Radical Light: Small Gauge
Acceleration (Stark, 1993)
Curator Steve Anker in Person!
Radical Light: Alternative Film And Video In The San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, (UC Press), edited by Steve Anker, Co-Curator of Film at REDCAT, and Pacific Film Archive curators Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid, is a rich compendium of essays, reminiscences and striking visuals that attests to the vital and varied experimental film and video scene that has existed in the Bay Area for more than half a century. In conjunction with the book’s release, Filmforum and other organizations are hosting a series of screenings highlighting an amazing range of work produced in the Bay Area over the past seven decades. Filmforum’s show on January 23rd will highlight films made using the small gauges of super 8 and regular 8mm film!
Special thanks to Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz, Steve Seid, and Berenice Reynaud.
Radical Light: Small Gauge highlights super 8 and regular 8mm films made in the Bay Area. Even though regular 8mm and later super-8mm were designed as amateur home mediums during the middle decades of the last century, artists using these small-scale tools increasingly appreciated the intimacy of the screening situations and the low-key and fragile qualities of the image and spontaneity that 8mm filming allowed. This program showcases a wide range of ways that San Francisco based moving image artists consciously worked with the small-scale nature of 8mm, using home distributed found footage, working with daily ‘home movie’ subjects to create expressive and direct diaries and cinematic reveries, or using the nature of these tools for formal exploration. Filmmakers include Bruce Conner, Scott Stark, Nathaniel Dorsky, Bob Branaman, Janis Crystal Lipzin, silt, Julie Murray, and Ellen Gaine.
17 Reasons Why
Directed by Nathaniel Dorsky (1987, 8mm, color, silent, 19 min.)
17 REASONS WHY was photographed with a variety of semi-ancient regular 8 cameras and is projected unslit as 16mm. These pocket-sized relics enabled me to walk around virtually "unseen," exploring and improvising with the immediacy of a more spontaneous medium. The four image format has built-in contrapuntal resonances, ironies, and beauty, and in each case gives us an unpretentious look at the film frame itself ... the simple and primordial delight of luminous Kodachrome and rich black and white chugging thru these timeworn gates.
Acceleration
Directed by Scott Stark (1993, super 8, color, sound, 10 min.)
A snapshot taken in a moment of human evolution, where the souls of the living are reflected in the windows of passing trains. The camera captures the reflections of passengers in the train windows as the trains enter and leave the station, and the movement creates a stroboscopic flickering effect that magically exploits the pure sensuality of the moving image. Award: First Prize (Director's Choice), Black Maria Film Festival, 1994