Sunday September 18, 2011, 7:30 pm

Los Angeles Filmforum Presents

The 2011 Festival of (In)appropriation – Contemporary Found Footage Filmmaking

Filmmakers Dillon Rickman and Mark Toscano, and curators in person!

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood

Founded in 2009, the Festival of (In)appropriation is a yearly showcase of contemporary short (20 minutes or less) audiovisual works that appropriate film or video footage and repurpose it in “inappropriate” and inventive ways.  In this program, we bring together a selection of 14 recent films that appropriate footage from diverse sources with vastly different results, demonstrating the range of approaches contemporary filmmakers are taking in repurposing found materials. Indeed, these films push the boundaries of the “found footage” film, raising questions about how we define “found footage” filmmaking in an era in which ever more materials are available for reuse in ever more complex ways. We believe that together, these films reveal how (in)appropriation is flourishing at this social and historical moment. - Jaimie Baron, Andrew Hall, and Lauren Berliner, Curators

Films include:

Lucky Strike by Shashwati Talukar (Taiwan, 2010, 1min., video)

“Ready! Aim! Light Up! Lucky Strike commercials from the fifties and atomic bomb tests meet their match.” (Shashwati Talukar)

Interdimensional Headphase by Dillon Rickman (USA, 2011, 2:35min., video)

“Compassion blooms through the Interdimensional Headphase.” (Dillon Rickman)

Camp by Peter Freund (USA, 2011, 7min., video)

“This experimental short juxtaposes the political and theatrical senses of “camp” as a metaphor for our contemporary cultural deadlock between two post-modernist sensibilities. Guiding this split (parallax) vision, two narrative voices (one in Chinese, the other in Arabic) mix venerated cultural statements with original commentary, while factual and fictive footage provide support, context, and counterpoint.” (Peter Freund)

Jive by Steve Cossman (USA, 2011, 8:05min., video)

“To view a photograph is a time-based experience. Inherent in the still image are lines, planes and patterns; a composition that guides the eye. At points in the image, one’s focus might rest, in others it might move quickly from left to right, bottom to top. In Jive, the path that the viewer takes has been activated along a timeline. The original image is a found photograph that has been divided into 100 smaller compositions. Using these ‘frames’ as a palette, the photographic fragments are then placed sequentially to lead the viewer through the original image. This allows the viewer to see the image in a different way, taking a path through the image in another form, the moving image. Adjacent pieces create gentle linear movements. Areas of the image that exist in the same space but could not directly relate before are now able to communicate.” (Steve Cossman)

The Homogenics by Gerard Freixes Ribera (Spain. 2010, 3:30 min., video)

“The same people living in the same houses. Uniformization turns everything into stereotypes. The Homogenics family sitcom is an extreme example of that.” (Gerard Freixes Ribera)

Ceibas Epilogue: The Well of Representation by Evan Meaney (USA, 2011, 7:20min., video)

“in part a remake of Hollis Frampton’s Gloria! (1979), in part a repurposing of hacked, 16-bit video game technology; the well of representation asks us to reconsider our fear of the liminal. following the convergent narratives of several voices, ranging from the linearly historical to the cybernetically personal, we come to understand the journey ahead: searching from interface to interface, knowing that whatever home we find will be a collaborative compromise. one where we might live beyond our representations and finally come to say what we mean.” (Evan Meaney)

The Voyagers by Penny Lane (USA, 2010, 16:30min., video)

“In 1977, NASA sent two Voyager spacecraft on an epic and risky journey into interstellar space. Each Voyager carries a golden record album, a massive compilation of images and sounds embodying the best of Planet Earth. According to Carl Sagan, “[t]he spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” While working on the golden record, Sagan met and fell madly in love with his future wife. The record became their love letter to humankind and to each other. Recently, I began my own hopeful voyage into the unknown. This film is a love letter to my fellow traveler.” (Penny Lane)

***10-minute Intermission***

February 2008 & June 1967 by Mark Toscano (USA, 2010, 6min., 16mm)

“An experiment bringing together two field observations of two completely different activities from two disparate times and places. I joined these twin moments (one captured, one found) as a way of trying to understand what the experience of the one would do to the experiencing of the other in the linear time of a darkened film theater.” (Mark Toscano)

Tusslemuscle by Steve Cossman (USA, 2009, 5:14min., 16mm)

“The work presented is a reflection on humanity’s ecological relationship and the ritual of restoration. The violent pulse speaks with a sense of urgency and chaotic struggle while the hypnotic arrangement keeps us in blinding awe as to its condition. Tusslemuscle is composed of 7,000 singe frames, which were appropriated from view-master reel cells. Each frame was hand-spliced to create a linear film-strip. Jacob Long created the score to enhance these themes.” (Steve Cossman)

Avo (Muidumbe)/Granny (Muidumbe) by Raquel Schefer (Portugal, 2009, 10:49min., video)

“Mozambique, 1960, just before the beginning of the war, portrait of a colonial family. A sequence of archive footage filmed by my grandfather, former colonial administrator, is the point of departure for an experimental documentary about the history of the Portuguese decolonization and its memory. Double memory or memory split in two: the lived and descriptive memory of the colonizers (their texts and images) versus the invented memory of their descendants. This film is an attempt to represent my indirect memories of Mozambique.” (Raquel Schefer)

Kanye West Apologizes to George W. Bush by Jaimz Asmundson (Canada, 2011, 2:45min., video)

“The way Kanye West’s Today Show apology, for saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”, should have been: face to face.” (Jaimz Asmundson)

Self-Destruction for Eternity by Wei-Ming Ho (Taiwan, 2011, 6:26min., video)

“Who decides who is good or evil? Who decides who lives or dies? Who will be the next victim? the calm before the storm…Is it an illusion? Or are there dark realities and tragic flaws hidden behind the scenes? Using machinima to record the process of playing games, this film correlates elements from different games and remixes them in order to re-comprehend them in a different way.” (Wei-Ming Ho)

Palindromia by Lab Collective (Phillipos Vardakas & Despina Ekonomopolou) (France/Greece/Spain, 2011, 6:02min., video)

“A relapse and recurrence of a tunnel with no way out. Once the war arrives, it never leaves. It always remains in the collective memory within people, leaving indelible traces. This audiovisual experiment is a visual discourse about war and its outcomes and collateral damage. It renders the rawness of war as a palindromic movement underlying what it takes to be ‘safe and secure’ in our civilization.” (Lab Collective)

A Reasonable Man by Brian L. Frye (USA, 2011, 15min., video)

“In March 2001, a Georgia police officer observed Victor Harris speeding and initiated pursuit. Deputy Timothy Scott joined the pursuit and intentionally collided with Harris, who crashed and was rendered a quadriplegic. Harris sued Scott, alleging that Scott used excessive force because the pursuit did not endanger the public. Scott responded that the pursuit did endanger the public, and submitted two videotapes of the pursuit. The trial court held that a jury should decide the case because the parties disagreed about a question of fact: whether the pursuit endangered the public. In Scott v. Harris, the Supreme Court reversed 8-1, holding that the videotapes conclusively disproved Harris’s version of the facts. A Reasonable Man uses the videotapes submitted by Scott and excerpts from the oral argument before the Supreme Court to show how courts have evaluated one kind of motion picture evidence.” (Brian L. Frye)

Total running time: 108 minutes including a 10 minute intermission

Advance ticket purchase available through Brown Paper Tickets.  Click here to purchase.

Note that the Egyptian no longer validates for the Hollywood & Highland parking, although that may still be your best bet for parking.  You’ll have to get validation in the Hollywood & Highland complex though.  There is also street parking, some $5 lots, and the Metro Red Line to Hollywood & Highland.

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles; and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.   Additional support generously provided by American Cinematheque.