presented in association with Pacific Film Archive
[members: $6 / non-members: $10]
The alchemical cinema of Phil Solomon surges and seethes like molten metal and breathes with rich animal fecundity. Consistently and paradoxically both subtle and heroic, Solomon’s films present screen space less as a window to be looked into than as a generative site in which evocative imagery is endlessly concealed and revealed within a constantly unstable ground. On the occasional of his first San Francisco appearance since 2001, Solomon appears in person to present his 2010 masterwork American Falls, an epic meditation on our nation’s collective myths and dreams, heroes and villains. Presented as a compendium of the past century’s most striking moments from the collective media consciousness (citing Chaplin, Keaton, Griffith and Zapruder among others) and organized into a resonating three-screen mural format, American Falls subsumes and overwhelms its viewer, simultaneously critiquing and embodying the tragic arc of success and failure inherent in the myth of American aspiration. Program will also include Solomon’s Remains to Be Seen (1989/1994) and the very rare As If We (1979). (Steve Polta)
[Facebook event here]
Saturday, October 19, 2013, 12:00 am