
a ter
n th
Rat
s , p
es ,
beg
nd e
the
time
s th
y re
s du
tim
ials
e im
lif
a 1 p
e br
of
ages
e . . .
utti
gras
an t
s cap
cats
s th
ey s
ng d
s e
it
o
e
as
ey a
erve
1 a tes th
a (1968)
otential for producing tactile
eaking through these illusions
film, both Rat Life... and
, highlighted through color and
, Wieland writes: "I shot the
ifferent things in their cages:
tc. .When I put them in the sink
e what the film was about. ..a
It is a beast fable with gerbils
the oppressors. Once again titles
re flashed on the screen over the
to introduce subsequent
e escape of the gerbils from an
Tl^vw^o of ^o-l^c^_ A/..
<xn~_35
American political prison in 1968 to freedom in Canada, and how
they take up organic gardening in the absence of DDT, occupy a
millionaire's table, and enjoy a cherry festival and flower
ceremony. However, it ends on a less humorous note: an American
invasion. The film is very meticulously shot and controlled,
and ... the color and delicacy of Wieland's approach to the
animals and their surroundings create sensuously textured images
and relationships. --Regina Cornwell
Solidarity (1973)
Joyce Wieland describes this film
women are involved, but told in a
PEOPLE DEMONSTRATED IN KITTCHENER
STRIKING WORKERS OF THE DARE COOK
opening statement of the film is
appearing over the imagery and su
center of the frame for the lengt
"solidarity" itself thus becomes
structure to the visual impact. A
exists on the soundtrack and a fe
captures the essence of human an
portion only of the demonstrators
into powerful compositions in str
focusing on the texture of the gr
patterns and pathways made by rai
stark white of a cup, but, most i
Women's feet in high-heeled shoes
not in goosestep but as individua
same class, yet each bearing its
and layers of meaning. The film m
isolating one single aspect of th
strength of the subject, and of t
Cinema. Vol. 1, #3. 1974.)
as one "ab
very diffe
, ONTARIO,
IE FACTRORY
followed by
staining it
h of the fi
a spatial e
lthough the
w readable
xie ty and t
' bodies: t
ong colors;
ass, the gr
n, a discar
mportant of
, walking t
Is will, cl
individual
akers ' powe
e who 1 e , ma
he film.
out a strike in which
rent way. . ." "500
IN SUPPORT OF THE
, APRIL 1973" This
the title SOLIDARITY
s po s i t ion on the
lm . The wo rd
lement and gives
political message
placards, the film
oil by revealing one
heir feet. We are lead
walking shots
ave 1 of the road ,
ded paperbag, the
a 1 1 - - the shoes,
ogeather in unison,
early belonging to the
stamp, carry layers
r of observation,
gnifies the enormous
(excerpt from Art &
I f you read in a Victorian novel thai an
actress who began her career in the
early 1800s was still going strong in
T884, you would dismiss it as absurd.
But transfer the century to our own. and
the dates correspond to the career of Lil-
lian Gish. She made her first appearance
on the stage in 1901 at the age of five — as
Baby Lillian — acted in her first film in
1912. and recently finished a picture that
will be released this year. Lillian Gish is no
ordinary actress: by common consent, she
is one of the greatest of this century-
You can safely say that about stage
players, for their performances survive
only in the memory. But Lillian Gish's
performances exist in films that have been
subjected to scrutiny again and again. The
verdict is always the same: Lillian Gish is
astonishing.
Meeting her is an exhilarating experi-
ence, for her enthusiasm is undimmed. She
has the ability to convey her memories as
though relating them for the first time. To
see that face — the most celebrated of the
entire silent era. and so little changed —
and to hear references to "Mr. Griffith"
and "Mary Pickford" is to know you arc at
the heart of film history.
Kevin Brownlow
She was discovered, if that is the right
word, by D.W. Griffith. She credits him
with giving her the finest education in the
craft of film that anyone could receive. He
created much of that craft himself, making
up the rules as he went along. She calls him
"the Father of Film." And the pictures
they made together read like a roll call of
the classics of the cinema: The Birth of a
Ration (1915). Intolerance (1916). Hearts
of the World (1918), Broken Blossoms
(1919). Way Down East (1920), Orphans
of the Storm (1921).
The films she made immediately after
she left Griffith, when she had her choice
of director, story, and cast, include more
classics, such as La Boheme (1926), The
Scarlet Letter (1926), and The Wind
(1928). In a later chapter of her career, she
played in Duel in the Sun (1946), The
Right of the Hunter (1955), Orders to Kill
(1958), and A Wedding (1978).
"Wc used to laugh about films in the
early days," she says. "We used to call
them flickers. Mr. Griffith said, 'Don't you
ever let me hear you use that word again.
The film and its power arc predicted in the
Bible. There's to be a universal language
making all men understand each other. Wc
arc taking the first baby steps in a power
that could bring about the millennium.
Remember that when you stand in front of
the camera.'"
It was this ideal, this integrity, thai
made compromise so difficult for both of
them. The seriousness with which Lillian
Gish took her work was undermined at
MGM in 1927 when it was suggested that
a scandal might improve her performance
at the box office. "You are way up there on
a pedestal and nobody cares." said the
producers. "If you were knocked off the
pedestal, everyone would care."
Lillian Gish realized she would be ex-
pected to give a performance offscreen as
well as on. "I'm sorry," she said, "1 just
don't have that much vitality." Shortly
afterward, she returned to her first love,
the theater, and the cinema lost her for the
better part of a decade.
What the film producers failed to com-
prehend was how much value for the
money she gave them, for she was part of
an older tradition. Griffith had imbued his
players with the discipline and dedication
of the nineteenth-century theater, and Lil-
lian Gish carried these qualities to unprece-
dented lengths.
A celebration of this year's Life Achievement Award winner.
11 AMERICAN FILM
In ihe film. Means of the World (\9\%),
she gives a heartrending performance as a
shell-shocked girl who wanders the battle-
field, in search of her lover, carrying her
wedding dress. The film established her
uncanny ability to portray terror and hyste-
ria, and it established, too, the warmth and
poignancy she could bring to love scenes.
But Hearts of the World paled by com-
parison with the next major production of
the partnership. Broken Blossoms (1919)
had none of the usual Griffith trade-
marks — no cast of thousands, no epic sets.
It was based on a story by Thomas Burke
about the love of a Chinese man for a
twelve-year-old girl. At first, Lillian Gish
fought against playing the role. She offered
to work with a child of the right age, but
felt she couldn't possibly play the part
herself. Griffith insisted that only she
could handle the emotional scenes.
How right he was. Lillian Gish played
the child (changed to a fifteen-year-old)
with conviction. She invested the role with
a quality so powerful and disturbing that a
journalist — watching the filming of the
scene where the girl hides in a closet as her
father smashes the door with an ax — was
overwhelmed:
She pressed her body closer to the
wall — hugged it, threw her arms high
above her head, dug her fingers into
the plaster. A trickle of dust fell from
beneath her nails. She screamed, a
high-pitched, terrifying sound, a cry
of fear and anguish. Then she turned
Broken Blossoms: Gish played this scene
so convincingly that a visitor to the set
was horrified; The Night of the Hunter:
older — and tougher.
*ws\ -.:
and faced the camera.
It was the real thing. Lillian Gish
was there, not ten feet from the cam-
era, but her mind was somewhere else
— somewhere in a dark closet. Tears
were streaming from her eyes. Her
face twitched and worked in fear. . . .
I have always considered myself hard-
boiled, but I sat there with my eyes
popping out.
T
t is hard for most filmgoers these days
to see silent films. But in London last
year, we staged a tribute to Lillian Gish
Jl as part of the "Thames Silents" film
program. "Thames Silents" is an out-
growth of the "Hollywood" television se-
ries that David Gill and I produced a few
years ago for Thames Television .
David Gill and composer Carl Davis
were determined to present a silent film in
a West End theater with a live orchestra,
just as it would have been shown in the
twenties. In November 1980, they pre-
sented Abel Gance's Napoleon, and its
success led to "Thames Silents" becoming
an annual event. In 1981 they showed King
Vidor's The Crowd and in 1982 Clarence
Brown's Flesh and the Devil, with Garbo
and Gilbert, and later that year Vidor's
Show People, with Marion Davies — all
with new scores by Carl Davis. (Each film
is being prepared for television. MGM/
UA will distribute the MGM productions
on video. )
Last year's event was highly appropri-
ate, for no one has championed the cause of
silent film with orchestral accompaniment
more energetically than Lillian Gish. We
were very anxious that she should make a
personal appearance at the event, but,
aware of her hectic schedule, we were
doubtful whether she would have the en-
ergy to travel to London. We underesti-
mated her. Above all, Lillian Gish is a
trouper. She said she would come, and
come she did.
There was a ripple of anticipation at the
airport when her plane arrived. An off-duty
immigration officer asked who we were
waiting for, and when he heard the name,
he produced a camera from his shoulder
bag and joined us by the railings. Our
spirits soared when we caught our first
glimpse of that exquisite face. Miss Gish
may technically be an old woman, but she
is still astonishingly beautiful.
We broke the news to her and her man-
ager, James Frashcr. that a newspaper
strike had wiped out our publicity, and that
now everything depended on her. "We'll do
a lot of radio," she said, "that'll help."
Given one day in which to rest, she then
AMERICAN I II M
myself: How can you survive such an or-
deal without pneumonia? But an article by
cameraman Lee Smith in the December
1 92 1 issue of American Cinemaiographer,
a technical journal that has never resorted
to press agentry, described how the ice-floe
sequence was shot:
We had doubles for both Miss Gish
and Mr. Richard Barthelmess, but
never used them. . . . Miss Gish was
the gamest little woman in the world.
It was really pathetic to see the forlorn
little creature huddled on a block of
ice and the men pushing it off into the
stream, but she never complained nor
seemed to fear. But the cold was bitter
and Miss Gish was bareheaded and
without a heavy outer coat, so that it
was necessary at intervals to bring her
in and get her warm. Sometimes when
the ice wouldn't behave she was al-
most helpless from cold, but she im-
mediately reacted and never seemed
lo suffer any great distress.
illian Gish came into pictures by acci-
dent. In 1912, she and her sister,
Dorothy, visited the Biograph Stu-
dios in New York because they heard
that their friend Gladys Smith was work-
ing there. (Gladys Smith had changed her
name to Mary Pickford.) In the lobby, the
sisters met a hawk-faced young man who
asked them if they could act. "I thought his
name was Mr. Biograph. He seemed to be
the owner of the place. Dorothy said, 'Sir,
we are of the legitimate theater.'"
"'Well,' he said. 'I don't mean reading
lines. 1 mean, can you act?' We didn't know
what he meant. He said, 'Come upstairs.'
We went up there where all the actors were
waiting and he rehearsed a story about two
girls who are trapped by burglars, and the
burglars arc shooting at them. We watched
the other actors to see what they were
doing and wc were smart enough to take
our cues from them. Finally, at the climax,
the man took a .22 revolver out of his
pocket and started shooting at the ceiling
and chasing us around the studio. Wc
thought we were in a madhouse."
The young director was D.W. Griffith,
and the film became An Unseen Enemy,
the first of many one- and two-rcclcrs to
fe.ilure Lillian Gish. Thus her career began
before the advent of the feature film. It
was Griffith who helped to pioneer the
feature film in the United States — and it
was his epic I he Hinh of a i\aii<tn (1^15)
lhal ensured its survival. "1 saw the
rushes." she said "Even at that early age. I
was (erriblv interested in film, how it was
made, what happened to it. 1 was in with
the developing and printing of the film, the
cutting of it, so I'd seen 'The Clansman,'
as it was then called. The others hadn't,
and I was there that night the rest of the
cast saw it for the first time. I remember
Henry B. Walthall, who played the Little
Colonel: He just sat there, stunned by the
effect of it. He and his sisters were from
the South. Eventually they said, 'It's unlike
anything we've ever seen or ever imag-
ined.'"
When Griffith visited England during
the First World War, ostensibly to arrange
for the premiere of his 1916 epic. Intoler-
ance, he began to prepare for a huge propa-
ganda film to support the Allied cause. He
brought over Lillian and Dorothy Gish,
traveling in the company of their mother,
to play the leads. The journey across the
Atlantic was dangerous enough, with con-
stant peril from U-boats, and their stay at
the Savoy Hotel in London was enlivened
by German bombing raids. But Griffith
decided to take them to France, and there
they saw the devastation of war at first
hand.
"In one of the villages on the way up
front from Senlis," said Lillian Gish, "we
+
She arrived on the
set with sunken eyes
and hollow cheeks;
she had stopped
drinking liquids
for three days to
give her lips the
necessary dryness.
saw a house that had been destroyed: bits
and pieces of furniture and an old coffee-
pot on its side. What pictures it brought up,
because everyone there had been killed. As
we drove up in this car to places where they
wouldn't send trained nurses — they were
valuable, actresses were a dime a dozen —
we saw the astonished look on the faces of
all the soldiers. They couldn't believe that
these people in civilian clothes — we were
dressed as we were in the film — would be
up there. And we were within range of the
long-distance guns."
Way Dow'n East: She refused a double for this harrowing sequence.
^a H
.*»
%i ^m^
■ .to*
MARCH 1984 25
When she worked with the young King
Vidor on La Boh'eme, she astonished him
with her dedication. He was not accus-
tomed to actresses who prepared them-
selves so thoroughly for their parts. She felt
that research was part of the job. As Mimi,
she had to die of tuberculosis, so she asked
a priest to take her to a hospital to talk to
those who were really dying of the disease.
She arrived on the set with sunken eyes
and hollow cheeks, and Vidor asked what
she had done to herself. She replied thai
she had stopped drinking liquids for three
days to give her lips the necessary dryness.
When he shot the death scene, he decided
to call "cut" only when he saw her gasp
after holding her breath to simulate death.
But nothing happened. She did not take a
breath.
"I began to be convinced that she was
dying." said Vidor. "I began to see the
headlines in my mind: 'Actress Plays Scene
So Well She Actually Dies.' 1 was afraid to
cut the camera for a few moments. Finally,
I did and I waited. Still no movement from
Lillian John Gilbert bent over and whis-
pered her name. Her eyes slowly opened.
At last she look a deep breath, and I knew
everything was all right. She had somehow
managed to find a way to get along without
breathing . . . visible breathing, anyway.
We were all astounded and there was no
one on the set whose eyes were dry."
Small wonder that Vidor said. "The
movies have never known a more dedicated
artist than Lillian Gish."
The qualities for which Lillian Gish is
famous were exemplified in D.W. Grif-
fith's production of Way Down East.
The picture was based on an old theat-
rical melodrama so lurid that when she
read the play, she could hardly keep from
laughing. It tells of Anna Moore, a country
girl who visits ihe city and is seduced by a
wealthy playboy by means of a mock mar-
riage. Abandoned and destitute, she gives
birth to a baby that dies soon afterward.
She wanders the countryside and finds a
haven at a farm. But when her secret is
discovered, she is turned out of the house.
Staggering through a snowstorm, she col-
lapses on the ice as it starts to break up, and
is carried toward certain death over the
falls. The farmer's son, who loves her, races
to the rescue, leaping from floe to floe and
grasping her a split second before disaster.
Griffith transformed this material into
superb entertainment, and by her presence
Lillian Gish gave the story a conviction and
a poignancy no other actress could have
provided. "We filmed the baptism of An-
na's child at night," she wrote in her auto-
biography, recently reissued, "in a corner
of the studio, with the baby's real father
looking on. Anna is alone: the doctor has
given up hope for her child. She resolves to
baptize the infant herself. The baby was
asleep, and. as we didn't want to wake him,
I barely whispered the words, 'In the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost ..." as I touched the tiny tem-
ples.
La Boheme.'G/'.rA j death scene with John
Gilbert; director King Vidor and producer
Irving Thalberg on the set.
"There was only the sound of the turning
camera. Then I heard a thud. The baby's
father had slumped to the floor in a faint.
D.W. Griffith was crying. He waved his
hand in front of his face to signify that he
couldn't talk. When he regained control of
himself, he took me in his arms and said
simply. 'Thank you.'"
The film was made in and around Grif-
fith's Mamaroneck studio, on a peninsula
jutting out into Long Island Sound. The
winter was so severe that the Sound report-
edly, froze over. For one scene, shot during
a blizzard, three men lay on the ground,
gripping the legs of the tripod while Billy
Bitzer ground the camera and Lillian Gish
staggered into the teeth of the storm. "My
face was caked with a crust of snow," she
said, "and icicles like little spikes formed
on my eyelashes, making it difficult to keep
my eyes open. Above the howling storm
Mr. Griffith shouted, 'Billy, move in! Get
that face.'"
On top of this, she had to shoot the ice-
floe scenes. One of her ideas for this se-
quence was to allow her hand and hair to
trail in the water as she lay on the floe. "1
was always having bright ideas and suffer-
ing for them," she wrote. "After a while,
my hair froze, and I felt as if my hand were
in a flame. To this day, it aches if I am out
in the cold for very long."
Motion picture history is compounded of
generous helpings of legend, and some his-
torians have wondered if Lillian Gish has
exaggerated her feat. I have wondered that
AMHUCAN Til M
•plunged into a schedule that exhausted
everyone but her. When she arrived for a
lecture at the National Film Theatre, she
was mobbed. Cameramen, professional
and amateur, crowded round, and it was all
James Frasher could do to get her to the
reception room. The theater was packed
and she delighted the audience with her
enthusiastic recall and her humor.
"Is there any part you wished you'd
played?" asked a member of the audience.
"A vamp," she replied. "Oh, I'd love to
have played a vamp. Seventy-five percent
of your work is done for you. When you
play those innocent little virgins, that's
when you have to work hard. They're all
right for five minutes, but after that you
have to work to hold the interest. I always
called them 'ga-ga babies.'"
During the next few days, she embarked
on a nonstop series of interviews for radio,
television, and the newspapers, which grad-
ually returned from the strike. She was
interviewed by Carol Thatcher, the prime
minister's daughter, for the Daily Tele-
graph and by John Gielgud, an old friend,
who talked with her about the theater for
the Guardian. Ticket sales showed a
marked improvement.
The films. Broken Blossom;: and The
Wind, were shown in a West End theater
called the Dominion, built in 1 929. Chaplin
premiered City Lights there. The twenties
decor is still intact, and, more important,
there's still a pit for the orchestra.
I was very pessimistic about the size of
the audience; I recalled seeing The Wind
many years ago at the National Film The-
atre with seven people. But our tribute
averaged more than a thousand people at
each of the four performances. As anyone
who has tried to program silent films will
agree, that is an astonishing turnout.
II was also gratifying to see Lillian
Gish's name in huge letters on a marquee
again, and to see the crowds gathering
before each show with autograph books.
The first night. Broken Blossoms was at-
tended by some of the most famous names
in the English theater, not only John Giel-
gud, but also Emlyn Williams, who played
Richard Barthclmess's part in the remake
of Broken Blossoms. Silent star Bessie
Love came to see her old friend; they had
both been in Intolerance. They posed for
pictures with Dame Anna Neagle, whose
husband Herbert Wilcox directed Dorothy
Gish in the silent era.
Lillian -Gish introduced the film and
supplied some of the background. She also
explained the importance of the music.
Carl Davis had arranged the original Louis
Gottschalk score of 1919 (the Gish charac-
— t—
"When you play
virgins, you have to
work hard. They're all
right for five
minutes ; after
that you have to
work to hold the
interest
)>
ter's theme, "White Blossom," was com-
posed by D.W Griffith himself). The audi-
ence watched the beautiful tinted print
with rapt attention. The occasion was un-
marred by those titters that so often wreck
showings of silent films. One could feel the
emotion, and the applause afterward was
tremendous. "I have been going to the
cinema for fifty years," said one man, "but
this was my greatest evening."
I hope he was there the following eve-
ning, for it was even more impressive. In
her introduction, Lillian Gish left no doubt
that The Wind was physically the most
uncomfortable picture she had ever made
—even worse than Way Down East. "I can
stand cold," she explained, "but not heat."
The exteriors were photographed in the
Mojave Desert, near Bakersfield, where it
was seldom under 120 degrees. "I remem-
ber having to fix my makeup and I went to
the car and I left part of the skin of my
hand on the door handle. It was like pick-
ing up a red-hot poker. To create the wind-
storm, they used eight airplane engines
blowing sand, smoke, and sawdust at me."
MGM/UA allowed us to provide a new
score for The Wind (which will also replace
the 1928 Movietone recording in the televi-
sion version). Carl Davis and arrangers
Colin and David Matthews created a storm
sequence of earsplitting volume. As one
critic said, it was as though they had
brought the hurricane into the theater. The
effect of the film and the music pulverized
the audience. Lillian Gish said it was the
most exciting presentation of The Wind
she had seen in years. Some people com-
pared the experience to seeing Napoleon,
and several found it even more powerful.
The critic of the Daily Telegraph com-
pared Gish to Sarah Bernhardt and that of
the Guardian thought the director of The
Wind, Victor Seastrom, was now on a level
with D.W. Griffith.
Lillian Gish received a standing ovation,
and days later people were still talking of
The Wind: a physically demanding role,
with stunning results.
her astonishing performance in the film.
"It was the film event of the year," said
George Perry of the Sunday Times. "Carl
Davis's music was incredible. It felt as
though the theater was collapsing. It made
Sensurround seem a crude gimmick. Lil-
lian Gish's performance was absolutely
wonderfuk"
We said farewell to Miss Gish at her
hotel while she was busy packing. Her hair
was down, and I have seldom seen her look
so beautiful. All of us connected with the
event were exhausted, but Lillian Gish was
as full of vitality as ever. "When I get back
to New York," she joked, "I shall go to bed
and 1 won't get up until 1984. When you
think of me, think of me horizontal."
When we think of her, we will think of
her striding onto the stage of the Dominion
to receive the acclamation of an audience
that, thanks to her, has rediscovered its
faith in the cinema. (1
Kevin Brownlow is a filmmaker and film histo-
rian. His books include The Parade's Gone By
and "Kanolron": Abel Cance's Silent Classic.
MARCH 1984 27
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film
TWO FILMS BY DOUGLAS SIRK
WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1956)
"The fetid taste of intrinsic imperfection, of behavioral mistakes endlessly
repeated form generation to generation, find expression in the staggeringly demonic
visual motifs recurring throughout Sirk's films of the merry-go-round, the amusement
park ride, the circular treadmill, the vehicle that really goes nowhere, insulated
hopeless activity, the Western frame of mind, people struggling to get outside cages
of their own building yet encased by their own unique palpable qualities. Mirrors
and surfaces as distancing agents (revealing yet qualifying and placing). A flight
of stairs - stages of grace? No image or icon has a simplistic easily solvable frame
of reference. An immediate appreciative laugh shouldn't obscure the double puns and
triple meanings to be found in Sirk's 'outrageous' moments. A lot of them happen in
WRITTEN ON THE WIND , probably Sirk's richest work. One will suffice. Bob Stack
after being told by his doctor he's impotent immediately comes upon a young boy jig-
gling furiously atop a stationary (natch) penny machine rocking horse (like Berg's
'Wozzeck'). He's straddled around an enormous horse's head with a gleeful climactic
smile (this in 1956 remember) totally oblivious to Stack's woes. How many ironic
meanings can you count? Here's the son Stack will never have, performing a function
Stack isn't up to, on a machine that isn't going anywhere anyway, but enjoying him-
self nevertheless." — Warren Sonbert, Notes by Film-makers on Sirk , Pacific Film
Archives series DOUGLAS SIRK AND THE MELODRAMA, 1975
THE TARNISHED ANGELS (1958)
"...Nothing but defeats. This film is nothing but an accumulation of defeats.
Dorothy is in love with Robert, Robert is in love with flying, Jiggs is in love with
Robert too, or is it Dorothy and Rock? Rock is not in love with Dorothy and Dorothy
is not in love with Rock. When the film makes one believe for a moment that they are,
it's a lie at best, just as the two of them think for a couple of seconds, maybe...?
Then towards the end Robert tells Dorothy that after this race he'll give up flying.
Of course that's exactly when he is killed. It would be inconceivable that Robert
could really be involved with Dorothy rather than with death.
The camera is always on the move in the film; just like the people it moves round,
it pretends that something is actually happening. In fact everything is so completely
finished that everyone might as well give up and get themselves buried. The tracking
shots in the film, the crane shots, the pans. Douglas Sirk looks at these corpses
with such tenderness and radiance that we start to think that something must be at
fault if these people are so screwed up and, nevertheless, so nice. The fault lies
with fear and loneliness. I have rarely felt fear and loneliness so much as in this
film. The audience sits in the cinema like the Shumann' son in the roundabout: we
can see what's happening, we want to rush forward and help, but, thinking it over, what
can a small boy do against a crashing aeroplane? They are all to blame for Robert's
death. This is why Dorothy Malone is so hysterical afterwards. Because she knew.
And Rock Hudson, who wanted a scoop. As soon as he gets it he starts shouting at
his colleagues. And Jiggs, who shouldn't have repaired the plane, sits asking 'Where
is everybody?' Too bad he never noticed before that there never really was anybody.
What these movies are about is the way people kid themselves. And why you have to
kid yourself. Dorothy first saw Robert in a picture, a poster of him as a daring
pilot, and she fell in love with him. Of course Robert was nothing like his picture.
What can you do? Kid yourself. There you are. We tell ourselves, and we want to
tell her, that she's under no compulsion to carry on, that her love for Robert isn't
really love. What would be the point? Loneliness is easier to bear if you keep
your illusions.
There you are. I think the film shows that this isn't so. Sirk has made a film
in which there is continuous action, in which something is always happening, and the
camera is in motion all the time , and we understand a lot about loneliness and how it
makes us lie. And how wrong it is that we should lie, and how dumb." — R.W. Fassbinder,
Notes by Film-makers on Sirk , Pacific Film Archives series DOUGLAS SIRK AND THE
MELODRAMA, 1975
Recommended reading:
SIRK ON SIRK by Jon Halliday (A Cinema One Paperback)
DOUGLAS SIRK: THE COMPLETE AMERICAN PERIOD (Published by the University of Connecticut
Film Society)
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
March 3U. 1985
DIRECT ANIMATION
A 'hands-on' approach to filmmaking
****
Curated by Stephanie Maxwell
Program:
Hand-Co loured Films (15 mins, silent) by Path! Freres. Circa 1904-1910.
A collection o f rare early Pathe Freres historical trick films all hand
painted.
Retour a la Raison (Return to Reason) — (4 mins?, silent) bv Man Ray. 1923.
Man Rav was one o£ the leaders of the American Dada movement in the early
1900' s. Retour a la Raison, an ironic title for a film whose intention was
the direct opposite in the Dadaist style of 'conscious attack on nublic sen-
sibility', combines both photography and the techniaues of t-he 'rayogram'. This
techniq"e involves th* 1 layinp of objects (nails, springs, dust, etc.) onto
film and exposing it to lieht. This film is one of th*> earliest examples of
film which draws attention to the material nature of the film itself and the
images on it as a photochemical reality.
Rainbow Dance (6 mins, sound) bv Len Lye. 1936.
Len Lye is a key figure in the development of 'direct' filmmakine because
he made his own separate discovery of the process and developed it with so much
imagination and thoroughness that once and for all he opened this area of film-
making for others to follow. Lye's first direct film Colour Box (1935) was
made entirely of inscribed (scratched, nainted, drawn...) desiens dnne directly on
the fiTm itself. Rainbow Dance follows in this tradition, but this time Lye
experiments with live action material by maniDulating the three color matrices
of the Gasparcolor and Technicolor processes in color film production.
Lines Horizonta l (5 mins, sound) by Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambert. 1962.
Lines Horizontal was made bv optically turning each frarne of their earlier
film Linps Vertical by 90 degrees- In Lines Vertical, lines are graphed or
engraved directly onto the film lengthwise with needles and knives and then
colored with various dves.
The Canaries (4 mins, sound) by Jerome Hill. 1968.
"A lesson in love-making. Hand-painted animation on film."
*Int emission*
Uncle Sugar's Flying Cirrus (3 mins, sound) bv Warren Bass. 1970.
This film (excppt for the titles) was made without a camera: using aircraft
press-tyDe, hole punches, felt pens, film leader, and thirteen images from
Picasso's Guernica punched out of 35mm slides and punched into film. Inspiration
for the film derived from the 1970 U.S. bombing of Cambodia.
Variations on a 7 Second Loop-Painting (6 mins, silent) by Barry Spinello. 1970.
This film combines handmade imaees on film and sten-printine and optical
manipulation processes. A seven second loop-painting of film is repeat f>d
several fimps and then varied in texture and form throueh an optical printer.
Memories of War fib mins, sound) bv Pierre Hebert. 1982.
Working at the National Film Bnar^ of Canada, Hebert created this richly
complex animat-ion that graphically reveals the intolerable dilemnas of poli-
tiques and war. A multiplan of animat-ion techniques are used, including
free-hand scratching of images onto film, cut-out and eel animation, as well
as thp incorporation of live action footage inf> animated scenes through
the use of optical printing.
Burnt Offering (8 mins, sound) bv David Gerstein. 1976.
Recipe: Rolls of 16mm and regular bran color and black&white unexposed film.
Bake in o^en for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.
Add loops, freeze frames and blurred images with an optical printer.
Add sound to taste.
Circuit VII (8 mins, sound) by Gil Frishman. 1983.
One in a series of eight films dealing with states of consciousness. This
film is symbolized by the inevitability of immortality and interspecific symbiosis. -GF
Live-action footage is reworked by scratching directly into the photoeranhed
imagery frame-by-frame.
Bloodlines (4 mins, 1984) by Mark Yellen. 1984.
In another example of 'direct' filmmaking techniques. Mark's use of
adhesive tape and markers gives a wild organic quality to lines drawn on film.
The soundtrack is composed of Haitian street music and orieinal sound effects.
Thanks to Mark Yellen for his contribution in formulating this program.
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
NEW PERSONAL VISIONS IV
BOSTON
CECILE FONTAINE
Untitled (or Golf Film), 1984, 16mm, lh min. Live action using Found
Footage manipulated by tape or "ammonia base detergent" affecting both
image and sound .
Untitled (contact print), 1984, 16mm, 40 sec. "Hand contact print" of
a Found Footage manipulated beforehand and exposed several times to a
projector bulb.
Correspondance , 1984, 16mm, 2 min. "Hand optical print" combined with
emulsion transfer and of super-8 segments of home movie and of 35mm slides.
A Color Movie , 1983, super-8mm, 5 min. Direct animation and collage
intercut with live action (self portrait).
Untitled (or painting studio), 1984, super-8mm, 2% min. Live action com-
bine with manipulation of the Film by bleaching or displacing the emulsion
side and with collage of acetate or 35mm slides.
Untitled (or Church), 1984, super-8mm, 1% min. Live action manipulated
with "ammonia base detergent."
A Color Sound Picture , 1984, super-8mm, 1% min. 16mm Found Footage recut
into S-8mm and edited on the academy leader structure. (All notes by
Cecile Fontaine.)
JENNY BOSSHARD
Reader , 16mm, 17 min. A true love story about an idealistic love which
goes pragmatic in the end. One of film's recurring symbols bears explanation:
the Origami swan is a reference to an old Japanese ritual. A woman who had
lost her husband at sea might make 1,000 Origami swans as a prayer for his
safe return. Also, keep in mind that the girl balancing the plate on her
head is initially striving for the love of the man on the roof. (Jenny
Bosshard. )
DENISE O'MALLEY
Jestering ; Candle for Liza , both 16mm, 8 min. total. Two personal films,
powerful in the quality of their images and simplicity of intent.
GREG PAXTON
You Go to My ; Fishnets ; Andy ; Henna ; Can't Help It ; Lizzard ; Beat 85 ;
Restaurant , all super-8mm, 17 min. total. "Precious images separated by
black leader" - Greg Paxton.
(OVER)
CINDY GREENHALGH
Ruby's Riches , 16mm, 3 min. ; Plastic Primer , 1984, 16mm, 5% min.; Life
Is Even Bigger Now , 16mm, 2^ min. "I treat film as a non-precious material,
as something to handle, to collage upon, to paint over and/or to cut up
and tape back together. In my work I deal with edges, juxtapositions,
confrontations, layers. I tackle the painting/film polarity with
scissors, braiding the two media together with tape.
I look for reasons to rejoice, then I assemble the reasons, layering
strips of film, cutting tiny single frames, cooking up new majesty. My
films are fashioned distinctly by hand, I squeeze energy into 16 milli-
meters, making the connections as I go. My work assumes a delight in
the misaligned, the mathematics and the plastic in art.
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
FILMS BY MORGAN FISHER - April 11, 1985
1) PRODUCTION STILLS (1970), 11 min. — "A documentary about nothing but itself;
technicians become actors, equipment is transformed into props; the reality
that the film records is congruent only with the duration of the film." (M.F.)
2) THE WILKINSON HOUSEHOLD FIRE ALARM (1973), 1% min. —"Anaemic cinema."
3) PROJECTION INSTRUCTIONS (1976), 4 min. — "A score to be performed; a film that
elevates the projectionist from passive mechanic to interpretive artist. A film
that promotes redundancy from a dubious possibility to an absolute trategic nec-
essity, and is shown correctly only when by conventional standards it is mis-
carried. Nothing but text; a long overdue exaltation of the verbal."
4) STANDARD GAUGE (1984), 35 min. — "A frame of frames, a piece of pieces, a length
of lengths. Standard gauge on substandard; narrower, yes, but longer. An ECU
that's an ELS. Disjecta membra ; Hollywood anthologized. A kind of autobiography
of its maker, a kind of history of the institution of whose shards it is com-
posed, the commercial motion picture industry. A mutual interrogation between
35mm and 16mm, the gauge of Hollywood and the gauge of the amateur and independent."
"My films tend to be about the making of films. I didn't programmatically set
out to do this, it's just something that I can't seem to resist. The more
deeply I delve into it the more inexhaustibly rich the subject becomes. The
process by which motion pictures are produced is distressingly complex, and
every aspect of it is to me fraught with suggestion, though of a seemingly
bathetic sort. So my films incline to the literal and the matter-of-fact. In
a sense they are educational in that they explain procedures or apparatus under-
lying film production that an audience might not be familiar with. My feeling
is that it is important for an audience to understand how it is that a film comes
into being, where it comes from, so to speak, and what it must have undergone
(in the material sense) before it appears before their eyes as shadows on the
screen. People should know that these phantasms are the upshot of a ponderous
and refactory art, If they are not aware of it they are denied the chance to
understand film as such.
Actually, it has always puzzled me that my films weren't done long ago. Once
one starts to reflect on film they are for the most part obvious ideas, though
none the less elegant. From the beginning there has been a reflexive strain in
cinema, but it has always struck me as half-hearted, Vertov and Hellzapoppin'
notwithstanding. Film should have taken the plunge at the outset and begun by
looking at itself, a pursuit as worthy as the treatment of 'subjects'. Hence
my films represent an effort to catch up, to redress an oversight committed by
history." — Morgan Fisher, 1976
TEXT TRANSLATIONS FOR SEVEN PORTRAITS
BY EDVARD LIEBER
2. LEONARD BERNSTEIN - German : Discarded out-take from Ich bin ein Anti-Star , of Evelyn
Kunneke reciting a funeral eulogy.
3. ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG - English : There were countless fallings then, nothing remaining
but possible and continuous. .. 'who are you?' they kept asking me...
gradually their real intentions became a solution; for example,
darkness. . .suddenly there was nothing to signify! each impossibility
was already another subject. . .1 succeeded in doubting the absence
of suggestion; everything vanished , drifting beneath silence in one
conversation; then there were precautions. . .they asked me where we
had been; the highways were unfamiliar and false. . .a different
message withdrew our return, motionless, without response, vast,
empty; in the corridor I heard nights in the same place. . .he could
have denied it from moment to moment without me... in mountains
something aimed an instant of against, drawing back the exception:
to mention the alleged obstacle: why should I? different reasons
assumed an unknown succession, for it helped neither here nor in
the poor substance of their recurrence. I stayed still, in spite of
my being no longer there. ..' don' t do it' he said. . .it would have
been difficult seeking a way, at all .. .unspoken. . .there was one
degree of probability they left far behind. . .falling, perhaps.
6. JOHN CAGE - Spanish : Synopsis of a soap opera scene from a television turned on by Merce
Cunningham during the filming: He locks the door, goes to the window and
looks out. . .people are being shot; he gazes up at her, outside the moon is
shining- he tries another door- light comes near. . .he turns and he is outside;
he attempts to scream, she looks at him; he climbs up the wall to the castle;
figures emerge from the shadow of the trees; her gaze is cold and distant. . .
the girl is calling the other girl.
Spanish : List of colors in John Cage's kitchen: Tokyo yellow, Nile green,
Dutch grey, Aztec brown, Chinese blue, Miami pink.
Latvian : Parody of a talk show interview from a television turned on by
Merce Cunningham during the filming .
German : Re-assembled fragments of the telephone conversation between John
Cage and a friend as. seen in the film: Thank you; are you cold? there are the
fireworks; next time; whatever made you conduct in Munich? open this door,
still unconscious, nothing tonight; I'm not you anymore; where? no. did she
ask you? continue; I don't stay there; at me too; what do you leave? I began
with permission; as many as you like; then it must be true; why not rent the
house? silence; well, go then, good evening, i should lock the door, there
she is.
English : Text composed and spoken by John Cage for this film.
Spanish : Cross-reference to the speaker in Robert Rauschenberg :
Part 'G' - the sudden manifestation of Diana's fatigue.
Spanish : Statement about John Cage: He abandoned imitation and description
for statement, defiantly pulling the external into its boldness ; his inner
world never vanished; he pursued his individuality to unforseen ends... the
only inevitable aspect of his life was negation.
Spanish : Commentary on the film, in the form of a coda:
interspersed probable
departure exchange
particular vertical
memory capaci ty
implacable separate
remoteness incomplete
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
BRAKHAGE IN PERSPECTIVE:
SELECTED EARLY FILMS
THE WAY TO THE SHADOW GARDEN (1955) 16mm. 10 min. Experimental sound by Brakhage
"Binding himself, a young man escapes his frightening room to enter the even more
terrifying beauty of Shadow Garden." - Cinema 16
"...creates a tormented, claustrophobic world... this wild study of a tortured youth
has astonishing moments of brilliance." - Film No. 12.
CAT'S CRADLE (1959) l6mm. 5 min. Color. Silent.
"Sexual witchcraft involving two couples and a medium cat." - Cinema 16.
PASHT (1965) 16mm. 5 min. Color. Silent.
"In honor of the cat, so named, and the goddess of all cats which she was named
after (that taking shape in the Egyptian mind of the spirit of cats), and of birth
(as she was then giving kittens when the pictures were taken), of sex as source,
and finally of death (as this making was the slavage therefrom and in memoriam)."- S,B.
THREE FILMS (1965) l6mm. 10 min. Color. Silent.
'Includes three short films: BLUE WHITE , "an intonation of child birth"; BLOOD'S
TONE , "a golden nursing film"; VEIN , "a film of baby Buddha masturbation".* - S.B.
THE DEAD (i960) l6mm. 11 min. Color. Silent.
"Europe, weighted down so much with that past, was The Dead. I was always Tourist
there; I couldn't live in it. The graveyard could stand for all my view of Europe,
for all the concerns with past art, for involvement with the symbol. THE DEAD became
my first work in which things that might very easily be taken as symbols were so
photographed as to destroy all their symbolic potential. The action of making THE
DEAD kept me alive." - S.B
INTERMISSION
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT (1958) l6mm. 40 min. Color. Silent.
"The daylight shadow of a man in its movement evokes lights in the night. A rose
bowl held in hand reflects both sun and moon like illumination. The opening of a
doorway onto trees anticipates the twilight into the night. A child is born on the
lawn, born of water with its promissory rainbow, and the wild rose. It becomes the
moon and the source of all light. Lights of the night become young children playing
a circular game. The moon moves over a pillared temple to which all lights return.
There is seen the sleep of innocents in their animal dreams, becoming the amusement,
their circular game, becoming the morning. The trees change color and lose their
leaves for the morn, they become the complexity of branches in which the shadow man
hangs himself." - S.B
"...a film in the first person. The protagonist, like the members of the audience,
is a voyeur, and his eventual suicide is a result of his inability to participate
in the 'untutored' seeing experience of a child. ANTICIPATION consists of a flow of
colors and shapes which constantly intrigues us by placing the unknown object next
to the known in a significant relationship, by metamorphising one visual statement
into another. Whenever Brakhage shows a shot for a second time, it gains new meaning
through its new context and in relation to the material that has passed during the
interval." - P. Adams Sitney.
San Francisco Cinematheque, May 30, 1985.
American Landscapes:
The Wold Shadow , Stan Brakhage, 2h min. color silent.
Pilotone Study #1 , Tom Brener, 12 min. color sound.
Haste , Konrad Steiner, 25 min, color silent.
Intermission
Eclipse , Linda Klosky, 3 min. color
Fearful Symmetry , Michael Wallin, 15 min. color silent.
Wild Night in El Reno, George Kuchar, 6 min, color sound.
Density Ramp , Jeff Rosenstock, 17 min. color sound.
The films presented tonight are landscape/cityscape films in the surface-
aspect of being composed of outdoor views. This alone is not the essence of a
landscape film. Conversely, these films are not exclusively landscape films.
They were chosen under this rubric not to categorize them, but to enhance our
ability to enjoy them by providing a reinforcing context that highlights certain
strengths which run parallel in all the films. These strengths involve a
sensitivity to (outdoor) envirnments which serves various purposes of character-
ization, namely the characterization of events, places and persons. A landscape/
cityscape film is predominantly made up of VIEWS, and the 'action' (which can be
subtle or spectacular) is the ambient image and sound of a given view; that is,
what is the background of a dramatically staged scene (in another type of film)
is elevated to the subject of a shot. The action is 'found' as a result of
pictoral composition. The action is 'found' in the conspiracy of camera placement
and shutter release timing.
In Eclipse and Wild Night in El Reno the emphasis is on a single natural event .
In the spectacle of the thunderstorm and the total eclipse attention (and intention)
is diverted from the presence of the filmmaker at the site of filming: he is
reduced to the role of witness, whose subjectivity is indexed only by the singular
vantage point and the limiting frame. The event takes place, literally takes over
the/place. The physical space and proximate objects are transformed by the will
of occurance, the place assumes a mood, which is not an essence of the place, but
an episode in its existance which will pass (the darkness ebbs, the storms abates).
The Wold Shadow comes closest of the films collected here to the methods of
landscape painting in its non-temporality. Nothing takes place, it is our vision
that is dynamic. Place is no longer site; sight here is unseen but the spirit is
given a shadow in the movement away from the specific. In contrast, Haste and
Pilotone Study #1 are not timeless, in fact they rely on the conventionalized
representations of duration, punctuated by micro-events, in elliciting the hidden
(invisible, inaudible, non-cinema-recordable) spirit of Place. Here the
accumulation of many otherwise inconsequential events conjures. the characters of
a rural midwestern neighborhood and a bygone freight-train district.
The presence of the individual in the place with the world is reflected back by
the sight in the highly edited films Fearful Symmetry and Density Ramp . The
present individual takes over the images (views) from themselves and the man-
ipulated view of a consciousness imprinted on the scene is an agitated or ominous
or otherwise stylized and anthropomorphized vision. We see a mind doing the
seeing in these films, actively interpreting the cityscape.
— Konrad Steiner
San Francisco Cinematheque, June 2, 1985
The Early Soviet Cinema: Kuleshov's Workshop
The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
( NEOBYCHAINIYE PRIKLUCHENIYA MISTERA VESTA V STRANYE BCLSHEvTKOV )
1924- U.S.S.R.
Goskino. Directed by Lev Kuleshov. Script by Vsevolod I. Pudovkin and Nikolai Aseyev.
Photographed by Alexander Levitsky. Production design by Pudovkin. With Porfiri Podobed,
Boris Barnet, V.I. Pudovkin. 90 min. B&W. Silent 18 f .p.s
This film was the first sucess of Lev Kuleshov's famed workshop, which was influenced
by Meyerhold's theories. Kuleshov was himself a major film theorist and this film
demonstrates the early use of his anti-Stanislavkian, anti-psychological acting style,
emphasizing instead the actors appearence and movements.
Sergei Eisenstein studied film direction in Kuleshov's Workshop, and this amusing
comedy was made with the help of two other major Soviet Directors who also appear in it:
V.I. Pudovkin and Boris Barnet.
' The artist in the cinema paints with objects, walls and light.... It is almost
unimportant what is in the shot, and it is really important to dispose these objects
and combine them for the purpose of their final, single plane' .
from ' The Task of the Artist in the Cinema '
(Vestnik Kinematografiya 1917)
The basic technical contribution of Kuleshov, the artistic legacy that he handed over to
Pudovkin and Eisenstein for further investment, was the discovery that there were, inherent
in a single piece of unedited film, two strengths: its own, and the strength of its
relation to other pieces of film. In his text book Pudovkin quotes Kuleshov as saying,
' in every art there must firstly be a material, and secondly a method of composing this
material specially adapted to this art, ' and Pudovkin goes on to explain:
1 Kuleshov maintained that the material in film-work consists of pieces of film, and that
the method of their composing is their joining together in a particular creatively
conceived order. He maintained that film-art does not begin when the artists act and the
various scenes are shot-this is only the preparation of the material. Film art begins
from the moment when the director begins to combine and join together the various pieces
of film. By joining them in various combinations, in different orders, he obtains
differing results . '
continued.
Salt for Svanetia
( SOL SVANETII )
1930 U.S.S.R.
Goskinprcm (Georgia) . Written and directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, frcm an idea by
Sergei Tretyakov. Photographed by Kalatozov and M. Gegelashvili . 54 min. B&W. Silent
The Soviet Georgian Mikhail Kalatozov was trained as a cameraman in the Kuleshov group
and brought an eye for strong formal imagery to his films. His best known film is the
1957 fiction feature THE CRANES APE FLYING, but his earlier SALT FOR SVANETIA is more
important. It reports on the life of Svanetia, an isolated section of the Caucasus
between the Black and Caspian Seas that was cut off from the world by mountains and
glaciers except for one narrow foot path through the mountains. At the time of the
Russian Revolution, its inhabitants were still living in the most primitive conditions,
intensified by ignorance and superstition. Typifying the plight of the region was its
lack of salt, without which the herds could not produce milk. The salt thus had to be
hand-carried up the footpath from the lowlands.
While incorporating much of Eisenstein's angular compositions and seme of Dovzhenko's
themes and lyricism, the film often imbues its images with a biting clarity akin to
Surrealism. As a result, it resembles in power as well as subject Buraiels later
LAND WITHOUT BREAD (1933) . Despite its champions, among them the perceptive
American critic Harry Alan Potamkin, this unusual masterwork has just recently
become generally available outside the Soviet Union.
FILMS BY CAROLINE AVERY
AND PHIL SOLOMON
Films by Caroline Avery
HIDWEEKEND
PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
FIRST OF HAY
BIG BROTHER *'
Caroline Avery will introduce her films tonight.
Films by Phil Solomon
THE PASSAGE OF THE BRIDE ( 1979-80)
When I left New York for Boston, a friend of mine gave me a 16mm home
movie (from the late twenties/early thirties, which he found in a pawnshop)
as a going away gift. I spent the next year analyzing every frame of this
wedding and honeymoon roll, becoming more and more obsessed with every social
gesture found in all parts of any given frame. By adding overlays and
isolating gestures into discreet rhythms, I began (through a reversed
excavation) to discover the hidden narrative. The Brides and the Bachelors
transubstantiating into their various guises of male and female, light and dark,
compression and rarefaction; a Gothic horror tale of bonding and freedom.
WHAT'S OUT TONIGHT IS LOST (1983)
With material culled from various home movies (mine and others) , I
began to make a film as a note in a bottle about an evaporating friendship.
The film gradually began to veer off into other disappearances surrounding
me at the time. Images of (different) women tempered and shaped by using
the film's surface texture as a kind of emotional weather (inspired by
Wallace Stevens' use of the metaphor of weather). An attempt to repair
the darkened lighthouse under adverse conditions.
THE SECRET GARDEN (1965)
A long time ago, my sister introduced me to the patterns of refracted
light that formed in the textured window of our bathroom; she called this
the Magic World of Paloopa. I spent many hours in that bathroom moving
my head around abd watching these beings arise and disappear into melting
landscapes. I credit these adventures with sparking my interest in film.
The Secret Garden is a Griffith-style children's story, which takes
place inside a young boy's fever dream (after his birthday party) on one
Easter Sunday, in the middle of the night.....
~..' ■• Films by Phil Solomon (continued)
WINTERSKIN ( A sketch for a Work in Progress)
I have been thinking about a.nd trying to make a film portrait of my
parents for many years. For the past three years, I have been watching my
mother slowly disappear inside herself, as her illness has radically changed
the lives of both of my parents. WINTERSKIN is an urgent attempt for me
to confront my own feelings of helplessness and distance (geo and emotional)
in the tones and movement of the photographed moment, rather than through
the various formal 'treatments' of my other work.
I am presenting a brief silent sketch of this film tonight (I expect
the finished' film to be much longer, with sound) as it is the most current
expression of my needs in filmmaking. The brief landscape shots which bridge
certain sequences were photographed during the various trips to see my family-
and were usually the only moments when I could be alone .
Audio tapes played tonight during intermission by Phil Solomon.
•"»* *.'.». ■-.-
L Khouyfedge «s as i^ed a? tx. raspbeimy
Ih f^iS film, i wanted to represent luomens temp^na-rvre
■ranges a^d the stream of time,
I cuv> interested in wamevfc temperature as Tf Chtfn^eS by cycles.
(/hen 1 tfinlc abeat sc/ch a delrcare const-? ttcKon of uuomehs bod/,
J. cannot help thinkimg about me lender- of natime. The
TOCLtfor^ip between. WDmens body and -fine St-reayn of tfm£ iS
Ijhterestmg to me- I made •Hits -fflm asmi fh>s rde^t.
b A wandering Story
|r.. Th^ 6 a * ln * s u/hidn made me stOH: to wakt. fhrs
**"" € ^ ^ J<^pa_nese thadi>icnaJ Story pattern that
JU/eom-Ffnd rn many my+h or novels. A man of noble b;N-n
\S ex, led cu.d rs u/^denrmj , but he is always helped by
|a WomcDn U/ta is connected to u;ateh SomehouJ . Mam,
Stores use me Same pattern of ei/c*+5. It was interest^
tome mat many Japanese Storres Kai/e tradrtionaily shared
jfbis bnd of r4t* about me heialnonsh? p between a ma-n
and a u/oma.n.
I TV second one is my uncles Aeath. We dfed of a heart
-attack. Lohfle he was tM*ndeWn$ and u/a! kim9 oh an upward
P Slope. I always felt mat he iA/as Somehow relate to the
gvrveh m -fW Torres and 1 wanted to ima^ne what he
Sauj be -fore he d. v ed.
p it is drffreult to explarn how these 2. +fnhgS are connected
to eadndrfheir, Kowcuer L thfed to represent my feeUngs
P U/P-fK my -Pilwi p
| On the Sound track , I ^OS reading noteS K/h?cb I toofc
at a lecture abaut Japanese mythology I went to Tn.
P Ja^an. .
i
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
CINEMATOGRAPH PARTY AND SCREENING
September 22, 1985
PROGRAM
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
* 30 Turns III by Roy Ramsing and Jacalyn White, 1985, mixed-media installation
* People Who Dream by Scott Stark, 1985, mixed-media installation
Asiam, As I Am by Toney Merritt, 1982, 6 min. , silent
Eucalyptus by Gary Adkins , 1977, 7 min., silent
Basic Elements by Diane Kitchen, 1984, 5^ min., silent
Let's Be Pals by James Irwin, 1985, 7h min., silent
Non Legato by Michael Rudnick, 1984, 6 min., sound
Agriculture, Part 1 by Medora Ebersole, 1981-84, 8h min., sound
Story Of The Pig by James Oseland, 1984, 7 min.
INTERMISSION
Passing Through by Willie Varela, 1985, super-8mm, 7 min., silent
Fireside by Konrad Steiner, 1983, 11 min., silent
Right Eye/Left Eye by Janis Crystal Lipzin, 1983, 6 min., sound
As The Sun Goes Down, A Hole Appears In The Sky by David Gerstein, 1976, 11 min., sound
Honeymoon In Reno by Dominic Angerame, 1983, 4 min., sound
Masquerade by Larry Jordan, 1981, 5 min., sound
The Mongreloid by George Kuchar, 1978, 10 min., sound
Strong Willed Women Subdue and Subjugate Reptiles by C Larry Roberts, 1982, 11 min.,
sound
The Cinematheque would like to thank all of the filmmakers invovled ii^onight's
screening for the generous donation of their work. The next issue of Cinematograph
will be on sale in early May of 1986.
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
STAN BRAKHAGE — SELECTED RECENT FILMS
September 28, 1985
1) The Garden Of Earthly Delights (1981), 2h min., color, silent, 18 f.p.s.
"This film (related to Mothlight ) is a collage composed entirely of montage
zone vegetation. As the title suggests it is an homage to (but also argu-
ment with) Hieronymous Bosch. It pays tribute as well, and more naturally
to "The Tangled Garden" of J.E.H. MacDonald and the flower paintings of
Emil Nolde." (S.B.)
2) Nodes (1981), 3min., color, silent, 24 f.p.s.
'"nodus knot, node — more at NET)... 4a: a point at which subsidiary parts origin-
ate or center... 5: a point, line, or surface of a vibrating body that is free
or relatively free from vibratory motion. 1 In the tradition of Skein this
hand-painted film is the equivalent of cathexis concepts given me by Sigmund
Freud (in his "Interpretation of Dreams"), 30 years ago, finally realizing
itself as vision. (Quote:Web. 7th)" (S.B.)
3) RR (1981), 8 min., color, silent, 24 f.p.s.
"This film is a mix of landscape images seen from train windows and the patterned
shapes and shifting tones of moving- visual- thought thus prompted; it was
inspired by Robert Breer's Fuji ." (S.B.)
4) Unconscious London Strata (1982), 22 min., color, silent, 24 f.p.s.
"This film photographed London in 1979, finished in January of 1982, is an
exploration into the depths of unconscious reactions. Having been in London
with Stan when he photographed it , I find this a deeply accurate memory-
piece. Not 'That's how it looked to me,' but rather 'That's how it felt!'
There are many new techniques in this film, new grammar. It is a very rich
lode." — Jane Brakhage
"While visiting London England (dream of my youth) and wishing to be simply
camera-tourist (taking pics, of exotic architectural arrangements imagined
since earliest Dickens, etc.) I found myself forced, yes forced* , to photo-
graph, rather, the nearest equivalent to the NON-pictorial workings of my
mind which these London scenes, before my eyes and camera lens, would afford —
each scenic possibility distorted from any easily identifiable picture to some
laborious reconstruction of the mind's eye at the borders of the unconscious.
It was two years before I could even begin to edit ; and then some visual-song
of all of England's history began to move thru this material, fashioning it in
some way 'kin to that music of Pierre Boulez which is at one with the poetry
of Rene Char — this plus the English 'round', song and dance... only (as is
true to my thought process then, in England, and now in memory) the rounds are
within rounds, round and around, all (as many as 7 interspersed thoughts con-
tinuing the orders of shots) interwoven." (S.B.)
5) Creation ( 1979), 17 min., color, silent, 24 f.p.s.
"...almost like the Earth itself — the green ice covered rocks, the slicing
feeling, the compressive feeling of the glaciers. The whole time I was
watching I kept thinking that you were a master of the North, the arctic
landscape — the dark red flowers in the dusky light, the deep blue light,
the tall trees with the running mists, and Jane looking. . .the ice, the
water, the moss, the golden light. A visual symphony..." — Hollis Melton
6) Egyptian Series (1984), 20 min., color, silent, 24 f.p.s.
Notes currently unavailable.
ine hounUauon tor Ail in cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
September 29, 1985 THE MAGIC OF MELIES — Selected films by Georges Melies
1) The Conjuror , 1896, 4 min.
2) The Eclipse , 1907, 8 min.
3) The Melomaniac , 1903, 4 min.
4) The Monster , 1903, 4 min.
5) The Terrible Turkish Executioner , 1904, 6 min.
6) The Inn Where No Man Rests , 1903, 5 min.
"/) An Astronomer's Dream , 1898, color, 9 min.
8) The Kingdom Of The Fairies , 1903, 12 min.
INTERMISSION
9) The Apparition, or Mr. Jones' Comical Ex perience With a Ghost , 1903, 4 min.
10) The Palace Of The Arabian Nighr .s , 1105- 10 min., color
11) Baron Munchausen's Dream , 1911, 12 min.
12) The Conquest Of The Pole , 1912, 12 min.
f ^
"Georges Melies has long suffered the indignity of being considered the cinema's
venerable grandpa, kindly, amusing, but largely irrelevant. The young men of today
have preferred to come to grips with the 'fathers' of the medium. The reactionary
philosophy (masquer-^iin^ -is ' human:' Sin ')... *.aV.ej» the..^ i-atural candidates for all
that oedipal curiosity. itaanwhile. M/lies '3 known as the mechanic who invented
all those clever tricks but who wasn't bright enough to move the camera about, or
as the clown whose theatrical narratives, though picturesque, are childish and
largely insignificant. His greatest claim to their attention has been that he in-
fluenced Edwin S. Porter.
Rather, we have shown that Melies ' 'weaknesses ' are his great strengths; that
his relentless style, unbroken by montage but enlivened by spectacular camera
tricks, is admirably effective in inducing a condition of absent- and open-minded-
ness propitious for the reception of his poetic imagery, because it is childish,
is bursting with vitality, operating in that dynamic area of tension and release,
of dislocation and relocation that we call the marvellous.
The inclination that Melies felt to make detail the focus of his work is not a
limitation. Instead it suggests a way of looking at cinema as a medium only as
valuable as its occasional revelatory image. The wider framework of narrative
structure we discard without reservation or guilt in favour of the metamorphic,
the erotic and the humorous image." — Paul Hammond', Marvellous Melies
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
NEW FILMS FROM CANYON CINEMA - October 3, 1985
1) NOH TIGER (1982) by Wendy Blair, super 8mm, 4 min. , b&w, silent.
"A tiger, once in motion, is now stilled and fragmented. An incomplete record
of time. Serene with age, a Noh mask offers a history of rural and illusion
as time's voice. In the shadows, in the movement, there is time — observant
and elusive." (W.B.)
2) BUDAPEST PORTRAIT (1984) and LENIN PORTRAIT (1981-82) by Peter hutton, 20 min.
and 10 min., b&w and color, silent.
Hutton was brought to Budapest by the Hungarian government to make a personal
portrait of Hungarian life and culture, a move unprecedented since its Commun-
ist alliance. Prints of both films shown tonight are final work-prints, which
the filmmaker. has consented to show since final release remains unclear.
3) TRACY'S FAMILY FOLK FESTIVAL (1983) by Bill Brand, 10 min., color, sound.
"The film is an impression of the 1982 folk festival at the Tracy and Eloise
Schwarz farm in Central Pennsylvania. The festival, which was dedicated to
Elizabeth Cotton (author of "Freight Train"), includes Bluegrass , Old Timey,
Cajun, Country, and Gospel music." (B.B.)
INTERMISSION
4) AR EA PREDICTOR (1983) by Bill Baldewicz , regular 8mm, 6 min., color, silent.
"This film, shot with the aid of a 5-cent item from an army surplus store,
subtlely illustrates the areal extent of contamination by radioactive materials
expected from small nuclear weapons — up to 1 megaton (1 MT) bombs. Before
it became surplus, the 5-cent "area predictor" was intended for use as an
overlay on military maps. The film, too, uses maps along with camera-leak
"blasts" to suggest nuclear warfare.
The film alludes to the often overlooked fact that the greatest damage likely
to result from nuclear-power industrial accidents is not direct destruction
of life and property, but rather, extensive land and water contamination by
low, but unsafe, levels of radioactivity. The same statement may also be true
for nuclear weapons exploded in areas of low population." (B.B.)
5) KALEIDOSCOPE (1935) and COLOUR FLIGHT (1938) by Len Lye, 8 min., colour, sound.
These are "direct" films — that is, films made without a camera. Lye painted
colorful designs onto celluloid, matching them to dance music. Music:
"Biguine d'Amour" (Don Baretto and his Cuban Orchestra, Kaleidoscope ) ;
"Honolulu Blues" (Red Nichols and his Five Pennies, Colour Flight ) .
6) BRANCUSI'S SCULPTURE GARDEN ENSEMBLE AT TIRGU JIU (1977-84) by Paul Sharits,
23 min., colour, sound.
"This film is a chronicle of a visit I made in 1977 to Romania to experience
three of Brancusi's most famous sculptures: "The Endless Column"; "The Gate
Of The Kiss": "The Table of Silence". These works are in the small, rural
town of Tirgu Jiu, not far from the village of Hobitza (where Brancusi was
born and spent his childhood) . These works are shown in photographs and dis-
cussed as totally autonomous "abstract" sculptures simply placed conveniently
around the town; but, in fact, they are also parts of a larger and very
specific environmental (and symbolic) motif. Their placement suggests a
metaphysical continuum; they span the boundaries of the town and while aligned
in a (virtual) straight line, a-1 three cannot be seen from any single point
of view, so there is a temporal unfolding as one moves through the town to
experience the relationship.
(over)
(2)
The works were commissioned to commemorate the persons from the area who had
died in World War I, and the peace and the flow of life were to be suggested.
Brancusi placed the "Endless Column" on the outskirts of the town and "The
Table Of Silence" on the opposite end of town in the park, very near the
River Jiu. "The Gate of the Kiss" is the entry to the park. In the middle
of the town there is a church; all the sculptures are aligned through this
center. The very arrangement of the pieces suggest themes of sexuality,
the dance of life and the circularity of existence.
"The Table of Silence" I see in part as a spacial-circular embodiment of the
endless temporal-linear flowing of the river it is placed next to. Stephen
Georgescu-Gorgon, who worked with Brancusi erecting the works, recalls that
Brancusi ..."once explained to me that it was intended for the 'hungry ones',
who came back from their daily work in the fields and sat round it 'in silence'
to have their only meal. Hence the "Table of Silence"." (P.S.)
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
CINEMATIC RECOLLECTIONS Saturday, Nov. 16
Karen Holmes: RETURNING THE SHADOW , 22 min. (1985) world premiere
"Examines the tension between the image that is recorded
in a photograph and what is remembered. The film creates
its own internal memory as it achieves a reconciliation
of past and present.
The film is based on and around 5 photographs , taken
sometime in the early 1940s. In trying to find an identity
for these people, elements of the photographs are isolated
and extended in visual associations: a crumpled quilt
on the bed in one photograph resembles rippling water.
The film is constructed in a way that allows the viewer
to contribute his/her experience during the film in an
„ effort to find the identity of the characters and possibly,
to reflect on one's own identity." (K.H.)
Stephanie Beroes: VALLEY FEVER , 20 min. (1979)
Inspired by Merleau-Ponty 's statement, "there is a
perpetual uneasiness in the state of being conscious",
this film has to do with questions of perception, the
way we see things. In an experimental, non-narrative
context, the film presents a man and a woman who carry
on a disjunctive conversation, superficially about the
effects of illness on perception, actually about their
mutual inability to percieve the world from any other
than a personal viewpoint. They set up a projector and
show each other footage of their respective hallucinations
under the influence of fever- images of the desert, palms,
swimming pools, and the American suburban landscape.
The hallucination sequences make a lyrical counterpoint
to the formal, structured lipsync sequences." (S.B)
Janice Lipzin: TREPANATIONS , super-8mm, 20 min. (1983)
"A film made up of various kinds of correspondece-pictorial,
written, and audio tape "letters" sent to the filmmaker
by friends. The soundtrack is the dominant element and was
constructed from excerpts from the tape correspondence
of a contemporary woman photographer. She describes the
madness of her daily life in moods vacillating between
delight and despair. Her experiences, while uniquely
her own, function as a magnifier through which we all
can see our own situations and strongly identify with
hers. The title describes a delicate cranial operation
performed in prehistoric cultures." (J.L.)
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
November 17, 1985
THE FILMS AND VIDEOTAPES OF OWEN LAND
"The most impressive avant-garde filmmaker of the 1970 's was George Landow
(a.k.a. Owen Land). Since 1969, when he released Institutional Quality and
thereby found a place for his astonishing verbal wit in his cinema, he has
produced a coherent body of aggressively original films and has asserted, through
those films, a unique position in opposition to the very genre in which he works.
Many of his most exciting films contain an elaborate network of allusions and
quotations. Primary among the references are earlier Landow films. When he mocks
and criticizes dimensions of his own artistic aspirations, the film-maker cau-
tiosly offers us sly hints about his earlier intentions and their pitfalls."
P. Adams Sitney
FILMS
Diploteratology or Bardo Follies , 1967, 7 min.
"His remarkable faculty is as maker of images... the images he photographs
are among the most radical, super-real, and haunting images the cinema
has ever given us." - P. Adams Sitney
The Film That Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter , 1968, 94 min.
A breakthrough film in the American cinema, one of the first that calls
attention to the conditions of its own making and existence.
Remedial Reading Comprehension , 1970, 5 min.
"One of the ways that Remedial Reading Comprehension works is in the degree
of filmic distance which each image has in the film. Distance here refers
to the degree of awareness on the part of the viewer that the image he is
watching is a film image rather than 'reality'. Landow's film does not
try to build up an illusion of reality... It works rather toward the op-
posite end, to make one aware of the unreality, the created and mechanical
nature, of film." - Fred Camper
What's Wrong with This Picture?: I/II , 1972, 10% min.
"An excercise in combining a documented segment of a real occurence with
structural elements. The film becomes a study of speech patterns. There
is, on several levels, a play on the difference between film mechanics and
video electronics." - Owen Land
Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present I , 1973, 6 min.
A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation
Front of Berkeley, California (a.k.a. Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present,
Part 2 ) , 1974, 11 min.
Wide Angle Saxon , 1975, 22 min.
"...Earl's memory is so full of images that he confuses the face of the
young woman from the shoe repair shop with the images in the experimental
film that he saw at the Walker Art Center, and imagines red paint being
poured on her face." - Owen Land
"This is the truth about Wide Angle Saxon ; when it is most ridiculous,
when it gets its biggest laughs, is when it is most in earnest." - P. Adams
Sitney
No Sir, Orison , 1975, 3 min.
"Orison means prayer. The title of the film is a palindrome, that is,
it reads the same backward or forward. The film grew out of an attempt
to create a structure around my first original palindrome, 'no sir, orison',
written while working on Wide Angle Saxon ." - Owen Land
New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals
a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops , 1976, 10 min.
"A reworking of an earlier film, Institutional Quality , in which the same
test was given. In the earlier film the person taking the test was not
seen, and the film viewer in effect became the test taker. The newer
version concerns itself with the effects of the test on the test taker."
On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and its Relation
to the Unconscious or Can the Avant -Garde Artist be Wholed , 1980, 20 min.
"Two Pandas, who exist only because of textual error, run a shell game for
the viewer in an environment with false perspectives. They posit the
existence of various films and characters, one of which is interpreted by
an academic as containing religious symbolism. Sigmund Freud's own
explanation is given by a sleeper awakened by an alarm clock." - P. Adams
Sitney
VIDEO
Noli Me Tangere , 1983, 6 min.
"In this first videotape by Landow, an important avant-garde filmmaker,
sexual and technological anxieties converge in a single obsessive image.
Amy Taubin
The Box Theory, 1984
CINEMATHEQUE
NEW FILMS '85
PROGRAM NO. 1, 7:30 p.m.
Film Performance by D & S and the Real Time Art Show
Violent by Sal Giammona
Denizens of the See by Michael Rudnick and Mike Henderson
The Dyed Again by Mark Sterne
Go Like This by Rock Ross
Hotel Capri by George Kuchar
Fuckin' Hawaii by Dean Snider
Return to Infancy by Dean Snider
5 minute intermission
Fear Is What You Find by James Irwin
Goblin Valley by Andrej Zdravic
Black Heat by Chuck Hudina
Poor Young People by Medora Ebersole
Phone Film Portraits by Dominic Angerame
In the Company of Women by Jacalyn White
In Progress by Willie Varela
Evil Comes to Eden by James Oseland
An Installation for Ellen Zweig by Janis Lipzin (film installation)
CINEMATHEQUE
NEW FILMS ' 85
PROGRAM NO. 2, 9:30 p.m.
Film Watchers by Herb de Grasse, hand signing by Eve Silverman
Aquation by Marian Wallace
Tone Poem by Mike Kuchar
Foot 'Age Shoot-Out by Kurt Kren
Untitled by Margaret White
Shot Reverse Shot; An Intercourse with Film by Barbara Coley
11/9/85/Las Vegas/Envy by Scott Stark
Fragment by Ellen Gaine
Spleen Part 1 Artifices by Peter Herwitz
Via Rio by Dana Plays
The Illusion Machine Experienced by Jan Novel lo
Document Unearthed in the Northwest Territory by Jack Walsh
5 minute intermission
The Doll & the Buffaloes by Mike Henderson & Michael Rudnick
Jeaneret's House by Scott Frankel
To the Spirit in the Sky by Mark Sterne
Light at the End of the Tunnel by Jerome Carolfi
The Night Could Last Forever by Dean Snider
Projection Piece by Bruce Conner
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
December 5, 1985
THE SKY ON LOCATION
Babette Mangolte in Person
The Sky on Location (1982), 78 minutes.
Script, photography, editing: Babette Mangolte. Music: Ann Hankinson.
Voices: Bruce Boston, Honora Ferguson, Babette Mangolte. Camera Assis-
tant: Ralph Chaney, Mark Daniels, Neil Harvey. Editing Assistant:
Maureen Judge. Location Sound: Ralph Chaney. A co-production between
Babette Mangolte and ZDF Television, West Germany.
The Sky on Location is a 78 minute color exploration of, rumination on land-
scape, produced for German television. It presents visual records of a series
of trips through various parts of the far West: from the Colorado Rockies to
Glacier Park, across the Great Sandy Plain to Death Valley, across the Great
Divide Basin to the Green River, through the Cascades — Mt . Hood, Mt . St. Helens,
to the rain forests of the Olympic Peninsula; back to the Southwest and Yosemite.
No people are seen in the film except, implicitly, those travelling in a train
seen in one image, in the giant trucks exploiting the lumber felled by the ex-
plosion at Mount St. Helens, and those mentioned on the soundtrack. The sound
track includes environmental sound and some music, and three voices which
regularly add bits of personal, historical and aesthetic context. The
obviously directed and scripted formality of the three voices is so detached
from the imagery (we do not feel we're travelling with these people, or even
that we're eavesdropping on their excursions) that we are forced to do more
than "get into" the beauty and awesomeness of the places Mangolte films: we
must also focus on the (past and present) meanings and implications of imagining
such spaces in painting (Mangolte specifically thanks Barbara Novak's Nature and
Culture , a study of 19th century American landscape painting) photography, and film.
BM: From the beginning the film was meant to be without any people at all. But
after I saw the footage from the summer, I said, "That's unbearable; I need to
have once or twice an element of scale." Because everything appeared to be at
the same distance. Whether you use a telephoto shot of a mountain or a wide
angle shot, you're always very far away from the mountain, if you see it at all.
If you are on it or near it, you see only a section of the mountain. The space
is so open that there is never any foreground to give you perspective. That's
what fascinated me in the subject matter. I thought about it in 1975 when I
went on a bus tour to visit the West . The other thing the film was about from
the beginning was the difference in color from north to south — geography made
visual through color and light. I discovered that the light shifts so radically
that a certain element of drama was possible. The Sky is not about nature as
backdrop, but more about the idea of wilderness, which I've discovered is so
ingrained in American culture, but totally bewildering to Europeans. I don't
even know a French word you could use to translate the idea. I am Americanized
enough now to identify with it. Travelling alone, or with one assistant, through
those places helped me understand. But Europe lost the sense of wilderness
centuries ago. It's so much more crowded. There is no area which is not put to
some use, and which is not crossed by roads. Even the tops of the mountains are
not really secluded. And you don't have that sense of space..." (From an inter-
view with Scott MacDonald, AFTERIMAGE, Summer 1984.)
"The film attempts to construct a geography of land from North to South, East and
West and seasons to seasons through colors instead of maps." - Babette Mangolte
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
Sunday, December 8, 1985 - FILMS BY MARJORIE KELLER
1) She/Va (1973), 8mm, 3 min.
2) By 2's and 3's: Women (1974), 8mm, 7 min.
3) The Web (1977), 8mm, 10 min.
Three early 8mm films in which women and children appear. I learned how
to edit in the making of She/Va . It's the first film of mine that I con-
sidered finished. By 2's and 3's: Women still strikes me as an angry film.
You may not see that in it because it looks like a travel diary, a land-
scape film. I remember thinking that if I could have edited it with a
hatchet, I would have. And in The Web I delved for the first and only
time into film as mischief -making; wicked, like a child.
4) The Answering Furrow (1985), 16mm, 27 min.
Owing to Virgil's Georgics , translated by Thomas Carlysle. With assistance from
Hollis Melton and Helene Kaplan. Music: Charles Ives, Sonata for Violin and
Piano //4 ("Children's Day at the Camp Meeting") and Ambrosian Chant (Cappella
Musicale del Duomo di Milano) . Filmed in Yorktown Heights, New York; St. Remy
en Provence, France; Mantua, Rome and Brindisi, Italy; and in Arcadia and the
island of Kea in Greece. I would like to thank Saul Levine for making this
screening possible.
Georgic I
In which the filmmaker depicts the annual produce
first seen in spring - The furrowed earth ready for
planting - The distribution, support and protection
of young plants - The implements of the garden.
Georgic II
In which the life of Virgil is recapitulated in summer,
with a digression on the sacred - The sheep of Arcadia -
The handling of bees - The pagan Lion of Kea.
Georgic III
In which the filmmaker presents the skill and industry
of the old man in autumn - Ancient custom and modern
method - The use of the implements of the garden.
Georgic IV
In which the compost is prepared at season's end -
The filmmaker completes The Answering Furrow with
the inclusion of her own image.
A note on the music:
The music works with the image to parallel the trace of history. Ives
recalls Protestant hymns, they recall the origin of the hymn in Milanese music
of the 12th century, which allows for that music closest (in my experience of
recording and making this film) to the hum of bees and the hum of amplifiers,
the Orthodox Greek chant.
— Notes by Mariorie Keller
[he San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Cinematheque and Intersection present:
X ($T)
WEDNESDAY, November 7
9 p.m.
Jean-Francois Bory
Victor Hernandez Cruz
Esmerelda
Andrei Codrescu
Andrea Dace
Charles Amirkhanian
Gherasim Luca
Lyn Hejinian
Jim Pomeroy
Barbara Smith
Idris Ackamoor/Rhodessa Jones
THURSDAY, November 8
9 p.m.
Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux
Amy Elliott
Eleanor Antin
Michael Sumner
Mark Scown/Harald Dunnebier
Al Wong
Marsha Vdovin
Carolee Schneemann
Chuck Z
Monica Gazzo
Joel Hubaut
FRIDAY, November 9
SATURDAY, November 10
9 p.m.
Michael Shay/Stephen Perkins
Slick Ric Salinas
Guilia Niccolai
Scott MacLeod/Jeanne Gallo
Michael Peppe
Bernard Heidsieck
Larry Wendt
Jerome Rothenberg/Bertram Turetzky
Tim Badger/Clifford Hunt
Armand Schwerner
9 p.m.
Jacqueline Cahen
Jim Petrillo/Betsy Davids
John Marron
Nanos Valaoritis
Opal Palmer/Deborah Majors
Anne Tardos
Michael McClure
Jackson Mac Low
Stephen Vincent/Steve Wilson/Ann Hankinson
Greg Goodman
Ellen Zweig
Terry Allen
Funded in part by The National Endowment for the Arts, The San F»ancisco Hotel
Tax Fund, The Zellerbach Family Fund, The Italian Institute of Culture of San
Francisco and The French Government.
P0LYH0NIX 8: Director, Ellen Zweig; Assistant Director, Scott MacLeod; Public
Relations Director, Marsha Vdovin; Production Coordinator, Andrea Dace; Reception/
Fundraising, Amy Elliott
Sound Engineers: David Mighell, Roxanne Merryfield
Photos by Michael Shay
Special Thanks to: Jean-Jacques
(Kulchur Foundation), The French
Francisco and the Center for Expe
Francisco State University, Steve
Beau Takahara, Lilian Gendler (St
(KPFA), CO-LAB Theatre and Galler
Janis Crystal Lipzin, Carmen Vigi
Ackley, Wanda Hansen, William Dav
Spurr, Roberto Bedoya, Francesca
Dent.
Lebel, Jacqueline Cahen, Lita and Morton Hornick
Cultural Service of The French Consulate of San
rimental and Interdisciplinary Arts at San
Anker, Maryse Berniau, Kathy Brew, Robert White,
owaway Travel), Russ Jennings and Susan Stone
y, Tomasina, John McBride, Jurek and Beata Zahorska,
1, George Lakoff, Jim Hartz, Lise Swenson, Bruce
enport, Greg McKenna, David Gerstein, Catherine
Valente, Calvin Ahlgren, Mark Scown and Vivian
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film
Saturday, April 7, 1985
"MAGIC AND THE OCCULT"
" INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER " by Kenneth Anger (1969) 16mm 11 min<,
(hand-tinted color)
"Kenneth Anger, more than any other avant=garde film-maker,
is the conscious artificer of his own myth. . . For him more than
for any other avant-garde film-maker Hollywood is both his matrix
and the adversary... Invocation of My Demon Brother ... marks a
stylistic change and a refinement of Anger's Romanticism. . . The
early films of Anger observe for the most part the classical unit-
ies of time and space and tend to have clearly defined beginnings,
middles, and ends... In Invocation (he) still utilizes the off-
screen look as a formal fixture? one can distinguish an introduc-
tion and a conclusion. But nevertheless the film marks a radical
step for him in the direction of open form, where montage does not
depend on the illusion or the suggestion of spatial and temporal
relationship between shots... In Invocation of My Demon Brother ,
Anger continues to glorify the creative imagination as he does in
all of his films, but he extends the rhetoric of metamorphoses
and universal analogy beyond the transformations of Inauguration
of the Pleasure Dome and the dialectical metaphors of Scorpio
Rising into a "web of correspondences, a rhetoric of metamorpho-
ses in which everything reflects everything else," ...
"In Invocation Anger combines material from the original Luci -
fer Rising , a document of the Eguinox of the Gods ritual he per-
formed the night the film was stolen, a helicopter landing in
Vietnam, footage of the Rolling Stones, alchemical tattoos. For
the first time he uses anamorphic photography. . .
"The film moves among levels of reality, suggesting that one
image is the signature of another. It is Anger's most metaphys-
ical film; here he eschews literal connections, makes the images
jar against one another, and does not create a center of gravity
through which the collage is to be interpreted... Thus deprived
of a center of gravity, every image has egual weight in the film;
and more than ever before in an Anger film, the burden of synthesis
falls upon the viewer.
"...It is very much a part of the aspiration of Invocation of
My Demon Brother to get beyond the limitations of cinema and di-
rectly into the head. . . . Invocation is... an investigation of the
aesthetic guest through occult rhetoric. What makes this film...
difficult ... is the film-maker's new use of his art as an instru-
ment of discovery. The film is about the concentration of the
imagination and indirectly about the power of art to achieve it...
Watching the film, one feels that the film-maker did not know what
the film was to be until it was finished..." *
* P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film , New York: Oxford University Press,
1974, pp. 128-135.
" HEAVEN AND EARTH MAGIC FEATUR E" by Harry Smith (1950s) 16mm
66 min .
"I must say that I'm amazed, after having seen the black-and-
white film (#12) last night, at the labor that vent into it. It
is incredible that I had enough energy to do it. Most of my mind
was pushed aside into some sort of theoretical sorting of the
pieces, mainly on the basis that I have described: First, I col-
lected the pieces out of old catalogues and books and whatever;
then I made up file cards of all possible combinations of them;
then, I spent maybe a few months trying to sort the cards into
logical order. A script was made for that. All the script and
the pieces were made for a film at least four times as long.
There were wonderful masks and things cut out. Like when the dog
pushes the scene away at the end of the film, instead of the
title "end" what is really there is a transparent screen that has
a candle burning behind it on which a cat fight begins - shadow
forms of cats begin fighting. Then, all sorts of complicated
effects; I had held these off. The radiations were to begin at
this point. Then Noah's Ark appears. There were beautiful scratch-
board drawings, probably the finest drawings I ever made - really
pretty. Maybe 200 were made for that one scene. Then there's a
graveyard scene, when the dead are all raised again. What actually
happens at the end of the film is everybody's put in a teacup, be-
cause all kinds of horrible monsters came out of the graveyard,
like animals that folded into one another. Then everyone gets
thrown in a teacup, which is made out of a head, and stirred up.
This is the Trip to Heaven and the Return, then the Noah's Ark,
then The Raising of the Dead, and finally the Stirring of Every-
one in a Teacup. It was to be in four parts. The script was
made up for the whole works on the basis of sorting pieces. It
was exhausting ly long in its original form. When I say that it
was cut, mainly what was cut out was, say, instead of the little
man bowing and then standing up, he would stay bowed down much
longer in the original. The cutting that was done was really a
correction of timing. It's better in its original form." *
"Smith's use of chance coincides with his idea of the mantic func-
tion of the artist. He has said, 'My movies are made by God; I
was just the medium for them. ' The chance variations on the basic
imagistic vocabulary of the film provides yet another metaphor be-
tween his film and the Great Work of the alchemists... The viewer
of No. 12 ( Heaven and Earth Magic Feature ) finds himself confront-
ed with repetitive scenes of preparation - an egg hatches a hammer,
which changes a machine, which will produce a liguid, etc. - toward
a telos that brings us back to the beginning. The characters of
the film end up precisely as they were at the beginning. Every-
thing returns to its place of origin." **
" EL ESPECTO ROJO " (1929-30) 22 min. ("Th e Red Specter ")
Produced by the Pathe Brothers (possibly by Melies), this hand-
tinted fantasy depicts the incarnation of the devil, who color-
fully performs miraculous transformations.
* P. Adams Sitney, "Harry Smith Interview," Film Culture #37,
(Summer 1965), p. 5
•* P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Filmy op. cit .
1
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
EMATHE<^
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
ine rounaauon ror Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
CHANCES IN TIME
Random Operations in Film
Though we like to think there is sense and order in the world it often appears
that there is none. In July, 1984, in a suburb of San Diego, a man walked into a
McDonald's restaurant armed with a small arsenal and motivelessly murdered twenty
people whom he had never met. Two weeks later a retired carpenter from the Bronx
won twenty million dollars in a lottery. We talk of the role of chance in these
things, but the word "chance" is actually a convenient way to describe the complex
interactions of events, emotions and the lumbering momentum of time that bring
things together in a way not quite random, not quite predestined.
The use of random operations in the creation of art can be seen as an attempt to
tap into the energy of this universal chance/destiny compost heap. Artists who
use chance are, whether conciously or not, trying to divest themselves of the no-
tion of duality in their existence, the sense of "self" being separate from "every-
thing else". This has much to do with several Asian philosophies, and some of
the works in this exhibition have obvious ties to Oriental thought. But it also
has to do with modern science, particularly physics; the implications of the
Einstein/Podolsky/Rosen thought experiment of 1935 are far more bizarre than any-
thing in a Zen koan. We are all unquestionably integral parts of the same Thing,
by whatever theosophical or philosophical yardstick you use to determine what
that "Thing" is. Our artworks are part of it as well.
The artists in this exhibition are working at the edge of the invisible, elusive
border of cause and effect. Chance as a process is crucial to 20th century art,
but its role in cinema has been under-appreciated. The purposeful uses of chance
lay bare the contruction of a medium most people prefer when it is seamlessly
illusionistic. This three-part series examines random operations in the creation
of film, video, music, performance, slide projection, poetry, and installation.
It is the first of its kind. Dice-throwing, performance-games, found objects,
randomly-determined structure, uncontrollable events, and indeterminat consequences
are the tools that construct these works many of which are having their public or
San Francisco premieres.
Because most of the implementations of chance in time-based media occur during one
or more of the production stages, its use is not always clear in the final product,
and is often invisible. The works in- this exhibition fall roughly into six cat-
egories:
1. Chance in Subject. At the time of the original photography or recording, the
subject is more or less out of the control of the artist. The end result is
often a revelation, giving something the artist could not possibly have de-
vised on his/her own.
- 1 -
Chances in Time
2. Chance in Camera/Subject Relationship. This concerns not only what occurs in
front of the camera, but the actions of the camera as well. These are
works in which the camera was an unusually active participant with the subject.
3. Chance in Physical Manipulation. These are works in which the physical medium
is manipulated and altered in ways not entirely under the artist's control. In
film, this could involve painting, gluing objects and other forms of destruction
to the emulsion.
4. Chance in Editing. Given a set of written or visual modules, their chance sel-
ection and reorganization can result in something extraordinary. This can in-
volve a variety of preparations before the editing process begins.
5. Chance in Presentation. This is the most visible use of chance, in that it
occurs at the time of public presentation. Each performance is purposefully
and sometimes wildly different from all others, or involves several key ele-
ments developed completely in isolation from each other.
6. Chance in the Device. It often happens in media which depend on technology
that an artist will adapt a machine, or create a new one, which operates on
chance principles, usually within parameters of the artist's choosing.
Though each evening's program was designed to include a mixture of works - a var-
iety of mediums, lengths, dates, and placement in the above six categories - each
program does have a particular concept. The first evening, June 1st, looks at two
historical precedents, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. The second evening, June 8th,
concentrates on the uses of chance during the various stages of film production
and presentation. The third evening, June 15th, highlights expanded cinema or
film-like work in other mediums.
The diversity and scope of these works attests both to the unlimited uses of chance
in the creation of film and related arts, and that it is now one tool among many
that contemporary artists use to achieve their ends.
- James Irwin, Guest Curator
- 2 -
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
EMATHEi^
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
i ne rounaauon tor Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
CHANCES IN TIME
Random Operations in Film
JUNE 1, 1985
RETOUR A LA RAISON (1923, 5 min.) by Man Ray.
Man Ray was one of the original experimenters in film, and his work is a fertile
ground of ideas that would be fully taken up by later generations. This film's
experiments include the application of his "rayogram" technique of placing objects
on the film and exposing it to light. "There was no separation into successive
frames as in movie film," Ray has said about the work. "I had no idea what this
would give on the screen."
THE MAKING OF THE ROUGH AND (VERY) INCOMPLETE PILOT FOR THE PROPOSED VIDEODISC
ON MARCEL DUCHAMP (ACCORDING TO MURPHY'S LAW) (1981-84, 15 min., video) by Lynn
Herschman.
This started as a reasonably straight biography on Duchamp featuring a performance
of Relache by the Joffrey Ballet, and interviews with John Cage, Calvin Tomkins,
Nam June Paik and others. Then a series of chance disasters occurred, including
a cardiogram of Duchamp 's heart being stolen and held for ransom! "The process
of making it became like the Large Glass : things breaking and being damaged,"
says Herschman. She found herself asking, "What would Duchamp do?"
ANIMATED SOUNDTRACK (1974, 6 min., film) by Mario Castillo.
Created by layering the results of optical printing, video and sound synthesizing,
all of it generated from a complex combination of graphic design and photography.
One of the primary reasons for the film, says Castillo, was to produce sounds from
the film's graphics on his home-built optical-reader synthesizer. Many of the
film's images are the source material for the dense track. The entire work was
chance-oriented, using much random selection and arbitrary combinations.
ICE (1972, 7% min., film) by J. J. Murphy.
A film by another filmmaker is projected through a 50-pound block of ice and re-
photographed from the other side. What is interesting is that Murphy has taken
one of the most inviolably fixed, precision features of the film process - the
optical lens - and mutated it, so that the image is lets pass is in constant flux.
BREAKFAST (1972-76, 15 min., film) by Michael Snow.
A camera dollies toward a table set as if for a breakfast cereal commercial. There
is a clear shield in front of the camera, and it makes contact with food and simply
keeps going. The resulting mess, obviously, was of a random nature. A hilarious
comment on the cliches of moving cameras in theatrical films.
- 3 -
Chances in Time
HONEST (1980, 6 min. , film) by Craig Schlattman.
A performance that includes the cameras documenting the performance. An artist's
version of a tavern strength contest, it records the filmmaker holding two run-
ning cameras, at arm's length, shoulder high, for the duration of the 100' rolls
of film (about 3 minutes, which must have felt like an eternity). All footage
is included, everything is in the order of occurrence, but because neither of the
cameras nor the tape recorder were in synch with each other, extensive displacement
occurs in the final print.
CODEX (1984, approx. 20 min., poetry) by Aaron Shurin.
Created by a method evocative of film editing strategies, this piece was inspired
partly by The Epic of Gilgamesh , an ancient Sumerian poem. Phrases and sentences
from that epic seemed to demand Shurin 's attention. He wrote 62 of them on slips
of paper, and would draw them out of an envelope at intervals as Codex was being
written. As Shurin points out, it is not just the process of working with the
quotations that was a chance process in his work, but also the fact that the
cuneiform tablets on which the early epic was inscribed were chanced upon, so to
speak, in the 1880 's.
- Notes by James Irwin
- 4 -
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
CHANCES IN TIME
Random Operations in Film
Program 2: June 8, 1985
HIGH KUKUS (1973, 3 min., sound film) by James Broughton.
A single shot of the surface of a pond in a field. It sounds simple, and it is.
But what an array of activity occurs in this three-minute take. This is a
classic example of the filmmaker giving himself over to external events, for
Broughton had no control over the film except for when to turn the camera on.
An illustration of the virtues of Zen patience, it also features Broughton on
the soundtrack reading fourteen of his humorous haikus (thus the title) . As
he writes in the print version of High Kukus , "Wherever you make your home, said
the Louse, is the center of the world."
MOTHLIGHT (1963, 4 min., silent film) by Stan Brakhage.
Created by securing moth wings and plants between two strips of clear tape, all
of which were thin enough to allow light to pass yet still show intricate texture.
The projected film, presenting as it does segments and abstractions of what is
recognizable as remnants of once-living beings, has a poetic beauty somewhat mit-
igated by the constant reminder of death. The wings and leaves are all "found
objects" employed by Brakhage as is. He also had no specific control over what
the film would look like, frame by frame, when projected.
KU (1981, 13 min., film & performance) by James Irwin. Performance by Ellen
Ezorsky.
A combination of random operations in both the creation of the film and in the
final presentation. A film of obscure images is projected behind a performer
who speaks of everyday occurrences of psychic phenomena and tales from the gray
area between causality and coincidence. The projected film is itself a sort of
pictorial oracle, reminding us that, as Jung suggested, individual translation
of random operations can often serve as a psychological inkblot test . "Ku" is
the 18th hexagram of the I Ching , translated in the Wilhelm/Baynes version as
"Work on What Has Been Spoiled".
CHANCE FILM (1969, 12 min., sound film) by David Heintz.
Several methods of chance were used: coin tosses, cards, and dice. These oper-
ations determined most important choices in the planning and editing of the film,
including type of image, camera technique, subject, and the soundtrack. There
are a number of moments where segues or double-exposures give remarkable combina-
tions. Heintz says such moments were truly a matter of chance: "We were quite
astounded to see the finished film and how well many aspects worked together and
in sequence."
Chances in Time 6/8/85
RANDOM (1983, 8 min. , sound videotape) by Mark Vail.
One of the most sophisticated machines artists are using for personal work is
the small computer. It can be a storehouse for all the random variables used
in the other works in this series, endlessly recombined in laborious calculations
that would take the human hand virtually forever to accomplish. Vail used a
computer to create the music and graphics for this tape through random-number
generating. The music was performed on the keyboard employing a seven-notes-per-
-octave scale. There are two "characters" in the piece, one spewing out graphics,
the other ingesting them.
SOUND CAMERA ROTATIONS (1976-79, 33 min., sound film) by Robert Attanasio. Made
in collaboration with Mildred Iatrou.
Made in three installments over four years, each session comprised of Attanasio
and Iatrou photographing and sound-recording each other in front of the Guggenheim
Museum in New York, then attempting to hail a cab willing to drive them twice
around the block and back in front of the museum before the roll of film runs out.
As Attanasio puts it, "Object: Beat The Clock!" Their actions mimic the spiral-
ling architecture of the museum. There are many chance elements: the possible
entertainment value of random passers-by, the weather conditions, the length of
time needed to hail a cab (holding out as long as possible for a roomy Checker) ,
even (as becomes dramatically clear) the changing fashions of year to year.
INSTALLATION at Eye Gallery, 758 Valencia Street:
The Installation by Michael Shemchuk is in its entirety a simple camera, a machine
for gathering light and capturing it on a surface. A storefront window is made
light-safe, covered with red filter material, and backed with light sensitive
paper. By virtue of incisions made in the acetate, it becomes a huge box camera
with a photographic image in flux visible at all times to people walking by,
day or night. Camera obscura projections are once removed from reality but with
a clarity of detail our eye can not capture alone, two qualities well-suited to
the Renaissance where it was born. The comparitive murkiness of Shemchuk' s in-
stallation is, perhaps, a more apt metaphor for our own historical period.
Program Notes by James Irwin
The Foundation for Art in Cinema
CINEMATHEQUE
The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film.
CHANCES IN TIME
Random Operations in Film
Program 3: June 15, 1985
0-A (1982, projected slides) by Charles Lovell.
"In this series of photographs," writes Lovell, "I went over ten years of old
negatives and made prints of the most interesting frames which were before the
first exposure on the roll of film. These images were shot haphazardly, while
advancing the film toward the first exposure, and are uncomposed and unplanned."
The photographs are being presented as projected slides, their order determined
at random, and provide an interesting film-like work in comparison to actual
projected films.
MOLD FX (1980, 2 min. , sound film) by Michael Rudnick.
Processed home-movie footage lay exposed to moisture for ten years before
Rudnick stumbled across it (by chance) . During that time extensive mold had
grown on the film, producing an almost profound commentary on the typical home
movie that peeks out from behind the shifting ugly/beautiful mold. It is a
"found object" in the Duchamp tradition since Rudnick 's main contribution was
printing the film for preservation, titling and then signing it.
LEARNING TO BREATHE ABOVE GROUND (1982-84, approx. 20 min., film & performance)
by Scott Stark.
Layers several chance operations. It turns the film process on its head by using
the two basic technological tools of film - camera and tape recorder - in a way
that places the human performer virtually at their mercy rather than the other
way around. Stark requested that three quotes be included in these notes:
"The onset of capitalism can be traced to the onset of agriculture." - Malcolm
Anderson, from The 20th Century Petroglyph
"Lilacs and daisies, hornets and bees,
telephone poles and color TVs.
The long search has ended, the answer is found,
we all are now learning to breathe above ground."
- Judith Wicks, from "Vertical Shift"
"The Lord be with you.
(And also with you.)"
- Roman Catholic Ritual
COLLECTION (1982, 11 min., double-projection sound film) by Kathleen Laughlin.
A two-projector piece, indeterminate in that the projectors are not synchronized,
allowing chance interactions between the images. The work concerns a popular
chance operation, collecting things. Successful collections depend on being
at the right flea market, beach or auction at the right time. One must recog-
nize a chance/opportunity, and seize it, for it may never come again. The form
of collecting here is seashells. As we see them pass by, either on an invis-
ible conveyer belt or between fingers, people on the soundtrack discuss other
forms of collecting ("I collect ideas", "I collect aquaintances") .
DRAGON VORTEX (1984, 9 min. , music recording and projected slides) by Larry
Price.
Comrised of two separate elements, both of which use overt chance operations.
The taped soundtrack is a musical work, Merope (The Lost Chord) , created on an
instrument constructed by Price and his brother. It is an aeolian or wind harp
with twelve tunable strings. "It's fascinating," says Price, "how various themes
are developed and repeated, arranged only by the vagueries of the wind." The
slides are richly colored gels projected from multiple projectors overlapping on
the screen. As they fade in and out, various permutations of color mixing occur.
REPORT (1963-67, 13 min., sound film) by Bruce Conner.
Photographers have won Pullitzer Prizes for images that are extraordinary only
in that someone actually had a camera pointed in the right direction and the
shutter released at a fortuitous moment. An artist can employ such material at
a later time in a work that both consolidates and transcends the information in
that material. This is the case in Report . By the use of fragmentation, rep-
itition and variation Conner peels back the layers and shows us that while the
Kennedy assassination was a tragedy, the media circus surrounding it was a sordid
travesty.
FISTFIGHT (1964, 11 min., sound film) by Robert Breer.
Originally part.jqf Karlheinz Stqckhausen's concert /happening Originale . The
film is a deluge of images presented in short bursts separated by black leader,
the screen's content changing radically even from frame to frame. Breer was
interested in chance early, and says that for this film he "tried random
couplings frame by frame and scene by scene, sometimes shuffling my card/images
like playing cards." The soundtrack is edited from the five performances of
Originale and was added later. "If you listen closely," says Breer, "you can
hear on my track one of the actors complaining that the piece was too episodic -
'not enough was left to chance'."
- Program Notes by James Irwin
