Jefferson Presents...#81 07/28/07

From: ADAM ABRAMS (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Jul 19 2007 - 11:05:03 PDT


Jefferson Presents...#81Experiments on FilmSat. 07/28/07, 9:00PMGarfield Artworks4931 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh$5, $4 StudentsRudy AlbersSilent Music (1967) 16mm, color, silent, 14 minA film experimenting with the use of multiple exposed colored lights evoking the mystery of creation, stars and planets, atoms and electrons, souls and spiritsBill BrandChuck's Will's Widow (1982) 16mm, color, silent, 12 min... weaves a complex of feelings and personal associations into a swirl of landscapes and abstract images. Jagged shapes swarm the surface acting variously as frames, veils and component elements of the photographic images. Though formally extreme the film's emotional quality emerges in subtle and gentle ways.Tom ChomontOblivion (1969) 16mm, color, silent, 4.25 min"Successfully blends elements from both the poetic and diary modes. In the process Tom Chomont has created one of the few truly erotic works in cinema." -- J. J. Murphy, "Reaching for Oblivion" Millennium Film Journal, Winter/Spring 1979 "Exquisitely erotic... a shimmering fantasy..." -- Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times, February 1976James DouglasSpeed Queen (1969) 16mm, black and white, sound, 9.5 minA personal fantasy. Repeating and recurring images. Grain, hesitation, flash, black, and light rhythm rhythm. --J. D.Standish LawderRaindance (1972) 16mm, color, sound, 16 minRAINDANCE plays directly on the mind through programmatic stimulation of the central nervous system. Individual frames of the film are imprinted on the retina of the eye in a rhythm, sequence, and intensity that corresponds to Alpha-Wave frequencies of the brain. RAINDANCE becomes an experience of meditative liberation beyond the threshold of visual comprehension. Vision turns inward. The film directs our mental processes, controlling how we think as well as what we see. Images fuse with their afterimages, colors arise from retinal release of exhausted nerve endings, forms dance across short-circuited synapses of the mind. RAINDANCE was made entirely from a scrap of found footage taken from an old animated cartoon representing a sheet of falling rain. The cartoon was called, "The History of Cinema."Warren SonbertCarriage Trade (1971) 16mm, color, silent, 60.75 min"In CARRIAGE TRADE, Sonbert interweaves footage taken from his journeys throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States, together with shots he removed from the camera originals of a number of his earlier films. CARRIAGE TRADE was an evolving work-in-progress, and this 61-minute version is the definitive form in which Sonbert realized it, preserved intact from the camera original. "With CARRIAGE TRADE, Sonbert began to challenge the theories espoused by the great Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s; he particularly disliked the 'knee-jerk' reaction produced by Eisenstein montage. In both lectures and writings about his own style of editing, Sonbert described CARRIAGE TRADE as 'a jig-saw puzzle of postcards to produce varied displaced effects.' This approach, according to Sonbert, ultimately affords the viewer multi-faceted readings of the connections between shots through the spectator's assimilation of 'the changing relations of the movement of objects, the gestures of figures, familiar worldwide icons, rituals and reactions, rhythm, spacing and density of images." -- Jon Gartenberg, program note for CARRIAGE TRADE, Whitney Museum of American Art, New American Filmmakers Series, October 11-17, 1973
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