SFCINEMATHEQUE

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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

RADICAL LIGHT

Bay Area Found Footage—from Junk to Funk to Punk

Victoria Theatre





Curated and presented by Craig Baldwin
presented in association with Pacific Film Archive and Oddball Film + Video
Gibbs Chapman, Steven Dye, William Farley, Kerry Laitala, Douglas Katelus, Thad Povey, Jay Rosenblatt, Greta Snider, Michael Wallin + program curator Craig Baldwin in person
[members: $5 / non-members: $10]

Among the rich and richly varied filmways of the Bay Area is that rather outré (or is it?) practice known as Found Footage filmmaking, a mode of production that’s enjoyed a peculiarly prominent place in the local heritage. Among the many reasons are the living legacy of Dada and anti-Art, a sense of Pop humor about the pre-fabricated, and, crucially, the no-budget, contrarian, yet generous impulses from the Beat, Hippie and Punk sub-cultures. A shifting matrix of life-styles, psycho-geographies, art- and social-histories—and a whole lotta creativity!—has enabled us to discover and share our own uses and meanings for things. A crafty imagination can still make its own way through an ever-more bewildering forest of signs—maybe even swing from those trees! This is what is both supremely ironic and profoundly redemptive about this ingenious bricolage aesthetic. (Craig Baldwin)

Thad Povey: Thine Inward-Looking Eyes (1993) 2 min. / Dean Snider: Stink (1984) 5 min. / Chick Strand: Cartoon le Mousse (1979) 15 min. / William Farley: Being (1975) 10 min. / Michael Wallin: Decodings (1988) 15 min. / Bruce Conner: Cosmic Ray (1961) 4 min. / Jay Rosenblatt: Prayer (2002) 3 min. / Greta Snider: Futility (1989) 9 min. / Kerry Laitala: Hallowed (2001) 11 min. / Gibbs Chapman: an examination of exhibits A(1) through E(5) (2001) 19 min. / Steven Dye: Zero (1996) 3 min. / David Sherman: Tuning the Sleeping Machine (1996) 13 min.

Download program notes