Writer, composer, theorist and filmmaker Trinh Minh-ha consistently challenges her audiences with each new work, constantly shifting the ways in which she critically engages with the form and spirit of cinema. Long celebrated for her essay films that transform viewers through their exquisitely articulated deconstruction of our cinematic expectations (Reassemblage, Surname Viet Given Name Nam), she has also worked in experimental narrative. Her newest piece, Night Passage, co-directed with Jean-Paul Bourdier, is a digital tale made in homage to Kenji Miyazawaís novel, Milky Way Railroad. Three young characters go on a journey into the land of ëawakened dreams,í moving between the train that carries them and the mysterious places of inner longing and existential reflection in which they stop, each elegantly depicted through a different artistic approach. (Irina Leimbacher)

Admission is FREE!
For 6 pm dinner reservations ($15/ person) call 415-331-2787 by April 13
For additional information, visit www.headlands.org

Since the early 90s the worldís first microCINEMA, San Franciscoís Total Mobile Home (TMH)-Rebecca Barten and David Sherman-have periodically procured armloads of deserted institutional films from trashcans behinds Bay Area libraries, schools and labs. Says TMH: "It is a strange, sad and beautiful thing to find a 16mm film in a dumpster. It always means that some power-that-is has deemed celluloid obsolete. It is a call for action." During their 2004 residency at The Headlands Center for the Arts Project Space, TMH will finally have the time and space to inventory and present this luminous garbage. Composed of unfurled and arranged celluloid strips, film cans, reels and mechanical/natural light projections, the studio becomes an expanded cinema laboratory for synthesizing discoveries, a celebration of daily cine-exhumation. (Total Mobile Home was an integral part of the Cinemathequeís curatorial committee during 2002-03.)

Cinematheque member discount not available.
For advance tickets call 415-561-5012 or visit www.sffs.org

Incorporating keenly wrought observations, plundered educational films, hand-drawn animation, decaying celluloid or an eclectic array of optical techniques, the ten films in our annual co-presentation of recent experimental work bring to light concealed realities and unspoken emotions. Charlotte Pryceís Concerning Flight: Five Illuminations in Miniature, Julie Murrayís I Began to WishÖ and Thad Poveyís Metaphysical Education each transform their found footage into provocative existential meditations, while Kent Longís The Waves and Jeanne Liottaís Loretta use optical printing to highlight form and pattern. Master animator Robert Breerís What Goes Up; Brian Fryeís Observations at Gettysburg, 6 July 2002; Ernie Gehrís Passage; Rebecca Meyersí glow in the dark (january-june) and Bill Morrisonís Light is Calling each, in very distinct ways, highlight the passage of and through time, whether personal, historical or of celluloid itself. (Irina Leimbacher, Kathy Geritz)

Cinematheque member discount not available.
For advance tickets call 415-561-5012 or visit www.sffs.org

This international selection of experimental shorts features manipulations of appropriated footage, creations of alternate parallel worlds and meditations on the meaning of family. Films include Itís Not My Memory of It: Three Recollected Documents (Julia Meltzer & David Thorne) An investigation of secrecy, memory and classified documents; Papillon díamour (Nicolas Provost), a mesmerizing manipulation of Rashomon; imAgo (Nikos Veliotis) which questions televisionís role as a creator of idealized images; You Define Single File (Random Touch), a cryptic symbol-laden message from space; The Greater Vehicle (Robert Fox) An ode to group salvation through public transport; Martin (Bill Basquin), a formal study and a sociological vignette; Not Too Much Remember (Tony Gault), exploring the power of storytelling; Papa Blue (Charlene Shih), the story about a father and daughterís journeys through depression; and The Happy Three Family (Karen Vanderborght) a surreal spin on the biblical tale of The Three Wise Men. (Maia Cybelle Carpenter)

Historical panoramas were invented because people wanted to see many times and spaces at once, while cinema has from its inception also been a means to envision a more expansive and more detailed reality. Muybridge's motion studies, PainlevÈ's seahorses, and Brakhage's sea of nameless greens all realize Vertov's KINO EYE, extending human perception. The science of biomimetics tries to get machines to see how humans do, but tonightís artists use cinematic machines to see beyond the human and even induce the sense of a body that you don't have. Featuring Robert Schaller's My Life as a Bee, made with a pinhole camera; Kurt Kren's matte box virtuosity in Asyl; Urban Episodes by Steina, part of her "Machine Vision" series; Orkan Telhan's immersive virtual environment On Escape, and going straight from camera obscura to DV, Ernie Gehr's weightless Glider. (Konrad Steiner)

What if film is not necessarily a simulacrum of reality but a way of perceiving the space we inhabit? Our lives are spent on the split-level between the forms of architecture and movements of city planning: the inside of the city versus the outside of the city. Tonightís program is a curatorial experiment in reading the abstracted texts of urban spatial dynamics, exploring the notion that architecture equals the art of the frame and that the art of the frame equals film. Challenging the stability of presence and leading us on unexpected paths, these works explore the infamous opposition of architecture and the city planned, the world over. Featuring Icarus by Tirtza Even, Vacancy by Matthias M¸ller, Midtown by Sarah Morris, Invisible Cities by Julio Soto as well as Japan: Kesei Line Single Take by Ian Toews, Fall by Deirdre Logue and two by Jesper Fabricius: Arkitektur (Architecture) and Landsbykirker (Village Churches). (MaÔa Cybelle Carpenter)

"[P]hotographs remind us that landscape is not an act of fate but of human choice, and seem to ask, ëWhat would you like this landscape to become, bearing in mind what it was and what it is?í" (Philippe ArbaÔzar) The works in this program focus on re-presenting the ënaturalí landscape as a site of information exchanges. By framing the landscape and its horizon line, the image begins to function as site of potentials-a virtual space simultaneously inhabiting pasts, presents and futures. Included in the program is David Rimmer's Local Knowledge, Oskar Fischinger's Munich/Berlin Walking Trip, Steven Toppingís Reading Canada Backwards, Thomas Comerfordís Shaumberg, IL: Figures in the Landscape, Kurt Kren's Tree Again and Megan Michalak's Event Horizon. (MaÔa Cybelle Carpenter)

In celebration of Tuumba Pressí recent publication of Nathaniel Dorskyís new book Devotional Cinema (described by Kathleen Tyner as "a rare treasure of penetrating insight into the language of filmÖ somewhere between a Zen koan and a Victorian love story"), the Cinematheque presents A Childís Garden and the Serious Sea, the 1991 masterwork by Stan Brakhage, close friend of Dosrkyís and easily the most prolific filmmaker in the history of the medium. The first in the epic "Vancouver Island Quartet," a major series of luminous long form film poems which straddled the final decade of Brakhageís life, A Childís Garden is a visual meditation on the land- and seascape of Victoria Island, British Columbia and an imagined biography of Marilyn Brakhage through an envisioning of her childhood there. (Steve Polta)

Nguyen Tan Hoang kicks off Dialogues in the Dark: The Pleasures and Anxieties of Influence, a new series for which contemporary media provocateurs pair their own works with those of their avant-garde forebears. Vietnamese-American Hoang makes videos that raucously and provocatively subvert both pop culture and identity politics while simultaneously interrogating forms of desire in queer Asian male identities. Through playful and ironic re-appropriations of an eclectic array of images, he explores and explodes various forms desire, its mediatization and gay subjectivity. Tonight he presents four videos -his probings of homoerotic imagery in Forever Jimmy! and K.I.P., and the semi-autobiographically inspired The Calling (the priestly and the queer) and PIRATED! (boat child meets pirates)- as well as other works that have had an influence on his practice: Cecilia Doughertyís The Drama of the Gifted Child, Bruce and Norman Yonemotoís Vault, Richard Fungís Islands, Robert Blanchonís Letís Just Kiss + Say Goodbye and Clover Paekís We Got Moves You Ain't Even Heard Of (part one). (Irina Leimbacher)

Ross Lipman premieres The Interview, a taut psychological narrative exquisitely rendered in muted colors and with a soundtrack worthy of comparison to Bresson's best. Shot during Lipmanís years in San Francisco, it concerns a woman trying to pick up the trail of her past, by chance and through goodwill entering the life of a single mother, herself struggling to create a future in an era of downsizing. We will also be graced by two live performances, first by SF's own Julie Queen, singer and star of The Interview, then Lipman's preview of his narrated slide chronicle Rotherhithe (Keep Warm. Burn Britain!) a slice of lives in the addict/outcast/punk enclave known in anarchist circles as "Squatter's Paradise" in East London. Also screening The Gift- Michael Barrish screen test and Rhythm 93. (Konrad Steiner)

Many of Janie Geiserís films are like cinematic miniatures, evoking ambiguous narratives and cryptic worlds filled with primal yet elusive emotion. Through her delicate and deft animation of found objects, cut-out images and enigmatic female figures, she creates tiny dramas with immense resonance, often drawing from a ënoirí sensibility of anxiety and suspense. Tonight we will screen several of Geiserís works, including Spiral Vessel, Immer Zu, Lost Motion, Ultima Thule, The Fourth Watch and the Bay Area sneak preview of her new Terrace 49. These will be accompanied by films which have inspired or had a formal and emotional impact on her own work, including Ernie Gehrís Rear Window, Phil Solomonís Figure/Ground (The Snowman), a short piece by MeliËs and other surprises. (Irina Leimbacher)

Since the late ë60s, Morgan Fisher has made films which foreground the industrial basis of all filmmaking, ironically combining narrative and non-narrative forms and underscoring the common ground between the oft-unreconciled poles of the independently produced "experimental" film and industrially produced commercial product. In his first visit since 1985, Fisher (who has long worked in and been inspired by the film industry) will present his latest film, ( ) -a rigorously constructed homage to the unsung building block of narrative film language known as the insert shot-in the context of specifically chosen precursors and inspirations, the films --- ------- by Thom Andersen and Malcolm Brodwick, Arnulf Rainer by Peter Kubelka and Fisherís own 1974 film, Cue Rolls. (Steve Polta)

For more than twenty years, media archeologist Rick Prelinger has been investigating and interpreting ephemeral media forms, most famously educational and industrial film. Projects such as Our Secret Century, Call It Home and the Ephemeral Films series use this material as a means to expose twentieth-century trends such as the growth of the American middle class, the history of suburbia and the ever-rising tide of advertising and consumerism within post-war capitalism. Tonight, Prelinger presents Panorama Ephemera, which he describes as "a collage of sequences taken from a wide variety of industrial, advertising, educational and amateur films which traverses the conflicted landscapes of twentieth-century America and lets the filmsí often skewed visions construct a new American history that begins and ends in unexpected places." (Steve Polta)

Former San Francisco resident Jennifer Fieber returns from New York for her first in-person screening, along with Cinematheque staffer, filmmaker and audio artist Steve Polta. The luminous landscapes and abstracted urban structures of Fieberís films resonate with a disquieting tranquility, while Polta transposes his rhythmic and sometimes rancorous audio syncopations with sensuous renderings of micro-landscapes. Fieber will show her her films Letters are Yellow, Dual16, Their Idols Disintegrate, and her work-in-progress Swiss Alps. Polta will screen four new silent works, including the 16mm film Minnesota Landscape; three super-8 films: The Berries, 2001 in Oakland, and interval Oakland 99, all silent; and two older super-8 sound films, Estuary #1 and 1997C (Red Sketch). (Scott Stark)

Known throughout Europe for his wildly gestural, vibrantly colored abstract paintings, Basque artist JosÈ Antonio Sistiaga treats color and light as raw materials and sole subject matter in his large scale imersive canvasses, expressing a vigorous and confrontational attitude towards free and direct sensual experience. While actively painting since the 1950s, Sistiaga has since the ë60s assembled an equally masterful body of film work, virtually unknown in the United States. Tonight we screen Sistiagaís 1970 masterpiece and best-known film Ere Erera Baleibu Icik Subua Arauaren. Meticulously hand-painted over the course of two years the film is a silent, continuously transforming seventy minute experience of pure vibrating light and roiling texture-screened tonight as a brand new print, in all its 35mm Cinemascope glory! (Steve Polta)

Jean Rouch made hundreds of films, initiated a collaborative form of ethnographic cinema, was seminal for the French New Wave and coined the term cinÈma vÈritÈ with Edgar Morin in Chronicle of a Summer. He died in a car accident in Niger this year at the age of 86. As a tribute to his crucial role in breaking down borders between fact and fiction and acknowledging the power of improvisation, we present his early masterpiece and perhaps the first road movie, Jaguar (1954/67). Three Africans set off from rural Niger in search of jobs and adventure. Reaching the Gold Coast (now Ghana) shortly before the end of colonialism, they work in the ports, in the lumber trade or as market sellers, and become "jaguar," or "cool." As Rouch said, "Jaguar was funÖ we made it up as we went along." (Irina Leimbacher)

Screening of this six-and-a-half hour film will run from 2-5 pm, pause for a dinner break and continue from 6:30 until 10 pm.

Star Spangled to Death (1957/59-2003, 16mm film transferred to video) is Ken Jacobsí legendary and monumental paean to the pratfalls of patriotism and the mind-numbing consequences of conventional wisdom. Found materials as diverse as Nixonís "Checkers" speech, a Warner Brothers short publicizing the NRA, a neo-colonialist documentary about white explorers among African "savages," cartoons, scientific films, and many others are interspersed with clips of a young (pre-Flaming Creatures) Jack Smith and Jerry Sims making public spectacles of themselves in a variety of outrageous and devilishly-costumed performances. Shown in several versions since the late 1950s, the piece contains in its current version many new clips and is now considered by Jacobs to be "final." SSTD is a delirious, urbane and thoroughly entertaining diatribe about Americaís proud, willful and lethal rush toward cultural and political self-delusion. (Scott Stark)