Experimental, Downtown & Underground Films at Tribeca Film Festival

From: Jon Gartenberg (by way of Pip Chodorov) (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Apr 26 2006 - 07:15:54 PDT


Experimental Film Programs at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival
(For screening times and ticket information,
please visit www.tribecafilmfestival.org)

Animated New York
USA
Section: NY Specials (57 min)

Welcome to the wonderfully warped world of New
York City independent animation, where a new
breed of radical animators eschew government
funding, yet thrive in the exploding indie film
culture. Chelsea resident and Oscar® nominated
animator Bill Plympton has assembled the best of
the best of these outlaw films.

H.C.E.
Directed by Richard Sylvarnes
U.S.A.
Section: NY, NY Narrative Feature (87 min)
World Premiere

In this rapid-cut, experimental, tragicomedy
collage of mythology, history, literature, and
comic books, Sylvarnes bounces us through a
fragmented, impressionistic history of the world
from Napoleon to Jesus, from Socrates to Superman
and back again with a 6-year-old girl as our
guide.

Jack Smith and the Destruction Of Atlantis
Directed by Mary Jordan
U.S.A.
Section: NY, NY Documentary Feature (96 min)
World Premiere

Jordan creates a mesmerizing collage of images
and audio from the life and work of Jack Smith,
the underground filmmaker, photographer,
performance artist, and anti-capitalist, who
worked in New York from the '60s until his death
in 1989. Highlights include the story behind the
Supreme Court case over the banning of his 1963
classic Flaming Creatures.

Leaving Home Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank
Directed by Gerald Fox
USA
Section: Spotlight
North American Premiere

In this intimate and moving portrait of
groundbreaking photographer and filmmaker Robert
Frank, Fox engages the artist in a dialogue about
his life and work. Creative tensions develop
between Frank's desire to focus on the present
and Fox's impulse to revisit the past.

My Dad Is 100 Years Old Directed by Guy Maddin
Canada Section: Spotlight (16 min) New York
Premiere
In this unique tribute to the great filmmaker
Roberto Rossellini, his daughter Isabella
collaborates with cinephile par excellence Guy
Maddin to create a loving and very personal
portrait. A Zeitgeist release. Followed by the
screening of a new archival print of either
Rossellini's The Flowers of St. Francis (1950) or
The Rise of Louis XIV (1966).

Notes on Marie Menken
Directed by Martina Kudlácek
Austria
Section: NY Specials (97 min)
North American Premiere

A diary portrait of underground filmmaker Marie
Menken based on the reminiscences of her family
and friends. Various interviewees recount stories
of how Menken and her husband, filmmaker Willard
Maas, became the inspiration for the protagonists
of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
In English.

On the Bowery
USA
Directed by Lionel Rogoson
Section: Restored & Rediscovered, 1957 (65 min)
World Premiere

On the heels of its lovely restoration of Lionel
Rogosin's Come Back, Africa (1960), which
premiered at TFF last year, the Cineteca di
Bologna has just finished restoring Rogosin's
first film, the Oscar®-nominated documentary
about the harsh and often shocking realities of
life on what in the '50s was New York's Skid Row.

Ontic Antics Starring Laurel and Hardy: Bye,
Molly Directed by Ken Jacobs U.S.A.
Section: Spotlight (89 min) North American
Premiere Jacobs, a major figure of the
experimental filmmaking world, embraces digital
technology in this video reworking of the 1929
Laurel and Hardy film, Berth Marks. Preceded by
Hidden Inside Mountains, Laurie Anderson's
20-minute meditation on "nature, artifice, and
dreams," and Robert Wilson Video Portraits:
Isabelle Huppert.

Tribute to Nam June Paik
U.S.A.
Section: Restored & Rediscovered (120 min)

A collection of work by Korea-born, New
York-based video art pioneer Nam June Paik, who
died in January. Presented in collaboration with
the Nam June Paik Studio, Electronic Arts
Intermix, and John Hanhardt, Senior Curator of
the Film and Media Arts department at the
Guggenheim Museum.

Windows
Directed by Shoja Azari
U.S.A.
Section: NY, NY Narrative Feature (80 min)
World Premiere

Life in the big city has always had its
disquieting side, perhaps never more than in this
riveting view of what some inhabitants of New
York see--and what they fail to notice, as Azari
weaves together a loosely-constructed narrative
based on 10 choreographed, single-shot scenes in
which windows play a key role. Preceded by 25
LETTERS, Grahame Weinbren's interactive project
based on his one-minute films that generate the
letters of the alphabet.

Between Two Worlds

The delicate nature of intimate relationships is
explored by these shorts. One combines narrative
suspense with dance, to cross a bridge between
two lovers. The other follows a couple traveling
to Asia during the SARS epidemic.
Between Two Houses, Directed by Clara can Gool
SARS, A Love Story, Directed by Mathieu Borysevicz

(DIS)Location by the Sea

Two premiere experimental filmmakers explore the
fragility of human existence by setting it
against the order of the natural world. One
employs geometry to achieve his cinematic ends,
while the other weaves a masterwork of found
footage.
Ideas of Order in Cinque Terre, Directed by Ken Kobland
The Highwater Trilogy, Directed by Bill Morrison

In Black-and-White and Living Color
Shot on a wide range of media and framed through
a variety of cameras, these experimental shorts
offer both sobering and joyful visions of our
contemporary human existence.
Native New Yorker, Directed by Steve Bilich
epitaph*, Directed by Mikael Lubtchansky
My Empire, Directed by Ted Ciesielski
Afraid So, Directed by Jay Rosenblatt
Errata, Directed by Alexander Stewart
Flow, Directed by Scott Nyerges
Swan's Island, Directed by Bill Brand & Katy Martin
Octave, Directed by Emily Hubley

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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.