San Francisco
Cinematheque
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Program Notes
Booklet 1996
San Francisco Cinematheque:
Director: Steve Anker
Associate Director: Joel Shepard
Associate Curator/ Administrative Manager: Irina Leimbacher
Editors of Program Notes Booklet 1996:
Christine Lee
Irina Leimbacher
C Whiteside
Program Curators/Presenters
Steve Anker
Bongi Busika
Fred Camper
Tom Church
Maureen Gosling
Irina Leimbacher
Orgone Cinema: Alisa Dix, Michael
Johnsen, and Greg Pierce
Fatimah Tobing Rony
Erin Sax
Joel Shepard
Rani Singh
John Thomson
Program Notes Written
and Researched By
David Bjomgaard
Alex Blatt
S. Roy-Chowdhury
Brian Frye
Jeffery Lambert
Irina Leimbacher
Richard Lerman
Christine Metropoulos
Joel Shepard
Bruce Townley
C Whiteside
Stacey Wisnia
Paul Yi
Yaz Yoshii
Program Co-Sponsors
American Federation of Arts
Asian American Film Festival
Center for the Arts
Cine Accion
Film Arts Foundation
Gallery 16
Goethe-Institut San Francisco
Hungarian Film Union
Massacre at Central Hi/Cosmic Hex
National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA)
New Langton Arts
Pacific Film Archive
Refusalon
Roxie Cinema
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Walter/McBean Gallery
San Francisco Cinematheque
480 Potrero Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94110
phone: 415-558-8129
fax: 415-558-0455
ij
SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE
PROGRAM NOTES BOOKLET 1996
Neglectosphere: Culture Jamming and the Techno-State
Thursday, February 1, 1996 — Refusalon Gallery 1
Stan Brakhage: Trilogy
Sunday, February 4, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 2
Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle
Thursday, February 8, 1996 — Center for the Arts 3
Dangerous Women: Die Unheimlichen Frauen by Birgit Hein
Co-sponsored by Goethe-Institut San Francisco 5
Leslie Thornton's Peggy and Fred in Hell - Complete Cycle -7
Thursday, February 15, 1996 — Center for the Arts 6
Leslie Thornton: New Films and Videos
Saturday, February 17, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 8
Unshackling the Vision: South Africa on Film
Wednesday-Friday, February 21-23, 1996 — Center for the Arts 10
The Second Coming
Sunday, February 25, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 14
Cinema Meets Psychoanalysis: Secrets of a Soul and More
Thursday, February 29, 1996 — Center for the Arts 15
Daughter(s) of Extermination
Sunday, March 3, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 17
Eleanor Antin: The Unpaved Road to Filmmaking
Thursday, March 7, 1996 — Center for the Arts 18
Bela Tarr Retrospective
Friday - Wednesday, March 8-13, 1996 — Roxie Theatre 19
Exiles and Strangers/Here Now Women's Stories
Tuesday, March 12, 1996 — AMC Kabuki 20
Beating with Barbara Sternberg
Thursday, March 14, 1996 — Center for the Arts 21
Surface Tensions: Playing With Landscapes
Sunday,March 17, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 23
Traces of Forgotten Moments: New Films by Lewis Klahr
Thursday, March 21, 1997 — Center for the Arts 24
Sidney Peterson: A Celebration
Sunday, March 24,1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 25
Projecting Sexual Taboos: M.M. Serra and Aline Mare
Thursday, March 28, 1996 — Center for the Arts 26
Raw Punk, Hot Funk: Weird Concert Films
Sunday, March 31, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 27
Soundculture 96: Hutchinson, Custer & Somami
Wednesday, April 3, 1996 — New Langton Arts 28
Soundculture 96: Richard Lerman Performances, Films and Videos
Monday, April 8, 1997 — New Langton Arts 28
The Aroma of Enchantment: Japan and 1950's America
Thursday, April 11, 1996 — Center for the Arts 30
Mexican Surrealism & Subversion
Sunday, April 14, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 31
Inside/outside prison: Wendy Clarke's One on One
Thursday, April 18, 1996 — Center for the Arts 31
Early Evening Experimental
Sunday, April 21 , 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 33
Ghosts of Film History and Film Theory: lecture/screening with P. Adams Sitoey
Sunday, April 21,1 996 — San Francisco Art Institute 33
Resurfacing the Screen
Wednesday, April 24, 1996 — AMC Kauki 34
Early Evening Experimental
Sunday, April 28, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 36
Big Screen Research
Sunday, April 28, 1 996 — San Francisco Art Institute 36
Wanting the Same Thing and Not Wanting the Same Thing
Thursday, May 2, 1996 — Center for the Arts 38
Early Evening Experimental
Sunday, May 5, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 39
Step Across the Border
Sunday, May 5, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 39
Early Evening Experimental
Sunday, May 12, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 41
Seven Women — Seven Sins
Sunday, May 12,1 996 — San Francisco Art Institute 41
Seventeen by Joel E)eMott and Jeff Kreines
Thursday, May 16, 1996 — Center for the Arts 44
New Bay Area Films
Sunday, May 19, 1996 - San Francisco Art Institute 45
Archimedes' Screw and other new works
Thursday, May 23, 1996 — Center For the Arts 46
Early Evening Experimental
Sunday, May 26, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 48
Yoko Ono 3: With and For John Lennon
Sunday, May 26, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 49
London Sound and Vision
Thursday, May 30,1996 — Center for the Arts 50
Early Evening Experimental
Sunday, June 2, 1997 — San Francisco Art Institute 52
Orgone Cinema
Sunday, June 2, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 53
Butoh Film Festival
Monday, June 10, 1996 — AMC Kabuki 54
35th Birthday Celebration!
Sunday, June 16, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 55
Beat America on Film I: Rebels & Outsiders
Sunday, October 6, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 56
Beat America On Film 11: Living On The Edge
Sunday, October 13, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 58
Beat America on Film HI: Music and Motion
Sunday, October 20, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 60
Beat America on Film IV: Art off the Walls
Sunday, October 27, 1 996 — San Francisco Art Institute 61
Beat America on Film V: A Look at Some Key Beat Figures
Sunday, November 3 , 1 996 — San Francisco Art Institute 63
A Black And White Night (or A Night In Black And White)
Thursday, October 10, 1996 — Center for the Arts 64
King Kong Vs. Superfly
Friday & Saturday, October 1 1 &12, 1996 — The Werepad 66
Early Evening Experimental
Sunday, October 13, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 66
Millennial Dis-eases: Divinity Gratis by Betzy Bromberg
Thursday, October 17, 1996 — Center For the Arts 67
Mexico South: Videos From and Near Chiapas
Thursday, October 24, 1996 — Center for the Arts 68
Hell-O-Rama Halloween Hoe-Down
Thursday, October 31, 1996 — Victoria Theater 68
The Whom: Doug Hall/Bill Berkson/George Kuchar
Thursday, November 7, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 69
Ralph Ackerman: Facing Beat
Friday & Saturday, November 8 & 9, 1996 — Gallery 16 70
Early Evening Experimental
Sunday, November 10, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 72
"It's All True" Flight and Other Films by Greta Snider
Thursday, November 14, 1996 — Center for the Arts 72
Nature and Cinema: a screening/lecture by Fred Camper
Sunday, November 17,1 996 — San Francisco Art Institute 74
American Magus: The Alchemy of Harry Smith
Wednesday & Sunday, November 20 & 24, 1996
— San Francisco Art Institute 76
50 Feet of String and others by Leighton Pierce
Thursday, November 21, 1996 — Center for the Arts 78
Queer Irony:: In Observance of a Day Without Art
Sunday, December 1 , 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 79
Two Ages: Films by Nathaniel Dorsky
Thursday, December 5, 1996 — Center For The Arts 81
Early Evening Experimental
Sunday, December 8, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 82
New York Punk and After: Films and Videos by Vivienne Dick
Sunday, December 8, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 82
The Radical Cinema of Zora Neale Hurston
Sunday, December 15, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute 84
Hand-Crafting Mystery
Thursday, December 19, 1996 — Center for the Arts 85
Ozu's Late Autumn
Sunday, December 22, 1996, — San Francisco Art Institute 86
Program Notes Booklet 1996
NEGLECTOSPHERE:
CULTURE JAMMING AND THE TECHNO-STATE
Erik Saks and Patrick Tierney in person
Thursday, February 1, 1996 — Refusalon Gallery a
Neglectosphere is America's funniest home video on culture
jamming, memeing a wrinkled stance of ironic distance, just as
reality television sets up the acceptance of automatic weapon
wounds as a lifestyle. Welcome to our meme-a-thon.
— Erik Saks and Patrick Tierney
Tonight the San Francisco Cinematheque launches 1996 with a program of new video works by
Erik Saks and Patrick Tierney co-sponsored by Refusalon Gallery. Saks and Tiemey have been at
the forefront of the culture jamming fervor, and tonight's screening closes the Refusalon's month
long show of their sculptural, collage, and video works. Laden with a wry sense of humor, the
videos use wildly imaginative techniques that include their sinister puppetry artistry. The hermetic
art of Saks and Tiemey comes from a cynical appreciation for outdated popular aesthetic culture,
particularly of the 1950s, from which they turn nostalgia upside down by positioning it in the
mindset of the "police state."
Erik Saks is a media artist based in San Pedro. He is beginning his second feature film, Cappy
Pepper, with collaborator Patrick Tiemey. His film and video work concentrate on the fleeting and
shifting qualities of the human condition in the late 20th century. His work has focused on phone
phreaking, gun control, hazardous waste, and parthenogenesis.
Patrick Tierney is an artist and educator based in the South Bay with a year round pass to
Disneyland. His provocateur wheeling and dealings surface in many metropolitan locales,
including the Balkans. He recently had a one day exhibition of his collages in a hotel room at the
Hotel Stillwell.
Copper Connection (1993); video, sound, 15 minutes
Hide (1990); video, color, sound, 1 minutes
Hide is a fake commercial concerning civil liberties. While on one level this 60 second spot is an
amusing parody of exploitative late-night television marketing campaigns. Hide also sends out a
deft, ominous and unfortunately necessary message conceming the threat to freedom of expression
in this country's current climate of Helmsian censorship.
Neglectosphere (1995); video, color, sound, 30 minutes
A new documentary video about Patrick Tiemey's fake surveillance installations surreptitiously
placed in Los Angeles municipal buildings. Through multiple image layering and mosaic style
framing, the video essay illicits theories of pranksterism and cultural jamming while also serving as
a "how to" instructional tape on "media virus" activities. (ES)
Don From Lakewood (1989); 3/4" videotape, 22 minutes
Don From Lakewood's soundtrack is a series of phone conversations Tiemey had with a furniture
salesman in LA when he was trying to buy a couch. It is illustrated with cardboard sets and puppet
figures... the Pixelvision image giving it a seedy used-fumiture store tone.
San Francisco Cinematheque
STAN BRAKHAGE: TRILOGY
Sunday, February 4, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Widely acknowledged as one of the "parents" of American experimental cinema, Stan Brakhage is
undeniably a "culture hero", a myth maker and legendary protagonist in recreation of what he
himself proclaimed "closed-eye vision". A filmmaker since the 1950s, Brakhage created or helped
to define entire genres and modes of film practice, beginning with his first, terrifying psycho-
dramas, through his mythical, lyrical autobiographies and explorations of epic proportion and
significance to his current work with intricately detailed, meticulously crafted and controlled hand-
painted films. A long-time proponent of the experimental film as "home-movie" or personal
exploration, Brakhage has always worked to make film a part of life in the course of a life spent
watching and creating films. He currently lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado.
We Hold These (1994); 16mm, color, silent, 12 minutes
"The 'truths' of this film, which the title prompts, are slightly recognizable patterns of fish and
animal biology, plant and flower shapes, and human anatomy which are interwoven with pastel
cubes and otiher geometries - pastels as is 'hung' in a white light interwoven with straight and
diagonally bent black lines, eventually clear architectural forms. The recognizable patterns are
literally etched on black leader (primarily) and interspersed with very organic painted forms on
white. There is often an intended sense of hair and mucous membrane amidst these forms and
interwoven with the electronic 'x-ray' of bones. The interplay between black-and-white sections
and multi-colored sections increases until there is some sense of merging the two toward the end.
(Note: each frame is double-printed)"
— Stan Brakhage
/ Take These Truths (1994); 16mm, color, silent, 20 minutes
"This film is entirely hand-painted and is composed of such an evolution of variably colored
shapes that their interaction with each other should constitute a purely visual 'self-evident' (as
prompted by the title): everything beyond the title is as far removed from language as I could
possibly make it; and thus it is, to me, practically impossible to describe. Each frame is printed
twice, so that its effective speed (at 24 fps) is 12 frames per second. A variety of organic and
crystalline painted shapes (painted on clear leader, thus as if brilliantly back-lit in a blazing space of
light) are interspersed with very dark (black leader) passages as if etched with scratches of light
and stained radiances: the juxtaposition of these two contrasting qualities of painted and scraped
film are 'interwoven', sometimes with vine- or vein-like irregular lines in black or alternatively,
scratch-etched white. There are also some straight, multi-colored bars which move to thick
gelatinous effects which resolve themselves in a long passage of beseemingly-struggling
hieroglyphic white shapes in a black field, ending on a brief spate of variable coloration."
— Stan Brakhage
/... (1995); 16mm, color, silent, 26 minutes
"This is a hand-painted double-step-printed film (i.e. each frame repeated once) which begins with
some ephemeral forms and pale tones reminiscent of the "blues" of frothing ocean brewers, the
dun "yellows" of beach, and a complexity of fleeting inter-mixed various other colors and lines
suggestive of a variety of vegetable and animal life such as might appear in a seascape.
"The black lines gradually become hieroglyphic and then thicken (whenever they appear) across the
length of the film - becoming more and more globular in their vertical inter- weave with increasingly
brilliant and then darkened colors. Sometimes there is a beseeming thicket of multiple colored
shapes, sometimes a complexity more akin to animal cellular internal systems, and tfien, again,
pale washes of tone remindful of the film's beginning.
Program Notes Booklet 1996
"Finally the vertically moving globs and coils begin to thin, break up into broken lines interspersed
with pointillistic imagery and horizontal washes of tone, punctuated by beseeming rock-hard
(usually centered) shapes like brilliantly colored, but battered, flecks of form. Then the "washes"
are interrupted by spaces of pure white which come, finally, to a whitened end."
— Stan Brakhage, November 4, 1995
When shown consecutively, this group of films is entitled Trilogy,
and is dedicated to Phil Solomon.
GUY DEBORD'S SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE
Thursday, February 8, 1996 — Center for the Arts
Understood on its own terms, the society of the spectacle proclaims the
predominance of appearances and asserts that all human life, which is to say all
social life, is mere appearance. But any critique capable of apprehending the
spectacle's essential character must expose it as a visible negation of life - and as a
negation of life that has invented a visual form for itself.
— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle 1967
Tonight the San Francisco Cinematheque presents the premiere of Guy Debord's 1973 film Society
of the Spectacle in a video version subtitled by Keith Sanborn. Sanborn is well known as a critic,
translator, and filmmaker. He has translated texts for numerous films, as well as George Bataille's
book. The Deadman. In 1989, he collaborated with Peggy Ahwesh on a cinematic adaptation of
that novel. His film criticism has appeared in Cinematograph , as well as numerous exhibition
catalogues.
Society of the Spectacle is one of the key texts of the Situationist corpus, and stands as a prime
example of the Situationist concept of detoumment, a term that has been defined in the Situationist
International Anthology :
Short for: detoumment of preexisting aesthetic elements. The integration of present
or past artistic production into a superior construction of a milieu.. .in a more
primitive sense, detoumment within the old cultural spheres is a method of
propaganda, a method which testifies to the wearing out and loss of importance in
these spheres (45).
It is this concept of detoumment that infuses the works, texts, and legend of the Situationists with
their extreme relevance to the current cultural situation. Detoumment's relevance to the cinema can
be witnessed in the found footage films of Craig Baldwin and the cinematic essays of Jean-Luc
Godard. As Guy Debord wrote with Gil J. Wolman, "It is obviously in the realm of the cinema
that detoumment can attain its greatest efficacy, and undoubtedly, for those concerned with this
aspect, its greatest beauty."
Society of the Spectacle (1973); video version of 16mm, color, sound, 87 minutes
"Few groups have had a more profound social impact on post-war French culture than the
Situationist Internationale. Inheriting the mantle of designated enfants terribles from the Lettrists,
from 1957 to 1972, they formed the center of an unparalleled interrogation of political and cultural
relations. Whether they were the cause or simply one group of participants among others of the
May 1968 uprising is less interesting than the fact that their slogans and tactics became common
San Francisco Cinematheque
coin for the generation of '68 in France. Their trenchant anarchist critique of received political ideas
on the left and on the right, their inventive detoumments of official culture in texts, paintings,
films, architecture, and their active role in the occupations movement distinguish them from others
of their generation - such as Godard - who were all too eager to become the children of Marx and
Coca-Cola.
"Guy Debord has been painted as a dynamic figure among equals and as an egotistical Bretonian
pope of the SI; in any case his writings and actions over three decades speak for themselves. At
least they do now. If Debord's work in theory has become the unexamined cornerstone cliche of
postmodernism, his paintings, artist books and films are known only to a very few outside France.
Even in France, from 1984 to early 1995, shortly after his suicide, Debord refused to allow his
films to be seen. The reason was the libelous treatment by the French press of the mob style
assassination in a Paris parking garage of his long time friend and patron, Gerard Lebovici. In
January 1995, Debord allowed two of his films and a new videotape to be screened on Canal + in
France. The film. Society of the Spectacle , is Debord's own 1973 adaptation of his 1967 book by
the same name. Its direct influence on France is incalculable. Its indirect influence via the American
reception of Godard is immense. The film is an essay, based on detoumed images (Hollywood and
East Block feature sequences, news footage, commercials, pom, stills) and makes use of a
continuous voice-over by Debord himself. It uses intertitles as well as music and it includes
acknowledged and detoumed quotations from Hegel, Marx, Cieszowski, von Clausewitz and
many others. It's an extremely dense text visually, verbally, intellectually. It is easily one of the
most important films of that decade."
— Keith Sanborn
"A short note on the subtitles for The Society of the Spectacle:
"At a point between eleven and twelve minutes into the film, the original French subtitles for the
dialogue that appeared over a film portraying the Soviet Civil War were replaced by the English
subtitles for the voice over. The English titles at this point run as follows: 'positive use of existing
concept...' Below are the original French subtitles and a translation:
— Quelle allure!
— Des intellectuels!
[ — ^Mighty Fancy footwork!]
[ — Intellectuals!]
— Nous sorames perdus!
— ^En arriere!
[—We're lost!]
[ — Retreat!]
— Halte! Laches, vous avez abandonne vos camarades! Suivez-moi!
^Suivez-moi! En avant!
[ — Stop! you cowards! you've abandoned your comrades!]
— ^Follow me ! Forward march ! ]"
— Keith Sanbom
• program notes by Jeffery Lamberf
Program Notes Booklet 1996
DANGEROUS WOMEN:
DIE U N HEIMLIC HEN FRAUEN BY BIRGIT HEIN
BiRGIT HEIN in person
Co-sponsored by Goethe-Institut San Francisco
Sunday, February 11, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
At the forefront of European radical and feminist filmmaking since the late 1960s, Birgit Hein's
found footage meditation on media violence, 1988's Kali Film: I Spit On Your Grave (with
Wilhelm Hein), was one of Europe's most disturbing films in many years. Bom and raised in war-
torn Berlin, Birgit Hein studied art history and theater in the 1960s. In a collaboration that lasted
from 1966 until 1988, she and Wilhelm Hein did performances and created installations throughout
the world, as well as made such internationally successful films as Verbotene Bilder and Kali-
Film, that challenged notions of sexuality and violence. In 1968, she became a co-founder of
XScreen in Cologne, Germany's first exhibition venue for avant-garde film. Since 1971, she has
written numerous publications on experimental film, such as Film im Underground, the first
German publication on the subject of underground film, and Film as Film.. She has traveled
extensively with her own film programs and those of other filmmakers in Europe, Canada, the
States and Asia. She is Professor of Film and Video at the Academy for Fine Art in Braunschweig
and is one of Europe's most original, provocative and indefatigable champions of a radicalized
cinema.
Tonight, the San Francisco Cinematheque welcomes Birgit Hein as she presents Die Unheimlichen
Frauen, her further and courageous interrogation of society's portrayal of women.
The Mysterious Women (1991); 16mm, color, sound, 63 minutes
"Since the beginning of history women have also been perpetrators. They have been as courageous
and brave as men. They can be equally brutal and criminal and, of course, just as homy.
Nevertheless, to this day, there exists the feminine ideal of "non-aggressiveness-peacefulness-
asexuality" with which women have been suppressed for centuries. This film shows us women
soldiers, partisans, watchmen, and criminals as well as child-bearing, drunk, masturbating,
circumcised, dismembered victims, who then must pay for the fear that women cause within men.
Scenes from old and recent documentaries, from trivial films and my own staged sequences are
mounted to a collage of images. These are supplemented by a collage of sounds and a montage out
of quotes and my own texts. It's also about me; about my fears and fighting myself to be able to
live my own strengths."
— Birgit Hein
FILMOGRAPHY
Rohfilm (1968, with Wilhelm Hein); Strukturelle Studien (1974, with Wilhelm Hein); Film
performance Superman and Wondenvoman (1978/82, with Wilhelm Hein) ; Love Stinks-Bilder
des Tdglichen Wahnsinns (1982, with Wilhelm Hein); Verbotene Bilder (1986, with Wilhelm
Hein); Die Kali-Filme (1987/88, with Wilhelm Hein); Die Unheimlichen Frauen /The Mysterious
Women (1991); Baby I Will Make You Sweat (1994).
San Francisco Cinematheque
LESLIE THORNTON'S
PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL - COMPLETE CYCLE
Leslie Thornton in person
Thursday, February 15, 1996 — Center for the Arts
Bone Eating Insect Hell. Discriminative Fully Assumed Characteristic Hell. Hell
Where Everyone Is Cooked Hell. Great Screaming Hell. Upside-Downness Hell.
Five Senses Hell. Hell of Repetition. Being Very Specific Hell. Bird Mouth Hell.
Hell Where Everything Faces The Ground. Place of Great Tragedy. Why, Why
Hell. Contemporary Superlative Hell. Tenderness Hell. Hell Where The Suffering
Is 10,000 Times Greater Than In All The Other Hells Combined. All Kinds Of
Hell. Telling The Difference Between Objects And Actions Hell. Not Telling The
Difference Between Humor And Despair Hell. Hell's Hell. Forever And Endless
Hell. Hell For All The People Who Perform Badly In All The Other Hells Hell. An
Old Pond. A Frog Jumps In. Plop.
Let's dance.
As these figures wheel around, the almost unbearable tension and exaltation which
has gripped the spectators is suddenly relieved by the appearance of two
grotesquely grinning masks, whose movements ape the dancers. She shook her
head, lifted up her foot, who cares, turned on the radio. I'm not going to build this
up until something else happens, something overheard and unknown. Mouth wide
open, no reason. Getting up, walking across the room, sitting down.
— from Peggy and Fred in Hell
Leslie Thornton began the Peggy and Fred in Hell series in 1981, exhibiting its constituent parts as
she completed them as the stages of a work-in-progress, eventually concluding the series with a
total of seven films and videos. The entire body of work documents the concerns, adventures,
actions and revelations of a pair of children (played by Janis and Donald Reading, 8 and 6 when
filming of the series began) as they construct a world of their own from the detritus of
contemporary society. Extending to a pointedly ridiculous degree the figure of the "media-ted"
individual, or "self as cipher of assimilated and reconfigured meaning, received from nameless,
placeless sources, Thornton stands the critique of this taxonomic individual on its head, using this
figure to instead critique the taxonomy itself and the meaning-making in which it participates.
Though these works differ significantly from one another, employing diverse styles, forms, and
modes of address, ranging from minimal, more rigorous, structured forms to visually
overwhelming, hyperbolic collages of incongruous cultural artifacts (referring both to the objects
and situations which she herself films and the found elements which she incorporates into her
work) and behavior patterns, these works share a conmion theme which manifests itself through
their necessary position as texts which demand interpretation and engagement on the part of their
audience. The body of work refuses simple prescriptive or didactic strategies, instead investigating
the terms of meaning production and the structuring of narrative elements through their explosion
into isolated fragments, each resonating wildly within a superstructure of recognized meanings, yet
failing to function comfortably in terms of the familiar, of that-which-is-known-and-understood,
effecting an implicit argument through example as to the necessary instability of the apparently
impregnable fortress of social or institutional meaning. The works address gender politics and
identity, the production and dissemination of social meaning through interaction with technology,
the freedom of mediated meaning to separate itself from its object and vice versa, through the
absolute, unbridgeable gap between the Known and the Actual, and plenty more. A composite text
par excellence, this series of works.
Program Notes Booklet 1996
The Peggy and Fred in Hell Prologue (1985); 16mm, b&w, sound, 21 minutes
"[This film] was meant to quietly focus attention on the voice, and on voice in relation to gender. A
male voice and a female voice... It is actually a silent film of vocal chords, that has intertitles, and
toward which you can only look. It is not about hearing, it's about looking... In any event, the
opening is meant to be a delirious and empowering space of female voice. And then the whole
piece, in different ways, tries to foreground voice, the grain of the voice - not just what someone is
saying, but the tone and inflection they use and the effects it produces."
— Leslie Thornton, October 1990
Peggy and Fred in Kansas (1987); video, b&w, sound, 11 minutes
"...there's something edgy and strong about Peggy and Fred in Kansas, which comes on like a
Godard movie starring children."
— ^John Powers, in the LA Weekly, May 1989
"In Peggy and Fred in Kansas , there is an interlude where we see the relationship between reality
and fiction unraveled and unsettled (a relationship adults are confident they understand). In the dim
domestic underworld of Kansas, Fred begins an event: Fred, imitating a telephone: 'Briiing briing.
Don't answer it! Briiing.' (he picks up the phone) 'It's for you. What's your name? Quick!' Peggy
(scornfully): 'Princess Ilea' (she takes the receiver) Fred (creating the voice that Peggy listens to):
'Now hear this - 1 will kidnap you...' (Peggy hangs up) 'What did he say?' Peggy: 'Whoever
answered that phone's getting killed!' Clearly it is a fiction, an event, they generate for themselves
but it is also a reality in which they participate, their relationship to a world at the other end of the
phone."
— Linda Peckam, "Total Indiscriminate Recall: Peggy and Fred in Hell"
Peggy and Fred and Pete (1988); video, sepia, sound, 23 minutes
"a cross between Greed and Vampyr " — Steve Fagin
"Peggy and Fred and Pete also explores dislocation between sound and image in a piece that is
closer to musical form than film/video - a fugue in narrative in which certain images are
orchestrated like variations on a melody, arranged in different harmonies."
— Linda Peckam
(Dung Smoke Enters the Palace) (1989); 16nMn film & video, b&w, sound, 16 minutes
"...it is the eye of God looking down onto the moon's surface, a sight which has a curious echo,
set up by the imprecise synchronization of film and video where the slight delay between screen
and monitor gives the effect of a mirror reflection, an omniscience... the voice of God itself
prophesying from an Old Testament text, 'Verily I say unto you all these things shall come upon
this generation.' While the verse looks to the future, it is a return to the past; in juxtaposing outer
space with the Old Testament, Thornton has teased out the regression hidden in progress, the
fundamentalism hidden in sophisticated culture, the fear behind the desire to predict and control
and a darker meaning of prophecy and fulfillment that reflects the linear and instrumental mind."
— Linda Peckam
Introduction to the So-Called Duck Factory (1990); video, b&w, sound, 11 minutes
"...there is supposed to be a slight discreditation of what is being said because it's supposed to be
understood not for its content alone but from the position from which it is spoken... a clearly
upper-crust sort of academic voice is giving us a story about the Mau-Mau warriors as if it's first
hand - but wait a minute, who is he? The story is interesting, but who is he to tell this story?
Whose story is it?"
— ^Leslie Thomton, October 1990
San Francisco Cinematheque
Whirling (1992); video, b&w, sound, 2 minutes
The Problem So Far (1995); 16mm film & video, b&w, sound, 10 minutes
LESLIE THORNTON: NEW FILMS AND VIDEOS
Leslie Thornton in person
Saturday, February 17, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Since 1974, Leslie Thornton has created a body of film and video work that functions not simply
as a group of different works by an individual maker, but rather as a matrix of texts that
correspond, complement, and comment upon one another. Each film works on its own terms to
create images of immeasurable beauty and intelligence, seen together they create an intricate web of
images that repeat from film to film in numerous contexts; meaning is constantly shifting, and the
processes of communication and cultural interaction become integral components in the act of
cinematic construction. This spring, Thornton will be awarded the American Film Institute's 1996
Maya Deren Award.
Tonight the San Francisco Cinematheque presents a program of her films and videos that includes:
Adynata, made in 1983, along with a number of her most recent works, including the West Coast
premieres of Old Worldy, The Last Time I Saw Ron and Strange Space, as well as a glimpse at her
work in progress, The Great Invisible.
Strange Space (1993); video, color, sound, 4 minutes
"This video was specially produced for AIDS awareness day, 1 December 1992. In barely three
and a half minutes, the makers succeed in creating a penetrating and melancholy image of the
inevitability of death. The poem, by Rainer Marie Rilke recited in English, accentuates that sorrow
of losing the future. The fact that the melancholy never becomes sentimentality results partly from
the choice and the editing of the images. Behind a white grid we see the vague images of the inside
of a person, accompanied by a woman's voice who, businesslike, sums up the medical details:
'Okay, this is patient Ron Vawter...,' and the diagnosis is established. The second layer of images
that is introduced, also in black and white, shows the discovery and exploration of the moon. It is
just as desolate here as in the medical shots; very close and extremely far away, both become
abstractions. No-man's land, area without a footing. The profile of the patient appears in color. He
is surrounded by the landscape of the moon and cut off from it at the same time. Then the medical
equipment produces a piercing beep in sharp contrast to a deep man's voice reciting a poem by
Rilke: 'True, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer...'"
— ^Drift Distribution
The Last Time I Saw Ron (1994); video, color, sound, 12 minutes
"During the winter of 1994, actor Ron Vawter was in Brussels working on a theater production
about the mythical Greek warrior Philoktetes. Philoktetes has been abandoned by Odysseus on the
uninhabited island of Lemnos after he has been bitten by a snake while on route to Troy. He was
betrayed by his friend Odysseus because his wound would not heal, provoking mournful cries and
an unbearable stench that distressed the other soldiers. When Ron Vawter was diagnosed with
AIDS, this story of anguish and isolation took on added poignancy, and he arranged to collaborate
with Dutch director Jan Ritsema on a theatrical production inspired by the myth. An international
group of artists came together to develop Philoktetes Variations under the auspices of the
Kaaitheater in Belgium. Ron Vawter passed away just as the production reached fruition.
8
Program Notes Booklet 1996
"The Last Time I Saw Ron is made from footage shot for the play, and includes stunning material
of Ron's figure flying through the cosmic and destructive events. A pregnant woman drifts along
side him as his body merges with the time and space of the universe. The tape is a moving
meditation on the power of art as a life-giving force, and on man's extraordinary belief in that
power."
— ^Drift Distribution
Old Worldy (1995); 16mm, b&w, sound, 30 minutes
conceived by Leslie Thornton and Anouk de Clercy
...all found footage with one edit. (LT)
The Great Invisible (1990 to present); 16mm, color, sound
in progress and shown on video
"In 1990, Leslie Thomton returned to the story of Isabelle Eberhardt (the subject of There Was an
Unseen Cloud Moving) with renewed interest, and is currently in production on a feature length
narrative film about this provocative woman. It offers a completely new perspective on the
character of Isabelle Eberhardt, delving further into the sensuality of her life story, and bringing
forth original research conducted in Algeria and France."
— ^Drift Distribution
Adynata (1983); 16mm, color, sound, 30 minutes
Adynata presents an impossible world of exoticism and difference, an "Orient" noticeably
constructed in a play of seductive surfaces. The film begins with an instance of fact - a formal
photographic portrait taken in 19th Century China of an aristocratic couple - then proceeds on a
series of false penetrations on a course of vulgar tourism of the "Other." This inscrutable Other is
seen variously as history, culture, woman, eroticism, madness, and violence through a complex of
resonances which both engage the viewer in pursuit and deny any solace of "knowing." The
surface remains constantly opaque. (LT)
"The images in [Adynata ] are lush and one consistently gets the sense of an overwhelming surplus
of the signifier: a rippling piece of bright red silk which fills the frame; jewelry, ornamentation and
clothing designed to connote the Otherness of the "Oriental"; exotic flowers and grasses in lavish
botanical gardens; a close-up of bright and deep green tropical plants. The colors are extremely
vivid and work to amplify what at first glance appears to be an unruly fetishism of the exotic
object. There is too much for the eye - the film seemingly capitulates to the seductive force of
visual pleasure. But this richness of the image is somewhat deceptive. It is already a second-order
signifier of an exoticism associated with the discourse of Orientalism which is both quoted and
criticized by the film. And, for Thomton, the discourse of Orientalism is precisely a discourse of
excess, of hyperbole, of the absurd. In Adynata, she investigates the mise-en-scene of Orientalism
- the conglomeration of sounds and images which connote the Orient for a Western
viewer/auditor."
— Mary Ann Doane, Millennium Film Journal
FILM AND VIDEOGRAPHY
Old Worldy (1996), 16mm; The Last Time I Saw Ron (1994), video; The Problem So Far (1995),
16mm film and video; The Great Invisible (1990-present), 16mm; Strange Space (1993), video,
co-produced with Ron Vawter; Whirling (1992), 16mm; Introduction to the So-Called Duck
Factory (1990), 16mm; (Dung Smoke Enters the Palace) (1989), 16mm and video; Peggy and
Fred and Pete (1988), video; There Was an Unseen Cloud Moving (1988), video; Peggy and Fred
in Kansas (1987), video; She Had Her So He Do He To Her (1987), 16mm; lOOI Eyes (1987),
multi-media installation; The Peggy and Fred in Hell Prologue (1985), 16mm; Oh, China, Oh!
(1983), 16mm; Adynata (1983), 16mm; Jennifer, Where Are You? (1981), 16mm; noexitkiddo
(1981), 16mm; Minutiae (1979), 16mm; Fiddlers in May (1977), produced for Connecticut Public
San Francisco Cinematheque
Television; Howard (1977), 16mm; All Right You Guys (1976), 16mm; X-Tracts (1975), 16mm;
Face (1974), super-8.
UNSHACKLING THE VISION:
SOUTH AFRICA ON FILM
Co-curated by Soutli African Artist Bongi Busika,
Center for the Arts Media Coordinator Erin Sax, and Cinematheque Director Steve Anker
Wednesday-Friday, February 21-23, 1996 — Center for the Arts
The rule of Apartheid South Africa and its stranglehold on cultural expression has come to an end.
It leaves behind not a barren landscape, a cinematic desert, as one would expect, but an era rich in
heroism of cultural resistance and human sacrifice.
To say South Africa's racist regimes were threatened by the power of the moving image is to
understate the fact. Until 1925, tlie government had refused the introduction of TV. South Africa's
progressive filmmakers were jailed or exiled. But the most notorious instance of the government's
resolve to black-out resistance is the Delmos Trial. The regime based its case against the media
group Afriscope on five rolls of film and forty-two video tapes it seized from its offices. People
who testified in anti-apartheid documentaries like CBS's "Children of Apartheid" were jailed and
even murdered. And yet the people's determination to fight on could not be crushed.
Unshackling the Vision: South Africa on Film, the first festival of South African films on the West
Coast since the 1994 elections, unmasks the images the racist regime so tirelessly tried to
obliterate. They are images of cruelty and courage, as well as determination against overwhelming
odds.
— Bongi Busika, Co-Curator
Program for Wednesday, February 21, 1996
Peter Davis in person
In Darkest Hollywood: Cinema & Apartheid (1993); by Peter Davis, video, 112 minutes
Almost from the beginning of cinema, filmmakers have looked at the continent of Africa with fear
and fascination, prejudice and contempt. South Africa, with its fabulous mineral wealth, exotic
locations, and white settlers, attracted scores of movie makers. Now, as the era of white rule ends,
In Darkest Hollywood asks, "What was the role of cinema during the 45-year reign of apartheid?"
Through a mosaic of feature, documentary, and propaganda films, with commentary by writers,
directors, and actors, some of whom supported apartheid, and others who fought to destroy it. In
Darkest Hollywood turns the lens toward the filmmakers and to the society they so often
misunderstood and misrepresented.
Most of the time, the studios played at best a passive, at worst a collaborationist role. Films like
Untamed pitted white heroes against savage Zulus in a way that justified white conquest. And
Hollywood was indifferent to the strict segregation of cinemas, and a censorship that equated the
intelligence of an adult African with that of a white schoolchild.
With so much denied them, Africans took what they could of the cinema. The impact of American
films - gangsters, cowboys, musicals - was tremendous, and dictated habits of dress and behavior
10
Program Notes Booklet 1996
for millions of township Africans. Cinema became their way of escaping from the harshness of
white domination.
With access to the means of production closed to them, Africans had to rely on foreigners for
depictions of black heroes. During the first decade of apartheid, Jim Comes To Jo'burg (1949), the
first all-black feature film made in South Africa revealed an abundance of musical talent closely
modeled on American movies; Korda's Cry, The Beloved Country was shot in the streets of the
townships outside Johannesburg; and Lionel Rogosin for the first time used African writers to tell
their own story. But the promise of an all-Black cinema, even the possibility of meaningful
interracial collaboration, was crushed with the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, and the resultant
crackdown on those freedoms left to Africans.
In the period after Sharpeville, only pro-apartheid expression was possible in the South African
cinema, from overt propaganda to the subtle racism of The Gods Must Be Crazy. Hollywood -
with its own long history of racism - was indifferent until the Soweto uprising of 1976 created a
massive public interest in South Africa. But it still took Hollywood over a decade to produce Cry
Freedom and Dry White Season - and even then, the horror of apartheid had to be told through
white heroes. Only with an underground feature from South Africa, Mapantsula, co-directed by a
white and a black South African, does an authentic black hero emerge.
In the post-apartheid South Africa, the writer Lewis Nkosi observes, "The struggle for political
and cultural autonomy will be in vain if the black majority continues to be represented only by
well-meaning whites. What we need is to create our own images of who we are and what we want
to become."
— notes provided by the filmmaker, Peter Davis
Program for Thursday, February 22, 1996
Make Believe (1993); by Harriet Gavshon, video, 26 minutes
In August 1993, in the town of Schweizer-Reineke and its neighboring township, Ipelegeng, two
contrasting but simultaneous ceremonies took place - one held for the African National Congress,
the other for the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB). As a response to the conservative white
town council's decision to give the freedom of the city to Eugene Terre'blanche and the
Wenkonmiando, the AWB's paramilitary group, the neighboring black township decided to honor
Joe Modise, the commander of the Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's armed wing.
As these two diametrically opposed events are witnessed through the eyes of three of the town's
children. Make Believe revezds, through their hopes and their misgivings, the future of a country
where children grow up entrenched in hatred and fear. Adri supports the AWB in what he sees as a
God-ordained quest against communism. Kenny, a member of the ANC's Young Pioneers, hates
AWB leader Eugene Terre'blanche, but is prepared to talk to his children about a non-racial future.
Niels is not taking sides, but believes God's will will prevail.
Amidst the sharply contrasting festivities, the children demonstrate their innocence as they grapple
with long standing prejudices and hatreds that they do not fully comprehend. As they speak, it
becomes evident that the attitudes which they will develop toward each other may determine South
Africa's future.
Stepping Out (1994), A Weekly Mail Television Production; video, 29 minutes
Denzel, a teenager from the township of Newclare, takes part in the Miss Gay Transvaal
competition - a drag show. The cameras are on Denzel, as well as his mother and a local gay rights
activist who were both in attendance. An interesting and intelligent look at gay life in South Africa.
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San Francisco Cinematheque
Nice To Meet You, Please Don't Rape Me (1995); by Ian Kerkhof, 16mm, 71 minutes
'"No event that begins without undoing us, no love that begins without killing us.' This sentence
refers to the electroshock produced by the images and sounds of Ian Kerkhof s film. He cries out
his thwarted love affair with a country which he does not want to hate, which he was forced to
leave and which he still wants to believe in. Still wants to believe in even if electing a black
president does not suffice to turn around the fate of an entire people. Kerkhof sounds the alarm bell
so that an abortive appointment with History can be avoided. His solution? Dying, loving, being
bom again. A trinity.
"A morbid trinity, made up of a black man, an Afrikaner and an English man, make a descent into
hell and meet up with the obsessional world of the filmmaker, who explores the ins and outs of a
society sick within itself, with apartheid. South Africa is exposed naked in its ugliest, most
shameful feature: rape. This ubiquitous parable takes on all forms: sexual, verbal, political, moral,
psychological.
'"Nice to meet you, please don't rape me'. Interrupted by torrents of obscenities, this prayer is
hummed during the entire film. It also becomes a dream where fiction and reality are blended, such
as when the actors, stepping out of their roles, reveal, perhaps in spite of themselves, the demons
that haunt them.
"Paradoxically, the film is a hymn to love. Raping in order to die, forgiving in order to love, living
in order to be bom again. It is a harsh, jarring, caustic film about the absurdity of a society in
which the only genuine victory today over apartheid is the fact that a black or white woman is
raped every 83 seconds. 'It's monstrous, but South Africa is like that.'"
— Miss N'Gone Fall, Revue Noire, June 1995
"This film is an analysis of South African society using the metaphor of rape. The film perceives
South Africa as a rape culture, wherein the relationships between men and women have been so
perverted by a history of colonialism, apartheid and violence that people cannot engage in normal
social intercourse. The film is about three men, an un-holy trinity, but they are not real characters,
not real individuals. They function to present the audience with archetypes and concepts. The
narrative developments lead to the men raping each other, but not just sexually, they also do so
verbally. The possibility of friendship between themselves is polluted by their violent
backgrounds.
"The actors were prepared to enrich the film with a lot of personal experience. That's clear from the
acting level but also a great deal of the script information came from them: an Afrikaner, a black
man and a white English speaker - they represent different aspects of South African society. Under
apartheid all the inhabitants of South Africa learned to live with hate; that there has been a
democratic election does not automatically mean that all that hate will just evaporate.
"I am appalled at how superficially the media treats South Africa: as if the election day ended an
entire history. But hate is still brewing in people's hearts, even if it isn't legitimized by the state
any more. That is what I wanted to show in the film. I compare this film to a huge ripe boil; it is
full of pus, but only once that boil has been burst and the pus has seen the light of day can one
even think of the healing beginning. This was the process that the actors went through. After a few
days the tmst was established and then in the free space of the rehearsal room anything was
possible. A lot of really terrible stuff came up. Racial hatred has been deeply impregnated in black
and white South Africans, regardless of education levels and financial privilege. The space that the
actors received in order to express that hatred was very satisfying for them.
"I get letters from all three actors who are still to an extent dealing with the after effects of the
openness with which they dealt with each other during the shooting. I think you can see that clearly
in the final scene of the film in which the men are literally chained to each other: despite all the
terrible stuff they have done to each other they still have to face the future together. It is a simple
12
Program Notes Booklet 1996
metaphor but I wanted it to be clear and I hope that South Africans get the opportunity to see the
film. People have found the film extremely pessimistic... but for me it is about the insight that these
people are bound together because of the appalling history that they share. So I see it as a hopeful
film. Not a pleasant, but definitely an honest, film."
— Ian Kerkhof
Ian Kerkhof was bom in South Africa in 1964. In 1994, he completed his studies at the
Netherlands Film and Television Academy. He has made several short films and five full-length
films, including Kyodai Makes the Big Time .
Program for Friday, February 23, 1996
Songololo: Voices of Change (1991); by Marianne Kaplan, video, color, sound, 54 minutes
An award-winning documentary which offers an exciting glimpse of the changes presently taking
place in South Africa. Songololo portrays the emergent post-apartheid culture, bom of the
collective hopes, aspirations and memories of black South Africans. This vision is articulated
through the work of two black artists, well known and popular in their country: Gcina Mholpe is a
writer and storyteller; Mzwakhe Mbuli is a musician and a poet-activist. Songololo depicts the
powerful role black South African popular culture - including hostel dancing, township jazz,
church reunion singing, praise poetry and freedom songs - plays in the survival and triumph of a
people.
In a Time of Violence (Episodes: 1. The Line, 2. All on Edge, 3. Fire with Fire)
(1994); by Brian Tilley, video, color, sound, 156 minutes
Sometimes the reaction to a film can be almost as interesting as the film itself. When the first
episode of /n a Time of Violence aired in July 1994, thousands of Zulu hostel dwellers, supporters
of the Inkatha Freedom Party, stormed South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)
headquarters. They threatened the cast with violence; the rival ANC reported 1 1 deaths related to
the telecast. CCV, the arm of SABC which broadcasts specifically to the black population, banned
the remaining two episodes. But, after a nation-wide protest against this capitulation to political
pressure, it broadcasted the entire series a week later to a record audience.
In a Time of Violence is a fast-paced political thriller set during the final tense months of apartheid.
One of the most ambitious television dramas ever produced in South Africa, it was written by
Mapantsula director Oliver Schmitz, stars some of the country's finest actors and features a vibrant
score by top Township bands. The series dramatizes the basic ANC policy of ethnic reconciliation
within a multi-racial democratic society.
The series' hero, Bongani, a young ANC activist and poet from Soweto, is the sole witness to a
bmtal train massacre by an Inkatha militant, Duma. When Bongani is recognized, he and his
girlfriend, Mpho, a member of his ANC youth unit, take refuge in his uncle's flat in Comiston
Court, a run-down apartment block in Johannesburg.
If Soweto represents the old South Africa of inter-ethnic violence, the residents of Comiston Court
suggest a post-apartheid "Rainbow Coalition": Bongani's uncle, an up-and-coming trader; the
Afrikaner caretaker, adrift in the new society; a Coloured prostitute, who shares his loneliness; a
gay black couple; and a disillusioned former Mozambican revolutionary, now a gun-runner.
The series deftly interweaves the Soweto and Comiston Court storylines to contrast violent and
non-violent paths to South Africa's future. The apartment block unites across racial and class lines
in a successful rent strike against a black real estate speculator, an example of the series' deliberate
challenging of stereotypes. A renegade white police agent who has been supplying Duma with
guns, kidnaps Bongani (revealing police involvement in what came to be called "black on black
t3
San Francisco Cinematheque
violence.") But in the changing political climate, it is legal pressure, not Bongani's armed ANC
comrades, which leads to his ultimate release.
— notes provided by the distributor
THE SECOND COMING
Jack Walsh m person
Sunday, February 25, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
The San Francisco Cinematheque and Film Arts Foimdation are honored to present the premiere of
San Francisco filmmaker and producer Jack Walsh's new film. The Second Coming, a gay teen's
coming of age story set in the shadow of a Fundamentalist takeover of the U.S. government.
Known to the Bay Area film community as a filmmaker and as the series producer of The Living
Room Festival which airs armually on KQED, Walsh is also a local media activist who co-founded
the experimental media advocacy group X-Factor and is currently serving as the President of the
Board of Film Arts Foundation. The Second Coming will be preceded by Walsh's earlier award-
winning Present Tense.
Present Tense (1987); 16mm, color/b&w, sound, 26 minutes
Etesigned as a "time capsule" for the mid-Eighties, Present Tense is an autobiographical film that
examines love and desire in the shadow of paranoia and state repression. Using journal entries,
scholarly text and newspaper articles, and punctuated with traditional, classical, and post-
punkAndustrial music, this film unravels the divergent elements of life in the then current period of
the Eighties. Centered on personal experience and organized around a short period of time (6/86 -
10/86), Present Tense uses the modem state, both European and American, to explore issues of
gender, class, genocide, torture, and surveillance. (JW)
Tlte Second Coming (1995); 16mm, b&w, sound, 53 minutes
In 1986, when the Religious Right in America was barely noticeable, yet still fostering
conservative, anti-gay legislation nationwide, I thought to myself if Christ appeared in America
today most right-wing Christians would never see him and most would likely despise him. Thus,
my initial premise for The Second Coming came into being. I thought who is most hated in
America today, for surely that is where a messiah will surface, and then I thought that few are
more dispossessed than a gay, bi-racial, poor, teenager.
Set in an undisclosed time in the near future, this short feature takes place during an attempted
takeover of the U.S. government by Fundamentalists. Carlos, alienated from most of his peers and
family, finds love and companionship with a classmate Ben. Together the two join forces with a
group of teens who are making and broadcasting videot^)es that question the crisis created by the
FuiKlamentalists' threat
Though The Second Coming began as a retelling of the Christ myth, it was soon displaced by my
humanist interest in ordinary people taking extraordinar\' stands, often in complete contrast to their
circumstances, as a result of the injustices they experience themselves and as witnesses to
injustices perpetrated on others. Employing a Hollywood convention, that of the love story,
Carlos, the main character, is moved to action as the result of his boyfriend's murder during a
queer bashing.
14
1996
Tbe film that most direcdy infonced ^'-^ ~^?- ->n oi The Second Ccmmg is Vincent Shaman's
19^1 fOm, Umdergroamd, M. Sttxy -r my film, about a granp of resisaas inside Nan
GennaBy. And, of oonise, the ^^- i anti-Nazi yoodi stoop. The WkHe Rose, is also
ccfliial to tbe constraction of tbese &ju^ xesisnmrr to tbe I^ndaiKMaiist Areat ihtt evcamiBjr
topfdes tbe VJS. govenmienL
Like my pievioas woiks, tfiis film inc(Hp(xases nairative, docomentaiy and expaimenial
filimiiakiiig tntrilit^sinry Fnnnd imyis, far MMiyltL are nseri as ggnpnsts of infaniMtitMi in ^
film's nanalive stnictnre. They iDnsttaie a narrative space tbat could ikx be crestod - miliaiy
fKilities, tbe White House, and rdigioas tight comfminds. They also serve as an essay
uwufap o i nt to what occurs in die film's narrative.
Although The Second Commg is driven t^ tbe
emaim ental narrative fihn b ecaosr it cmjrfoys
cinema. The film moves buwxjm luuMive and
experimental e^ay that recomextnalizes fooad
SeoOT^ CbMM;^ is a film dot oolfafnes foons and Idb its
hk a growing climate ai repressioo and staie mililia
wakMip cafl to tbe faces of evil afoot in
I describe it as an
from tbe cuuut nau alive
(at tnuBS ficiianiriEBB(Q as wdl as
aRfaival footage. To this end. The
stoiy from nnki|iie pet^iectives.
TheSecand
asa
(JW)
Durins the past t>»'elve vears. Jack Wrisii t aod a oed and direaed six fihns (Tfce Second Commg.
1995rPresent Tense, 1987; WoHdmg Oass Chnmide, 198S; D o c m men t Unemnhed^ 19S4; Aasic
Trammg, 1984; AeocfaMflk. 1983) and one vidBaia|ie(DMrXodb. 1993) dot have shown at fitan
festivals tfarou^hoot the United States, Europe, and Anstcalta. Among Walsh's awavds are two
GoUen Gate Awards fiom die San Rmusco ImnuMi u na l Rfan Festival (1986, 1988): a Grand
Priae (1968) ad two Juror's CiMion (1986. 1993) from the Black Maria Hfan and Vkko Rst^
»d a Director's ClKMce Awani from dte Atlana Fihn and Video Festival (1994). He is a redineat
of film prodnction grants frorn tbe Jetortte Fboiidadon. Tlte FtKific Pioneer Roid, and the Western
States Regional NBA Media FeUowsiiip Pkogim. Rom 1992 to 199S, Walsh was tbe Series
Prodncer of tbe Li\ing Room Festival, an annnal 13-part tdeviaon series of independendy
prodnoed films and videos diM aired on San Rtandsco FBS siMion K(^D-TV.
CINEMA MEETS PSYCHOANALYSIS
SECRETS OF A SOUL AND MORE
OgatBdandrit.s/tinpdhy hJnaLeiudhafhfi
Thursday, Febnury29, 1996— Center Jbr the Arts
The in^etms offibn andpsyckoamafysis is a
boAhavetodowiAaqmestfi)rnarrati9e,boAabo
aaing as mstioaions.
boihmvoivea
1 do not fed happy about your magnifioent pnqect -Afy cbirf otjection is stiD diat I do not
believe diat sadsfectory plastic reprcsentadon of our afastnclions is at aD posabfe." Sach was
FmMfs respoise to Karl Abniiam. founder of tbe Berfin Psychoanalytic SocieQr aid a dose
coUeasoe^ ReiKl s. when Abraham wioie to him abont the Germat film studio 1%*^ proposal to
do a fUm about psycboan^ysis. A few years eariicr Sanaid (joldwyn had ofiered Read $100,000
IS
San Francisco Cinematheque
to cooperate on a film depicting famous love scenes from history; Freud refused to even discuss
the offer. He did not participate in the film which would become Pabst's Secrets of a Soul, though
his colleagues Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs did, with Sachs writing a 31 page monograph
introducing several psychoanalytic concepts to accompany the film.
Cinema and psychoanalysis obviously have had numerous encounters of all varieties and degrees
of intimacy in their century long histories. Tonight the Cinematheque's program looks at just two
of these encounters in which cinema explicitly takes on psychoanalysis, and more specifically
psychoanalytic case studies, as its subject matter. Whether a 'satisfactory plastic representation of
psychoanalysis' abstractions' is possible is certainly doubtful, and, here at least, not the point.
What is of interest, however, is to see how cinema has tried to incorporate and speak about
psychoanalysis - essentially how one apparatus of representation (with its particular vocabulary,
syntax, history and ideology) takes on and confronts another.
The two films presented this evening are wildly diverse in their historical moment, their style and
their intent. Made more that fifty years apart, the first has been described as a project of
legitimization (this is open to debate) while the second could be described as an attempt at
delegitimization, or at least an attempt to open up some psychoanalytic as well as cinematic textual
norms to critical exploration. Both films represent psychoanalytic case studies, whether fictional or
fictionalized by having been already written and recounted. The first, made when the language of
cinema was still relatively young, is innovative in its attempts to represent unconscious imagery
and dream life and its positioning of the spectator in relation to these, while the second, made when
cinematic language was much older and, in the hands of some, extremely conscious of its own
habits and presumptions, is innovative in its critical deconstmction of filmic norms - be it framing,
editing, or narrative structure.
The meeting tonight is then not only between cinema and psychoanalysis, but also between two
very different moments and uses of the cinematic medium.
Secrets of a Soul (Geheimnisse einer Seele) (1926); by G.W. Pabst,
16mm, b&w, silent, 64 minutes
Secrets of a Soul , made in collaboration with Freud's colleagues Hanns Sachs and Karl Abraham,
presents a case study of phobia, repression and compulsion and is the first film to represent the
method of psychoanalysis as treatment. The project was initiated by Hans Neumann of the German
studio Ufa who asked Pabst to direct it. Completed one year after Joyless Street and two years
before Pandora's Box, the film is unusual for this period of Pabst's work in that it focuses almost
exclusively on a male character.
In his correspondence to Freud initially describing the project, Karl Abraham wrote that the film
"will present a life history from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis and will show the treatment and
cure of neurotic symptoms. ...My idea is not to describe psychoanalysis systematically but to give
examples from everyday life and to develop the theory around them." Contemporary critical
readings of the film's representation of psychoanalysis have diverged quite radically as indicated
by the comments which follow:
"The entire project of Secrets of a Soul is founded on the idea of certainty, and even simplicity,
presumably in order to popularize Freudian psychoanalysis in the idiom of Hanns Sachs. ...here
the idea is to convince [the] audience that psychoanalysis is an important addition to medical
science. In other words. Secrets of a Soul is a project of legitimization, where the strength of
psychoanalytic explanation is demonstrated by showing a correct diagnosis and cure."
— Janet Bergstrom, "Psychological Explanation in the Films of Lang and Pabst."
in Psychoanalysis and Cinema, E. Ann Kaplan, Editor
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
"Secrets of a Soul (1926) is both symptomatic and ironic, a text that reflects the double concern of
many important Weimar films. It interrogates male subjectivity and, likewise, the nature of cinema
itself, providing a scintillating metafilmic inquiry. Focusing on a troubled psyche, the film
discloses an unacceptable identity, an alternative person and unbearable self, a man who can no
longer direct his own actions. The protagonist slips from the symbolic into the imaginary,
regressing from the head of a household to a dependent child and mother's boy. The film's
dynamics will allow him to reassume, in a hyperbolic and over determined way, a position of
authority and control over himself, his household, and his wife. Cinema, likewise, appears here as
a medium whose task it is to order images, to provide pleasing self-images, to harness the
seemingly irrational and arbitrary. The impetus of film and psychoanalysis is a common one: both
involve a medium, both have to do with a quest for narrative, both also employ similar
mechanisms, acting as institutions, dream factories, indeed textual apparatuses... Pabst succeeded
- despite Freud's own misgivings and hostilities - in translating a talking cure into a silent film. In
so doing, Pabst created a dynamic wherein the analyst in the text corresponds to the analyst outside
the text, placing the spectator in a discursive relation to the on screen exchange.
"...Secrets of a Soul, from its very first shots, provides the spectator with an admonition not to be
deluded by initial impressions, not to be fooled by spurious connections. The opening image
shows a strip of material being used to sharpen a blade, suggesting a strip of celluloid and the hand
and tool that cuts it. The introductory passage makes it clear just how convincingly editing can
manipulate and distort. A number of shots lead us to believe the husband and wife are in the same
room; eyeline matches and directionals deceive, though, for the two inhabit separate spaces and are
hardly as intimate as it would seem: a wall stands between them, in fact. The editing creates a false
image that we come to recognize as such after we regain our bearings. In the same way, the
psychoanalyst edits a story derived from his patient's mental images, a "final cut" that seems to
edify. If the psychoanalyst entered the man's life by returning a key, it is significant that the object
both opens and closes, just as the ultimate explanation privileges certain moments and memories
while blocking out others. The epilogue, which otherwise would be superfluous, provides a
further perspective beyond the initial closure, one both ironic and unsettling. ...Once again, certain
footing gives way to precarious ground..."
— Eric Rentschler, "The Problematic Pabst: An Auteur Directed by History,"
in The Films ofG.W. Pabst, Eric Rentschler, Editor.
For a discussion of the second film screened tonight
see E. Ann Kaplan, Women &. Film: Both Sides of the Camera
DAUGHTER(S) OF EXTERMINATION
Sunday, March 3. 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
DAUGHTERCS'jOF EXTERMINATION : Sequel to/Continuation of Reg. 8mm: SAVED FROM
EXTINCTION :
Pulled together by YOU
All parties (The audience, the management, me.) agreed the last show was such a smashing
success we should do another . . . Program, structured similarly, will now include: "Trailer for
Reg. 8mm: SAVED FROM EXTINCTION"( 1994- 1996); "The Producer", b&w smoker from the
1920's/silent era(?); Shorter, different version of "Before Gentrification Hit" (1980-1996) with
more urban soundtrack
(Ohio Players); "Half of a Lasse Braun Film(1970's); "Double & Triple Images Shot Around
Town (Van Ness near Geary, the Richmond district. Ocean Beach.), appropriate text and Mexican
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Blues . . . .We'll be giving away even more films. To the first 25 patrons, this time. Along with
cassettes and cd's, so you can experiment also. Pages from WALLPAPERS ("A Magazine on
Walls".
Theme: Travel/Film.)will be on display too ....
Like last time, if you bring a film to show, you get in free....
— Tom Church
ELEANOR ANTIN :
THE UNPAVED ROAD TO FILMMAKING
Eleanor antin in person
Thursday, March 7, 1996 — Center for the Arts
A pioneer in post modem and feminist art, Eleanor Antin's work has been regarded as ground
breaking. Often defying the boundaries of genre, she employs installation, performance,
photography, video and film. Internationally recognized, Eleanor Antin has performed and
exhibited around the world, including one-woman shows at the Museum of Modem Art and the
Whitney Museum, major installations at the Hirschhom Museum and the Jewish Museum in New
York, and a performance at the Venice Biennale. Several of her mixed media works, such as 100
Boots, CARVING, a traditional sculpture. The King of Solana Beach, and The Adventures of a
Nurse are frequently referred to as classics of postmodern, feminist art.
Autobiography, in a fundamental sense, is Self getting a grip on oneself... it can be
considered a partial type of transformation in which the subject chooses a specific,
as yet unarticulated image, and proceeds to progressively define herself... Usual
aids to self definition - sex, age, talent, time and space - are mere tyrannical
limitations upon my freedom of choice.
— Eleanor Antin
In 1972, Antin began to explore the area of self-transformation through persona. Her "selves" (the
King, the Ballerina, the Nurse), explored through her broad range of artistic expression, have
challenged both issues of "Self as well as "Historicity". The Angel of Mercy (1977), used "old"
photographs to chronicle the life of Nurse Eleanor Antin in 19th century Victorian England and in
the Crimean War. Her published joumal. Being Antinova (1983), recounts the three weeks she
lived in New York as a retired Black Ballerina of Diaghilev's Ballet Russe. Through all of her
personas, she manages to explore her own identity and it's infinite possibilities:
There is no point at which she suddenly stops being Eleanor Antin. What she
becomes is already part of her, and she never ceases to be what she is to begin
with. There are no borders, no precise contours, no center.
— Jonathan Crary
In 1991, Antin released the feature The Man Without A World to broad critical acclaim, presenting
it as a "recently rediscovered" film by forgotten Jewish film director, Yevgeny Antinov. Yet many
years before this, Eleanor Antin was one of the earliest pioneers of video art. Beginning in the
early seventies, her earliest works were performative pieces in real time, yet always with what she
terms a "proto-narrative", many of which coincide with her exploration of identity.
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Tonight, SF Cinematheque welcomes Eleanor Antin as she presents an overview of her "unpaved
road to filmmaking."
Program includes excerpts from:
The King (1912); h&w
The Ballerina and the Bum (1973); b&w
The Angel of Mercy (1977)
From the Archives of Modern Art (1987)
The Last Night Of Rasputin (1989); video, b&w, silent
The Man Without A World (1991); 16mm shown on video, b&w, color, silent, 98 minutes
b6la tarr retrospective
Co-Presented with the Roxie Theatre
Friday - Wednesday, March 8-13, 1996 — Roxie Theatre
Bela Tarr is one of the world's most distinctive filmmakers. Bom in 1955, Tarr is a product of
Hungary's prestigious Bela Balazas Studio, the country's premier film academy. To date, he has
completed six features, four of which - are included in tihie series.
Sdtdntango (1994); 435 minutes
An exquisitely paced psycho-social portrait of post-communist malaise, Satantango is a tale of
petty schemes and profound emotions as seen in a handful of seedy rural characters whose hopes
and lives are drenched in interminable rain. A tour de force of black & white cinematography, the
film is also a biting commentary on freedom, hope, delusion, and the ambiguous appeal of small-
time charismatic leaders. Set on a dilapidated collective farm somewhere in rural no-man's land,
Satantango describes, from a variety of viewpoints and by skipping back and forth over an
unspecified period of time, the final days of "cooperative living" among a group of drunken cheats,
crippled adulterers, and luckless cretins. Eager for profit, the members of the collective connive
and conspire among and against one another, only to find themselves eventually atomized and
abandoned by the charismatic con man Irimias - who just may be the demiurge of the film's title,
and of whom one character tellingly observes, "He could build a castle out of cow shit."
Damnation (1987)
Another devastating social critique, this time from the period marking the impending fall of
communism. A lonesome depiction of a grizzled anti-hero's ill-fated obsession with a wrecked
chanteuse.
The Pre-fab People (1982)
A gritty cinema verite style portrait of a frustrated working class couple. Cassavetes-esque, tight
close-up portraits of explosive bickering.
Almanac of Fall (1984)
A stunningly choreographed examination of the tensions among five people forced to share an
apartment.
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EXILES AND STRANGERS
HERE NOW WOMEN'S STORIES
Massoud Abolfathi, M. Trinh Nguyen, and Sean O'Gara
LISETTE FLANARY, YURIKO GAMO, MIDORI IKEMATSU, AND LAWAN
JIRASURADEJ
IN PERSON
Co-presented by the National Asian American Telecommunications Association
as part of the Asian American Film Festival
Tuesday, March 12, 1996 — AMC Kabuki
EXILES AND STRANGERS
Eiga Zuke II: Tsukemono Sound Edition (1994); by Sean Morijiro Sunada O'Gara, USA,
35rmn, 2 minutes
Eiga Zuke is a literal "pickling of 35mm film" that is a whimsical commentary on the "true" nature
of Asian representation on film.
Death and Peanuts (7995); by Donna A. Tsufura, USA, 16mm, 4 minutes
Donna Tsufura captures the quiet rituals of a woman and a mound of dirt.
Dariche (1995); by Massoud Abolfathi, Iran, 16mm, 14 minutes
Dariche is a Persian word for window and shows a lone man at a window, pulling up the blinds. It
is an illusive film of love in exile, the memory of a woman - her smile, her eyes - of trying to catch
the time of memory when the memory stays perpetually in the realm of the untouchable.
Xich-lo (1995); by M. Trinh Nguyen, USA, 16mm, 20 minutes
Xich-16 captures a young Vietnamese American woman in preparation for a significant and
emotional reunion with her relatives who have remained in Vietnam after her own move as a child
to the U.S. World premiere.
Stranger Baby (1995); by Lana Lin, USA, 16nmi, 14 minutes
Disembodied voices, flying saucers, strange messages on an answering machine are just your
generic supermarket tabloid brand of "alien" sightings in Stranger Baby: aliens considered a threat
because they speak a language you don't understand; aliens always being asked, "What are you?"
Sounds familiar? Perhaps all aliens don't come from outer space.
IQBAL: Two or Three Things I Know About Himi\994y, by Nasser Aslam, England,
35nmi, 25 minutes
A portrait of Mohammad Iqbal, poet/philosopher and spiritual founder of Pakistan. It shuns dates
and family histories. Instead, it's infused with the rich seductiveness of Urdu poetry and luminous
black and white images reminiscent of the great Indian classics of the fifties. U.S. premiere.
HERE Now Women's Stories
Kimono (1995); by Midori Dcematsu, Japan, video, 2 mdnutes
In a short time, captures a complex female subjectivity.
Reflection (1994); by Yuriko Gamo, USA, 16mm, 5 minutes
Yuriko Gamo presents the conflicts between cultures and expectations of cultures through the
simple ritual of dressing.
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Kill Kimono (1996); by Lisette Flanary, USA, 16mm, 19 minutes
Kill Komono opens with a costumed woman washed out on a beach. She has just swum from
Tokyo the night before. In the course of the film we find other women like her, displaced, yet
yearning for physical attributes to ground oneself in one's culture or perhaps to be freed from it.
World premiere.
Shakers (1995); by Midori Ikematsu, Japan, video, 2 minutes
La Vida (1996); by Lawan Jirasuradej, Thailand, 16mm, 20 minutes
An experimental film with lush colors and vibrant stagings. World premiere.
Here Now (1995); by Yunah Hong, USA/South Korea, 16mm, 30 minutes
A 30-year old woman caught in a mid-life crisis, living an urban life and working in a copy store,
and grappling with an unsatisfying relationship, excited by a new encounter and frustrated by
friends and their relationship ups and downs.
BEATING WITH BARBARA STERNBERG
Barbara Sternberg in person
Thursday, March 14, 1996 — Center for the Arts
The narrative? What narrative? If only it were a narrative! But it is precisely not a
narrative, it is time, burning time, beating from hour to hour, it is time beating in
life's breast.
— Helene Cixous, "Promethea"
Sternberg's films affect through their rhythmic pulses. She makes films that set in
place many complex networks, films that touch, that move, working to change
perceptions, to reorder a world.
— ^Barbara Godard
One of the texts by Helene Cixous in Barbara Sternberg's new film Beating begins: "Let yourself
go! Let go of everything! Lose everything! Take to the air. Take to the open sea. Take to letters.
Listen: nothing is found. Nothing is lost, everything remains to be sought. " Much of Barbara
Sternberg's work embodies this cry, this call - nothing is found, nothing is lost, everything
remains to be sought.. Her films are this seeking, this journey, with its rhythms and hesitations, its
assurances and its doubts. Eschewing conventionalized narrative or any fixed ontology of the
world or of the self, Sternberg embraces and explores the flux, the contradictions, the spaces and
pauses between things, between reflection and silence, between present and past, between self and
community.
Barbara Sternberg holds a unique place in the contemporary Canadian avant-garde, and the San
Francisco Cinematheque is honored to welcome her for her first visit ever to the Bay Area. Based
in Toronto, Sternberg has produced ten films in the past seventeen years, each laboriously crafted
and each exploring various interstices of work, desire, time, identity and how one speaks (and
films) the world and the self into being. Sternberg taught film at York University in Toronto for
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San Francisco Cinematheque
several years and has worked as the Experimental Film Officer of the Canadian Filmmakers'
Distribution Center and as a programmer at Pleasure Dome in Toronto. Her films have screened
widely across Canada and internationally and are included in the collection of the Art Gallery of
Ontario and the National Gallery.
— Irina Leimbacher
Transitions (1982); 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes
Transitions is a film of inner life and speaks of time, reality, power. It depicts the disquieting
sensations of being between - between falling asleep and being awake, between here and there,
between being and non-being. These metaphysical themes are evoked by the central image of a
woman in white over which layers of images and sound (voices) are superimposed. (BS)
Beating (1995); 16mm, color, sound, 64 minutes
"Doubt is both the power and propulsion of Beating. Jewish and a feminist, Sternberg has erased
love letters to make naked the empty between her legs, a mirror of history's negation. Each filmic
gesture soothes the guiding insult, filling the space with her version of love. But how can
otherness make room for another? With the eye of a fetishist she searches the body's topography
for clues of oppression. And finds it here."
— Kika Thome
Sight and sound are central components of memory, and likewise of the cinema. With Beating,
Barbara Sternberg challenges our understanding of the relationship between memory and cinema
by challenging us to see and hear a highly controlled flow of images and sounds that collide,
fragment, and flicker, to create a landscape of impressions that are both mystifying and
provocative. At the same time she deals with issues that are by no means easy to grapple with.
Images of Nazis, sexual organs, lynched Jews, and a couple that appear to be involved in a dance
that evokes a sexual struggle are just a few of the powerful images that stay with one long after the
film is over. Sternberg's film has a 25 part structure that at times hardly seems to exist because of
the fluidity and purpose with which each shot meets the next. The depth of the filmic text (which
itself borrows from the texts of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Helene Cixous, and Hannah Arendt)
is matched by the intricate depth of the projected images (many of which have gone through
generations of optical printing) and sounds. The intellectualizing here never veers into pure
abstraction; it is always grounded in the world, whether through the evocation of memory or
through the images from nature. These moments of natural beauty and repose both contrast with
and provide a reprieve from the density of the text itself; this repose, however, is one of
continuous movement, and while that may seem paradoxical, one must recognize that although the
film is never far from the beauty and color of its sensuous imagery, it is adso never far from its
scratches; its black and white and negative photography; and finally the specter of Nazism and the
danger of forgetting the Patriarchal seeds which bred it. Ultimately we are forced, through the
strength of the images and the intensity of Sternberg's vision, to remember what we have seen,
what we have heard, and what we have lived through in time.
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
Beating (1995); Through and Through (1992); At Present (1990); Tending Towards the Horizontal
{19SS); A Trilogy (1985); Transitions (1982); Opus 40 (1979).
•program notes by Jeffery Lambert*
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
SURFACE TENSIONS:
PLAYING WITH LANDSCAPES
Sunday, March 17, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
When time stops and time is never ending; and the ground swell, that is and was
from the beginning, Clangs the bell — T.S. Eliot
Drift (1995); by Chris Welsby, 16min, color, sound, 17 minutes
The idea for this film comes from the experience of three winters living in the Kitsilano district of
Vancouver. Walking out along the ocean front is a rewarding experience at any time of year, but in
winter the fog moves in and the landscape assumes its quintessential Pacific Northwest
appearance. It is at this time more than any other when, lacking a clearer point of reference, one's
attention is drawn to the large cargo ships which anchor in the bay... On some days they assume a
monumental, sculptural presence, testimony to the technological domination of the environment...
On a different day they look like children's toys or partially drawn pictograms... The picture plane
is in continuous motion like the ocean which on the surface at least, is the subject of Drift.... it is
also.. .an essentially filmic metaphor... for the act of looking... (CW)
Tensile (1995); by Mark Wilson, 16mm, color, silent, 4 minutes
Study of a River (1996); by Peter Hutton, 16mm, b&w, silent, 19 minutes
"(Hutton is) perhaps the most single-minded and compelling collector of landscapes since the cine-
explorers of the Lumiere era" — ^J. Hoberman, Village Voice
"Study of a River... is a portrait of the Hudson through the four seasons of the year.... As in his
Eastern European films, Hutton has mined the past in his pursuit of evocative cinematic
landscapes. He has delved into the ecological history of the Hudson and has paid particular
attention to the great tradition of the nineteenth-century Hudson River school of American
painting." — ^John Pruitt
Bouquets 1-10 (1995); by Rose Lowder, 16mm, color, silent, 12 minutes
An investigation into landscape, time and the act of seeing.
Opening the Nineteenth Century: 1896 (1896/1991); by the Lumiere Brothers/Ken Jacobs,
16mm 3-D (Pulfrich filter supplied), 9 minutes
"Jacobs' lifelong project has been an aesthetic, physiological and social critique of projected
images. He isn't just an artist of awesome formal invention, but also a philosopher of the
medium." — J. Hoberman, Village Voice
Surface Tensions 2 (1983/1995); by Vincent Grenier, 16mm, color, sound, 5 minutes
"Instead of letting us pass through his images unscathed as a documentarian might, enabling us to
proceed directly to the object photographed, Grenier keeps us protectively imprisoned in his
images, for there is nothing beyond. Or, as in the best of his work, both nothing and something."
— Martha Haslanger, The Downtown Review
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San Francisco Cinematheque
TRACES OF FORGOTTEN MOMENTS:
NEW FILMS BY LEWIS KLAHR
Lewis Klahr in person
Thursday, March 21, 1997 — Center for the Arts
A prolific filmmaker since 1977, familiar with many styles of experimental film practice, Lewis
Klahr has established a formidable reputation through his work with found-footage, collage and
cut-out animation. In his extensive body of Super-8 work, including two multi-film series entitled
Picture Books For Adults and Tales of the Forgotten Future he initiated the articulation of and
developed a signature style which draws on the oneiric, atemporal work of Larry Jordan, Harry
Smith and especially Joseph Cornell as well as the pop sensibilities of Kenneth Anger. Rich with
an odd, unfixable nostalgia reinforced by seductively layered and yet ultimately irreconcilable
images-made-strange, Klahr's films play with distance, the soulless stares and inscrutable
blankness of his figures frozen-in-motion reflecting a longing for a past which is necessarily -
irretrievably lost.
AUair (1994); 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes
Green(62) (1996); 6 minutes
Whirligigs in the Late Afternoon (1995); 16mm, color, sound
The Pharaoh's Belt (1994); 16mm, color, sound, 43 minutes
In The Pharaoh's Belt, Klahr engages in a sort of fantastic history of childhood, using the
attribution of incoherent significance and the perverse joy of irrational association characteristic of
games of make-believe to fashion an allegorical narrative of adolescence. A dizzying melange of
resonant images and shocking - yet always coyly astute - juxtapositions of objects, actions and
effects, this film uses the familiar and banal to tear open the Pandora's Box of suburban childhood,
and revels in the terrors it releases. A narrative of incommensurate events, chronicle of a dream
always on the verge of waking into adulthood, it explores an uncharted terrain of linoleum floors
and the hving room couch, wondering at the mysterious wonders implicit in the birthday cake and
the vast unknown expanse of an outer space which equals in wonder any uncharted wild or misty
ruin. And as we float through this lost space, breathing only the forgotten ether, these images
assume their own sort of truth, naming a story which need not be told, but remembered, and their
sense becomes clearer as it becomes less so.
"I have been deeply inspired by Smith's Heaven and Earth Magic Feature. It is the main filmic
model for [The Pharaoh's Belt ] with its epic length, use of sound effects, and sublime
transcendence of transcendence and horror. A short-hand way to communicate the differences
between Smith's masterpiece and my film is in the use of the dripping liquids. For Smith the
liquids are usually urine and semen, for me mucus and tears."
— Lewis Klahr, 1995 interview with Patrick Friel
FILMOGRAPHY
Picture Books For Adults: Deep Birdtank Fishing (1983); Enchantment (1983); Pulls (1985);
What's Going On Here Joe? (1985); The River Sieve (1984); Candy's 16 (1984); Deep Fishtank,
Too (1985); 1966 (1984); Purple Days (1985).
Take Me Tonight (1985); The Nightingale's Fisted Wave (1986); Her Fragrant Emulsion (1987);
Fait Divers (for Tom Gunning) (1989).
Tales of the Forgotten Future: Part One: The Morning Films: Lost Camel Intentions (1988); For the
Rest of Your Natural Life (1988); In the Month of Crickets (1988). Part Two: Five O'Clock
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Worlds: The Organ Minder's Gronkey (1990); HiFi Cadets (1990); Verdant Sonar (1990). Part
Three: Mood Opulence: Cartoon Far (1990); Yesterday's Glue (1989); Elevator Music (1991). Part
Four: Right Hand Shade: Station Drama (1990); Untitled (1991); Untitled (1991).
Treadwinds (1992) with Walter Lew; City Film (1993); The Pharaoh's Belt (Cake Excerpt) (1993);
Downs Are Feminine (1994); The Pharaoh's Belt (1994); Altair (1994); Whirligigs in the Late
Afternoon (1995).
SIDNEY PETERSON: A CELEBRATION
Sidney Peterson in person
Sunday, March 24,1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Americans in general ...may be said to have the same kind of respect for art that
undertakers have for life. They are so respectful that it is enough for a work to be
called a work of art for it to be accorded the deference normally reserved for a
respectable cadaver. Experimental films are frequently, either by intention or
accomplishment, works of art. Thus, they are often dead before they are screened.
— Sidney Peterson
Considered a pioneer of the New American Cinema, and an important voice in postwar American
experimental film, Sidney Peterson began work on his first film. The Potted Psalm, a collaboration
with James Broughton, in the summer of 1946. This film galvanized the art community of San
Francisco, prompting a walkout and generating substantial controversy and renewed interest in
filmmaking as a fine art. Subsequently, he became a faculty member at the California School of
Fine Arts, now known as the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught the Cinema 20
workshop. Between 1947 and 1949, he conceived of and directed several films in the context of
this class, employing a style influenced by surrealism and steeped in a profoundly idiosyncratic
love of literature and philosophy which refused them the pious reverence that produces only
corpses, instead recognizing the explosive potential hidden in all hopeless knowledge. An
intellectual in the broadest, rarest sense, Sidney Peterson created deceptively simple films which
betray the weight of the shoes they wear (thirty-four pounds, to be exact) only when the joke is
recognized as ttie bitterest sort of wisdom.
The Invisible Mustache of Raul Dufy (1955)
Mr. Frenhofer and the Minotaur (1948); 16mm, sound, b&w, 21 minutes
"The elements of Peterson's synthesis in [this] film are easily isolated: ...they are Balzac's story,
Le Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu, Pablo Picasso's engraving Minotauromachia, and a monologue in
James Joyce's style. The visual unification is achieved simply and elegantly by the nearly absolute
use of anamorphic photography and either fluid camera movements responding to the movements
of the actors or almost choreographic movements of the actors within the static frame. Slow
motion, especially at the beginning of the film, contributes to its gracefulness. There is almost no
fast motion, superimposition, or wild movement of the camera. Peterson operated the camera
himself."
— P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film
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San Francisco Cinematheque
"Anamorphosis, as Jurgis Baltrusaitis points out in his fundamental study, Anamorphoses, is 'an
evasion that imphes a return; stifled in a torrent or whirlwind of confusion, the image emerges
resembling itself when looked at sideways or reflected in a mirror... the destruction of the figure
precedes its representation.'"
— Sidney Peterson in The Dark of the Screen
Clinic of Stumble (1947)
The Lead Shoes (1949); 16mm, sound, b&w, 18 minutes
"It is vitally important for full appreciation of The Lead Shoes to try to beat it at its own game - to
try to follow its many levels of meaning clear through - because only these experiences of mental
defeat really open the viewer to the film. Try as you will - and just exactly as in the gambling
casino - you cannot win - cannot wring a coherent set of meanings from the film. Sidney has
masterfully stacked the deck! The means, or themes, of The Lead Shoes are deliberately edited at
cross-purposes. No simple warp and woof here, but rather one of the most masterful frays of
meaning ever created - thus, one of the greatest celebrations of Mystery I've ever experienced."
— Stan Brakhage, 1973 Lecture
"It was part of the special confusion of our time to combine belief with dis-belief and we proposed
to treat our half-beliefs as 'ready-mades' which only had to be conceived of as objects (like the lead
shoes themselves) to ht. found. If this was reification (treating abstractions as 'real' (things), it
went with alienation - the two being generally regarded as the twin diseases of the then generation,
involving, among other things, a loss of the soul. I don't know that we went quite that far."
— Sidney Peterson in The Dark of the Screen
Man In A Bubble (1981)
The Merry Go-Round In The Jungle (1955)
FILMOGRAPHY
The Potted Psalm (1946) with James Broughton; The Cage (1947); Horror Dream (1947); Clinic
of Stumble (1947); Ah! Nurture (1948) with Hy Hirsch; The Petrified Dog (1948); Mr. Frenhofer
and the Minotaur (1948); The White Rocker (1949); The Lead Shoes (1949); Adagio For Election
Day (1949); Man in a Bubble (1981).
•program notes by Brian Frye*
PROJECTING SEXUAL TABOOS:
M.M. SERRA AND ALINE MARE
M.M. Serra and Aline Mare in person
Thursday, March 28, 1996 — Center for the Arts
"M.M. Serra and Aline Mare explore boundaries of sexuality in terms of ritual, performance and
media. M.M. Serra is Director of the Film-Maker's Coop in New York City and recently curated a
European tour of X-rated films by women. Aline Mare's mixed media pieces '...fuse the dynamics
of dream, blood, fire and flesh.'"
— K.K. Wanglung
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Turner (1988); 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes
"Mysterious, elliptical, extremely delicate in its making - yet bursting with energy - Turner seems
to elaborate a particularly feminine aesthetic of sensuality and pleasure."
— Joanne Kieman, 'Parabola Series #4"
L' Amour Fou (1992); 16mm, color, sound, 17 minutes
"L' Amour Fou is a curious meditation on the pleasures and terrors of S/M, in which interviews
with enthusiasts collide with choice pom clips, Fleisher cartoon, Hans Bellmer poupees and a
couple of sphincter-tightening routines. The results are compelling, this film lingers, never once
shpping into hype or deadly cool." — Manohla Dargis, Village
Voice
A Lot of Fun for the Evil One (1994); video, color, sound, 14 minutes
with Maria Beatty, music by John Zom
In the words of Craig Baldwin, "It's Super Hot! A proud film that celebrates sexual desire where
the energy never drops and the camera never stops... Absolutely uncompromised."
"It's a strong piece, intense and yet joyful, and I like that a lot, the sense of pleasure and joy that
comes through. It seems the Evil One was not the only one having a lot of fun."
— Gene Youngblood, October 1995
Soi Meme; 16nmi, color, sound, 8 minutes
Camera by Peggy Ahwesh and Abigail Child. Music by Zeena Parkins.
Homage to Goddess Rosemary who is a NYC performance artist.
RAW PUNK, HOT FUNK: WEIRD CONCERT FILMS
Sunday, March 31, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute ^
Tonight's program is two rarely screened, truly strange concert documentaries. Neither are
available on home video.
The Blank Generation (1976); by Amos Poe and Ivan Krai, 16mm, b&w, sound, 70 minutes
Stupefying and totally artless. The Blank Generation is the very first punk rock film, from
underground filmmaker Amos Poe (Subway Riders ) and Patti Smith's guitarist, Ivan Krai.
Featuring the Ramones, Blondie, Marbles, Jayne County, the New York Dolls, Richard Hell and
the Voidoids, Television, and Talking Heads. "Directed" in an anti-art, anti-style, and purposefully
tedious manner, the film accurately captures this joyless, drug-soaked, anti-music phenomenon.
Wattstax (1973); by Mel Stuart; 16mm, color, sound, 100 minutes
Black is beautiful in this high-energy monster jam featuring foul-mouthed emcee Richard Pryor,
and unforgettable live performances from the Bar-Kays (in spandex and multicolored fright wigs),
silky smooth Carla Thomas, Isaac "Shaft " Hayes, Rufus "Do the Funky Chicken" Thomas, the
Staple Singers (eating ribs in a limousine), funk balladeer Luther Ingram, and many more.
Inspirational words from an Afro'd Reverend Jesse Jackson round out the bill, a benefit concert
for the people of Watts (a.k.a. South Central) held at the LA Coliseum in 1973. "I am...
SOMEBODY! "
•program notes by Joel Shepard*
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SOUN DCULTURE 96
Brenda Hutchinson, Beth Custer and Laetitia Sonami
First Alone. Then All Together.
Wednesday, April 3, 1996 — New Langton Arts
The three artists tonight will first perform 15 to 20 minute solo pieces then combine to perform a
new composition written by Custer, Hutchinson and Sonami especially for SoundCulture 96.
1) Brenda Hutchinson will perform excerpts from Every Dream Has Its Number for
voice, tape and Giant Music Box. Brenda Hutchinson's work as a sound artist has included
installations, performance and compositions for dance, opera, film, video and radio. Many of her
performances have been included on contemporary sound/music CD anthologies. Special thanks
to Pat Roberts and Convivial Design.
2) Beth Custer will improvise using extended techniques for clarinet and voice. Beth Custer is
the instrumentalist/composer with Club Foot Orchestra, Trance Mission, Clarinet Thing and the
Joe Goode Performance Group. She has composed music for California Shakespeare Puppet
Theater, Kronos Quartet and Earplay as well. She has performed at the International Performance
Festival, Czech Republic; The Exploratorium, SF; and the Other Minds Festival, Center for the
Arts, SF.
3) Laetitia Sonami will perform ...and she keeps coming back for more, a composition
developed specifically for the Lady's Glove, a glove embedded with sensors that allow the
manipulation of voice and sounds through gestures. For this composition, "I resorted to FM
sounds which provide the fluidity and instability lost in sampled sounds. These sounds are formed
and clustered as habitual patterns and abstract attachments, little sound-beings appearing because
they keep coming back for more, wandering in the undefined territory where organisms and
mechanisms blend with each other. The piece is dedicated to Jerry Hunt."(LS) Laetitia Sonami has
been performing for the last 15 years in the Bay Area and abroad blending home-made electronic
devices with narrative, and several of her compositions have been released on CD.
intermission
4) Deity or Anatomy, collaborative performance by Hutchinson, Custer and Sonami. Text :
Sumner Camahan (excerpt from "Mona Lisa", Thirteen Stories, Burning Books publisher, 1996).
SOUNDCULTURE 96
Richard Lerman Performances, Films and Videos
Co-Sponsored with New Langton Arts
Monday, April 8, 1996 — New Langton Arts
Richard Lerman is a composer, sound, video and film artist who works extensively with self-built
transducers and electronics. Since 1977, he has made microphones from different materials such as
brass screens, copper tape, nylon cord, stainless steel, money, and credit cards by attaching piezo
electric devices to these materials. The piezo effect transforms the surfaces of these materials into
functional microphones that reveal small sounds within the environment they are placed in. Richard
Lerman began his Transducer Series Films in 1983, which use his microphones as both
camera subject and audio input. Concerning the series, "I chose Super 8 for its ability to record
directly onto the mag stripe during filming. As an improvising performer, I was also drawn to in-
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
camera editing... I made more than 50 of these films, the last one in 1988. 1 project the originals at
screenings, being very unhappy with both Super 8 prints and duplicated soundtracks."
Richard Lerman has screened films and videos, performed solo pieces and set up sound
installations throughout North America, Europe, Asia and the South Pacific. He currently teaches
in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance Department at Arizona State University-West.
Changing States 3 (1992); performance for metal microphones and butane torch
"I first used the technique of heating amplified metal with flame in a performance piece from 1985.
Early versions of Changing States were more improvisatory. The title refers to the change in the
metal as the chromium atoms recrystallize after being heated. The score uses labanotation-like
symbols to tell the performer how to move the flame over the metal to release the sound."
A Copper Strip On Fire (1984); Super 8, color, sound
"My sons, Joshua and Jesse, use the flame of a blowtorch to play the surface of the copper strip
transforming it into an instrument. What you hear is the adhesive on the copper tape burning,
heating the metal and causing sound."
David and Sharon with Pond-life (1985); Super 8, color, sound
"My brother and his wife are swimming in a pond near our family summer house in Neshkoro,
Wisconsin. Sound was gathered from an installation of amplified brass sheets, metal strips in the
water, baited fish-hooks and windharps."
Newfoundland Transducer Series (1986); Super 8, color, sound
"Several site specific sound installations at the 1986 Sound Symposium Festival. The locations
include St. John's Harbor and Port Kirwan."
A Windharp at La Pataia State Park, Tierra del Fuego (1988); Super 8, color, sound
"This park is located at the southernmost point in Argentina."
INTERMISSION
Four Places at South Point (1989); video, color, sound
"This tape was recorded and edited in video 8-1 became interested in using stereo sound while
making and recording installations. South Point is the southernmost point in the United States."
Two Windharps at the Tokugawa Women's Grave (1990); video, color, sound
"This tape became part of a collaborative installation called TAKUHON with artist Mona Higuchi
and several other artists that we presented in Tokyo in 1991."
Manzanar and Dachau (1994); video, color, sound
"This tape also became part of several collaborative installations with Mona Higuchi based on the
liberation of Dachau by Japanese- American soldiers in May, 1945 while their families were
interned in concentration camps in the United States."
Sonoran Desert Ants (1996); video, color, sound
"Pari of a year-long project I am now engaged in called A Sonic Mapping of the Sonoran Desert. I
have been recording cactus thorns, rocks, etc. in the desert portions of Phoenix. The project is
being sponsored by the Institute for Studies in the Arts at ASU, Tempe."
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Incident at 3 Mile Island: an Elegy for Karen Silkwood (1980);
performance for amplified tuning forks and laser light
1 . entry into the reactor
2. dirge with half-lives
"This piece was premiered in May 1980, in Portland, OR, before the first entry into the damaged
reactor."
•program notes by Richard Lermam
THE AROMA OF ENCHANTMENT:
JAPAN AND 1950'S AMERICA
Chip Lord in person
Thursday, April 11, 1996 — Center for the Arts
Chip Lord has worked with video as a creative medium since 1972 when he was a founding
member of Ant Farm and TVTV, producing such video classics as Media Bum, The Eternal
Frame, and Four More Years (as well as the famous roadside sculpture, Cadillac Ranch from
1974). More recently he has written and directed Motorist (1989), and produced video installations
- Picture Windows (1990, with Mickey McGowan), and Fashion Zone (1992). In 1987, with his
former Ant Farm partners, he designed and supervised construction of a public sculpture for the
Hard Rock Cafe in Houston, Texas. Lord is a Professor in Theater Arts at the University of
California-Santa Cruz, where he also teaches film and video production.
Tonight, Chip Lord presents The Aroma of Enchantment and introduces it with a talk about the
Futuristic in the American 1950's. Using slides of Cadillac Ranch and clips from Easy Living
(1984, with Mickey McGowan), Lord will construct the context from which he viewed Japan
during a Fellowship in Tokyo from the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission in 1991.
Cadillac «ancA( 1974/ 1994); video
The Aroma of Enchantment (1991); video, color, sound, 55 minutes
The Aroma of Enchantment is a video essay that investigates the "Idea of America" that developed
in postwar Japan. Lord weaves historical footage of General Douglas MacArthur with stories told
by collectors or practitioners of Americanization. Each person interviewed connects their concept
of America to the post-war occupational period, a time when images and ideas about America were
powerfully influential in Japan. Lord uses voice-over to relate his own feelings of "otherness" and
cultural displacement in 1990's Tokyo, connecting these ideas visually to the historical moment
when MacArthur and U.S. troops arrived on Japanese soil in 1946. Shot with a Hi-8 camcorder,
the tape uses innovate visual metaphor and personal insight to come to terms with reciprocal
cultural influence in the U.S.-Japanese relationship.
"After more than forty years, Japanese young people can still feel the 1950's atmosphere, they
smell the aroma of enchantment, and to them it must be fresh and attractive. They have not
experienced anything like the fifties but this is how they would like America to be."
— Yasutoshi Bcuta
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
MEXICAN SURREALISM & SUBVERSION:
BUNUELS DEATH IN THE GARDEN
& SIMON OF THE DESERT
Programmed by Joel Shepard
Sunday, April 14, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Death in the Garden (1956); new 16 mm print, color, sound, 90 minutes
With Georges Marechal, Simone Signoret, Charles Vanel. From a novel by Jose Andre Lacour.
An adventurer, Chark, arrives in a small Amazonian village just at the time the government has
nationalized the diamond mines. A riot breaks out. Accused of theft, Chark is arrested. He runs
away and flees on a boat with Castin, an old prospector, his mute daughter Maria, a French
prostitute Gin, and a missionary Father Lissardi. Chark makes himself the leader of the group and
forces them to land and go deep into the Amazonian forest...
"... one of the few movies around that should not be missed. Set in the backwaters and jungles of
an unidentified South American dictatorship, Death in the Garden is a large-scale narrative that
takes on the state, church, the military, society and the individual in such a way that you feel the
director must have intended this primeval locale to be a kind of psychological mirror-image of the
Franco Spain from which he exiled himself... Bufiuel with his usual mastery creates a tragedy
between three men and two women (one a symbol of purity, the other a symbol of vice). He
dissects the behavior of people who, isolated from their social and moral structures, show their
own nature. Shot in the Mexican jungle, the drama is tinted with surrealism. Ants eat up a snake.
The long hair of the deaf and mute are caught in the lianas and Simone Signoret wearing an
evening gown and diamonds appears in the jungle as a painting by Rousseau."
— Vincent Canby, 1977
Preceded by: Simon of the Desert (1965); 16mm, b&w, sound, 42 minutes
Bunuel's scathing religious satire of St. Simon Stylite's attempts to preach the word of God
despite the Devil's efforts to tempt him. Photographed by Gabriel Figueroa.
INSIDE/OUTSIDE PRISON
Wendy Clarke's One on One
Programmed by Irina Leimbacher
Thursday, April 18, 1996 — Center for the Arts
How rarely do contemporary media forms work to build bridges across human
differences rather than simply make spectacles of those differences.
— Michael Renov on Wendy Clarke's One on One
Video artist and psychotherapist Wendy Clarke is probably best known for her Love Tapes, an
interactive art piece in which people of all ages and backgrounds were given three minutes of tape
time to speak about what love means to them. Clarke was facilitator rather than director, supplying
her subjects with the opportunity and requisite tools to accomplish the task. Participants entered
small boothlike structures, usually set up in public places, containing a chair, video camera and
monitor. After choosing a backdrop and musical accompaniment, they activated the camera,
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viewing themselves while taping. If they wished, the piece then became part of the installation,
instantly available for public viewing and the larger project. A similar project dealing with AIDS is
currently being created and is on view at the Exploratorium through June 2.
One on One is another interactive project, a series of remarkable dialogues between inmates at the
California Institution for Men in Chino and Southern Califomians on the 'outside'. Clarke was an
artist-in-residence at the Institution for Men for four years, during which time she led workshops
in poetry writing, painting, photography, and videomaking. Late in 1990, she proposed a new idea
to her video workshop: a series of video letters between the class members and people outside the
prison, the latter ultimately being drawn either from a progressive church in Santa Monica or from
a group of successful African American business people in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles.
Like The Love Tapes, these video letters are intimate and self -regulated but, unlike them, they are
exclusively addressed to an individual who responds in kind. Fifteen tapes were produced in this
way.
Media critic, writer and professor Michael Renov on One on One:
[It] attests to a power latent in the video medium, a power that has seldom been
explored. It is a power that is political, psychological, and spiritual: a power to
facilitate the reversal of repression at the level of (confessional) speech and of
experience and in so doing forge bonds that are wholly media specific. Contrary to
expectation, these media-specific relationships appear to engender effects (the
visible signs of bolstered spirits, as well as audible testimony) that are bi-
directional, experienced by both video partners. It is my contention that this new
kind of relationship is a fundamentally tiierapeutic one rooted in confession freely
and mutually exchanged. In One on One, the inmates' confessions - the uncoerced
expressions of unspoken pain or pleasure - elude authority rather than wholly
submit to it, as Foucault would have it. These unsanctioned utterances serve no
institutional master. While indeed judgment, consolation, even reconciliation may
be sought from the interlocutor "outside", the dynamic of dominance and
submission is everywhere reversible. If the ear of the other indeed contributes to the
(re)construction of the speaking self, it is only on condition that the positions of self
and other, confessor and confessant, remain fluid and reciprocal.
— Renov, "Video Confessions" in Resolutions, 1996
Wendy Clarke has described her role in One on One as follows:
One on One is an art project designed to use the medium of video as a means for
forming relationships between people who would otherwise never get a chance to
communicate with each other. As in my other works (The Love Tapes, Interactive
Video), I envision my role as an artist in terms of planning, facilitating, directing,
and synthesizing interactive situations. I provide both a base structure and a taping
format from which the art experience is created through subject-medium interaction.
I asked the inmates at the Califomia Institution for Men, in Chino, CA to participate
in an introductory tape. This tape was made by having each inmate, one by one, sit
in front of the camera and introduce himself by saying his name, talking about who
he is, why he is in prison and what his interests are. I then took these tapes and
showed them to people on the outside and asked them, one by one, to make a video
tape directed to one of the inmates. I took these tapes back to the prison and showed
them to the inmates, and again asked each of them to make a response to the person
who had made the tape for them on the outside. I went back and forth between the
prison and the outside communities making and showing these tapes... and so the
dialogues continued.
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
The one rule we had was that this dialogue was only to be held on video. Each
person was to be in contact through video and never in person or by letter. I did this
because I wanted the relationships to be a pure video experience, one that was
bound to the essence of the medium. The number of times that the participants
dialogued depended on several factors: it was over when the inmate was paroled, a
time limit had been set from the start, or the participants did not want to continue.
One on One (1991); video, color, sound, a series of 15 tapes of varying lengths
This evening the Cinematheque will present one of the One on One dialogues in its entirety,
preceded by excerpts from two others.
Damon and Ramsess, 14 minute excerpt
Raul and Jeanine, 15 minute excerpt
Ken and Louise, 80 minutes
EARLY EVENING EXPERIMENTAL
Sunday, April 21, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Receiving Sally and Each Evening by Erin Sax
Valentin De Las Sierras by Bruce Baillie
My Name is Oona by Gunvor Nelson
In the Month of Crickets by Lewis Klahr
GHOSTS OF FILM HISTORY AND FILM THEORY
A LECTURE AND SCREENING WITH P. ADAMS SiTNEY
Sunday, April 21, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
P. Adams Sitney has been a theorist, critic and historian and advocate of avant-garde film since the
young age of sixteen. His contributions to Film Culture magazine, his work as editor of several of
its publications (among them The Essential Cinema, The Avant-Garde Film and Film Culture
Reader ), his role in the formation of Anthology Film Archives, and his own books Visionary Film
and Modernist Montage testify to his early and continuing support of experimental filmmakers and
their medium. Visionary Film remains one of the seminal historical and critical investigations of
experimental film and functions as a point of reference for all the work which followed it. The
terms and categories Sitney established persist as the best known, most universal means for
identifying modes of practice, and his arguments still carry substantial force. Sitney has lectured
extensively in North America, South America and Europe since the 1960s and is currently
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Professor of Film at Princeton University. This evening he will lecture from a book-in-progress on
intimacy and epic in American avant-garde, raising ghosts of film history and theory through the
following three films.
I. Apparatus Sum (1972); by Hollis Frampton, 16mm, color, silent, 2.5 minutes
"Apparatus Sum is a very brief study for Magellan: At the Gates of Death . "
"A brief lyric film of death, which brings to equilibrium a single reactive image from a roomful of
cadavers. Thanks to Sally Dixon and Dr. Nikolajs Cauna."
— Hollis Frampton, NY Filmmakers' Co-op Catalog
n. Gloria! (1979); by Hollis Frampton, 16mm, color, sound, 9.5 minutes
"In Gloria! Frampton juxtaposes nineteenth-century concerns with contemporary forms through
the interfacing of a work of early cinema with a videographic display of textual material. These two
formal components (the film and the texts) in turn relate to a nineteenth-century figure, Frampton's
maternal grandmother, and to a twentieth-century one, her grandson (filmmaker Frampton
himself). In attempting to recapture their relationship, Gloria! becomes a somewhat comic, often
touching meditation on death, on memory, and on the power of image, music and text to resurrect
the past."
— Bruce Jenkins, A^ Filmmakers' Co-op Catalog
ni. Vision in Meditation #2; J^iesa Verde (1989); by Stan Brakhage,
16mm, color, silent, 17 minutes
"This meditation takes its visual imperatives from the occasion of mesa Verde, which I came to see
finally as a Time rather than any such solidity as Place. 'There is a terror here,' where the first
words which came to mind on seeing these ruins; and for two days after, during all my
photography, I was haunted by some unknown occurrence which reverberated still in these rocks
and rock structures and environs. I can no longer believe that the inhabitants abandoned this solid
habitation because of drought, lack of water, somesuch. (These explanations do not, anyway,
account for the fact that all memory of The Place, i.e. where it is, was eradicated from tribal
memory, leaving only a legend of a Time when such a place existed.) Midst the rhythms, then, of
editing, I was compelled to introduce images which corroborate what the rocks said, and what the
film strips seemed to say: the abandonment of Mesa Verde was an eventuality (rather than an
event), was for All Time thus, and had been intrinsic from the first human building."
— Stan Brakhage, Canyon Cinema Catalog
RESURFACING THE SCREEN
A PROGRAM OF EXPERIMENTAL WORK
Curated by Kathy Geritz, Pacific Film Archive and Steve Anker, S F Cinematheque
Co-presented by the San Francisco International Film Festival,
the San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Pacific Film Archive.
Wednesday, April 24, 1996 — AMC Kabuki
The six experimental films in this program resonate between the familiar and the mysterious,
between the recognizable and the obscured. They share a delight in images, taking pleasure in
appearances as well as in the implications that lurk beneath. In Elise Hurwitz's strain, restrain,
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
traces of the physical emerge from a sea of black, recalling the fragility of memory while David
Sherman's haunting Tuning the Sleeping Machine delves into the seduction of our collective
movie-going past. Peter Mutton's Study of a River subtly connects the flow of the Hudson River
to the flow of human and film time. Altair is Lewis Klahr's cutout animation, using images from
'40s Cosmopolitans to create a sinister world, and Ariana Gerstein's Losing Touch disrupts the
image itself through cutting, layering and fracturing. As grand finale, Bruce Conner's Crossroads,
in a stunning new 35mm print, creates an extended meditation on the paradox between the sublime
pleasure of the unfolding images and their horrific implications.
strain, restrain (1993); by Elise Hurwitz, 16nrmi, b&w, silent, 3 minutes
Strain, restrain imagines a physical connection to a body long gone, to a person whose stories are
never discussed. A family photograph, the only historical piece of information, lends itself to a
fleshing out of a link between an ancestor and a descendent. Brief images do not last, but reappear,
like memories of an event that was never well understood. The film creates visually the struggle for
knowledge surrounding family secrets, and the piecing together of disparate information to
understand the past. (EH)
Tuning the Sleeping Machine (1996); by David Sherman; 16mm, color, sound, 13 minutes
Here, the process of filmic perception relies on equal parts optics, mechanics, and chemistry; the
experience of converging stories comes only with the specific channeling of these conditions.
Tuning the Sleeping Machine suggests a psycho-physical cinema, an emulsive journey of hypnotic
illusion that pulls at narrative expectation. Circulating forces of control suffuse our collective
cinematic experience; this is a beautiful and daunting history.
Preface: in 1895 Sigmund Freud abandons hypnosis as a viable therapeutic practice in favor of
psychoanalysis. The same year the Lumiere brothers present the first flickers of recreated life
through motion pictures. (DS)
Study of a River (1996); by Peter Hutton, 16mm, color, silent, 19 minutes
"Study of a River is a portrait of the Hudson through the four seasons of the year... Hutton has
mined the past in his pursuit of evocative cinematic landscapes. He has delved into the ecological
history of the Hudson and has paid particular attention to the great tradition of the nineteenth-
century Hudson River school of American painting."
— John Pruitt
AUair (1994); by Lewis Klahr, 16nmi, color, sound, 8 minutes
Altair offers a cutout animation version of color noir. The images were culled from six late '40s
issues of Cosmopolitan magazine and set to an almost four-minute section of Stravinsky's
"Firebird" (looped twice) to create a sinister, perfumed world. The viewer is encouraged to
speculate on the nature and details of the woman's battle with large, malevolent societal forces and
her descent into an alcoholic swoon. However, what interested me in making this film was very
little of what is described above but instead a fascination with the color blue and some intangible
association it has for me with the late 1940s. (LK)
Losing Touch (1994); by Ariana Gerstein, 16mm, color, sound, 7 minutes
Scraps and chunks of rhymed thought, almost remembered, almost understood. Carried by light
and filtered through film that is solarized, scratched, cut, painted - some frames embedded with
insects (ants and roaches). (AG)
Crossroads (1975); by Bruce Conner, 35mm, b&w, sound, 36 minutes
"At thirty-six minutes. Crossroads is Conner's 'Gone With the Wind.' The first underwater atomic
bomb test at Bikini Atoll on July 25th, 1946 was recorded by over five-hundred camera 'eyes' in
boats, in planes and on land. The colossal, gravid image of that mushroom cloud was raised as a
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scepter of American might for all the world to see.. .and fear. This was a dragon-slayer of a
project. To strike at the heartlessness of the beast; the specter of atomic war itself.
"With his obsessive persistence, Conner ventured into the labyrinth of the National Archives in
Washington, D.C. where much of that generation-old footage had been filed as "classified." He
was determined to re-choreograph one of our biggest "performances" into an artifact for re-
appraisal. The first section of Crossroads is twelve minutes of successive views of the detonation,
with a reverberating score by Patrick Gleeson performed on the Moog synthesizer. It begins with
silence and a bird's call before the holocaust of sound descends. The last 24 minutes with Terry
Riley's numbing, translucent missa solemnis evokes a funereal majesty in slow motion until the
very grain of the motion picture film executes a glowing totentanz as it flickers in lethal
incandescence."
— Anthony Reveaux
The Pacific Film Archive is celebrating its 20th year as one of the world's most important film
archives, film studies centers, and exhibitors of film art. Their exhibition program offers a wide
variety of world cinema from its earliest days through the present, highlighted by prints of
exceptional quality, with different public screenings almost every night of the year. They have one
of the finest archival programs devoted to the preservation of experimental film; a new print of
Bruce Conner's Crossroads was made from a restored negative as part of one of their major
preservation projects. For more information or to become a member, call 510-642-1412.
EARLY EVENING EXPERIMENTAL
Sunday, April 28, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Adynata by Leslie Thornton
Exact Fantasy by Laura Poitras
BIG SCREEN RESEARCH
INTRODUCED AND PRESENTED BY GREGG BlERMANN OF X FILM CHICAGO
Sunday, April 28, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
According to Fred Camper, "In the last year X-Film has been the best source for recent
experimental films in Chicago." X-Film Chicago neither uses or seeks out art funding in the form
of grants or government handouts. This allows the freedom to not be swayed by fetishes of fickle
art fashion. Should President Buchanan fumigate the NEA Building, X-Film would still be
showing films. Totally avoiding the thematic programming that ghettoizes experimental film, X-
Film is truly able to show the best of the genre. In March the group began its first national tour.
Big Screen Research, the best of two seasons culled from 98 films by 61 artists from 12 countries.
Tonight's program is made up of work by younger or unknown artists, mostly new to the Bay
Area. The group currently includes filmmakers Gregg Biermann, James Bond, Francis Schmidt
and Scott Trotter.
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
O (1967); by Tom Palazzolo, 16mm, color, sound, 12 minutes
An early work by Chicago's best known experimental filmmaker, O exemplifies Tom's fascination
with American performance and his well known documentary style. Based on ideas from Baroque
painting, O refers to a center point in the frame around which weightless circus performers swirl
and vapid car race attendees run. In the words of the artist; "Low class stuff has always attracted
me... Its accessibility. Anywhere you can pop in with a camera and not intimidate people."
(O) (1994); by Atsuhiko Mori, 16nmi, color, sound, 6 minutes
"This is a story about a fish looking back on his past as a human" is the cryptic opening sentence
of Atsuhiko's tale of a failed Nirvana. A film comparable to religious parables, in that it expresses
complex and crucial ideas in a simple manner.
Home (1994); by Ulrike Reichhold, 16mm, color, sound, 11 minutes
"Reichhold brings a personal dimension to form... the filmmaker appears to be defining "home"
first as her apartment and then as the city it is in, but what's moving is the sense of dislocation she
creates - inside and outside never quite merge"
— Fred Camper
Mr. Glenn W. Turner (1988); by Heather McAdams, 16mm, b&w, sound, 10 minutes
This film has its sound lifted from the introduction of a motivational speaker and millionaire
salesman of beauty products. In the viewer's mind, anything put on the screen is associated with
what is said by the voice-over. In this manner, anyone or anything can be motivated to become Mr.
Glenn W. Turner.
The Chill Ascends (1993); by Jim Seibert, 16mm, b&w, sound, 20 minutes
This film is an attempt to express memories that are dislocated and disintegrated as a result of
childhood trauma. Working ideas for different sections were: invasion, resistance/mutilation,
death, and ascension. Titles are from the Roman Catholic Mass of the Dead. They are as follows:
Recordare (Remember), Quid Sum (How Wretched Am I), Lacrimosa (Lamentation), and Libre
Me (Deliver Me).
Cycles (1992); by Ariana Gerstein, 16mm, b&w, silent, 6 minutes
A film of intricate interframe detail. Perhaps the best example of Ariana's style of hand manipulated
black and white images interwoven by rhythmic crosscutting. The title refers to the short repetitive
sequences of film she varies throughout the work.
78 RPM (1994); by Anton Herbert, 16mm, color, sound, 5 minutes
A trip to nowhere and the past - equating the two. The makers knowledge of cinema technology
and history are evident throughout the film. He uses this information to acquire for the viewer an
experience that references the classic tools of film communication, while maintaining a hand made
craftsmanship.
Trip East For Color (1994); by Francis Schmidt, 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes
Beginning with a witty and acerbic reference to trends in film theory "this film has lots of signs in
it - but only to you and me". Trip East manages to be both humorous and profound. It is a kind of
all in one travelogue, diary, structural film and home-movie that seems to be both insolent to and
respectful of all of these forms within and without itself.
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WANTING THE SAME THING
AND NOT WANTING THE SAME THING
INGO Kratisch and Jutta Sartory in person
Co-Sponsored by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco
Thursday, May 2, 1996 — Center for the Arts
Through a series of experimental film works produced over the past 16 years, Ingo Kratisch and
Jutta Sartory have described the complex relationship between urban artist and city space, from
documenting the incremental and revolutionary changes in their native city, Berlin, to exploring the
social and moral aspects of artistic production in the public sphere. In poetic and conceptual ways,
the filmmakers provide a working model for the integration of challenging formal and aesthetic
issues with socially engaging content. O Logischer Garten (1988) was screened at the
Cinematheque in 1993, and tonight we present Das Gleiche wollen und das Gleiche nicht wollen
(Wanting the Same Thing and Not Wanting the Same Thing).
Das Gleiche wollen und das Gleiche nicht wollen
(Wanting the Same Thing and Not Wanting the Same Thing)
(1990); 16mm, color, sound, 98 minutes
This is a film that could be described as a city portrait of sorts: a portrait of Berlin as a
political/historical/emotional site that is mapped out tiirough a tapestry of individual voices, lives,
everyday observations. It shies away from any preconceived rhetoric, and history specifically
Jewish history - in Berlin is not represented as an abstract term but in its reflection on the present
and the personal. Among the Berliners the film follows are architect Myra Warhaftig, who searches
Berlin for buildings that were designed by Jewish architects; Mario Offenberg, who fights for the
rights of the Adass Jisroel community, the recreation of its synagogue and the care of its cemetery;
the German American writer (and here also chef and scribe) Jeannette Lander; and the sound artist
Rolf Langebartels. Jutta Sartory comments, "The Berlin residents are shown during the period
between summer 1988 and December 1990 in their personal relationships to their professional
activities and to their art. The persons' actions are not invented, but evolve during the moments of
shooting. Thus the film is composed of the subject's reality and at the same time constitutes the
framework for their appearance. Performer and acting individual are identical."
"Das Gleiche ... represents for me a turning point. It is not a document or an essay, but an
expression. And what it expresses is precisely the need to become whole once again. Not only
personally, but for the city, the nation, and the society as well. When Sartory, Kratisch, and their
friends repair the gravestones in the cemetery of Adass Yisroel, it is not only the Jewish
community that is being repaired, but Berlin and Germany as well. Beyond acknowledging
absence and loss, ...it takes a further step in acknowledging those who live.
"It also expresses an interest in others that is rare and profound. But this interest is also a
reflection, because it comes not out of a desire to teach but to learn. There is no narrative voice in
Das Gleiche ... that tells you anything, there is no knowledge outside the film itself. In its
expression of Jutta's and Ingo's experience of these particular people, places, and events it, too, is
whole, generous. The film shares an experience that most haven't the courage or ability to
undertake.
"And what it does is to quietly prod their own culture into the acceptance of another reality -
towards integration when it is divided, towards an acknowledgment of the past when it is denied,
towards finding a connection to what has been lost or cast away."
— Dan Eisenberg, "Reparatur"
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
In all of their work, "Kratisch and Sartory's symbols are not obvious or easy, but neither are they
hermetic and private, for the films suggest how to interpret them. As viewers are initiated into a set
of symbols and personalities, they are invited, tacitly, to join the searchers who scour Berlin and
its environs for the refuse and remnants of former times."
— Karen Rosenberg
EARLY EVENING EXPERIMENTAL
Sunday, May 5, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
nostalgia by HoUis Frampton
Plumb line (1968-1972); by Carolee Schneemann
STEP ACROSS THE BORDER
Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel in person
Programmed by Irina Leimbacher
Sunday, May 5, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
I think if I do a concert and one person has their ideas seriously affected by what I
did, and comes to me in perplexity, or in some kind of changed state, and wants to
talk about what I did, that's great, and that happens a lot.
— Fred Frith in the film. Step Across the Border
Fred Frith' s music makes your jaw drop, your feet dance, and your neighbors
move.
— a music critic
...if you used a carrot to shave with in the morning, could you still call it a carrot?
Frith so redefines the possible uses of the guitar arui makes traditional discourse
irrelevant.
— L.A. Herald Examiner
Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel have just dropped down into San Francisco from Munich to
screen their new film of life in motion, Middle of the Moment, at the San Francisco International
Film Festival. What better opportunity to see their previous film of life in motion and portrait of
avant-garde musician Fred Frith, Step Across the Border - a film as improvised, inspirational,
open-ended and full of a sense of wonder as Frith's own compositions. We are thrilled to have
them and their film - which may also make your jaw drop and your feet move - at the
Cinematheque tonight.
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Nicolas and Werner have been making films - both fiction and their own special form of
documentary - for several years, first alone, then together. Each attended the Munich Film School,
but at different times. They met in the early 80s by chance (well, one was asking the other where to
find some pot) and began participating in each other's projects. Werner had already made several
films focusing on music including Vagabunden Karawane which follows a group of musicians
from Germany overland to India via Iran and Afghanistan, and Nicolas was beginning film school
where he would make a feature and Wolfsgrub, a documentary about his mother's survival in Nazi
Germany and her father the Jewish author Max Mohr. Friends and collaborators, they decided to
make a film together, as co-equal partners, while at a stopover in Madrid on their way to visit
Fernando Birri's new film school in Cuba. Both had used the music of Fred Frith in previous
films, and they loved his spirit and his work. The choice of their subject was perhaps somehow
obvious...
Werner and Nicolas work together as a team, collaborating in all aspects of the film production and
post-production (though one does camera and the other sound - see if you can figure that one out
from the credits!). Aside from Step Across the Border and Middle of the Moment, they also co-
directed Lani und die Seinen about the life of a Sinti (gypsy) family in France at the same time they
were making Step Across the Border.
Step Across the Border (1990); 16mm, b&w, sound, 90 minutes
With musicians: Fred Frith, Joey Baron, Ciro Battista, Iva Bitova, Tom Cora, Jean Derome, Pavel
Fajt, Eitetsu Hayashi, Tim Hodgkinson, Arto Lindsay, Rene Lussier, Haco, Kevin Norton, Bob
Ostertag, Zeena Parkins, Lawrence Wright, John Zom, and many others. And special appearances
by: Robert Frank, Julia Judge, Jonas Mekas, Ted Milton, John Spacely, Yasushi Utsonomiya,
Tom Walker.
"In the midst of the New Music maelstrom dwells the impishly adventurous Fred Frith. Along with
avant-gardists such as John Zom, Brian Eno and Christian Marclay, British-bom Frith has
expanded the bounds of musicality, adding serendipity, recombinant styles, and a panoply of
worldly sounds to the acceptable spectmm. His compositions, generally built around prepared
guitar, jitter with freshness. Step Across the Border travels to several continents tracking Frith's
conspicuous creativity. Unencumbered by celebrity, this whimsical musician confesses a desire to
change the listener. The efficacy of his music is conveyed through mesmerizing performances -
some spontaneous recitals, others in formal concert. Undaunted by Frith's feints and fancies, the
directors of this extraordinary piece of portraiture, Nicolas Humbert and Wemer Penzel, have
extended his field of play. They've constmcted a symphony of the post-industrial city, hellish
lyricism, and all, locating the source of Frith's music in a nocturnal brilliance. Step Across the
Border pushes Frith's sonic experiments into the rich province of visual soundings."
— Steve Seid
"In Step Across the Border two forms of artistic expression, improvised music and cinema direct,
are interrelated. In both forms it is the moment that counts, the intuitive sense for what is
happening in a space. Music and film come into existence out of an intense perception of the
moment, not from the transformation of a pre-ordained plan. In improvisation the plan is revealed
only at the end. One finds it.
"The other connection concems the work method: the film team as band. Much as musicians
communicate via the music, our work, too, was realized within a very small and flexible team of
equals. What mattered was exchange. And movement. Sometimes we started filming in the middle
of the night, responding to a new idea that had arisen only minutes before. We had a fundamental
feeling for what we wanted to do, for what kind of film this should be. And we followed that
feeling. It was all very instinctive ..."
— Nicolas Humbert and Wemer Penzel
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
"Listen & See. The wish associated with every kind of artistic endeavor, the wish to change the
world, is fulfilled in this film in a literally phenomenal way. People are very happy to receive all
the time, but there are some things you can do in cultural terms that will make people react in a
different way - more finding something in themselves they didn't know about... when it works,
it's because it strikes a chord inside somebody.' The growing awareness of the principles of
musical creation, the process of discovery and the musician's perceptions correspond with an
increasing understanding of the expressive methods of the two filmmakers. Initiated into the
multifarious possibilities of a world to seize, hear and observe, the auditor/viewer is - after the
unforgettable closing images of the film bring all its principles to the point" - left, finally, to face
himself: Step Across the Border, listen and see."
— Herman Barth
Selective Filmography:
Vagabunden Karawane (Penzel, 1979); Dein Kopf ist ein schlafendes Auto (Penzel, 1980)
Krampus (Penzel, 1983); Bokra — Pirates of Silence (Penzel, 1984); Nebel jagen (Humbert
1984); Posolera (Penzel, 1985); Wolfsgrub (Humbert, 1985); AdiosAl Odio (Penzel, 1987); Lani
unde die Seinen (Humbert & Penzel, 1989); Step Across the Border (Humbert & Penzel, 1990)
Middle of the Moment (Humbert & Penzel, 1995).
Thanks to the Goethe -Institut San Francisco, the Goeihe-Institut Los Angeles,
the San Francisco International Film Festival , and LA. Filmforum
for making the filmmakers' visit to California possible!
EARLY EVENING EXPERIMENTAL
Sunday, May 12, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Films by Gunvor Nelson:
Frame Line (1984)
Field Study #2(1988)
Natural Features (1990)
SEVEN WOMEN — SEVEN SINS
A FILM BY CHANTAL AKERMAN, MAXIE COHEN, VALIE EXPORT, LAURENCE
Gavron, Bette Gordon, Ulrike Ottinger and Helke Sander
Programmed by Irina Leimbacher
Sunday, May 12, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
What constitutes a sin in this day and age, and how would you approach such a subject? That was
the question the German television station ZDF put to seven women filmmakers along with a
guarantee to produce their varied versions of sin on celluloid. This omnibus film provides an
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exciting, stylistically and geographically diverse overview of work by some of the most respected
and formally adventurous women working in the field today. Germany's Helke Sander directs
Gluttony; New York based Bette Gordon interprets Greed; Maxi Cohen, another New Yorker,
directs Anger; Belgian Chantal Akerman embodies Sloth; Austrian Valie Export portrays Lust;
Laurence Gavron of France takes on Envy; and Germany's Ulrike Ottinger directs Pride.
At the time this film was made, the subject of the seven deadly sins had already been explored
twice in compilation films. The first was in 1951 at the hands of seven Italian and French directors,
among whom were Roberto Rosellini (who did the segment on Envy ), Georges Lacombe, and
others. The second was completed exactly a decade later by a contingent of the French New Wave
including Jean-Luc Godard (who directed Sloth ), Claude Chabrol, Jacques Demy, and others.
One of the ideas behind the second version was that the values of art and society had changed so
dramatically in 10 years that the notion of sin and its translation into cinema were worthy of a new
and different work. It took twenty-six more years until seven women were offered the opportunity
to reinterpret and cinematically reformulate those same old seven sins! As most compilation work.
Seven Women — Seven Sins is extremely varied in tone, style and pace. The film thus serves not
only as a women's version/vision of sin but also provides insight into the diverse cinematic
concerns and styles of the seven women directors who participated in its making.
Seven Women — Seven Sins (1987); 16mm, color, sound, 101 minutes
Commissioned and Produced by ZDF Television, Federal Republic of Germany.
Gluttony (FiUtern!) by Helke Sander, Germany
Eve discovers the rapture of the apple and offers it to Adam thus committing the original sin. Told
in studio-bound cartoon style, this tale serves as an allegory for the plight of the contemporary
male/female relationship. With Gabriela Herz and Michael Dick.
Much of Helke Sander's work stems from her close involvement with the women's movement
(which she helped launch with a pivotal speech at the Socialist Students' Association in 1968) and
deals with its development and sexual politics in the context of patriarchal capitalism. Founder and
editor of Frauen und Film, the first European feminist film journal, she is probably best known for
her feature. The All Around Reduced Personality — Redupers (1977). One of her most recent
films was a documentary on the rape of German women by the Allied Forces at the end of World
Warn.
Greed (Pay To Play) by Bette Gordon, United States
Three women have a strange, claustrophobic encounter in the ladies room of a luxurious Manhattan
hotel. The bathroom attendant is sure she'll win the lottery until the rich bitch destroys it and the
call girl helps to dispose of the body. Set in a timeless "twilight zone", where objects bear a
menacing aura and seemingly harmless conversation carries a threatening subject. Pay To Play is
about greed, avarice and its victimization of women in a consumer society. With Rosemary
Hochschild, Kate Valk, Roberta Wallach.
Bette Gordon's earliest films were experimental non-narratives made in collaboration with her
then-husband, James Benning. Combining feminist theory with the exploration of narrative form,
her subsequent work includes Empty Suitcases (1981) and the feature Variety (1984) (written by
Kathy Acker).
Anger by Maxi Cohen, United States
Maxi put an ad in the Village Voice looking for angry people. After close to a hundred calls, she
interviewed, amongst others, a four time murderer who had never been caught, a Wall Street
sadist, a cop framed by the police department, a hermaphrodite angry at herself for choosing to
become a woman, and a couple stuck in their anger at one another.
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Maxi Cohen has produced and directed a number of films and videos, many of them
documentaries, including Joe and Maxi (1979) about her relationship with her father and Intimate
Interviews: Sex in Less than Two Minutes (1984). She also designed the first US video art
distribution system at Electronic Arts Intermix and co-founded First Run Features.
Sloth (Portrait d'une paresseuse) by Chantal Akerman, Belgium/France
Chantal pushes the phenomenon of being lazy to its utmost. The director, Chantal, tries to get out
of bed in order to shoot this film about sloth. Like a kid who doesn't want to go to school, she
leisurely goes through the ordeal of preparing oneself for the day, for work, with contempt.
"Comparable in force and originality to Godard or Fassbinder" (J. Hoberman), Chantal Akerman
began making films while a teenager and finished (as well as starred in) her first feature Je Tu, II,
Elle (1974) at the age of 24. Probably best known for Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce,
1080 Bruxelles (1976), now a classic of feminist cinema, she has made numerous films which
consistently subvert conventional cinematic forms and genres and redefine women's place and
voice in them.
Lust (Ein Perfektes Paar oder die Unzucht Wechselt Ihre Haut) by Valie Export,
Austria
Valie's approach to lust translates in modem terms to a music video about sex and consumerism.
In one satiric scene a bodybuilder, who uses his body like a billboard to sell products, tries to
advise a woman to do the same.
A performance artist, installation artist, photographer, and instigator of 'film happenings' as well
as an experimental and feature filmmaker, Valie Export does work which often deals with the
liberation of the female body and the extemalization of psychic states. She is perhaps best known
for her first feature, Invisible Adversaries (1976), a science fiction film about female identity and
representation, and her more recent feature. The Practice of Love (1984). Export briefly taught and
lived in the Bay Area in the mid-eighties.
Envy (II Maestro) by Laurence Gavron, France
Laurence proves that jealous feelings are good for nothing. A man, who is the nephew of the
theater director in a small town in France, envies the work of the conductor, one of his uncle's
employees. He imitates his idol's life-style (dining on oysters and drinking champagne) and the
way he conducts the opera - "The Barber of Seville". One day this frustrated little man has the
courage to kill his uncle, and takes over the conductor's job. The trouble is he can't conduct
anything but "Seville" and put to the test goes insane. With Evelyne Didi.
Laurence Gavron is a filmmaker and journalist who began her filmmaking career by working on
projects by Cassavettes, Rappaport and Wenders. Her other films include Just Like Eddie, a
portrait of Eddie Constantin, and a short feature. Fin de Soiree
Pride (Superbia) by Ulrike Ottinger, Germany
An allegorical triumphant procession in operatic style is intercut with modem military parades of
every bizarre form and style. With Delphine Seyrig, Irm Hermmann, Yasuko Nagata.
Another of Germany's most well-known and formally innovative women directors, Ulrike
Ottinger's work has been hailed as a landmark in the development of a highly stylized, erotic
women's cinema. Her first feature Madame X — Eine absolute Herrscherin (1977) explored the
lesbian matriarchy of pirate queen Madame X, and her more recent Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia
(1988) explored the relations between four women traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railway and the
Mongolian women they encountered on their joumey. She is currently working on a documentary,
partially shot in San Francisco, about Jews who emigrated to China.
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SEVENTEEN BY JOEL DEMOTT AND JEFF KREINES
Programmed by Joel Shepard
Thursday, May 16, 1996 — Center for the Arts
We are familiar with the story of political prisoners who are disappeared when their views don't
agree with those in power. Well, the same happens to films too. Seventeen is an in-your-face
independent example. Originally intended for airing on PBS and funded by Xerox, the two banded
together to send a message "from Sponsorville" that was not to be ignored. They pulled the rug out
from under the filmmakers with broadside salvoes like that of PBS President Larry Grossman:
"There are some things you cannot do on TV". This and other negative language was included in a
joint Xerox/PBS statement slated to appear in TV Guide the week of the film's television premiere.
It seems that Xerox and PBS were quite cozy, with the corporate giant taking the broadcaster's
word that the finished product was offensive, based on little more than a sneak peak at an under
three minute trailer. WTiat followed was something of a breech birth, complicated by the strong
feelings of pre- viewers in the community represented, even with the support of carefully screened
audiences.
Perhaps you should congratulate yourself that you're here watching this showing tonight. It almost
didn't happen. Even after the initial PBS/Xerox potshots the film continued to be dogged by open
hostility by nominally liberal, supportive media sources. American Film ended up publishing a
harshly cut piece, to provide a positive spin for money roller Xerox. The list of (some very self-
interested) hit pieces stretches from the very beginning to tonight's screening. The more one delves
into the history of the piece, the more it sounds like Hearst's somewhat more deserving hatchet-job
on Welles' Citizen Kane.
Since this film portrays teenager headbangers stumbling through the flatness that is Muncie,
Indiana you can lay even money that there's attitude a-plenty. Turns out that there's also lots of pot
smoking, boozing, dozing, dumb loud music, talking back, flipping the bird to teachers backs,
cussing, dissing, pissing off, flirting, kissing, racist posturing, random destruction, balling,
teenage pregnancy - in short, the kind of deviant (but also typical) hormone driven behavior that
we've all got fond memories of but do not want to view on any screen, small or large, where we
could be recognized by friends, family . Or, worse yet, documented as those bad examples by
strangers throughout the global village. Good thing seventeen-year-olds aren't like that in our
town. Kids these days, huh?
Unless one actually grew up in the happy days of video-land (or on Jupiter), the behavior
documented is something we all share, to some degree. Teenage Werewolf \s closer to the heart of
all our experience. Given the reaction to this film, this shared experience is also something we
wish to shed in, literally, the worst way possible. What appears to be exploitative cynicism on the
part of the filmmakers is, actually, a mirror of our common life-paths, growing up and trying out
attitudes, choices that do not come equipped with an easy-to-follow flow chart or owner's manual.
Even though none of the action and speech documented is made up (fictional), this film shows,
unflinchingly, what makes up the currents of life itself. Each succeeding generation is a blank one,
with adult experience (and censorship) providing the only hastily scribbled narrative. Seventeen
lets us see what was crossed out before various editors (read: the Man, your folks, your principal -
it's not just big corporations or public broadcasters who want to mold our way of thinking, bend
us to their will) got done with the final copy.
SELECTIVE FILMOGRAPHY
Vince & Mary Ann Get Married; 36 Girls; Down on the Farm; Demon Lover Diary.
•program notes by Bruce Townley
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
NEW BAY AREA FILMS
BY Jim Flannery, John Turk, Inger Hansen, Andres Sanz, Farhad
Kalantary, Rebecca A. Blumen, Barbara Klutinis
Sunday, May 19, 1996 - San Francisco Art Institute
The Bay Area is still home to one of the most thriving experimental film communities in the
country, and each year several new filmmakers emerge with distinctive voices who gain national
attention. Tonight we will see a selection of films by makers mostly new to the Cinematheque:
Wind, Water Wings by Barbara Klutinis, whose Trumpet Garden was shown in 1985; Static by
Inger Lise Hansen; Particle Physique by John Turk, a winner at this year's Ann Arbor Film
Festival; Photoheliograph by Jim Flannery, whose performance Steve Reich for 2 Projectors was
included in a program of Bay Area animation in 1993; Emily, Greensboro 1995 by Andres Sanz, a
winner at this year's Big Muddy Festival, If My Mother Knew by Rebecca A. Blumen and Reera
by Farhad Kalantary.
1) Photoheliograph (1995); by Jim Flannery, 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes
Photoheliograph is an interpretation of a 1926 poem by Harry Crosby, which consists of the word
"SUN" surrounded by a grid of the word "black". In the film, 49 digitally-manipulated samples of
the word "black" - one for each in the poem - are looped simultaneously for ihe duration of the
film; the image is constructed of 49 treatments of a photograph of the atmosphere of Saturn,
replicating the phase relationships of the sound loops, obscured by darkness before the appearance
of the SUN at die midpoint. The film is intended to provide the viewer with an experience rather
than an idea, to speak physiologically rather than linguistically. (JF)
black black black black black
black black black black black
black black black black black J,
black black black black black
black black SUN black black
black black black black black
black black black black black
black black black black black
black black black black black
black black black black black
"The title is a play on words. Heliograph can refer either to an early form of photography or a
means of transmitting telegraph messages using the sun's rays. Jim's film uses celestial images
heavily processed into luscious color photographs which then telegraph an oppressive tattoo into
the viewer's head. One is literally being engraved upon by the film."
— Francis Schmidt, X-Film Chicago
2) Particle Physique (1995); by John Turk, 16mm, color, sound, 8.5 minutes
This film is an exploration of the physical and chemical properties of the film medium. Within the
disintegrating stability of the emulsion's surface is a depiction of an urban landscape in decay. The
human figure is left suspended in the infemo. (JT)
3) Static (1995); by Inger Lise Hansen, 16mm, color, sound, 4.5 minutes
Objects, material and matter in constant motion - always in different locations, not going anywhere
in particular. (ILH)
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4) Reera (1995); Farhad Kalantary, 16nmi, color, sound, 8.5 minutes
Reera is a glance at the state of confinement in the mental space of the individual. A self-induced
imprisonment the system of beliefs and perceptions and a freedom which always escapes farther
away in every attempt made to reach it. (FK)
5) Emily, Greensboro, 1995 (1995); by Andres Sanz, 16mm, b&w, sound, 6 minutes
A chronicle of a man's desire for a woman (who, in turn, becomes WOMAN: "...and the other
was Emily too.. .Emily could be anything.. .Each change came faster") that is also a memory of lust
preserved in a hothouse. Semi-pixelated images/shots interspersed with what appears to be '"real
time". (AS)
6) If My Mother Knew... (1996); by Rebecca A. Blumen,
16mm, color and b&w, sound, 6 minutes
This is an experimental film with a beatnik/jazz drums and bass soundtrack. This film is a portrait
of a "lesbian gaze" in San Francisco which sensualizes architecture, fruits and the female body.
The images combine naturally occurring sensuous geometric shapes, colors and textures in San
Francisco through the juxtaposition of women's bodies, wild camera movement, and San
Francisco architecture. (RAB)
7) Wind/Water/Wings ( 1995); by Barbara Klutinis,
16mm, color, sound by Pamela Z, 22 minutes
Wind/Water/Wings is an optically printed canvas which explores the interior feel of a world
moving with inherent fluidity through a medium of wind and water. It presents an impressionistic
portrait of unnatural forces that collide. On a metaphorical level, it represents the fragile, interactive
status of nature.
Wind/Water/Wings is my menopause film: meditative, reflective, unsettling, unpredictable,
sometimes ripping apart at the seams. It takes the form of an archetypal drama between nature's
poetic elements and unnatural forces gone awry. This film can also be seen as a metaphor for our
fragile environment - both exterior and interior. (BK)
ARCHIMEDES' SCREW AND OTHER NEW WORKS
BY SCOTT STARK
Scott Stark in person
Thursday, May 23, 1996 — Center For the Arts
Scott Stark has produced more than 50 films and videos in the last fifteen years. Additionally, he
has created a number of gallery and non-gallery installations using film and video, and created
elaborate photographic collages using large grids of images. Bom and educated in the midwest, he
has always been interested in aggressively pushing his work beyond the threshold of traditional
viewing expectations, challenging the audience to question its relationship to the cinematic process;
yet he also tries to build into the work elements of whimsy and incongruity that allow the viewer to
laugh and reconnect while maintaining a critical distance. Both a passionate purist and a cynical
skeptic, he likes to emphasize the physicality of film while humorously cross-referencing it to the
world outside the theater, attempting to lay bare the paradoxes of modem culture and the magical
nature of the perceptual experience.
Scott's films and videos have shown locally, nationally and internationally, including recent one
person shows at New York's Museum of Modem Art and the Austria Filmmakers Cooperative in
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Vienna. His films I'll Walk with God and Acceleration both won recent Director's Choice first
place awards at the Black Maria Film Festival. He has taught art classes at the San Francisco Art
Institute (where he also received his MFA), interweaving non-traditional uses of film and video
with a variety of art disciplines. Stark served for seven years on the board of the San Francisco
Cinematheque, during which time, among many other things, he co-founded the Cinematheque's
joumal of film and media art. Cinematograph.
Scott has worked in a variety of motion picture media, including 8mm, super-8mm, 16mm and
video. Several of his films introduced a novel technique where he ran movie film through a still
camera, which, when projected, produces collage-like barrages of images and odd optically-
generated soundtracks. He calls this series of films the Chromesthetic Response Series. These
days he makes his living as a graphic designer and desktop publisher, and occasionally gives
presentations about the Internet to artists and filmmakers.
He is the author of the Flicker pages, the world wide web site for avant garde cinema,
@ http://www.sirius.com/~sstark/.
Denea Bull Run (1993); Super-8, color, sound, 6 minutes
Two camera rolls documenting a public spectacle in Denea, Spain.
Under a Blanket of Blue (1996); Super-8, color, sound, 15 minutes
A super-8 alchemy of song and imposing urban landscapes. Filmed in heavily over-developed
areas of northern and central Spain, the dehumanizing and impersonal architectural structures that
the inhabitants call "home" are edited into a bittersweet array of rigid geometric forms and bland
textures. Ironically grafted onto the imagery is Glenn Miller's sweet romantic ballad, "Under a
Blanket of Blue," both in original recording and in a breathless vocal a capella by the maker during
the filming.
Back in the Saddle Again (1946(?)/1996) 16mm, b&w, sound, 5 minutes
A found film shot by a man named Bud Sola of his family and friends, using an old single-system
sound camera.
Acceleration (1993); Super-8, color, sound, 10 minutes
A snapshot taken in a moment of human evolution, where the souls of the living are reflected in the
windows of passing trains. The camera captures the reflections of passengers in the train windows
as the trains enter and leave the station, and the movement creates a stroboscopic flickering effect
that magically exploits the pure sensuality of the moving image.
I'll Walk with God (1994); 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes
Using emergency information cards surreptitiously lifted from the backs of airline seats, I'll Walk
with God pictorially charts an airline flight attendant's stoic transcendence through and beyond
worldly adversity. "Through an elaborate system of posturing and nuance that evokes an almost
ritualistic synergy, the female protagonist(s) are shuttled toward a higher spiritual plane, carried
aloft on the shimmering wings of Mario Lanza's soaring tremolo.
Archimedes' Screw (1996); Hi-8 video, color, sound, 15 minutes
The final installment of the trilogy that includes I'll Walk with God (1994) and Acceleration
(1993); cross-referencing early 20th century nostalgia with Christian indoctrination, and using a
modem billboard as a point of departure, Archimedes' Screw playfully distills and reconfigures
contemporary notions of spirituality and public/private identities, evoking a sense of displaced and
re-placed sanctification.
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W (1988); three super-8 projectors, color, sound, 25 minutes
An expansive, soaring, joyfully indulgent paean to the range of human sensual and psychic
experience. Shot using three super-8mm cartridges which were cycled at 10-20 second intervals
through the camera. Time segments are compressed and overlapped.
VIDEO/FILMOGRAPHY OF SCOTT STARK, 1980-PRESENT
Abrasion (1980); Rescission (1980); Proof: A Fragment (1980); S.F. Skyline (1981); Waterhole
(1981); Learning to Breathe Above Ground (1981); Disaffected Motor Response (1981); Truck
(1981); Straddle (1981); Geneva (1982); Corporate Accounting (1982); The Function of the
Gland... (1982); Degrees of Limitation (1982); Urban Archeology #7 (1982); Umbrella Man
(1982); Waves & Reyes (1982); Hotel Cartograph (1983); Generation 30 (1983); Urban;
Archeology #3 (1983); Texturale (1984); Language (1984); Home Film (1984); Max Film (1985);
Tie Film (1985); 11/9/85/Las/Vegas/NV (1985); LVN/Redux (1985); Probability (1985); Air
(1986); Low Resolution TV (1986); H (1987); Detector (1987); Crazy (1987); [Sustain] (1987);
Chromesthetic Response (1987); The Sound of His Face (1988); Comers (1988); The Politics of;
Identity Part 1 (Female) (1988); The Politics of Identity Part 2 (Male){\9?,%); Splitting You
Splitting Me Still (1988); W(1988); Satrapy (1988); Protective Coloration (1990); Episiotomy
(1990); So Bin Tag (1991); Don't Even Think (1992); Tender Duplicity (1992); Imperfect
Solutions (1984/1992); Unauthorized Access (1993); Acceleration (1993); I'll Walk with God
(1994); Under a Blanket of Blue (1996); Archimedes' Screw (1996).
EARLY EVENING EXPERIMENTAL
Sunday, May 26, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Song 24 & 25 (1967); 8mm, 10 minutes
"A naked boy with recorder and a view from the dump."
Song 26 (1968); 8mm, 8 minutes
"The emotional properties of talk."
Song 28 (1969); 4 minutes
"Scenes as texture."
Song 29 (1969); 4 minutes
"A Portrait of the artist's mother."
American Thirties Song (Song 30) (1969); 30 minutes
"A picture of the spirit of the 1930's."
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
YOKO ONO 3: WITH AND FOR JOHN LENNON
Bed-In, Woman, Goodbye Sadness, and Sisters, O Sisters
Sunday, May 26, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Some critic recently commented on John and I as being lollypop artists who are
preoccupied with blowing soap-bubbles forever. I thought that was beautiful.
There's a lot you can do with blowing soap-bubbles. Maybe the future USA should
decide their presidency by having a soap-bubble contest. Blowing soap-bubbles
could be used as a form of swearing. Some day the whole world can make it its
occupation to blow soap-bubbles.
Would they ever know that John West and Yoko DeMille ate bananas together?
— Yoko Ono
From her work with the Fluxus movement to a recent guest appearance on Mad About You, Yoko
Ono has continued to occupy an uncompromising and wholly original place in American popular
culture. As a member of Fluxus, Ono established herself as one of the most important figures in
the late sixties and early seventies avant-garde art scene, associating with luminaries such as John
Cage, Nam June Paik, and Robert Rauschenberg. But it was her marriage to John Lennon that
brought her name world-wide recognition. The marriage was one of those rare events that could
only have happened in the sixties when the differentiation between the extreme avant-garde as
exemplified by Ono and popular culture in the form of a Beatle, John Lennon, was continually
blurred. The marriage also instigated, along with the escalating war in Viemam, the introduction of
a more overtly political element to Ono's work. Conceptual projects like Bed-In and Bagism served
as strong protests against the war, but what made these collaborations between Ono and Lennon so
successftil was not simply the political message they espoused, but rather how they approached it.
The conceptual piece Bagism involved Lennon and Ono standing in a plastic bag naked, smiling,
and waving peace signs to protest the war. What first appears a silly prank, reveals itself to be a
grim and provocative portrait of the way in which many soldiers would return from the battlefields.
It is this ability to combine humor and seriousness, whether about politics or feminism or art, that
gives Ono's work much of its power and originality. The films and videos presented tonight,
particularly Bed-In, exemplify this tendency. All of them involve, either directly or through
memory, the figure of John Lennon; the important impact their relationship had on each other's
works and, ultimately, on our culture as a whole cannot be underestimated.
Ten for Two: Sisters, O Sisters (1972); 16mm, color, sound, 4 minute excerpt
"Shot in December, 1971, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ten for Two is a feature-length documentary
of the John Sinclair Freedom Rally (the leader of the Rainbow People's Party had been sentenced
to ten years in prison for possession of two marijuana cigarettes - hence the title). Other performers
included Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Allen Ginsberg, and Commander Cody and his Lost Planet
Airmen. The film was never released in America due to legal problems; this segment documents
Ono's performance at the rally."
— Tom Smith, American Federation of Arts
Woman (1981); video transferred to 16inm, color, sound, 3 1/2 minutes
Goodbye Sadness (1982); video transferred to 16mm, color, sound, 2 1/2 minutes
"Made after Lennon's death, these two videotapes and Walking on Thin Ice were made to
accompany musical selections from the album Double Fantasy. They combine home-movie footage
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San Francisco Cinematheque
of the Lennons with new footage of Ono Hving alone in New York. The juxtaposition of this visual
material creates a powerful feeling of loss."
— Tom Smith, American Federation of Arts
Bed-In (1969); collaboration with John Lennon, 16mm, color, sound, 61 minutes
"The most overtly political of Ono's films is Bed-In, also known variously as Bed-Piece or Bed-
Peace. The Lennons spent one entire week in bed in a hotel in Montreal as a protest against the
Vietnam War. The bed is constantly ringed by journalists and photographers, and an odd
assortment of guests (Tommy Smothers, Timothy Leary, Al Capp, Jonas Mekas) drops by to chat
and debate political issues."
— Tom Smith, American Federation of Arts
"The message of peace was the strongest idea, but there was also the message of love - men and
women being able to make a statement together - and the West and East coming together."
— Yoko Ono
"The film Bed-in.. ..is a straightforward documentary. It is also a visual record of the late 1960s
search for peace during the Vietnam war. In this film Ono and Lennon became the subjects, not
within a conceptual or performance structure as in their other films, but as activists using their
celebrity as a means to bring attention to the issue that concerned them. Here the public persona
was not critiqued or hidden from view but was used as a means to an end - the search for a
positive, constructive, and poetic search for peace."
— John Hanhardt, Yoko Ono: Arias and Objects
FILMOGRAPHY OF YOKO ONO
Eyeblink (aka One, One Blink, FluxFilm #15 and #19 ) (1966); No.I (aka Match, FluxFilm #14 )
(1966); No.4 (aka FluxFilm #16 ) (1966); No.4 (Bottoms ) (1966); Film No.5 (Smile ) (1968);
Two Virgins (1968 with John Lennon); Bed-In (1969 with John Lennon); Rape (1969 with John
Lennon); Apotheosis (1970 with John Lennon); Fly (1970); Freedom (1970); Up Your Legs
Forever (1970); Erection (1971); Imagine (1971 with John Lennon); The Museum of Modem Art
Show (1971); Ten for Two: Sisters, O Sisters (1972 with John Lennon); Walking on Thin Ice
(1981); Woman (1981); Goodbye Sadness (1982)
•program notes by Jeff Lambert*
This exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts
The AFA media arts exhibitions are partially supported by the National
Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts
LONDON SOUND AND VISION
JOHN Thomson in person
Thursday, May 30,1996 — Center for the Arts
London Sound and Vision is a diverse survey of work being made in London over the last couple
of years by film and video artists. The program attempts to capture the concerns and devices of
artists working in one of the world's largest and most culturally diverse cities. The films which
make up the first section of the program use visual means to represent manifestations of individual
subjectivity, relationships between individuals and the articulation of subjectivity within social
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
bodies. The second part of the program consists of recent work by London video artists.
Characterized by a downbeat, ironic wit, most of these works abandon the video wizzery of 1980s
video art for a sparse, almost amateurish appearance.
John Thomson has worked as a cinema organizer at the London Filmmakers' Co-op since early
1995. He also curates film and video on a freelance basis and tutors in film at Central St. Martin's,
London..
The Watershed (1995); by Alia Syed, 16mm, 7 minutes
A film of testimonies - of love, betrayal, and a testimony of abuse. The testimony of self that you
take to an-other. A revenge film where the protagonist's greatest destruction is ultimately her own.
(AS)
Salamander (1994); by Tanya Mahboob Syed, 16mm, 15 minutes
Set in an urban landscape this film fragments conventional narrative into a playful and
expressionistic nocturne that carries its 'lesbian sub-plot' with the power of a ten-ton truck. (TMS)
I'm Not Here (1994); by Carol Morley, 16mm, 14 minutes
In 1970 the actor Sir Alec Guinness wrote a letter of complaint to The Times newspaper about the
lack of attention shop attendants gave to customers. The letter was printed under the heading 'I'm
not Here'. Using that story as its inspiration this film about shop assistants and boredom wittily
combines extracts from a Harrods' training video and original footage of Miss London Stores
1970.
Front Crawl (1994); by Chris Saunders, 3/4" video, 10 minutes
Originally produced in 16mm for 'FUEME', a live performance at the University of London Union
swimming pool in 1992, Front Crawl uses a rdxture of found and original footage to explore the
fears and pubescent eroticism that lurk below the surface in this reworking of a 1970s swimming
training film. (CS)
Kim Wilde Auditions (work-in-progress excerpt) by Cerith Wynn Evans, 3/4" video, 10
minutes
Kim Wilde Auditions is a purposefully unfinished piece - an ongoing work in progress. Excerpts
from a male model's audition tape for a Kim Wilde music video have been chosen especially for
London Sound and Vision.
Hermaphrodite Bikini (1995); by Clio Barnard, 3/4" video, 5 minutes
A story about a bra is recounted in a kitchen while angels with butterfly wings swing in a garden.
This bra is the first really successful one I've ever owned... I wore it every day for a year which
is totally obscene. It sort of melted and welded itself to my skin. It felt like an extra bodily part,
another organ." (CB)
Ann (i) mated (1994); by Ann Course, 3/4" video, 3 minutes
A surrealistic animation exploring the world of childhood. Freudian symbolism combines with
images of daily life, family disputes and abuse in a strange, anthropomorphic universe.
45 Rabbits to Walsingham (1992); by Keith Stutter, 3/4" video, 3 minutes
"Walsingham is an alias amongst many others that Keith Stutter has chosen in order to denounce,
with a certain degree of cynicism, conftised political situations. He arranges borrowed images into
analogical series to which he then imposes his own logic."
— Centre Georges Pompidou
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San Francisco Cinematheque
Various Degrees (1993); by Keith Stutter, 3/4" video, 3 minutes
The Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol is not known for its architectural beauty but for its
suicides. The video examines the way people deal with suicide, the last taboo. (KS)
The Inequality of Being (1992); by Keith Stutter, 3/4" video, 3 minutes
"The Inequality of Being has a deadpan charm. A voice flatly intones 'another dead pigeon' over
various squashed corpses and then exclaims, with feeling 'oh, poor cat' over the desiccated
remains of a pussy."
— Sarah Kent, Time Out
Waiting For Dave (1994); by George Barber, 3/4" video, 6 minutes
A humorous rooftop monologue: George Barber explains how he sees the year developing while
waiting for the ever unreliable Dave.
Passing Ship (1994); by George Barber, 3/4" video, 6 minutes
George Barber appropriates popular film culture and engages with it on his own terms. He reclines
in his bath narrating, in a loosely constructed monologue, an account of how he survived a plane
crash over water and the events which lead up to it. A montage of 1970s American disaster films
accompany and interact with his tongue-in-cheek account.
Annabel (1995); by Chris Saunders, 3/4" video, 6 minutes
Annabel is a humorous and provocative critique of the institutionalized economic terrorism
practiced in the city of Lx)ndon. Annabel is a split screen romantic thriller. (CS)
Hair Piece (1994); by John Goodwin, 3/4" video, 4 minutes
Walter Mitty meets Vidal Sassoon in this humorous short. An entertaining exploration of the ways
in which hairstyles define character and roles.
Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995); by Tracy Emin, 3/4" video, 5 minutes
Emin's amazing sexual coming-of-age video describes her liberation from the confines of a small
seaside resort.
EARLY EVENING EXPERIMENTAL
Sunday, June 2, 1997 — San Francisco Art Institute
The running times of all Songs are necessarily approximate as the works are created
for the medium of 8mm and therefore projected, for the most part, by machines
with variable motors. They are intended to cohere rhythmically at speeds ranging
from 8 frames to 24 frames per second. The approximate times indicated are based
on an average speed midway between these two extremes. The running times listed
in the catalogue for Songs 1-10 are perhaps more indicative of 12 frames per
second than of 16 frames per second average given below, because at the time I
submitted length approximates fort he first ten Songs I was more interested, as
viewer of my work in that slower speed.
— Stan Brakhage, from Filmmakers' Cooperative Catalogue No. 4
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Song 26 (1968); 8 minutes
"The emotional properties of talk."
Song 27 My Mountain (1968); 26 minutes
"Time-lapse photography of Arapaho Peak."
Song 27, Rivers (1969); 36 minutes
"Eight short themes."
ORGONE CINEMA
Allisa Dix, Michael Johnsen, and Greg Pierce in person
Sunday, June 2, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
"when i was young i used to think that people on tv spoke another language, then i
found out they spoke my language but were Lying."
— Michael Johnsen
orgone cinema is pittsburgh'S only cinema and archive by that name, they have shown movies
since 1993 as such, so funny you probably shouldn't laugh so much, they "push a pro-love, pro-
film agenda... and will do their levelest sincere best to get you to agree with them."
films to watch:
\. portrat hurt kren nr,5
2. they call this movie they call
me mr. tibbs.
3. chico fell like a ton of bricks and the man
chico and the man fell like a ton of bricks
chico fell like a ton of bricks &
the man fell like a ton of bricks
4. loch ness monster
—the making of loch ness monster
5. ev635a.wllc.72
6. how (much)male organ functions
during sex act
7. the boris spassky high-frequency comb
8. pupae unison move
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San Francisco Cinematheque
9.michael johnsen's barium enema
+ 4-projector onscreen loop
performace/movie "ex-lax"
and 2-analytic proj.
"irritable bowel
syndrome"
AT LAST: AN IDEAL SUBJECT FOR CINEMASCOPE
BUTOH FILM FESTIVAL
West Coast premieres of works from the Tatsumi Hijikata Archives
Introduced by Akiko Motofuji
Co-presented by d-net's San Francisco Butoh Festival
and San Francisco Cinematheque
Monday, June 10, 1996 — AMC Kabuki
Butoh dance may cost you your life. You're like an upright corpse.
— Tatsumi Hijikata
Initiated by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno in the late 1960s, Butoh evolved as a reaction to the
extreme codification of traditional dance in Japan and the westernization of Japanese culture after
World War U. It was both a revolutionary dance movement intended to shock and disturb, and a
magnetic sphere in which artists from various disciplines interacted. Today Butoh is recognized as
one of the major developments in contemporary dance in the latter half of the 20th century, and its
stark, theatrical quality has revolutionized the way people view what dance is and can be.
Tatsumi Hijikata was a key figure in the development of Butoh, and, like Sergei Diaghilev in the
1920s, he served as a matchmaker between dance and visual art. His works are remembered as a
remarkable achievement in the history of performing arts, and he is acknowledged as the greatest
influence on Japanese art since the 1960s. Never seen before on the West Coast, tonight's films
provide a rare glimpse into Hijikata's work and the origins of Butoh.
Akiko Motofuji was Hijikata's dance partner, manager and wife (now widow). In 1950, she
established the Asbestos Dance Studio. Her style combines ballet, neue Tanz and Butoh in a
unique form that explores the severity of body and spirit. In addition to teaching, performing and
traveling with her company, Motofuji manages the Tatsumi Hijikata Archives and has written a
book about her life with Hijikata.
Heso to Genbaku (Navel and A-Bomb) (1960); by Elko Hosoe, 16mm, b&w, 20 minutes
In 1960, "The Laboratory of Junnu" was founded by a group of radical avant-garde artists,
including Shuji Terayama, Nagisa Oshima, Shintaro Ishihara and Shuntaro Tanigawa. Heso to
Genbaku, featuring 'Tatsumi Hijikata, is a fruit of their collaboration. The film speaks to the
singular experience of the Japanese people as victims of the A-Bomb through the metaphor of the
navel.
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Hoso-tan (Story of Smallpox) (1972); by Keiya Ouchida, 16mm, b&w, sound, 95 minutes
After the famous Butoh film Rebellion of the Body, Tatsumi Hijikata ended a four-year period of
silence with the premiere of Hoso-tan. Hijikata described this work as "an embryo, sailor and
child, prostitute, a boat turns back to women's body and then many things happened." Full of
startling imagery and radical movement, Hoso-tan will redefine and reshape our concepts of
Butoh.
Akiko Motofuji's Asbestos-kan Dance Company
performs June 13-16 at Fort Mason's Cowell Theatre.
For more information about the San Francisco Butoh Festival, call 415/824 5044.
35TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION!
Program curated by Steve Anker and Irina Leimbacher
Sunday, June 16, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Yes, it's been 35 years since Canyon Cinema and the San Francisco Cinematheque were bom on
the proverbial sheet hung in Bruce Baillie's backyard. Today the Cinematheque is one of the
world's oldest showcases of alternative film and video. Striving to make experimental film and
video a part of the larger cultural landscape, the Cinematheque presents over 75 programs of rarely
seen new as well as historical work each year, with the artists present at many of 5ie screenings;
publishes its programs notes and a joum^, Cinematograph (due out in October!); and regularly
collaborates with a number of other arts organizations, including Film Arts Foundation, Center for
the Arts, New Langton Arts, Pacific Film Archive, Total Mobile Home, San Francisco
International Film Fest, and others - all on a shoestring budget. Over the years we have premiered
thousands of new works by artists from the Bay Area and all over the world, many of which are
now landmarks of the personal, avant-garde cinema. Tonight's screening includes works by some
of the many previous or current Bay Area filmmakers who have been a part of our past and present
history, beginning with two short films by Canyon Cinema and San Francisco Cinematheque
founders Bruce Baillie and Chick Strand.
Many thanks to you, our audience, who continue to support us and the future of independent film
and video art, and without whom we would not exist.
All My Life (1966); by Bruce Baillie, 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes
Caspar, California, old fence with red roses. (BB)
Fever Dream (1979); by Chick Strand, 16mm, b&w, sound, 7 minutes
A wet hot dream. (CS)
Untitled (1977); by Ernie Gehr, 16mm, color, silent, 5 minutes
Snowflakes falling, a delicious slow pulling of focus.
Field Study #2 (1988); by Gunvor Nelson, 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes
A collage film: dark pourings, bright colors, animal grunts, drawings flutter past.
WiW Night in El Reno (1977); by George Kuchar, 16nmi, color, sound, 6 minutes
A thunderstorm above a hotel in May: sun, wind, clouds, rain and electrical pyrotechnics.
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San Francisco Cinematheque
Intermission
Thine Inward-Looking Eyes (1993); by Thad Povey, 16nmi, color, sound, 2 minutes
Relax. Take a deep breath. (TP)
Till My Head Caves In (1990?); by Rock Ross, 16mm, b&w, sound, 5 minutes
The filmmaker's first anti-intellectual film. (RR)
Tree (1994); by Timoleon Wilkins, 16mm, color, sound, 4 minutes
A found-footage film-poem in elegiac Kodachrome color.
Blood Story (1990); by Greta Snyder, 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes
A simultaneous progression of three divergent tales (2 verbal, 1 visual) of the same raw matter.
Receiving Sally (1993); by Erin Sax, 16mm, b&w, sound, 6 minutes
A response to an imminent death, a projection of closure both forward and back. (ES)
Field Sketches (1995); by silt, super 8mm, color, silent, 6 minutes
Studies from the electro-magnetic field, (silt)
• special thanks to David Sherman and Canyon Cinema, our sister organization*
BEAT AMERICA ON FILM I:
REBELS & OUTSIDERS
Sunday, October 6, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Angry statements, cultural critiques, ruptured etiquette, invasive technique
Beat culture shook 50's and early 60's America to its very placid core. Beat meant "Poor, down
and out, deadbeat, sad, used," according to Beat writer John Clellon Holmes. Jack Kerouac
added, "The Beat Generation is basically a religious generation... Beat means beatitude, not beat
up... You feel it in a beat, in jazz - real cool jazz or a good gutty rock number." As part of a city-
wide celebration of this largely San Francisco movement, the Cinematheque presents five
programs of Beat-era films which had an originality and audacity comparable to writing, music,
performance and painting. Thanks to Ray Carney for his assistance.
7:30 PM
\)Desis1film (1954); by Stan Brakhage, 16mm, b&w, sound, 7 minutes
"Desistfilm employs all the techniques of a spontaneous cinema... The camera, freed from its
tripod, gets everywhere, never intruding, never interfering; it moves into close-ups, or follows the
restless youths in fast, jerky tilts and pans. There seems a perfect unity here of subject matter,
camera movement, and the temperament of the filmmaker himself... The film has vitality, rhythm,
and also the temperament of a poem by Rimbaud, of a naked confession - all improvisation..."
— Lewis Jacobs, The Emergence of Film Art
2) Skullduggery (1960); by Stan Vanderbeek, 16mm, b&w, sound, 5 minutes
Double exposure and other methods are used to include animated collage "live" newsreel footage,
mixing the eye with live scenes and unlive scenes, to jibe at world so-called leaders. (S V)
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
3) Scotch Tape (1962); by Jack Smith, 16nmi, color, sound, 3 minutes
"A Master sense of spiritual nothingness... the most recent explosion of a major creative force in
cinema has in this film filled a New Jersey junkyard with life and movement and spiritual
weightlessness." — Jonas Mekas
A)Doomshow (ca. 1962); by Ray Wisniewski, 16mm, b&w, sound, 10 minutes
In a letter to the Coop, "Dear Bill: I lost Doomshow Tuesday evening on the 'D' train.. .Maybe it's
better that way: Doomshow, was there ever a Doomshowl Let it live, wherever it is, jammed up
someone's vein, say, dead, and dead it might LIVE as myth. Yours truly, Ray Wisniewski" (The
film has since been found.) A ritual fire dance in a cellar on 10th Street in the shadow over
Christmas Island. (RW)
"...Doomshow is one of those black poems of our century which are almost too ugly to look at,
too frightening because they are so true and so much like our own souls."
— Jonas Mekas
5) The End (1953); by Christopher MacLaine, 16nim, color, sound, 35 minutes
"Surprisingly little information is available on Chris MacLaine and his films. That the work even
survives today is largely due to the efforts of Stan Brakhage, who in 1962 brought MacLaine's
films to public attention... The few facts that are known, are, at best, sketchy. He was a published
poet, a sort of down and out San Francisco bohemian who later became one of the psychic
casualties of that scene. His last years were spent at Sunnyacres, a state mental hospital in
Fairfield, California. A destitute and destroyed human being, he died there in April 1975."
— J. J. Murphy
"What is The End all about? It is not my business to tell you what it's all about. My business is to
get excited about it, to bring it to your attention. I am a raving maniac of the cinema. Here is a great
film before you. Here is a film that moves as art; as thought, as an experience. It successfully
combines a number of different searches and drives of modem cinema, it explores and pushes its
boundaries into new lands of experience... If the new art of the dying dinosaur called Europe is
nothing but respectable, square, stale entertainment. The End is part of that new art, and it all
comes from the American underground, which contains visions and movements of new life."
— Jonas Mekas, Movie Journal
6) Go Go Go (1962-4); by Marie Menken, 16mm, color, silent, 1 1.5 minutes
Various parts of the City of New York, the busy man's engrossment in his busyness make up the
major part of the film.. .a tour-de-force on man's activities. (MM)
"Here, the people of the city of New York seem locked into repetitive movements by the grids of
the streets and the pulse of the traffic; by the ritualistic antics of graduation ceremonies or muscle-
men exhibits... but Marie's hand-held camera prevents any and every sense of repetition one might
begin feeling; so that the little "city symphony" that is Go Go Go manages to show the entire
trappings of the metropolis without the consequent despair..."
— Stan Brakhage, Film at Wit's End
7) Towers Open Fire (1963); by Anthony Balch and William Burroughs,
16mm, b&w and color, sound, 1 1 minutes
"Towers... is a direct film equivalent of Burroughs' writing. It has the same apparent formlessness
and the same scabrous humor. The two keys to tiie film are the cut up verse and the dream machine
pioneered by Brion Gysin and Burroughs. ..Four word summary of message content: life is an
orgasm."
— Ian Cameron
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San Francisco Cinematheque
9:00 PM
Shadows (1957-9); by John Cassavetes, 16mm, b&w, sound, 87 minutes
"Since John Cassavetes' film Shadows, more than any other recent American film presents
contemporary reality in a fresh and unconventional manner, it rightly deserves the first Independent
Film Award. The improvisation, spontaneity, and free inspiration which are almost entirely lost in
most films from an excess of professionalism, are fully used in this film. The situations and
atmosphere of New York night life are vividly, cinematically, and truly caught in SHADOWS. It
breathes an immediacy that the cinema of today vitally needs if it is to be a living and contemporary
art."
— Film Culture, January 26, 1959
"In every technical aspect, from the grainy texture of the image to the elliptical and fragmentary
nature of the editing, a documentary maimer is directly evoked, and in such a way that the narrative
fiction.. .seems almost stumbled upon - one followed thread in a tangle of apparently limitless
actuality."
— Jonathan Rosenbaum in "The American New Wave, 1958-67'
BEAT AMERICA ON FILM II:
LIVING ON THE EDGE
Sunday, October 13, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Alternative lifestyles in an increasingly modular world
7:30 PM
1) Triptych In Four Parts (1958); by Larry Jordan, 16mm, color, sound, 12 minutes
One of the few remaining authentically "Beat" films, made from the inside of that particular North
Beach movement. Features artists Wallace Berman and family, poets Michael McClure and Phillip
Lamantia, and artist John Reed. The film begins with a North Beach portrait of John Reed,
proceeds to a grail-like search of the sacred peyote grounds, then returns to the Berman's home in
S.F. "A spiritual drug odyssey seeking religious epiphany, a thing which many people believed in
at that time." (LJ)
2)Aleph (1965); by Wallace Berman, 8mm, color, silent, 7 minutes
"This film is a serial of fleeting images, with live action interspersed by a multitude of stills -
Nijinsky, Nureyev, the Singing Nun, etc. Almost every frame has been hand painted with Hebraic
characters and numbers. The tone is dispassionate, the flickering parade of images having the
elegant, unemphatic simplicity of a rock'n'roll beat."
— David Bourdon, Village Voice,\965
3) Overstimulated (1963); by Jack Smith, b&w, sound on tape, 5 minutes
"This short film, restored in 1995 stars Jerry Simes and the late filmmaker. Bob Fleischer. It is an
early filmic exploration of the "aesthetic of delirium" which Smith developed in his later films. At
one time, in the 1970s this film was treated by Smith as a fragment, and included in various
film/performances with No President. "
— Pacific Film Archive, August 27, 1996
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
4) lAttle Stabs At Happiness (1959-63); by Ken Jacobs, 16mm, color, sound, 15 minutes
Featuring Jack Smith.
Down and person to person, cinema officially gets grabbed back from the professionals here.
Material was cut in as it came out of the camera, embarrassing moments intact. 100' rolls were
used, the timings fitting well with music on old 78's. I was interested in immediacy, a sense of
ease, and an art where suffering was acknowledged but not trivialized with dramatics. Whimsy
was our achievement. And breaking out of step. (KJ)
5) The Brink (1961); by ruth weiss, 16nim, b&w, sound, 40 minutes
Voice over by ruth weiss, Photography by Paul Beattie.
the night the day
the brink
hear horizon hunger
chant
"A south of Market cafeteria thirty-five years ago, Playland-at-the-Beach, Chinatown, Sutro Park -
poet-performer ruth weiss narrates this tone-poem following a pair of lovers through the urban
landscape. The film is based on her book Single Out, with additional unpublished material, as well
as excerpts from Blue in Green, Gallery of Women and a play Figs.
— Pacific Film Archive, April 13, 1996
9:00 PM
1) Night Of The Bomb (1961); by George and Mike Kuchar,
8mm, color, sound on tape, 12 minutes
An early work by the Kuchar brothers. Rebellious teens twist and orgy into oblivion.
"QUESTION: How did your film career start?: We're twenty-one now, but for many years our
films have been scorned. At the age of twelve I made a transvestite movie of the roof and was
brutally beaten by my mother for having disgraced her and also for soiling her nightgown. She
didn't realize how hard it is for twelve-year-old director to get real girls for his movie. But that
unfortunate incident did not end our big costume epics. One month later Mike and I filmed an
Egyptian spectacle on the same roof with all of the television antennas resembling a cast of skinny
thousands. Our career in films had begun"
— George Kuchar, Village Voice, March 5, 1964
2) The Flower Thief (I960); by Ron Rice, 16mm, b&w, sound, 75 minutes
Starring Taylor Mead.
In the old Hollywood days movie studio would keep a man on the set who, when all other sources
of ideas failed (writers, directors), was called upon to 'cook up' something for filming. He was
called The Wild Man. The Flower Thief has been put together in memory of all dead wild men who
died unnoticed in the field of stunt. (RR)
"The Flower Thief makes Shadows look like a Jerry Wald production."
— H.G.Weinberg
• program notes by Alex Blatt and Yaz Yoshii*
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BEAT AMERICA ON FILM III:
MUS IC AND MOTION
Sunday, October 20, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Music as the force of change, the beat of life
7:30 PM
1) Beat (1958); by Christopher MacLaine, 16mm, color, sound, 6 minutes
"The atmosphere of the San Francisco beatnik scene as visualized by creator Christopher
MacLaine, extended filmically so that it includes the human feelings which touched off that scene
as a social movement."
— Filmmaker's Cinematheque (NYC, ca. 1960s)
2) Allures (1961); by Jordan Belson, 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes
The hypnotic, hallucinatory realm of Eastern consciousness played a significant role in Beat
sensibility. "(Belson) describes Allures as a 'mathematically precise' film on the theme of
cosmogenesis - Teilhard de Chardin's term intended to replace cosmology and to indicate that the
universe is not a static phenomenon but a process of becoming, of attaining new levels of existence
and organization."
— Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema
3) Bridges-Go-Round (1958); by Shirley Clarke, 16mm, color, sound, 3.5 minutes
"By my standards. Miss Clarke's picture, an eerie close-up of metropolitan bridges, is
extraordinary. A film that captures the bizarre magic of man-made spans with the movement of a
lightning clap and with the same terrible beauty."
— Thompson, NY Times
4) Cosmic Ray (1961); by Bruce Conner, 16mm, b&w, sound, 4 minutes
"...Of course, the title also refers to musician Ray Charles whose art Conner visually transcribes
onto film as a potent reality, tough and penetrating in its ability to affect some pretty basic animal
instincts. But if such is the content of the film - that much of our behavior consists of bestiality -
the work as a whole stands as insight rather than indictment."
— Carl Belz, Film Culture
5) Motion Picture (1956); by Frank Paine, 16mm, color, sound, 4 minutes
"The energy and freedom of traveling down the road in an automobile was one of the central Beat
metaphors. Pain's mastery of space and time is usefully contrasted with Clarke's in Bridges-Go-
Round. While Paine lunges through space and eats it up, Clarke balletically dances around it."
— Ray Carney
6) The Anatomy of Cindy Fink (1966); by Richard Leacock, Patricia Jaffe, and Paul Leaf,
16mm, color, sound, 12 minutes
A rarely seen documentary about the life of a Greenwich Village dancer, by one of the pioneering
cinema verite filmmakers of the period.
7) Scorpio Rising (1963); by Kenneth Anger, 16mm, color, sound, 29 minutes
"From beginning to end, Anger fills the screen with death allusions - skulls, the cyclists' lethal
looking clothing their powerful machines, scorpions, Siamese cats, sadomasochistic acts of
violence and perversion, and eventually and inevitably death."
— Regina Comwell
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
"Scorpio Rising, Anger's 1963 documentary of Brooklyn bikers in the context of American mass
culture, is one of the crucial films of the 60's by any standard - aesthetic, political, sociological, or
commercial- that you care to mention."
— Village Voice
8) Fugs (1962); by Ed English, 16mm, color, sound, 12.5 minutes
The sights and sounds of the Lower East Side rain forest.. .this film captures some of the Fugs
environment, the Lower East Side, the McDougal street scene, police harassment, their audiences,
and the filmmaker. (EE)
9:00 PM
1) The Cry of Jazz (1958); by Edward Bland, 16mm, b«few, sound, 35 minutes
"A forerunner of black militancy, this angry, radical, and deliberately abrasive work (made by
young Black intellectuals) explodes in passionate outbursts about the death of jazz at the hands of
the Whites and the suffering of the Black race. It postulates that the Black is the conscience of
America and will liberate it; a historic document."
— Amos Vogel, Film As A Subversive Art
2) The World According to John Coltrane (1991); by Toby Bryon and Robert Palmer,
video, color, sound, 85 minutes
Extensive footage of Coltrane in performance on New York television in the fifties, which
provides a deep insight into the spirituality of his music. A penetrating portrait of Coltrane and his
influences.
BEAT AMERICA ON FILM IV:
ART OFF THE WALLS
Sunday, October 27, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Beat Energy Infiltrated All Foims of Performance and Art
7:30 PM
1) Mounting Tension (1950); by Rudy Burckhardt, 16mm, b&w, sound, 20 minutes
The story was made up more or less as we went along. Larry Rivers as the madly energetic, over-
sexed artist and Jane Freilicher, a combination of palmreader and psychoanalyst t^ing to straighten
him out but turning into another girl friend and model. John Ashberry is a straight boy interested in
baseball but ends up an abstract painter. (RB)
2) The Man Who Invented Gold (1957); by Christopher MacLaine,
16mm, b&w and color, sound, 14 minutes
"Published poet and down-and-out bohemian who later became one of the psychic casualties of the
beat scene made only four films in his life time. Little information is available on him and his films
but all of them (along with Ron Rice's) are clearly the most significant films to come out of the beat
period."
— J.J. Murphy
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"A film fable so structured that all alchemical searchings are clearly filmwise (gold being
discovered cinematically in each sequence of mixed black & white and color) so that when the
drama - discovery is actually made, it acts as a deliberate anti-climax of aesthetic perfection."
— Stan Brakhage
3) Happenings: One (1962); by Raymond Saroff, 16mm, b&w, silent, 21 minutes
A combination of films of "happenings" staged by the Ray Gun Theater, with Claes and Pat
Oldenburg, Lucas Samaras and Company. Introduction by art critic Brian O'Doherty. (RS)
A) Jamestown Baloos (1957); by Robert Breer, 16mm, 6 minutes
"Mixing photographs, newspaper clippings, and quickie paintings of an insolent taschisme, he ran
them together as fast as racing cars. The eye absorbs them imperturbably, as if they constituted a
coherent sequence. It is the succession of different images itself which comes to constitute an
illusory form, comparable to that of solids in movement, and which reduces every attempt at
analysis to a simple impression."'
— Benayoun, Positif
5) The White Rose (1967); by Bruce Conner, 16mm, b&w, sound, 7 minutes
A film documenting the removal of Jay De Feo's painting. The White Rose, from her apartment.
After eight years of layering, the painting weighed over 2,300 pounds.
"The images selected and the order constructed become a formal mystic service. We see the altar,
the penitence, the cross, the investiture, the descent, and finally, the mourning. The men in
garments seem to draw strength from touching the surface. The respect they render the painting
appears as worship."
— Camillle Cook
6) The Cut-Ups 1962); by Anthony Balch and William Burroughs,
video, b&w, sound, 15 minutes
"The Cut-Ups is the actual breakthrough in the gray room. Instead of rendering Burroughs'
writing, Balch re-interprets it as cinema."
— Cinema Rising
9:00 PM
The Connection (1961); by Shirley Clarke, 16mm, b&w, sound, 103 minutes
"Nothing happens in The Connection . They talk, they goof, they play jazz. No ideas arise, no
dramatic climaxes occur - or if they occur, they are of little importance, they don't change
anything. That is where the meaning of The Connection is: in that nothingness, in that
unimportance. It shows something of the essence of our life today only because it is about nothing.
It doesn't point at truth - it sets truth in motion, it suggests it.
"Beneath the supposed meaninglessness of The Connection, beneath all walking, talking and
jazzing, a sort of spiritual autopsy of contemporary man is performed, his wounds opened. The
truths which would have slipped through the hermetic forms of the classical drama were caught by
the supposed formlessness of The Connection . Fake external dramatic clashes would have led us
away from the true drama; big pronounced ideas would have hidden our true uncertainty; even the
metaphors would have become lies."
— Jonas Mekas, Movie Journal, 1962
"The Connection's visual qualities, setting, characters, action and temporal developments all
adhere to cinema verite conventions... Camera angles and movements reveal a completely
enclosed, naturally lighted room rather than a two or three-sided, evenly lighted set on a sound
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
stage. The action or, rather, the lack of conventional dramatic progression suggests a real-life
situation rather than a scripted one."
— Lauren Rabinovitz, Points of Resistance, 1991
BEAT AMERICA ON FILM V:
A LOOK AT SOME KEY BEAT FIGURES
Sunday, November 3, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Tonight's screening is the last of five programs of Beat-era films presented by the Cinematheque as
part of a city-wide celebration of this largely San Francisco movement. Thanks to Ray Camey for
his assistance.
7:30 PM
1) Pull My Daisy (1959); by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, 16mm, b&w, sound, 28 minutes
Voice over by Jack Kerouac. Jazz score by David Amram.
"Friday morning in the universe ..." — Pull My Daisy
"Jack Kerouac wrote the script for the film, the third act of a play called The Beat Generation,
based on an actual evening at Neal and Carolyn Cassady's household in Los Gatos in 1955.
Painter Alfred Leslie and photographer Robert Frank formed a movie partnership call G-String
Enterprises and filmed the last act of the play. Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky play themselves.
Gregory Corso is Jack Kerouac, Larry Rivers is Neal Cassady and Delphine Seyrig plays Carolyn
Cassady, the only professional performer hired. The title comes from the first line of the doggerel
poem 'Fie My Fum,' which Ginsberg, Cassady and Kerouac jointly composed over several
months in 1949."
— "Ferlinghetti, City Lights, and the Beats in San Francisco," conference. Pacific Film Archive
"Pull My Daisy is a classic look at the soul of the beat generation, made with writers Jack Kerouac
and Allen Ginsberg, and painters Alfred Leslie, Larry Rivers and Alice Neel. It was written and
narrated by Kerouac; based on his unproduced play. The Beat Generation. It tells the story of a
bishop (Richard Ballamy) and his mother (Alice Neel) who pay a visit to Milo, a railroad worker.
At the same time his poet friends, Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso, hang around
quizzing the bishop about the meaning of life and its everyday relationship to art and poetry. Pull
My Daisy is recognized as one of the most important works of avant-garde cinema."
— "Film and Video by Robert Frank," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Pull My Daisy was awarded first prize for Beat American Experimental Film for 1959 at the San
Francisco Film Festival.
2) Huncke and Louis (1995); by Laki Vazakas, video, color, sound, 10 minutes
"A work in progress. A wonderful and disturbing portrait of Herbert Huncke and his companion
Louis Cartwright. Cuts beneath the primping and preening of the movement to document the
human cost, as Huncke's work also does. Usefully compared with The Connection as a study of
self destruction through drugs and life style."
— Ray Camey, "The Beat Goes On (After Effects, Continuations, Reflections),"
The Beat Movement in Film: A Comprehensive Screening List, Whitney Museum of American Art
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3) Lenny Bruce Performance Film (1968); by John Magnuson, video, b&w, sound, 59
minutes
"Only surviving visual record of a Bruce performance on stage. Bruce improvises a jazzlike 'riff
based on the transcript of this trial. His intellectual brilliance and agility come through..."
— Ray Carney, "The Documentary Record: Portraits of the Artists"
9:00 PM
1) The Hipster, the Delinquent and the Square (ca.l960)
A lost treasure from Craig Baldwin. An educational film.. .a strong warning to parents and teens.
2) The Subterraneans (1960); by Ronald MacDougall, film, color, sound, 89 minutes
Hollywood's turgid period version of Kerouac's novel.
"A gentrification of Kerouac's novel of the same title, with a race change (from black to white) of
the female lead."
— Ray Carney, "The Boutiquing of Beamess: Hollywood Goes Beat"
"About Hollywood movies, the less said the better... Holly wood translated the inchoate spiritual
longings, free-floating anxieties, and vague feelings of alienation that animated the Beat movement
into a series of cliched props, costumes and Looney Toon characterizations..."
— Ray Carney, "Escape Velocity: Notes on Beat Film"
A BLACK AND WHITE NIGHT
(OR A NIGHT IN BLACK AND WHITE)
David Michalak and Robert Fenz in person,
plus live music by nik phelps
Thursday, October 10, 1996 — Center for the Arts
" To error is human, to film divine!" — Albert Brooks
PART I
Reaching For The Trigger (1986); by David Michalak, 16mm, b&w, 6 minutes
Following one's passions quiets the noise that surrounds. An attempt to catch ideas before they
slip away.
Vertical Air (1994-1996); by Robert Fenz, 16mm, b&w, sound, 28 minutes
Vertical Air, with soundtrack by AACM member Leo Smith, is an electric look at America. Images
attack from every angle - the perspective of a bird in flight, or a scarring insect. Music and image
exist side by side, individual and equal. (RF)
Robert Fenz has had his work screened in film festivals around the country, and at Millennium and
Anthology Film Archives in New York City. His latest work incorporates the work of
contemporary jazz composers and musicians. He has been an associate of Wadada Leo Smith since
1991.
Composer-improviser, Leo Smith has performed with Anthony Braxton and is an influential
member of the AACM.
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Vertical Air will screen as a one man show at the Museum Of Modem Art, a Cineprobe Series,
May 5,1997.
Intermission
Live Music -"Black and White Reversal"
performed by Nik Phelps - clarinet and Carla Kihlstedt - violin.
PART II
Once A Face (1984); by David Michalak, 16mm, b&w, 2 minutes
This film ponders the nature of shifting identity by showing a slacker shaving his stubble and
submitting to a suffocating tie.
...From disheveled misfit to strangled yuppie, "I looked high and low for that unusual place, been
called crazy, a lunatic, a real bad case!" With a total production cost of $125 this super-8 blow up
remains my only film to make a profit. (DM)
Not Quite Right (1987); by David Michalak, 16mm, b&w, 10 minutes
. . .Demons and desire for change. Skin shedding, back stabbing and disembodiment characterize a
man's mental battle with reality. (DM)
Inside-Out (1996); by David Michalak, 16mm, b&w, silent, 18 minutes
A silent movie that dances, this film is a portrait of a dancer's attempt to achieve balance and
continue performing in spite of his mental, physical and spiritual breakdown. The film's somber
setting, however, is consistently countered by a serenade of zesty horns, scored by Nik Phelps
and his cohorts in the equally estimable Clubfoot Orchestra. Choreographed by Karen Foley. (DM)
"Inside-Outs 18 scintillating minutes of joyous melody and grace healed my funk and charged my
mood like nothing has in weeks. Indeed Michalak tells me the film's theme is rejuvenation...
"Visually, Michalak relies on stunning composition and a stationary camera, disdaining multiple
cuts in favor of the simple visual beauty of cinema's golden era."
— Michael Fox, Bay Guardian
IN SIDE' OUT
SCORE BY NIK PHELPS
performed by the Club Foot Orchestra plus additional players
Myles Boisen Slide Guitar/Bass
Sheldon Brown Clarinet
Matt Brubeck Cello
Carla Kihlstedt Violin, Viola
Beth Custer Clarinet, Bass, Clarinet
Chris Grady Trumpet
Steve Kirk Guitar
Gino Robair Drums
Nik Phelps Oboe, Clarinet, Flute, Piccolo,
French Horn, Soprano, Alto &
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Ban Saxes and Trumpet
Richard Marrio Trombone
David Michalak Slide Guitar
Recorded at Crow Magnon studios by Mark Schleunes, mixed by Myles Boisen,
more mixing by Mark, David and Nik.
San Francisco experimental filmmaker David Michalak celebrates 25 years of filmmaking with
Inside-Out. Michalak's work has screened at FAF and other film festivals around the country. He
had a one man retrospective at the Victoria Theatre in July.
• program notes by Alex Blatt and C Whiteside •
KING KONG VS. SUPERFLY
Friday & Saturday, October 11 &12, 1996 — The Werepad
Jacques Boyreau, Scott Moffet, and Cornelia Jensen present a pulse-plowing showcase of
Massacre at Central Hi aesthetics. Certain to be one of the weirdest evenings the SF Cinematheque
has ever presented...
First the simulvision of "King Kong vs. Superfly," arguably the baddest blaxploitation
bonanza ever to bust into your brain like a bomb with the biggest boggie you've ever seen, baby.
Then, a sample of Hollywood Shrapnel A.D. 1972, a surreal happening of exploitation and
dimebag child, scum and grace, Boris Karloff and glam rock, short attention spans and the abyss,
nigger luvvers and soul brudders, followed by a very special screening of "Dimebag Child vs
Art Fag." Be amazed at how time and space is only something your mind creates. (JB)
A Massacre at CentralHi/Cosmic Hex co-production
in association with the SF Cinematheque.
EARLY EVENING EXPERIMENTAL
Swiday, October 13, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Necrology (1969-1970) by Standish Lander
In Order an American Adventure Story (1988) by Jacalyn White
strain restrain (1993) by Elise Hurwitz
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Decodings (1988) by Michael Wallin
North Beach (1978) by Henry Hills
MILLENNIAL DIS-EASES:
DIVINITY GRATIS BY BETZY BROMBERG
BETZY BROMBERG IN PERSON
Thursday, October 17, 1996 — Center For the Arts
Betzy Bromberg, one of Los Angeles' finest experimental filmmakers, has been making films
since 1976. Coming from New York, her films reflect an urban lifestyle from a feminist
perspective. Her films have shown in the U.S., Canada, and Europe; including one-woman shows
at the London Filmmaker's Co-operative, the College of St. Lucas in Brussels, and the Museum of
Modem Art in New York City, and group shows at locations such as The Instituto De Estudios
Norteamericanos in Barcelona, Spain, the Vootrum Centrum in Belgium, the National Film Theatre
in London, the Harvard Film Archives in Cambridge, and in the Netherlands (American Avant
Garde 1980-1990). Betzy 's films are in collections at the National Film Library of Australia, the
Honolulu Academy of Fine Art, and the University of Wisconsin. Betzy taught film production at
the California Institute of the Arts from 1990-1995 and has worked in the special effects industry
in Hollywood since 1980.
Petit Mai (1977); 16mm, color, sound, 18 minutes
"Petit Mai is a raw, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink movie: choppy street scenes, a girl clowning,
subway sequences enlivened by artless overexposures and split screens. What holds it together is
the strong and unobtrusive audio track, a melange of confessional rapping, nondescript mood
music, and slyly gratuitous sound effects."
— J. Hoberman, Art Forum
Divinity Gratis (1996); 16mm, color with b&w, sound, 59 minutes
The film begins with a blind girl who sees a flash in the sky. We get a feeling of our insignificance
when images of humans are cut with expansive rock formations. The camera spins and pans
quickly over stones and waves eroticizing the texture and movement of nature. Museums display
stuffed bears, deer, and other wild life in their natural habitats, while a family of plastic human
dolls is placed in a camp setting. As the news reports murders, accidents and arrests of humans, a
man's voice is heard talking about hunting. Divinity Gratis also shows us the unleashed sexual
side of the red light district where fleshy, dancing women are adorned with tattoos, spikes, strap-
ons, and piercings.
"As mankind slouches toward the millennium, pride and shortsightedness often blind him (her) to
the imminent dangers of the future. The willful pollution of the Earth, the instability of politics, and
indeed nature herself are all potentially destructive forces. The greatest enemy of man, however, is
time. Mankind rules to extinction. Experimental filmmaker Betzy Bromberg's Divinity Gratis
explores our ultimately minor role within a treacherously vast and indifferent universe."
— Kirby White
•program notes by Stacey Wisnia •
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MEX ICO SOUTH:
VIDEOS FROM AND NEAR CHIAPAS
CURATOR, VIDEO ARTIST: MAUREEN GOSLING
Co-sponsored by Cine Accion
Thursday, October 24, 1996 — Center for the Arts
This program of short videos represents four different contemporary visions of southern Mexico.
Las Ollas de San Marcos (The Pottery Of San Marcos) (1992);
by indigenous (Huave) videomaker, Teofila Palafox, 12 minutes
Las Ollas de San Marcos is on women of a Zapotic village making large clay pots. Videomaker
Palafox is also a midwife and belongs to a women's weaving collective. Her video has taken her to
festivals in New York and southern France.
A Skirt Full of Butterflies (1993); by Maureen Gosling and Ellen Osboume, 15 minutes
A Skirt Full of Butterflies deals with the hearty, spirited and legendary Zapotic women of Isthmus
of Tehuantepec. Five women tell what it is like to live in a place where women run the economy,
where being fat is regarded as an ideal of beauty and where women's work is just as valued as
men's. Invited to the Margaret Mead Film Festival and the National Museum of the American
Indian's Film And Video Festival.
Prado Pacayal (1995); by Carlos Martinez Suarez and Jose Manuel Pintado, 27 minutes
Prado Pacayal takes us to the center of conflict, where Mayan farmers retum to their village to find
that it has been destroyed by the military. The video is a testimonial diary of the destruction and a
plea to the outside world.
No Hay Vuelta Atras (No Turning Back) (1994); by Soco Aguilar, 25 minutes
No Hay Vuelta Atras documents in a very colorful way the Mexican public's reaction to the 1994
Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Unlike most coverage of the movement at the center of the uprising,
the video presents the network of support that developed in Mexico City and other urban areas
immediately following the historical events of that year.
MEXICO SOUTH will be presented by award winning documentarian Maureen Gosling, who
worked with independent filmmaker Les Blank for more than twenty years as co-filmmaker,
editor, and sound recordist and received an American Cinema Editors award nomination for
Burden of Dreams. She is currently completing a documentary feature on what we can learn from a
"traditional" culture, the Zapotecs of southern Mexico, how economic power affects women's self-
worth and how valuable cultural self-determination is to a community.
HELL-O-RAMA HALLOWEEN HOE-DOWN
A TRIPLE DOSE OF 70'S SLEAZE HORROR
Thursday, October 31, 1996 — Victoria Theater
To celebrate Halloween, we bring you a triple-bill of impossibly rare 70's exploitation trash. First,
Blood Freak (1972), a sleaze classic with heavy Christian overtones in which ugly biker hippies
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
smoke pot and turn into giant turkeys! Then, Boarding House (1979), a 42nd Street favorite: a
boarding house turns into a blood-drenched inferno of death, and minds and faces are slashed
open. And last but not least, it's the inimitable Andy Milhgan's Bloodthirsty Butchers (1976),
a loose version of the "Sweeney Todd" story, set in ye olde Victorian England (actually, Staten
Island). Incomprehensible stretches of dialogue are mixed with decapitations, breast pies, and
grotesque sex scenes. Stupefying!
•Programmed by Joel Shepard*
THE WHOM:
DOUG HALL/BILL B ER K S ON / G E OR G E KUCHAR
Doug Hall, Bill Berkson, George Kuchar in person
co-sponsored by the Walter/ McBean Gallery of the San Francisco Art Institute
Thursday, November 7, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Tonight Cinematheque and the Walter/McBean Gallery feature new work by three artists long
associated with the San Francisco Art Institute, whose creative energies move freely between
mediums and genres. Bill Berkson is the author of 1 1 volumes of poetry, and his art criticism
appears in Arrforum and Art in America.. Bill will read a selection of his recent poetry. Doug
Hall's media installations have shown in museums throughout the world, and he recently
completed a residency at the American Academy in Rome. Doug will show Terminal Landscape for
slides, video projection and audio. George Kuchar has made hundreds of films and videos, and he
has inspired several generations of artists. George will premiere Uncle Evil, Bargain Basement
Bumpkin and Vermin of the Vortex.
Terminal Landscape for slides, video projection and audio, by Doug Hall; 27 minutes
DOUG HALL is an associate professor in the New Genres department and has taught at the San
Francisco Art Institute since 1981. Hall is the former chair of the department and has served on the
Art Institute's board of trustees and on the board of directors of the Bay Area Video Coalition. He
received a BA in anthropology from Harvard University and an MFA in sculpture from the
Rinehart School of Sculpture of the Maryland Institute of Art. Hall has won numerous awards,
including the 1995 Prix de Rome, six grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a
Guggenheim Fellowship, a Western States Regional Media Arts fellowship, a Rockefeller
Foundation fellowship, a William and Flora Hewlett/Film Arts Foundation grant, a James D.
Phlean Award, and a Fulbright Senior Lecture fellowship. Hall has presented his work widely,
including shows at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh; the Oakland Museum; the Institute of
Contemporary Art in Boston; the American Film Institute in Los Angeles; the San Francisco
Museum of Modem Art; New Langton Arts in San Francisco; the Whitney Museum of American
Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; and the
Museum of Modem Art in New York.
Bill Berkson will read a selection of his recent poetry.
BILL BERKSON is director of the Letters and Science program and has taught at the San
Francisco Art Institute since 1984. Berkson is also the coordinator of the Public Lectures Program
and served as interim dean of academic affairs in 1992. He studied at Brown University, the New
School, Columbia University and New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. He is the author
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of 1 1 books and pamphlets of poetry, including, most recently. Red Devil, Start Over, and Lush
Life. His work has been included in many literary journals and anthologies. Berkson is a
contributing writer to Artforum and other publications, and is a corresponding editor for Art in
America. He was editor and publisher of Big Sky publications from 1971-78. Berkson has
received several awards, including a Yaddo Fellowship, and grants for poetry from the Poets
Foundation, the Marin Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Berkson was given
an Artspace Award for New Writing in Art Criticism in 1990 and was a visiting artist/scholar at the
American Academy in Rome in 1991. He has curated several exhibitions, including Ronald
Bladen: Early and Late at the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art and The Paintings of Albert
York at the Mills College Art Gallery and was adjunct curator for Facing Eden at the M.H. de
Young Museum.
Uncle Evil (1996); by George Kuchar, 5 minutes
Bargain Basement Bumpkin (1996); by George Kuchar, 8 minutes
Vermin and the Vortex (1996); by George Kuchar, 20 minutes
GEORGE KUCHAR is a professor in the Filmmaking department and has taught at the San
Francisco Art Institute since 1971. Kuchar worked as a commercial artist while making 8mm and
16mm films which were embraced by the underground movie scene of the 1960s. During the
1970s, he began making sync-sound movies, and in the 1980s, he began experimenting with
video. Kuchar has won the Maya Deren Award from the American Film Institute, a National
Endowment for the Arts grant, a Worldwide Video Festival First Prize Award and a Lx)s Angeles
Film Critics Award. He had a four-program tribute at the San Francisco International Film
Festival, and a recent screening at a Video Drive-In event in Portugal. Two full-length programs of
his films are in the collection of (and distributed in Europe by) the British Film Institute. Other
works are in the collection of the Museum of Modem Art in New York, the Pacific Film Archive in
Berkeley, and the Anthology Film Archives in New York. Kuchar has made over 60 films and 70
videos, has had several screenplays made into films, and has acted in two productions.
RALPH ACKERMAN: FACING BEAT
Friday & Saturday, November 8 &9, 1996 — Gallery 16
Ralph Ackerman has worked as a photographer, filmmaker and, most recently, a developer of
interactive CD-Roms. His films were available through the New York Film Co-op., and have been
shown widely throughout the United States and Europe. His work in the late fifties and sixties
with beat luminaries such as Ginsberg, Charles Plymell, and others will make up a portion of this
exhibition. His most current work is documenting and publishing the writing of a New York based
group called the Unbearables.
PROGRAM I
David L. Ulin, of the New York Unbearables group, will open the evening reading from his work-
in-progress, Kerouac's Ghost.
Ralph Ackerman will show his films and clips made at or relating to the IP Studio scene:
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Night in the Life of Charles Plymell (1964); 16mm, b&w, sound, 6 minutes
evolved from Fuck Face
Everything's Gravy (1968); 16mm, color, sound, 11 minutes
The Incredible Poetry Reading (1968); Super-8, b&w, 4 minutes
Zoo Liquid Prototype (1955); 16mm, video, b&w, color, sound, 60 minutes
only a five minute clip will be shown
Novelist /poet, Charles Plymell, who worked with Ralph out of the IP studio during the early
sixties and co-made Fuck Face, will be present.
Video taped comments on Ackerman's never-before-seen Incredible Poetry Reading footage by
poet/participant/organizer, David Meltzer. Other participants present were poets Lew Welch, John
Weiners, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, San Francisco
Mime Troupe and publisher, David Haselwood.
Carl Linder's films, Woman Cock and The Devil is Dead, will be shown.
Filnmiakers and writers who were involved with the IP studio are: Bob Branaman, Stan Brakhage,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Carl Linder, Lee Meyerzove, Michael McClure, Steve Levine, Tony Martin
(Tape Music Center) and Bruce Baillie (Canyon Cinema).
The evening will conclude with a poetry reading by Neeli Cherkovski, Jules Mann, Brighde
Mullins, Carolyn Peyser, George Tsongas, and others.
PROGRAM II
Charles Plymell will read from his novel. Last of the Moccasins, recalling his scene in San
Francisco with Neal Cassady, Herbert Huncke, Allen Ginsberg, et. al. Plymell will show his
animated collage film. The Great Brain Robbery, made at the IP studio.
Ralph Ackerman will show his video clip of Plymell in his Cherry Valley, New York home
reading his account of his printing of the first issue of R. Crumb's Zap Comix and Charles'
printing of William Burroughs' APO-33 Bulletin for Claude Pelieu and Mary Beach.
Painter/filmmaker, Bob Branaman, will make a rare appearance to show his films and recall the
publishing of Fux Magascene. Fux and his film. Gold Mouth, were produced at the IP studio.
Ackerman will show video clips of the New York writers group, the Unbearables, reading from
their forthcoming book, Crimes of the Beats.
Unbearable, Mike Golden, will read from his D.A. Leavy work.
The evening will conclude with a poetry reading by Tom Clark, Mike Golden and Charles Plymell.
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EARLY EVENING EXPERIMENTAL
Sunday, November 10, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Films by Peter Hutton:
Images of Asian Music: A Diary From Life (1973-1974)
Budapest Portrait: Memories of a City (1984-1986)
"IT'S ALL TRUE"
FLIGHT AND OTHER FILMS BY GRETA SNIDER
Thursday, November 14, 1996 — Center for the Arts
Flight (1996); 16mm, silent, 5 minutes
An imprint of my dad's photographs and some other things he left me... About the process of
going to heaven. (GS)
Mute (1991); 16mm, color, sound, 14 minutes
Mute is an irresolute web of shifting power positions. It is a malevolent bed-time story whose focal
character, while deviating herself from the grip of the narration, firmly maintains her ambivalence
toward her state of menace. Incl'ded is subtitled information, which is the running contrapuntal
perspective of the "other," the mute. This commentary blossoms out in the long silent sections,
from a discussion of her own involuntary objectification to her problematic "fascination" with a
foreign culture. (GS)
"Mute cleverly plays with the idea of feminine lack as silence through the structured absence of the
female voice, relegated to text at the bottom of the screen. A man's voice speaks of his desire for a
woman, detailing the attributes of her body which he finds most pleasing. The text at the bottom of
the screen responds, but there is no connection; she is mute, he cannot hear her, and the two
registers - voice and text - will not coincide."
— Holly Willis
Hard-Core Home Movie (1989); 16mm, b&w, sound, 5 minutes
Hard-Core is a frank and irreverent documentary that asks the question, "what is hard-core?"
Seedy, grainy, and fast-paced, this is a nostalgic look at an ephemeral moment in the history of a
subculture: punk rock in San Francisco in the late eighties. Everyone from fucked-up teenagers to
elderly Mexican tourists attempts to explain the allure and mystique of the scene. Filmed at S.F.'s
historical petting-zoo/theater/punk rock emporium. The Farm. (GS)
"Snider combines the eye of an historian with the hand of an artist - the result is oddly archival,
and at the same time quite moving. Does the combination add up to nostalgia? During Hardcore
Home Movie, I found myself feeling almost wistful, watching scene after scene of punks
slamdancing, punks mugging for the camera, punks expressing anger and frustration in fragments
of scenes. Yeah, it was nostalgia."
— Kate Bomstein
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Futility (1989); 16mm, b&w, sound, 9 minutes
Futility's narrative is told in two disarmingly honest and personal voice-overs, with images
reprinted from found and archival footage. The first section is a woman's story about a pregnancy
and subsequent difficulties in scheduling an abortion. The second is a moribund love letter read by
the same narrator. The images are never an illustration of the voice-over, nor do they constitute a
narrative of their own, but blow in and out randomly, constituting a kind of peripheral vision. The
film's severe economy of means provides a startling contrast to the unity and characterological
nature of the soundtrack. (GS)
"This is a dense film, both visually and emotionally, which bears multiple viewing to sort through
its many connected layers: a laundry list of despair set against industrial imagery. Reworking
found footage from industrial films. Snider pulls meaning from the mundane through her
soundtrack's vivid language: 'When you say, 'I love you too', it feels like you're scraping me with
a fork.' She links the horrors of her social, biological and psychological realities to examine the
futility of it all."
— Karl Soebnlein, Out Week
Blood Story (1990); 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes
Blood Story is a simultaneous progression of three divergent tales; a soundtrack of eavesdropped
"girltalk," a subtitled story of a troublesome spot, and a series of images that fluidly peruse the
two. The pictures articulate the space between one threatening, and one intimate, experience of the
same symbolic matter. (GS)
"Greta's masterpiece, uses layers of allegory and true-life crime story to reveal the
miscommunication at the heart of patriarchal eroticism."
— Ann Powers, S.F. Weekly
Our Gay Brothers (1993); 16nmi, color, sound, 9 minutes
"Our Gay Brothers is bound to ruffle a few feathers. The voice-overs of a gaggle of gay guys
discussing what they like and dislike about women's bodies is punctuated by images of early hard-
core pom and vulva metaphors drawn from a variety of everyday objects. Snider gets away with
murder and gets under the skin by making the fags' patter issue from the mouths of the most
remarkable shallow queens. The filmmaker isn't the least bit interested in balance. She slams
mercilessly into gay men's low-level awareness of female anatomy. Snider's film is provocative
and convincing. Its whiplash montage underscores women's justifiable anger at the mind set of
many gay men."
— Warren Sonbert, San Francisco Sentinel
No Zone (1993); 16mm, color, sound, 19 minutes
"A 20-minute tour through America's urban out-back - a film peopled with thrashers, herbalists,
wanderers, and backyard scientists that looks like a wildflower patch, and grows like one. Off-
road philosophies, from the value of putting codeine in your travel pack to a few words on 'the end
of history' itself, are translated to film with a gentle hand that gives No Zone' s material room to
breathe."
— Susan Gerhard, Bay Guardian
Portland (1996); 16mm, b&w, sound, 14 minutes
"A road movie about how a trip from San Francisco to Portland drastically changed the lives of
four friends. But the camera never goes on the road. Each of the friends is interviewed afterward,
documentary-style, about what happened on the trip. Each tells a different version of the story,
letting the viewer decide what really happened. Snider creates a road movie's feeling of movement
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by including abstract images of blurred movement, representing (as one example) something like
how you'd feel riding in a convertible with your eyes closed."
— Chuck Graham, Citizen Film Critic
Flight (1996); 16mm, silent, 5 minutes
•program notes by Stacey Wisnia*
NATURE AND CINEMA
A SCREENING/LECTURE BY FRED CAMPER
Sunday, November 17, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
1) Hoisted Street (1934); by Conrad Friberg, 16mm, b&w, silent, 18 fps., 15 minutes
2) The Wold-Shadow (1972); by Stan Brakhage, 16mm, color, silent, 2 1/2 minutes
3) Creation (1979); by Stan Brakhage, 16mm, color, silent, 17 minutes
4) Second Weaver (1966); by Mrs. Benally, 16mm, b&w, silent, 9 minutes
5) Seven Days (1974); by Chris Welsby, 16mm, color, sound, 20 minutes
6) Le Tempestaire (1947); by Jean Epstein, 16mm, b&w, sound, 23 minutes
In this rather personal presentation, I will explore filmmakers' conceptions of nature, and speak of
how my past wilderness trips have changed my views of cinema. Film, a product of the industrial
revolution that is reshaping the planet in the image of humans and their machines, has rarely tried
to depict nature as it was. The natural world is most often used as a metaphor for the filmmaker's
inner life, or for aspects of the medium. Space is organized in terms of isolated points of interest.
But filmmakers occasionally present a glimpse of something else: a world that predated us and that
exists outside our understanding. In Creation, Stan Brakhage transforms Alaska through his
personalizing gaze, yet also leaves traces of the outer world. The Chicago of Conrad O. Nelson's
Halsted Street is presented democratically, geographically, following the whole length of a street.
Chris Welsby's Seven Days and Jean Epstein's Le Tempestaire both use cinema - fast motion,
slow motion - to depict a nature whose mysteries cannot be fully seen by the human eye. Also to
be shown are The Wold-Shadow (Brakhage) and Second Weaver (Benally).
The "Nature and Cinema" presentation grows out of a series of trips to the north woods I took
between 1967 and 1981, particularly five trips hiking alone in roadless and trackless areas of
northern Canada (Quebec, Labrador, Northwest Territories). These trips have resulted in
reflections on the differences between wildemess and human civilization; the differences between
the kind of seeing encouraged by most cinema and the kind of eyesight one has as one hikes
through forest, or swims in lakes and ponds. The presentation will be in some sense a critique of
the way nature is represented - or misrepresented - in much of Western Art.
The premise of this program is that humankind's basic relationship to the rest of the planet -
everything on earth that is not a product of human civilization - is one of deeply hostile aggression;
that we see the planet, its plants and animals and rocks and oceans, as our private property, to do
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
with as we wish. This all-prevailing ethos realizes itself in most films, which, by seeking to
transform the materials in front of the camera into public entertainments for mass audiences or into
the private, interior visions of an artist, replicates in cinema what our species is doing to Earth.
I will show a group of films in which the filmmaker imparts to nature a certain freedom; in which
the filmmaker surrenders a degree of moment-to-moment control over the image, resulting in a film
which is more open to the possibility that the planet contains realms which are at least partially
outside of human understanding and human control. This is a visionary step that, at least in my
reading of film history, surprisingly few films have taken.
— Fred Camper
The following passage, whose relevance to these concerns I hope will be apparent, is from the
essay, "The Land Ethic," in A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold, first published in 1949.
When god-like Odysseus returned from the wars in Troy, he hanged all on one rope
a dozen slave-girls of his household whom he suspected of misbehavior during his
absence.
This hanging involved no question of propriety. The girls were property. The
disposal of property was then, as now, a matter of expediency, not of right and
wrong.
Concepts of right and wrong were not lacking from Odysseus' Greece: witness the
fidelity of his wife through the long years before at last his black-prowed galleys
clove the wine-darks seas for home. The ethical structure of that day covered
wives, but had not yet been extended to human chattels. During the three thousand
years which have since elapsed, ethical criteria have been extended to many fields
of conduct, with corresponding shrinkages in those judged by expediency only.
The Ethical Sequence
This extension of ethics, so far studied only by philosophers, is actually a process
in ecological evolution. Its sequences may be described in ecological as well as in
philosophical terms...
The first ethics dealt with the relation between individuals; the Mosaic Decalogue is
an example. Later accretions dealt with the relation between the individu^ and
society. The Golden Rule tries to integrate the individual to society; democracy to
integrate social organization to the individual.
There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property. The
land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.
The extension of ethics to this third element in human environment is, if I read the
evidence correctly, an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity. It is the
third step in a sequence. The first two have already been taken...
— Aldo Leopold
Fred Camper is a writer and lecturer on film and art who has taught at several colleges and
universities, published in Artforum, Screen, Film Culture, Motion Picture, and other periodicals,
catalogs, and books. His articles have been reprinted and translated into several languages. He has
written on both "avant-garde" cinema and on certain Hollywood directors active between the 1930s
and the 1960s. He began writing on film while running a film society at M.I.T. in the mid-60s; a
number of his early publications were originally program notes for that group. He has lectured in
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New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Toronto, Turin, and elsewhere, and is
a former (and he hopes future) independent filmmaker. For the last several years he has published
weekly reviews in The Chicago Reader, of art, sculpture, photography, installations, and film. He
has reviewed exhibits of pre-Columbian art, Inuit sculpture, Russian icons, Monet, Degas, and the
work of many well-known and lesser-known contemporary artists.
The S.F. Cinematheque would like to thank
Don Smith for his help in making tonight's program possible.
AMERICAN MAGUS: THE ALCHEMY OF HARRY SMITH
Wednesday & Sunday, November 20 & 24, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Program for Wednesday, November 20th
Biological slide-show presented by Rani Singh.
A chronological history on the life of Harry Smith, focusing primarily on his artwork, most of
which has never been publicly seen.
Number 1-5, 7, 10: Early Abstractions (1939-1956);
orig. 35mm, 16mm, color, sound, 23 minutes
My cinematic excreta is of four varieties: - batiked abstractions made directly on film between 1939
and 1946; optically printed non-objective studies composed around 1950; semi-realistic animated
collages made as part of my alchemical labors of 1957 to 1962; and chronologically superimposed
photographs of acmalities formed since the latter year. All these works have been organized in
specific patterns derived from the interlocking beats of the respiration, the heart and the EEC Alpha
component and should be observed together in order, or not at all, for they are valuable works,
works that will live forever - they made me gray. (HS)
No. 1: Hand-drawn animation of dirty shapes - the history of the geologic period
reduced to orgasm length.
No. 2: Batiked animation, etc., etc. The action takes place either inside the sun or
in Zurich, Switzerland.
No. 3: Batiked animation made of dead squared, the most complex hand-drawn
film imaginable.
No. 4: Black and white abstractions of dots and grillworks made in a single night.
No. 5: Color abstraction. Homage to Oscar Fischinger - a sequel to No. 4.
No. 7: Optically printed Pythagoreanism in four movements supported on squares,
circles, grill-work and triangles with an interlude concerning an experiment.
No. 10: An exposition of Buddhism and the Kaballa in the form of a collage. The
final scene shows Aquaric mushrooms (not in No. 11) growing on the moon while
the Hero and Heroine row by on a cerebrum.
— synopsis/descriptions by Harry Smith
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Program for Sunday November 24th
Number 12: Heaven & Earth Magic (1959-1961); 16mm, b«few, sound, 66 minutes
No. 12: The first part depicts the heroine's toothache consequent to the loss of a very valuable
watermelon, her dentistry and transportation to heaven. Next follows an elaborate exposition of the
heavenly land in terms of Israel, Montreal and the second part depicts the return to earth from being
eaten by Max MuUer on the day Edward the Seventh dedicated the Great Sewer of London. (HS)
Number 10 & 11: Mirror Animations (1957-1962); 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes
"Both No. 10 and No. 11 are pointedly hermetic. They describe analogies among Tarot cards.
Cabalistic symbolism, Indian chiromancy and dancing, Buddhist mandalas, and Renaissance
alchemy. The process of animation itself, with its continual transformations, provides the vehicle
for this giant equation."
— P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film.
If, (as many suppose), the unseen world is the real world and the world of our senses but the
transient symbols of the eternal unseen, and limiting ourselves to the aesthetic experience's well-
known predilection for the eyes and ears, we could logically propose that any one projection of a
film is variant from any other. This is particularly true of Mirror Animations. Although studies for
this film were made in the early 1960's the non-existence of suitable printing equipment until
recently, my inability to locate the original camera footage until 1979, and particularly, the lack of
an audience ready to evaluate L. Wittgenstein's "Ethics and Aesthetics Are One and the Same," in
the light of H.C. Agrippa's earlier, "there is no form of madness more dangerous than that arrived
at by rational means" have all contributed to delaying until now the availability of a print in the full
mirror-reverse form originally envisioned. (HS)
Number 14: Late Superimpositions (1965); 16mm, color, sound, 31 minutes
Superimposed photographs of Mr. Fleischman's butcher shop in New York, and the Kiowa
around Anadarko, Oklahoma - with Cognate Material. The strip is dark at the beginning and end,
light in the middle, and is structured 122333221. 1 honor it the most of my films, otherwise a not
very popular one before 1972. If the exciter lamp blows, play Bert Brecht's "Mahogany." (HS)
Number 6 (ca. 1948-1951); 16mm, color, sound, 3 1/2 minutes, 3-D film
For those who are interested in such tilings: No; 1 to 5 were made under pot; No. 6 with schmeck
(-it made the sun shine) and ups; No. 7 with cocaine and ups; Nos. 8 to 12 with almost anything,
but mainly deprivation, and 13 with green pills from Max Jacobson, pink pills from Tim Leary,
and vodka; No. 14 with vodka and Italian Swiss white port. (HS)
"For 30 years Harry Smith worked on these movies, secretly, like an alchemist, and he worked out
his own formulas and mixtures to produce these fantastic images. You can watch them for pure
color enjoyment; you can watch them for motion - Harry Smith's films never stop moving; or you
can watch them for hidden and symbolic meanings, alchemical signs. There are more levels in
Harry Smith's work than in any other film animator I know. Animated cinema - all those Czechs,
and Poles, and Yugoslavs, and Pintoffs, and Bosutovs and Hubleys are nothing but makers of
cute cartoons. Harry Smith is the only serious film animator working today. His untitled work on
alchemy and the creation of the world will remain one of the masterpieces of the animated cinema.
But even his smaller works are marked by the same masterful and never-failing sense of movement
- tiie most magic quality of Harry Smith's work."
— Jonas Mekas, Village Voice
Rani Singh is the executor of the Harry Smith Archives. Although purported by Smith to be a
Princess of the Moghul Empire and fluent in several languages, her Punjabi isn't all that proficient.
Actually she was Harry Smith's assistant from 1988 until his death. She works on various
archival, film, art and music projects. She has worked with such luminaries as Allen Ginsberg,
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Francesco Clemente, Mark Pellington, and Marianne Faithful. She lives in New York City across
from the spot where the Peace Eye Bookstore used to stand. Currently, she is chief researcher for a
major feature length documentary on the social legislative history of Marijuana entitled "GRASS"
directed by Ron Mann.
50 FEET OF STRING AND OTHERS
BY LEIGHTON PIERCE
Leighton Pierce in person
Thursday, November 21, 1996 — Center for the Arts
Deer Isle #5 (The Crossing ) (1992); video, sound, 6 minutes
There is more than one way to get to an island.
Deer Isle #8: Going Out (in the morning) (1994); video, 4.5 minutes
What happens when the air moves through the house early in the moming.
Red Shovel (1992); 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes
A narrow angle of view, closely watched, on the Fourth of July.
Blue Hat (1993); 16 mm, color, sound, 4.5 minutes
An impressionistic study of the work/play involved in learning simple things.
50 Feet of String (1995); 16 mm, color, sound, 52 minutes
This is a film consisting of 12 sections all dealing in some ways with the slow and subtle repeated
rhythms of daily life. The approach is highly painterly and impressionistic. The pace is slow with
the intention of inviting viewers (those willing to go) into a more visceral and less verbally
analytical state of mind. The "action", small events like the mail arriving, the storm coming, and
the grass getting mowed, are secondary to the way of perceiving those events. In many ways this
film reaches back into a kind of personal memory one might recall from early childhood. (LP)
Leighton Pierce has been making experimental film and video documentaries since 1980. His
training was in music and sculpture, influences that are still evident in his media work. His films
and videos have been shown in major art museums and festivals around the world including New
York's Museum of Modem Art, the Hirshhom and The National Gallery of Art in Washington,
D.C, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Edinburgh Film Festival, and numerous festivals in
Germany and the Netherlands. He is also a frequent award winner in domestic US film and video
festivals such as Ann Arbor and Black Maria.
Before concentrating on film and video Pierce studied music composition - musique concrete, and
free jazz. Many compositional strategies still influence his production process.
Leighton Pierce's documentary films deal with everyday activities in insightful ways, providing a
critique of how we view and take stock of events while also guiding how we understand life.
Documentary mainstays of plot manipulations, suspenseful insights, and political agendas seem to
be missing. In their place exists a careful study in color, shape, and the transforming power of
perception. One striking moment in 50 Feet of String is a close-up shot of a window pane while
someone is busy doing something off camera; the viewer is not allowed to see the action, as a wall
literally separates the audience from the event. But by giving attention to details surrounding an
action, and by examining beauty in the overlooked details, layers of meaning form to reveal an
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impression of the moment. Through layers the familiar becomes remote and detached from
conventional meaning, as objects become abstract compositions of light and color. The familiar is
unrecognizable when viewed through a close-up of a curtain, grass or leaves, leaving "action"
behind in a secondary position. In the absence of a tightly defined plot, the viewer must sketch an
understanding of this moment for themselves, while being both unaware of the "action" and fully
aware of the camera position. In this way, the viewer is reminded of the personal bias involved in
shooting and editing film. Pierce both questions the hierarchy of value in conventional
documentaries, and examines the role producers/directors take in deciding which story amongst the
many stories is to be told.
Several segments in 50 Feet of String have a lyrical voice that work extremely well. ".29 inches",
perhaps the most narrative segment, details the intrusion of a thunderstorm on our lives: a curtain is
pulled back, a foot is heard tapping to the beat of a rocking chair, and the rain falls. The storm is
powerful; the motion of the trees blowing in the wind and the intensity of the rain pounding on the
chair is exhilarating. We feel as though we are the ones waiting for the storm to pass, "two
maples" is striking in its abstract geometry. Undulating colors and light on a flat picture plane are
suddenly given meaning as the focus changes to reveal layers. A beautiful composition of yellows-
greens-blues is revealed to be trees of autumn reds/yellows/browns as seen through taJl grass.
Elsewhere, a flat picture plane of color becomes a landscape of leaves, grass, and water. We
admire the beauty of the composition, and then nod as recognition of the object sets in. In this
way, we are allowed to view the world as if for the first time, and marvel in the wonder of
knowledge and recognition. Perhaps it is revealing that some of the only characters that populate
this film are children. Perhaps this is a call for all of us to take a new look at the world, in order to
marvel at the exhilarating and the simple, to see startling juxtapositions, and to re-examine how we
view the world at large.
OTHER WORK BY LEIGHTON PIERCE
Red Shovel (1992); Thursday (1991); Principles of Harmonic Motion (1989-91); You Can Drive
the Big Rigs (1989); Grotto (1989); On the Road Going Through (1987); And sometimes the boats
are low (1983); He Likes to Chop Down Trees (1980).
•program notes by David Bjomgaard*
QUEER IRONY:
In Observance of a Day Without art
Sunday, December 1, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
These short films, in stretching the conventions of genre categories, mirror the
complexity of identity itself. Not quite queer enough or so queer as to be reflexive
caricatures, the films' protagonists and styles walk the fine line of being both what
they are and what they are not. In observance of A Day Without Art and World
AIDS Day, these films testify to the tenacity of contemporary artists who remind us
that facing the serious incongruities of life requires a sense of humor.
— Cathy Lee Crane, Curator
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Houdiniana (1996); by Marget Long, 16mm, color, sound, 9 minutes
Metaphorized by the "magical" life of Harry Houdini, a young girl and a gayboy experience the
fluidity and transitory state of their identities across time, gender and sexuality. Has screened at the
SF Lesbian and Gay Festival, in Montreal and London.
27 (1996); by Greg Sax, 16mm, color, sound, 4 minutes
Thoughts at the age of 27: the pain of living during an epidemic; the irony of a generation for
whom death is becoming banal. Has screened at various festivals including Melbourne, London,
Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York.
Lady (1993); by Ira Sachs, 16mm, color, sound, 28 minutes
Written and performed by Dominique Dibbell (of The Five Lesbian Brothers), this portrait
questions the blurring parameters of sexuality, desire, and what it means to be a woman. Has
screened at numerous International Film Festivals.
INTERMISSION
Boot Camp (1996); by John Matthews, 16mm, b&w, sound, 6 minutes
A fresh-faced young boy-next-door can no longer hold back. He crosses the line and enters a
leather bar. Recently awarded audience choice for Best Boy's Short at Austin Gay & Lesbian
Festival, and has screened at Festivals in Chicago and Los Angeles.
Third (1996); by Rae Rea, 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes
The story of one woman's step from internal noise to external noise through the combat of
seamless visuals and jarring audio. Has screened at Sinking Creek, Cacophony Drive-In and
Vermihon Film Festivals.
Not For Nothin' (1996); by Cathy Lee Crane, 16mm, b&w, sound, 28 minutes
A genderfuck cabaret performer takes a journey in search of the Beloved. Recently awarded Best
Black & White Cinematography in a Short Film at the 41st Cork International Film Festival in
Ireland. Has screened in Chicago, New York, Europe and Brazil.
Join us afterwards for Q&A
with Marget Long, Rae Rea, Cathy Lee Crane & Dominique Dibbell.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Marget Long is a San Francisco filmmaker and visual artist. She shot That's Allright Mama
(1994), a short film about dyke truckers and is now happily writing and "researching" a film about
1970's pom star, Marilyn Chambers.
Greg Sax lives in Los Angeles where he is working on an MFA degree in Directing from UCLA.
He has a degree in Semiotics from Brown University. He is currently finishing his second short
28, and is cutting a documentary on recent events in the West Bank of Israel.
Ira Sachs lives in New York City where he has worked for Eric Bogosian and Martin Scorsese.
His film Vaudeville has screened around the world while he continued his work in theatre at the
Manhattan Theatre Club and Home for Contemporary Art and Theatre. He just completed his first
feature film.
John Matthews lives in New York City where he has directed and assistant directed several
plays, including the premiere of A Well Hung Snowman at Playwrights Horizons. A master's
candidate at the Columbia University School of the Arts, John is currently preparing to shoot his
thesis film.
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Rae Rea has made films for over 13 years in Vermont, Boston and now San Francisco where she
lives. She is in the MF A/Cinema Department at San Francisco University and was recently
awarded a personal works grant from the Film Arts Foundation for her current project NonSense.
She co-curated refuse' off frame this past June at the Victoria Theatre.
Cathy Lee Crane: After working for years in New York City producing experimental theatre and
coordinating international tours for Suzanne Vega and Shawn Colvin, Cathy moved to San
Francisco in 1993 to make films. Her first short white city (1994) is distributed by Waymaker for
AIDS Organization Fundraising. She is in the MF A/Cinema Program at San Francisco State
University where she has developed a love for cinematography.
TWO AGES :
FILMS BY NATHANIEL DORSKY
Nathaniel Dorsky in person
Thursday, December 5, 1996 — Center For The Arts
Tonight the San Francisco Cinematheque and Film Arts Foundation co-host an evening with one of
San Francisco's most beloved independent filmmakers, Nathaniel Dorsky. Although he has been
an inspiring teacher, project-saving editor for others' films, and successful commercial filmmaker,
his first love and commitment is to the personal works that are the hallmark of the true artist. Since
the early 1960s Dorsky has patiently and carefully developed a body of films that have received
international critical attention. These works are notable for their concentrated craft, visual beauty
and clarity of form, marrying light with intelligence.
This evening's program includes the recently completed Triste and the revised version of the
earlier, seminal Hours For Jerome. Both films reflect Dorsky's interest in using images from
"everyday life" in such a way as to open for the viewer a greater sense of our given situation.
"In filmmaking, what I wanted to do was make films where the viewer was set in front of the
screen and the screen was in front of the viewer, and there was a self-existing dialogue, a flow
between the viewer and the screen, which was not supported by language. It was like getting a
message, in a sense. " — Nathaniel Dorsky
Hours For Jerome (1982); 16mm, color, silent, 50 minutes
This footage was shot from 1966 to 1970 and edited over a two year period ending in July 1982.
Hours For Jerome is an arrangement of images, energies, and illuminations from daily life. These
fragments of light revolve around the four seasons and are very much a part of the youthful energy
and poignant joy of my mid-twenties. Part One is spring through summer; Part Two is fall and
winter. The title of the film refers to a "Book of Hours" which, in medieval European Catholicism,
was a series of prayers presented eight times every 24 hours. Each "hour" had its own qualities
from pre-dawn till very late at night and these qualities also changed through the progressing
seasons of the year. They were traditionally illustrated by luminous miniature paintings, and were
often titled "Hours for...". Saint Jerome was a favorite subject of these illuminations and he is
often depicted at his studies accompanied by a lion. The Jerome in Hours for Jerome is a close
friend and filmmaker who is seen at his work or studies often with his cats. He is first seen reading
the newspaper, then putting sugar in his coffee, contemplating a book of Mozart's letters in a
"rain and lightening" storm, swimming, and writing a letter in blue; and in Part Two picking an
apple, editing film, standing under a tree, reading, watching television during a snow storm, and
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driving a car at twilight. So the title is a somewhat humorous reference to the medieval form, as
this film is also a series of illuminations from different times of day and night progressing through
the seasons. There is also the pun that so much of the film has to do with various kinds of time.
(ND)
Triste (1976-1996); 16nmi, color, silent, 18 minutes
Just recently finished, this film was shot in California in the 1980s and is the filmmaker's first
indication of a mature film language that reveals our daily iconography through a series of
"unseen" connectives. An evocative directness of camera is combined with on- and off -rhymed
montage to enliven the screen itself into a speaking character.
In Triste, because the images are a complicated variety of things from normal life, seen very
carefully, the challenge became to create a montage that in each moment could not be reduced to
verbal or conceptual interpretation - therefore opening to the viewer a greater sense of the present
moment. (ND)
FILMOGRAPHY
Ingreen (1964); 16mm, sound, color, 12 minutes. Fall Trip Home (1965); 16mm, sound, color,
11 minutes. Summerwind (1965); 16mm, sound, color, 14 minutes. Hours For Jerome (1966-82);
16mm, silent at 24 fps, color, 50 minutes. Pneuma (1976-83); 16mm, silent, 18 fps, color, 29
minutes. Ariel (1983); 16mm, silent, 18 fps, color, 16 minutes. Alaya (1976-87); 16mm, silent,
18 fps, color, 28 minutes. 17 Reasons Why (1985-87); 16mm, silent, 18 fps, color, 20 minutes.
Triste (1976-96); 16mm, silent, color, 18 minutes.
•program notes by Stacey Wisnia*
EARLY EVENING EXPERIMENTAL
Sunday, December 8, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Films by Gunvor Nelson:
Frameline (1984)
Field Study #2 (1988)
Natural Features (1990)
NEW YORK PUNK AND AFTER:
FILMS AND VIDEOS BY VIVIENNE DICK
Sunday, December 8, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
The inspiration and encouragement to start producing low-budget films camefi-om
New York, especially fr-om strong women I saw around me, who were part of the
emerging punk scene or were doing it in dance, theatre and photography.
— Vivienne Dick
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
Irish bom film and video maker Vivienne Dick last appeared at the Cinematheque in 1981 with her
extraordinary super-8 fantasy portraits of the New York underground punk scene. Since then
Vivienne has worked in London and emerged as one of Britain's most widely shown and original
filmmakers.
Beauty Becomes the Beast (1979); super-8, 40 minutes
"Beauty stars Lydia Lunch as an agonized downed-outwoman of ambiguous age (anywhere
between three and twenty -three), trekking around from ocean front to East Village slum with her
companion, a naked, eyeless, wrecked, wretched rubber baby doll, to a screaming soundtrack
partially composed of Lunch singing with her group Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. She lolls on the
bed witfi her cat, fights in front of the TV set, is beset with leering, grimacing, paranoid-freakout
monsters who tell her, 'Be dirty, sugar,' and threaten to sew up her pussy. The rhythm of Dick's
shooting and editing mimics her heroine's manic depressive behavior, shifting mercurially from the
horrific to the comedic and back again. Dick's camera, for the most part hand-held, is
expressionistic. Its sharply angular tilts and rapid zooms, its off-balance slanted framing match the
emotional condition of her subjects. In Beauty, a sequence of slow distracted repetitive pans
evokes the masturbatory movements of a very young girl."
— Amy Taubin
The upbringing of a female child and her initiation into a sexual role defined by authority figures,
television and newspapers. Lucille Ball is as important as the Son of Sam episode and die media
blow-up it received. The main character, Lydia Lunch, plays a 7-year-old child growing up by the
sea and alternately an adult in a decaying western city. (VD)
She Had Her Gun All Ready (1978); super-8, 30 minutes
Set in New York's lower east side, the film revolves around the power relations between two
friends, where one dominates and paralyzes the other, and how this paranoia is overcome when the
controlled person decides to take responsibility. (VD)
"With Lydia Lunch and Pat Place, and set in the Lower East Side, NYC, this is a film about
unequal power between two people (of any gender), or the repressive side of a person in conflict
with the sexual powerful side. Karyn Kay calls it '...the contemporary unspeakable: women's
anger and hatred of women at the crucial moment of overpowering identification and obsessional
thralldom.'"
— Rod Stoneman
Let Me Tell You a Story (1989); super-8, sound, 12 minutes
A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy (1994); betacam, 23 minutes
"This film represents a return, a settling of psychic accounts with her family and place of origin.
The rural social landscape in Donegal contrasts with textures of 'big city' life in this gentle
investigation into inherited identity and the route to mortality. The boundaries between the home
movie and television social documentary are dissolved in an exploration of everyday life, as the
film performs devastatingly honest open-heart surgery and tries to understand an individual
experience, a personal version of the 'family system' from the inside."
— Rod Stoneman
A video about a return to the family home. From this starting point a joumey through Dick's family
history allows a narrative to be constructed about personal identity. In this video, Dick's
observational camera contends with her active voice to produce some profoundly moving scenes.
But this is not simply a personal, internal work - A Skinny Little Man investigates in a significant
way the development of the individual subject.
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San Francisco Cinematheque
FILMOGRAPHY
A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy (1994); betacam, 23 minutes: New York Conversations
(1991); betacam, 21 minutes; London Suite (1989); 16mm, 28 minutes; Pobal: Portrait of an Artist
(1988); 16 mm, 25 minutes; Two Pigeons (1989); super-8 to betacam, 4 minutes; Images of
Ireland (1988); U-matic, 14 minutes; Rothach (1985); 16mm, 8 minutes; Like Dawn to Dust
(1983); super-8, 6 minutes; Trailer (1983); super-8, 10 minutes; Loisada (1983); super-8, 3
minutes; Visibility: Moderate (1981); super-8, 38 minutes; Liberty's Booty (1980), super-8, 47
minutes; Beauty Becomes the Beast (1979); super-8, 40 minutes; She Had Her Gun All Ready
(1978), super-8, 26 minutes; Staten Island (1978), super-8, 5 minutes; Guerillere Talks (1978),
super-8, 24 minutes.
THE RADICAL CINEMA OF ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Fatimah Tobing Rony in person
Sunday, December 15, 1996 — San Francisco Art Institute
Tonight the San Francisco Cinematheque welcomes film scholar and producer Fatimah Tobing
Rony, who will lecture on the documentary footage shot by Zora Neale Hurston in the 20's and
40's in the context of ethnographic tradition and postmodern film aesthetics. As in other areas, Ms.
Hurston was ahead of her time and outside the boundaries enforced in her field. Ms. Rony will
compare Hurston's ethnographic footage to that of other anthropologists, and discuss how her
work is an important precursor to contemporary films by African American women directors such
as Julie Dash's Daughter of the Dust. There will also be a rare screening of a selection of Zora
Neale Hurston's footage.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist whose fictional
and factual accounts of African-American heritage are among the most significant of this century.
She authored several published novels, short stories and essays during her lifetime {Their Eyes
Were Watching God, Jonah's Gourd Vine, Dust Tracks On A Road, and others), and seven more
volumes of her unpublished writings will appear in the next several years, published by Harper
Collins. Although Hurston's reputation was in decline during the last years of her life, her work
has been championed by the current generation of African- American women writers who have re-
discovered and have been influenced by her unique style.
Fatimah Tobing Rony is a filmmaker and cultural critic. Her lecture on 'The Radical Cinema of
Zora Neale Hurston" was delivered at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Spring of
1966.She currently teaches at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. Her short film. Concrete
River, is premiering at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles this January. Her
book, The "Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, is published by Duke University
Press. Her video On Cannibalism has been screened at several international film festivals and art
museums. She has written for several journals including Artforum, Camera Obscura, Film
Quarterly, The Independent, and Afterimage, and has given lectures in many forums, including the
Institut Arabe in Paris, France, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution,
and the Walker Art Center.
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
HAND-CRAFTING MYSTERY
NEW FILMS BY
ELISE HURWITZ, JURGEN REBLE,
Ken Paul Rosenthal, and Phil Solomon
Thursday, December 19, 1996 — Center for the Arts
Tonight the San Francisco Cinematheque presents four films, all meditations and elaborations
involving the wonders and mysteries of hand-processing: Ken Paul Rosenthal's Spring Flavor
(1996), Phil Solomon's The Snowman (1995), Elise Hurwitz's Metal Cravings (1996), and
Jurgen Reble's Das Goldene Tor {The Golden Gate) (1992). In these films, surfaces and textures
are instantaneously redefined and transformed, both obscuring and revealing images which
repeatedly crystallize then shatter... a profound tension is thus created, a play between the beauty of
surface as image and surface as the filter/screen through and upon which an image is discovered.
Having inherited such descriptions and likenesses ranging from Phil Solomon's "reverse form of
archaeology" to Ken Paul Rosenthal's "giving birth", these hand-processed films challenge us to
see the chemistry and traditions of filmmaking simultaneously defied yet infinitely reinvented.
Spring Flavor (1996) by Ken Paul Rosenthal; super-8iran-16mm,color, silent, 3 minutes
sunsquashed and squeezed Spring Flavor is also about my eroding image
golden gate park pond reeds as Filmmaker, and being reborn alchemist,
koleidoscopically colliding sculptor of light, and mod scientist, ah, to
dyed in pondside berries bleach, bleed, and beltch kodachrome's crisp
buried in ass to celluloid soup! ah, to stripmine the
side of pond frameline for its silver soul! ah, to give birth
de -t- recomposing to a perfectly imperfect creature and scream,
the texture of the gesmre "it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!" Spring Flavor is an
chasing the scent of light excavation ten years in the making. Dig it
the flavor of a flower sent. with your eyes.
— Ken Paul Rosenthal
Local filmmaker Ken Paul Rosenthal is an ardent enthusiast of super-8 film and periodically
teaches a class on hand-processing at Film Arts Foundation. Recently, he co-curated a program of
hand-processed films at Artist Television Access' Other Cinema, "An Evening of Hand-Processed
Films!"
The Snowman (1995); by Phil Solomon, 16mm, color, silent, 10 minutes
"A meditation on memory, burial and decay...a belated kaddish for my father." — Phil Solomon
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pinetrees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice.
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind.
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
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San Francisco Cinematheque
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
— Wallace Stevens
Phil Solomon currently teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Having first shown his
films at the San Francisco Cinematheque in 1985, Phil has continued to show his films many times
in the Bay Area over the years. The Snowman was first screened in a slightly different form at the
San Francisco International Film Festival in 1995.
Metal Cravings (1996); by Elise Hurwitz, 16mm, b&w, silent, 6 minutes
Emulsion dripping off the frame. Made from the desire to coat emulsion unevenly across film, tired
of Kodak's product. Rough, uneven film that wouldn't get the stamp from Inspector #1. (EH)
Local filnmiaker Elise Hurwitz, aside from having produced a variety of hand-processed films, is
the current Facilities Manager at Film Arts Foundation. A graduate of the San Francisco Art
Institute, she has also studied at Binghamton and in Paris.
Das Goldene Tor (The Golden Gate) (1992), by Jurgen Reble;
16mm, color, sound, 60 minutes
"Weaves together fragments of nature films about insects and reptiles, images from space
programs, and astronomy with the filmmaker's own footage of human activity from his immediate
environment. 'The Golden Gate,' a term that dates back to pre-Christian methodology, describes
the spiritualization and renewal of divine fire by passing through the winter solstice."
— Film-makers' Cooperative Supplement 1996
Jurgen Reble was one of the members of the German film collective Schmelzdahin ("melting
away"). First working largely in Super-8mm, he has continued making films and doing live
performances of chemical alterations throughout Europe and America since Schmelzdahin
disbanded in the late 1980s.
•program notes by Christine Metropoulos*
OZU'S LATE AUTUMN
Sunday, December 22, 1996, — San Francisco Art Institute
Late Autumn (1960); 35mm original, 16 mm print, sound, 127 minutes
"People sometimes complicate the simplest things. Life, which seems complex, suddenly reveals
itself as very simple..." — Yasujiro Ozu
"In his fullness all elements of the narrative film are considered simultaneously; the underlying
theme of these elements is the boundary of containment and release. The screen itself
communicates directly to the audience as a luminous square in darkness, a reflecting pool of both
surface tension and depth. The rigorous framing makes each shot an elegant 'package of space'
having its own precise weight. The cuts are delicate mysterious pops into nowness, opening
further the transparency of the moment. In this stillness, the characters have the freedom to be, and
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Program Notes Booklet 1996
the story reveals their subtle but inevitable burden of identity within society. For the audience,
bathed in this light, the accumulated sadness of the human heart blosssoms and breaks."
— Nathaniel Dorsky, Pacific Film Archive Notes
Like a Japanese Tea Ceremony, where every movement is refined and every action has meaning,
Late Autumn treats the simplicity and beauty of everyday life as an aesthetic and moral ideal. A
hand gesture, a facial expression, a joke amongst friends, a misunderstanding; all of these add to
the drama that unfolds. Action and emotion in a conventional sense are secondary. Here, each
action is purposeful and austere, and as a result, equally vivid in unspoken meaning. Whether it is
tea making or a wedding ceremony, Ozu leads the viewer to recognize the beauty in life and the
tensions that lie under the surface - whether these tensions are a conflict between generations,
between modernity and tradition, or between a new beginning in life and an end. This matter of
fact treatment of the complications and follies of human interaction create a powerful, emotional
film.
Yasujiro Ozu was bom in 1903. He quit Waseda University because "it wasn't too interesting",
and joined Shochiku at the age of 20. Four years after joining Shochiju, Ozu directed his first film.
"I didn't want to be a director as quickly as all that. If I were assistant I could spend my evenings
drinking. A director has to spend his time working on continuity." During his thirty-six years in
the industry, Ozu produced fifty-four films. Among his favorites were There Is A Father, The
Toda Brothers, Tokyo Story, and Early Summer.
Unmarried, he lived with his mother the simple life celebrated in his films. His closest friend was
Kogo Noda, the scenarist with whom he worked from the beginning and who certainly is also
greatly responsible for the peculiar excellence of Ozu film. Of his personal life he once said: "I like
big things - like whales. I £dso like to collect brass. And I collect all sorts of patent medicine."
Of him critic Shimbi lida has said: "...this man has succeeded in instilling some of the traditional
Japanese spirit of art into the new field of motion pictures... This alone is sufficient to imprint the
name of Yasujiro Ozu in our memories. The sight of him, huddled before a fireplace in a tiny
mountain cabin with Kogo Noda as they thrash out the scenario between them gives one the feeling
that one is indeed watching a true Japanese master at work."
OTHER WORKS BY YASUJIRO OZU
/ Was Bom, But (1932); The Story of Floating Weeds (1934); Record of a Tenement Gentleman
(1947); Late Spring (1949); Early Summer (1951); The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1953);
Early Spring (1956); Tokyo Twilight (1957); Equinox Flower (1958); Floating Weeds (1959);
Good Morning (1959); End of Summer (1961); An Autumn Afternoon (1962).
•program notes by David Bjomgaard*
87
Makers Index
Abolfathi, Massoud 20
Ackerman, Ralph 70-71
Aguilar, Soco 68
Akerman, Chantal 43
Anger, Kenneth 60
An tin, Eleanor 18-19
Aslam, Nasser 20
Baillie, Bruce 33, 55
Balch, Anthony 57, 62
Baldwin, Craig 64
Barber, George 52
Barnard, Clio 5 1
Belson, Jordan 60
Benally 74
Berkson, Bill 69-70
Berman, Wallace 58
Biermann, Gregg 36
Bland, Edward 61
Blumen, Rebecca A. 46
Brakhage, Stan 2-3, 34,
48, 52, 56, 74
Branaman, Bob 7 1
Breer, Robert 62
Bromberg, Betzy 67
Bryon, Toby 61
Bunuel, Luis 3 1
Burckhardt, Rudy 61
Burroughs, William 57, 62
Camper, Fred 74-76
Cassavetes, John 58
Cherkovski, Neeli 71
Clark, Tom 71
Clarke, Shirley 60, 62
Clarke, Wendy 31-33
Cohen, Maxi 42
Conner, Bruce 35, 60, 62
Course, Ann 5 1
Crane, Cathy Lee 80, 81
Custer, Beth 28
Davis, Peter 10-11
Debord, Guy 3-4
DeMott, Joel 44
Dick, Vivienne 82-84
Dix, Allisa 53
Dorsky, Nathaniel 81-82
Ellen Osboume 68
Emin, Tracy 52
Enghsh, Ed61
Epstein, Jean 74
Evans, Cerith Wynn 5 1
Export, Valie 43
Fenz, Robert 64
Flanary, Lisette21
Flannery, Jim 45
Frampton, HoUis 34, 39
Frank, Robert 63
Friberg, Conrad 74
Gamo, Yuriko 20
Gavron, Laurence 43
Gavshon, Harriet 1 1
Gehr, Emie 55
Gerstein, Ariana 35, 37
Golden, Mike 71
Goodwin, John 52
Gordon, Bette 42
Gosling, Maureen 68
Grenier, Vincent 23
Hall, Doug 69
Hansen, Inger Lise 45
Hein, Birgit 5
Herbert, Anton 37
Hijikata, Tatsumi 54
Hills, Henry 67
Hong, Yunah 21
Hosoe, Elko 54
Humbert, Nicholas 39-41
Hurston, Zora Neale 84
Hurwitz, Ehse 35, 66, 86
Hutchinson, Brenda 28
Hutton, Peter 23, 35, 72
Dcematsu, Midori 20, 21
Jacobs, Ken 23, 59
Jaffe, Patricia 60
Jirasuradej, Lawan 21
Johnsen, Michael 53
Jordan, Larry 58
Kalantary, Farhad 46
Kaplan, Marianne 13
Kerkhof, Ian 12-13
Klahr, Lewis 24-25, 33, 35
Klutinis, Barbara 46
Krai, Ivan 27
Kratisch, Ingo 38-39
Kreines, Jeff 44
Kuchar, George 55, 59,
69-70
Kuchar, Mike 59
Lander, Standish 66
Leacock, Richard 60
Leaf, Paul 60
Lerman, Richard 28-30
Leslie, Alfred 63
Lin, Lana 20
Linder, Carl 71
Long, Marget 80
Lord, Chip 30
Lowder, Rose 23
Lumiere Brothers 23
MacDougall, Ronald 64
MacLaine, Christopher 57,
60,61
Magnuson, John 64
Mann, Jules 71
Mare, Aline 26
Matthews, John 80, 81
Mc Adams, Heather 37
Meltzer, David 71
Menken, Marie 57
Michalak, David 64, 65-66
Mori, Atsuhiko 37
Morley, Carol 51
Motofuji, Akiko 54
MuUins, Brighde 71
Nelson, Gunvor 33, 41,
55,82
Nguyen, M. Trinh 20
O'Gara, Sean 20
Ono, Yoko 49-50
Ottinger, Ulrike 43
Ouchida, Keiya 55
Ozu, Yasujiro 86-87
Pabst, G.W. 16-17
Paine, Frank 60
Palafox, Teofila 68
Palazzolo, Tom 37
Palmer, Robert 61
Penzel,Wemer 39-41
Peterson, Sidney 25-26
Peyser, Carolyn 71
Phelps, Nik 65-66
Pierce, Greg 53
Pierce, Leighton 78-79
Pintado, Jose Manuel 68
Plymell, Charles 71
Poe, Amos 27
Poitras, Laura 36
Povey, Thad 56
Rea, ReaSO, 81
Reble Jurgen 86
Reichhold, Ulrike 37
Makers Index
Rice, Ron 59
Rony, Fatimah Tobing 84
Rosenthal, Ken Paul 85
Ross, Rock 56
Sachs, Ira 80
Saks, Erik 1
Sander, Helke 42
Sanz, Andres 46
Saroff, Raymond 62
Sartory, Jutta 38-39
Saunders, Chris 5 1 , 52
Sax, Erin 33, 56
Sax, Greg 80
Schmidt, Francis 37
Schneemann, Carolee 39
Seibert, Jim 37
Serra, M.M. 26
Sherman, David 35
silt 56
Singh, Rani 76, 78
Sitney, P. Adams 33
Smith, Harry 76, 78
Smith, Jack 57, 58
Snider, Greta 72-74
Snyder, Greta 56
Solomon, Phil 85
Sonami, Laetitia 28
Stark, Scott 46-48
Sternberg, Barbara 21-22
Strand, Chick 55
Stuart, Mel 27
Stutter, Keith 51
Suarez, Carlos Martinez 68
Syed, Alia51
Syed, Tanya Mahboob 51
Tarr, Bela 19
Thomson, John 51
Thornton, Leslie 6-10, 36
Tiemey, Patrick 1
Tilley, Brian 13
Tsongas, George 71
Tsufura, Donna A. 20
Turk, John 45
Ulin, David L. 70
Unbearables, The 71
Vanderbeek, Stan 56
Vazakas, Laki 63
Wallin, Michael 67
Walsh, Jack 14-15
Weekly Mail Television
Production 1 1
weiss, ruth 59
Welsby, Chris 23, 74
White, Jacalyn 66
Wilkins, Timoleon 56
Wilson, Mark 23
Wisniewski, Ray 57
df
Title Index
Acceleration 47
Adynata 9, 36
Aleph 58
All My Life 55
Allures 60
Almanac of Fall 19
Altair 24, 35
American Thirties Song 48
The Anatomy of Cindy Fink 60Anger 42
The Angel of Mercy 19
Ann (i) mated 5 1
Annabel 52
Apparatus Sum 34
Archimedes' Screw 47
The Aroma of Enchantment 30
Back in the Saddle Again 47
The Ballerina and the Bum 19
Bargain Basement Bumpkin 70
Beat 60
Beating 22
Beauty Becomes the Beast 83
Bed-In 50
Before Gentrification Hit 17
Black and White Reversal (music) 65
The Blank Generation 27
Blood Freak 68
Blood Story 56, 73
Bloodthirsty Butchers 69
Blue Hat 78
Boarding House 69
Boot Camp 80
the boris spassky high-frequency comb 53
Bouquets 1-10 23
Bridges-Go-Round 60
The Brink 59
Budapest Portrait: Memories of a City 72
Cadillac Ranch 30
Changing States 3 29
chico fell like a ton of bricks and the man 53
The Chill Ascends 37
Clinic of Stumble 26
The Connection 62
Copper Connection 1
A Copper Strip On Fire 29Cosmic Ray 60
Creation 74
Crimes of the Beats (reading) 71
Crossroads 35
The Cry of Jazz 61
The Cut-Ups 62
Cycles 37
D.A. Leavy (reading) 71
Damnation 19
Dariche 20
Das Gleiche wollen und das Gleiche nicht
woUen (Wanting the Same Thing and Not
Wanting the Same Thing) 38-39
Das Goldene Tor (The Golden Gate) 86
David and Sharon with Pond-life 29
Death and Peanuts 20
Death in the Garden 3 1
Decodings 67
Deer Isle #5 (The Crossing ) 78
Deer Isle #8: Going Out (in the morning) 78
Deity or Anatomy 28
DeneaBullRun47
Desistfilm 56
The Devil is Dead 71
Die Unheimlichen Frauen (The Mysterious
Woman) 5
Die Unheimlichen Frauen (The Mysterious
Woman).i).The Mysterious Women (Die
Unheimlichen Frauen) 5
Dimebag Child vs Art Fag 66
Divinity Gratis 67
Don From Lakewood 1
Doomshow 57
Double & Triple Images Shot Around Town
17
Drift 23
(Dung Smoke Enters the Palace) 7
Each Evening 33
Eiga Zuke 11: Tsukemono Sound Edition 20
Emily, Greensboro, 1995 46
The End 57
Envy (H Maestro) 43
ev635a.wllc.72 53
Every Dream Has Its Number 28
Everything's Gravy 7 1
Exact Fantasy 36
Fever Dream 55
Field Sketches 56
Field Study #2 41, 55, 82
50 Feet of String 78-79
Flight 72, 74
The Flower Thief 59
45 Rabbits to Walsingham 51
Four Places at South Point 29
Frame Line 41
Frameline 82
From the Archives of Modem Art 19
Front Crawl 51
Fugs 61
Futility 73
il
I
The Golden Gate (Das Goldene Tor) 86 i
Title Index
The Mysterious Women (Die Unheimlichen
Frauen) 5
Geheininisse einer Seele (Secrets of a Soul)
16, 17
Gloria! 34
Gluttony (Futtem!) 42
Go Go Go 57
Gold Mouth 71
Goodbye Sadness 49
The Great Brain Robbery 71
The Great Invisible 9
Greed (Pay To Play) 42
Green(62) 24
Hair Piece 52
Half of a Lasse Braun Film(1970's) 17
Halsted Street 74
Happenings: One 62
Hard-Core Home Movie 72
Here Now 21
Hermaphrodite Bikini 51
Heso to Genbaku (Navel and A-Bomb) 54
Hidel
The Hipster, the Delinquent and the Square
64 T
Hollywood Shrapnel A.D. 1972 66
Home 37
Hoso-tan (Story of Smallpox) 55
Houdiniana 80
Hours For Jerome 8 1
how (much)male organ functions 53
Huncke and Louis 63
I Take These Truths 2
I'll Walk with God 47
I'm Not Here 51
I... 2
If My Mother Knew... 46
Images of Asian Music: A Diary From Life
72 '■
In a Time of Violence (Episodes: 1 . The
Line, 2. All on Edge, 3. Fire with Fire) 13
In Darkest Hollywood: Cinema & Apartheid
10-11
In Order an American Adventure Story 66
In the Month of Crickets 33
Incident at 3 Mile Island: an Elegy for Karen
Silkwood 30
The Incredible Poetry Reading 71
The Inequality of Being 52
Inside-Out 65
Introduction to the So-Called Duck Factory 7
The Invisible Mustache of Raul Dufy 25
IQB AL: Two or Three Things I Know About
Him 20
Jamestown Baloos 62
Kerouac's Ghost 70
Kill Kimono 21
Kim Wilde Auditions 51
Kimono 20
The King 19
King Kong vs. Superfly 66
L' Amour Fou 27
LaVida21
Lady 80
Las OUas de San Marcos (The Pottery Of San
Marcos) 68
The Last Night Of Rasputin 19
Last of the Moccasins (reading) 71
The Last Time I Saw Ron 8
Late Autumn 86-87
Le Tempestaire 74
The Lead Shoes 26
Lenny Bruce Performance Film 64
Let Me Tell You a Story 83
Little Stabs At Happiness 59
loch ness monster 53
Losing Touch 35
A Lot of Fun for the Evil One 27
Lust (Ein Perfektes Paar oder die Unzucht
Wechselt Dire Haut) 43
Make Believe 1 1
Man In A Bubble 26
The Man Who Invented Gold 61
The Man Without A Worid 19
Manzanar and Dachau 29
The Merry Go-Round In The Jungle 26
Metal Cravings 86
michael johnsen's barium enema 54
Motion Picture 60
Mounting Tension 61
Mr. FrerJfiofer and the Minotaur 25
Mr. Glenn W. Turner 37
Mute 72
My Name is Oona 33
Natural Features 41, 82
Navel and A-Bomb (Heso to Genbaku) 54
Necrology 66
Neglectosphere 1
Newfoundland Transducer Series 29
Nice To Meet You, Please Don't Rape Me
12-13
Night in the Life of Charles Plymell 71
Night Of The Bomb 59
No Hay Vuelta Atras (No Turning Back) 68
No Tuming Back (No Hay Vuelta Atras) 68
Title Index
No Zone 73
North Beach 67
nostalgia 39
Not For Nothin' 80
Not Quite Right 65
Number 1-5, 7, 10: Early Abstractions 76
Number 10 & 11: Mirror Animations 77
Number 12: Heaven & Earth Magic 77
Number 14: Late Superimpositions 77
Number 6 77
37
(0)37
Old Worldy 9
Once A Face 65
One on One 31-33
One on One: Damon and Ramsess 33
One on One: Ken and Louise 33
One on One: Raul and Jeanine 33
Opening the Nineteenth Century: 1896 23
Our Gay Brothers 73
Overstimulated 58
Particle Physique 45
Passing Ship 52
Peggy and Fred and Pete 7
Peggy and Fred in Hell 6-7
The Peggy and Fred in Hell Prologue 7
Peggy and Fred in Kansas 7
Petit Mai 67
The Pharaoh's Belt 24
Photoheliograph 45
Plumb Line 39
Portland 73
portrat kurt kren nr.5 53
The Pottery Of San Marcos (Las OUas de San
Marcos) 68
Prado Pacayal 68
The Pre-fab People 19
Present Tense 14
Pride (Superbia) 43
The Problem So Far 8
The Producer 17
Pull My Daisy 63
pupae unison move 53
Reaching For The Trigger 64
Receiving Sally 33, 56
Red Shovel 78
Reera 46
Reflection 20
Salamander 51
Satantango 19
The Second Coming 14-15
Scorpio Rising 60
Scotch Tape 57
Second Weaver 74
Secrets of a Soul (Geheimnisse einer Seele)
16-17
Seven Days 74
Seven Women — Seven Sins 41-43
Gluttony (Fiittem!),
Greed (Pay To Play),
Anger,
Sloth (Portrait d'une paresseuse),
Lust (Ein Perfektes Paar oder die
Unzucht Wechselt Dire Haul),
Envy (D Maestro), and Pride (Superbia)
Seventeen 44
78 RPM 37
Shadows 58
Shakers 21
...and she keeps coming back for more 28
She Had Her Gun All Ready 83
Simon of the Desert 3 1
A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy 83
A Skirt Full of Butterflies 68
Skullduggery 56
Sloth (Portrait d'une paresseuse) 43
The Snowman 85
Society of the Spectacle 3-4
Soi Meme 27
Song 24 & 25 48
Song 26 48, 53
Song 27 My Mountain 53
Song 27, Rivers 53
Song 28 48
Song 29 48
Songololo: Voices of Change 13
Sonoran Desert Ants 29
Spring Flavor 85
Static 45
Step Across the Border 39-41
Stepping Out 1 1
Story of Smallpox (Hoso-tan) 55
strain restrain 66
strain, restrain 35
Strange Space 8
Stranger Baby 20
Study of a River 23, 35
The Subterraneans 64
Surface Tensions 2 23
Ten for Two: Sisters, O Sisters 49
Tensile 23
Terminal Landscape 69
Thine Inward-Looking Eyes 56
Third 80
Till My Head Caves In 56
Title Index
Towers Open Fire 57
Trailer Reg. 8mm: Saved From Extinction 17
Transitions 22
Tree 56
Trilogy 2-3
Trip East For Color 37
Triptych In Four Parts 58
Triste 82
Tuning the Sleeping Machine 35
Tumer 27
27 80
Two Windharps at the Tokugawa Women's
Grave 29
Uncle EvU 70
Under a Blanket of Blue 47
Untitled 55
Valentin De Las Sierras 33
Various Degrees 52
Vermin and the Vortex 70
Vertical Air 64
Vision in Meditation #2: Mesa Verde 34
Waiting For Dave 52
Wanting the Same Thing and Not Wanting
the Same Thing (Das Gleiche woUen und das
Gleiche nicht woUen) 38-39
The Watershed 51
Wattstax27
We Hold These 2
Whirligigs in the Late Afternoon 24
Whirling ( 8
The White Rose 62
Why I Never Became a Dancer 52
Wild Night in El Reno 55
WindAVaterAVings 46
A Windharp at La Pataia State Park, Tierra
del Fuego 29
The Wold-Shadow 74
Woman 49
Woman Cock 71
The World According to John Coltrane 61
Xich-16 20
Zoo Liquid Prototype 71
