San Francisco Cinenatheque 1984 Program Notes *l From the collection of the 0 Prejinger ^ V Jjibrary b t San Francisco, California 2007 JANUARY 19, I98I; "THINGS ARE MORE LIKE THEY ARE NOW THAN TKEY EVER \VERE BEFORE": THE BEAT ERA The 50 '3 was a time of H-bomb3, witch hunts and Cold War hysteria. It also provided the fertile ground for an explosion of growth in American art. l^^hlle Kerouac was loading the Beat poets to a rejection of America's white Protestant underpinnings, the new cinema was struggling to assert itself. Middle-class complacency was answered by anger and a Bohemian life of freedom and romance. Today, in the face of rearmament and Reagan's Big Stick policy, these films of the Beat Era and thf early 60'3 have the immediacy of a deja-vu that has been brought Into focus by our disturbing entry into I98I4.. PROGRAM: Beat (Chris Maclalne, 6 mln . ) ; Doomshow (Ray Wlsnlewskl, 10 min. ) ; Aleph (Wallace Berman , 15 mln, ) ; The End (Chris Maclalne, 35 mln) ; Thp iilpater, the Delinquent and the Square (19 mln . ) . Tonight's program features a newly reconstructed print of The End by Chris Maclalne. This print was made from the original picture and sound printing rolls, rediscovered by J.J. Murphy in I9QI at W.A. Palmer Labs (Maclaine's film laboratory). Maclalne was a poet who came to San Francisco as a student at the University of California. For 114. years, from I9I4.7 to I960, he wrote poetry, publishing his own and others' works In such magazines as Contour, Beatitude and Golden Goose. He was an eccen- tric and colorful figured Using Artaud as a model he assumed the pose of enlightened madman whose work showed a mystical, almost messianic fervor. l-Ihen The End premiered it was met with almost total hostility. J.J. Murphy quotes Larry Jordan in Film Culture #70-71 as saying that "They didn't have lyrical qualities. They weren't psychodramas - they didn't come out of Maya Deren and they weren't cinepoems - they didn't come out of Belson. And they weren't poems, the way Brough- ton'3 early works were. They were harbingers of doom, very personal. They were ahead of their time." Maclalne died in 1975. He spent the last 6 years of his life committed to Sunnyacros Convalescent Hospital, the victim of methedrine abuse and his own demons of despair. Also Included in tonight's program are: Doomshow by Ray Wisnlewski, c. 1961, 10 min. In a letter to the r-limmakers' Cooperative, NYC, "Dear Bill, I lost Doomshow Tuesday evening on the 'D' train .. .Maybe it's better that way: "goomshow, was there ever a Doomshow? Let it lie, wherever it is, jammed up someone's vein, say, dead, and dead it might LIVE as myth. Yours truly, Ray Wisnlewski." (The film has since been found.) Aleph by Wallace Berman, 1965, 15 min . Originally made In 8mni and then Dlown ap to l6mm, the film is a densly packed collision of fleeting Images. Every frame is -hand-painted with Hebraic images and letters, evoking a sense of Kabalistic mystery shared with his collages, frescoes and sculptures. The Delinquent, the Hipster and the Square, 1959, 19min . Produced by CBS, this is a kinescope of a live TV show dwelling on the evils of beatnik living and the dangers they pose for the boy next door. It Includes a performance by the Max Roach Quintet. "An hilarious satire of exaggerated adolescent style." Print courtesy of Craig Baldwin. CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDIXG... NEW AND SELECTED PILMS OF GARY ADKTNS SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE AT NEWSPACE JANUARY 21, 19 84 PROGRAM; UNDER THE MACHINES OF FIRE (1981) CONFIGURATIONS UNTO THEMSELVES (1983) CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING... (19 83) EUCALYPTUS (1978) CANTS FROM NATURAL HISTORY WORKS (19 75) UNDER THE MACHINES OF FIRE (1981) 16mm. Color. Sound. 23 minutes. Upon first looking out... Under the influence of social forces... Reflecting on human conditions .. .Surreal visions of threat... In shadows of daily existence, ,. Images gathered outside and then brought home., .As children held with innocence .. ,A possible translation occurs ,, ,Towards new affirmations, A Travelog Parade of exploding tropical landscapes; satellite cloud patterns; industrial pig iron light; naval ships and toy models; ruins of ancient civilizations; mastodons and Chinatown; lionel trains; oaxaca liqhtf; rnd punta banda waves; Sn^m. diary entries; and kodachrome roses in a backyard with Gail, 'Sweep the garden, any size* Filmed in Oaxaca, Yucatan, Baja - Mexico, San Diego, S,F, § Chi. 79-81 CONFIGURATIONS UNTO THEMSELVES (1983) 16mm. Color. Silent. 11 minutes. CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING... (1983) 16mm. Color, Silent. 19 minutes. ***** EUCALYPTUS (1978) 16mm. Color. Silent. 7 minutes. ",,.a poetic film about a turtle, eucalyptus nuts and oriental landscape painting. The nuts and the turtle are metaphorically identified in terms of having shells. Finally, the editing pinpoints a mountain in one of the landscape pictures. It's contour suggests the trutle's shell, recalling the ancient cosraological belief that the world is but a turtle balanced on infinite tiers of progressively larger turtles. Humorously, Adkins turns the mountain upside down a typical plight of turtles. I suspect that this film may merit a complicated symbolic interpretation, How<iver, the clear, elegant poetic analogies Adkins is able to suggest betweetn the disparate objects in the film are more than enough to sustain my interest," Noel Carroll - SOHO NEWS, 1979 CANTS FROM NATURAL HISTORY WORKS (1975) 16inm, Color. Sound. 14 minutes. Ip cants from natural history works the original storv is by Jorge Luis Borges , frorr the book, Lnbvrinths . The snoken voice is generously read by filmmaker Michael Guccione. A Parable of the Endless Recurrence. A dream that deliberntely attempts to exhaust its possibilities and borders on its own narody; the duplication of space and the memory of time. In the recognition of a caged leopard. An image of human thought. The apparent contradictions of illusion, Dante dying in Rochester. The Foundation for An in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bav Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, I98I4. MOLLIS FRAMFTON THE MAGELLAN CYCLE Tiger Balm, 1972, 10 mln . Tha Straits of Magellan, 1977, 52 min . Magellan's First Dreain (Matrix), 1972, 25 min. "Hollla Frampton is currently at work on a leviathan work entitled Magellan. Almost as if to hyperbolize the prime axiom of the structural film, the overall shape of this serial work is so complex (as opposed to being the "impression" one would be left with) that it would require several pages to describe Just the matrices governing the relationships among the several hundred parts of the work. Initially conceived with a running time of nine hours, thirty-six minutes, the work Itself will eventually run thirty-six hours and be seen over a period of one year and four days, "Although the structure of the overall work has been guided by mathematical formulations, the individual films (parts), themselves, seem in no way to resemble the formulaic "structural" film. The difference between these recent films and the presumed "structural" aspects of Frampton 's own earlier work involves the complexity of the schemes used to generate the formal deployment of elements. In his older films, for instance, the "structures," and even the a priori schemes which generated them, were visible , that is, recoverable to varying degrees by the spectator. Tn the films of Magellan, this Is no longer the caae ; the output of the a priori schemes has become so large, so complex, that the "structures" they generate are no longer seen, are no longer retrievable. A»d though the "seasonal films" of Straits of Magellan inrolre what Frawpton has oallad "situations In which nature la very clearly l»ltatl«g art," these filna utilize a scientific technology which all»w8 art to formally Imitate nature ... Juat as a luap of coal praaenta to ua nothing of its complex arrangomont of earbon chains, these films simply appear, while any systematic formulas which may have generated them do not. "Magellan announces a major development which becomes significant, not in relation to the myth of "structural film," but in view of the achievements of Frampton 's past work and the recent history of avant-garde film. The received wisdom about Frampton pro- claims his Interest in Intellectual structures, in scientific and mathematical formulas for generating works. Frampton has been contrasted with Snow: the former engaging in the construction of an intellectual space, the latter exploring the dialectics of plastic space. Such an opposition obscures a major aspect of Frampton' 8 work which underpinned many of his early films and which, with the films of Magal Ian , has become a dominant concern: the development of an opia tomology of vision. In the earlier films, this took the form of apporcapnive strategies which highlighted the relation between perception and modes of cognition in the spectator. With Magellan , Prampton has at last succeeded in the total merging of intellectual apace with the space of the world. The paradoxical is achieved by the dynamic welding of presumed dualities; forms are created where once it was presumed boundaries existed. " Bruc« Jenkins Wide Angle Vol. 2, No. 3, 1978 The Foundatioo for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE Th« Bav Area snowcasa tor personal ana avani-^roe film ROBERT !r"L3C" R~T?.CS?"CTIVZ MARCH 29,1934 The San Francisco Cinematheque presents a three part retrospective of the films of Robert Nelson, native San Franciscan, v/hose work in the 1960s in collaboration with Funk Artists William Wiley and Robert Hudson, composer Steve Reich, and San Francisco Mime Troupe Director, Ron Davis, established his reputation as an original voice in San Francisco's "hipster cinema". Reflecting and encouraging an irrevercuice for polite middleclass values via an ironic, playful, and unrelenting "un-uptight sense of humor", Xelson and his SF Art Institute cohorts mirrored the transforming climate of the post- beat/prepsychedelic 60s. Collective imagination infused the films, and the artists' offhanded approach to process allowed the idiosynchratic nature of the works to reign free and expressive. 'With Nelson, art values and enter- tainment values collide ecstatically. "-(Nelson) has long been recognized (along with Bruce Conner, the Kuchar Brothers and a few others) as the avant-garde cinema's most potent comic filmmaker... nearly all Nelson's films develop one form of humor or another. This along with his improvisational methods, his connection with the SF .Art Institute, and the Eastern influences on his work have made hin a representative of what's usually thought of as an essential element of 'West Coast Filmmaking'." -Scott MacDonald The conclusion of this three part presentation of Nelson's work will be a screening of Suite California: Stops and Passes (Parts I and II) on May 3. "... I'd say that everybody knew something Nvas going on, but nobody I knew imagined what would actually happen in the 60s explosion. . . many of the people v/ho were already in the art scene, who were just a little bit older, kept some distance. They'd already formed their ovm alternate lifestyles. To the extent that their lives overlapped with what ^\as happening in the mid- '60s, they were a part of it, but they were already there when it exploded I'd seen a few avant- garde films, so I already knew you could do anything you wanted." -R.N. THE AWFUL BACKLASH (196?) U min Soundtrack by Nelson "Bill Allan came over to my hovise one day, at about the time that Blondino \vas nearly finished, and said that we should make a film about a fishing reel backlash. He fishes all the time and the idea came to him while casting... I'm really happy with this movie and I think that it's nearly perfect. I showed it a lot in Europe last year, and some people over there thought it was a put-on but it isn't, others hated it because it is so boring. I usually feel very good when I see it." -R.N. THE OFF-HAND JAPE (196?) 9 min Soundtracic by Nelson and William T. Wiley "...I've always felt good about this film because it's beyond criticism. No one can say it's awful, no matter what elaborate reasons they construct, without talking about what's good in the fiL-n. If it's truly av.i'ul. rr.en it's just ri^ht. because that's exactly what v.'e had in nund. If you can't enjoy that kind of awfulness. "hat's another ir<atter,.. and I'd have to say 'that's your problem because, after all. there are plenty of other lends of awfulness that you really do enjoy, and YOU know it!'..." R.N. BLEU SHUT ''-r7C! 33 "lin Soundtrack by Nelson v/ith William Wiley "Bleu Shut 13 a prime example of the participatory film, a form which emerged at the ena of the 1960s out of extensions of the structural film. . . The participatory films follow the direction established by the structural cinema in finding corollaries for the conscious mind..." P. A. Sitney, Visionary Film "...You can see a boat in a harbor and have one reaction to it, walk around and see the name and have a different reaction. The boat feels one way if it's called Mary Jane; it feels another way if it's called The Weekender. It loote different. For me those names, and the kitsch mentality they reflect are ap- pealing and repulsive. Since you can feel both ways about them, there's an edge and that edge appeals to me. . . The clock came out of my own arduous struggle to sit through a lot of independent movies. I often have a powerful urge to look back to see how much is left on the reel, ViTien I succumb, the reel always looks huge! I put the clock up there so that no one would have to turn around." -R.N. DEEP W;STUH:I ^197'+) 6 mln "Nelson calls Deep Westum a 'death film'. Dr. Samuel West, an Oakland dentist who was an early supporter and collector of Wiley, Geis, Hudson, et al, h^ad died shortly before the film \vas made. 'Nothing ^vas spelled out,' Nelson says, 'but it was in all our minds at the time' . Deep Westum is a memorial gesture and a meditation on mortality. .A.t the same time, it pays tribute to the en- dviring ties and personal affection that have characterized the work of Nelson, Wiley and their friends. And this friendship is, in great measure, the subject of their work." -J. Hoberman HAMLET ACT Cl982) 21 min Screenplay by Joe Chang -Docu-Drama style (Hamlet as a video camera- person) The Foufloation for An in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bay Area snowcase tor oersonai and avant-^aroe rilm R03EHT :.'ELSON P.ETROSPECTI'.'Z MARCH 22, 1984 The San Francisco Cinematheque presents a three part retrospecrive of the filns of Roberr Melson, native San Franciscan, vhose work in the i950s in collaboration with Funk Artists /.'illiam iviley and Robert Hudson, composer Steve Reich, and San Francisco Mime Troupe Director, Ron Davis, established his reputation as an original voice in San Francisco's "hipster cinema". Reflecting and encouraging an irreverance for polite middleclass values via an ironic, playful, and unrelenting "un-uptight sense of humor", ^'elson and his SF Art Institute cohorts mirrored the transforming climate of the postbeat/prepsychedelic 60s. Collective imagination infused the films, and the artists' offhanded approach to process allowed the idiosynchratic nature of the works to reign free and expressive, '.vith Nelson, art values and entertainm.enr collide ecstatically. "-(Nelson) has long been recognized (along with Bruce Connor, the Kuchar Brothers and a few others) as the avantgarde cinema's most potent comic filmmaker. . .nearly all Nelson's films develop one form of humor or another. This along with his im.provisational methods, his connection with the SF Art Institute, and the Eastern influences on his work have made him a representative of what's usually thought of as an essential element of 'West Coast Filmmaking'."- Scott Macdonaic The Cinematheque is proud to present three evenings of Nelson's works. On March 29 the program will include The Awful Backlash , The Off- Handed T^oe , Bleu Shut , Deep Ives turn , and Hamlet Act . On May 3 Suite '^'alif ornia ; Stops and Passes i Parrs I and II) will be screenea. " You're not aloof or remote or superior. You just feel submerged. In a way you're safe because you're invulnerable because you know what the things you're involved with represent and you know what they are, and you know the absurdity and meaninglessness of them..." -R.N. PLASTIC HAIRCUT (1963) 15 min. "Bill Wiley, Ron Davis, Robert Hudson and m.yself got excited about the idea of making a film together. I had made two home movies before this time using a borrowed camera, so I was the technical expert. None of us knew anything about making movies at that time, but we all knew about art (namely, that it had something to do with having a good time)..." -R.N. 0 DEM /:atehmelo::s 1965) i: -m. . >v t ,-e all had a rcod ti~e running arouna -ne ;-'.i3sicn Zistricr ar.d Potrero Hill District busting up waterr.elons , shoving off, ana having fun. A few weeks later, v.-hen I had the fil~ roughly edirsd, I ran i. silent for Ron and Saul and a few people a- the :-:ir.e Troupe. There -:^s deadly silence and it looked awful. Everyone was en-.oarrassed for ~e and didn't know what to say. I faked it by saying that i- was good an- I told them not to worry... the track (by Steve Reich) has helped z'r.e film a lot." "....T.y view was that stereotypes in themselves can't say anything, they obscure rather than reveal. To present them blatantly, in a cents that rr.ade them confrontational, seem.ed to me a way of being bold and daring... and a way of creating a lure for racist projections... the film is about being on a razor line." -R.N. HOT LEATHERETTE (1967) 5*1 min. "... I think this is a pretty good rr.ovie, ~aybe just a shade -oo rric;: I showed it in Mill Valley one night and it made a girl puke , the second best compliment that I've ever gotten for my movies)." -R.;;. GRATEFUL DEAD (1967) 1^ min. "...overnight the whole scene was born. From my point of view it was almost instantaneous. Old icons were tumbling and floating downstream; other gods were disappearing over the horizon. It was an astounding continual shock and people came- young people, bigger crowds, still bigger crowds- all dancing in the streets, and taking acid and being transformed by it."- R.N. "...Nelson jams (on optical printer) with the rock group/Concert footage of The Dead manipulated-presented using various modes: color positive and negative, mirror printing, loop printing, various forms of stepped and stop motion, blurring swish pans, frenetic zoom.ing. This is accompanied by a jaggedly rhythmic sound collage of Dead music The sounds and images move (with considerable dexterity) in and ou- of rhythmic synchronization." Scott MacDonald THE GREAT BLONDINO (1967) 41 min. "...We didn't have any ideas or script. V7e just had characters... the rest we just made up as we went along. Mostly, we just worked out simple visual ideas and took a lot of shots of Wiley's paintings and constructions. The form of the movie was made up at the editing table..." -R.N. "...Blondino is a long never-resolved dialogue between it's protagonis inner and outer worlds, between film as material and film as represen- tation, between art and entertainment... he (Nelson) was able to orchestrate Blondino 's elements into a grand summation of a 20 year cycle in San Francisco avante-garde filmmaking... developed through the separate work of Peterson and Broughton, the films of Christopher MacLaine and those of Ron Rice, and (the style) was to reach an apogee with The Great Blondino. Thus exhausted, the picaresque mode itself was eclipsed in San Francisco by a style of psychedelic abstraction." - J. Hoberman The Foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film §^i;I«^MI!^^2i2^j__THE_SILENT_FILN^A_PAIULLEL_H Programmed by Jon DiBenedetto. Animation is usually overlooked when considering the early silent film. A particular focus of this program of obscure works is the characteristic reflexity of early animation which often .included the animator's presence, the animator as the magician in the cinema, and the technical trasition from paper to eel-animation. The program will include the premier of two films by Emile Cohl recently released in America. Tonights show will include :Drame Chez Les Fantoces, (1906) and The man in the moan. (1907) Emile Cohl; Sure - locked homes, (1926) Otto Mesmer; The voice of the night- ingale, (1923) Vladidslas Starevitc; Max and Merit z (1920) Wilhelm Bush; Down where the limburger blows (1917), Bray Studios featuring the Katzen jammer Kids;Willi's nightmare (1926), Paul Perofs: Princess Nicotine (1909) J, Stuart Blackton; Adam raises cain (1920) Tony Sarg; Animated hair cartoon;A.W.0.L. , and other films. There will be a short intermission. SUNDAY APRIL 1, 7:30 p.m. at S.F. ART INSTITUTE, The Foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film New College Gallery- Saturday 7 April 1984 NO FAMILY PICTURES Film and Music by James Irwin (1983) 2 2m in/S 8 mm/col or/sound This is a personal, at times an expressive film concerned with film education and its effect on the relationship between women and media. "Cameras are boxes for transporting appearances", writes John Berger in Another Way of Telling. "The photographer chooses the event he photographs. This choice can be thought of as a cultural construction." What do the appearances in this film mean to you? Various manipulations of the image: (a) the filmmaker is always present (b) film is a physical, pliable medium. I try to understand the equipment available to me and use it to its fullest, rather than envision a result and spend money on fulfilling that vision. My choice to use S8mm is for economic, political and aesthetic reasons tied inseparably together. Except for the printing and a short section of sound transfer, all the film and music work was done in my small studio using reasonably modest tools. Therefore the film is itself an example of the low-cost, small-format media it implicitly advocates. - J.I. The Foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bay Area sncwcase for personal ana avant-garde fiinn "The film is there and you are here. You're equal. It's neither fascism nor entertainment."- Michael Snow The San Francisco Cinematheque presents T^chael Snow's monumental work LA REGION CENTRALE, 1970-71, 190 min. , sound The following notes are excerpted from Snow's discussion of the film in Form and Structtire in Recent Film published by the Vancouver Art Gallery. "Standard Time had the germ of the idea. ^Vhen I saw what happened with the continuous circular, horizontal pans I realized there was alot to be done with it. If properly orchestrated it can do some powerful physical-psychic things. It can really move you around. If you become completely involved in the reality of these circular movements it's 'you' who is spinning surrounded with everything, or conversely, you who are a stationary centre and it's all revolving around you. But on the screen it's the centre which is never seen, which is mysterious. One of the titles I considered using \\'as !?43210T234?! [and adaptation of a sculpture title] by which I meant that as you move down in dimensions you approach zero and in this film, La Region Centrale that zero point is the absolute centre, Nirvanic zero, being the ecstatic centre of a complete sphere. You see, the camera moves around an invisible point completely in 360 degrees, not only horizontally but in 'every' direction and on every plane of a sphere. Not only does it move in predirected orbits and spirals but it itself also turns, rolls and spins. So that there are circles within circles and cycles within cycles. Evenually there's no gravity. The film is a cosmic strip ... In various philosophies and religions there has often been the suggestion, sometimes the dogma, that transcendence would be a fusion of opposites. In Back and Forth there's the possiblity of such a fusion being achieved by velocity. I've said before, and perhaps I can quote myself, 'New York Eve and Ear Control is philosophy. Wavelength is metaphysics and Back and Forth^is physics. ' By the last I mean the conversion of matter into energy. E=mc~. La Region continues this but it becomes simultaneously micro and macro, cosmic- planetary as well as atomic. Totality is achieved in terms of cycles rather than action and reaction. It's 'above' that. ...In my films I've tried to racike something happen that couldn't happen in any other way so that there is something special about the experience that comes from the possibilities of the medium. If it seems worthwhile to make art works at all which is sometimes questionable you'd better do something that adds to the world, not in a material sense but that as an experience has some distinction to it. At the same time the films are not coercive, they're objective." M.S. 1972 The Foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film Saturday, May 5, 1984 "Muzak and Other Evidence" Films by Scott Stark Circus Animal - 1983, 3 Super 8 Projectors, Sound Made with Mary Schneberger. When you pay to see a film you are essentially paying for a product, which is the privilege of seeing through the camera's point of view. In this piece the camera/point of view becomes purely a commercial product which can be purchased like any other product. Hotel Cartograph - 1983, 16mm Color Sound A study of an urban environment in an exploratory manner. The film is one shot only, using a 16mm synch sound rig with the camera mounted on a movable cart. Cartograph = cart + graph, or the creation of a graph/graphic image using movement; also, cartography, the art of map making. Theoretically one could partially reconstruct the layout of the building using the film as a map or score. Muzak and Other Evidence - 1984, Super 8 Color Sound I once had a science teacher who talked about how we rely more heavily on visual information than oral information. "If you saw a duck that made a noise like a train," he said, "you'd say 'Hey, that duck sounds like a train' rather than 'Hey, that train looks like a duck." Third in a series of three, this film involves the gathering of evidence for a sociological statement. The film is deconstructed into its elements and attempts to examine both the process of recording the information and the information itself. Key concerns include the effect of sound on visuals and the use of the components of the film - sound, light, color - as artifacts. In Anticipation of the Circuitous Disappearance of the Umbrella Man Involving the Evocation and Deliniation of the Threshold of Density - 1983, 16mm Color Silent A formal study of the relationship between film and the object being filmed. An emotional event contextualized for meaning/ statement, and pushed beyond the point of comprehension, pushed to the wall(paper) . Searching for the point where a threshold of comprehension exists. Thanks to Patricia Powers, Jim O'Brien, Chris Sanborn, Mary Schneberger, Jun Jalbuena, Mike Krewer. The Foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film May 5, 1984 Films by Sharon Greytak Some Pleasure on the Level of the Source - 1982, 15mm Color Sound Psychical formations, images of memory, etc., become the tangible deviants of censorship. When sync sound is heard momentarily before the image is seen, sound functions as narration or commentary. When picture and sound are in unison, sound works as description. The dissolve in film has historically been a signifier for transition. I use the image of a young girl to point out minute detail in a developmental process. The filmic act, as well as culturally imposed acts, are questioned by focusing on a perception of an occurrence or transition that would normally go unseen. I am interested in the formation and transmittance of shifting content during that moment within the film; how meaning can be exploited and/or heightened (heightened meaning being new meaning or another meaning) . This leads back to censorship where a supposed understanding or relationship between the filtered down fragments manage to form; posing as complete thought. Czechoslovakian Woman - 1982, 16mm Black & White Sound The manipulation of filming photographs of such cultural content is an outward gesture of the desire to understand an incident by means of the scrutinization of isolated detail . This melancholy act results in a futile attempt to draw limitless information or to reconcile with a past since one can never be close enough to that photograph/ situation as depicted. The Living Room - 1983, 16mm Color Sound No notes available. Notes by S.G. CITr?'ATHKQUS San Francisco Mav 10 iS'^U. (bovs) 198^ 2 minutes b/w Melanie Shopa Satire b: a usu. tonical literary composition holding up human or individual vices, folly, abuses, or shortcomings to censure by means of ridicule, irony or other methods sometLmes with an intent to bring about improvement. Thought Transference 199^ 10 minutes colour ^Hexandra rronigsmann "Another way of communication." April 8^ USA 1954 3 minutes colour Thomas Tellander "A diary. " YUFU in the first position 197B 10 minutes David Ronce "A bicycle ride between success and failure. Idealogical measurement fo: the usefullness of each." Forum I98I 8 minutes b/w Alexandra JConigsmann "Four empty rooms; building up and down in Germany." > Mololoo: 1984 b/w 4 minutes Lars Erik "erg flight and sound' thought = ^^^" • INTEPyiSSION B.L.T. 1982 10 minutes (installation) Thomas Tellander/ Melanie Shopa Next 1984 6 minutes Knut Wilhelm "The pigs of today are the pork chops of tomorrow" (graffiti statement) " an evolutionary chase on concrete." I am not . . . 1984 ^4-5 seconds Alexandra Konigsmann "... a machine." Falling Apart 1984 5 minutes Thomas Tellander " See what I mean." (There will be a reception in the courtyard following the program.) May 17, 1984 THE SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE presents a MERRY, JOYFUL, MEMORIAL TRIBUTE iiiii"""'' to HOLLIS FRAMPTON 1936 1984 Films this evening: Short Films 1975, #3, by Stan Brakhage / 16mm /color /silent /2 min. A portrait of H.F. and of the animal traditionally likened to persons of high intellect. Information 1966 / silent / 4 min. / "Hypothetical 'first film' for a synthetic tradition constructed from scratch on reasonable principles, given: 1) camera; 2) rawstock; 3) a single bare light- bulb. I admit to having made a number of splices." - H.F. Manual of Arms / 1966 / silent / 17 min. / "Coxirtly dances with friends and lovers in the form of a 14-part drill for the camera, incorporating physiognomic & locomotor evidence related to the lens by 13 artists and an historian, namely: C. Andre, B. Brown, R. Castoro, L. Childs, B. Goldensohn, R. Huot, E. Lloyd, L. Lozano, L. Meyer, L. Poons, M. Snow, m. Steinbrecher, T. Tharp, J. Weiland." - H.F. Lemon (for Robert Huot) / 1969 / silent / 7-1/2 min. / color "As a voluptuous lemon is devoured by the same light that reveals it, its image passes from the spatial rhetoric of illusion into the spatial grammar of the graphic arts." - H.F. carrots & Peas / 1969 / 5-1/2 min. / soiand /color / "A 'tradi- tional* side-dish of mixed vegetables inhabits a succession of •traditional* art-styles. The sumptuous, sometimes tiresome para- dox of the static image in film, is rudely presented in the form of an art historian's slide-lecture... for which genre of discourse the spoken commentary is of about average relevance to the images." - H.F. Hapax Legomena III [Critical Mass] / 1971 / 25-1/2 min. / sound/ b/w "As a work of art I think [CRITICAL MASS] is quite vmiversal and deals with all quarrels (those between men and women, or. men and men, or women and women, or children, or war.) It- is war!... It is one of the most delicate and clear statements of~Tnter-hiiman re- lationships and the difficulties of • them that I have ever seen. It is very funny, and rather obviously so. It is a magic film in that you can enjoy it,, with greater and greater appreciation, each time you look at it.' Most esthetic experiences are not enjoyable on the sixrface. You have to look at them a nxomber of times before you are able to fully enjoy them, but this one stands up at once, and again and again, and is amazingly clear." - Stan Brakhage **■- - INTERMISSION - Gloria (from the Magellan cycle) / 1980 / silent / 8 min. / color H.F. had a grandmother whose companionship and spiritual spunk helped sustain his childhood trials. This film offers an objectification of his feelings and thoughts for her. Otherwise unexplained Fires 1977 / silent / 18 min. / color Filmed m large part durxng H.F.'s lecture-screening tour in the Bay Area: visit (s) to the Musee Mechanique, Land's End, the Cliff House. The S.F. fog is proclaimed, as also are the cypress trees that line parts of our local beach. A visit to the Brakhage Colo- rado residence provided images of chickens/roosters.. Winter Solstice (from the Magellan cycle) 1974 / silent / 33 min. / color "Magellan. . . Initially conceived with a running time of nine hours, thirty-six minutes, the work itself will eventually run thirty-six hours and be seen over a period of one year and four days . "Although the structure of the overall work has been guided by mathematical formulations, the individual (parts), themselves, seem in no way to resemble the formulaic "structxiral" film. . . In the films of Magellan. . . the output of the a priori schemes has become so large, so complex, that the "struct\u-es" they generate are no longer seen, are no longer retrievable. . . the "seasonal films" of Straits of Magellan involve what Frampton has called ' situations in which nature is very clearly imitating art.'... "A film like Autumnal Equinox or Summer Solstice is no less 'systematic' than the films of Frampton 's earlier period; it is simply less metrical, less concerned with duration as a prime com- positional component. This shift from the metric to the rhythmic undercuts the kinds of anticipation structiores or timing devices which operated in several of Frampton 's previous works. Instead of 'baring the device' of the dialectic of temporal engagement ( memory /ant icipat ion ) , the recent films go one step fxirther in suspending the elements and representational aspects. And as the key to these films no longer entails a discernable generative principle or a priori scheme, what becomes foregrounded is the act of perception... "Magellan. . . . announces a major development... in view of the achievements of Frampton 's past work and the recent history of avant-garde film. . . A dominant concern: the development of an epistemology of vision. In [Frampton' s] earlier films, this took the form of apperceptive strategies which highlighted the relation between perception and modes of cognition in the spectator. With Magellan, Frampton has at last succeeded in the total, merging of intellectual space with the space of the world. The paradoxical is achieved by the dynamic welding of presumed. dualities; forms are created where once it was presumed boundaries^ existed." * , * Bruce Jenkins, wide Angle magazine. Vol. 2, No. 3, .1978: "Frampton Uhstructured - Notes for a metacritical history, " pp. 22-27;^-i|X;: --fr^^xg: ■:.>:,^. ,^^^ •: ; ,.. ,..;^..k2^:•v-Ki.-H^^^3v^?5•;>V^*^i• June 7 San Francisco Cinematheque DIFFERENT PLACES/BAD PLACES A selection of films by (mostly) women. A Setting: Clever men build cities, Clever women topple them. Beautiful, these clever women. But they are owls, they are kites. Women have long tongues. Stairways to ruin. Disorder is not sent down from Heaven, But bred by these women. from The Book of Songs (Shih Ching) , a Confucian classic. "If women have a role to play,... it is only in assuming a negative function: reject everything finite, definite, structured, loaded with meaning, in the existing state of society. Such an attitude places women on the side of the explosion of social codes: with revolutionary movements." Julia Kristeva, from an interview with Xaviere Gauthier in Tel Quel #58 "...woman has sex organs just about everywhere. She experiences pleasure almost everywhere. . .The geography of her pleasure is much more diversified, more multiple in its differences, more complex, more subtle, tham is imagined — in an imaginary (system). centered a bit too much on one and the same. "She" is infinitely other in herself. That is undoubtedly the reason she is called temperamental, incomprehensible, perturbed, capricious — not to mention her language in which "she" goes off in all directions and in which "he" is unable to discern the coherence of any meaning. Contradictory words seem a little crazy to the logic of reason, and inaudible for him who listens with ready-made grids, a code prepared in advance. In her statements — at least when she dares to speak out — woman retouches herself constantly." Luce Irigaray, Ce_ Sexe qui n'en est pas un (This sex which isn't one), , ■ 1977. "For analysis has a way of failing to participate in the very spirit which it would analyse, and therefore not involving itself in an ironic self-contradiction, but in a violation and negation of that to which it is attempting to do justice." Zen and the Comic Spirit, by Conrad Hyers . DIFFERENT PLACES/BAD PLACES All of the films being shown tonight are somehow concerned with speaking, and speaking from the "outside". They resist or reject any conventional rela- tionship to language and domninant culture, and to a fixed form or structure. They assume the legitimacy of their own voices? A question is posed: Is this the voice of the women with long tongues, of negativity, of narcissism, or of something else? Linda Peckham, UNTITLED, 1984, 10 minutes The feminine voice is not the transparency of a consciousness. It is che irresponsible focal point of these events, where the moments of concealing and revealing are dislocated as reference for memory and narrative. -L. Peckham Lee Sokol, AQUI SE LP HALLA (Here You Will Find It), 1982, 18 minutes Aqui Se Lo Halla juxtaposes both sensual and violent footage of Mexico with a 40 year old Mexican's poignant account of a youthful passion. It works through a series of doublings: a woman uses a man to talk with a particularly "feminine" sensitivity about women and the possibility of a heterosexuality of differences. -L. Thornton Su Friedrich, SCAR TISSUE, 1980, 6 minutes I wanted to notate as precisely as I could the essential rhythms and emotions of the environment, while undermining its essence; to build slowly from a quietly threatening atmosphere to one in which there is no possible contact between the men and the women, where the urge to get somewhere destroys the need to understand the meaning of the journey. It concerns the chaste being chased, the chaser being captured, the captivating being captive, the chaste being powerless, the captor being impotent tho powerful. -S. Friedrich Lawrence Sheinfeld, HOW I GOT HERE, 1984, 14^^ minutes How _!_ Got Here is another of my arguments for making efficiency and expediency the twin pillars of a new, truly American aesthetic. This is the cheap fraud refined, so as to be cheaper. Rather than apologizing for our lack of a past such as we believe we would like to have had, and rather than, in all glum earnestness, setting about to recreate such a past in a convincing way, we must learn to represent our desire for that past. If the past is everything we haven't got, then the desire for it will prompt frantic efforts to achieve by any means possible the singular moment of absolute rest which is our sham past. -L. Sheinfeld Su Friedrich, BUT NO ONE, 1982, 9 minutes In the dream, I was unable to act according to my good conscience. When I awoke, the women were still outside my window, hard at work. On a walk through the city, I saw the men tearing down and building up the world. Meanwhile, fish were being killed for my evening meal. -S. Friedrich Leslie Thornton an excerpt from PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL, 1984, 20 minutes A room overstuffed with the detritus of culture is the setting in which the young Peggy and Fred "learn to talk". They scramble over the surfaces of meaning like little imperfect recording machines, getting everything wrong, with a feeling and conviction that is both marvelous and frightening. The children are being inscribed into the Symbolic Order, he alienated from himself, but not language, she from language, but not herself. He builds their house and she looks for their voice. (Note: This is an autonomous seguence from a feature length work-in-progress.) L. Thornton Films programmed and notes prepared by Leslie Thornton The Foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bav Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film Saturday, June 8, 1984 Brakhage ; The Roman Numeral Series ana other Films This evening's program will be only the second time that the Roman Numeral Series has been shown in sequence, and in its entirety"] Tn the United States. Roman Numeral Series I-IX, 1979-80, 16mm color/silent, 48 min. "This begins a new series of films which would ordinarily be called 'abstract', 'non-objective', 'non-representational', etc. I cannot tolerate any of those terms and, in fact, had to struggle against all such historical concepts to proceed with my work. Midst creative process, the sound ' imagnostic ' kept ringing in my ears. It seems to be an enjambment of Latin and Greek; but Charlton T. Lewis' 'Elementary Latin Dictionary' gives me (via Guy Davenport) 'image' ... Sanskrit=AIC= ' like ' , GNOSIS 'knowledge', GNOSTIC=AGNOSCO= 'to recognize/to know' and the happier IMAGINOUSUS 'full of fancies'/ 'fantasies', illustrated by Catullus' singular use (perhaps creation of the term?) in the line 'His mind solidly filled with 'fancies of a girl'. Even though exhausted by this etymological pursuit, and despite my prejudice against taking on 'foreign airs' of tongue, 'Imagnostic' keeps singing in my head and escaping my lips in conversation." - S.B. The following films have only recently been released through the Canyon Cinema Supplement. Wedlock House; An Intercourse, 1959, 16mm, color/silent, 11 min. "The first months of marriage, with moments of mutual awareness, frightening understandings, lovemaking." - Cinema 16 Angels ' , 1971, 16mm, color/silent, 2 min. "This then the property of many angels." - S.B. Door, 1971, 16mm, color/silent, 2 min. "This the only all-inclusive autobiography I've yet managed; and as I'm still alive, it is to be understood as a metaphor which defines the limits of expectation." - S.B. Fox Fire Child Watch, 1971, 16mm, color/silent, 3 rain. "Ken, Flo, and Nisi Jacobs in the Syracuse Airport: this is what you might call baby-sitting in the swamp." - S.B. The Peaceable Kingdom, 1971, 16ram, color/silent, 8 min. "This film, one of the most perfect it has ever been given to me to make, was inspired by the series of paintings of the same title by Edward Hicks." - S.B. San Francisco Cinematheque June 10, 198^ POETS ON FILMi FRANK O'HARA The Last Clean Shirt. Film by Alfred Leslie. Subtitles by- Frank O'Hara. Song "The Last Clean Shirt" by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. Original black-&-white version, 1964, destroyed by fire in 1966; present red-&-white version printed by the filmmaker in 1970. ^5 minutes. Intermission USAi Poetryi Frank O'Hara. The 11th in a series of filmed interviews and readings, produced & directed by Richard Moore for KQED-TV and National Educational Television. Photographed and edited by Philip Green. Filmed in 16 mm. at O'Hara' s apartment and Alfred Leslie's studio in New York, March 5. 1966. First televised on September 1, 1966. 15 minutes. Frank O'Hara: Second Edition. From unused footage for USA» Poetry, produced by Gordon G.A. Craig and edited by Peter Kunz for the American Poetry Archive and Resource Center at the Poetry Center, San Francisco State University. 1975. 35 minutes. "Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them, I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies." — Frank O'Hara, from Personismt A Manifesto, 1959. "To most people reality is a confirmation of their expectations. Some part of an artist's practice should be to consciously try to add alternatives to what others think they see. Pull My Daisy and The Last Clean Shirt are the best known of my films that explore that ideaT'' — Alfred Leslie Amherst, Mass. 1984 Notes The Last Clean Shirt "The first of its three parts has a young Negro get into an open car with a young white woman, set an alarm clock at 12i00, and then start driving around the city. The camera is in the back of the car so you can see the couple of the ordinary city sights. She talks continuously in a made-up language — similar to the Bergmanese in The Silence. At 12i07, they're still riding and she's still talking. (By this time, the audience was booing.) The car drives on, passes a church where a loud speaker is blaring something about 'Ashes to ashes'. Around 12:10, the car is back at its starting place; and while the couple is getting out, a man's voice on the soundtrack sings "They put the last clean shirt on my poor brother Bill.' Fin. Part two repeats the whole thing exactly as we saw and heard it the first time -- except it is accompanied by subtitles indicating what the woman is saying. Her continuous patter reads like e.e. cummings under the influence of Gracie Allen. Once again the car and its passengers return to the starting point and "the last clean shirt on my poor brother Bill." Fin — again (with so much applause on the sound track that it almost drowned out the booing of the real audience) . Part three shows exactly the same visuals from 12 o'clock on, but with new subtitles, this time revealing what the main is thinking while the woman chatters on. And his stream of consciousness winds up with an expression of hatred for that "last clean shirt* song..." — review of the premiere of The Last Clean Shirt at the 1964 New York Film Festival, by Philip T. Hartung, The Commonweal . October 23, 196^4-. Finally in Sweden, March 1962, during a preposterous ride in the back seat of a convertible, the combination of the wind, the motor roar, the Swedish language, and my already faulty hearing produced what turned out to be the final notes for The Last Clean Shirt . I made a rough draft of the film in October 1 962 on returning from Europe, using as its basil the car. ride, A Life and Time, and the outline of a scene I had written for Mr. 2. ' ' ' <''" ■•" ' ' ■" ' . ' • ; -' V " ' • In 1965 Shirt was filmed. In the first days' shooting the camera was focused and tied and left to operate independently in the back seat of a convertible. In the second shooting I tied the camera to the knees of a friend who was then strapped into the back of a station wagon. Knowing what the camera would see at that angle and position, I simply drove around looking for things to shoot through the rear view mirror of the car. When something. looked right L yelled, •■*'Shoot",' and the camera would be turned on. '^■' ^' '-''•"(•>.,.• ■'..■■,:.i<,. -y . -j* .r,«ui:i,;. .. ; Later I was given the use of a record called The Last Clean Shirt, vo-itten, pro- , duced, and released by Jerry Lieber and Mike StoUer. Because I liked it so much and because the music and lyrics had so much to do with the ideas in the film, I named the film after the song;'-' -^^y''"^^u >'^- ^^\''- -Hf I {..■•rm ■<':■': , . When the composite print was complete, I screened it for Frank O'Hara to see if we could work out a way for him to write the sub-titles for what would be reels two and three. O'Hara and I had considered doing a few things earlier; an animated film based on an idea of Joe LeSeur's called Messy Lives, an animation of some poems, and also the staging of a pornographic tape of mine called The Flower Girls. None of these had ever worked out because the production time seemed too im- mense to coordinate with our respective work schedules. But this project seemed measurable, and we worked out this method of collaboration. O'Hara would write whatever he wanted. I would adapt the transfer, the timing, and the word and letter spacing of the sub-titles on the screen. I could also repeat any line or lines as frequently as I wanted, as long as they remained in the original sequence. I burned the titles in at Titra, and a complete version of the film was screened. at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco in the summer of 1964. The showing there was the only sympathetic viewing of the film I have ever known of. More usual was the hissing, booing, slow clapping, and foot stamping that greeted the film at 1 the New York and London Film Festivals. ' ' i. ...'..■ ^w A description of the London screening appears in a very complete and sympa- thetic review by Philip French in an issue of Encounter magazine, 1964. A piece about the film in the Catholic Film Review saw the film as a search for truth, and eventually the film won an award in Bergamo, Italy. It then was ignored. ITS LOSS: -. ';-" ' Two years later, on October 16, 1966, a few months after Frank O'Hara's death, my studio and its entire contents were destroyed in a disastrous fire that took the lives of twelve firemen. But the fire, destroying everything else, apparently did not burn all of my films. They looked to be safe and intact since they were in a steel cabinet that was supposed to be fire resistant. The entire cabinet was visible from the street, jammed into a. corner of the building. I tried to get a cherry picker to pluck it out. Not only was I unable to borrow one from any private person or from any city or state department. I was unable to get assistance of any kind to get any- thing out. Despite one week of endless telephone calls to all the museums in New York and to countless friends and acquaintances, I got no help. Finally, the build- ing was knocked down into rubble and the cabinet with the film merged with the rest of the brick and fire trajh. Fortunately, while they were carting away the debris, a few reels fell out of the cabinet and I was able to get them and save them. Also fortunately, at least regarding The Last Clean Shirt, a print of the film was in the Bergamo Archive, and a 35mm negative was still with the lab. The sub-title slugs had remained with Titra in New Jersey, but the time sheets with the valuable mea- surements of screen time were gone, as were all of the out-takes, original 16mm negative, and other film documents. But a new print could be made if 1 could get the measurements for the sub-titles from the Bergamo copy., I wrote Bergamo re- questing help with this and got no reply, ■lui.v, ';,;., , I;;. I • , I. •■' :.-■'''■■'■,:{' . .:.-■"? ,■.. , . - ■I,:. ;,- . ITSRECOVERY: •■.■■,»,..■••>:. In 1970, Kynaston McShine asked for a complete print of the film for the Infor- mation Show he was putting on at the Museum of Modem Art in New York. Want- ing a complete version of the film he assisted me in what turned out to be an almost comic struggle with the Bergamo Archive to get their cooperation. It seemed they would only help us for a price. In order to get their help we would have to find and send them a print of a film they wanted for their collection. But we were unable to get the film they wanted. It took months of overseas calls, letters, telegrams, and finally arm twisting to get the material we needed; It could certainly never have been accomplished without the help of both Kyna«ton McShine and the Museum of Modern Art; • • ■' .ri ,.■■ ..• . . Finally, having the measurements for the sub-titles* 1 was able to make a com- plete print. But this new print was not identical to the original. I did incorporate into it one change. Because of the poor quality of the 35mm negative I had at the lab, I made the new print up in red and white rather than in black and white. The red made up for the thinness of the 35mm negative, by shortening the tonal range and by giving the eye different expectations. Color works differently than black and white in its expression of dark and light. Like Rubens, who used vermillion ' and brown to express the darkest force, I used a reddish brown instead of black. ' ' I still have the other shreds of film I saved from the rubble. I believe they are part of the picture track of the work print of the other film I had made in collabora- tion with Frank O'Hara called Philosophy in the Bedroom (1966) . This is a film of three people in bed making love. O'Hara 's sub-titles tell us what happens immedi- ately after the people leave the bed, and an on-screen character's monologue tells us what happened to them before they got into bed, and before we see them on the iscreen. The picture was shot on 8mm black and white film with sync sound. A 16mm color master was struck off of that, and then a 35mm negative was made from that master. A complete composite print, with music by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller (a three minute composition repeated for one hour), was screened at a number of places, including the Museum of Modem Art in New York, thanks to the icourtesy and care of Willard Van Dyke; • ; ' — Alfred Leslie, from notes for A Tribute to Antholoa:y Film Archives' Avantgarde Film Preservation Program, The Museiim of Modern Art, New York, October 19. 1977. USA I Poetryt Frank O'Hara Frank O'Harat Second Edition Scenes are shot in O'Hara' s floor- through apartment at 791 Broadway and Leslie's studio further down on the Lower East Side. (The studio is the same one that burned in October of 1966.) Leslie & O'Hara are discussing the script for Philosophy in the Bedroom, later entitled Act & Portrait. O'Hara's prose text for the film is included in Selected Plays (Full Court, 1978). The voice-over is that of Richard Moore. The tabby cat's name was Boris. The assemblage over O'Hara' s desk with with Bendiga Nuestra Casa in it is by Joe Brainard (not Larry Rivers as the titles suggest). The large action painting behind O'Hara & Leslie in the last sequence is by Michael Goldberg, and the multi-bulbed lamp is by Larry Rivers. The "Jim" that phones to relate his experience with a "flashing bolt" is the poet Jim Brodey. The audio portion of the reading, of "Having a Coke with You" is reproduced on Biting Off the Tongue of a Corpse (LP, Giorno Poetry Systems, 1975). (Program Notes compiled by Bill Berkson) Grateful acknowledgment is made to Steve Bassett of the American Poetry Archive for making this screening of the film Frank O'Harai Second Edition possible; to the Indiana University Audio-Visual Center for USAi Poetrvi Frank O'Harat and to Alfred Leslie and Jonas Mekas for The Last Clean Shirt. San Francisco Cinematheque June 16, 1984 GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM (1981) THE TIES THAT BIND (1984) By Su Friedrich The text of GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM is a succession of fourteen dreams taken from eight years of my journals. I chose to work with dreams that were the most troubling to me, that expressed my deepest anxieties and longings, or that had forced a sudden awareness about a nagging problem. Since anything repeated often enough tends to lose its mysterious ritual power, I hoped that I might exorcise certain personal obsessions while using a language that was direct enough to allow others to recognize their own demons ( assuming that our desire for attachment and our fear of it can be equally demonic) . I also respect those dreams that can create an uncanny confusion between what was dreamt and what was done "in real life". Some of the dreams seemed so plausible, but were physically impossible. Somehow, these metaphors had more credibility or impact than do most real experiences. In general, I am more concerned with finding ways to integrate the (harsh) wisdom of dreams into my life than I am in analysing the struc- ture and function of dreams through any given system (Freudian, Jungian, etc). 5h£ NAf A vERy ACTIVE I MAGiK/ATiOhJ "^^HtJU^r CAUiJT"- TO fAV SH£J ON SOMESODyi HiTu^r. Let me state very simply that, in making THE TIES THAT BIND, I had no intention of creating a general portrait of all Germans, or of all German women, nor did I intend to explain the origins of the war or of Nazism. The film began as a personal investigation of my own mother's life before and during the war, primarily from age 10 to 28. I was often tempted to extend the film beyond the parameters of her own stories, but I decided against that; I wanted to stay close to her text and work within the confines of a single life. Since the war has engendered such a wide range of material, which often takes such a broad, "objective", view of the events, I was interested in taking a more subjective and "limited" approach. Moreover, it would be ludicrous to presume objectivity when working with material about my mother (although I tried hard to maintain my scepticism throughout the project) . I restricted my found footage of Germany to that of Ulm, which I acquired on a trip in 1982. Even though nothing in the images distinguishes them as shots of Ulm, it was important for me to know that it was her hometown rather than just "images of war". In particular, the shot of the Nazi banner strung across the road forced me to admit and imagine the Nazi presence in her daily life much more than if I had used the familiar propaganda footage of marches, etc. Similarly, all the footage of contemporary Germany (of Dachau, the Berlin Wall, etc.) was shot by me during the same trip; I just didn't want to depend on anyone else's view of the sites. I juxtaposed images of my mother in her current life with stories of her past largely because those experiences still haunt her terribly, and because I can't separate who she is now from who she became because of Nazism and the war. But beyond that, it seemed to create a conversation between the images, which I made, and the sound, which she made. From the inception of the project, I tried to learn more about Nazi and pre-Nazi Germany. Despite being 75% German-American and learning quite generally about the war in school and through the mass media, I was surprised at how little I knew of the details. I also understand now that my own shame at the legacy of the Germans kept me from finding out more about the war when I was younger. The more I learn, the more questions I find, and I think that making this film was just the beginning of a long process of uncovering German history for myself. I was committed to investigating the areas of German complicity and resistance, independent of my mother's accounts. Memory is a tricky thing, and moreso when one is forced to recall (by a persistent daughter) an experience as traumatic as a war (and one as fraught with guilt and silence as World War Two) . I learned a new patience in talking with her when I finally understood that sometimes the truth gets let out slowly, in small batches, and that that doesn't make it less of a truth. But I also did alot that my mother was 1. ' ^'"^"^ "°^^^ ^i— but the ;esnir °"" '°""'^ ^^^^ to -est She coula :::errL^^^^^ ^"°" - ^--nt t'h': .:t:; a\\°,"^^^t ^' '''''^' I began the film thinking of h. '^' "' popular image of all rlZ, ^"^ ^^ ^ relatively cour;,ao end, I understood tha?sTe" '' ^^--^^ly complicito°3 ,nTim '^'"°"' ^'"^" ^^^ person would do who • 'n't aT^ courageous, but within the fim"; °%^"'°"i- ^" the That led to a most uraen^ ^ '° ^"^ °f "'artyrdom or orL .°^ "^" ^"^ ethical conscientious person do r \"".''°" '°' '"e: How much can 11^'"' ^""'° "distance. society in which eJenthi"".' °' ^"°"P actions) when nrf. f/"^ ordinary-but- ^ite unsafe? She Inherxted W^" ^^^'^^" ^^^tholic "A?yan") f '''' ^ ^^^^°-^^ Chancelor h^h ok ""edited the Nazis; she was n „ ^ ' ^^ Potentially But it :as a fuH: e!f" ^V'''' ^" '''' ' ^^e fllj^.L^ ^'^" "^"^ -^ -de independently "^ '"'°""' terrorist state bv the time.h ' '^'"" ^^'^^ different. So I found myself wonH ""^^ "^"^ ^°°"^^ ^° ^^t -"ore, knowing that I !n f. "^ °^^^ ^"^ °^er: if j had h ■ from this saL dil. "^'^ Probably die for it^ife ^^^" "^^' ^°"ld I have resist- ^ear of guaranteed "'r^^:^^" °- -" demonstrate, lea'^'t" '"'r^"^ °"^^ " ^-roLm can't answer that quest lo" -' °' '""^- ^^^ ^^en I ^ut ' I ?f -""^^ ^^^"^ without the hook; it Hus^ ^"estion. it certainly doesn't l«i myself m her place, i -St people are so'afr^r: °" '^ '°°' ^^^^ ^e^.'ottl^llTT -^"^ °^'^^ ^^^^^^ °« It seems that oftenihen' e'o P'^"'^^^' ^° confront such ex'tr""' "r'^" '^<^-- much more readily to devisinf ^" '^^^'^ ^ith terrorism t^"/^^"'"^ violence, to formulating an Tf^Tl ^ ^^""^Pe routes (whether n^^^K.' ^^^ ^^"^ their wiles I do know that ^hat'd^na^r: °PP°3ition. i don't kL^ entire^e'^h^'.r ^'^^^^^^^ ^^- to Naei policy. ^ ^ -Levant to current Am^rLl^'^l t^L^^^ 'T •c- -^■'■i--i.i_a as It was Su Friedrich P-s Seve 1 ^^^' "'"^^'^ "an, .Hanks to .esue Thornton ,o. au .„ ,,, ' "-IP ^n .akin, this show possible. Jerry Wentz and Gary Doberman San Francisco Cinematheaue / June 21, 1984 Domicile/ 1977, Gary Doberman, Ih min "Think of a couple of things like they say: 'Limits are what any of us are inside of ...', 'Verse consists of a constant and a variant ..." Already the v;orld is here, truly, and anyone who has ever had experience of actual confinement — jail, hospital, body, army — common to human state can't really be patient with any assumption that we need to do it to ourselves... "[However] [t]he artist has specific responsibility in that he or she is often in a territory of hitherto inacknowledged signi- ficance - . • "In this film there is a simple accessible constant v/hich you will have no difficulty in recognizing. There is an eaually apparent variable. So your question — to phrase it poorly — might be, what is it that is being measured here?. "The materials of this film are personal, comfortably so. Nothing in that way distorted or untoward. But the choices of the art- ist are both crucial and defining, and there is evident attention to v/hat he has called boundaries. One is also impressed that there is such confident articulation of resources particular to film, marked technical skill — 'without which nothing.'" — Robert Creely, Was That a Real Poem and other Essays Marks of Reference, 1980, Gary Doberman, ll^s min "As I said, but wish to imprint, Marks of Reference is one of your very greatest films to m.e , Gary — a breakthrough for for my comprehension of your work over these 'inner rectangles' for yfeors in your films ... " Stan Brakhage. Water Marks , 1981, Jerry Wentz, 41 min An autobiographical film in v/hich the filmmaker, during a trip home to visit his family, recalls the religious atmosphere (Fundamentalism) that he grev; up in. Memories of childhood in subtitles are juxtaposed in contrast with images and sounds of his relatives, the family dogs, religious television programs, and "created environments" of allegorical significance. A finely balanced sense of the tragic and the comic weaves the dimensions of sound, image, and word. The multi-layered story that unfolds reveals religion's stke in the electronic media. The Foundation for An in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film Thursday, September 20, 1984: THE FILMS OF KURT KREN -- With Kren in person "Kubelka's reputation outside Europe is vast compared with that of his fellow Austrian Kurt Kren. But for European film-makers the work of Kren has had a more significant influence. Unlike Kubelka, who has snent much of his time in the U.S.A., Kren remained in Europe and has made films consistently since 1957, to date completing about thirty 16mm works. Again compared with Kubelka, his work is more involved and varied, initiating a wider variety of formal issues and basic philosophical questions. There are broadly three phases in his work. The first is highly systemic; the second, beginning about 1964, is no less formal, but works in relationship to the Material-Actions of Otto Muehl and Gunter Brus, bringing a new set of issues not easily relatable to his formal notions; and the third starts around 1967, where the formal notions are again dominant but often combined with a more expressive or provocative content. As his work continues to develop in tune with current directions, he should not simply be seen in his historical role." — Malcolm Le Grice, Abstract Film and Beyond (1977) PROGRAM: "3/60-Trees In Autumn", b&w, opt. sound, 5 min. "6/64-Mama and Papa (M.-A. Muehl)", color, sil., 4 min. "8/64-ANA(Action Brus)", b&w sil., 3 min. "10/65-67-Selfmutilation (Action Brus)", b&w sil., 6 min. "15/67-TV" b&w, sil., 5 min. "24/70-Western", col., sil., 3 min. "31/75-Asylum", col., sil., 9 min. "32/76-An W + B", col., sil., 7 min. "33/77-No Danube", col., sil., 9 min. "36/78-Rischart", col., sil., 3 min. "37/78-Tree Again", col., sil., 4 min. "38/79-Sentimental Punk", col., sil., 4 min. "39/81-Which Way To CA?",b&w, sil., 3 min. "40/81-Breakfast im Gr-uen", b&w, sil., 3 min. "41/82-Getting Warm", col., sil., 3 min. "42/83-No Film", b&w, sil., h min. Discussion "16/67-September 20th", b&w, sil., 10 min. Kurt Kren's original scores for many of the films shown tonight will be on display on the Lecture Hall walls. The Foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film NEW FILMS BY WILLIE VARELA September 27, 1984 Order of Program: LIGHT JOURNALS 1-5 16mm, color, silent, 20 min. NO LEFT TURN Super 8, color, silent, 25 min. ***Intennission*** PUSH PULL Super 8, color, silent, 5 min, FOREST LAWN Super 8, B & W, sound, 3 min. IN THE FLESH Super 8, color, sound, 3 min. THE PERFECT NINE Super 8, B & W, sound, 3 min. 5TH & MARKET Super 8, B & W, sound, 3 min. LOSS OF NERVE Super 8, B & W, sound, 3 min. JAMES BROUGHTON Super 8, color, sound, 7 min. GEORGE KUCHAR Super 8, color, sound, 7 min. The LIGHT JOURNALS were shot and edited between 1976 and 1979. They were originally shot in Super 8 and later blown up to 16mm. These films are records of daily life observed and commented on, and are not meant to be seen as anything more - or less. Rather, the task of trying to enter into the flow of spontaneous events, into life as it exists in front of you, is a difficult one. The motivating force behind the making of this kind of film is to render the light that strikes objects and people in an interesting, engaging, and even compelling way. For me, the challenge in making this kind of film is to take material that is inherently very personal and would seem to concern only the maker, and elevate it into something that will have meaning to others. While the problems of working with sensuous, "beautiful" images (especially in today's artistic/political climate) might appear to be insurmountable, the opening up of daily experience seems to me to still be a worthwhile undertaking. In these films, the desire to investigate the world in order to create a new "world" on film was the overriding concern. t NO LEFT TURN is a Super 8 film that was shot in 1982 and part of 1983. It was made for the purpose of coming to grips visually with a new environment (in this case, San Francisco). I moved here from El Paso in the summer of 1982 and immediately began shooting film as a way to feel more at ease in a new place. Of course, I also initially found the city visually stimulating. However, as shooting progressed, I began asking myself if I was really learning anything about San Francisco just by shooting film of it. In a sense, I was still really just a tourist, and would remain so for a while longer. Gradually, I realized that I was shooting events that had meaning for me, but that soipehow seemed to be more charged because of the new environment. NO LEFT TURN, then, is as much a film about me as it is about San Francisco. The surface has been scratched, with truth still an elusive goal. In PUSH PULL, there is an attempt to define and extend the tensions that arise from juxtaposing abstract and representational images. The inspiration for this film came from the handpainted films of Stan Brakhage. However, what I tried to do here was to ground the film in that technique and then insert straightforward imagery to create a new wrinkle. FOREST LAWN is a deliberately vulgar and mocking gesture aimed at the antiseptic "packaging" of death that Forest Lawn cemetery stands for. IN THE FLESH is a film about the (dis)embodiment of erotic desire. By deliberately not showing faces but only parts of two bodies, the skin, hair, and the light that defines the contours of these bodies become the focus of the film, and a balance between the pornographic and erotic imagination is attempted. In THE PERFECT NINE, a public event is scrutinized and subjectively recorded and commented upon. The occasion was a promotional appearance by Marine Jaman, the dancer and actress who did the dancing for Jennifer Beals in the movie "Flashdance". I attended this event at Macy's downtown more out of curiosity than anything else. I waS' interested in seeing how an individual who was largely responsible for the mammoth success of a commercial movie would cope with having to perform in a department store in order to promote a line of clothing, all because she was not credited in the film and therefore denied mass recognition. 5TH & MARKET is also a record of a public event, of a sort, in that the life that centers around the 5th and Market area downtown is as much a "spectacle" as the Macy's promotion, only the actors in this drama are not acting but simply living out their lives in a highly visible, "public" manner. The film is largely edited in the camera and the soundtrack is of a black wOman preacher who is seen at the beginning of the film and again towards the end.^ LOSS OF NERVE is again a record of a public event, in this case a Mark Pauline performance 'that was held in September of 1983 as part of an urban art exhibition that was being sponsored by New Langton Arts, then 80 Langton. What initially attracted me to filming this "performance" of industrial machines was the highly sensational istic manner in which Pauline and his associates at Survival Research Laboratories were promoting this event. Pauline had been hyping this event in the local press as a possibly dangerous happening, dangerous at least to the spectators. One especially provocative piece had appeared in the Music Calendar of Spet. '83 wherein Pauline had strongly hinted that anyone who attended this event might be in serious danger of getting hurt, and that he simply was not going to be responsible if anything went wrong. Admittedly I was attracted as much by the possibility and thrill of danger as being just plain curious. In the end, Pauline turned out to be just another poseur, a true "show biz" personality in that he had manipulated the media in such a skillful way only to mount a gratuitously menacing event, one in which he exerted such precise and complete control over his machines that wery little was actually left to chance. In a piece that appeared in the Sunday Pink Section of this past June announcing yet another performance, Pauline admitted that he and his partners were in such control of their violent, menacing machines that nothing could possibly go wrong. The only thing he didn't say was that this was a show "for the whole family". Ironically, the film makes the event look more exciting than it really was. The last two films are portraits of James Broughton and George Kuchar, respectively. Poet/filmmaker James Broughton reads some recent poems and filmmaker George Kuchar relates various childhood traumas, including his obsession with the "lean people". -Willie Varela September 1984 The Foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film THE OTHER SIDE: EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE CINEMA -- 3.960-1980 - Program II POLA?ro/YnGOSIAVIA Text-Door (197ii), 2 mln . , b/w; Tea-Spoon (1976), 2 min., b/w; Match-boT (197^). ^ nln., b/vr--all by Wolclech Bruszewakt "What I do l3 nothing else than setting traps fron yhat exists. I try to set the traps on *"he borderline of <"he ' spiritual ' and the 'material', of 'what we know and think of and 'what there is.'" (rt.5. in Film as Film catalogue, 1979) 30 Sound Situations (1975), 10 min., b/w, by Ryszard Wasko Wasko'3 30 Sound Situations is precisely what its title tells us it will be. The film was shot in one day in Lodz, ir March, 1975. The artist himself appears in each scene and claps two pieces of wood carefully in the same way in thirty different settings. Each clapping is conditioned by Its surroundlng3--including other sounds and the position of the mlcrophone--yet there are no dramatic peaks, no high points. The film and Wasko intentionally pass from one sound sit- uation to another, presenting the viewer with an alternative way of constructing film. Straight Line /Steven s-Duke (I96I4.), 8 min., b/w; The Morning Of A Faun (1963), (J min., b/w--by Tomislav Gotovac Straight Llne/Stevens-Duke was shot with a camera fixed on a tripod at the head of a tram, behind its driver. The camera's loirney through Belgrade--past people, houses, trees, boulevards, cars and trucks — is repeated a number of times, as Is Ellington's accompanying "Creole Love Call". The Morning Of A Faun consists of three scenes. The first is a long shot, taken from a fixed camera position, peer- ing onto the terrace of a surgical ward of a hospital. Patients are seen resting, relaxing, in behaviour which looks eccentric and comic. In the film's second brief section, the camera zooms toward a plaster wall In need of repair. And in the last and longest scene, Gotovac films the intersection of a square — its small chapel, parked car, and streets — with a constantly zooming camera. If these three scenes seem enigmatic, Gotovac compounds this with his sound-track. As in other of his films, this one opens with the music of Glenn Miller and hla big-band tunes. The terrace scene is accompanied by the sound-track from a section of Godard's Vlvre Sa Vie. The cracked wall sequence is silent, while the treet scene incorporates part of the sound-track .from Hollywood's The Time Machine. (over) THE OTHER SIDE: POLAND /YUGOSLAVIA Forwards-Backwards Piano (1977), l8 min., color; Two Times In One Space (1.976-Vv), 12mln., b/w--b7 Ivan Ladislav Galeta Forward3-Backward3 Piano is a delightful surprise in the way it takes classical music as material for an experinent in sound. Concert pianists Fred Dosek plays Chopin's Waltz #2, opus oIi., at a grand piano four times. The first version is played and heard as written by Chopin. The other three are manipulated by pianist, filmmaker, or both. Prior to each playing, the version is announced in writing, e.g. the words "version 2", written backwards, signal that the piece will be filmed in reverse. Dosek presents an equally dignified performance with each manipulation of *-he Chopin, which makes all the more humorous the Iconoclastic way Galeta subver-^s the romantic score. Two Times In One Space Is a domestic comedy which plays with film space. Gale'-a selected a segment of the 1969 film In The Kitchen, directed by Nikola Sto.ianovic , project-ed two identical prints, and superimposed them with a 2li.0-frame, "-en-second '"ime delay between the two. As Galeta's film opens, the family is eatingat a table. After ten seconds, the second ' layer ' of images appears. The woman walks over and removes a white sheet from a doorway; the son and husband are preparing for bed; the wife prepares food; her husband awkwardly lends a hand. An erotic situation develops on the opposite balcony, followed by an apparent suicide. Finally, the husband pulls down a black shade. The film winds down to one layer of images and ends. The House (1977), 8 min., color, by Radoslav Vladich The protective spaces Vladich films are those of his own house with parents, wife and child. Each room in the house has its own char- acter; each is handled on film in a different way. In "Mother's Room" we are given shots of a woman's hands sewing and of a man playing accordion. Family pictures are proudly displayed. A panning camera with short, Jerkincr movements presents the sitting room, while the room where the child of the house sleeps is filmed from the floor. We are treated to close-ups of foods In the pantry and, finally, stills of the family which lead to the dining room. Seen through Vladlch's camera, the house is presented as a warm and comforting place full of love. The Other Side : European Avant-Garde Cinema 1960-1980 was curatod by Reglna Cornwell and aponsored by the American Federation of the Arts. Program notes were by Cornwell (Catalogues are available for $3.00). Future programs in the aeries will be: West Germany (co-sponsored with the Goethe Institute), Nov. 1; Hungary, Nov. ki France/Italy, Nov. 15. Five other programs from the Initial series will be shown at the Pacific Film Archive (call 6l4.2-li4.i2 for details). The Foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. THE OTHER SIDE; EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE CINEMA, 1960-1980 PROGRAM III: WEST GERMANY Lutz Monmartz: Selbatachusse (Self-Shooting) , 1967, 7 minutes. Self-Shooting parodies the preoccupation with the self-reflexive in cinema. Mommartz plays both subject and object. Holding his camera in every possible position, he shoots himself: above his head, in front of himself at arm's length, behind, below, at various awkward and distorting angles. He joins his camera antics with a potpourri of program music, to both heighten and lighten his parody. Dore 0. Nekes: Lawale , 1969, 30 minutes. Lawale stands out as something of a departure from O's other films . The domestic air is here, but most of the film is shot in a brieht, harsh, cold and extremelv peti-^ bourgeois home. T'he compositions tend to be angular, formal and tableau-like, the scenes dominated by women. Dore 0 herself is present, sometimes pushed to the side as she strueeles for some kind of Identity in this speechless atmosphere. Vlado Kristl: Italienisches Capriecio, 1969, 30 minutes. Krlstl presents us with capricious events within the Italian landscape: a man, fully clothed, dives into the sea; people stop at the roadside to clean their car windows as "MILIT'A'R" appears, is spoken and sung; people appear to be listening hard, one man with an ear to the ground. Sound is distorted, and seems at times to run backward. The f ully-clothed diver emerges from the water, undresses, neatly places his clothes on the sand, and lies beside them, then dresses and returns to the water. At one point, sounds of drilling drown out what needs to be heard. Near the end, someone speaking in German asks: "Are you in the military? Answer! Answer!" But no one does, Klaus Wyborny: Dallas Texa3--After the Goldrush, 1970/71, 35 minutes. The hyphenated title actually represents two films, the first done in 1970 and the second in 1971. In the 35 minute screening, the two are divided by leader, separately titled, and repeated. Wyborny presents us with two narrative fragments which use the same location, but are shot at different angles and with different players (a small car backs partially into t'if frame, where it remains; a man is seen running toward a cabin; the door opens and we see, from extreme lone shot, a man falling inside) frcir which the viewer infers a love triangle involving one woman and two men. The houndation tor Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. THE OTHER SIDE; EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE CINEMA 1960-1980 PROGRAM V: ERANCE/ITALY La Petite Fllle (The Little Girl) by Pascal Auger, 1980, 11 m^n. Pascal Auger Is associated with the Paris Film Co-op, and his The Little Girl Illustrates one kind of filmic research with which the group is Taentified. Her Auger plays with time through the vehicle of a child at play, manipulating real time for his own cinematic reconstruction of it. Auger edits the Images of the little girl in the sand in short back-and-forth bursts of past and present motions, thus distorting her gestures. Each of the chili's movements seems to be a struggle because of the exaggerations of the edltincr, but each is finally executed, and the little zirl moves on to her next action. The process is then repeated, over and over. Tosca by Dominique Noguez, 1978, 20 mln. For his film, Noguez takes part of the second act of Puccini's opera and works within a static frame, calling attention to the offscreen space in which action is Implied via the use of arias from the opera. On the edges of a banquet table, we see a man's hands and occasionally, a woman's. Tosca, with back to camera, is pleading with Scarpla, who is eating and drinking. W© never see their faces. Finally there is a scurry back and forth across the screen: Tosca has left with Scarpla In pursuit, yet the camera does not move or follow them. Later, they return: he Is seen taking paper from the table, and Tosca 's hand stealthily picks up the knife. There is a violent scuffle as the table moves while the camera remains still. The screen Is black for a considerable time. Finally we glimpse light from a burning candle, and the film ends. Per Brautigam, Die Komodlantln und Per Zuhalter (The Bridegroom, the Comedienne and the Pimp J by Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Hulllet, 1960, 23 mln, featuring Werner Paaablnder The Bridegroom opens on graffiti on the wall of a Munich post office : "stupid old Gormany/l hate It over here/l hope I can go home soon/Patrlcla," over which are auperlmpoaed the credits, followed by a four-minute moving camera shot through Munich's red-light district at night, accompanied by a Bach oratorio. The second part is a Ferdinand Bruckner play. The Sickness of Youth, shot In a single take lasting ten minutes"; The stark stage, which has a Mao quotation scrawled on Ita back wall and la filmed in long shot, la the scene of abrupt melodramatic entrances and exits. The third part, Inspired by a newspaper article about a romance between an ex-proat Itute and a Black man. Includes a chase, a wedding, recitations from John of the Cross, a murder, and more Bach. La Verlflca Incerta, by Glanfranco Baruchello, 196[t., I4.5 mln., with Alberto arifl. La Verlflca Incerta Is a witty montage made exclusively of several dozen Hollywood Cinemascope films which appear squeezed or elon- gated on the screen. Genres are mixed, chases mismatched as the film moves at a rapid pace, disorderly yet creating its own kind of order by relying on classical Hollywood film editing. What results is a kind of "greative geography" -- as Lev Kuleshov, Soviet director and one of the pioneers of montage, called it -- in which relationships that haven't previously existed can be constructed simply by Juxtaposing strips of film. The foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. FILMS OP BRUCE CONNER -- November l8, I98I4. Televialon Aaaaaatnatton (8mm Installation), filmed In 1963 and 196l|. on Ibmm; final 100' film reduced to 8mm, and seven copies spliced head to tall on one reel. Ten Second Film (1965), l6mra, 10 sec, b&w, silent Permian Strata (1969), l6mm, I4. mln., b&w, sound Mongoloid (1978), 16mm, I4. mln., b&w, sound America Is Waiting (198I), l6mm, 3iniln., b&w, sound A Movie (1958), l6ram, 12 mln., b&w, sound Report (1963-1967), l6mra, 13 mln., b&w, sound Take The 5? 10 To Dreamland (I976), l6mm, SslO mln., b&w, sound Valse Trlste (1979), l6mm, 5 mln., b&w, sound Intermission Breakaway (1966), l6mm, 5 mln., b&w, sound Vivian (196[|.), l6mm, 3 mln., b&w, sound The White Rose (1967), l6mm, 7 mln., b&w, sound Marilyn Times Five (1968-73), l6mm, 13 mln., b&w, sound Looking For Mushrooms (1960-1963), 100' l6mm original reduced to 0mm, projected at 5 f.p. s. Easter Morning (1967), filmed In 8mm. "All of the multiple exposures and editing created In sequence on the original film. Only a few frames were removed before this final copy was made. "--B.C. Projected at 5 f.p.s. Music for the above two films la IN "C" by Terry Riley. "Like dreams, Conner's films reawaken memories of past movie experiences, those films which form our sense of narrative expectation In film. The Inexorable chase of A MOVIE, the Incessant repetition of what we do not want to see In REPORT, the Incomprehensible force of the Atomic Bomb In CROSSROADS, and the elusive feelings and logic conjured by the Images of TAKE THE 5:10 TO DREAMLAND, are all structured as films dreaming about fllmfl. Their structure has the Ineluctable logic of dreams as they rush elllptically to their conclusion. Finally Conner's films are his theory of the film experience, his montage is directed toward the material of film composition and the feeling of his (our) being PO«"""f, ^^z ,*^« ,^ demon of film's past and the collective memory of its iconography (Images) --John Hanhardt I omm The Foundation for An in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bav Area showcase for oersonal and avani-garOe film Saturday, December 1, 1984 Ken Jacobs' im, tqm, THE PITER'S SC'^ 115 min. B&W/coior silent 1969 ~his is ' nega-wc''-; cf the American avanT-;:2:-de cinema. in '■ -- , Jacob- ': road- ens, resurrects and expands upon an anc ienr-ear I y film, extracting from it form and life-potential such as only the rare artist can — proving, as it is said, that it takes an artist to see (then make) a I iving art. From a playful black and white 1905 vintage Billy Bitzer film, wonderous passages are laid bare via Jacobs' magic use of re-framings, re-piayings, re-photog- raphy. A present tense is opened that mines the "score" that was, here, the original brief film. Perhaps without realization consciously, Jacobs' divine sense of drama has given Tom true manner of autobiographic fo I low-throughs of love of detail. A lost animal (a pig) embodies here the living muse of one man's cinema, personally re-hatched and effervesced with complete adora- tion. Worlds within worlds are born of meaningful emulsion-grain vignertes and tapestries of the unexpected — a celebration of the heroic "chase". The film's single color passage quietly blasts us in our seats. - Ga i I Cam hi "Original 1905 film shot and probably directed by G. W. "Billy" Bitzer, res- cued via a paper print filed for copyright purposes with the Library of Congress. It is most reverently examined here, absolutely loved, with a new movie, almost as a side effect, coming into being. "Ghosts! Cine-recordings of the vivacious doings o* persons long dead. The preservation of their memory ceases at the edges of the frame... The staging and cutting is pre-Gri f f I th. Seven Infinitely complex cine-tapestries com- prise the original film, and the style Is not primitive, not uncinematic but the cleanest, inspired indication of a path of cinematic deve ioprnenr whose value has only recently been rediscovered. My camera closes in, only to betrer ascertain the infinite richness (playing with fate, taking advantage of the loop-character of all movies, recalling with variations some visual complexes again and again for particular savoring), searching out incongru- ities in the story-telling (a person, confused, suddenly looks out of an delighting in the whole bizarre human phenoiTiena of story- g itself and this within the fantasy of reading any bygone time out of the visual crudities of film: dream within a dream! + _ I 1 : -« ; -I IX lOltlll — "And then I wanted to show the actual present of film, just to begin to indi- cate its energy. A train of images passes like enough ii:'.d different enough to imply to the mind that its eyes are seeing an arm lift, or a door close; 1 wanted to "bring to the surface" that mul ti -rhythmic collision-contesting of dark and light two-dimensional force-areas struggling edge to edge for identity of shape... to get Into the amoebic grain pattern itself - a chemical dispersion pattern unique to each frame, each cold st I I I . . . st irred fo life by a successive 16-24 f.p.s. pattering on our retinas, the teeming energies elicited (the grains!) then collaborating, unknowingly and ironlcaily, to form the a I ways-poignant-because-a Iways-past-i I I usion." - Ken Jacobs The Foundation tor Art iii Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. •WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SEX?" : Films from Car^yon Cinema. Thursday, December 6 1984. 3:00, S.F. Art Institute Auditorium. The title for this program comes from the fact that sexually explicit avant-garde filmwork after 1976 is rare. In the days when Rob and Laura Petrie slept in separate beds, the avant-garde was one of the few places to see graphic sexuality treated with any intelligence. But as early as I966 Andrew Sarris could claim that "relaxed censorship is depriving the avant-garde of its raison d'etre. " Now we have Joan Collins in Playboy, Miss America in Pent- house , every other TV movie is about incest or prostitution, and home video pornography is a booming business. As if in reaction, the avant-garde is looking pretty chaste. There must be reasons for this. There is a welcome increase in awareness of sexual exploitation, for instance, and few people dare to be misunderstood in the arena of sexual politics. Exhibi- tion venues have become more middle-class, many festivals reject- ing work they feel to be unsuitable for the kiddies. But the avant-garde has usually ignored, or purposefully antagonized, such concerns. The question remains: whatever happened to sex? Clues may be found in these films. Thev were chosen because they deal explicitly with sex (not eroticism), and/or because of their attendant commentary on male/female relationships. Two threads run through most of them. One is obfuscation. All of them, in one way or another, em- ploy distancing devices, shields behind which the artists hide. Three are animation works, two use found footage not of the artist' making, one secretly spies on people, and one isolates body parts, depersonalizing them. None has solved the problem of confronting sex head-on. The second thread is that most of these films say less about sex than about the way media represents it. Despite changes in superficial attitudes, sex remains a highly personal and emotion- ally volatile activity. Rarely is it presented plainly, honestly, and without manipulation. Perhaps the flurry of explicitness from 1970 to 1975 took this graphic-yet-distanced strategy as far as it could go. It may be that the next step - personal sexual films without obfuscation - requires more daring, and involves more risks, than most film- makers and audiences are prepared for. We shall see. Dangling Participle (1970) I8min, b&w, snd. By Standish Lawder . Culled from sex-education films of the 1950' s, it is both hilarious and discomforting. It shows the sexual education The Beaver was getting at school as Ward fondled June's pearls at home. In other words, it makes clear why a "sexual revolution" was inevitable. Home on the Range (1973) 3tnin, col, snd. By Darrell Forney. An odd little work, anticipating video-projection "home entertain- ment centers". A treat for dog lovers. Near the Big Chakra (1972) 17min, col, sil. 3y Anne Severson. Contemplative shots of 37 female genitals, from babies xc senior citizens. The casual aloofness of the film is fascinating, yet problematic, a condition giving it a charged presence. Though pudenda is what sexual difference is all about, one feels after- wards that the film has nothing to do with sex. The Secrete of Life (1971) 15min, col, snd. 3y Victor Fac- cinto. Part II of Faccinto's "Video Vic" series, it is funny, mean-spirited, inventive and infuriating all at the same time. He has obvious psycho-sexual anxieties which he parades before us, his often horrified viewers-cum-analysts , Keep Bright the Devil's Doorknob (1978) ^min, col, snd. 5y Richard Beveridge. As Brakhage did with autopsies in The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes, Beveridge does with pornography: he excerpts the most appalling and intense moments, out of context, and strings them together. It makes one long for Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler. Crocus (1971) 7min, col, snd. By Suzan Pitt. As the married couple in this animated film are about to make love, their baby cries for a drink of water. The mother tends to it as the father pouts, and you wonder why more filmmakers don't show that sex is inseparable from the rest of life. Voyeuristic Tendencies (1983) 17min, b&w, snd. By Dominic Angerame . Possibly the sexiest film in the program by virtue of what it doesn't portray, and a perfect sex film for the 1980's. We are teased, cajoled, lured and finally snubbed as we learn one possible answer to what has happened to sex: it has been subsumed in our society's current confusion between artifice and reality. James Irwin Guest Curator ["he Foundation lor Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. BLACK-AMERICAN FOLK ARTISTS ON FILM (FILMMAKERS WILL BE PRESENT) THE ANGEL THAT STANDS BY ME (1983) Produced by Allie Light and Irving Saraf, 28 min. Minnie Evans is the embodiment of the visionary artist. She is an 88-year old Black painter of Wilmington, North Carolina, who has created a world of mythic animals, religious symbols, and natural beauty. ANGEL... concludes Light and Saraf's series on American Folk Artists (Visions of Paradise) . Each artist in the series was self taught, comes from a different ethnic backround and began pursuing their art late in life. Allie Light taught in the Woman's Studies department at San Francisco State and taught Screenwriting at both State and City College. She has been working in film for the last seven years. Irving Saraf headed the film department at KQED and worked at the Saul Zaentz Company for ten years where he designed their Film Center. Light and Saraf have collaborated for the last ten years and have produced seven award winning documentaries. The two Bay Area filmmakers are currently developing a feature to be shot on location in the Four Corners area in Utah. TCHUBA... MEANS RAIN (1981) Produced by Kathryn Golden and Ashley James, limin. An introductory film on Cape Verdean history and culture. The island archipelago nation is located 360 miles off the northwest coast of Africa. The film was funded by a grant from the Polaroid Foundation. AMERICAN TREASURE: THE FOLK ART OF JOAQUIM MIGUEL ALMEIDA (1984) Produced by Kathryn Golden and Ashley James, 30min. PREMIERE AMERICAN TREASURE... is a portrait of an extraordinary 86-year old artist, Joaquim Miguel Almeida. Yet, it also tells the story of a people (Cape-Verdean-Americans) as we look at Joaquim's art work and listen to his memories. Joaquim learned to carve the model whaling boats and packet vessels in Cape Verde. His art is inspired by the poetry and folklore of Cape-Verdean-Americans, the first black people to immigrate to tl" United States voluntarily. It was filmed entirely in the historic old whaling port of New Bedford, Massachusetts. American Treasure is a Film Arts Foundation sponsored project, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Arts and Humanities Council . Kathryn Golden has produced three films: Majestic Theatre, Niqhtsplay, and The PASSIVE EARTH. She is currently collaborating with Ashley James at Searchlight Films on the next film in their Cape-Verdean-American series. Ashley James is currently directing and producing The Vertigo Tour- a documentary on jazz pianist Ran Blake and his compositions for and fascination with Hitchcock's Vertigo. He is also directing a film on the late jazz musician Earl Fatha Hines. His past award winning credits include Booker, The Case of the Legless Veteran, Fade-Out, Zack. and Ancestors. iFilm Arts Foundation 346 Ninth Street — Second Floor. San Franci.sco. California 94103 Administrative Offices 415-552-8760 • Editing Facility 41 5-552-6350 The Foundation for Art in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The Bav Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film THE FILMS OF SAUL LEVINE — Part 1 December 13th, 1984 Personal Appearance Chicago Reds and Blues (1973) l6inin from S-8mm orig., S.-'-Zz. min. , color A pun on commxinists and music, the title i_3 the film. The words red and blue alternately flash on the upper and lower portions of the screen at variable intervals. V;hen held on the screen, the word seems to become its color and in the end actually intercut with colored leader; when flashed intermittantly, both words appear to be on the screen simultaneously, making a strobe-like effect on the ceiling and the floor of the room. The minimal nature of the film seems to be a joke, a response to the simplistic demands to unite art and politics, form and content often made on politically active artists. described by Mar.jprie Keller new Left Notes (1968-76) l6mm from regular 8mm orig., 28 min., color We are given a unique viewpoint of an active participant (Saul was the editor of New Left Notes the SDS journal) in. the civil rights movement. Two subjects take up most of the film 1) the protest rallies in numerous east coast locations, in particular centering on a young woman activist who funstions as a catalyst for both public, and private activities depicted, and 2) the film medium itself most apparent by the volatile attack on film editing via the very visible splice line bar between almost every other frame. A sort of fallout occurs from this visceral undermining of the medium in that we see grain patterns, color flicker, and flare outs as an integral part of the story- telling apparatus. It appears as if Levine wants us to see the unrest of the sixties as a call to the self-examinaticn of not only our relationship to politics but most imperatively to ourselves. No conclusions are made, but observations and reflections combine into the "notes" format to make viewing the film an experience akin to pondering the philosopher's stone. We see, we experience, and we go onward, ever onward. AUthough the film was left unfinished, its release in 1983 (The concern of Marjorie Keller and Bill Brand who brought about the reg. 8mm ta.l6.mm blowup and preservation of the film) strikes a most strident note as we as a nation face Ray Gun and all of the conservative death trip that he encompasses. described by Bruce Posner. notes of an Early Fall (1976-77) S-8mm sound, 38 min., color A film about displacement and if it seems as if I was obsessed with sound in making this film, I wasi Using a single system S-8mm camera and a sound projector to edit, I solved the mystery of expanding the range of the material by counting up 18 frames when I'd make a cut (something I don't have too much trouble doing.) That no seasonal Fall is depicted is a clue as to how to read the film. In exploring the gaps, the holes of the material, spin offs were subject and object division, fall in the history of western philosophy, the discrepancy in light and sound waves... With my films I am seeking/finding new formal sophistication rooted in real attempts to illuminate the world. comments made by Saul after screening San Francisco Art Inst December 11th, 1984 The Big Stick (1968-72),, l6mm from regular 8mm orig, , 13^/2 min. , black & white UNFINISHED BUSINESS: WHO IS TELLING YOU WHAT TIME IT IS? THE BIG STICK A MOLECULE WHICH IS CERTAINLY ROBUST ENOUGH TO HANG AROUND FOR YEARS— RUSSIAN AIJIERICAN INTERCOURSE, CASUAL AND NECESSARY^-UNREACTIVE , UNPRODUCTI^/E , AND LOADED WITH MALARIAL UNDERSTANDING PACKED FOR THE FUTURE, COMPLEX, SLOW IN BURSTING, FRIESHTED: BUT JUST NOW, IN THIS TROUGH OF EVENTS WAITING AU-^OST IMMOBILE IN HISTDRY, NOT GREASED TO SLIP TO THE BRAIN, NOT CLEAN IN SHAPE LIKE THE TRANSCENDENTAL WHIZZ KIDS, BUT TRUNCATED, DELICACT IN FURY, THE SHAPE OF A SKYLINE APPROACH ING A BOMB CRATER. THERE ARE EXPLOSIONS ON THE HORIZON, THERE IS NO PLACE TO TURN. THE. GUILLOTINES BEGIN TO SOUND LIKE MACHINE GUNS. THE MOTION PICTURING OF THE PAST MAY PAUSE FOR THE FORMAL, THE DRAMATICAL, OR THE RHETORICAL EMPHASIS, FOR. REFLECTION. BUT NOT FOR THOSE HEADS AND BODIES TUMBLING THROUGH THE FRAMES LIKE GRAINS IN A BARREL. SAUL, YOU WERE SHOCKED THAT I WOULD WANT TO LOOK AT THE FILM FRAIffi BY FRAME, WITH THE EXHORTANT POWER TO ROAM, IN SOME STOPPED MOMENT, AFRAID MAYBE THAT THE ARCHITECTURE ERECTED IN THE SPACE BLTWEEN THE FRAMES WOULD RATTLE DOWN TO SUFFOCATE ME IN. PLASTIC DR (unclear Ed.) FILLING A SPACE ONTOLOGICALLY ffiDRTLING IB(IMOBII£ IN THE SKY AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEAVE THE BODY AND CONTEMPLATE THE BLOW ABOUT TO LAND. described bjr Dan Bamett 1 he Foundation tor An in Cinema CINEMATHEQUE The regular Bay Area showcase for personal and avant-garde film. THE FILMS OF SAUL LEVINE -- Part 2 December 15. I98I4. The Notes are an expanding collection of nine films that move between their source In personal history and their manifestation In visual constructs. The material from which they come Is the casual, dally activity of those around the filmmaker and the fllrmnaker himself, being filmed by a responsive, Improvlsatlonal camera eye, educated In the "palette" of film emulsions. By their range of Imagery, a sense that all the activity surrounding the flmraaker la potential art, not because of the privileged genius of the artist for living or seeing life, but out of the sense that there la no "lofty subject" - all life la worthy of consideration . " Marjorle Keller Note One, 1967, 8mm, b^ mln . "As the only note entirely In B&W, Note One atanda as the purest example of Levlne's drive to sculpt simple Tight Into an Image. The figures of his parents emerge from the grainy darkness Into the Intimate space of home. The Intensity of the grain fights the Images and often overpowers them, making a ahadowplay that lends an aura of the ephemeral to the figures theraaelves . . .The restive gaze of the camera, 09ntem- platlng the Sabbath evening as the shawl Is donned and the candles are lit, carries with It a reverence for the unmanlpulated Image- as-document that the later Notes bely. It Is fitting as the first Illustrating the contextual and formal sources for the later films, -Marjorle Keller Note to Coleen. 197i4., 8mm, 5 mln. "...Perhaps Note to Coleen Is an oracle, giving all answers to all questions, for to me It spoke of the meaning of language, the economics of millimeter, the Ideology of Image ... the art fair throws Into especial relief the problems of popular vs. elitist arts, the cul-de-sac of the filmmaker trying to be at once political and artistic revolu- tionary without Incurring the wrath of comrades on either side." -B. Ruby Rich Not Even a Note, 1978, 2^ mln. On the Spot, 1973 » 28 mln. Near Sight, 1977-78, 2 mln. Arrested; Breaking Time, Part 2, 1977-82, 8mra, 8 mln. "While It la part of the series of rilms titled Breaking Time, this film evokes Levlne's earlier series The Notes, especially Note to Patl. The silent poetry of winter and thaw, shovelling snow, people made large and small through the Intercutting of close ups and long shots, movomert and stlllrosa croatod through fast cutting - all are similar to strategies from his earlier work. In this film, a large Marlboro billboard with a running bull is used to further these themes by minlscullzlng the men who are painting it, and making metaphorical enlargements of houses, rivers, and even the reflection of the filmmaker himself." - Marjorle Keller A Few Tunes Going Out: Part • 1 : Bopping the Great Wall of China Blue, 1979, S-8, 7 mln. Part 2; Groove to Groove, 1979, S-8, 12 mln. A Brennan Soil Columbusns Medina, 1981;, 13 mln, "A Few Tunes Going Out is a set of meditations on the relationship of film to music. Eevlne Is an ardent fan of American blues and Jazz, and In these films combines a love of the wall of blues with the structure of avant-garde Jazz. Both films plaj with the edge which Joins and separates film and music. Translation, "bi- llngualism," and visual onomatopoeia are the motives that keep the Interpenetrablllty of image and sound going. "Bopping the Great Wall of China Blue is a triple portrait of the blues aisc Jockey May Kramer, the filmmaker Dan Barnett, and Levine himself. It is cut rapidly between May talking, Dan editing a film at a Steenbeck and "bopping" down the steps of the Great Wall while listening to a portable radio, and Saul delivering pasterles, smoking, and hack coughing. Shots of an astronaut floating in space, clouds, and Chinese women performing slow motion exercises expand the portraits' domains. The work of delivery and its required knocking on doors becomes music through the editing. . .The metaphorical unity of the characters of Levine 's world, in v^lch China is both ''red" and "blue" (aa Chicago was for him ten years earlier), la affirmed, as always, in the editing." "Groove to Groove continues this kind of portraiture, concentrating on May Kramer and Levine, and develops the "bl-llngual" paradigm of film and music. . .Through the l8 frame disjunction between sound and image necessary in cutting single-system Super 8mm sound film, splices are made before we hear the sound of the splicer, voices are heard before we see the speaker. A series of Jokes told in English and Yiddish about language and mis- understandings created by, in the first case, English and in the second instance, by the naming of Jewish holidays, affirms the film's themes of translation." - Marjorle Keller Star Film, 1968-71, 15 mln. Recently reprinted, this la a lat answer print. "Repatition was a feature in the creation of the two other films shown. The first waa an untitled work which Levine refers to, aa "the Star Film": it's a l6mm film in which handprinted stars are placed on a fllmstrlp that has been stained and tinted. The shifts in color and in resonance make the film particularly attractive: at tlmoa, as when green stains and stars appear on a pale pink tint, it la a ravishing visual experience." -Daryl Chin Soho Weekly News