Jefferson Presents...#80

From: ADAM ABRAMS (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Jun 15 2007 - 06:30:00 PDT


Jefferson Presents...#80Sat. 05/23/07, 9:00PM$5, $4 StudentsGarfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Ave.Bruce BaillieMass For The Dakota Sioux (1964) 16mm, black and white, sound, 20.5 minSynopsis: The film begins with a short introduction--No chance for me to live, Mother you might as well mourn Sitting Bull Hunkpapa Sioux Chief. Applause for a lone figure dying on the street. INTROIT. A long, lightly-exposed section composed in the camera. KYRIE. A motor cyclist crossing the San Francisco Bridge accompanied by the sound of the Gregorian chant, recorded at the Trappist Monastery in Vina, California. The sounds of the mass rise and fall throughout. GLORIA. The sound of a siren and a short sequence of a '33 Cadillac proceeding over the Bay Bridge disappearing into a tunnel. The final section of the Communion begins with the OFFERTORY in a procession of lights and figures to the second chant. The anonymous figure from the introduction is discovered again, dead on the pavement. The body is consecrated and taken away past an indifferent, isolated people, accompanied by the final chant. The Mass is traditionally a celebration of life; thus the contradiction between the form of the Mass and the theme of Death. The dedication is to the religious people who were destroyed by the civilization which evolved the Mass.Quixote (1965) 16mm, color & b/w, sound, 45 minClimaxing the film makers first period of work, QUIXOTE is a kind of summary and conclusion of a number of themes, etc., especially that of the hero... depicting Western orientation as essentially one of conquest. The film is conceived in a number of different styles and on a number of simultaneous levels. In four parts, one reel. "More relevant than ever, Bruce Baillie's 'American Symphony' ... released in 1990 via an S-VHS master." -- Frankfurter Zettung "American as conquistador ...." -- P. Adams Sitney "-- quixotic filmmaker become the hero of his own film." -- S. Frey One-year journey through the land of incessant progress, researching those sources which have given rise twenty years later to the essential question of survival.Rudolph BurckhardtCaterpillar (1973) 16mm, color, sound, 6 minLooking down at nature's small works in the woods of Maine, the straight up at the sky, then down again at the going-on of an inch worm. It could happen any day.David DevenskyBeethoven's Chicken (1970) 16mm, color, sound, 6.5 min"... consists of chickens being butchered and hung out on meat hooks, to the accompaniment of the Fifth Symphony. As the film progresses, the imagery mutates from nearly documentary to nearly surreal. An eyeball-clashing scene recalls "Chien Andalou" yet Devensky holds it on-screen much longer than Dali and Bunuel. Finally a chickens' skull is pounded to bits by a hammer. And each time we think (or wish) the final blow has fallen another follows. The camera peeks all the while and one is uncertain of what is more disquiting - the action on the film, or ridged stare of the camera. --Richard Koszarski, New York AmericanRobert RayherA Man in the Box (1978) 16mm, color, 7.15 min"Rather than looking outward, and creating a spherical universe around itself (e.g. Michael Snow's LA REGION CENTRAL) , the camera is introspective, defining itself by how it 'sees the world'; it never sees anything but itself. A MAN IN THE BOX is a camera's photographic memory, trying to focus upon its own image." R.R.Kathrin ResetaritsEgypt (1997) 16mm, black and white, sound, 10 minSubtitled print.Joyce WielandCatfood (1968) 16mm, color, sound, 13 min"In CATFOOD she shows a cat devouring fish after fish for some ten minutes. There seems to be no repetition of shots, but the imagery is so consistent throughout--shot of the fish, the cat eating, his paw clawing, another fish, the cat eating, etc.--that it is just possible theat shots are recurrent, There is no question but that Wieland has a unique talent." P. Adams Sitney, Film Culture "J.W.'s CATFOOD is as uncompromising and didactic as anything by Godard" The New Yorker
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