Cine Soiree!!

Millennium Film Workshop Cine Equipment Sale!!!

2012-01-24T21:57:00.002-05:00

This Saturday - The Millennium Film Workshop Cine Equipment Sale!

See you there!

Snow and Fotopoulos

2012-01-15T14:59:00.000-05:00

Many events all concurrent with one another: Occupy Cinema at Anthology, and the openings for Michael Snow at Jack Shainman Gallery, and James Fotopoulos at Microscope Gallery. Attended both the Snow and Fotopoulos shows -- but it can sometimes be difficult being too many places all at once.

Tempting to draw comparisons between the two exhibits of artwork by filmmakers, but what was truly striking by way of comparison: issue of space -- that is to say, the available square footage of gallery space -- and its influence upon the grandly minimal arrangement at the Chelsea exhibit, with its cavernous white expanses, or the intimate and abundantly covered walls -- seeking to maximize the miniscule -- in Bushwick's aptly named Microscope Gallery. Is larger space the ideal? The hanging of the Fotopoulos show invited the perusing of the drawings through a meandering of the eye from one work to the next: up, down, this work to the side, and that work above or below, making sequences and comparisons through a zigzagging from one drawing to another. A larger space might not have been as conducive this type of hanging: Perhaps an eye-level ribbon of drawings -- providing a more linear experience -- would have been more appropriate to a large space?

Intimate spaces seem to have been increasing within the past few years: Microscope, Spectacle Theater, and even the storefront-located Union Docs, all functioning within small-sized spaces of one sort or another (compared to the full-sized theater seating 100 or more). The little Maya Deren Theater (which seats 72) on the ground floor of Anthology seems cavernous compared to these more recent venues. Of course Bradley Eros's E.P.I.C. = E(xtreme) P(rivate) I(ntimate) C(inema), in which several screenings took place for an audience of exactly one, may be the ultimate example of this small-sized venue (or perhaps the Edison Kinetoscope, which by its nature can have no more than one viewer at a time?).

***

And so begins the new year and a new year of Cine Soirees as the blog is now one year old.

Cheers!

The Secret Life of... Anthology Film Archives

2011-12-10T17:32:00.001-05:00

A festive Secret Life screening at Anthology Film Archives: the once-every-calendar open screening for staff and friends of Anthology. The evening finished off with birthday cake for Bradley Eros.

Secret Life is not really all that much of a secret: it's listed on the Anthology calendar and anyone can attend. But despite its public listing Secret Life is almost always more of a private screening for those filmmakers showing work that night.

Bradley refers to a screening where the attendees are also the filmmakers as a "players only" event, which sounds more like a poker game. I'm intrigued by this notion: what lies in between a public and a private screening? Is the in between ostensibly a private screening into which some uninvited guests may have wander in? Or how to characterize a screening where the public was invited but only the "players" attend? Is this now a more of private screening through the happenstance of who shows up?

But that's all for now. If you what to know more you'll just have to come to Secret Life yourself. Won't tell you about what was shown that night -- that would be giving away the secret!

Cheers!

"Christmas on Earth" at Artists Space

2011-12-01T10:01:00.001-05:00

At Artists Space on Friday to help project Barbara Rubin's "Christmas on Earth," with Barney Rosset, MM Serra, and Jonas Mekas on hand for the introduction of the film. The event was in celebration of the release of Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia? edited by edited by Marta Kuzma and Pablo Lafuente.

I've projected "Christmas on Earth" several times now with MM Serra, who has been a notable champion of this double-projection work, perhaps under-recognized for its importance in exemplifying sixties underground cinema. Figures in body paint play out erotic interactions, superimposed in a smaller frame within a larger one, the outer image comprising of closeups of the body, most notably shots of genitalia. The synthesis of these two images creates the impression of the body-painted figures as inhabitants of the genitalia, as if we are privy to the playful goings-on of unseen pixies and sprites that inhabit various hubs and recesses of the body.

The film has a certain indeterminacy built into its presentation: The film is a dual projection piece, with one image inside the other, the inner image approximately half the size of the outer one. The black and white footage is transformed into color by the projectionists placing color gels in front of the lens of each projector while the film is showing. Barbara Rubin requests that the soundtrack be a live radio, tuned to a rock station. All of this is communicated by a set of instructions that are packed in the can with the film.

Given its design as a work of expanded cinema, each time the film is shown something new is there in its presentation. What drew my attention in projecting the film on this occasion was the degree to which the density of the color gels demanded careful consideration from the projectionist. A very deep, dark color (dark blue, for instance) could completely obscure the image if a bright gel (yellow, perhaps) was being used by the other projector. I kept trying to adjust the use of gels on the projector to complement the gel on the other projector, not just in terms of color combination but also in terms of density of lightness or darkness. Something I'm sure I've done without thinking about it, but this time -- perhaps due to the gels available -- it seemed to require much more deliberation than at other times I've helped to show the piece.

For those wanting to know more about the film, an very informative article on Barbara Rubin's "Christmas on Earth" can be found in Art Signal Magazine.

Cheers!

MONO NO AWARE 2011

2011-12-01T10:00:00.001-05:00

December has rolled around again. And another MONO NO AWARE expanded cinema screening greets the last month of the year. Still digesting the experience. And "experience" is what it certainly was: the annual event is dedicated to the experience of live film performance: live reading with film, live combinations of images, live music and images, live overhead projector performance, and even live audience cell phone mayhem (on purpose).

The full lineup can be found in the Mono No Aware gallery. Some works still reverberating on this rainy Wednesday morning include Eric Ostrowski's "Monkey," a rapid fire three-screen visual inundation of pairs of circles within circles, an orange-green ever-transforming mandala; and Lindsay McIntyre's "A Northern Portrait." Where Eric's piece threw you back in in your seat with its sensorial intensity, Lindsay's pulled you slowly into its meditative and contemplative atmosphere, the overlapping loops of mostly black-and-white footage evoking a repeated mantra of images.

Can't wait for next year! See you then.

Cheers!

Cinebeasts "Gowanderlust!"

2011-11-06T21:10:00.000-05:00

A belated post of last month's cinema walking tour. . .

A took a break from Views From the Avant-Garde to attend the "Gowanderlust!" cinema walking tour put on by Cinebeasts.

Our tour guide was Nathan Kensinger, who has been photographing the changes neighborhood around what was once known as the "Lavender Lake" in honor of its infusion of pollutants and industrial runoff. It's been a while since the Gowanus last caught fire (that was back in 1946), but on a fine day the canal still can produce quite a stink. Which makes it curious that people would choose to anchor their houseboats on this chemical-choked waterway. And some people have taken to going canoeing on the canal, but the thought of capsizing in the Gowanus sounds about as unpleasant as it gets.

With each stop of the walking tour a screen, PA system, and a projector had been set up to show a film. The works selected had either been shot in the neighborhood or picked in response to the industrial landscape around the canal. There were films by Henry Hills, Donna Cameron, Kevin T. Allen, and myself.

Back in the spring Penny Lane curated a screening of psychogeographic cinema at Flaherty NYC. But here was a psychogeographic experience of cinema.

Seeing the work out in the street instead of in the enclosure of the "black box" movie theater was not unlike drive-in movie experience, the sensation of unconfined space, the sensation of the night sky above the audience even while the main focus of attention was directed to the image on the screen. The Gowanus environment, struggling between gentrification and toxic industrial destitution, formed a conversation of the senses between the screen and the screening site. The smell of dank polluted water became part of the experience of seeing Kevin T. Allen's camera roll portrait of a rowboat bobbing in the stagnant waters. The texture of dried mud on cobblestones, the haphazardly abandoned wooden pallets in the periphery, the guttural growling sounds of diesel engines of trucks in the distance; all these contributed to the viewing of the films in a subtlety visceral manner.

The evening ended with a presentation of Nathan's photographs of the changing neighborhood. Let's hope for more cinema walking tours from Cinebeasts come the spring. New Town Creek next?

Cheers!

Adolfas

2011-10-23T09:51:00.000-04:00

A toast of Limoncello for Adolfas Mekas!

Cheers!

Views from the Avant-Garde

2011-10-14T09:41:00.000-04:00

Another autumn and another "Views from the Avant-Garde" at the New York Film Festival. This year as the screening spaces at Lincoln Center haveexpand so has Views: now at two theaters, larger and smaller (plus other works showing in the amphitheater just off the lobby of the newly opened cinema), and with a few of the programs repeated instead of the previously established framework of a two-and-a-half day marathon all in the Walter Reade.

***

Views is not just a screening – although some will cynically read the program as a score-card of who is and isn't included – but a gathering-place for the larger avant-garde filmmaking community. From around the country (and around the world) filmmakers congregate here and see each other, and will perhaps go a whole year without seeing each other again (until next year's Views). And so it is a valuable point of convergence for the wider community of filmmakers who are out in some part of the country without the same opportunities to see work as here in New York (or even the opportunity to see avant-garde cinema just to be had in Brooklyn by itself). It's a place where everyone can catch up, compare notes, ask the inevitable "Are you showing something in the festival?" question (that is always a little awkward if the answer is no), and dawdle together in the leftover time between programs.

***

Paul Clipson

One of the highlights this year was a super-8 performance by Paul Clipson. He presented his work at Views last year, together with a performance by Bruce McClure, and it was gratifying to see him back again this time.

An intense energy permeated the films through the layering of briefly viewed images. The super-impositions created in-camera. This is remarkable considering it was all done with a super-8 camera. Super-8 film comes on a cartridge that is not designed to be backwound. But a few cameras exist can backwind the film just a few seconds (until the film can't go back any further in the cartridge), and so the many layers of images on screen were the result of a constant going back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth over the same short bit of film, slowly working through the three minute roll. Most shots were just a couple of seconds long; some quite sort, less than a second. The brevity of each of these images was offset by layering the same subject over itself, extending the subject matter over many shots, so that a brief glimpse of tree branches was part of larger sequence of superimpositions: branches upon branches upon branches. These were not conventional stand-alone "shots" as we think of them in talking about a film, but overlapping facets of an extended sequence of related and merging images. Several pieces used nature as the subject, with multiple exposures of grass and leaves in extreme closeup, the camera itself close in among the blades of grass, the focus racking to reveal the many planes of depth in this nearly-microscopic environment. Even closer and smaller were the faces of insects filling the screen (if there was a Q&A I would have been tempted to ask how he managed to get the insects to be so well-behaved in front of the camera and not just jump out of the shot). The intensity of sunlight directly on the lens, obscured through the branches of trees, the image layered over itself again and again.

Some of the works were performed with live music by ARP (Alexis Georgopoulos), which included "Chorus," a film of lights at night, with many layers of superimposed images and intense colors; red, magenta, yellow, aquamarine, the camera arcing and zooming and moving, lights obscured through metal mesh, neon signs, the many sources of illumination at times becoming seemingly abstract ripples of light reflected in puddles on the street.

As the lights came up after the screening there was a little residual vertigo from the momentum of these unreeling images of such beauty and intensity. In reaction to "Chorus" someone made a passing comment about being back in San Francisco at a 1960s light-show. But I was wondering if there was some affinity between these films and the symphonic poems of Romantic era composers, such as Liszt, who were also creating single-movement works intended to evoke an experience of beauty and intensity. In terms of sensibility, size, and handling of themes there seemed much in common; here were visual symphonic poems. Let's hope to see more of them again in the near future!

Cheers!

Machine Gut

2011-09-30T23:17:00.000-04:00

Katherine Bauer has curated a group show of film installation works in a splendidly Rube Goldberg contraption-like fashion: "Machine Gut."

Projectors throw images in all directions, take-up reels cast shadows, the sounds of chewed sprockets and chattering splices fills the space, the film-artists* move about the machinery, tinkering and threading the mechanisms, feeding the devices with ribbons of images.

***

Some photos from the opening reception, held on Wednesday. This coming Saturday, October 1st, will be the show's closing expanded cinema performance. Not to be missed!

Cheers!
___________________
*David Baker, Joanne Lipton, Rachael Abernathy, Bradley Eros, Lary 7, Katie Torn, Sam Freeman, Jason Martin, Victoria Keddie, Sarah Halpern, Mary Magdalene Serra, Donna Cameron, Joel Schlemowitz, Steve Cossman, Rachelle Rahme, Smith and Lowles, Allison Somers, Celeste Carballo, Casandra Jenkins, Matt Petronelli, Poncho, Jamie Mohr, Dan Bunny, Jessica Gispert, and Kat Bauer.

Cinebeasts "Gowanderlust!"

2011-09-19T20:17:00.000-04:00

Coming up October 8, 2011 (postponed from September 24, 2011 due to wind and rain) is Cinebeasts walking tour + cinema:

"Gowanderlust!"

Walking tour by Nathan Kensinger, and films by Kevin T. Allen, Donna Cameron, Henry Hills, and me ("Camera Roll (for Taylor)" and "Silo," both of which were shot in the Gowanus environs).

Meet outside The Bell House at 149 7th Street at sundown. Ticket sales for this event are advance only. Attendance is $10 per person; tickets can be purchased through Brown Paper Tickets.

Cheers!

Index Festival "Colo(u)r Sound Culture Mash Up"

2011-09-12T10:09:00.000-04:00

Back again to Millennium Film Workshop for the Index Festival's Colo(u)r Sound Culture Mash Up, with works by Geoff Pugen, Jeremy Rotsztain, Collin McKelvey and Kelly Lynn Jones, Liz Wendelbo, Dana Bell, Alyssa Taylor Wendt, Michael Robinson, Tom Ruth, Sadek Bazaraa, Jon Santos, Katherine Bauer, Optipus, Kenneth Zoran Curwood.

The mixing and correlating of the senses is known as "synesthesia," where the sounds of colors are experienced (although it may take the form of other combination of the senses). The notion of these correlations has been intriguing for its aesthetic potential to a great many artists. James Huneker wrote of "Painted Music" (1919), which included Whistler's "symphonic" works on canvas, and of hearing unsung music while viewing the works of Renaissance painters. The color organ, which was used to perform the colors of music, is chronicled by William Moritz in "The Dream of Color Music, And Machines That Made it Possible" (and I've even built a little lightplay machine for expanded cinema performances).

***

The films of Kenneth Zoran Curwood and Kat Bauer were among the more notable of the evening, which also included two remarkable expanded cinema performances: Dana Bell's dance piece "A Delicate Balance" with live music and projections, and "Spectrum" by the art collective Optipus, with 16mm, 8mm, slides, and live sound (music and Foley effects). Some photos:

Cheers!

Independence Returns at Microscope Galley

2011-09-10T12:12:00.001-04:00

Microscope Gallery is celebrating its 1st year anniversary, with "Independence Returns" a title which reprises "Independence," the gallery's inaugural show.

The opening night ended with a live film performance by Bradley Eros featuring a condensed feature cut of "The Incredible Shrinking Man" in 8mm. The performance itself became "The Incredible Shrinking Film" with the projector on a rolling platform, moving closer and closer to the screen -- or in this case, a little cardboard house onto which the image was projected -- so that the projection would get smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Eventually the image was so small, and projector was so close to the little house, the film could no longer be seen by the audience.

The film performance was dedicated to the memory of George Kuchar, who did so many wonderful things within the smallest of cinematic gauges.

Cheers!

Index Festival at Millennium Film Workshop

2011-08-23T09:43:00.000-04:00

The inaugural edition of the Index Festival is in full swing. At first glance the idea of holding an event August does not seem ideal; so many people using this time to go out of town to enjoy the last few weeks of summer. And yet the choice of putting on the Index Festival in August has the virtue of presenting fewer conflicts with other things happening at the same time, as is typical of the rest of the year.

At Millennium Film Workshop for "[Mis]Adventures in Manipulation" over the weekend. Sounds and visuals by Shelley Burgon, Future Archeology, Twistycat, Liz Wendelbo, Carrie Gates, Byron Westbrook, Maria Chavez, MV Carbon, and Bruce McClure. An added treat was live camera mixing (with vintage analog video equipment!) by E.S.P. TV

Coming up at Millennium on August 27th Index Festival presents "Colo(u)r Sound Culture Mash Up." See you there (if you don't already have plans to go out of town).

Cheers!

Red Hook Cine Soiree - August 6, 2011

2011-08-08T14:00:00.004-04:00

Another summer afternoon, and another Red Hook Cine Soiree.

The films and filmmakers were Cet Air La by Marie Losier, Summer Reading, pt 1 (When We Were Witches) by Jeanne Liotta, Eros c'est Lamour by Bradley Eros and Tim Geraghty, Portrait #2: Trojan by Vanessa Renwick, and a special screening of Entr'acte by Rene Clair, Francis Picabia, and Erik Satie with live soundtrack by Joel Schlemowitz's Krupnik Orchestra.

***

The "live soundtrack by Joel Schlemowitz's Krupnik Orchestra" consisted of instruments handed out to the audience to provide a live score. A highly improvised undertaking, albeit with some conducting to indicate various cues in the film. It's not the first time that an audience was given out instruments to make music for a film score: I recall a wonderful evening at Issue Project Room with The Parasitic Fantasy Band, which included one piece where Sam Hamilton handed out hand-percussion instruments, bells, and chimes to the audience members as part of the "live ephemeral expanded cinema and ecstatic 16mm/8mm film and sound performances." The experience was a low tech version of "surround sound" -- the tinkling sounds emanating from everywhere around the room.

Of course the auditory results of little hand-percussion instruments are much different than what you get from our orchestra's array of instruments: a trombone, a french horn, a bugle, crash cymbals, a banjo, melodicas, flutes, drums, and various other highly noisy things. A little video excerpt of the musical mayhem is posted below.

And later on, as the afternoon thunderstorms arrived, drinks at Sunny's.

Filmmaker websites:
Jeanne Liotta - www.jeanneliotta.net
Marie Losier - www.marielosier.net
Oregon Department of Kick Ass : Vanessa Renwick, Filmmaker - www.odoka.org
Joel Schlemowitz - www.joelschlemowitz.com

Cheers!

Cine Soiree Visits the Northwest

2011-07-27T10:30:00.000-04:00

Portland

The Portland-based microcinema Grand Detour has packed its summer schedule with many enticing cinematic experiences, visiting artists, local talent: No Fest, Stefan Gruber, Cut and Run, David Sherman, Jodie Mack, and myself. The culmination of the season is the "Bad Film BBQ" an open screening where people may bring whatever films they're most embarrassed at having made.

The flower-suffused city of Portland is an Elysium to the "foodie," with an array of food carts clustered in lots, little portable kitchens with an array of different delectable offerings, although Thai cuisine seemed to dominate. And let's not forget the obligatory visit to the venerable Powell's Bookstore.

Ben Popp is programmer of the Grand Detour screening series, with fellow-filmmaker Karl Lind helping to host some of the visiting artists. The venue was an anonymous looking multi-purpose art space, currently under renovation (hopefully the renovation will include a track for a curtain that can go along the windows and sufficiently darken the room for screenings). Not too dissimilar in feel from Light Industry and the spaces they would use in downtown Brooklyn and in Sunset Park before the move to up to the north end of the borough: The somewhat raw multi-purpose art space, the folding chairs, the constant battle of light and darkness in a space with big windows.

***

Seattle

Some time to chat with Seattle filmmaker Jon Behrens on curatorial collaboration, with his idea for simultaneous screenings in New York and Seattle of programs of we would send to each other. Then off to the Northwest Film Forum.

The Northwest Film Forum in Seattle is more of a nailed down space: an actual cinema and screening room, not borrowed or rented space from, or in collaboration with, another organization. The programmer, Adam Sekuler, described the venue in comparison to New York cinema spaces as being more of a combination of Anthology Film Archives, IFC, Film Forum, and the Walter Reade, in that it shows the work of film artists, documentarians, indie filmmakers, but is also a place that screens revival theater and art house movies, and even a few more mainstream foreign films to boot.

At the time of its founding the name of the "Northwest Film Forum" had been the more informal-sounding "Wiggly-World." I kind of miss that name, although perhaps I'm also missing the practical side of the equation, inasmuch as it's likely to be a lot easier to get state funding if your organization is called Northwest Film Forum instead of Wiggly-World.

Drinks afterwards at nearby Vermilion.

***

A while back I recall reading Ed Halter's comparison of East and West coast film scenes in his article: "Portland vs. NYC, Plus 'Views from the Avant-Garde' at this Week's New York Film Festival"

Ed described his impressions of a dichotomy of the aesthetically formal, "artsy" east coast, and the west coast film scene's sensibility of DIY informality:

A certain solemnity of purpose has certainly accrued around the New York scene, where a great deal of experimental film activity circles around venerable institutions like Anthology Film Archives, MOMA, the Whitney and Lincoln Center, which screens its annual "Views from the Avant-Garde" showcase later this week as part of the New York Film Festival. . . In contrast to New York’s dense, neotraditionalist, introspective atmosphere, Portland feels giddy with a traditionally Left Coast sense of newness, autochthonic reinvention and a politely neopunk lack of interest in either satisfying inner professors or playing to curatorial predilections. Or so it seemed to me when I visited there on Labor Day weekend for the first annual Peripheral Produce Invitationals, eager to see what was happening a continent away.

I was a little bit curious about this question of New York vs. Portland artistic sensibilities that Ed wrote about back in 2001. How much of it hold true today, ten years later?

Somehow I think this contrast has softened over the years. The influx of digital formats and web-based media, the tragic loss of reversal print stock, the watering down of the once prestigious term "film festival" so that now that other every little grassroots screening calls itself the "such-and-such film festival." There is now such a greater diffusion of layers within each community that it is harder to make such a sharp distinction as it was back then (for instance, if you said "filmmaker" instead of "video artist" back in 2001 it meant something, whereas now it's getting to be a pretty meaningless distinction in 2011). And so east and west are each more mixed up with a range of sensibilities, the distinction feels more fuzzy, with more exceptions to the general rule than there used to have been.

At least, that was my impression from this brief westerly journey. It would be interesting to get Ed's perspective on this (Hey Ed, care to put something down in the comments section?).

Cheers!

Cinema 16 benefit for Millennium Film Workshop

2011-07-20T10:50:00.032-04:00

A fantastic evening of live music and film at Millennium Film Workshop, when Molly Surno presented a special "encore" screening of previous Cinema 16 events as a benefit for the venerable media center. The film scores were performed by Nick Yulman, Joseph Keckler and Dan Bartfield, Forma, and Ablehearts.

Molly has really tapped into something special with her focus on live music and cinema. There is a feeling of excitement that permeates a Cinema 16 screening; the sense of being part of a unique experience, with music that isn't part of each performer's repertoire, but is specially created for the event. There is a mixing of the audience between those who might attend concerts and shows, but who do not ordinarily attend experimental film screenings, and those who are familiar with some of the films and regularly attend screenings, but for whom the musicians and their compositions are a wonderful discovery. This makes Cinema 16 a little something of an antidote to the potential for provincialism of the different niches of the art scene.

***

The event was also the first of a series of fundraising endeavors for Millennium Film Workshop. Like many other arts organizations, the media center is struggling in the face of cutbacks to art and culture that are taking place in a climate where the Republicans in Congress blithely propose such things as the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts (as well as many other targets, like the NEH, Public Broadcasting, Planned Parenthood, and so on).

For those who remember the "culture wars," this is nothing new, but it is always disconcerting when an organization that is such an important fixture to the cultural life of the city (Millennium has been a resource for artists and a place where scores of film and video makers have shown their work since its founding in 1966) is at risk. Let's hope this new culture war will soon die down, but in the meantime let's all pitch in and make sure that the arts organizations important to our community don't wind up casualties.

Cheers!

Red Hook Cine Soiree 2011

2011-07-08T13:08:00.000-04:00

3pm - Saturday
August 6, 2011

BWAC
499 Van Brunt Street
Red Hook, Brooklyn
(across the street from Fairway)
http://www.bwac.org/directions
Screening room is on the first floor, accessible to all.

Joel Schlemowitz presents a salon of experimental & underground films.

A summer afternoon and short works of avant-garde cinema? Our agenda is to program our soiree attuned to the enchantment of the season of Mid-Summer Nights' Dreams, to indulge ourselves in the hazy and lazy segment of the calendar, to enlighten ourselves lightly and sprightly, to work Puckish mischief on the screen, to take respite from the oppressive sun in the magic lantern parlor by the sea.

Expect red wine and soft cheese and 1920s foxtrots on the Victrola!

Adolfas Mekas

2011-06-15T14:05:00.001-04:00

It's always a shock when someone who is full of life should pass away, at whatever age. And a when it is someone whose life is so vividly lived, it's almost hard to believe that they are really gone. Such was the reaction to the news of the passing of Adolfas Mekas.

What was striking about Adolfas was the interconnectedness between art and life. Hallelujah the Hills made more sense to me when I had met the filmmaker in person. The wit and ebullience, with everyone kept well lubricated with his home-made Limoncello, seemed to all come together in the merging of the innocently absurdist art and the drollery of life. There was a certain generosity of spirit around him; this can be seen in the egalitarian-minded christening of "The People's Film Department" at Bard (listed more soberly on the Bard College website as the Department of Film and Electronic Arts).

***

With obvious relish he asked if I knew about the bunny suit. Pola cringed at its mention. Adolfas explained that when the spring semester was coming to an end, and the lull between finals and graduation had fallen upon the Bard College campus, he would pull out his furry rabbit costume and stroll around the campus dressed as a giant bunny. Department Chairs, Deans, the College President, and other esteemed members of the academe would suddenly pretend they didn't know him, quickly darting away at the approach of the furry apparition. Who is there to carry the torch of such madcap drollery in today's academe?

***

The occasion of our meeting came after I had sent Adolfas a manuscript, "The Sayings of St. Tula," (St. Tula being the Patron Saint of the People's Film Department at Bard) which he assumed at first was a prank being played on him by one of the other faculty at Bard. His basis for his thinking it was a prank was that "Schlemowitz" was clearly a made up name. In 1999 I paid a visit to Bard College for the book signing for "The Sayings of St. Tula." Some photos from that event are here.

He will indeed be missed.

Kamakura!

2011-06-12T21:30:00.000-04:00

Cheers!

78s!! - "What Makes My Baby Cry?"

2011-06-11T21:03:00.001-04:00

WHAT MAKES MY BABY CRY?—Fox Trot

(Sosnilk-Hibbler-Squires)

Five Harmaniacs

Victor 20507-A

Projexorcism at Microscope

2011-05-16T11:09:00.003-04:00

Projexorcism visits New York to do a show at Microscope Gallery with projections by Ed Cooper, and sound by Jacob Lunow and Rick Gallagher. Four 16mm projectors activated by a lighting controller and suspended from bicycle chains which allow the images to move to different parts of the screen -- and off the screen entirely. The title of the show: "Spaceglue Continuum"

The projectors, threaded up with found footage films from Ed's extensive collection, are not all running all of the time. One is on, then another, then two at once, then back to one, then three, then just one again, then another, then all four. It's a dialogue between found footage films, with the soundtracks serving as the primary basis for an audio-visual cut-up poem.

For those who didn't make it to Microscope you can see documentation of some of their performances on the Projexorcism website. But not exactly the same as being there. While there was nothing "flowery" about the Projexorcism experience, the difference between the live performance and documented version is much like the difference between a flower in the garden and a flower that's been pressed between the pages in a book. The juxtapositions of footage have a greater aesthetic tension when happening spontaneously in front of you, something you can feel in the room; the energy of the live performance.


The bicycle chain suspended projectors activated by Ed Cooper to send the image floating around on and off the screen.

Cheers!

Soirees!

2011-05-11T08:01:00.000-04:00

Editing Memory (Sheri Wills)

Saturnalia Jam (Jeanne Liotta)

Jasper Goes to a Bohemian Party

Cheers!

Tribeca!

2011-05-06T16:23:00.000-04:00

"Impressions of Memory"

On Sunday attended the short experimental screening Impressions of Memory programmed by Jon Gartenberg. The films were:

One Over Wanderlust by Brendon Kingsbury

The D Train by Jay Rosenblatt
After the Fire by Jacques Perconte (France)
Garden Roll Bounce Parking Lot by Melissa Friedling
Current (Reprise) by Brian Doyle
One Day I Forgot and Used My Hands by Charles Lim (Singapore)
Sleep by Claudius Gentinetta and Frank Braun, written by Claudius Gentinetta (Switzerland)
Strips by Félix Dufour-Laperrière (Canada)
Paper by Egill Kristbjornsson (UK)
Filmpiece for Bartlett by Scott Nyerges
The Green Wave by Ken Jacobs
Bye Bye Super 8 by Johan Kramer (Netherlands)

The thematic linkage of "memory" was employed in a broad way. Films that were diverse in style, technique, mood, aesthetic philosophy, were joined together, and so a beautiful video work with no lens shared the program with sophisticated experimental animation, and with elegant found footage flashback pseudo-narrative, and with distressed 35mm footage hanging in a garden, and with avant-garde 3D, and with super 8 film essay, and with colorfully trippy video image processing, and with de Chirico-eque usage of an vacant urban environment.

Impressions of Memory? There were no two films that took the same approach to how such impressions would materialize on the screen. The program seemed to be a testament to the richness of possibility for the experimental film.

***

Marie Losier's "The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye"

After seven years in the making, the New York premiere of The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye. Arrived to find the filmmaker, Marie Losier, being interviewed on the red carpet! Marie has been the creator of many wonderful film-portraits prior to this. I'm quite fond of her Tony Conrad film along with the others. And so it was very charming to see a filmmaker who is "one of us" receiving write-ups in the newspapers and the red-carpet treatment.

The film was very beautiful and moving. Really a film about the meaning of love, as told through the story of Genesis and Lady Jaye.

At the after-party down at Bowery Electric someone who wasn't at the screening asked how it went. The audience was "with" the film. That is to say, they were on the film's side. How can you tell? Well, it's hard to say, it's not something that anyone said, but just the energy you sense from people in the dark while the film is showing. And I've been to screenings where you've gotten quite a different sense of the energy in the room too.

***

Jon Gartenberg

While waiting for Marie's film to begin someone asked me about Jon Gartenberg. They knew who he was, but wanted to know what he was like as a programmer. [Full disclosure: Jon has programmed my films at Tribeca in past years.]

Jon is someone who spreads his enthusiasm for experimental film through his programming. I've been to shows at Tribeca where he will introduce the program by asking the audience: "Show of hands, who has never seen a film by one of the filmmakers in this program? And who has never been to a program of experimental or avant-garde films before? Well, you're in for a real treat!" And will elaborate that what is so great about programming at Tribeca is introducing these non-mainstream films to an audience that might never have experienced this type of work before.

We get to experience "art" as something that is not some stuffy, elitist thing. But it's not about having the work watered-down or made housebroken for the inexperienced audience. Works of art may be strange; they may not even try to appeal to the audience in the usual ways; they may be utterly challenging and provocative. But there is excitement in facing that challenge of being challenged by the work. And Jon will make it clear to the audience that it is okay to be experience the work in this way, to be excited by this prospect. And that sums up my answer to the question of what Jon is like as a programmer.

Cheers!

How to Assemble an Oxberry

2011-04-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

The recently donated Oxberry animation stand gets put together at Millennium Film Workshop:

Cheers!

Optipus> Kodachrome Funeral at Participant Inc

2011-04-23T19:28:00.001-04:00

At Participant Inc for the Optipus film group's Kodachrome screening:

Optipus film group
celebrates & mourns
the Death of Kodachrome
..................................................@ Participant Inc gallery
253 East Houston St
.......................................
Friday, April 22, 8pm
............................................
All Kodachrome Films
(original & found, new & old, 16mm, S-8, R-8 & slides)
& the premiere of our new ‘Zine
...............................................
Bradley Eros    Lary Seven   Victoria Keddie
Rachelle Rahme   Rachael Abernathy   Katherine Bauer
Tim Geraghty   Sarah Halpern     Pancho/Oscar
David Baker   Jay Hudson    Lisa Kletjian   Feliz Solomon
..................................................
Viva!   Kodachromanticism!

As with many such expanded cinema events watching the elaborate set-up take place was almost like a second show in itself:

Projectors, projectors, projectors (16mm, super 8, 8mm, 35mm slide), portable Victrolas, sound-producing objects for musique concrete, the "koda crowns" referred to Bradley's eulogy "Koda Crows," and still more projectors.

Along the wall the Optipus Kodachrome Zine was tacked up, and copies for sale for $5, "Even though it cost us about $20 a copy to produce," remarked Bradley. But so it was, since you couldn't have a "Kodachrome" zine without a lot of color copying.

***

The program began with Bradley and Lary wearing their "koda crowns" introducing the show.

Bradley read his "Koda Crows" ode by flashlight. Kodachrome closeups of fire were accompanied by the crackling sound of color gels being crumpled by the Optipus group, the sound coming from different directions all around the room.

David Baker handed out balloons to the audience, warning everyone not to inflate the balloons until he gave the signal. Following a poem, also read by flashlight, he announced that everyone could now inflate their balloons as "I Did It My Way" began to play from a boom-box, and pandemonium broke out with the audience volleying balloons into the air, the round shadows of the drifting balloons crisscrossing the screen, accompanied by a chorus of bleating "balloon music" made by pitching the end of the deflating balloons. Marianne suggested that someone needed to create a balloon orchestra. "With guest conductor David Baker!"

A roll of footage of Elvis impersonators followed. From the back of the room Lary Seven explained, "These are 'Elvii'." (Elvii, the plural for Elvis, of course. "Elvis-es"? that would just be silly.)

Kodachrome slides from Sarah Halpern's family brought us into the home movie part of the program, and tied together with her essay "Kodachrome and Death," in the aforementioned zine.

The expanded cinema Kodachrome mash-up ended things. Slides, and 16mm, and super 8, and regular 8 all at once! But with several pauses, as the circuit breaker tripped from all the projectors going at once, followed by the power strip doing the same. Each time a collective "Aww," from the audience as the room went dark and silent. But a lovely thing to see in those moments when it wasn't all shutting down.

Bradley reads "Koda Crows"

"Yes cry you koda crows! black birds beyond the chromatic spectrum"

David Baker reads by flashlight.

Elvii.

The power went off more than once during
the expanded cinema portion of the show.

Cheers!

Vanessa Renwick at Flaherty NYC

2011-04-20T22:54:00.001-04:00

A screening by Vanessa Renwick, "founder and janitor" of the Oregon Department of Kick Ass, as part of Flaherty NYC at Anthology. The program was culled together from her prolific oeuvre, with the curatorial theme centering on that of nature and the northwest. Still remembering "Portrait #2: Trojan" and its eerily views of a defunct nuclear plant; images that had a more powerful poignancy in these days of such dire news from Fukushima. During the Q&A mention was made of Vanessa's installation work, including a piece with a forest-like environment of greenery, logs, and branches, where one lay upon a bed of moss and gazed up at a video projected on the ceiling. It was then revealed that visitors to that exhibit had told Vanessa they had sex in her installation. A unique complement indeed.

Cheers!

BYOK: Bring Your Own Kodachrome! at Microscope Gallery

2011-04-19T09:31:00.001-04:00

At Microscope Gallery a packed house for an open screening of the last of the Kodachrome movies, organized by Stephanie Gray and Pip Chodorov. Some lush, beautiful rolls of film by Moira Tierney, Jeanne Liotta, Lynne Sachs, Rachael Abernathy, Andrew Lampert, Joshua Lewis, Stephanie Gray, Jason Martin, Virginia Eubanks, Bradley Eros, Georg Koszulinski, Stefan Grabowski & Mariya Nikiforova, and Pip Chodorov, with some unannounced rolls by Sarah Halpern, Fabio Roberti, and Lary Seven at the end of the evening.

But the unexpected aspect was the large number of rolls shown that looked not at all like Kodachrome. Expired stock people were rushing off to Dwane's for the last batch and getting back these bleached-out, pinkish images. I joked with Pip, "So, do you think it would be better to shoot a fresh roll of Ektachrome or a stale roll of Kodachrome?" And joked with Bradley, "Kodachrome, known for it's delicate, pinkish, desaturated color."

The evening ended with an impromptu birthday dinner celebration for Lary Seven!

Super 8, and regular 8!

Pip Chodorov & Stephanie Gray introduce the show.

A moment from Lynne Sachs "Morivivi" in regular 8mm.

Bradley reads "Koda Crows." His eulogy to Kodachrome.

Pip shot some Kodachrome that expired in 1980.
A ghostly pink image was the result.
Not exactly the lush color one associates with Kodachrome.

Cheers!

Guy Maddin at The New School

2011-04-11T11:35:00.003-04:00

Guy Maddin chatted about his films, and screened shorts and excerpts at The New School, including some examples from Hauntings, his installation of lost works of cinema recreated in Guy Maddin fashion. Maddin is a master of witty self-deprecation when speaking about his work. A memorable quip was his attribution of the screenings his early films to the closing of the Bleecker Street Cinema.

I did see Maddin's Archangel when it ran at the Bleecker Street Cinema, way back when. Perhaps the remembrances of those long lost citadels of cinema, the old revival theaters and out-of-the-mainstream movie houses, are yet another cinematic haunting?

Cheers!

78s!! - "The Vamp"

2011-04-10T17:58:00.002-04:00

The Vamp—Fox Trot

(Byron Gay)

Joseph C. Smith's Orchestra

with Vocal Refrain

For Dancing

Victor 18594-B

Canyon Cinema

2011-04-02T15:15:00.002-04:00

Financial troubles for the venerable Canyon Cinema.

You can read the organization's message to the community here:

http://canyoncinema.com/2011/03/31/important-message-to-the-film-community

***

The shift from rentals of 16mm films to DVD and on-line access is certainly a major factor. And to the extent that this change has been troubling to the finances of Canyon Cinema as an organization it in turn has an effect on the experimental filmmakers themselves. To make a work of personal cinema you can have some other job to pay for your filmmaking art; or get donations, discounts, and discards; or get funding through a grant (if you're lucky); or maximize the use of cheap DIY techniques; or all of the above. The filmmaker is subsidizing the work. As a filmmaker you might send work to a film festival and pay an entry fee (but not get a share of the ticket sales). On-line distribution also leaves the filmmaker subsidizing the work. (Has UbuWeb ever sent a filmmaker a royalty check? I doubt it.)

The cooperative distributor is a model where funding actually flows back to the artist who made the work. Let's hope that model can continue in some form or fashion!

Non-Camera Filmmaking at The New School

2011-04-01T07:14:00.002-04:00

Some stills from our cameraless filmmaking multiple projection mash-up:

Cheers!

St. Tula

2011-03-26T07:30:00.004-04:00

excerpts from

The Sayings of St. Tula

the Patron Saint of Cinema

“Film loves light.”

***

“Love the under-exposed and the over-exposed. They let you see beyond the expected.”

***

“Say not that ‘The film did not come out.’ Film always comes out. Sometimes not the way you had expected.”

***

“The Film has a dual nature. It possesses the physical existence of the Mortal Ribbon upon a reel. The Film is also the ethereal Image of the Light which exists beyond the physical.”

***

“Film without Fear.”

***

“Let thine Camera Lens discover lost Sights and unveil forgotten Mysteries and awaken the Imaginations of the audience whom others have enchanted into passivity. St. Tula’s Blessings shall make it so.”

***

“If thy shot offend thee, cut it out.”

***

“Those who have received St. Tula’s blessings may create their films as Michelangelo did his sculpture: By merely revealing the Image that already doth lay there within the Emulsion.”

***

“Forget thee not to wind the spring.”

***

“St. Tula loves your Film. Even if no one else does.”

3/21

2011-03-21T08:00:00.006-04:00

Cheers!

iimura at Microscope Gallery

2011-03-19T23:50:00.001-04:00

A visit to Microscope Gallery to the opening of:
Takahiko IImura: Between the Frames
March 19 - April 11, 2011
Opening Reception Saturday March 19 6-9PM
w/ live 16mm projection performance of the ever-changing "Circle and a Square"

***

The performance consisted of a hole-punch, 16mm black leader spliced as a loop suspended from daylight spools on the ceiling, and 16mm film projector. The projector was started and the screen remained empty. As the black leader ran through the projector Taka would add punches to it, slowly building from the intermittent flash of light projected on the screen produced by the occasional punch-hole in the black leader, and then, with Taka adding more and more punch-holes to the film, the performance concluded with a constant, stroboscopic flashing of circles of light. Filled with punch-holes, the film reached the point where it could no longer hold itself together as it ran through the projector. The film broke and the performance ended. As everyone snapped pictures, Taka held up the punched-out film in triumph!

Some photos of Taka performing "Circle and a Square."

Cheers!

The Secret Life of... Anthology Film Archives

2011-03-18T13:00:00.001-04:00

Scenes from "The Secret Life of... Anthology Film Archives" on Thursday night. Some quite exquisite work was presented.

The Secret Life is in the calendar, like any other public screening, but the event had something of a quasi-private feeling. It's much more like an artistic "salon" than anything else. An open screening for the staff and friends of Anthology. Rather than give the full rundown, better to just suggest you come to the next one: After all, we can disseminate, tantalize, ruminate, but none of this is the actual experience of the screening itself. And if you can, please bring something to show!

Cheers!

"Psychogeographies" at Flaherty NYC

2011-03-17T08:00:00.016-04:00

Took part in a screening at Flaherty NYC at Anthology Film Archives, March 14, 2011. Penny Lane curated the films.

The program:
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIES
For the March installment of the Flaherty NYC monthly screening series, The Flaherty will present Psychogeographies: work by Kathryn Ramey, Jason Livingston, & Joel Schlemowitz. The program consists of four 16mm films about places both real and imagined. There will be a post-screening discussion with the filmmakers, moderated by Colin Beckett, Critical Writing Fellow at UnionDocs.

The Films:
Yanqui WALKER and the OPTICAL REVOLUTION (Kathryn Ramey, 2009, 33 min)
Weimar (Joel Schlemowitz, 1996, 8 min)
Tombeau for Arnold Eagle (Joel Schlemowitz, 1994, 4 min)
Under Foot & Overstory (Jason Livingston, 2005, 35 min)

In addition to programming the show, Penny wrote a lovely short essay about the works to accompany the screening:
"Psychogeographies: Four films about place and time"

I had given Penny a hard time about her wanting to show "Weimar," this rather silly film that was made on a bit of a lark, and also so old (made 15 years ago). But she was pretty insistent on including it. Perhaps it was appropriately "psychogeographic," in keeping with the program's theme.

***

An interesting question during the Q&A: Did we, the filmmakers, all know each other and know each other's work before it had been programmed together in this show? Were we all friends, did we make work in reaction to each other? Or did Penny just find three filmmakers who had no association with each other and put our films together, discovering a connection between the work that was unknown to any of us?

It's a curious relationship between the individual works that we create and the larger artistic community in which they are a part. Discovery of this larger artistic community is often an important step in the beginnings of artistic maturity. Something I'm often encouraging my students to seek out. Perhaps the community of other artists could be thought of as the environment through which our wanderings, intersections, and connections form a psychogeographic experience? Not an experience of a geographic place, but a geography of artists. Is our relationship to the artistic community, through which our works wander, like that of relationship between the flâneur and the city?

***

A good-sized crowd from the screening made it over for drinks post-screening drinks at The Scratcher. More than I'd seen at other Flaherty NYC screenings. A testament to that sense of community!

Cheers!

Cine Soiree - Movie Mike presents. . . "Turn on, Be-in, Freakout"

2011-03-14T08:15:00.001-04:00

The first of a series of guest-curated parlor-screenings took place, with film archivist and programmer Movie Mike.

The invite announced:

Movie Mike presents a special screening of a newly struck print (with material previously unseen) of his 16mm film footage of the Human Be-In in Central Park, shot by Mike himself in 1967, paired together with his "Stoner's Night Out" antidrug PSA reel.

About Movie Mike
Mike Olshan (Movie Mike) is an archivist of 16mm film whose collection explores the underside of cultural history, from politically incorrect racist and sexist musical numbers, to Red Scare hysteria, pulp fiction genres, and early animation. He finds gems among the scrap-heap of commercial film production that range from the merely puzzling head-scratchers to the mind-blowingly wack. As a film collector and archivist Mike is a true polymath of para-cinema!!

Mike has produced film screenings from his collection for Lunacon, Anthology Film Archives, Millennium Film Workshop and the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema, and has hosted shows at various colleges, museums, art fairs and pub back rooms.

***

The fifteen-minute reel of black and white footage had been shot by Mike with a Bell & Howell with the hope of selling it to the local television news. (They weren't interested in it. But, as he explained to us after the screening, he did eventually sell some footage to the local news of a Yayoi Kusama happening.)

Up until this point Mike's screening copy of the Human Be-In footage was a not-so-great one-light workprint. I persuaded him to get a timed print, which meant footage that had been very washed-out without much detail (overexposed material that just needed to be printed down) could now be clearly seen (44 years later!)

The 16mm footage included the early morning gathering at Central Park's Belvedere Castle by the reservoir; the larger gathering later that day at Sheep Meadow; the police taking someone away with the crowd throwing flowers on the hood of the police car (and everyone chanting "We love cops! We love cops!"); a person who took all his clothes off, shouting "Love! Love! Love!" carried aloft by the crowd; a young man wearing an army helmet with "LOVE" written across it, who later changed his name to Wavy Gravy; and everyone in the meadow forming a huge circle and rushing together, all at the same time, into the middle.

The highlight of "Stoner's Night Out," was of course, the antidrug PSA narrated by (a rather stoned sounding) Sony Bono, who appears on camera at the end in satin nehru jacket and matching pants.

***

At the last minute we decided to have the soiree be a fundraiser for the Japan Society's Earthquake Relief Fund.

Movie Mike introduces the show

Mike's footage from the 1967 Human Be-In

Q and A with the audience after the 1967 Be-In footage

Cheers!

Cinema 16 at the Kitchen

2011-03-09T11:26:00.000-05:00

Cinema 16 is going strong! Molly Surno's reinvention of Amos Vogel's venerable film series has taken a different approach from its precursor in the presentation of experiential works; consistently featuring the combination of live music and film.

On March 8, 2011 the following sold-out show took place at The Kitchen:

"An Evening with Cinema 16, curated by Molly Surno"

Psychic Ills performing live music to:

"Chumlum" by Ron Rice

"Necromancia" by Beryl Sokoloff & Crita Grauer

"The Voices" by John E Schmitz

"Light Sleep" Lichter Peter

"Gradiva Sketch I" by Raymonde Carasco

(Nick Curley's article, "The Reel Thing, Molly Surno’s Cinema 16 brings spring awakening to The Kitchen," in NY Press is worth a visit.)

***

A screening with music performed "live" is a tangibly different experience from the experience of a film with a pre-recorded soundtrack. And Molly's film series has made good on this concept, with a sense of anticipation of seeing familiar works a different light and being introduced to unfamiliar works in a completely unique way. One aspect in particular -- less so about the experience itself -- is the way she has managed to introduce an audience to these films who would not necessarily have sought out an experimental film screening. These are people who are ostensibly are there to hear the band. And yet each film is given its due; it's not "wallpaper" behind the band. And so, as a method for expanding the audience for experimental films, Cinema 16 has been admirably successful.

***

On a few occasions my short films have shown in Cinema 16 programs, and I've been asked if I had heard the score ahead of time, before the screening. Did I go to the screening not knowing how the film I'd made had been scored and finding out the same time as everyone else? But it seemed to me this question was missing the point somehow. One of the wonderful things is not knowing what the score will be -- having a chance to be surprised by how someone else would reinterpret your work. Some sort of prior approval of the score would dampen the whole nature of this collaborative venture -- it would spoil the surprise to know ahead of time.

***

The next Cinema 16 screening will be on April 16th at PS1. See you there!

Cheers!

Exquisite corpse curating

2011-02-27T16:21:00.001-05:00

Some post-screening reflections on exquisite corpse curating. On Saturday Kevin Duggan and I presented our screening at Union Docs made up of films selected from The Film-Makers' Cooperative, and curated as an exquisite corpse. Each of us selecting a film in response to the previous film selected by the other. The premise was not to curate in the manner of having a theme, but to let the exquisite corpse travel on its own path, ending up where neither of us could anticipate it would take us.

***

In keeping with the exquisite corpse aspect we kept the actual program secret up until the show. But now we can let the cat out of the bag:

Rudy Burckhardt
Eastside Summer (1959) 16mm, color, sound, 11 min
selected by Kevin

Seth Mitter
Beard St (2007) 16mm, color, silent, 3 min
selected by Joel

James Benning
Chicago Loop (1976) 16mm, color, sound, 8.5 min
selected by Kevin (originally was to have been Brahkage & Cornell's Gnir Rednow, but it wasn't available)

Michael Snow
Standard Time (1967) 16mm, color, sound, 8 min
selected by Joel

Marie Menken
Lights (1966) 16mm, color, silent, 6 min
selected by Kevin

Florens Fanciulli
Giro Giro Tondo (2007), 16mm, color, sound 3 min.
selected by Joel

Robert Breer
Fuji (1973) 16mm, color, sound, 8.5 min
selected by Kevin (originally was to have been Harry Smith's Mirror Animations, but it was already rented out)

Martha Colburn
Cats Amoré (2001) 16mm, color, sound, 2.5 min
selected by Joel

The exquisite corpse going from: lyrical city portrait; to structuralist city portrait; to structuralist camera use of movement; to lyrical use of camera movement; to experimental animation.

***

In retrospect the most interesting part of the experience was the degree to which it was necessary to proactively fight against having the exquisite corpse slip into a thematic program. The rudder had to be pushed to keep from just sailing along in a straight line. The uncharted direction characteristic of the exquisite corpse wasn't just something that wanted to happen on its own. In fact, a large part of selecting works turned out to be the negative process of what not to select: After starting with a few city portraits and films about urban landscape it would have been very easy to keep moving in that direction (Marie Menken's Go Go Go, Dominic Angerame's city symphony films). This would have been a very acceptable thematically contained program of films about The City, but certainly not a true exquisite corpse. None of the unexpected lurching moves from one thing to another. In a curious way it was more challenging to program a "theme-less" exquisite corpse program than opting for a curatorial theme; for instance if Kevin and I had just said, "Let's do a program all about camera movement," or something like that.

***

But now wondering about the many possible approaches to experimental curating. The exquisite corpse; the use of parameters (all films with the word "red" in the title, or all films one minute long) to connect disparate works; processes of audience selection; multiple people bringing films in a "salon" style program; or even the total multiple projection mash-up as an act of experimental curating. Here's to the possibilities!

Cheers!

Pre-Cinema!!

2011-02-25T18:00:00.003-05:00

Some lovely places on the web to visit; which celebrate and delve into the subject of pre-cinema. . .

There are the pictures of the fantastic assortment of magic lantern and other pre-cinematic devices in the George Eastman House's pre-cinema collection.

***

For a more comprehensive education on pre-cinema, there is a well-designed website giving The History of the Discovery of Cinematography, as researched, compiled & written by Paul Burns.

***

Pre-cinema did not end with the coming of cinema. Restored in 2008, here is Bill Brand's wonderful Masstransitscope, from 1980. A zoetrope that uses the motion of a subway train from which the viewer sees the sequence of passing frames. It's such a pleasure to ride the train from DeKalb in Brooklyn and see the reactions of people caught by surprise by this magical experience of public art.

Sooner or later there will have to be the Cine Soiree event that takes the form of a soiree on board the subway, where we all meet up and ride the train back and forth to view Masstransitscope together over and over again! An update, perhaps, of Edna St.Vincent Millay's Recuerdo ("We were very tired, we were very merry—/We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry").

***

And Tjebbe van Tijen's Imaginary Museum is worth an extended visit; not just on our pre-cinema tour of the web, but also for everything else housed in van Tijen's museum. Our visit starts with the 2003 panoramic collage scroll, entitled A Panorama of Pre-Cinematic Principles

Long live pre-cinema! Cheers!

Rose Lowder at Anthology

2011-02-20T10:01:00.005-05:00

Fields of wildflowers in single frame, now revealing the patterns of flux in the wind hidden from our perception in real time, with movements appearing like the iron filings under the influence of a magnet. One of the many experiences seeing the films of Rose Lower at Anthology.

The organizer of Rose Lowder's US screenings, Tara Nelson, has also created the Rose Lowder blog supplementing the events, with film stills and photographs of the filmmaker at the various screenings. The frame enlargements are especially interesting after having seen the films in that clusters of frames are reproduced, rather than a single still image. It's a little difficult to get a sense of what the effect of these alternating images is like without seeing the film; the real revelation comes in having seen the film and going back and seeing the underlying still frames. What seemed to be superimposition on the screen is not superimposition at all, but a succession frames that blend together with each other through the rapid alternations of image. Superimposition created in eye and mind.

Rose mentioned, in answer to a question about technique, that she had been fascinated by Robert Breer's film Eyewash. How was it that images that were each only a single frame were either seen or obscured? She spent three years reading everything she could on the nature of perception before ever making a film of her own.

How many filmmakers consider the question: "How it is that we see what we are looking at?" rather than just think about their films as "images" and take the perception of the images for granted?

***

The film tour blog is a very useful supplement to the screenings, and even to the Q&A with the filmmaker. This usefulness is borne out by the example of a discussion during the Q&A of the method behind some of the films. Rose described her graph-paper notetaking system for charting out what she was shooting. It seemed a pity not to be able to see what this looked like, but then it turns out that we can, thanks to the blog. An effective addition to the screening itself.

Cheers!

Film and video

2011-02-17T23:35:00.001-05:00

What is it about the video image that gives it such a different quality from film?

In discussing differences of film and video the quality of the image itself as a recording medium is usually talked about--often it's a topic discussed practically to death--but not enough is said about the quality of projection. Somehow projection is taken for granted. And projection isn't just question of image quality, but a great deal of difference exists in the quality the light itself from a film projector versus that of the light from a video projector.

It is not unlike the difference between the quality of the light produced by an incandescent bulb versus the quality of the light from a florescent bulb. One gives off a warm intensity. The other, a diffused, sickly pallor.

While brightness seems to be the obsessive goal with video projection--ever and ever brighter as measured in vaster and vaster quantities of lumen--it seems a pity that the somewhat unpleasant quality of the light itself should be overlooked.

***

I recall a few years back seeing a screening at Anthology of High Definition video. I was very bothered by the light from the projector. The works themselves that screened that night seemed undermined by the hardness--the oppressive harshness--of the light.

A while after that there was a dance film showing at Anthology made by Physical TV. It had been shot in digital video and then transferred to 35mm film. It looked terrific. Of course, the fact that it looked so good had much to do with the production itself. But it also didn't have the appearance of having been produced in digital video, even if it didn't necessarily look like it had been shot on film either: much of this difference in the appearance of the work that was the result of projection; not the qualities of the recording medium. Perhaps everyone who shoots on film and transfers to video has it backwards? It would be better to shoot on video and transfer to film for projection purposes.

***

The candle, sunlight in wintertime, the incandescent bulb, the florescent light, all distinctive in the quality, the evocation, the feel, and the "texture" of light. And for the preeminent essay on the qualities of light, there is Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows

Cheers!

Valentine's Day 2011 at Flaherty NYC

2011-02-15T10:07:00.022-05:00

A romantic Valentine's day at Anthology Film Archives with Flaherty NYC and A Show for Valentine’s Day - A Collection of Nine Love Inspired Shorts programmed by Penny Lane and featuring films and videos by Matt McCormick, Alison Kobayashi, Bradley Eros & Tim Geraghty, Peggy Ahwesh, Ben Coonley, Jacqueline Goss, Jodie Mack, and Lenka Clayton & James Price.

***

Quite interesting how the works flirted with the subject of romance and successfully avoided the pitfalls that can derail the filmic love poem: the saccharine and the schmaltzy. Humor (sometimes straight-faced at other times not) often seemed a key ingredient, but not always. And yet even with a many different approaches--from the lyrical, to the purposefully ambiguous, to the visually metaphoric, to the bombastic--there never seemed to be a cold cynicism towards romance in any the works selected. A show of film and video that takes a cynical view to the subject of romance would not be hard to put together, but would not be as appealing as this selection of work. It would likely seem "too easy" as a program, and the works themselves might also come across as "too easy" in such a context. But to make a non-cynical film about romance without creating something gooey? There's a challenge!

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Drinks after the screening at the Scratcher. Cheers!

Cheers!!

2011-02-08T18:05:00.000-05:00

Cine Soirees past...

2011-02-04T07:39:00.003-05:00

The Red Hook Cine Soiree held in the summer of 2010, featuring films and videos by Nathaniel Lambert Cummings, Bradley Eros & Tim Geraghty, Jim Jennings, Marie Losier, Jennifer Reeves, Jeremy D. Slater, and Sheri Wills. The filmmaker after-party included 16mm films projected in the backyard from the collections of Bradley Eros and Mike Olshan.

So what is a "cine soiree"? How is it different than a screening? It's not that different, but with wine and cheese it becomes more like a gallery opening, more overtly celebratory of the films. You couldn't have a cine soiree without wine, cheese, and a good baguette. Add pre- and after- music to the show played on the Victrola. Perhaps artistic "salon" could also apply in the sense of creating an atmosphere of sharing the work.

Finally, curate with a tinge of eclecticism; a nuance of film programming the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema did with great success. Punctuating the serious works with an oddball "soundie," as if insurgent saboteurs had suddenly taken over the projection booth. Curiously, this tactic of juxtaposing the sacred (avant-garde and experimental cinema) and the profane (cultural detritus produced by Castle Films) does not undermine the avant-garde selections. It serves to set at ease an audience who, although they might already appreciate works of avant-garde cinema, are now implicitly advised by this curatorial folly that it's okay to enjoy these films as well. Such is the cine soiree.

...more photos here

Cheers!

At Wordship II

2011-01-31T08:13:00.000-05:00

A visit to Richard Kostelanetz out on the boarder of Queens and Brooklyn. Previously, his 20,000 books had been housed in his loft in Soho. The loft was written about in his witty memoir of the neighborhood, Soho: Rise and Fall of an Artists's Colony.

These are not photographs of a bookstore, it's Richard's place. "Wordship II" is a cathedral to books. Quite amazing. Cheers!

Exquisite corpse curating at Union Docs

2011-01-23T17:48:00.000-05:00

The end of February, at Union Docs, Kevin Duggan and I are putting together a program from The Film-Makers' Cooperative using the exquisite corpse technique. I'm not sure how much exquisite corpse curating has been done by other film programmers. In 2007, at the Images Festival in Toronto, Guy Maddin and Bill Morrison did a "show and tell" screening together: choosing films to show each other, with the audience witnessing the process. The nature of the remarks each of them made to set up the next film, "I picked this film for you, Bill, because..." gave it the feeling of a cinematic conversation between the two filmmakers, to which the entire audience was in the role of eavesdroppers.

* * *

Programming with the exquisite corpse model is a very different process than the curating-by-consensus method typically used in a committee of curators for a short film program, often with a struggle between different works favored, and sometimes with serious disagreements about what is to be shown or left out. With the exquisite corpse each programmer has to completely surrender to the other one's choice. And no works are selected as second choices, that is to say, picked merely as an alternative when there wasn't agreement over showing something else that was the first choice. There's a little bit of mischief in the process too. Certain films are like a move in a chess game where you suddenly and unexpectedly send a bishop or a rook completely to the other side of the board. Film curating as a competitive sport?

* * *

But an interesting thing to ponder: does one hand out program notes for a such show? Knowing what would be coming next would take away from the exquisite surprises of the curator's additions to the program's corpse. Do you want to know what a gift is going to be before you open the wrapping paper? Maybe just keep the suspense going while the projector starts up and the leader appears on screen, without knowing what the next film will be at all? Or perhaps numbered envelopes the audience can open one at a time before each film? Perhaps everyone gets program notes on a long strip of paper protruding from an envelope that can be partly slid out one film at a time? (No peeking ahead!) All this remains to be seen, but in the meantime read more about the screening below.

Cheers!

* * *

Call & Response From the Coop - a cinematic exquisite corpse for two film curators

7:30PM - Saturday 

February 26, 2011

Union Docs

322 Union Avenue

Brooklyn NY

www.uniondocs.org

Kevin Duggan and Joel Schlemowitz, many years after first meeting at Films Charas, co-curate a program of short films from the Film-Makers' Cooperative. The program is selected in the manner of a chess game: Kevin selects the first film, Joel chooses the next film in response, and so on.  An exquisite corpse for two film programmers! No curatorial theme!  Neither player knows what comes next! What connections will emerge? How will it end? 

The opening gambit: Rudy Burckhardt's evocative 1959 portrait of the Lower East Side, "East Side Summer," reflects the spirit of Films Charas, a L.E.S. neighborhood film program and forerunner of today's DIY microcinemas. Founded by filmmakers and activists Doris Kornish and Mathew Seig, and based in the El Bohio Cultural Center, it flourished in the '80s and '90s showing films ranging from political docs to Roger Corman B-movies to local East Village filmmakers to indie features. A frequent guest at Charas, Burckhardt also represents the Coop's mission of preserving and sharing independent and avant-garde film.

And so begins our program: what will be the next move?

About Kevin: Kevin is currently Senior Advancement Officer at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC); in addition to Films Charas, over the years he has worked for many independent media and arts organizations.  A visual artist exploring natural history (www.kevinduggan.com), he also directed the film "Paterson" (1989), an historical docu-fiction about that city's labor history.

About Joel: In the final year of Films Charas the duties of projectionist were taken up by Joel Schlemowitz.  Joel is an experimental filmmaker whose work is available on DVD through microcinemadvd.com and who teaches experimental filmmaking at The New School.  Joel's films have received awards at the Chicago Underground Film Festival.  Screening have included the Tribeca Film Festival and New York Film Festival.  For the past three years he has curated the Cine Soiree film series.  More information about Joel at www.joelschlemowitz.com

About the Coop: The Film-Makers' Cooperative is the largest archive and distributor of independent and avant-garde films in the world. Created by artists in 1962, as the distribution branch of the New American Cinema Group, the Coop has more than 5,000 films, videotapes and DVDs in its collection.  www.film-makerscoop.com

Interview with Andy Lampert

2011-01-21T12:27:00.003-05:00

Interviewed Andrew Lampert discussing the "Unessential Cinema." Will post a link to the full interview when it appears in print, but here's a little teaser for now:

"The title of Unessential Cinema of course is a joke on Essential Cinema but it also, without meaning to be a derogatory name for these collections, is to acknowledge that Anthology has all these materials. I really feel strongly that preserved film sitting on a shelf not being seen probably doesn't need to have been preserved. I mean what's the point of preserving something if people aren't going to see it?"

"Unessentail Cinema: That's Undertainment!"
at Anthology Film Archives, April 6th, 2010

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"One of the early shows that became a repeated show in the series was called 'Choose Your Own Adventure.' Taking eleven films and not looking at them beforehand other than winding through them and making sure that they were projectionable and putting them out on a table. Then when the audience came in announcing: 'We have eleven films here but we're only going to watch seven of them. And so, we have to vote. And the only way that we are going to know what they are is based on their title and kind of a brief idea might I have of what they are.' And every time we did that show they've been very fun, and I call that show 'a test of our democratic process in action.' Because it turns into fights in the audience, and people really want to see this, and people really want to see that. And everybody always wants to see porn first. They think it's going to be great. But then they realize about five minutes into a ten-minute reel, it's really not that fun to watch porn with groups in a theater, it becomes very awkward. So people's impulses tend to work against themselves. Or the one that was called 'Dissection of a Rat,' they want to see that. And then, you know, that's really hard to watch. But then the one that was just called, like, 'Number 22,' always yields the wonder of the show."

Cheers!

Screenings, screenings, screenings.

2011-01-12T17:12:00.000-05:00

This coming spring: Exquisite corpse curating; the highly anticipated Cocktail Cinema; backyard outdoor screenings when the weather finally permits; cameraless and found footage work from The New School; and finishing the season with another Red Hook Cine Soiree. Cheers!