Vancouver-23-03-07: LAST REFUGE FOR THE SENSES or NOISE HIPPIES AGAINST ALL WAR

From: ben d (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Mar 09 2007 - 00:05:01 PST


Hungry Ghost Cinema Presents the Vancouver Screening of:
LAST REFUGE FOR THE SENSES or NOISE HIPPIES AGAINST ALL WAR
Friday March 23, 9:00pm • $5
for location and/or further information contact:
604.682.3269x7466

Curator and Filmmaker Ben Russell in Person

Run a female artists’ collective, brew your own absinthe, attend an
anti-gentrification community board meeting, wheatpaste signs protesting the
war(s), and then lose yourself in what may very well be the Last Refuge for
the Senses.  A new breed of noise/psychedelia has sprung up as the only
rational response to an increasingly alienating form of global capitalism,
in an increasingly violent-and-joyless politicized existence – this new
media responds with a Chaos of Sound and Light that seeks to overwhelm you
but stops before you’re lost, its kind hippie heart still beating out a
space for you to occupy and own.  

Think Global but Act Local and Better Yet, Act Analog.  Like the American
psychedelic cinema of the 60s and 70s, this crop of contemporary 16mm films
enunciates an emotional response to an overwhelming historical moment
(now).  Their use of analog technologies, of live soundtracks and cameraless
processes is indicative of a DIY approach that has its political roots in
resistance and its aesthetic roots in a gentler past; geography has
conspired to create a micro-movement, for these are all works from the same
community (Providence, RI), emo-activist films by silkscreen artists and
noise musicians and puppeteers and sculptors whose political ideologies form
the basis for their artistic practice(s).  In a community already well-known
for its costume collectives (Forcefield), its drum-and-bass duos (Lightning
Bolt), its warehouse lifestylings (Fort Thunder, the Dirt Palace, the Pink
Rabbit), and its most graphic of arts (Paper Rodeo), filmmaking is a piece
of a larger whole, and these artists’ seeming deference to a prior
psychedelic moment is a superficial one – as is evident in their relatively
self-conscious means of production, the strength of these films lies in
their denial of total escapism, in their collective decision to create a
communal experience that can move beyond the screen and into the world
outside. 

Featuring music by Lightning Bolt, Mystery Brinkman, Carly Ptak (Nautical
Almanac), the Shirelles vs Suicidal Tendencies, Jodi Buonanno, and more,
we’ve got Noise Band Concert Footage, Direct Dumpster-Dive Animation,
History Through the Eyes of Bats, Live Soundtracks, Cut-Up Eyeballs, Single
Frame Collectives, Puppet Chaos, Analog Transcendence, and So Much More.
This is the cinema of deliverance, the theater of psychic hearts and radical
love - bleeding your eyes and ears clean of the sorrow of the everyday,
swelling your body full with hope for the possibilities of today.

FEATURING: Black and White Trypps Number Three by Ben Russell (11:30, 35mm,
2007), Paranoia Trilogy Part One: The Chemical Bath by Xander Marro (6:00,
16mm, 2001), Scream Tone by Jo Dery (3:00, 16mm,  2002), Echoes of Bats and
Men by Jo Dery (7:00, 16mm, 2005), The Red and the Blue Gods by Ben Russell
(8:00, 16mm, live sound, 2005), 01/06 by Mat Brinkman and Xander Marro
(13:00, 16mm, 2006), The Great Exodus by Jo Dery (6:30, 16mm, 2005), L’Eye
by Xander Marro (2:00, 16mm, 2004), Third Annual Roggabogga Motion Picture
by Forcefield (6:30, 16mm, 2002)
TRT 63:30

**This program is funded in part through the Rhode Island State Council for
the Arts**

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