From: Weekly Listing (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Apr 12 2008 - 10:35:28 PDT
Part 2 of 2: This week [April 12 - 20, 2008] in avant garde cinema
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SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 2008
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4/19
Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Filmmakers
http://www.chicagofilmmakers.org/
8:00 pm, 5243 N. Clark St.
ART DOCS SERIES: SMILE BOSTON PROJECT AND THE SMUTTY PROFESSOR
In the summer of 2003, Bren Bataclan began leaving paintings of his
colorful characters for people to take all over the Boston area on park
benches, in subway stations, schoolyards, and other public locations. To
each painting Bataclan attached a note that read, "This painting is
yours to keep if you promise to smile at random people more often."
Smile Boston Project (directed by David Tamés, 20 min., 2007, USA)
covers the project from its inception in the summer of 2003 through the
spring of 2007, examining Bataclan's influences, his goals, and the
reactions of the people who have found, purchased, and critiqued his
paintings. One of America's best known low-budget "underground"
filmmakers, George Kuchar is also famous for his outrageously campy
collaborations with his students at the San Francisco Art Institute.
During the making of one of his sci-fi dramas, "The Planet of the
Vamps", student Marc Rokoff took it upon himself to actually document
the insanity that takes place in Kuchar's class. Edited by Kuchar, The
Smutty Professor (40 min., 2003, USA), is a "lively record of the
production class in action as it tackles the teleplay with a minuscule
budget and scanty costuming. It's a behind-the-scenes exposé of creative
desperation and unbridled youth tackling the passions of dramatic
exposition and erotic excess with kindergarten kinship."—Kuchar Also
screening is That Which Sustains (directed by Tamir Elterman, 6 min.,
2007, USA)
4/19
Houston, Texas: Aurora Picture Show
http://www.aurorapictureshow.org
8 p.m., DiverseWorks Artspace
MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY: SHANA MOULTON AND TARA MATEIK
Saturday, April 19: Putting the Balls Away, Tara Mateik DiverseWorks Art
Space In 'Putting the Balls Away,' Tara Mateik reenacts the legendary
'Battle of the Sexes,' Billie Jean King's 1973 defeat of the former
Wimbledon men's champion, Bobby Riggs. By playing both roles in a video
version of the match, and reviving remarks by sports commentators Howard
Cosell and Rosie Casals, Mateik recalls the controversy sparked by the
most watched televised sporting event of the era. Saturday, April 19:
Cynthia's Moment, Shana Moulton DiverseWorks Art Space Shana Moulton
will play her character, Cynthia, the fictional protagonist in her
Whispering Pines series of videos. Moulton will bring Cynthia and her
strange world to life through an innovative use of sets, props, costume
and projected video. Combining live-action and projected video, Moulton
describes her performance as presenting "a series of home-made and found
orthopedic devices, cosmetics and belief systems." Moulton's
presentation will at different points approximate a personal growth
workshop, dance recital, instructional video and fairytale.
4/19
London, England: Tate
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/film
19:00, Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
PARADISE NOW! ESSENTIAL FRENCH AVANT-GARDE CINEMA, 1890–2008
Saturday 19 April, 19.00 Programme 13: Ange Leccia and Dominique
Gonzalez Foerster Ange Leccia and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, major
figures on the international contemporary art scene, both address cinema
in their work. Gonzalez-Foerster produces films, installations and
performances that stage the unfolding of psychological and emotional
dramas. Leccia deploys video projections in architectural interventions
and arrangements, to relay stories of personal and public dramas. Ange
Leccia, Stridura, 1980, 13', 16mm Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Plages,
2001, 15', 35mm Ange Leccia, True Romance, 2004, 5', video Dominique
Gonzalez-Foerster, Atomic Park, 2004, 9', 35mm Ange Leccia, Perfect Day,
2007, 67', video Programme duration 110' Don't miss 7 weekends of the
best French avant-garde cinema, including an unprecedented selection of
over 80 pioneering experimental films from the last hundred years,
including classics, as well as marvellous surprises, from psychedelia to
erotica, via music videos and radical political filmmaking. The theme of
each screening is inspired by manifestos written by celebrated DADA
provocateurs Marcel Duchamp and Tristan Tzara, and is guaranteed to make
you look at the French avant-garde in a new light. It also marks the
40th anniversary of the May 1968 protest movements that sparked a
revolutionary shift which resounds today. The series demonstrates the
political vitality and formal diversity of the French avant-garde from
the beginnings of cinema to the present day. The series includes
pioneering films by Christian Boltanski, Alberto Cavalcanti, Marcel
Duchamp, Jean Epstein, Gérard Fromanger, Philippe Garrel, Jean-Luc
Godard, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Maria Klonaris & Katerina
Thomadaki, Ange Leccia, Maurice Lemaître, Rose Lowder, Louis Lumière,
Étienne-Jules Marey, Chris Marker, Georges Méliès, László Moholy-Nagy,
Pierre Molinier, Marylène Negro, Man Ray, Carole Roussopoulos,
Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Ben Vautier, René Vautier and many
more. Curated by Nicole Brenez, Michael Temple, Michael Witt, Pierre
d'Amerval and Laurent Mannoni in association with Tate Modern and La
Cinémathèque française.
4/19
San Francisco, California: Other Cinema
http://www.othercinema.com/
8:30, 992 Valencia Street
MACIAS' OTAKU USA + GAMERA (AMPLIFIED)
Here's the national editor of Otaku USA, Patrick Macias, with his
outrageous sub-cultural survey, taking us on a breathless wild ride
through Weird Tokyo. With 3 books behind him, Patrick's become the main
agent for interpreting Japanese youth genres like anime, manga, and cult
films, and his years of trans-Pacific travel have generated a veritable
encyclopedia of bizarre fan-boy obsessions. Among the features of the
feverish J-Pop imagination are the maid cafes of Akihabara,
action-figure fetish cults (both erotic and warrior), costume
role-playing, and delinquent bikers, revealed in all their exotic detail
through Macias' anecdote-rich live narration. Consummating the program
is a monstrous sample of old-school exploitation, the incredible last
reel of Gamera, the Invincible, in glorious 16mm B/W, with live
soundtrack "enhancement" by Hans Grusel-san and the Anti-Ear. Free robot
model kits and magazines, too! *$8.
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SUNDAY, APRIL 20, 2008
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4/20
Albuquerque, New Mexico: Experiments in Cinema
http://www.basementfilms.org/
1pm, Guild Cinema
FILM/VIDEO WORK BY SCOTT STARK
Guest artist and legendary experimentalist, Scott Stark will present a
program of his film/video work. 16mm films: Air (1986), I'll Walk with
God (1994), Angel Beach (2001). Video: Chop (2003), To Love or To Die
(2003), Shape Shift (2004), More Than Meets the Eye: Remaking Jane Fonda
(2006).
4/20
Brooklyn, New York: UnionDocs
http://www.uniondocs.org
7:00PM, 322 Union Avenue
"LIGHT SPILL" & "HAPPY MONDAY"
UnionDocs presents an installation of experimental film works by artists
Sandra Gibson, Luis Recoder, and Andrew Filippone Jr. Two films will be
featured: Gibson and Recoder's Light Spill and Filippone's Happy Monday.
Both works use traditional materials of cinema – namely, film and a
light source – to explore space, light, and time. For Sandra Gibson and
Luis Recoder's Light Spill, the content of their film is secondary to
the conceptual exploration of their chosen medium. As the film runs, the
projector spews the contents onto the floor, allowing a pile to
accumulate throughout the exhibition. As the artists point out, their
work "recasts the light mechanics of a peculiar estrangement of the
medium. The art of cinema, yes, but more timely: the becoming cinema of
art. That is the coming attraction." In Happy Monday, Andrew Filippone
Jr. returns to his first film project – a failed and unfinished
decade-old narrative short – and recasts the abandoned 16mm film
negative into something he calls a "documentary film object." He
arranges the negative into a vague human body shape and presents it on a
large light box over which audiences linger. The frozen moments from the
unfinished short film are "entombed" in the frames of the negative, he
says, expressing both the failure of the original project and a critique
of his younger filmmaker self. Gibson and Recoder have shown work at the
Whitney Museum of American Art, P.S.1 MoMA, The Kitchen, Barbican Art
Gallery (London), KW (Berlin), TENT (Rotterdam), Palais des Beaux-Arts
(Brussels), and Image Forum (Tokyo). Filippone's films have screened at
d>art03 at the 50th Sydney Film Festival, Videomedeja, AIM IV: Art in
Motion, the Rhode Island International Film Festival, the Hot Springs
Documentary Film Festival, and on PBS. The exhibit opens at 7PM. There
is a suggested donation of $8.
4/20
Los Angeles, California: Filmforum
http://www.lafilmforum.org/
7:00 pm, Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. at Las Palmas
FILMFORUM PRESENTS CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN
Filmforum presents Carolee Schneemann in person with Kitch's Last Meal
(1973-78, 54 minutes, Super 8, color, dual projection, separate sound;
New restoration of original film reels/separate sound; Screening format
to be determined.) Schneemann's cat, Kitch, which was featured in works
such as Fuses, was a major figure in Schneemann's work for almost twenty
years. The film documents the routines of daily life whilst time passes,
a relationship winds down and death closes in: filming and recording
stopped when the elderly cat died. Schneemann will also be at REDCAT on
April 21 and UCLA Film & Television Archive on April 25. Los Angeles
Filmforum, at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd, at Las Palmas.
Sunday April 20 2008. 7:00 pm. General admission $9, students/seniors
$6, free for Filmforum members. http://lafilmforum.wordpress.com. The
Egyptian Theatre has a validation stamp for the Hollywood & Highland
complex. Park 4 hours for $2 with validation. Advance ticket purchase
now available through Fandango through the American Cinematheque
website, www.egyptiantheatre.com
4/20
New York, New York: Collective Sight
http://www.collectivesight.org
3 pm, Unisphere, Flushing Meadows, Queens
COLLECTIVE SIGHT
You are invited to participate in Collective Sight, two collaborative
cell phone movie-making events, taking place April 13th and 20th in New
York City. Participants are asked to shoot video with their cell phones
starting at the same time at the same place. Collective Sight takes two
similar structures (in historic places) as a starting point for
exploring public space in New York City. Sunday, April 13th 3 pm: the
globe sculpture on the north side of Columbus Circle at the center of
Manhattan. Sunday, April 20th 3 pm: the World's Fair UniSphere in
Flushing Meadows, Queens. Take part in one or both events! Basic
instruction in cell phone operation/video file transfer will be
provided. The videos will be combined into a single piece, and all
participants receive digital copy and cinematographer credit. More
information and a prototype video can be seen at
www.collectivesight.org. This project is done in collaboration with
Neighborhood Public Radio (NPR), as part of NPR's participation in the
2008 Whitney Biennial.
4/20
San Francisco, California: San Francisco Cinematheque
http://www.sfcinematheque.org
7:30 pm, 701 Mission St/YBCA
ESSAY ON CAMERA WORK
Kwame Braun and Chris Kennedy In Person. Tonight's films divulge the
buried undercurrents of institutional manipulation, emotional experience
and the social politics imbedded within documentary images and image
making. Kwame Braun's experimental video essay, passing girl:
riverside—An Essay on Camera Work, unfolds the complexities of emotion
and politics entwined within a simple moment between a young girl and a
man with a video camera. Memo to Pic Desk, by Chris Kennedy and Anna van
der Meulen, takes an idiosyncratic look at the theatricality of vintage
news photography using typewritten materials from the archives of the
Toronto Daily to disclose how moral codes, delinquency, and freewill are
pulled into an altered coherence. Harun Farocki's Respite resurrects
archival footage from 1941 that documents the life of inmates at the
Dutch transit camp for Jews in Westerbork, Holland. Shot by an inmate of
the camp at the command of an SS officer, the hidden politics of the
images create a visual tension of conflicted interests. Farocki, in an
ode to silent film, has inserted inter-titles with detailed descriptions
of the images as well as his own ruminations on the psychologically
complex footage. $10, general; $6, members, students, disabled, seniors.
4/20
Santa Fe, NM: Bearded Child Film Festival
http://myspace.com/beardedchildfilmfest
8pm, Meow Wolf, 2nd & Cerrillos
BEARDED CHILD FILM TOUR
A selection of underground and experimental films from the Bearded Child
Film Festival.
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.