Filmforum Begins Massive Oral Histories Project

Filmforum is well into the second major phase of its Alternative Projections project covering postwar experimental filmmaking in LA, which involves conducting videotaped oral histories with filmmakers, film programmers, artist, critics and others closely involved with the production of fine art filmmaking in Los Angeles from 1945-1980. Individuals are being selected for an oral history interview based on their contributions during this period, and we are also targeting contemporary filmmakers, artists, programmers, and scholars who have been influenced by work produced during this period.

So far we have shot interviews with filmmakers David Lebrun, Peter Mays, and Chris Casady, and curators Terry Cannon (founder of Filmforum) and Michael Fles (formerly John Fles of Cinema Theater).

We hope that these interviews will add significantly to the body of source material about this era, which to this point has been minimally documented. The transcripts from these interviews will be made available online as a resource for all scholars.

Below, you can see a few select clips and transcript excerpts. More video and full transcripts to follow!

November 22, 2009

Filmforum Begins Massive Oral Histories Project

Oral history with filmmaker David Lebrun at his home in West LA. CalArts grad student Andrew Schuler shoots and Adam Hyman directs.

Current Filmforum Executive Director Adam Hyman interviews Filmforum’s FIRST director, founder Terry Cannon, at his home in Altadena.

NOTE - Transcript excerpts only

“I started going to film shows. And the end of high school, I started going to the Genesis Film Programs. And that was a seminal discovery. That's where I first saw Pat O'Neill films and first saw Bob Nelson films ... that was a real turning point in my last year of high school to come into Hollywood. And go to these little Bohemian theaters like the Encore which is no longer around. But it was a great little underground repurposed dilapidated theater that some cool people had taken over and were running really neat films ...

And a little paragraph [on the program notes] said, Pat O'Neill is now teaching film at California Institute Of The Arts, which I don't think it even opened its doors yet ... And based on that program and that film, my friend Byron and I said we're gonna go to that school because that guy teaches there, that guy who made that totally psychedelic film ... So, that was, it was actually Pat O'Neill that led me to CalArts.” ...

“I do credit my job on Star Wars with subliminally indoctrinating, subliminally allowing me to absorb animation principles because of the number of explosions that I rotoscoped. I rotoscoped a lot of explosions. They were miniature explosions. There were little things that happen on set, on stage, but they were models blowing up. There were TIE fighters blowing up. And they were over cranked. They were shot at a few 100 frames a second maybe, or 150 frames a second or something like that.

And so, I would spend hours every evening in a dark cave with black, surrounded by black velveteen in my own little booth with this little projection. And I'd be hitting the button and then stepping through frames ... So later when I wanted to draw, it was very familiar kind of territory. I knew just how far to move something and what the space relationships were. And so, that rotoscoping gave me kind of a primal sense of analyzing motion.”

“Star Curtain was another experiment that just, I made into an extended film, and I shot whole rolls of paint. And meanwhile, I did some painting on footage, so I projected that on my wife's body and filmed it, and other things like that. These are all, there was a lot of sexuality in these films. And there was in the period, it was the beginning of the sexual revolution as well and also of a revolution in censorship.

Where, and you saw these in the Movies 'Round Midnight, the risqué, more and more risqué footage was being seen. And at some point, pubic hair began to be seen, which was amazing at the time. These were very nice films, though, at that point. It was, I shouldn't be calling it porn. It was sensual, I think, sensual going to the next step. At the same time, though, The Beatles were coming out. Dylan was beginning to be heard. The whole, there was a whole, the new age, the '60s was beginning, '64, '65.

So I got a porn film from this place that was very, low-key porn. I mean, it's just a woman with breasts or something. Put that and shot off my movie scope. I have a four-frame thing and other experiments like that. But very casual, very Warhol, just do a, you know, and I shot it all in a week. Had the six rolls, just cut the rolls together basically. And that was the original Star Curtain.

By this point, the experimental film was beginning to really blossom, and I think it was '66 that Warhol finally made Chelsea Girls, and that had a big run. And about this time, the Cinematheque 16, I think it was '66, was founded on the Strip. And the Strip was becoming a really big acid thing with, and there were hippies now, strippies (sic) and so on.

And at this point, I was also following the UCLA screenings, the student screenings. And the films were beginning to reflect this. And I have one of, I have preserved one of these films, Felix Venable's Les Anges Dorment, LSD in code, which is a couple humanists, whole lady, and they have an acid trip and he cuts from black and white to color. And that's a very important film, actually. I think it's the first time acid was really dealt with. And I have them. I have a, Stehura got me a print of that. And the film itself was lost. Felix Venable. I think it's '65.”

Chris Casady on his discovery of experimental filmmaking in LA, Pat O’Neill’s films leading him to CalArts, and how he learned everything he needed to know about animation from doing garbage mats on Star Wars:

Peter Mays on the making of Star Curtain, censorship, Movies ‘Round Midnight, the sexual revolution and the influence of LSD on UCLA student work in the 1960s.

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