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40
YEARS IN FOCUS
Taking
advantage of our recent 40th Anniversary as an opportunity to
re-visit high points of Cinematheque's exhibition history, 40
Years In Focus will present highlights of the scores of films
and filmmakers we were privileged to present over the years. Part
Two: 1971-1981 covers a period of sustained financial and institutional
stability, and includes the Program Directorships of Vincent Grenier(1974-75),
Carmen Vigil(1975-82) and Charles Wright(1975-77). Grenier produced
6 calendars of events in his one year of activity, Wright and
Vigil produced 18 together over two years together, and Vigil
was produced 28 calendars by himself alone over the next four
years. A precursor to the History of Bay Area Experimental Film
and Video series planned for 2003 by Pacific Film Archive and
Cinematheque, 40 Years In Focus will be presented in four sections
spanning each decade. The series is curated by Steve Anker unless
otherwise noted.
Saturdays
& Sundays
San Francisco Art Institute (unless otherwise noted) San
Francisco Cinematheque: 40 Years In Focus, Part Two, 1971-1981
Saturday,
February 9 at 7:30 pm
Maverick Feature Filmmakers
Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. & Tati's Mr. Hulot's Holiday
Buster
Keaton and Jacques Tati, two masters of visual comedy, were
among the many feature-length narrative filmmakers Cinematheque
presented during the decade. Sherlock, Jr. is a wonderful fantasy
with Keaton as a projectionist who enters the film he is showing,
and Mr. Hulot's Holiday is a tour-de-force burlesque of a modern-day
vacation.
Saturday, February 16 at 7:30pm
San Francisco Art Institute
The Queer Avant-Garde
This
decade saw the full maturation of a parallel avant-garde to
the avant-garde, an out-of-the-closet queer cinema that celebrated
sexual difference and unconventional film form. Su Friedrich's
Gently Down The Stream, Michael Wallin's The Place Between Our
Bodies, Tom Chomont's Oblivion, James Broughton's Hermes Bird,
Barbara Hammer's Multiple Orgasm, and Curt McDowell's Confessions.
Sunday, February 17 at 7:30 pm
San Francisco Art Institute
The Magic of Chemicals: Roger Jacoby/Lee
Krist
Lee Krist In Person
Roger
Jacoby appeared several times at Cinematheque before his life
was abruptly ended from AIDS complications, but his fervent
passion for hand-processing and expressive camera work still
reverberate and influence young filmmakers today. New York-based
Lee Krist will show a selection of his own Jacoby-inspired films,
made from his own emulsion and processing fluids and then projected
with a hand-cranked 35mm projector. Krist will show Roger's
Kunst Life I-III and How To Be A Homosexual, Part II.
Saturday, March 2, at 7:30pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Hollis Frampton's Hapax Legomena
From
1976 through 1980 Hollis Frampton visited Cinematheque on five
occasions, each time screening entire programs of new films
from his highly productive career. Not screened at Cinematheque
in its entirety since his very first visit in April 1976, Hapax
Legomena is a seven-part investigation of the specific conditions
of cinematic representation and the limitations and paradoxes
of visual description and narrative. Hapax Legomena includes
nostalgia, Travelling Matte, Critical Mass, Special Effects,
Poetic Justice, Ordinary Matter and Remote Control. (Steve Polta)
Sunday, March 3 at 7:30 pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Women Filmmakers of the Seventies
Tonight's
program offers an overview of the fertile contribution women
artists were making to independent, avant-garde filmmaking by
the Seventies, ranging from wickedly funny psychodramas to thoughtful
explorations of cinematic form. Films: Barbara Linkevitch's
Chinamoon, Gunvor Nelson's Take Off, Anne Severson's Near The
Big Chakra, Dore O's Kaskara, Sandra Davis' Maternal Filigree,
Martha Haslanger's Lived Time and Barbara Hammer and Barbara
Klutinis' Pools. (Steve Anker)
March 9 at 7:30pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Maverick Feature Filmmakers
Jon Jost's Speaking Directly: Some American Notes
Jon
Jost made five appearances at Cinematheque between 1971-81.
Jost's first feature-length film, Speaking Directly: Some American
Notes (1973), is a wry personal essay made a few years after
his 27-month stint in prison for draft dodging. Made in Montana
on a miniscule budget, this critique of America in the early
70s is brilliantly idiosyncratic reflection on society, filmmaking
and how one chooses to live one's life. (Irina Leimbacher)
Sunday, March 10 at 7:30 pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Chick Strand in the '70s
The
seventies was Chick Strand's most prolific period, featuring
some of her most accomplished and endearing work. Tonight's
selection exhibits a wide variety of cinematic concerns: Cosas
de Mi Vida, Elasticity, Cartoon le Mousse and Guacamole. (Program
and note by Carmen Vigil)
March 14, 16 and 17
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Cinematheque:
Four Decades of Film & Video
Sponsored and presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art
The
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will salute the Cinematheque
with a historical overview of five programs highlighting some
of the notable films and videos Cinematheque premiered or championed
throughout four decades of activity.
Thursday,
March 14 at 7:30 pm
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Program 1 The New Generation: A Celebration
of Recent
Bay
Area Films & Videos The series begins with a program of films
and videos highlighting some of the younger Bay Area experimental
moving-image artists frequently represented at the Cinematheque.
Installations: Michael Rudnick's Animated Glasses, Lynn Marie
Kirby's Photons in Paris: Image Encoding. Film and Video Screening:
Steve Polta's Estuary #1 (Constant Passage), silt's Pieces of
a River Shore, Greta Snider's Flight, Kerry Laitala's Hallowed,
Thad Povey's Thine Inward-Looking Eyes, Rodney Ascher's Somebody
Goofed, John Muse and Jeanne C. Finley's Language Lessons, Konrad
Steiner's Bum Series and Michael Rosas-Walsh's Lake Orion.
Saturday,
March 16 at 1:30 pm
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Program 2: 1961-1971 - Canyon Cinema Years
This program features work by pioneering Bay Area artists whose
art and presence had an impact on early activities of Canyon
Cinematheque (as it was then known), as well as two by prominent
non-locals filmmakers: Here I Am by Bruce Baillie, Angel Blue
Sweet Wings by Chick Strand, FFFTCM by Will Hindle, Schmeerguntz
by Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley, Third Eye Butterfly (for
double projection) by Storm De Hirsch, Arnulf Rainer by Peter
Kubelka, The White Rose by Bruce Conner and July '71 in San
Francisco, Living at Beach Street, Working at Canyon Cinema,
Swimming in the Valley of the Moon by Peter Hutton.
Saturday,
March 16 at 4 pm
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Program 3: 1971-1981 - Outside Influences
and Local Masters
Reflecting Cinematheque's shift from a primarily local exhibitor
to one equally incorporating artists working nationally and
internationally, this program focuses on the concentrated and
stylistically formal approach to films which increasingly dominated
Cinematheque programs during these years: Night Movie #1 (Self
Portrait) by Diana Barrie, The Bladderwort Document by Janis
Crystal Lipzin, Flight of Shadows by Michael Mideke, The Riddle
of Lumen by Stan Brakhage, Fuji by Robert Breer, Shift by Ernie
Gehr, 31/75: Asyl by Kurt Kren, Masquerade by Lawrence Jordan,
The Gardener of Eden by James Broughton and Joel Singer and
Hollis Frampton's Gloria!
Sunday,
March 17 at 1:30 pm
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Program 4: 1981-1991 - Generation Shifts
This
decade saw the emergence of a generation of filmmakers who turned
their attentions away from strictly formal artistic explorations
to personal and political concerns, including re-examination
of narrative traditions. The decade also saw the emergence of
film performance installation and the first instance of Cinematheque's
exhibition of video: Covert Action by Abigail Child, Peggy and
Fred in Hell (Prologue) by Leslie Thornton, Recuerdos de Flores
Muertas by Willie Varela, Martina's Playhouse by Peggy Ahwesh,
Migration of the Blubberoids by George Kuchar, Splash by Thomas
Allen Harris, and Measures of Distance by Mona Hatoum.
Sunday,
March 17 at 4 pm
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Program 5: 1991-2000 - Cinema in Reflection
The
films on this program are deeply reflective works on particularities
of cinematic space, and the majority are makers who emerged
during these last ten years: Gunvor Nelson's Time Being, Phil
Solomon's Figure/Ground (The Snowman), Janie Geiser's The Fourth
Watch, David Sherman's Tuning the Sleeping Machine, Luis Recoder's
Magenta 1, Martin Arnold's passage à l'acte, Peter Tscherkasskey's
Outer Space, Cade Bursell's Skate, Jeanne Liotta's Muktikara,
Shuo-wen Hsiao's Intrude Sanctuary, and Ken Jacobs' Georgetown
Loop.
|
from
Martin Arnold's passage à l'acte |
Friday-Sunday,
March 22-24
San Francisco Art Institute
A Brakhage Weekend II
With
fifty-nine programs over the last forty years devoted exclusively
to his work, Stan Brakhage is by far the most-screened Cinematheque
filmmaker. Twenty-five of these took place in the years 1971
through 1981, with four evenings of personal visits. Four seasonal
weekends devoted to works of this highly influential filmmaker,
highlighting major works from his career, will continue through
2002, in tribute to his fifty years of uninterrupted filmmaking.
Friday,
March 22 at 7:30 pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Stan Brakhage's "The Text of Light"
Brakhage's
first sustained foray into complete abstraction, The Text ofLight
is an epic adventure in perception, a meditation on the variancies
of
vision and a discovery of entirely new worlds within everyday
objects.Also: Two Super-8 films: Desert and Sketches. (Steve
Polta)
Saturday,
March 23 at 7:30pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Stan Brakhage: Short Films: 1971-1981
"He
Was Born, He Suffered, He Died"; @; The Shores of Phos:
A Fable; The Wold Shadow; RR; Sincerity I; Nightmare Series
Sunday,
March 24 at 7:00 pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Stan Brakhage: The Complete Arabic Numeral
Series
The
Arabic Numeral Series, a series of twenty films ranging from
five to thirty-two minutes in length, "inspired and governed
by strata of the mind's moving-visual-thinking," abstract films
using pure color and light suggesting internal worlds of non-linguistic
experience, thoughts on the verge of appearance. (Steve Polta)
Saturday, March 30 at 5:00pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Panel: Cinematheque In The Seventies
Supported by the San Francisco Film Commission
Admission $1
Former
Program Director Vincent Grenier established a strong curatorial
direction and voice for Cinematheque screenings that later Program
Directors Charles Wright and Carmen Vigil (later Vigil alone)
sustained throughout the decade. Join Grenier, Wright, Vigil,
late-seventies Administrative Manager Jon Livingston, filmmaker
and curator Janis Crystal Lipzin and moderator Steve Anker for
a discussion focusing on hot issues which remain essential today:
what were pros and cons of directing much of the programming
away from a primarily grass-roots community; of seeking (and
getting) funding support; and of a greater degree of institutionalization?
Sunday,
Saturday & Sunday,
March 31, April 6 & 7 at 7:30 pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Personal Selections by Carmen Vigil
The
seventies remains one of the richest periods in the history
of film art. During the decade covered by these three programs,
the older masters such as Brakhage, Conner, Breer, Strand and
Broughton had become teachers in universities and art schools
and were beginning to produce mature works. The young ones were
producing new energetic works taking the art of cinema to the
next stage. (Programs and notes by Carmen Vigil)
Sunday,
March 31 at 7:30 pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Personal Selections by Carmen Vigil
Program 1: The British Invasion
The
seventies was a period of ferment for British filmmaking. During
this time filmmakers visited the U.S. and challenged narrative
form by using the forces of nature and landscape in entirely
new ways. Program includes: After Lumiére: L'Arroseur Arrose
and Time and Motion Study by Malcolm Legrice, Condition of Illusion
by Peter Gidal, Sheppard's Bush by Mike Leggett and Chris Welsby's
Seven Days.
Saturday, April 6 at 7:30 pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Personal Selections by Carmen Vigil
Program 2
What's
Wrong With This Picture, Parts 1 and 2 by Owen Land, Breath
by Andrej Zdravic, Chuck Hudina's Bicycle, Michael Mideke's
Goats, Cargo of Lure by Jim Hoberman, Gulls & Buoys by Robert
Breer, Barn Rushes by Larry Gottheim and Picture and Sound Rushes
by Morgan Fisher.
Sunday, April 7 at 7:30 pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Personal Selections by Carmen Vigil
Program 3: The British Invasion
Divided
Loyalties by Warren Sonbert, Visible Inventory Nine: Pattern
of Events by Janis Crystal Lipzin, Rainbird by Michael Mideke,
An Evening at Home by Gail Camhi, Porter Springs 3 by Henry
Hills, Cants from Natural History Works by Gary Adkins and Pat
O'Neill's Foregrounds.
Saturday, April 13 at 2:00pm & 8:00pm
Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street
40 Years In Focus: Andy Warhol's The Chelsea
Girls
In
the 1970s, underground Superstar Ondine visited the Bay Area
several times screening films from Andy Warhol's "film factory"
in which he was featured. The memories of these visits will
hopefully be evoked with this special screening of Warhol's
1966 classic The Chelsea Girls at San Francisco's own Castro
Theatre. A sprawling parody of the Hollywood melodrama, this
double-projected camp classic simultaneously screens scenes
from the decadent and desperate downtown lives of Warhol's art
world entourage, in garish color and gritty black and white.
Expect to see outrageously improvised "performances" by Nico,
Eric Emerson, International Velvet, Brigid Polk, Mary Woronov,
filmmaker Marie Menken, and Pope Ondine himself! Soundtrack
features a rare live recording of the Velvet Underground. (Steve
Polta)
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Andy Warhol's The Chelsea Girls |
Sunday, April 14 at 7:30 pm
San Francisco Art Institute
Some Odd Items: Personal Selections by
Charles Wright
This
is an assortment of lesser-known pieces, eclectic beyond the
scope of any unified theory. If you nod off during one of them,
the next one may wake you up. In other words, it resembles many
of the evenings at the Canyon Cinematheque in the early seventies.
Then, as now, audiences were reminded that film (like life)
is a wide-open field. Herb De Grass's Film Watchers, Standish
Lawder's Eleven Different Horses, Ainslie Pryor's Angel Camomile,
Helene Kaplan's Rose and Seymour at Home in Queens, Victor Faccinto's
Where Did It Come All From? Where Is It All Going?, David Gerstein's
As the Sun Goes Down, A Hole Appears in the Sky, Barry Spinello's
Six Loop-Paintings, Charles and Ray Eames's Powers of Ten, David
Rimmer's Canadian Pacific, Will Hindle's Pasteur3 (Charles Wright)
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