At Wordship II

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

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.

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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?

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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!

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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

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.

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!