A Tribute to Chick Strand

Wed, 5 Aug 2009 16:58:58 -0700

Sunday September 13, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
Los Angeles Filmforum and MOCA present
A Tribute to Chick Strand
Filmmaker, artist, teacher, joyful marvel, force of life… Chick Strand passed away on July 11, and our city and our lives won’t be the same. For those of you who knew her, and those of you who didn’t, Chick was a marvelous and inspirational filmmaker and person, the artful person whom one was always delighted to see, an essential person who made the world a better place.
“With her camera, Strand does not “document” her subjects–she creates lyrical representations. She is not afraid to look through her lens as a person; questioning, admiring, and honoring what she sees. Just as she brings poeticism and the personal into ethnography, she infuses an integrity, honesty, and selflessness into her works that few people can manage.” – Pablo de Ocampo
“…For most of her filmmaking career, the integrity of Strand’s vision lay aslant of prevailing fashions, so that only belatedly did the full significance of her radically pioneering work in ethnographic, documentary, feminist, and compilation filmmaking – and above all, in the innovation of a unique film language created across these modes – become clear. Though feminism and other currents of her times are woven through her films and though her powerful teaching presence sustained the ideals of underground film in several film schools in the city, hers was essentially a school-of-one.” – David James, in The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2005) p. 358.
Tonight we’ll be running a wide range of the glorious gamut of her work, and one treat from her husband. Curated by filmmaker Amy Halpern.
Prints courtesy of the Academy Film Archive, by arrangement with Canyon Cinema.
Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966, 3 min., 16mm)
An experimental film poem in celebration of life and visions. Techniques include live action, animation, montage and found images.
Guacamole (1976, 18 min, 16mm)
Poetic surrealism. Approach is experimental in relationship of image and sound. A film about the loss of innocence and the search for the essence of the human spirit.
Cartoon Le Mousse (1979, 15 min, 16mm)
“Chick Strand is a prolific and prodigiously gifted film artist who seems to break new ground with each new work. Her recent “found footage” works such as CARTOON LE MOUSSE, are extraordinarily beautiful, moving, visionary pieces that push this genre into previously unexplored territory. If poetry is the art of making evocative connections between otherwise dissimilar phenomena, then Chick Strand is a great poet, for these films transcend their material to create a surreal and sublime universe beyond reason.” – Gene Youngblood
War Zone by Marty Muller, aka Neon Park (1971, 3 min)
Made with Chickie nearby.
By the Lake (1986, 9,5 min, 16mm)
A collage film made from Third World images and found sound from a 1940s radio show (”I Love a Mystery”), live recordings of an operation on a horse, and a 1970s church service, all taken out of context and reconstructed into new relationships and meanings. An Anglo woman’s interpretation of magic realism.
Waterfall (1967, 3 min, 16mm)
A film poem using found film and stock footage altered by printing, home development and solarization. It is a film using visual relationships to invoke a feeling of flow and movement. Japanese Koto music.
Kristalnacht (1979, 7 min, 16mm)
Dedicated to the memory of Anne Frank, and the tenacity of the human spirit.
Elasticity (1976, 25 min, 16mm)
Impressionistic surrealism in three acts. The approach is literary experimental with optical effects. There are three mental states that are interesting: amnesia, euphoria and ecstasy. Amnesia is not knowing who you are and wanting desperately to know. I call this the White Night. Euphoria is not knowing who you are and not caring. This is the Dream of Meditation. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who you are and still not caring. I call this the Memory of the Future. This is an autobiographical film funded by the American Film Institute.

About Chick Strand:
Appreciation by Holly Willis on Blur + Sharpen
Article by Pablo de Ocampo in the Portland Mercury from 2001
Paintings by Chick Strand
There is also an extensive discussion of Strand and her films in David James’s The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles (UC Press, 2005).
After graduating from Berkeley with a degree in anthropology, Strand threw herself into the cultural ferment of the Bay Area in the 1960s, especially Canyon Cinema, where she was one of its founders and instigators, with Bruce Baillie. After four years she moved to Los Angeles to study at UCLA and joined the newly formed Ethnographic Film Program. Meeting Pat O’Neill, who was at that time beginning his experiments with the optical printer, she made Waterfall (1967), a film that solarized and otherwise re-worked both live-action and found footage in the vein of contemporary West Coast psychedelia. This overall aesthetic continued to inform Strand’s work, but it was sharpened and made more serious by her encounter with what seemed an entirely contrary idiom, that of documentary ethnography. She did not get involved with the Hollywood film industry, but taught film for twenty years at Occidental College. She also painted extensively. Her second husband was Marty Muller, known more widely as the artist Neon Park, and she had one son, Eric Strand, a film editor. – Largely drawn from The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2005), pp. 358
“Her passing comes to me and others at Canyon Cinema with great sadness….Chick was one of the founders of Canyon Cinema and the Cinematheque. She always supported Canyon in all of the endeavors that have been done in the past. Personally she and I became close over the years and I could always count on her for advice in matters of Canyon and also on a very personal level. I will miss her greatly and her passing is a loss to the entire community. The experimental film community has lost a great human being. Her absence will be felt for some time.” – Dominic Angerame, Executive Director, Canyon Cinema
Chick Strand changed my life. A great teacher, a great filmmaker, a great human being. I am so grateful to have met her and learned from her. I would not be who I am today had I not met her. I was just one of so many students, but she was and will forever be a gigantic presence in my soul. – Brook Hinton, filmmaker
This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

John Gianvito and Jason Blalock

Tue, 4 Aug 2009 18:51:58 -0700

Sunday September 20, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Tribulations of American Liberalism:
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind by John Gianvito and
American/Sandinista by Jason Blalock
Tonight we feature two tributes to the efforts of American progressives past, using two very different approaches to non-fiction film, both compelling and insightful.
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind by John Gianvito
(2008, 58 min, 16mm)
A visual meditation on the progressive history of the United States as seen through cemeteries, historic plaques and markers. Inspired by Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States".
Winner of Best Experimental Film of the Year from the National Society of Film Critics (2008)
“In just under one hour, Profit Motive takes us on a tour of the United States via its cemeteries, minor monuments, and out-of-the-way historical markers. There is no voiceover narration, virtually no explanatory on-screen text, and very little camera movement. Instead, Gianvito has created an unconventional landscape film, one that recalls the strategies of certain avant-gardists (James Benning in particular, and perhaps Peter Hutton to a somewhat lesser degree) while at the same time delivering a bracingly unique experience, one that leaves viewers awestruck by its rigorous simplicity. Over the course of the film, it becomes clear that we and the film are tracing a chronological path through the American Left, paying near-silent homage to our comrades, those who fell in battle (slain by police or Pinkertons during strikes; felled by assassins) or those whose lives had simply run their natural course. Inspired by Howard Zinn’s magisterial People’s History of the United States, Gianvito’s leftist vision is righteously ecumenical, encompassing Eugene V. Debs and Frank Little, Sojourner Truth and Malcolm X, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Cesar Chavez, and many, many others whom mainstream historical accounts have buried far more comprehensively than their undertakers. In addition to forging a radical remapping of the American terrain, Gianvito’s film provides its audience with the rare opportunity to pay our respects by proxy.”
-- Michael Sicinski in Cinema Scope,
Full review and interview with Gianvito at Cinema-Scope
“I found myself re-reading stretches of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, re-encountering some measure of what is admirable in this country’s past, the words and deeds of so many, known and unknown, who contributed to the historical struggle for a more just and egalitarian society. In time the idea took root to want to pay homage to this history, as well as to this book which continues to mean so much to so many of us, and by so doing, the hope was to draw sustenance from the sacrifices and efforts of those who came before us. Profit motive and the whispering wind was intended as a small poem to this progressive past.” – John Gianvito, in the same Cinema Scope interview
A.O. Scott’s review in the NY Times

American/Sandinista by Jason Blalock
(2008, 30 min, video)
In the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, a bloody civil war between the socialist-influenced Sandinistas and U.S.- backed Contras ravaged Nicaragua. Despite the danger, thousands of Americans disobeyed White House warnings and descended upon the Central American nation, determined to lend their skills and labor to the revolutionary Sandinista cause.
Using an eclectic mixture of rare archival footage, arresting still photography, and contemporary interviews, American/Sandinista tells the story of a small group of controversial U.S. engineers who went further than anyone expected, and paid the ultimate price.
Read more on the American/Sandinista website
Nominee, Pare Lorentz Award, IDA 2007 • Portland International Film Festival 2008 • Nevada City Film Fest 2008 (Audience Award – Best Short Film) and more

About the Filmmakers:
John Gianvito is a filmmaker, curator, and critic. His films include the feature films The Flower of Pain, Address Unknown, and The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein, winner of multiple awards including being cited as one of the top ten films of the year by critics in The Chicago Reader, The Boston Phoenix, and Film Comment magazine. He has taught film production and film history at the University of Massachusetts/Boston, Rhode Island School of Design, and Boston University, and was film curator for 5 years at the Harvard Film Archive. In 2001 he was made a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. Gianvito is the editor of the book, Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi) and a Professor in Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College, Boston.
Jason Blalock (director/editor) works as a cinematographer, producer, and director on a variety of documentary and multimedia projects. Previously he served as Associate Producer on the feature documentary My Flesh and Blood, which won the Audience Award at Sundance and aired on HBO in 2003. He is the director of previous short docs Oakland Raider Parking Lot (2005), Spangled (2002), and High Rocks (1999), distributed by Peripheral Produce. Most recently he can be seen as a reporter on the PBS series Wired Science. In 2007, he completed the documentary filmmaking program at the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in Oakland, CA.

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

José Antonio Sistiaga and Savage Republic

Mon, 3 Aug 2009 10:28:01 -0700

Sunday September 27, 2009, 7:00 pm

At the Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N Fairfax
Los Angeles Filmforum, Cinefamily, Part Time Punks and the San Francisco Cinematheque present
José Antonio Sistiaga’s Ere Erera Baleibu Icik Subua with Live Musical Score by Savage Republic
“Basque abstract artist José Antonio Sistiaga painted directly onto film with homemade inks to create this silent 1970 feature. But Sistiaga’s strangely titled work… is different from the films of Stan Brakhage, who didn’t come to film from painting and had his own rhythm. […] [I]ts combination of color and 35-millimeter ‘scope (with about half an hour in black and white) yields the kind of spectacle one associates with musicals and [science fiction] epics.” -- Jonathan Rosenbaum
A hand-painted masterpiece of the 1970s; a legendary band of the 1980s. Sistiaga’s rarely-screened ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren is a work of uncompromising beauty that absolutely deserves a wider appreciation. Savage Republic, one of the unrecognized godfathers of post-rock, formed roughly three decades ago in the midst of the Los Angeles punk rock scene and abruptly disbanded in 1989. In recent years, they’ve reformed and their unique sound (somewhat akin to a Middle Eastern surf band backed by the rhythm section from Joy Division) is as compelling and inexorable as ever. Original members Ethan Port and Thom Fuhrmann, joined by Alan Waddington and Kerry Dowling, will perform their newly commissioned score to Sistiaga’s prodigious work (presented in a stunning 35mm print from Paris.)
Admission is $14
Buy tickets online at brownpapertickets!  
This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

Yvonne Rainer Retrospective (Part 1 of 8)

Sun, 2 Aug 2009 13:10:25 -0700

Sunday October 4, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Bodies, Objects, Films: An Yvonne Rainer Retrospective (Part 1 of 8 ) Yvonne Rainer in person!
Over the course of our 2009-2010 seasons, Filmforum is proud to present a full retrospective of the media works of Yvonne Rainer. One of the most significant artists in dance and film of the last fifty years, Rainer now calls Southern California home for much of the year, so we will be honored to have her in person at several of the screenings. To make it more interesting, each appearance by Rainer will feature a Q&A led by a different interlocutor, to discuss with her varying aspects of her approaches to her art and life. We’ll start with her earliest and latest works, all connected to various performances.
Tonight’s show is entitled Five Easy Pieces and is a compilation of five early short films made between 1966 to 1969. Tonight’s Q&A will be led by Lynette Kessler, director of Dance Camera West, to help bring it the relationship between these works and Rainer’s dance performances.
Hand Movie (1966, 5:00, b&w, silent, 8mm to video)
Close-up of a hand, the fingers of which enact a sensuous dance. Camerawork by William Davis.
Volleyball (Foot Film) (1967, 10:00 b&w, silent, 16mm to video)
A volleyball is rolled into the frame and comes to rest. Two legs in sneakers, seen from the knees down, enter the frame and stand beside it. Cut to new angle, same characters and actions. Camerawork by Bud Wirtschafter.
Rhode Island Red (1968, 10:00, b&w, silent, 16mm to video)
Ten minutes in an enormous chicken coop. Camerawork by Roy Levin.
Trio Film (1968, 13:00, b&w, silent, 16mm to video)
Two nudes, a man and a woman, interact with each other and a large balloon in a white living room. Performed by Steve Paxton and Becky Arnold. Camerawork by Phill Niblock.
Line (1969, 10:00, b&w, silent, 16mm to video)
A blond woman (Susan Marshall) in white pants and shirt interacts with a moving round object and the camera. Camerawork by Phill Niblock.
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid (2002, 31 min, video)
Yvonne Rainer combines a dance performance she choreographed for Mikhail Barryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project in 2000 with texts by Oscar Kokoschka, Adolf Loos, Arnold Schoenberg, and Ludwig Wittgenstein—four of the most radical innovators in painting, architecture, music, and philosophy to emerge from fin-de-siècle Vienna. Charles Atlas and Natsuko Inue videotaped the rehearsals of the dance. The idea for integrating some of this footage with the Vienna material came partly from the title, which both elegaically and ironically invokes a passage through time and the end of a way of life, or, more to the point, aristocratic life. Thus the passage of Baryshnikov himself is also implicated—from danseur noble roles in classical ballet to his current interests in postmodern dance.
About Yvonne Rainer:
When Yvonne Rainer made her first feature-length film in 1972, she had already influenced the world of dance and choreography for nearly a decade. From the beginning of her film career she inspired audiences to think about what they saw, interweaving the real and fictional, the personal and political, the concrete and abstract in imaginative, unpredictable ways. Her bold feminist sensibility and often controversial subject matter, leavened with a quirky humor, has made her, as the Village Voice dubbed her in 1986, “The most influential American avant-garde filmmaker of the past dozen years, with an impact as evident in London or Berlin as in New York.”
Rainer was born in San Francisco in 1934. She trained as a modern dancer in New York from 1957 and began to choreograph her own work in 1960. She was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, the beginning of a movement that proved to be a vital force in modern dance in the following decades. Between 1962 and 1975 she presented her choreography throughout the United States and Europe, notably on Broadway in 1969, in Scandinavia, London, Germany, and Italy between 1964 and 1972, and at the Festival D’Automne in Paris in 1972. In 1968 she began to integrate short films into her live performances, and by 1975 she had made a complete transition to filmmaking.
In 1972 she completed a first feature-length film, LIVES OF PERFORMERS. In all she has completed seven features: FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO… (1974), KRISTINA TALKING PICTURES (1976), JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN/1971 (1980, co-produced by the British Film Institute and winner of the Special Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association), THE MAN WHO ENVIED WOMEN (1985), PRIVILEGE (1990, winner of the Filmmakers’ Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival, Park City. Utah, 1991, and the Geyer Werke Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival in Munich, 1991), and MURDER and murder (1996).
Rainer’s films have been shown extensively in the U.S. and throughout the world, in alternative film exhibition showcases and revival houses (such as the Bleecker St Cinema, Roxy-S.F.; NuArt-L.A; Film Forum-NYC, et al), in museums and in universities. Her films have also been screened at festivals in Los Angeles (Filmex), London, Montreux, Toronto, Edinburgh, Mannheim, Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam, Creteil, Deauville, Toulon, Montreal, Hamburg, Salsa Majori, Figueira da Foz, Munich, Vienna, Athens (Ohio), Sundance, Hong Kong, Yamagata, and Sydney.
A half-hour video tape entitled YVONNE RAINER: STORY OF A FILMMAKER WHO… was aired on Film and Video Review, WNET-TV in 1980. THE MAN WHO ENVIED WOMEN was aired on Independent Focus, WNET-TV in, 1989, and PRIVILEGE on the same program in 1992 and during the summer of 1994.
In the Spring of 1997—to coincide with the release of MURDER and murder—complete retrospectives of the films of Yvonne Rainer were mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City.
“I love the duality of props, or objects: their usefulness and obstructiveness in relation to the human body. Also the duality of the body: the body as a moving, thinking, decision-making entity and the body as an inert entity, object-like… oddly, the body can become object-like; the human being can be treated as an object, dealt with as an entity without feeling or desire. The body itself can be handled and manipulated as though lacking in the capacity for self-propulsion.” (Rainer, Works 1961-73, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, New York, New York University Press, 1974, p. 134).

Upcoming in the Yvonne Rainer Retrospective:
November 8, 2009 (Part 2 of 8):
Film About a Woman Who ... (Rainer not present)
 December 6, 2009 (Part 3 of 8):
The Man Who Envied Women with Rainer in person

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

Best of the Ann Arbor Film Festival (Program 1)

Sat, 1 Aug 2009 13:24:33 -0700

Sunday October 11, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Echo Park Film Center
Los Angeles Filmforum and Echo Park Film Center present
Best of the Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour, Program I
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is the original and longest running independent film festival in the United States, recognized as a premiere showcase for risk-taking, pioneering and art driven cinema. The AAFF pioneered the touring film festival concept in 1964 and each year brings a selection of favorite and award-winning short films to more than 25 galleries, universities, art house theaters and cinematheques throughout the world. This program explores themes of life and death within the geography of our surroundings, and includes films from Detroit, Montreal, San Francisco, Berlin, Toronto and Tokyo.
This exciting show mixes new experimental, animation, and documentary work – a great way to catch up on what is happening in film & video art!
See the trailer for the show on Vimeo here.

Tonight’s films will include:
Dahlia by Michael Langan (2008, 5 mins)
An animated, fast-motion portrait that explores the bustle and permanence of a city: San Francisco. Set to a driving score of vocal percussion, this film is a high-velocity contrast of stable forms and the dynamic patterns of life. Read more ...
Studies in Transfalumination by Peter Rose (2008, 5 min)
The visual complexities of the ordinary world – a tunnel, a clump of grass, a discarded table, a piece of rock – are examined with modified flashlights and stripped down video projectors in this otherworldly exploration of place and perception. Read more ...
Passages by Marie-Josee Saint-Pierre (2008, 24 min)
An exquisitely drawn animation that tells the dramatic story of a mother giving birth to a child. Her enthusiastically awaited delivery day is turned on its head as systems go awry, jeopardizing the lives of both mother and baby. Read more ...
Reincarnation by Takeshi Kushida (2008, 5 min)
An otherworldly and poetic portrayal of one man’s journey between lives, expressed through movement, flesh and color. Read more ...
Six Apartments by Reynold Reynolds (2007, 12 mins)
Six isolated occupants of six different apartments live their lives unaware of each other. Without drama they eat food, wander between rooms, bathe, watch television, and sleep. For them, this is life; for the viewer this is a contemplation of worlds in constant activity and decay. Read more ...
Video Terraform Dance Party by Jeremy Bailey (2008, 12 mins)
Based on his live performances, Bailey shows off his latest software program that allows the user to design a better world. Combining improv monologue, social commentary, and interactive software, Bailey provides a platform to laugh and dance in our seats while contemplating the ways we live together. Read more ...
A City to Yourself by Nicole Macdonald (24 mins)
In 1950, Detroit’s population reached 1,849,568 people in the city; today there are fewer than half remaining. We hear a lot of negativity about the crumbling infrastructure of a shrinking, post-industrial city like Detroit, but what about the pluses of having a city to yourself? Read more ...
91 minutes total run-time

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

Azazel and Ken Jacobs

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:27:33 -0700

Saturday October 17, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimesKid and Ken Jacobs’ The Whirled
In a Los Angeles (if not a global) first, we host the father and son filmmakers Ken and Azazel Jacobs. Ken Jacobs comes with The Whirled, a short long unseen in Los Angeles a series of improvisations with Jack Smith. Azazel Jacobs presents his second feature film The GoodTimesKid.
**NOTE THE CHANGE IN DAY!**
This screening is part of a weeklong residency by Ken Jacobs at CalArts, REDCAT, UCLA and Los Angeles Filmforum. Special thanks to Steve Anker and Cal Arts for arranging the week, and Mark Rance and Benton Films for arranging tonight’s screening.
The GoodTimesKid by Azazel Jacobs (2005/2009, 77 mins)
A story about stolen love and stolen identities, literally shot on stolen film... Momma's Man writer-director Azazel Jacobs' second feature is an absurdist comedy of errors, a punk-rock slice of DIY rebellion, and a warmhearted frolic that captures the "amour fou spirit of the early French New Wave" -- The Village Voice
Hot-tempered Echo Park slacker Rodolfo Cano (Jacobs) enlists in the army to escape a meaningless existence with his free-spirited girlfriend Diaz (Diaz). When his call-for-service letter somehow winds up in the hands of another Rodolfo Cano (Gerardo Naranjo, director of Drama/Mex and I'm Gonna Explode), a quietly dignified loner who lives on a sailboat, their three lives intersect in odd and beautifully unexpected ways. Evoking the inventive gags of Chaplin and Jacques Tati, plus the deadpan minimalism of Kaurismäki and Jarmusch, The GoodTimesKid "finds poetry in wordless scenes of observation" -- The New York Times
"Before there was Momma's Man there was The GoodTimesKid. In Azazel Jacobs's second feature you can see his style beginning to take form, meshing a punk-rock attitude with cinema influences as wide ranging from Chaplin to Jarmusch." Jason Guerrasio, Filmaker Magazine
Read more about the GoodTimesKid on the film’s website.

The Whirled by Ken Jacobs (1956-61, 18 mins)
The Whirled is a collection of four short improvisations, three of them featuring Jack Smith for the first time on film. Saturday Afternoon Blood Sacrifice (1956) was shot in front of Jack's downtown NY loft on 150 feet of 16mm film, exactly as seen here. Next day I shot Little Cobra Dance on the remaining 50 feet (also intact). We fell off the couch laughing at what we'd done in this off-hand way, which marked the end of my fastidious art-film approach. In 1963 a snatch of the first film was shown on TV when I was somehow invited to participate in a quiz program (another poor chump participating was the painter and Happenings performer Carolee Schneemann). After years of shooting my raging epic Star Spangled To Death starring Jack as The Spirit Not of Life But of Living, and after a few months of being on the outs with each other, we got together for one last stab at friendship and filmmaking with The Death Of P'Town, 1961.

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

Ken Jacobs' Anaglyph Tom (Tom with Puffy Cheeks)

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:38:53 -0700

Sunday October 18, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Ken Jacobs’ Anaglyph Tom (Tom with Puffy Cheeks)
Los Angeles Premiere! Ken Jacobs in Person! 3-D!
Ken Jacobs is one of the leading practitioners of film and video art in the world. We’re delighted to host the Los Angeles premiere of his newest video work.

Curated by Steve Anker. This screening concludes a weeklong residency by Jacobs at CalArts, REDCAT, UCLA and Los Angeles Filmforum.

Tonight:

Anaglyph Tom (Tom With Puffy Cheeks) (2008, 118 minutes, DVCam) The real subject of Anaglyph Tom (Tom With Puffy Cheeks) is depth-perception itself. Our beloved performers from the 1905 Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son again encapsulate human absurdity for our amusement but this time in entirely illusionary 3-D. They step from -and back into- the screen surface. This is cosmic play with all strings pulled.” - Ken Jacobs

About Ken Jacobs:
Ken Jacobs was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1933. He studied painting with one of the prime creators of Abstract Expressionism, Hans Hofmann, in the mid-fifties. It was then that he also began filmmaking (Star Spangled To Death). His personal star rose, to just about knee high, with the sixties advent of Underground Film. In 1967, with the involvement of his wife Florence and many others aspiring to a democratic -rather than demagogic- cinema, he created The Millennium Film Workshop in New York City. A nonprofit filmmaker's co-operative open to all, it made available film equipment, workspace, screenings and classes at little or no cost. Later he found himself teaching large classes of painfully docile students at St. John's University in Jamaica, Queens.
In 1969, after a week's guest seminar at Harpur College (now, Binghamton University), students petitioned the Administration to hire Ken Jacobs. Despite his lack of a high school diploma, the Administration -during that special period of anguish and possibility- decided that, as a teacher, he was "a natural." Together with Larry Gottheim he organized the SUNY system's first Department of Cinema, teaching thoughtful consideration of every kind of film but specializing in avant garde cinema appreciation and production. (Department graduates are world-recognized as having an exceptional presence in this field.) His own early studies under Hofmann would increasingly figure in his filmwork, making for an Abstract Expressionist cinema, clearly evident in his avant garde classic Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son (1969) and increasingly so in his subsequent devising of the unique Nervous System series of live film-projection performances. The American Museum Of The Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, hosted a full retrospective of his work in 1989, The New York Museum Of Modern Art held a partial retrospective in 1996, as did The American House in Paris in 1994 and the Arsenal Theater in Berlin in 1986 (during his 6 month stay as guest-recipient of Berlin's DAAD award). He has also performed in Japan, at the Louvre in Paris, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, etc. Honors include the Maya Deren Award of The American Film Institute, the Guggenheim Award and a special Rockefeller Foundation grant.
A 1999 interview with Ken Jacobs can be seen on the Net as part of The University Of California at Berkeley's series of Conversations With History.

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

Robert Beavers in person

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:25:34 -0700

Sunday October 25, 2009, 7:00 pm

At the Hammer Museum in Westwood
Los Angeles Filmforum, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the Getty Research Institute, CalArts Film/Video, and REDCAT present
Robert Beavers in person!
Beavers’ first time in Los Angeles!

**NOTE THE CHANGE IN TIME AND LOCATION**
The Billy Wilder Theater is located in the Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd, at the northeast corner of the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood. Parking is $3 in the lot under the theater. Enter from Westwood Blvd, just north of Wilshire.
This presentation of work by avant-garde filmmaker Robert Beavers represents the filmmaker’s Los Angeles debut, after a career spanning from the mid-1960s to the present day, and is organized in conjunction with the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, who will present Beavers’ complete cycle earlier in October.
"Beavers’ films occupy a noble place within the history of avant-garde film, positioned at the intersection of structural and lyrical filmmaking traditions. They seem to embody the ideals of the Renaissance in their fascination with perception, psychology, literature, the natural world, architectural space, musical phrasing and aesthetic beauty."
Tonight’s films include:
Amor (1980, 15 min. 35mm, color, Italy/Austria)
Amor uses themes of cutting and sewing as metaphors. Cloth is cut and fabric is sewn; shrubs are trimmed and hedges form majestic garden archways; and a male figure claps his hands as if to signal a sync cue on which there is a visual cut. Central to this work are the complex emotions surrounding love, separation, and the metonymic twinning of objects, including that of edited image and sutured sound.
The Stoas (1991-97, 22 min., 35mm, color, Greece)
The Stoas includes images of the deserted industrial arcades (stoas) of Athens during siesta and the refreshing waters of a bountiful river. “An ineffable, unnamable immanence flows through the images of The Stoas, a kind of presence of the human soul expressed through the sympathetic absence of the human figure” (Ed Halter).
The Ground (1993-2001, 20 min., 35mm, color, Greece)
The Ground uses seemingly simple components – the sun-baked landscape of a Greek island, the blue waters of the Aegean Sea, and images of a man chiseling stone – to conjure the fundamental experience of holding something close to one’s heart. A repeated close up of a man pounding his bare chest, then gesturing with hand outstretched, lends dramatic tension to the film’s expression of devotional love.
Pitcher of Colored Light (2007, 24 min., 16mm, US/Switzerland)
Beavers’ most recent film, Pitcher of Colored Light is a loving portrait of his mother depicted in her Massachusetts home and garden, shot across several seasons.

About Robert Beavers:
Robert Beavers (1949–) began his extraordinary career in film at the precocious age of seventeen, the same year he met Gregory Markopoulos, the influential avant-garde filmmaker who would become his partner for life, and permanently relocated to Europe. Together Beavers and Markopoulos bravely dedicated themselves to a singular mode of art cinema that adamantly refused all commercial impulses and maintained a careful distance from the major currents of contemporary American experimental cinema. Until the mid- 1990s, Beavers, like Markopoulos, strictly controlled the exhibition of his work, restricting screenings to an annual series of outdoor events in Greece. In the last decade Beavers has selectively exhibited his films in and outside of Europe, always to tremendous critical acclaim.
Frequently drawing inspiration from European art and architecture, Beavers' films are equally noted for their intricate mosaic-like structure and exquisite framing as their insightful exploration of history and art. The thematic and formal complexity of Beavers' films is balanced by the sensuous beauty of every image contained within them. For the last ten years Beavers has re-edited and re-worked the sound for almost all of his films and organized them into an ambitious omnibus work entitled My Hands Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure.
Read about Beavers on the Harvard Film Archive website
Interview with Robert Beavers, by Tony Pipolo, from Millennium Film Journal, 1998
Interview with Robert Beavers in the Yale Daily News, 2009

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

Two screenings for the AFI Film Festival

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:38:00 -0700

Sunday November 1, 2009, 4:30 and 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
Los Angeles Filmforum and the AFI Film Festival present the premieres of three films, at two screenings
Los Herederos with A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (4:30pm) and The Anchorage (7:30pm)
Free Admission!
**NOTE THE CHANGE IN TIME(S)**
At 4:30 pm:
Los Herederos by Eugenio Polgovsky (2008, 90 min, Mexico, HDCAM)
Los Angeles premiere!
Here as in his first film Tropic of Cancer, Eugenio Polgovsky uses his camera as an exploratory tool to venture where other filmmakers might easily turn away. And few filmmakers have managed to so intensively document and reflect upon the poorest of the poor. The “herederos” of the title —children who have “inherited” a legacy of grinding poverty—live on the land. They plow, they harvest, they load wood and they build walls with the bricks that they made with their hands. They also frolic, and play and dance. Polgovsky and his extraordinary sound recordist Camille Tauss immersed themselves for three years in the lives of these children as they toil in the states of Guerrero, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Sinaloa, Puebla and Veracruz. Los Herederos is both extremely intimate (the camera’s point of view is like that of a tiny creature scurrying to keep pace with the kids) and pointedly universal, while rigorously refusing to draw conclusions. –Robert Koehler
Jim Lesses article on Los Herederos
Preceded by
A Letter to Uncle Boonmee by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
(2009, 18 min, Thailand/U.K., Digibeta)
Los Angeles premiere!
Winner of two prizes at the The 55th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
In Apichatpong’s hauntingly poetic piece—one part of his ambitious “Primitives” project—the voices of three young men describe to an uncle how their Thai village of Nabua has been abandoned in the wake of war.
Website of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

At 7:30 pm:
The Anchorage by C.W. Winter and Anders Edström
(2009, 87 min., U.S./Sweden, 35mm)
U.S. premiere! C.W. Winter and Anders Edström in person!
Winner of Locarno’s Golden Leopard for Filmmakers of the Present
Immersing the viewer in magnificent Swedish landscapes, this sober and meditative film reveals the beauty of nature and the beings that co-exist in harmony there: a Rousseauesque vision of a relationship between a human being and her environment. Ulla, the central character, relates in voiceover how it will be when it snows, but her expectations are disturbed with the arrival of a hunter, whose flashily colored clothing is out of place amidst the island’s greens and browns. Shot with a minimal crew, CalArts graduate C. W. Winter’s and photographer Anders Edström’s first fiction feature unobtrusively combines silence and the sounds of nature in contemplative sequences, sometimes adding snatches of songs about local folklore. Ultimately, the film serves as an ode to a woman whose strength and grace are in perfect harmony with nature. –Locarno Film Festival

Filmforum is also delighted to be the community sponsor for the following Los Angeles premiere at the Mann Chinese:

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans USA | DIR Werner Herzog
Wed. Nov 4, 7:00 pm, Mann 1 / Wed. Nov 4, 7:00 pm, Mann 3 CAST: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Jennifer Coolidge, Fairuza Balk, Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner After RESCUE DAWN, Werner Herzog returns to American genre cinema, this time taking on the mythic, audience-friendly framework of the gritty urban cop film. Working from William Finkelstein’s tightly compelling script, Herzog sets the plot in New Orleans, which allows for a few surreal Herzogian touches—decaying buildings, men communing with alligators. But this dark, shockingly funny drama keeps the focus on the title character, Detective McDonough, who scarfs down narcotics to cope with his back pain—making bets his body can’t cover—while neck-deep in a murder investigation. Nicolas Cage, in one of his strongest performances, invests McDonough with urgency and compassion, and gets terrific support by Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Vondee Curtis-Hall and Brad Dourif. Having positioned himself, in deed and word, as the ultimate Hollywood outsider, Herzog suddenly earns comparison with masters including Don Siegel, Nicholas Ray and Sidney Lumet.    About the AFI FEST:  AFI FEST 2009 presented by Audi takes place October 30th - November 5 in the heart of historic downtown Hollywood at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the neighboring Mann 6 Theater (in the Hollywood and Highland Center) and the Roosevelt Hotel, then moves to Santa Monica for two days of screenings at AFM, the American Film Market.  As our gift to moviegoers, free tickets are available to all festival movies, including a limited number of free tickets to evening red carpet galas. Get your tickets starting October 16 at AFI.com or AFI.com/AFIFEST, or by calling 1-866-AFI-FEST. You can also obtain tickets by going to the Festival Box Office located at the Mann 6 Theatre starting on October 26th, or on the day of the screenings via rush lines.  Become a patron of the festival and purchase an AFI FEST Patron Pass, available now. The AFI FEST Patron Pass provides early entry to screenings, lounge access and other benefits. By becoming a festival patron, you help make this free festival possible and support the art of film. For more details, visit AFI.com or call 1-866-AFI-FEST.  Seating is limited, so get your free tickets starting OCTOBER 16TH! Festival program schedule details will be announced on October 12 at AFI.com.

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

Yvonne Rainer Retrospective (Part 2 of 8)

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:45:31 -0700

Sunday November 8, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Bodies, Objects, Films: An Yvonne Rainer Retrospective (Part 2 of 8 ) Film About a Woman Who… (1974)
Over the course of our 2009-2010 seasons, Filmforum is proud to present a full retrospective of the media works of Yvonne Rainer. One of the most significant artists in dance and film of the last fifty years, this is the first full retrospective fo her films in Los Angeles.
Note that Yvonne Rainer will not be present at this screening.
Film About A Woman Who… (1974, 105 mins, b/w, 16mm)
Rainer’s landmark film is a meditation on ambivalence that plays with cliché and the conventions of soap opera while telling the story of a woman whose sexual dissatisfaction masks an enormous anger.
“If Lives of Performers is a compendium of possibilities, then Film About a Woman Who… is their fruition. Again in black and white, again photographed by Babette Mangolte, this film pushes even further Rainer’s initial thoughts on representation, narrative, sexual relationships, and the politics of personal power manipulations. The effects of feminist thinking becomes even clearer in this work, especially as reflected in hindsight by Rainer’s own remarks (in 1973) on the attraction of film over dance: that since “rage, terror, desire, conflict et al” were not unique to her experience in the way that her body had always been, now she ‘could feel much more connected to my audience, and that gives me great comfort.’ It was during this period, in fact, that a whole new audience was opening up for the work of women filmmakers, and an equally new context for their work….” -- B. Ruby Rich
Comments on Filmref.com about the film
About Yvonne Rainer:
When Yvonne Rainer made her first feature-length film in 1972, she had already influenced the world of dance and choreography for nearly a decade. From the beginning of her film career she inspired audiences to think about what they saw, interweaving the real and fictional, the personal and political, the concrete and abstract in imaginative, unpredictable ways. Her bold feminist sensibility and often controversial subject matter, leavened with a quirky humor, has made her, as the Village Voice dubbed her in 1986, “The most influential American avant-garde filmmaker of the past dozen years, with an impact as evident in London or Berlin as in New York.”
Rainer was born in San Francisco in 1934. She trained as a modern dancer in New York from 1957 and began to choreograph her own work in 1960. She was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, the beginning of a movement that proved to be a vital force in modern dance in the following decades. Between 1962 and 1975 she presented her choreography throughout the United States and Europe, notably on Broadway in 1969, in Scandinavia, London, Germany, and Italy between 1964 and 1972, and at the Festival D’Automne in Paris in 1972. In 1968 she began to integrate short films into her live performances, and by 1975 she had made a complete transition to filmmaking.
In 1972 she completed a first feature-length film, LIVES OF PERFORMERS. In all she has completed seven features: FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO… (1974), KRISTINA TALKING PICTURES (1976), JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN/1971 (1980, co-produced by the British Film Institute and winner of the Special Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association), THE MAN WHO ENVIED WOMEN (1985), PRIVILEGE (1990, winner of the Filmmakers’ Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival, Park City. Utah, 1991, and the Geyer Werke Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival in Munich, 1991), and MURDER and murder (1996).
Rainer’s films have been shown extensively in the U.S. and throughout the world, in alternative film exhibition showcases and revival houses (such as the Bleecker St Cinema, Roxy-S.F.; NuArt-L.A; Film Forum-NYC, et al), in museums and in universities. Her films have also been screened at festivals in Los Angeles (Filmex), London, Montreux, Toronto, Edinburgh, Mannheim, Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam, Creteil, Deauville, Toulon, Montreal, Hamburg, Salsa Majori, Figueira da Foz, Munich, Vienna, Athens (Ohio), Sundance, Hong Kong, Yamagata, and Sydney.
A half-hour video tape entitled YVONNE RAINER: STORY OF A FILMMAKER WHO… was aired on Film and Video Review, WNET-TV in 1980. THE MAN WHO ENVIED WOMEN was aired on Independent Focus, WNET-TV in, 1989, and PRIVILEGE on the same program in 1992 and during the summer of 1994.
In the Spring of 1997—to coincide with the release of MURDER and murder—complete retrospectives of the films of Yvonne Rainer were mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City.
“I love the duality of props, or objects: their usefulness and obstructiveness in relation to the human body. Also the duality of the body: the body as a moving, thinking, decision-making entity and the body as an inert entity, object-like… oddly, the body can become object-like; the human being can be treated as an object, dealt with as an entity without feeling or desire. The body itself can be handled and manipulated as though lacking in the capacity for self-propulsion.” (Rainer, Works 1961-73, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, New York, New York University Press, 1974, p. 134).

Upcoming in the Yvonne Rainer Retrospective:
 December 6, 2009 (Part 3 of 8):
The Man Who Envied Women with Rainer in person

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

Tom Gunning with D.W. Griffith in California

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:44:20 -0700

Sunday November 15, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Echo Park Film Center
Los Angeles Filmforum and the Echo Park Film Center present
D.W. Griffith in California, with talk by Tom Gunning
Tom Gunning in person!

**NOTE THE CHANGE IN TIME AND LOCATION**
For fans of early film, and of Southern California history!
We’re delighted to host the internationally-renowned film scholar Tom Gunning, who will talk about Griffith’s time in California, and these selected, rarely screened films made in So Cal in the years before World War I.
All films are in 16mm with live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick.
In 1910, retreating from the harsh East Coast winter which confined them inside the narrow limits of their NYC studio in a 14th st. brownstone, D.W. Griffith transported the Biograph film company to southern California. For the next four winters the company made over a hundred one reel (15 minutes) films in the area around Los Angeles, covering every genre in a range of locations: westerns in the deserts and hills; a caveman film in Griffith Park; tales of lost lovers by the seaside; Mexican dramas among the cacti. These brief films laid the foundation for cinema as a narrative art, but, even more, the displayed a beauty of landscape and detail that year later Griffith claimed Hollywood had completely forgotten. – Tom Gunning
Special Thanks to Tom Barnes for the silent speed projector and to all our print sources: David Shepard, USC Hugh Hefner Moving Image Archive, Academy Film Archives, and Budget Films.

Tonight’s films include:
Man's Genesis (1912, 17 min)
Griffith took on the somewhat daring task of illustrating Darwin's theory of man's evolution with Bobby Harron as a cavemen who proves intelligence triumphs over brawn. With Mae Marsh.  The New Dress (1911, 17 min.)
A psychological story of Mexican life showing Griffith's genius for building a story around an object. With Dorothy West.  The Massacre (1914, 20 min)
A true epic in small form, showing Griffith's ambitions to create a panoramic landscape of action. As he often did, Griffith showed how the American westward expansion destroyed the peaceful lives of Native Americans. With the magnificent Blanche Sweet and Wilfred Lucas.  The Unchanging Sea (1910, 14 min.)
Griffith used the seaside as a poetic motif to express longing and loss, combined with a deft use of parallel editing to express the cycles of life. With Mary Pickford and Charles West  The Sands of Dee (1912, 17 min)
One of Griffith most poetic films, based on a poem by Charles Kingsley, as Mae Marsh plays an abandoned lover who haunts the shore.  The Female of the Species (1912, 17 min)
A grim melodrama of survival in the desert in which women play out the central drama of jealousy and revenge (including a rather murderous Mary Pickford).

About Tom Gunning:
Tom Gunning is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media at the University of Chicago. He is the author of the books, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph and The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity and of over a hundred essays , especially on early cinema and the avant-garde. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute researching the theory and history of the moving image.

About D.W. (David Wark) Griffith (1875-1948):
Griffith was born in rural Kentucky to Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith, a Confederate Army colonel and Civil War hero. He grew up with his father's romantic war stories and melodramatic nineteenth century literature that were to eventually mold his black-and-white view of human existence and history. In 1897, Griffith set out to pursue a career both acting and writing for the theater but for the most part was unsuccessful. Reluctantly, he agreed to act in the new motion picture medium for Edwin S. Porter at the Edison Company. Griffith was eventually offered a job at the financially struggling American Mutoscope & Biograph, where he directed over 450 short films, experimenting with the story-telling techniques he would later perfect in his epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). Griffith and his personal cinematographer G.W. Bitzer collaborated to create and perfect such cinematic devices as the flashback, the iris shot, the mask, and crosscutting. In the years following Birth, Griffith never again saw the same monumental success, and, in 1931, his increasing failures forced his retirement. Though hailed for his vision in narrative film-making, he was similarly criticized for his blatant racism. Griffith died in Los Angeles in 1948, one of the most dichotomous figures in film history. – from Gunning’s IMDB entry

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

Best of the Ann Arbor Film Festival (Program 2)

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:55:16 -0700

Sunday November 22, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Best of the Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour, Program II
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is the original and longest running independent film festival in the United States, recognized as a premiere showcase for risk-taking, pioneering and art driven cinema. The AAFF pioneered the touring film festival concept in 1964 and each year brings a selection of favorite and award-winning short films to more than 25 galleries, universities, art house theaters and cinematheques throughout the world. This program explores themes of life and death within the geography of our surroundings, and includes films from Detroit, Montreal, San Francisco, Berlin, Toronto and Tokyo.
This exciting show mixes new experimental, animation, and documentary work – a great way to catch up on what is happening in film & video art!
See the trailer for the show on Vimeo here.
Tonight’s films will include:
Cattle Call by Mike Maryniuk and Matthew Rankin (2007, 4 min)Structured around the mesmerizing talents of 2007 Manitoba /Saskatchewan Auctioneer Champion, Tim Dowler, this film tries to create images as dazzlingly abstract, absurd and adrenalizing as the incredible language of auctioneering itself. It is the filmmakers hope that the film will induce near-bovine levels of dumbfoundedness in all those who gaze upon it.
Read more ...
Utopia, Part 3: The World’s Largest Shopping Mall by Sam Green and Carrie Lozano (2008, 12 min)
Built in 2005, more than twice the size of the Mall of America, the South China Mall outside of Guangzhou in southern China was designed as a celebration of middle-class consumption and spectacle. Often evoked as a symbol of China's economic emergence as a superpower, the reality is much more complex. Four years after it opened, the South China Mall sits almost empty, a foreboding metaphor for the future of global capitalism.
Read more ...
Quiero Ver by Adele Horne (2006, 6 min)
On the 13th of each month, hundreds of people gather at a site in the Mojave Desert to see visions of the Virgin Mary appear in the sun. They point Polaroid, cell phone, and video cameras at the sun, and compare interpretations of the resulting images.
Read more ...
Skhizein by Jeremy Clapin (2008, 14 min)
Audience Award 47th AAFF
Struck by a 150-ton meteorite, Henry has to adapt to living 91 centimeters from himself.
Read more ...
Retouches by Georges Schwizgebel (2008, 5 min)
Best Animated Film 47th AAFF
A film that mesmerizes with visual acrobatics. Between waves on a shore and a sleeper breathing, he alters the balance of shapes in the world and plays with perception to grasp the fleeting movement of our lives. Retouches is a series of passing visions of perpetual motion. A film without words.
Read more ...
Más Se Perdió by Stephen Connolly (2008, 15 min)
Best Sound Design Award 47th AAFF
Más Se Perdió (we lost more) draws connections between a series of places in Havana, Cuba, each of which have a relationship to notions of utopia.
Read more ...
Nora by Alla Kovgan & David Hinton (35 min)
Eileen Maitland Award 47th AAFF
"Shot in Southern Africa, Nora is based on childhood memories of the dancer Nora Chipaumire who was born in Zimbabwe in 1965. Using performance and dance, she brings her history to life in a swiftly-moving poem of sound and image. The original score was composed by a Zimbabwean legend" - Thomas Mapfumo.
Read more ...
Blue Tide, Black Water by Eve Gordon & Sam Hamilton (2008, 10 min) Amid an ocean of wax one might chance upon a garden of flowering chemicals, where the filmmakers have circumnavigated microscopic reactions, creating an epic in miniature. In 35mm!
Read more ...
91 minutes total run-time

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

Yvonne Rainer Retrospective (Part 3 of 8)

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:54:10 -0700

Sunday December 6, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Bodies, Objects, Films: An Yvonne Rainer Retrospective (Part 3 of 8 ) The Man Who Envied Women (1985)
Yvonne Rainer in person!
Over the course of our 2009-2010 seasons, Filmforum is proud to present a full retrospective of the media works of Yvonne Rainer. One of the most significant artists in dance and film of the last fifty years, One of the most significant artists in dance and film of the last fifty years, this is the first full retrospective of her films in Los Angeles. Each appearance by Rainer will feature a Q&A led by a different moderator, to discuss with her varying aspects of her approaches to her art and life. We’ll start with her earliest and latest works, all connected to various performances.
Tonight’s Q&A will be led by Berenice Reynaud, film scholar, professor of film at Cal Arts, and long-time friend of Rainer.
Tonight we will screen:
The Man Who Envied Women (1985, 125 mins, 16mm)
Around a familiar theme--the breakup of a marriage--Rainer constructs an honest, graceful and wickedly funny account of a self-satisfied womanizer, Jack Deller, the man “who almost knows too much about women.”
“Rainer renders the female subject in The Man Who Envied Women invisible, existing only as a voice-over performed by, coincidentally, the intensely ephemeral choreographer/dancer Trisha Brown. By aligning audience identification with an absent female protagonist and having the male lead played by two actors, Rainer short-circuits the male-dominated power structures that the feminist film theorists had found to be 'built into' cinematic language. Rainer turns the male gaze/female object formula on its head by removing the female spectacle and fracturing the central, stable male identity. In an interview at the time The Man Who Envied Women was in development, Rainer describes her complex relation to theory, noting its capacity to seduce and remarking that “sometimes reading Stephen Heath is a turn on” (p. 83). Rainer's critique of theory as both another field for playing out power relations and a performance to be interrogated somehow coexists in her films with a mobilisation of key theoretical concepts for her own purposes. In the same interview Rainer admits to discomfort with the language of theory which is evidenced in the film; the scene in which the central male character, Jack Dellar, delivers a philosophy lecture to his students is so prolonged, the lecture so impossible to follow and the camera so distracted (wandering throughout the space), a critique of the 'performance' of theory is achieved. Rainer both presents and subverts in the same aesthetic gesture.” -- Erin Brannigan, senses of cinema

About Yvonne Rainer:
When Yvonne Rainer made her first feature-length film in 1972, she had already influenced the world of dance and choreography for nearly a decade. From the beginning of her film career she inspired audiences to think about what they saw, interweaving the real and fictional, the personal and political, the concrete and abstract in imaginative, unpredictable ways. Her bold feminist sensibility and often controversial subject matter, leavened with a quirky humor, has made her, as the Village Voice dubbed her in 1986, “The most influential American avant-garde filmmaker of the past dozen years, with an impact as evident in London or Berlin as in New York.”
Rainer was born in San Francisco in 1934. She trained as a modern dancer in New York from 1957 and began to choreograph her own work in 1960. She was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, the beginning of a movement that proved to be a vital force in modern dance in the following decades. Between 1962 and 1975 she presented her choreography throughout the United States and Europe, notably on Broadway in 1969, in Scandinavia, London, Germany, and Italy between 1964 and 1972, and at the Festival D’Automne in Paris in 1972. In 1968 she began to integrate short films into her live performances, and by 1975 she had made a complete transition to filmmaking.
In 1972 she completed a first feature-length film, LIVES OF PERFORMERS. In all she has completed seven features: FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO… (1974), KRISTINA TALKING PICTURES (1976), JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN/1971 (1980, co-produced by the British Film Institute and winner of the Special Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association), THE MAN WHO ENVIED WOMEN (1985), PRIVILEGE (1990, winner of the Filmmakers’ Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival, Park City. Utah, 1991, and the Geyer Werke Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival in Munich, 1991), and MURDER and murder (1996).
Rainer’s films have been shown extensively in the U.S. and throughout the world, in alternative film exhibition showcases and revival houses (such as the Bleecker St Cinema, Roxy-S.F.; NuArt-L.A; Film Forum-NYC, et al), in museums and in universities. Her films have also been screened at festivals in Los Angeles (Filmex), London, Montreux, Toronto, Edinburgh, Mannheim, Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam, Creteil, Deauville, Toulon, Montreal, Hamburg, Salsa Majori, Figueira da Foz, Munich, Vienna, Athens (Ohio), Sundance, Hong Kong, Yamagata, and Sydney.
A half-hour video tape entitled YVONNE RAINER: STORY OF A FILMMAKER WHO… was aired on Film and Video Review, WNET-TV in 1980. THE MAN WHO ENVIED WOMEN was aired on Independent Focus, WNET-TV in, 1989, and PRIVILEGE on the same program in 1992 and during the summer of 1994.
In the Spring of 1997—to coincide with the release of MURDER and murder—complete retrospectives of the films of Yvonne Rainer were mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City.
“I love the duality of props, or objects: their usefulness and obstructiveness in relation to the human body. Also the duality of the body: the body as a moving, thinking, decision-making entity and the body as an inert entity, object-like… oddly, the body can become object-like; the human being can be treated as an object, dealt with as an entity without feeling or desire. The body itself can be handled and manipulated as though lacking in the capacity for self-propulsion.” (Rainer, Works 1961-73, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, New York, New York University Press, 1974, p. 134).

About Berenice Reynaud:
Berenice Reynaud teaches film history, theory and criticism at the California Institute of the Arts. She is the Co-curator of the film/video program at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in Los Angeles, and a correspondent for the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Spain) and the Viennale (Vienna, Austria). She has curated a number of film/video series for the UCLA Film & Television Archive (Los Angeles), the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume (Paris). She contributed one article to The Films of Yvonne Rainer (University of Indiana Press, 1989). She is currently writing her third book on Chinese cinema.

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

The Festival of (In)appropriation Returns

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:45:10 -0700

Whether you call it collage, compilation, found footage, detournement, or recycled cinema, the incorporation of previously shot materials into new artworks is a practice that has generated novel juxtapositions of elements which have produced new meanings and ideas that may not have been intended by the original makers, that are, in other words “inappropriate.” This act of appropriation may produce revelation that leads viewers to reconsider the relationship between past and present, here and there, intention and subversion. Fortunately for our purposes, the past decade has seen the emergence of a wealth of new sources for audiovisual materials that can be appropriated into new works. In addition to official state and commercial archives, vernacular archives, home movie collections, and digital archives have provided fascinating source material that may be repurposed in such a way as to give it new meanings and resonances.

In this program, a continuation of part one presented last June, we bring together a selection of recent films that appropriate footage from diverse sources in vastly different ways. Our goal in choosing these films is to show the range of approaches contemporary filmmakers are taking in repurposing found materials. Indeed, tonight’s 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

Special Thanks to Tyler Hubby

Tonight’s films include:
The Ship by Brandon Downing (2009, video, sound, color, 4:50 min.)
“A short featuring collaged elements of The People the Time Forgot (1977), Cousteau’s Odyssey: Calypso’s Search for the Britannica (1980), Pippi in the South Seas (1976), Footlight Parade (1939), Frankenstein Versus Baragon (1966), and Geeta Mera Naam (Geeta is My Name) (1982). Subtitles by Brandon Downing. Music from Jaan Pechaan (1952) and Frankenstein Versus Baragon (1966).” (Brandon Downing)

The Animated Heavy-Metal Parking Lot by Leslie Supnet
(2008, video, color, sound, 1:40 min)
“An animated tribute to Jeff Krulik and John Heyn’s 1986 video documentary classic, Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Remaining faithful to no-budget film making, Supnet reconstructs her favorite scenes using cut-out characters made out of aged paper, glue and ink.” (Leslie Supnet)

The Legend of Pwdre Ser (Dave Griffiths, 2008, color, video, 1:30 min.)
“Welshmen, NASA and snooker champions collide with advanced intelligence from outer space. Produced for ‘The Golden Record’ exhibition, a contemporary version of the phonograph record included by Carl Sagan in the two Voyager spacecraft in 1977.” (Dave Griffiths) Note: Watch for the movie cue-dots.

Friend Film by Colin Barton (2008, 16mm, 6 min.)
“This is a eulogy to lost friends, either by death or disassociation. River Phoenix appears as the archetypal figure of my generation. This film lives in a space of a junkie’s death walk, and their final exit from the earth. Hand-painted 35mm original with optical printing are at the source of this work; with a little help from an electric toothbrush and washing machine. Sound by Crank Sturgeon.” (Colin Barton)

Alone by Gerard Freixes Ribera (Spain, 2008, b&w, 3:05 min.)
“The heroic characters in mainstream fiction always show individualist attitudes. Here, that hero’s individualism is taken to its complete extreme.” (Gerard Freixes Ribera)

The Acrobat by Chris Kennedy (2007, 16mm, b&w. 5:50 min.)
“A consideration of the relationship of gravity and politics - the beauty and necessity of rising up, but also, perhaps, the significance of allowing oneself to fall. An exploration of how such forces resonate across space and time.” (Chris Kennedy)

Emergence by Marcin Blajecki (Poland, 3:45 min.)
An animated film traced on a 1953 McGraw-Hill film called Physical Aspects of Puberty.

Outlaw by Ann Steuernagel (US, 2008, 2:54 min.)
“A ‘recycled’ cowboy movie composed from found 16mm film footage. Through radical editing and layering, Outlaw accentuates that which is both iconic and ecstatic in the traditional Western.” (Ann Steuernagel)

Asleep at the Wheel by Mike Maryniuk (2005, 2:30 min.)
“Hole-punched memories and hand-processed hallucinations.” (Mike Maryniuk)

****Intermission****

That’s Right by Matthew Causey (2008, 3:07 min.)
Everyone, to the right!

Anemic Cinema with Z Coordinate by Jorge Sa
(Portugal, video, 3:23 min.)
“A tribute to Marcel Duchamps’ experimental film, Anemic Cinema, working with Z coordinate.” (Jorge Sa)

The Motions of Bodies by Ann Steuernagel (US, 2008, 4 min.)
“Inspired by Galileo's experiments with gravity.” (Ann Steuernagel)

Isolating Landscapes by Heidi Phillips
(Canada, 2007, sound, color, 4:31 min.)
“Isolating Landscapes is a short experimental film which includes found footage of landscapes, sailboats, and people washing in water. A series of ice heart moulds are shot over time showing a slow melt. Thematically, the work seeks to describe detachment and loneliness. The piece uses multiple film techniques such as hand manipulation of found footage, reticulation and hand processing of colour super 8 and 16mm film.” (Heidi Phillips)

The Last Interview in Exile by McLean Fahnestock
(2008, video, color, sound, 1:18 min.)
“In January, 1980 David Frost conducted a final interview with the exiled Shah of Iran in Panama. This monumental meeting of two personalities is distilled to a single exchange.” (McLean Fahnestock)

Profanations by Oriol Sanchez (2008, Spain, video, 20 min.)
“Profanations is a three-channel video work consisting of appropriation and reconstruction of images and sequences of films by Jules Marey, Pudovkin, Kirsanoff, Eisenstein, Romero, Halperin, Kulechov…from which a series of little, miniature micro-stories have been created. These stories have been organized according to Campanas de Luz (Light Bells), a music composition by Joan Riera Robuste. Profanations emerges from an interest in exploring relationships between sound and images with narratives and abstraction, playing with (dis)articulation found in film narratives, creating a rupture within narrative and representation.” (Oriol Sanchez)

Total running time: approximately 80 min. with 10-min. intermission.
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Check out a couple to see what the incredible range of tonight’s show:
Brandon Downing's The Ship:

  

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.