San Francisco Cinematheque
Spring/Summer 1995 Calendar

Admission: $6 general, $3 members, students, seniors, disabled.
Unless otherwise noted, all shows begin at 7:30 p.m.
For more information please call 415.558.8129.

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Nelson & Wiley: Before Need Redressed

Gunvor Nelson & Dorothy Wiley In Person.
April 13, Thursday, 7:30 PM
at CFA

Renowned Bay Area filmmakers (Schmeerguntz, Fog Pumas) Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley return to the Cinematheque to premiere Before Need Redressed (1994) which entirely re-works the material which comprised Before Need (1979). Of the later they said "We started with some dream images, a few actors, friends and relatives. The snow has melted and it was impossible to repeat. Standards of perfection applied to all the selves. The relationships, the layers of memory. Where are the tables for one?" For Gunvor Nelson's first appearance in San Francisco since 1992, she will also show her sublime and little-seen Light Years Expanding (1986).


Simple Beauties: The Art and Life of Bruce Baillie

Bruce Baillie In Person
April 17 - 21

"I have just uncovered a term for the way I plan to exist, and continue working: 'Home Movies.' Some of us around the country will be creating for a time,perhaps the duration of our lives, home movies. Forced back to the most bare limitations of life and work one can still walk familiar streets, stand at the back door to watch the changes of the sun."
-- Bruce Baillie, Nov. 23, 1962, San Francisco

Canyon Cinema founder (1960) Bruce Baillie has remained true to his art, life and vision of community for over 30 years. A profoundly spiritual man, Baillie seeks beauty in simple, honest moments and truths behind calcified habits. The films he has made are cherished throughout the world for their sensual lyricism and social critique, and in the last several years he has expanded his artmaking to radio, video, and literature. The Cinematheque proudly presents a week of Bruce Baillie eventsÑhis first public presentations in San Francisco since 1983Ñas a welcome antidote to this stuffy, fearful, conservative time. Each evening Baillie will show films, video tapes, play selections from his radio series Dr. Bish's Remedies and read from his fictional autobiography Memoirs Of An Angel.

April 17, Monday, 7:30 PM at SFAI
Films

Mass For The Dakota Sioux (1963-64), All My Life (1966), Castro Street (1966), Valentin De Las Sierras (1966) and others.
Co-sponsored by S.F.A.I.'s lecture series.

April 20, Thursday, 7:30PM at Center for the Arts
Films

Still Life (1966), Tung (1966), Quixote (1964-1965), Roslyn Romance (Is It Really True?)(1974) and others.

April 21, Friday, 8:30PM at SFAI
Films

Quick Billy (1967-70) and Camera Rolls (1968-69)

April 20 - 22, Thursday - Saturday mornings, 10:00 AM

SPECIAL LOCATION: Imaginary Light

Curated by Kathy Geritz and Steve Anker
April 23, Sunday, 7:30 PM at Kabuki

Co-sponsored by the San Francisco International Film Festival. Special admission will apply.

(Program will be repeated at the Pacific Film Archive on May 3 at 7 PM)
This program of new films by American filmmakers exalts in the sensual qualities of cinema, mining the unconscious through lush explorations of created and uncovered images. Local filmmaker Dominic Angerame's Premonition is a haunting portrait of the San Francisco cityscape. In The Book of Red Janie Geiser uses doll-like figures to construct a fantasy in which a woman's world is torn apart and imagined anew. In Phil Solomon's Figure/Ground (The Snowman) the picture surface beautifully shimmers and shifts to create an unsettling evocation of childhood. Peggy Ahwesh's The Color of Love is a lovingly brash paean to female sexuality. In Consideration of Pompeii is the latest in a series of hand-painted films by Stan Brakhage, a three-part meditation on loss and ephemera. Andrew Noren's Imaginary Light is an exquisite study of the delicacies of light and shadow.


Achtung Baby!
Media Snatchers of the 90s

Baldwin's Sonic Outlaws & Negativland Videos.
April 30, Sunday, 7:30 PM at SFAI

Craig Baldwin and Members of Negativland In Person.
Negativland is a 4-person electronic music ensemble that has developed a vast underground audience for pop-cultural critiques that have pushed copyright laws beyond their limits. Two weeks after releasing a parody of rock superstars U2, Island Records filed a massive suit which effectively censored the piece. Tonight Craig Baldwin will show Sonic Outlaws, a dense mosaic on copyright-infringement stemming from his investigation into the infamous Negativland-U2 suit, members of Negativland will present their most recent videos and CD/book publication Fair Use, and all will answer questions and discuss issues of media piracy.


Love and Dingleberries:
Alyce Wittenstein and George Kuchar

May 4, Thursday, 7:30 PM at Center for the Arts

A pioneer of the "Cinema of Transgression" movement, Alyce Wittenstein (No Such Thing as Gravity) takes a radical look at the AIDS crisis in this special sneak preview. In The Deflowering (1994), the mutation of the virus leads to an all-out war against nature. People have learned to enjoy wearing "safesuits" and the manufacturing of customized children. Booming new industries have developed. Meanwhile, teams of defoliators futilely attempt to stop an epidemic of fatal allergic reactions to pollen. A sly genetic engineer proposes a solution, but will the corporations allow their profits to be decimated? Starring Emmanuelle Chaulet, Taylor Mead, Steve O., and Holly Adams. Then, three delirious new video epics from the irrepressible George Kuchar, The Gifted Goon (1994) Portraiture in Black
(1995) featuring Mark Finch, and the pugnacious Nirvana of the Nebbishites (1994) starring Blackie the cat and Peppy the Magic Puppet. Curated by Joel Shepard.

The Mammals of Victoria
and Other New Films by Brakhage

May 7, Sunday, 7:30 PM at SFAI

Last calendar we presented Programs 2 and 3 of Stan Brakhage's 1960s 8mm Songs cycle. Tonight the Cinematheque premieres several of his newest films, selected from a group of over a dozen released within the past year. Included are The Mammals of Victoria (a companion piece to A Child's Garden and the Serious Sea), Black Ice, Stellar, Cannot Not Exist, and Three Homerics.


Artist As Filmmaker - Yoko Ono:
Rape + Erection

May 11, Thursday, 7:30 PM at Center for the Arts

Our second program in an ongoing retrospective of Yoko Ono's films focuses on the relation between the spectator and the film or the filmed. In the feature-length Rape (1969), one of Ono's most complex and engaging films, "a cameraman will chase a girl on a street with a camera persistently until he corners her in an alley, and, if possible, until she is in a falling position"(YO). Directed in collaboration with John Lennon, the film explores the camera as transgressor and as an extension of the male film crew and ourselves as voyeurs. Erection (1971) dissolves photographs of a construction site to document the erection of a London hotel. Produced by the American Federation of Arts

Canyon Cinema Nights:
Eccentric Visions

May 18, Thursday, 7:30 PM at Center for the Arts

Curated and Presented by Michael Wallin Michael Wallin presents some favorite films characterized by a wild diversity of styles and the single-minded peculiarity (if not dark perversity) of their vision. Wallin, now finishing a new film, managed Canyon Cinema for most of the 80s and was on its Board til last year Films include: New, Improved Institutional Quality by Owen Land (né George Landow); Cartoon le Mousse by Chick Strand; The Off-Handed Jape by Robert Nelson; The Mongreloid by George Kuchar; Film Watchers by Herb deGrasse; Breakfast by Michael Snow; The Secrete of Life by Victor Faccinto; Kindering by Stan Brakhage; Ronnie by Curt McDowell; and Rabbit's Moon by Kenneth Anger.

Regular 8mm: Saved From Extinction

Presented By Filmmaker And 8mm Film Junkie Tom Church
May 19, Friday, 7:30 PM at SFAI

"January '93, Kodak 'discontinued' regular 8mm film, a much misunderstood medium greatly loved by many, 'due to insufficient market demand...'(their words), that left a lot of folks upset. Tonight's program exhibits the entire gamut, from 'smokers' (200 ft. porno reelsÑthousands of which were made during the 60s and 70s) to trailers (Trailer for the Masturbation Film Festival), documentaries (Before Gentrification Hit, soundtrack by Caroliner), home/travel/vacation movies, abridged versions of classics, and 'personal' work by auteur/pioneers from the 50s and 60s (Mike Kuchar). Roughly 1 hour with 'talk'. Plus, the unveiling of a new local magazine, Marginal Film. Bring down those 8mm films out of your closet to be shown as part of the program & get in free. Also, we're gonna be giving away film to the first 50 customers." (TC)


The Story Lived by Artaud-Mômo

Produced by Beckett Plus One Productions
May 21, Sunday, 7:30PM at SFAI

Artaud-Mômo, a compelling multimedia performance, takes its title from Antonin Artaud's celebrated lecture of January 13th, 1947, in which he embodied the spirit of his "Theatre of Cruelty." Of Artaud, Jean-Louis Barrault said, "he made himself into a theatre -- a theatre that did not cheat." Artaud-Mômo endeavors to invent Barrault's statement -- to bring Artaud himself into the theatre, and make him a mythic figure. Using elements of stage action, sound, primary sources, film, and slides, Artaud-Mômo celebrates his uncompromising passion, embodies the chaos of his tragic life, and awakens the purity of his spirit.
Presented in association with Beckett Plus One Productions


Our Own Racisms:
The KKK Boutique Ain't Just Rednecks
+ Matzo Balls and Black-Eyed Peas

May 25, Thursday, 7:30PM at Center for the Arts


Daniel Robin In Person
Camille Billops and James Hatch's (Finding Christa) newest work examines the causes and consequences of racism in our culture while challenging us to look closely at our own. An eclectic mix of anecdote, interview, and stylized performance, the film "models itself on Dante's Inferno -- a journey through hell where punishment fits the crime, and confession is sometimes the only reward." (CB) Our guide, Camille, leads us and her friends through the multi-leveled KKK Boutique. While some souls deny all racism, and others, frozen by hatred, are eternally damned to pain, a few confess to their own racial madness to ascend back to the field of sunflowers where we began. Preceded by local filmmaker Daniel Robin's Matzo Balls and Black-eyed Peas which is an intensely personal look into a young couple's interracial relationship. -- Curated by Irina Leimbacher


Marcia Brady and Menstruation:
Female Hygiene and Safety Films

May 28, Sunday, 7:30 PM at SFAI

Do you remember when your school showed those outrageously funny, embarrassing and terrifying female hygiene and safety educational films? They were made for adolescent GIRLS ONLY and BOYS were NEVER allowed admission! Such sensitive issues as menstruation, personal safety, sex and dating were explored. Tonight's unforgettable program of these wildly entertaining and shocking 1960s and 70s GIRLS ONLY films includes: When Jenny When featuring The Brady Bunch's Maureen McCormick, Rape Alert, a notoriously graphic L.A.P.D. production, the hilariously surreal All Women Have Periods, Self Protection for Women, Changes, and more. Boys will be allowed. -- Curated by Joel Shepard and Alpha Blue Archives


Alexander Kluge 1:
Short Films

June 1, Thursday, 7:30 PM at Center for the Arts

One of the most influential and talented filmmakers of the German New Wave, "Das Neue Kino," Alexander Kluge's lyrical, incisive film-essays examine the collective consciousness and socio-political experience of post-war Germany. Informed by the theoretical tradition of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, Kluge's work, a sort of formal poetry of the cinema, occupies the undefinable space between document and film-narrative. This program of rarely seen short films represents a cross-section of Kluge's work completed over a period of approximately 15 years, including Die Ewigkeit von gestern (The Eternity of Yesterday), Kluge's meditation on Germany's Nazi past through the lens of its architecture.


Alexander Kluge 2:
The Blind Director

June 4, Sunday, 7;30 PM at SFAI

Marked by his characteristic concern with time and history, Kluge's film Der Angriff der Gegenwart auf die Ubrige Zeit (The Blind Director) examines the individual consciousness of historicity and intentionality as mediated by and filtered through mass culture in a series of archetypal parables of life in contemporary Germany. The English title of the film, radically different from the German which translates literally as "The Assault of the Present on the Rest of Time", refers to the final segment, Kluge's ironic self-appraisal as a man who escapes alienation only through his obsession with memory and imagination.


Won't You Come Out and Play, My Sex Bitch Goddess:
New Films by Women

Curated and Presented by Michelle Handelman
June 8, Thursday, 7:30 PM at Center for the Arts

Local Filmmakers In Person.
Forbidden images from the female libido make up tonight's show of erotic and funny films from New York and San Francisco. Hima B's documentary Straight for the Money investigates queer sex workers who strip for men (featuring Joan Nestle, Carol Queen, and Annie Sprinkle), while these shorts are guaranteed to get under your skin: Interior Scroll: The Cave (premiere) by Carolee Schneemann and Maria Beatty; Stellium in Capricorn by Georgia B. Wright; Rocketlipsbabblon by Annabel Lee; Nymphomania by Tessa Hughes-Freeland and Holly Adams; Engorge, Gobble and Gulp by Lisa Delillo; and What Gets You Off? by Danielle Massingale and Grace Giorgio. Please join the artists for a BYOB gathering after the show.


Beautiful People/Beautiful Friends

Lynn Hershman + Friends in Person
June 11, Sunday, 7:30 PM at SFAI

In celebration of her receipt of Germany's ZKM/Seimens International Media Award, the Cinematheque honors local artist Lynn Hershman by screening her recent work, Beautiful People/Beautiful Friends, in which an idyllic scene of love and tranquility transforms into a story of domestic violence and electronic surveillance. Accompanying this will be short pieces by Hershman's friends and collaborators over the last 15 years: Lisa Swenson, Mia Houlberg, Paula Levine, Jessie Drew, and current UC Davis students. Simultaneously, a new electronic interactive piece, America's Finest, will be on view at the Paula Anglim Gallery through early July.


Bay Area Women at Work

June 15, Thursday, 7:30 at Center for the Arts

Several Filmmakers In Person.
Tonight's program of new work by Bay Area women filmmakers will be an up-to-the-minute eclectic mix of experimental, animation, documentary and short narrative work all recently out of the lab and onto the screen. Since several of the works are not finished as we go to press, we're holding off on listing titles. Come and be surprised by the diverse palette of some of our community's own emerging women artists. Curated by Irina Leimbacher


Time Bomb!

John Muse and Jeanne C. Finley In Person
June 18, Sunday, 7:30 PM at SFAI

This evening's program presents works concerning fear, conversion experiences, and family values. Time Bomb! and I Want to Meet Uou, Dear Lady by John Muse and Jeanne C. Finley are works in progress being developed during an artist-in-residency at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in collaboration with their Work Practice and Technology group. Time Bomb! explores a young girl's decision to take Jesus into her heart during a Baptist Retreat. ...Dear Lady follows the story of a Jewish family's encounter with a Klansman. The third work by Finley, Conversations Across the Bosphorous, weaves together the lives of two Muslim women and reveals how their changing relationship to their faith reflects the greater cultural and political struggles in contemporary Istanbul. Please join the artists for a BYOB gathering after the show.


A Tribute to Warren Sonbert

June 22, Thursday, 7:30 PM at Center for the Arts

Warren Sonbert In Person
One of San Francisco's most widely shown filmmakers, Warren Sonbert was honored with a complete retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1994. The Cinematheque has premiered many of his recent films, but Sonbert's earliest groundbreaking work has remained unseen in the Bay Area for years. Tonight we celebrate Warren Sonbert's life and work with two early teenage films, Hall of Mirrors (1966) and Truth Serum (1967), as well as the seminal Carriage Trade (1968-72). "Like music, film operates in time: giving only so much in duration to absorb, read and digest before the new image triumphs over, reinforces, contradicts, plunges against or stares blankly at its predecessor. As in Proust or a house of cards each image functions as a resonance or reference to the others." (WS)


Facing Eden:
Bay Area Landscape In Film Art

July 5 - 26, Wednesdays, 7:00 PM, de Young Museum

de Young Museum Special Admission will apply
Ticket information: 415/750-3624 or 415/558-8129

A series of film and video programs (in conjunction with the de Young's exhibition Facing Eden: 100 Years of Landscape Art in the Bay Area) highlighting the diverse ways film and video artists have incorporated characteristics of the Bay Area's singular landscape into their creative work.


San Francisco's Undulating Skyline

July 5, Wednesday, 7:00 PM, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park

The hills and light of San Francisco create a continuous visual adventure in urban space: buildings and streets rove in height and depth as the open sky shifts from spot to spot, and nothing quite stays as it first appears. Panorama by Michael Rudnick, Spring by Thomas Korschil, Same Difference by Al Wong, The Man Who Could Not See Far Enough (Part V) by Peter Rose, and Side/Walk/Shuttle by Ernie Gehr. Lynn M. Kirby's film-installation Landscape No. 1 will be on view in the Trustee's Auditorium foyer beginning 30 minutes before show.


Scales of Grandeur:
Human And Natural Interfaces

July 12,Wednesday, 7:00 PM, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park

The visual beauty of the Bay Area's diverse natural landscape ranges from rolling hills to wooded streams, from cliffs to gentle horizons; all are impacted by the region's singular light and weather. These films reflect on this natural landscape through people's interactions with it. Span by William Allan and Bruce Nauman, Seasonal Forces: A Sonoma County Almanac by Janis Crystal Lipzin, Running Fence by David & Albert Maysles, Survival Run by Robert Charlton. Paula Levine's video-installation East/West No. 2 will be on view in the Trustee's Auditorium foyer beginning 30 minutes before show.


Light Energies:
Landscapes of the Mind

July 19, Wednesday, 7:00 PM, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park

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How does living here affect the brain? These films offer a timeline of fantasies and reveries inspired by the Bay Area as a place of discovery. Four In The Afternoon (1951) by James Broughton, Beat (1958) by Christopher MacLaine, All My Life (1966) by Bruce Baillie, Looking For Mushrooms (1961-67) by Bruce Conner, The Great Blondino (1967) by Robert Nelson & William T Wiley, I Change I Am The Same (1969) by Alice Anne Parker (a.k.a. Anne Severson), Women's Rites or Truth is the Daughter of Time (1975) by Barbara Hammer, Studies For Land's End (1995) by Phil Solomon. Lynn M. Kirby's film-installation Landscape No. 3 (1995) will be on view in the Trustee's Auditorium foyer beginning 30 minutes before show.


Life Flows

July 26, Wednesday, 7:00 PM, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park.

The constant motion of human activity and changing forms creates a visual surface that bends and reshapes itself from moment to moment. San Francisco time and place are expressively revealed through these films. Visions Of A City by Larry Jordan, Last Gasp by Jacalyn L. White, Delugion by Michael Rudnick, Fearful Symmetry by Michael Wallin, Crossing The Bar by Andrew Black, By The Sea by Toney Merritt, Pacific Far East Lines by Abigail Child, and Cable Car Melody by Charles Wright. Paula Levine's video-installation 36 Hours On 24th Street No. 4 will be on view in the Trustee's Auditorium foyer beginning 30 minutes before show.

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