Jefferson Presents ... NEXT SCREENING: This Thursday with a visiting filmmaker

From: ADAM ABRAMS (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Jun 26 2006 - 10:12:35 PDT


 
Jefferson Presents ... NEXT SCREENING:
    
 WHEN: Thursday, June 29, 2006, 9PM
 WHERE: Garfield Artworks 4931 Penn Ave.
 HOW MUCH: $5/$4 students, seniors
  
 Jefferson Presents ... welcomes visiting filmmaker
 Bill Daniel (Portland, OR) in person with his film
 "Who is Bozo Texino?" a 55 min. experimental
 documentary on hobo culture. Read below for full
 description and go to www.billdaniel.net for more
 info.
  
 Who is Bozo Texino? by Bill Daniel (55 min. black and
 white, experimental/documentary)
 
 THIS SPECTACULAR TRAVEL ADVENTURE FAITHFULLY
 PHOTOGRAPHED IN REALISTIC BLACK AND WHITE FILM AT
 CONSIDERABLE RISK FROM SPEEDING FREIGHT TRAINS AND IN
 SECRET HOBO JUNGLES IN THE DOGGED PURSUIT OF THE
 IMPOSSIBLY CONVOLUTED STORY OF THE HERETOFORE UNTOLD
 HISTORY OF THE CENTURY-OLD FOLKLORIC PRACTICE OF HOBO
 AND RAILWORKER GRAFFITI AND THE ABSURD QUEST FOR THE
 TRUE IDENTITY OF RAILROADING’S GREATEST ARTIST WILL
 LIKELY AMUSE AND CONFOUND YOU IN ITS SINCERE ATTEMPT
 TO UNDERSTAND AND PRESERVE THIS ARTFORM.
 
 Who is Bozo Texino? is a film on the 100-year-old
 tradition of hobo and railworker graffiti. The project
 is the result of a 20-year study of “monikers ” and is
 fabricated from hours of 16mm and super 8 film, most
 of it shot on freight trips across the western US. The
 film includes interviews with some of the railroad’s
 greatest graffiti legends: Colossus of Roads, The
 Rambler, Herby (RIP) and the granddaddy of them all,
 Bozo Texino. The film also catches some of the
 socioeconomic history of hobo subculture from its
 roots after the Civil War to the present day. Included
 are interviews with tramps that Daniel encountered in
 his travels. The range of the interviews, and the
 film’s style deal with both the clichés and the harsh
 realities of tramp life. In researching hobo culture
 Daniel found the written histories fraught with myth,
 and was initially frustrated by the apparent lack of
 verifiable truth to much of the lore.
 
 “At some point in the research, and in the filming, I
 had to give up on the idea of being able to tell every
 story down to the detail. One of my initial impulses
 was to create a highly resolved document that would
 allow people in the future to see exactly what this
 culture was like. Impossible enough. But at the same
 time I was painfully aware that to broadcast these
 discoveries would alter or wreck the innocence and
 freedom that was there. Gradually, I realized that to
 report on freight train culture I should just
 acknowledge this mythologizing that permeates the
 culture and adopt that as an essential part of my
 approach. But the difficulty was, at the same time, to
 present this purely documentary material that I
 earnestly want to be appreciated and preserved. And no
 matter what the disappointment might be in finding the
 lonely reality behind a particular myth or graffiti,
 there is a mystery, or truth, that will always evade
 the documentarian and the audience.” - Bill Daniel
 
 
 Jefferson Presents...
 Movies for YOU
 http://www.geocities.com/jeffersonpresents
 
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