Onion City Schedule Announced

From: programming (email suppressed)
Date: Thu May 31 2007 - 11:42:18 PDT


Hello Frameworkers,

Chicago Filmmakers is pleased to announce the line-up for the 19th Onion
City Experimental Film and Video Festival.

Hope some of you are able to attend.

Best,

Patrick Friel
Chicago Filmmakers

********************************

The 19th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival
June 14-17, 2007
Presented by Chicago Filmmakers

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE - OVERVIEW

Thursday, June 14 - 8:00 pm at the Gene Siskel Film Center
Opening Night Program

Friday, June 15 - 7:00 pm Reception/7:30 pm Screening at the LaSalle Bank
Cinema
Zanzibar Program One - The Virgin's Bed
With Jackie Raynal in Person

Friday, June 15 - 11:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Foggy Mountains Breakdown More Than Non-Foggy Mountains
With Jessie Stead in Person

Saturday, June 16 - 1:00 pm at the LaSalle Bank Cinema
Zanzibar Program Two - Vite/Deux Fois
With Jackie Raynal in Person

Saturday, June 16 - 5:30 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Group Program 1: Tonal Variations

Saturday, June 16 - 8:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Group Program 2: More Than Meets the Eye

Saturday, June 16 - 9:45 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Group Program 3: "Curiouser and Curiouser!"

Sunday, June 17 - 1:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Group Program 4: The Political Edge

Sunday, June 17 - 3:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
The Intimate Distance - A Tribute to Mark LaPore (1952-2005)
Curated and Presented by Mark McElhatten

Sunday, June 17 - 6:30 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Group Program 5: Luminescence

Sunday, June 17 - 8:30 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Group Program 6: Dreaming Awake

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE - DETAIL

Thursday, June 14 - 8:00 pm at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N. State
St.)
OPENING NIGHT PROGRAM

The Opening Night Program features an eclectic and exciting line-up by a
diverse range of artists.

Origin of the 21st Century (2000, 13 mins., France, Video): Jean-Luc Godard
in his provocative mode presents a dark, yet exhilarating, look back at
cinema and war in the twentieth century.
Man (2006, 5 mins., US, Video): Footage of a lone man starting a fire and
digging with a shovel becomes a study in video texture and repetition in
this stunning work by Kyle Canterbury. World Premiere.
The General Returns from One Place to Another (2006, 11 mins., US, 16mm):
Starting with text from a Frank O'Hara play of the same title, filmmaker
Michael Robinson crafts a mysterious and elusive work full of heartbreak and
beauty.
The Surging Sea of Humanity (2006, 10 mins., US, Video): Master
avant-gardist Ken Jacobs, using a single stereoscopic photograph of the 1893
Chicago World's Fair, reawakens a long dormant crowd.
Sevilla --> (ƒ) 06 (2006, 13 mins., Italy, 35mm): Shot from a helicopter,
Olivo Barbieri's portrait of Sevilla, Spain highlights the majesty of the
architecture and the abstracting effects of the aerial view.
Moby Dick (2000, 13 mins., Israel, Video): The epic in miniature: videomaker
Guy Ben-Ner's charming kitchen sink version of Melville's great novel is
shot entirely in his apartment and stars the artist and his young daughter.
The Improbable Is Not Impossible (O Improvável Nao è Impossível) (2006, 19
mins., Portugal, 35mm): The great Manoel de Oliviera transforms a
commissioned work about the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon into a
delicate and personal exploration of space and form. North American
Premiere.
Outerborough (2005, 10 mins., US, 35mm widescreen): Bill Morrison's
(DECASIA) ecstatic 35mm widescreen film runs a 1899 "ghost train" film
through its paces - side by side, forwards and backwards, superimposed - to
create a dizzying spectacle of speed and motion. Live musical accompaniment
by Ken Vandermark (reeds) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello)!

__________________________

Friday & Saturday, June 15 & 16 at the LaSalle Bank Cinema (4901 W. Irving
Park Rd.)
HELP US, DESTROY YOURSELVES:
Rediscovering Three Key Works from the Zanzibar Film Cycle, 1968-70
Co-Presented and Organized by Chicago Cinema Forum

The phrase "Aidez-nous, détruisez-vous" (Help us, destroy yourselves) was a
rabble-rousing graffito that marked the walls of University of Paris's
Nanterre campus in May 1968. It was in this place and at this volatile time
in world politics that a generation of French artists and thinkers defined
themselves around youth and workers' movements (recently chronicled in such
films as Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers and Philippe Garrel's Regular
Lovers). Among them were the Zanzibar filmmakers, who took the many street
mottos and images of the '68 protests and turned them into phantasmagoric
film allegories, many of them shot in North and East Africa in sumptuous
35mm (a format rarely afforded to experimental cinema), and screened for
late-night audiences by Henri Langlois at the Cinémathèque Française.
Difficult to see for decades, a selection of the thirteen or so films made
under the Zanzibar header from 1968-70 have recently resurged through the
efforts of researchers such as Sally Shafto and original Zanzibar filmmaker
Jackie Raynal, who will be present for both programs. Programmed by Gabe
Klinger with generous assistance from Jackie Raynal-Saleh.

Friday, June 15 - 7:00 pm (reception) / 7:30 pm (screening)
THE VIRGIN'S BED
Newly Struck 35mm Print!
Filmmaker Jackie Raynal will present the first-ever Chicago screening of
this film.

The Virgin's Bed (Le Lit de la vierge, 1969, 105 mins., France, 35mm) by
Philippe Garrel. In this post-revolutionary re-imagining of the story of
Christ, '60s fashion icon Zouzou (later the Chloe of Chloe in the Afternoon)
alternates three roles as mourning mother, pregnant Virgin Mary, and Mary
Magdalene, while a withered Pierre Clementi (Belle de Jour, The Conformist)
plays Jesus reborn into the present world. Wandering, unable to understand
the indifference around him, he bangs on the doors of apparently empty
houses, crying "I am the savior!" Shot in black and white 'Scope, production
began in France, but when further financing came in from heiress and
Zanzibar patron Sylvina Boissonnas, Garrel expanded to exotic Marrakech and
to the sacred Christian catacombs of Rome. Punctuated by lyrical long takes,
the film is also distinguished by music from John Cale and Nico, who Garrel
met in post-production and who would vitally influence many of his later
films. (Minimal French dialogue with English subtitles)
 

Saturday, June 16 - 1:00 pm
VITE & DEUX FOIS
Newly Struck and Restored 35mm prints!
Q&A with filmmaker Jackie Raynal and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum will follow
the screening.

Vite (Quickly, 1969, 37 mins., France, 35mm) by Daniel Pommereulle. The late
painter-sculptor Daniel Pommereulle, who briefly appears in both Rohmer's La
Collectioneuse and Godard's Weekend, also directed three films in his
lifetime. In his best-known, Vite, he interweaves footage of the moon and
stars that he shot using the Questar, a state-of-the-art telescope, with a
combination of documentary and staged scenes filmed in Morocco. The film,
previously unseen in the U.S. in 35mm, presents an odd series of textures as
it grapples with the disillusionment of those involved in the May '68
movements. (Minimal French dialogue with no subtitles).

Deux Fois (Twice Upon a Time, 1968, 72 mins., 35mm) is the first film by
Jackie Raynal, who, as a young film editor, worked with several filmmakers
of the Nouvelle Vague. About non-images and non-sounds, the film opens with
Raynal, who describes everything we are about to see and boldly concludes,
"This evening will mark the end of meaning." The critic Serge Daney wrote
that it is a "documentary on the place of the spectator in the room."
(French dialogue with English subtitles).

__________________________

Special FREE Late-Nite Show!
Friday, June 15 - 11:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
FOGGY MOUNTAINS BREAKDOWN MORE THAN NON-FOGGY MOUNTAINS
With Jessie Stead in Person!

Foggy Mountains Breakdown More Than Non-Foggy Mountains (2006, 59 mins.,
US, Video) by Jessie Stead: Winner of the "Best of the Festival" award at
this years' Ann Arbor Film Festival, Foggy Mountains is an insane,
maddening, and exhilarating film combining nine different versions of the
bluegrass standard Foggy Mountain Breakdown, road movie and music video
elements, structural film strategies, cryptic narration, and equal parts
wonder, confusion, apprehension, nostalgia, and delirium. "An old-fashioned,
absurdo-epic journey begins to prove the motion picture's lone hypothesis:
that foggy mountains breakdown more than non-foggy mountains." (Stead)

Saturday, June 16 - 5:30 pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP PROGRAM 1: TONAL VARIATIONS

O (2006, 2 mins., US, Video), A House (2006, 5 mins., US, Video),
Confusion (2006, 2 mins., US, Video), and Building in Detroit #3 (2006, 4
mins., US, Video): These four amazing videos by Kyle Canterbury display the
variety and richness of color, texture, and form video can take. World
Premieres.
Greenhouse (2007, 2 mins., UK, 16mm) by Ben Rivers. World Premiere.
The Coming Race (2006, 4 mins., UK, 16mm) by Ben Rivers: Where are they
going? North American Premiere.
Clut (2007, 5 mins., UK, Video) by Joe Gilmore and Paul Emery: This film
documents a series of experiments using an analogue and digital feedback
system. The system consists of a digital 3D model displayed on a monitor
which is in turn being captured by a video camera whose input is then
textured back onto the surface of the 3D model. North American Premiere.
Black and White Trypps Number Three (2007, 12 mins., US, 16mm) by Ben
Russell: " Shot during a performance by Rhode Island noise band Lightning
Bolt, this film documents the transformation of a rock audience¹s collective
freak-out into a trance ritual of the highest spiritual order" (Russell).
Weep, O Mine Eyes (Choir) (2007, 5 mins., UK, Video) by Louise K. Wilson.
North American Premiere.
What the Water Said 4-6 (2007, 17 mins., US, 16mm) by David Gatten: "Strips
of previously unexposed film went into the ocean and these fragments are
what returned. In this latest installment of a nine year project attempting
to document the underwater world off the coast of South Carolina, both the
sounds and images are the result of the oceanic inscriptions written
directly into the emulsion of the film as it was buffeted by the salt water,
sand and rocks; as it was chewed and eaten by the crabs, fish and underwater
creatures." (Gatten)
Set and Setting (2006, 3 mins., UK, 16mm) by Neil Henderson. North
American Premiere.
Tidal (2006, 3 mins., UK, 16mm) by Neil Henderson. North American
Premiere.
Kittens Grow Up (2007, 30 mins., US, 16mm): Luther Price intercuts two
found films, one about kittens and one about an alcoholic husband and
father, finding strange connections and shared themes. An unexpectedly
moving and resonant film about innocents.

Saturday, June 16 - 8:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP PROGRAM 2: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

Happy Again (2006, 5 mins., US, Video) by Gregg Biermann: Seven
superimposed layers of Gene Kelly singin' in the rain. A digital age motion
study inspired by the late 19th century chronophotographic work of
Etienne-Jules Marey.
Lake Affect (2007, 2 mins., US, Video) by Jason Livingston: "A late season
thunderstorm and its aftermath open a portal to the animal world."
(Livingston)
Mirror World (2006, 12 mins., US, Video): Abigail Child reshapes the
classic Bollywood film Aan into a mesmerizing study of class and sexuality.
More Than Meets the Eye: Remaking Jane Fonda (2006, 20 mins., US, Video):
Scott Stark stars himself in a "remake" of a Jane Fonda exercise video as a
springboard to ruminations on political activism, image construction, gender
roles, and the making of war.
Pyramids / Skunk (Hotel Diaries 5) (2007, 17 mins., UK, Video) by John
Smith: Smith's stays at two very different hotels two consecutive years at
the Rotterdam Film Festival occasion his uniquely deadpan commentary on his
lodgings, chocolate bars, politics, and dental emergencies. North American
Premiere.
Rock and a Hard Place (2006, 23 mins., US, Video) by Joshua Thorson: A
semi-narrative re-enactment video about Anthony Johnson, who is a young,
HIV+ teenager, victim of domestic abuse and rape, and author of a
best-selling memoir about his troubled life. Or is he? Part after-school
special, part cultural critique, this simultaneously earnest and kitschy
video explores truth and illusion, media sensationalism, and instant
celebrity with a decidedly queer eye.

Saturday, June 16 - 9:45 pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP PROGRAM 3: "CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER!"

Children of Shadows (2006, 18 mins., Japan, 16mm): Naoyuki Tsuji's stunning
and creepy charcoal drawing animation features two children making their way
among witches, morphing landscapes, and a cannibalistic father.
At the Heart of a Sparrow (2006, 29 mins., Canada, Video) by Barry Doupé:
All we can say is that Doupé's animated worlds are weird, wonderful, and
decidedly strange.
Wild Boy (2004, 17 mins., Israel, Video) by Guy Ben-Ner: A "re-make" of
François Truffaut's Wild Child starring the filmmaker and his young son. The
Wild Boy is found and tamed. Notions of play, make-believe, and artifice,
and transformation abound, from the home-made sets to the filmmaker's
apartment serving as the location to a heart-breaking passage from "child"
to "youth."
Once Upon a Time (2005, 25 mins., Germany, Video) by Corinna Schnitt: In
this absurdly charming and sly conceptual video a living room is slowly
invaded. First come the cats...

Sunday, June 17 - 1:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP PROGRAM 4: THE POLITICAL EDGE

According To... (2007, 9 mins., US, 16mm), Something Else (2007, 2 mins.,
US, 16mm), and Next to You (2007, 1 min., US, 16mm): These three short
films by Kevin Everson creep around the edges of the intersection of race,
culture, media, and social norms. They are powerful epistles in miniature.
Capitalism: Child Labor (2006, 14 mins., US, Video) and Capitalism: Slavery
(2006, 3 mins., US, Video) by Ken Jacobs: Jacobs mines two single
stereoscopic photographs to find the truth of things, which were hiding in
plain sight.
Freedom and Homeland (Liberté et patrie, 2002, 21 mins., Switzerland,
Video): Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville "begin Liberté et patrie
with the surprise encounter of an Aircraft and a Tower on a bright September
morning, then swan dive into Charles Ferdinand Ramuz's novel Aime Pache,
Peinture Vaudois enlisting Beethoven, Bocklin, Wittgenstein, Eisenstein,
Paradjanov, Maya Deren, Bunuel, Rene Clair and Serge Gainsborough in a
consideration of artistic endeavor, borderlines and the transformative shock
of chance meetings" (Mark McElhatten).
Stranger Comes to Town (2007, 28 mins., US, Video) by Jacqueline Goss: They
say there's only two stories in the world: man goes on a journey, and
stranger comes to town. Six people are interviewed anonymously about their
experiences coming into the US. Each then designs a video game avatar who
tells their story by proxy. Goss focuses on the questions and examinations
used to establish identity at the border, and how these processes in turn
affect one's own sense of self and view of the world.
Stranger Comes to Town re-works animations from the Department of Homeland
Security --combining them with stories from the border, impressions from the
on-line game World of Warcraft, and journeys via Google Earth to tell a tale
of bodies moving through lands familiar and strange.

Sunday, June 17 - 3:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
THE INTIMATE DISTANCE - A Tribute to Mark LaPore (1952-2005)
Curated and Presented by Mark McElhatten

The experimental film world, indeed the world of cinema, lost a truly
talented and unique artist with the passing of Mark LaPore in 2005. Chicago
Filmmakers has been presenting Mark's work for nearly a decade and we are
honored to be able to present this special program celebrating his vision
and artistry.
"Mark LaPore, though deeply influenced by the practices of the Lumiere
brothers, Andy Warhol, and Robert Bresson, expanded a tradition of
experimental documentary filmmaking practiced by Calvacanti, Wright, Rouch,
Gardener, the Macdougals, Hutton and Gehr, conducting profoundly cinematic,
highly distilled personal investigations into the nature of cultural flux
and reverie. He shot extensively in rural Sudan, Sri Lanka, New York,
Myanmar, India and Idaho." (McElhatten) "LaPore's films achieve a vision
that straddles and brings together the modes of experimental film,
ethnographic documentary, diarist travel films, lyrical autobiography, and
political polemic. They should be seen by anyone who cares about the cinema
and who cares about the way this image machine can display the world we have
made and, especially, the aspects we prefer to ignore of forget. Their
courage matches their beauty and their growing despair" (Tom Gunning).
Program: Lunatic Princess (2005, 4 mins., Video) Chicago Premiere; Kolkata
(2005, 35 mins., 16mm): "A portrait of North Kolkata (Calcutta), this film
searches the streets for the ebb and flow of humanity and reflects the
changing landscape of a city at once medieval and modern" (LaPore). Chicago
Premiere; The Sleepers (1989, 16 mins., 16mm); The Glass System (2000, 20
mins., 16mm); Untitled (for David Gatten) (2005, 5 mins., Video, co-made
with Phil Solomon): First Place winner at Onion City 2006.

Mark McElhatten is the co-founder and co-curator of the "Views from the
Avant-Garde" programs at the New York Film Festival. Over the past 30 years,
he has curated programs for festivals and venues around the world including
the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
McElhatten is also the film archivist for Martin Scorsese and is one of the
judges for Onion City this year.

Sunday, June 17 - 6:30 pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP PROGRAM 5: LUMINESCENCE

Qualities of Stone (2007, 11 mins., US, 16mm) by Robert Todd.
There (2007, 9 mins., US, 16mm) by Robert Todd.
el cielo - roll 1 (2007, 2 mins., US, 16mm) by Jeanne Liotta: A twinkling
camera roll of the night sky.
Risoni (2006, variable time, UK, 16mm Bipacked Loop) by Nicky Hamlyn. U.S.
Premiere.
Recordando El Ayer (2007, 9 mins., US/Ecuador, 16mm) by Alexandra Cuesta:
"Recordando El Ayer explores memory and identity through textures of
everyday life in a portrait of Jackson Heights - Queens, NY, home to a large
Latin American population" (Cuesta). World Premiere.
Ecstatic Vessels (2007, 21 mins., US, 16mm): Diane Kitchen's eye for
filming the natural world is distinctive and elegant. Here she focuses on
leaves in a wooded area, exploring the light, texture, color, and shifting
patterns and finding a richness and delicacy often ignored. World Premiere.
Bouvier and Prusakova (2005, 26 mins., US, 16mm) by Marya Alford: A
beautiful, simple, and moving film that subtly parallels the lives of
Jacqueline Kennedy and Marina Oswald. The narration is drawn from Marina's
testimony to the Warren Commission; visually, the film is composed of shots
of pink cherry blossoms against a blue sky.

Sunday, June 17 - 8:30 pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP PROGRAM 6: DREAMING AWAKE

Ready to Cope (2006, 7 mins., Canada, Video) by Aleesa Cohene: "Edited from
clips of horror and science fiction films, thrillers, self-help guides and
motivational instruction videos, Ready to Cope is an impassioned record of
collective anxiety" (Cohene).
Or Something Like That (2007, 7 mins., US, Video): Animator Lew Klahr
ventures into the quasi-music video realm with Guided by Voices. World
Theatrical/Festival Premiere.
This, and This (2006, 11 mins., US, Video): Vincent Grenier's newest video
demonstrates his continued mastery of finding the telling details of the
everyday world. Grenier's imagery becomes at once familiar and also
strangely alien, creating a mildly disturbing tension that forces the viewer
to look ever more closely.
When Owls Dream (2007, 4 mins., Canada, Video) by Rae Staseson: On a dreary
February day something magical happened... World Premiere.
Muriel¹s Song (2006, 3 mins., US, 16mm) by Grant Wiedenfeld: "A
hand-painted, hand-processed film only bent thru the lens of the projector
and your pearly-crowned pair." (Wiedenfeld).
Christian and Michael (2006, 5 mins., US, 16mm) by Adele Friedman: A
portrait film of friends of the filmmaker whose modern apartment in Vienna
is as much the subject as the people themselves.
nostalgia (april 2001 to present) (2005, 4 mins., Canada, 16mm) by
Christina Battle: Shards of an imaginary past.
Kati (2007, 4 mins., US, Super-8mm on Video) by Olan Netrangsi: Bubblegum
portraiture.
Everyday Bad Dream (2006, 6 mins., US, Video) by Fred Worden: Visual game
playing, of a sort, that teases the viewer between the recognizable and the
abstract. A cartoon conundrum.
été (summer / has been) (2007, 3 mins., Austria, Video) by Karø Goldt: A
summer color palate takes rectilinear form. North American Premiere.
Energie! (2007, 5 mins., Germany, Video) by Thorsten Fleisch: "An
uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes
photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual
systems of electron organization." (Fleisch)
Stereoscopic Experiment for Audience No. 2 (2007, 9 mins., US, Video) by
Robert Daniel Flowers: Geometric forms converge and collide in this
digital/electronic "homage" to the pioneers of abstract animation.
Ema/Emaki 2 (2006, 7 mins., Japan, 16mm) by Takashi Ishida: A delicate,
abstract scroll animation.

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