Come celebrate against the inauguration with a nostalgic romp through the Nixon era with camp stars from East and West. By marching or motorcade get to our AntiAuguration Screening of films by SF's own original drag collective The Cockettes and NY's pioneer queer performance artist Jack Smith.

The Cockettes' Tricia's Wedding
33 min. 1971, 16mm color/sound

"The world-famous Cockettes enact Tricia Nixon's wedding to Edward Cox on June 11, 1971. Hurtme O. Hurtme, television correspondent, covers the wedding and interviews celebrities in attendance such as Golda Mier, Indira Ghandi, Jaquelyn Onassis, Queen Elizabeth, and Elizabeth Taylor. Coretta King sings. During the reception, Eartha Kitt puts LSD in the punch. All hell breaks loose. A hilarious comedy filled with the real-life band of characters who inspired the Cockettes documentary."

Jack Smith's No President
45 min. 1968, 16mm, color/sound on CD

NO PRESIDENT was Jack "I was a Male Yvonne De Carlo" Smith's third feature film, after the notorious FLAMING CREATURES and NORMAL LOVE. Originally titled "The Kidnapping of Wendell Willkie by the Love Bandit," it was made in reaction to the 1968 Presidential Campaign.  In this version, restored by filmmaker Jerry Tartaglia, the scenes alternate between elaborate tableaux of Smith's creatures shot at his Green Street loft with campaign footage of former presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, a liberal Republican from Indiana who ran against FDR in the 1940's. The climax of the work appears to be the "auctioning" of the presidential candidate at the convention. No President features underground stars from 1968, including Tally Brown, Jerry Sims, Irving Rosenthal, Donna Kerness, Mario Montez, and Charles Henri Ford.

Contemporary Approaches to the Moving Image. These works embark upon a curious land without end and flow through passages of longing, curiousity, and the enigmatic.

Coast Starlight Kindling by Kim Miskowicz [Oakland, CA] (Super 8 film stock & processing prize from Dwayneís Photo plus $50 cash prize donated by SFAI Student Union)
Kill Your Darlings by Sarah Sophie Flicker/ Maximilla Lukacs [New York, NY]
Mario Makes A Movie by Roger Deutsch [Berkeley, CA] ($250 cash prize donated by Kodak)
Winter Light by Sow-Yee Au [Malaysia, made in San Francisco, CA] ($150 cash prize donated by SFAI Student Union)
Precarious by Ellen Zweig [New York, NY]

The sublime and the brilliantly mundane coalesce to electrify the senses.

Half Life by Matt Hulse [United Kingdom]
Light Quanta by Karen Johannesen [Chicago, IL] (Winnter of, $250 cash prize donated by Kodak; also for her film Oscillate)
Electrocute Your Stars by Marie Losier [Brooklyn, NY]
Me, Myself and I by Kelly Spivey [Flushing, NY] (Winner of $250 Kodak camera stock award for animation)
Convertible by Wah-Hei Au [Hong Kong, made in San Francisco, CA]
Two Short Pieces by Ken Wood [Milwaukee, WI ](Winner of $150 cash prize from SFAI Student Union)
Oscillate by Karen Johannesen [Chicago, IL ](Winner of $250 cash prize donated by Kodak also for her film Light Quanta)
Housesitting by Tony Gault [Englewood, CO] (Winner of $500 Kodak camera stock award for non fiction)

The yearning gaze and the mirroring mind entangle and create tangible snapshots out of the unknown.

Flowergirls by Robert Todd [Boston, MA]
Animal Cut Up Cakes by Elizabeth DiGiovanni [San Francisco, CA]
Water Water by Nicky Hamlyn [United Kingdom] (Awarded Honorable Mention)
For the Record by Carolyn Faber [Chicago, IL]
Flower by Tetsuya Hiroshima [Japan]
Observer/Observed by Takahiko Iimura [Japan]

Reminiscent of things past,  a voyage into the entwining path of the remains and the imaginary.

Altitude Zero by Lauren Cook [Iowa City, IA]
Post- Partum by Marie-Josee Saint-Pierre [Canada]
Glass Crow by Steven Subotnick [Providence, RI]
Looking Forward To by Wen-Chun Wu [Taiwan] (Winner of $150 cash prize donated by SFAI Student Union)
Gravity by Sheri Wills [Providence, RI](Awarded Honorable Mention)
Anderswo by Achim Neufeld [Germany, made in San Francisco, CA]

Presented in conjunction with UC Berkeleyís Graduate Film Working Group Lecture Series. Gorin will speak on Friday, February 4, at 2 pm in Dwinelle Hall, Room 142.

In the film history books, Jean-Pierre Gorin is frequently mentioned for his collaborations with Godard in the ë60s and ë70s, but his career has been just as prolific since moving to Southern California. My Crasy Life is the third film in his "California Trilogy" (after Poto and Cabengo and Routine Pleasures). Made in collaboration with the Sons of Samoa Westside 32nd Street Gang, it mixes scripted performances with other cinematic interventions into the Long Beach lives it provocatively conveys. For Gorin, "My Crasy Life has at its core a commitment, radical in its simplicity: to respect the voice of its 'subjects.'" (Irina Leimbacher)

Radical politics meet radical aesthetics in Nagisa Oshimaís most experimental feature, The Battle of Tokyo, or the Story of the Young Man Who Left His Will on Film (1970). In this fragmented tale, a young leftist finds the loaded camera of a comrade who leapt to his death while fleeing the police. While the young man, Motoki, obsessively attempts to retrace his comradeís political and erotic past through the experimental film found in the camera, Oshima intertwines avant-garde techniques, including projection onto a naked body, with documentary and narrative forms in an adventurous interrogation of the potential of film as a political and aesthetic weapon. (Irina Leimbacher)

In the personal documentary work of Portland-based Vanessa Renwick, edgy and grim poetry informs a steady, deliberate stare at extreme states of existence. Humans and other animals take decisive action. Everything is a matter of life and death. Daniel Mencheís thundering soundtrack propels the triple-screen wildlife epic Hope and Prey. 9 is a Secret ponders mystical visitations from crows and ravens after Renwick changes her name. The found footage gem, Britton, S. Dakota is constructed of haunting street portraits in a desolate town in depression era America. Also screening: two Vietnam era artifactsóTravis Wilkersonís harrowing National Archive, v.1 and Warren Haackís jarring Selective Service Systemóand Peter Kubelkaís seminal culture-clash document Unsere Afrikareise. (Steve Polta)

In her new essayistic feature Empathy, poet and filmmaker Amie Siegel (The Sleepers) playfully explores some of what happens between (male) psychoanalysts and their (female) patients, including the exercise of power, manipulation, and the promise of empathy. A provocative mosaic of genres that interweaves "real" documentary interviews with middle-aged male analysts, screen tests with "patients," and fictional melodrama, this film doesn't shirk from turning the camera and occasionally blunt questions on those who usually wield their power in silence. Siegel's gutsy approach includes digressions on modernism, the Eames chair, and her own authority issues. (Irina Leimbacher)

The two newest works by New York filmmaker Abigail Child document a search through images to throw light on how we got into this mess. The Future is Behind You retells the story of two sisters buffeted by the tides of fascism, with personal 16mm archives of a German Jewish family from the 1930s accompanied by the music of John Zorn. Cake and Steak examines the visual details of 1950s Americans training for a life in the suburbs. Child will contextualize her work by screening Alexander Klugeís Brutality in Stone: Eternity in Yesterday and letting D.W. Griffithís unedited camera reels deconstruct his invention of narrative in cinema. (Konrad Steiner)

Walid Raad, (a.k.a. the Atlas Group), is one of the most widely acclaimed artists from the Arab world. Fusing fact and fiction, Raad creates idiosyncratic political art in the form of simulated documents and archival materials, along with videos, collages and performance piecesósome in the guise of academic lectures. Whether focused on car bombs, horseraces or hostages, his often ironic work explores the ways that film, video and photography represent physical and psychological violence in contemporary Lebanese life. Featured in Documenta 11 and IN TRANSIT 03, Raad is a faculty member at Cooper Union. Cinematheque screened Raadís Hostage: The Bachar Tapes in 2001.

Nathaniel Dorsky is a San Francisco treasure. As a professional film editor, educator, and author, Dorsky's name is associated with a sublime and precise vision. For forty years he has made his own films out of tender encounters with the minute and the vast. He will join with us to present The Visitation (2002) and his most recent, Threnody (2004), which just premiered at the reopening celebration of MoMA in New York. These two devotional songs will be preceded by Triste (1996), the first work of a quartet of exquisitely photographed films from the 1990s. (Konrad Steiner)

Four eclectic videos explore what is typically thought of as non-place, whether urban intersections, bombing sites, or public bathrooms. Nevertheless, these are sites where things happen, the kind of things we donít usually discuss. Dominic Angerame's Anaconda Targets appropriates aerial video of a bombing run in Afghanistan while soldiers' voices reveal a horrifying callousness towards their "targets." Alfred Guzzetti's Calcutta Intersection finds suspense in his single-take observation of life on the run. Pierre-Yves Clouin discovers a new use for airplanes in Flying Sculpture. Finally, Mahnaz Afzali's hour-long documentary The Ladies Room explores the lives of several marginalized women whose paths cross in the public bathroom of a Teheran park. (Irina Leimbacher)

With a mathematicianís love of formalism, a painterís eye, and an inimitable wit, James Benning has been making structurally elegant, visually eloquent films exploring the psychic and material histories of American landscapes for three decades. One Way Boogie Woogie is Benningís second feature, filmed in Milwaukeeís industrial valley in 1977ó sixty shots, each one minute long, filled with games, jokes, and the exuberance of youth. In the summer of 2004 he re-made the film with the same 60 locations and the same people. In 27 Years Later, the games and jokes take on new meaning with the passing of time and age. (Irina Leimbacher)

On closing night of the 10th Annual WOCFF, local and international filmmakers grapple with latent fears and hidden heartbreaks as they ride the volatile tides between comfort and disharmony. From the struggle to reconcile past memories and reinvent future ones to the yearning for a sense of belonging, to grappling with "the perfect image," we witness the many shades between motionless meditation and emancipating physicality. Tonight's experimental works by both emerging and established artists include: Rosario Sonaliís Barefeet, Rosario Soteloís Fabrication, DiHuyen van Hoís The Yellow Heart, Larilyn Sanchez and Riza Manaloís Balikbayan/Homeland, Marianne Kimís Driveby, Michelle Dizonís Calibrate, Narissa Leeís For My Beloved, Heesoo Kimís Yoga Practice and Let Go, Chris Hoís Second Hand, Naoko Sasakiís Nocturno, Hsin-Ping Panís Blue Rain, Alka Raghuram's Panchali, Juana Awad and Jorge Lozanoís Menguante, Thea St. Omerís En Los Ojos, and Veronica Majanoís Two Four. (Linda Charmaraman, WOCFF)

The Festival opens at the Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, March 3-6. For more info see http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/pfa_programs/women_of_color/

These three new films explore time and texture in the depiction of exquisite cinematic landscapes. Peter Hutton's epic Skagafjˆrdur takes as its luminous subject the dramatic pacings of atmosphere and light over pristine Icelandic vistas. Elegantly capturing subtle rhythms and evanescent events, the film is a monumental study of land, sky and sea (in color and black and white). Emily Richardson's vigorous new film, Aspect, takes an all-over approach to composition and spatial description, using precise camera work and time-lapse photography to activate the entirety of the screen. Diane Kitchen's Quick's Thicket is a brilliantly colored ode to the visual vibrance of Mid-Western seasons. (Steve Polta)

We present the West Coast premiere of Christopher Harris' award-winning, eloquent still/here (2000). Examining suppressed histories, it documents urban loss and alienation in St. Louis through lingering shots of empty lots, abandoned houses and gutted businesses. These images are accompanied by reflective thoughts from interviews and a haunting score performed by Chicago jazz bassist, Tatsu Aoki. Paired with the beautifully meditative New York Portrait: Chapter Two (1980-81) by Peter Hutton. Together, these films inspire thoughts of the ephemeral city by alternately building it up and taking it apart. (MaÔa Cybelle Carpenter)

Jay Rosenblatt (The Smell of Burning Ants, Short of Breath) is best known for emotionally riveting work crafted largely from carefully mined and rhythmically re-printed and edited educational footage. Continuing this tradition, his new Phantom Limb (2005) is a collection of reflections on grief and loss triggered by the death of a child, and it is his most personal film to date. This half-hour premiere will be accompanied by other films about life, comedies focusing on his daughter Ella, including I Used To Be A Filmmaker, I Like It A Lot, and Little Tramp. Also: Worm, Friend Good, and Prayer. (Irina Leimbacher)