6/5/09 - Leslie Thornton's PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL (in Chicago)

From: Patrick Friel (email suppressed)
Date: Thu May 28 2009 - 23:28:22 PDT


WHITE LIGHT CINEMA PRESENTS
 
 
LESLIE THORNTON¹S CONTEMPORARY EXPERIMENTAL CLASSIC
PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL
 
 
Unseen in Chicago in more than a decade!
 
 
Friday, June 5 ­ 8:00pm
At The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
 
Leslie Thornton is tentatively scheduled to introduce the screening live via
webcam!
 
 
"Thornton's place in cinema history has already been assured for the sole
reason that she is the author of Peggy and Fred in Hell." (Bill Krohn,
Cahiers du Cinéma)
 
 
³[T]his series as a wholeŠrepresents the most exciting recent work in the
American avant-garde, a saga that raises questions about everything while
making everything seem very strange.² (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader)
 
 
A post-apocalyptic fairy tale for the modern age.
 
Now more than 25 years in the making, Leslie Thornton¹s extraordinary film
and video serial PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL (1984-2008, approx. 90 mins., video)
screens in it¹s most recent configuration. Featured last year at the 2008
Whitney Biennial, PEGGY AND FRED has morphed and changed over the years,
growing as Thornton incorporates new technology into her production.
Originally shown with both 16mm and video parts, it is currently exhibited
as a single-channel video work.
 
PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL follows two children, the eponymous Peggy and Fred,
as they wander and make discoveries in an unspecified future. Part
science-fiction, part comedy, part coming-of-age tale, part social critique,
PEGGY AND FRED stands as one of the most inspired and consequential
experimental works of the last quarter century.
 
 
³Peggy and Fred in Hell, Thornton's ongoing and open-ended series, maps a
surreal, quasi-apocalyptic realm littered with the detritus of a pop culture
bursting at the seams. Castaways in this wilderness of signs, Peggy and Fred
are, as Thornton states, "raised by television," their experience shaped by
a palimpsest of science and science-fiction, new technologies and obsolete
ones, half-remembered movies and the leavings of history. An exploration of
the aesthetics of narrative form as well as the politics of the image,
Thornton's rigorously experimental oeuvre has forged a unique and powerful
syntax.² (Electronic Arts Intermix)
 
 
³Peggy And Fred In Hell is one of the strangest cinematic artifacts of the
last 20 years, revealing the abuses of history and innocence in the face of
catastrophe, as it chronicles two small children journeying through a
post-apocalyptic landscape to create their own world. Breaking genre
restrictions, Thornton uses improvisation, planted quotes, archival footage
and formless timeframes to confront the viewer's preconceptions of cause and
effect.² (Video Data Bank)
 
 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 
 
This program screens Friday, June 5, 2009 at 8:00pm at The Nightingale (1084
N. Milwaukee Ave.).
 
Admission: $7.00-10.00 sliding scale
 
 
Website: www.whitelightcinema.com

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