SFCINEMATHEQUE

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Sunday, March 28, 1999

Compulsive Repetitions

An Evening with Martin Arnold

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts





The conventions of Hollywood filmmaking and its inherent repressions are the targets in Austrian filmmaker Martin Arnold’s trilogy of ratcheting cinematic deconstructions. Tonight, Arnold returns to San Francisco for the West Coast premiere of Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy, which fluidly mix scenes from three Garland/ Rooney vehicles into a brief summary, exposing their latent subtexts and creating sinister new narratives. Alone will be accompanied by pièce toucheé and passage á l’acte, Arnold’s two earlier examples of his frenetic analysis of kitsch culture and tour-de-force optical printing. “There is always something behind that which is being represented, which is not represented. And it is exactly that that is most interesting to consider.” “If pièce touchée expresses sexuality and passage à l’acte aggression, then perhaps Andy Hardy finds melancholia.” (MA)