presented in association with Pacific Film Archive
[members: $5 / non-members: $10]
In the middle decades of the twentieth century, the 8mm and Super-8mm film formats were introduced to the consumer markets as amateur mediums, “simpler” alternatives to the more unwieldy 16mm gauge. These small-scale tools attracted artists as well, as much for the spontaneity they afforded to filming as for the fragility of their images and for the air of low-key intimacy implied in their exhibition, contributing to a body of cinematic reveries and expressive “diary films” directly in dialog with the home-movie aesthetic. Technical qualities of these “lesser” gauges (such as synchronous sound-on-film recording) presented artists with unique formal challenges and expressive options, as did the corresponding mid-century market for home-distributed “short-subject” reels, whose concerns ranged from feature-film digest to newsreel to porn. This program features Bay Area artists using these traditions to make diaries and personal responses to political themes, including work by Scott Stark, Jacalyn White, silt, Julie Murray, and Janis Crystal Lipzin. (Steve Anker)