July 18, 19 and 26 – The Robert Frank Film Series!

The Robert Frank Film Series

This July we interrupt our traditional summer hiatus because of this exciting three-part series in conjunction with MOCA and Cinefamily.  The first of four screenings was held on June 21 at MOCA, and the final three will be held at the Silent Movie Theatre (July 18) and the Egyptian Theater (July 19 and 26).  Please note that times and locations vary from our normal programming.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Robert Frank’s landmark publication, The Americans, and in conjunction with MOCA’s exhibition From the Permanent Collection: Robert Frank’s “The Americans,” MOCA collaborates with Cinefamily and Los Angeles Filmforum to present a rare series of films by and about the renowned photographer. This series is curated by Adam Hyman.

July 18 – Early Films by Robert Frank (at the Silent Movie Theatre)

July 19 – Films By and About Robert Frank (at the Egyptian Theater)

July 26 – Recent Films by Robert Frank (at the Egyptian Theater)

July 26 – Recent Films by Robert Frank

Sunday July 26, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum and MOCA present
Recent Films by Robert Frank

True Story (2004)

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Robert Frank’s landmark publication, The Americans, and in conjunction with MOCA’s exhibition From the Permanent Collection: Robert Frank’s “The Americans,” MOCA collaborates with Cinefamily and Los Angeles Filmforum to present a rare series of films by and about the renowned photographer.

The first screening on June 21 at MOCA was entitled Portraits of Robert Frank, while the second screening on July 18 at the Silent Movie Theatre will feature Frank’s early work.  The third screening, at the Egyptian on July 19, features Films By and About Robert Frank.  And for this final screening, MOCA and Los Angeles Filmforum present a selection of Robert Frank’s newest films, some never screened in Los Angeles.

The Present (1996, 24 min.) is a thoughtful self-portrait in which Frank contemplates his relationships, his daughter’s death, his son’s mental illness, and his own work.

I Remember (1998, color, 5 min.), Frank recreates his visit to the home of Alfred Stieglitz, with wife June Leaf playing Georgia O’Keeffe, artist Jerome Sother playing Frank, and Frank himself in the role of Stieglitz.

Paper Route (2002)

Paper Route (2002, 23 min.) finds Frank accompanying Robert MacMillan on his early-morning paper route in rural Nova Scotia, creating a video portrait of the lives of ordinary people.

True Story (2004)

True Story (2004, color and b/w, 26 min.), returns to familiar themes of memory and loss, as the artist candidly reflects on his work, his wife’s artwork, and letters written by his son, Pablo, who died in 1994.

July 19 – Films by and about Robert Frank

Sunday July 19 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum and MOCA present
Films By and About Robert Frank

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Robert Frank’s landmark publication, The Americans, and in conjunction with MOCA’s exhibition From the Permanent Collection: Robert Frank’s The Americans, MOCA collaborates with Cinefamily and Los Angeles Filmforum to present a rare series of films by and about the renowned photographer.

The first screening, Portraits of Robert Frank, was held at MOCA on June 21.  The second screening featuring Frank’s early films will be held at the Silent Movie Theatre on Saturday July 18.  This third of four screenings features Films By and About Robert Frank.  It includes:

Fire in the East: A Portrait of Robert Frank (1986, color, 28 min) which looks at four decades of Frank’s life and career and includes interviews with such collaborators as Allen Ginsberg and Jonas Mekas.

O. K. End Here (1963, b/w, 30 min) Frank’s portrait of a New York City couple spending an intimate Sunday together, was honored with the grand prize at the 1963 Bergamo Film Festival.

Flamingo (1997, 7 min.) is Frank’s video diary of the construction of a new foundation for his house in a remote area of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

In Sanyu (1999, 27 min.), Frank memorializes his friend Sanyu (1901–1964), an important Chinese artist who died in anonymity in Paris.

Don’t miss the third Frank show on Sunday July 26th at the Egyptian Theatre!

July 18 – Early Films by Robert Frank (at the Silent Movie Theatre)

Saturday July 18, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax (at Melrose)

Los Angeles Filmforum and Cinefamily present
Early Films by Robert Frank

** PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE IN DATE, LOCATION AND PRICE **

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Robert Frank’s landmark publication, The Americans, and in conjunction with MOCA’s exhibition From the Permanent Collection: Robert Frank’s “The Americans,” MOCA collaborates with Cinefamily and Los Angeles Filmforum to present a rare series of films by and about the renowned photographer.

For this second screening of four, MOCA and Cinefamily present an evening of early films by Robert Frank. Films will include:

Pull My Daisy (1959, b/w, 28 min.), directed by Frank and Alfred Leslie from a script by Jack Kerouac, is a classic work of avant-garde cinema, revolving around a group of poets (Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso) who question a bishop (Richard Bellamy) and his mother (Alice Neel) about art, poetry, and everyday life.

Me and My Brother (1965-68, re-edited 1997, b/w and color, 91 min.), Frank’s first feature-length film, blends documentary footage of Ginsberg and Orlovsky with fictional constructs as it explores the inner and outer worlds of Julius Orlovsky, a catatonic who silently observes the world around him. The film was re-edited in 1997 to mark Ginsberg’s passing.

Admission for this screening is $12.  Visit http://www.cinefamily.org for details.

June 21 – Sarah Pucill at the Echo Park Film Center

Sunday June 21, 2009, 7:30 pm

Echo Park Film Center and Los Angeles Filmforum present
Sarah Pucill: Taken by the Frame – Los Angeles premieres!
At the Echo Park Film Center
1200 N. Alvarado Street (@ Sunset Blvd)  Los Angeles, CA 90026

Stages of Mourning

213-484-8846
info@echoparkfilmcenter.org
http://www.echoparkfilmcenter.org/

The Echo Park Film Center and Los Angeles Filmforum host British artist, photographer  and filmmaker Sarah Pucill. Pucill’s films and photographs play with boundaries of self and other, frequently involving mirrors or mirroring and strong performances.  Sometimes rigorously formal, other times humorously enamored with the possibilities of light, surfaces, and bodies, while exploring the range of possibilities vested in the camera.  Los Angeles premieres of all works from this award-winning experimental filmmaker.

Tonight we’ll be screening:
You Be Mother (1990, 7 min., 16mm, color)
Best Experimental Film Award, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Germany
Best Innovation Award, Atlanta Film Festival, USA
Milk and Glass (1993, 10 min., 16mm, color)
Stages of Mourning (2004, 17 min., 16mm, color)
Taking My Skin (2006, 35 min., 16mm, b&w)
Marion McMahon Award, Images Festival, Toronto, Canada (2007)
Fall In Frame (2009, 18 min., 16mm, color)

Fall in Frame

“The process of making is the starting point for my work, in which space and point of view have been longstanding concerns as has the (female) body. In my early short films and photographs I explored the relation between the body and domestic space. I worked with photomontage in You Be Mother, Milk and Glass, and later in Swollen Stigma and Cast, with wide-angle point-of-view shots and a macro lens. Developed out of this, my films from Stages of Mourning onward have incorporated a performance that is important with regard to its symbolic and cathartic value. There is an existential element to the slow pacing of the performance that confronts the viewer (and performer) with what it means to be in front of a camera, where the moment is being marked as an image outside of time. This approach to filmmaking runs counter to commercial film techniques, where the actual place of filming (the pro-filmic) is not only not repressed but is brought to the fore as a central characteristic of the film.” – Sarah Pucill

You Be Mother

More on Sarah Pucill:

http://sarahpucill.co.uk/

Sarah Pucill’s films have been screened at major international film festivals including: London Film Festival, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Osnabruck Media Arts Festival and Montreal Festival of New Cinema.  Television broadcasts include: BSB TV Australia (Mirrored Measure, 1996; bought by BSB), Carlton Television (Backcomb, 1995; funded by Carlton), Granada TV (You Be Mother, 1990).   Retrospective screenings include the Tate, the Lux and N.W.Here in London and the Millennium Film in New York.  This June a retrospective of her films which will premier her recent film Fall In Frame, 2009, will tour North America at venues including Anthology Film Archives, NY, MassArt Film Society, Boston and Pleasure Dome Toronto.

Funded by AHRC and the Arts Council, her previous film Blind Light, 2007 premiered at Millennium Film, NY in 07 and was shown at the European Media Arts Festival Osnabruck, Aurora Art Festival, Norwich and at the Louise T Blouin Foundation in 08.  Taking My Skin was recipient of the Marion McMahon Award at the Images Festival in Toronto 2007 and was shown as part of ‘Mother Cuts: Experiments in Film, Video & Photography’ at New Jersey University Gallery in 2008 together with work by Mona Hatoum and Mary Kelly.

Sarah Pucill lives and works in London and is Senior Lecturer at University of Westminster since 2000. Her work is distributed through Lux, The British Film Institute (BFI), British Council, New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Canyon Cinema, the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC) and Light Cone Paris.

An essay by Sarah Pucill on her work:
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=359043&Itemid=755

Filmography
Fall In Frame (2009, 18 min., 16mm, color)
Blind Light (2007, 22 min., 16mm, color)
Just Like All The Rest (2007, 7 min., DV, color) Collaboration with Marcia Farquhar 12 Shooters
Taking My Skin (2006, 35 min., 16mm, b&w)
Marion McMahon Award, Images Festival, Toronto, Canada (2007)
Stages of Mourning (2004, 20 min., 16mm, color)
Cast (2000, 17 min., 16mm, b&w)
Swollen Stigma (1998, 20 min., 16mm, color)
Mirrored Measure (1996, 10 min., 16mm, b&w)
Backcomb (1995, 6 min., 16mm, color)
Milk and Glass (1993, 10 min., 16mm, color)
You Be Mother (1990, 7 min., 16mm, color)
Best Experimental Film Award, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Germany
Best Innovation Award, Atlanta Film Festival, USA
‘Wicked Women and Wayward Girls’, BFI compilation tape, distributed by Connoisseur Video

June 7 – The Festival of (In)Appropriation

Sunday June 7, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum presents
The Festival of (In)appropriation: Contemporary Found Footage Filmmaking (click for full show page)
Curated by Jaimie Baron and Andrew Hall

Flicker On Off (2008)

Whether you call it collage, compilation, found footage, detournement, or recycled cinema, the incorporation of previously shot materials into new artworks is a practice that has generated novel juxtapositions of elements which have produced new meanings and ideas that may not have been intended by the original makers, that are, in other words “inappropriate.” This act of appropriation may produce revelation that leads viewers to reconsider the relationship between past and present, here and there, intention and subversion. Fortunately for our purposes, the past decade has seen the emergence of a wealth of new sources for audiovisual materials that can be appropriated into new works. In addition to official state and commercial archives, vernacular archives, home movie collections, and digital archives have provided fascinating source material that may be repurposed in such a way as to give it new meanings and resonances.

In this program, we bring together a selection of recent films that appropriate footage from diverse sources in vastly different ways. Our goal in choosing these films is to show the range of approaches contemporary filmmakers are taking in repurposing found materials. Indeed, tonight’s films push the boundaries of the “found footage” film, raising questions about how we define “found footage” filmmaking in an era in which ever more materials are available for reuse in ever more complex ways. We believe that together, these films reveal how (in)appropriation is flourishing at this social and historical moment. – Jaimie Baron and Andrew Hall

Khan (2008)

Khan by Daniel Martinico (2008, video, color, sound, 15-min. loop)
“William Shatner, twitching and tweaking in various poses, occasionally screaming out Khan’s name.” (Daniel Martinico)

The Blockbuster Tapes by Daniel Martinico (2008, video, 5 min.)
“This ‘film’ serves as the documentation of a project completed between 1999-2002. Over a period of 3 years, over 100 videos were rented from Blockbuster, manipulated, re-recorded back onto tape, and returned to the store.” (Daniel Martinico)

Through these Trackless Waters by Elizabeth Henry (2007, 16mm, color, sound, 12:30 min.)
“In the tradition of the collage film, a series of fragments add up to a meditation on the state of nature in which ecology of mind meets ecology of earth, and vice versa.” (Elizabeth Henry)

Time Away (2007)

Utopia Variations by Gregg Biermann (2008, video, sound, 5 min.)
“Utopia Variations is part of a series of video works that use the computational capacity of computers to transform iconic moments in works of classical Hollywood cinema. In this piece the “over the rainbow” sequence from The Wizard of Oz moves forward from the beginning and backwards from the end in half second intercuts. This gradually builds to a 25 voice split-screen canon in which each voice is slightly out of synch. The resulting matrix is mesmerizing, kaleidoscopic.” (Gregg Biermann)

Time Away by Aubriand a.k.a. Carole O’Brien (2007, video, color, sound, 7:15 min.)
“Roads as far as the eye can see. Signposts are glimpsed and people from another time are lost, en route to inner worlds of the mind…Debating the nature of time, three voices navigate the continuously moving space and lead us through grief to the transformative end of the road: time away changes what you thought you knew.” (Aubriand)

The Game by Tasman Richardson (2007, video, color, sound, 3:52 min.)
“A world of remote control warfare, hyper-reality, and military crafted videogames for recruitment. Emilio Estevez, Matthew Broderick and even Burroughs join in. All edits are strictly JAWA style, a.k.a. what you see is what you hear and the edits are 100% responsible for the rhythm and melody. Nothing added and nothing synched. Most importantly, this is done entirely with manual cut and paste and layering. No triggers, no shortcuts. Pure JAWA.” (Tasman Richardson)

Her Heart is Washed in Water and Then Weighed (Sasha Waters Freyer, 2006, 12:45 min., 16mm)
“Her Heart is Washed in Water and Then Weighed is a meditation on motherhood and mortality that takes its title from a procedure in the autopsying of a human corpse. Subtle juxtapositions evoke parallels between static monuments and living families and suggests what is lost to time and age.” (Sasha Waters)

TB TX Dance by Roger Beebe (2006, 16mm, 2:30 min.)
“The background of the image is made of patterns of dots directly laser printed on clear leader. That background also doubles as an optical soundtrack with different pitches created by the density of the dots. The dots were inspired by the stockings Toni Basil (‘Antonia Christina Basilotta’) wore in Bruce Conner’s Breakaway in 1966, which also serves as the source footage for the dancer in the film. Toni Basil herself is a source of inspiration for all 30-somethings who haven’t yet made enough of their lives. (She was 39 when ‘Mickey’ was a hit in 1982.” (Roger Beebe)

Untitled (“Tiny Bits”) by Sandra Gibson (2009, 16mm, color, silent, 3 min.)
“Bits and Pieces of film are chopped up and reconfigured in the optical printer. A ‘slide show’ of sorts that moves from fast-to-slow to slow down the tempo of perception.” (Sandra Gibson)

windshield baby gameboy movie (2009)

windshield baby gameboy movie by Clint Enns, (2009, video, color, sound, 1:47 min.)
“Images of a car crash are digitally interpreted using a Nintendo Gameboy Camera. This video is an attempt to demonstrate the inherently dehumanized nature of video game images.” (Clint Enns)

Intermittent Delight by Akosua Adoma Owusu (2006, 4:20 min.)
“Intermittent Delight juxtaposes close-ups of batik textiles, fashion and design from the 1950s and 1960s, images of men weaving and women sewing in Ghana, and fragments of a Westinghouse 1960s commercial – aimed to instruct women on the how-to of refrigerator decoration. Constructed from a combination of 1960s Afrobeat, traditional Asanta Adwa music, and field recordings of West African men and women producing cloths and garments, the soundtrack pulls the piece together and imbues it with a jolty and festive tone.” (Akosua Adoma Owusu)

Intermittent Delight (2006)

Flicker On Off by Caroline Koebel (2008, video, b&w and color, sound, 20:12 min.)
“Flicker On Off is a trilogy applying the idiom of experimental film and artist’s video to big budget movies in order to speak about world affairs in which could be described as an alternative format.” (Caroline Koebel) Part I: Repeat Photography and the Albedo Effect (8:12 min.), Part II: Sunroof (Bhutto Benazir Assassination) (6:10 min.), Part III: All the House (Haditha Massacre) (5:50 min.)

Speechless by Scott Stark (2008, 16mm, color, sound, 13 min.)
“3D photographs of human vulvae are animated and interwoven with surfaces and textures from natural and human-made environments. The genital images were taken from a set of Viewmaster 3D reels that accompanied a textbook entitled The Clitoris, published in 1976 by two medical professionals.” (Scott Stark) Sound by Greg Headley.
*Note: This film is extremely graphic and probably not appropriate for children. In addition, the editing made at least one of the curators feel sick to her stomach.

Total Running Time (with 10 min. intermission): 100 min.

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.

Three upcoming shows in late May!

The end of May is looking VERY exciting for LA Filmforum as we bring you the following three amazing shows:

May 27 – Restoring the Los Angeles Avant-Garde: Thom Andersen and Morgan Fisher

May 29 – Restoring the Los Angeles Avant-Garde: Things Are Always Going Wrong

May 31 – Dialogues by Owen Land, LA premiere with Owen Land in person!

May 31 – Dialogues by Owen Land, LA Premiere with Owen Land in person!

Sunday May 31, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Dialogues, by Owen Land – Los Angeles Premiere!
Owen Land in person!

Dialogues (2009)

Filmforum is delighted to welcome back legendary filmmaker Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow) for the official Los Angeles premiere of his newest work Dialogues.

On one level, Dialogues (2009, 133 mins, video) is a parody of Scorpio Rising, using era-specific hit records to locate scenes in time; on another level, it’s an interpretation of Plato’s dialogue ‘Phaedo’, in which Socrates proves the doctrine of re-incarnation; on still another level, it is a polemic for the Tantric belief in the sacredness of male-female polarity in the form  of thirty “Platonic Dialogues.”  Rated R: Restricted to audiences with a knowledge of Art History.  – Owen Land

Dialogues is a feature-length self-reflexive experimental film by Apollo Jize (aka Owen Land) with music by the American Buddhist composer Meredith Monk, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Yonkers, New York:

Dialogues (2009)

It was raining torrents in Torrance
But she had no rain insurance
She said to a molester
I’ll go back to Westchester
It never rains at Sarah Lawrence
But, alas, she finally went bonkers
Because it was raining in Yonkers
– Owen Land

More on Owen Land:

Owen Land, formerly known as George Landow, was one of the most original and celebrated American filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s.

Dialogues (2009)

His early materialist works anticipated Structural Film, the definition of which provoked his rejection of film theory and convention. Having first explored the physical qualities of the celluloid strip itself in FILM IN WHICH THERE APPEAR … and BARDO FOLLIES, his attention turned to the spectator in a series of ‘literal’ films that question the illusionary nature of cinema through the use of word play and optical ambiguity.

His two most complex films are WIDE ANGLE SAXON, in which a man has a spiritual revelation during an avant-garde screening at the Walker Art Center, and ON THE MARRIAGE BROKER JOKE, whose disparate cast of characters include two pandas discussing, and making, an avant-garde film about the marketing of Japanese salted plums. Both are models of the unconscious process, with loose narratives that bring together a variety elements through visual and verbal humour.

May 29 – Restoring the Los Angeles Avant-Garde: Things Are Always Going Wrong

Friday May 29, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum, Wilshire at Westwood

Los Angeles Filmforum, UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Hammer Museum present
Restoring the Los Angeles Avant-Garde: Things Are Always Going Wrong
New Restorations of Los Angeles Experimental Films
Pat O’Neill, Grahame Weinbren, Fred Worden, David Wilson, Roberta Friedman and Academy preservationist Mark Toscano in person!
FREE Admission!

**NOTE THE CHANGE IN DATE, LOCATION, AND PRICE**

Venusville (1973)

Since its formal inception in 1992, the Academy Film Archive has been working diligently to preserve and restore independent and experimental films. However, over the last five years, the Academy Archive has trained an additional focus on the work of Los Angeles-based artists.

As more films have come to the Academy, and more have been preserved or restored, a fascinating portrait of the Los Angeles avant-garde scene has begun to emerge. While films produced by artists in New York and San Francisco have historically been given an inordinate precedence in accounts of such work, an astonishingly diverse and extensive world of vital avant-garde filmmaking was–and still is–going on right here.  Accordingly, the title of this special two-night screening series has a double meaning.

All of the films presented in this program are by Los Angeles artists featuring prints restored by the Academy and making their Los Angeles restoration premieres. But in addition to highlighting the important work of the Academy–and by this selection of film artists, in particular–this series aims to contribute to the growing recognition of Los Angeles, then and now, as a significant center of avant-garde production.

By the Sea (1963, 10 min., 16mm, B/W, sound)
Directed by Pat O’Neill and Robert Abel
Organic and inorganic forms observed and captured at Muscle Beach are flattened onto slides beneath carefully applied cover slips and prepared for closer examination.

Throbs (1972, 7 min., 16mm, color, sound)
Directed by Fred Worden
Demonstrating a remarkable subtlety and restraint, Fred Worden explores the small epiphanies and nuanced areas of visual delight resulting from the energies created by a vibrant chemical reaction of intermingling footage.

Pasadena Freeway Stills (1974)

Pasadena Freeway Stills (1974, 6 min., 16mm, color, silent)
Directed by Gary Beydler
Possibly the most lucid, vivid and awesome demonstration of the building up of still images to create moving ones, Pasadena Freeway Stills simply, gracefully and powerfully shows us the process by which we are fooled by the movies.

unc. 91966, 3 min., 16mm, color, sound)
Directed by Bruce Lane
A haunting, affecting, three-minute epic constructed of memorable images and densely imagined narrative fragments distilled to an essence that registers dread, dissolution, fear and despair, but also a bittersweet melancholy, both for an idealized past and a diseased present.

Murray and Max Talk about Money (1979, 15 min., 16mm, color, sound)
Directed by Roberta Friedman and Grahame Weinbren
“We are always interested in constructing ways of evoking the pleasures of cinema without implicitly accepting an ideology–of passivity, manipulation, and repressed violence–that we would explicitly reject. Can there be films that remain cinematic without indulging in one form of pornography or another? Murray and Max… is, in part, a proposal, a blueprint, for such a form of cinema.” –Roberta Friedman and Grahame Weinbren

Venusville (1973, 10 min., 16mm, color, sound)
Directed by Fred Worden and Chris Langdon
No montage, no human subjects, minimal visual content, and the artists basically pissing on the fourth wall by calling attention in every way possible to the artifice of what they’re doing. An anti-film school film made at film school.

Rose for Red (1980, 3 min., 16mm, color, sound)
(1980) Directed by Diana Wilson
An unusual, jewel-like homage to unity and discordance in filmic composition.

Stasis (1976, 7 min., 16mm, color, sound)
Directed by David Wilson
The intentional misnomer of the title plays upon the misapprehension that the negation of one dynamic process with its inverse complement would result in something static. A landscape film wherein the invisible landscape between the capturer and the captured is brought mysteriously into view.

Venice Pier (1976, 16 min., 16mm, color, sound)
Directed by Gary Beydler
Shot spatially out of order on the Venice pier over the course of an entire year, Gary Beydler recomposed the footage in editing to make it proceed consistently forward in space, resulting in an intricate mixing up of chronology. Some cuts could represent a jump of months either forward or backward in time. The result is one of gauzy impressionism brought into vivid and breathtaking clarity.

Picasso (1973, 3 min., 16mm, (4/8/1973), B/W, sound)
Directed by Chris Langdon
“When Picasso died I wanted to make the first post-mortem documentary, as I knew would happen anyway, and cheaply. The film took four hours to finish from camera to print and cost a little under $5.” –Chris Langdon

Sears Sox (1968, 5 min., 16mm, color, sound)
Directed by Pat O’Neill, Neon Park, and Chick Strand
A bonus presentation of a short piece of commercial work done by three legendary L.A. artists.

May 27 – Restoring the Los Angeles Avant-Garde: Thom Andersen and Morgan Fisher

Wednesday May 27, 2009, 7:30 pm

At the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum, Wilshire at Westwood

Los Angeles Filmforum, UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Hammer Museum present
Restoring the Los Angeles Avant-Garde: Thom Andersen and Morgan Fisher
Thom Andersen, Morgan Fisher and Academy preservationist Mark Toscano in person!
FREE Admission!

**NOTE THE CHANGE IN DATE, LOCATION, AND PRICE**

--- ------- (1966-67)

Since its formal inception in 1992, the Academy Film Archive has been working diligently to preserve and restore independent and experimental films. However, over the last five years, the Academy Archive has trained an additional focus on the work of Los Angeles-based artists.

As more films have come to the Academy, and more have been preserved or restored, a fascinating portrait of the Los Angeles avant-garde scene has begun to emerge. While films produced by artists in New York and San Francisco have historically been given an inordinate precedence in accounts of such work, an astonishingly diverse and extensive world of vital avant-garde filmmaking was–and still is–going on right here.  Accordingly, the title of this special two-night screening series has a double meaning.

All of the films presented in this program are by Los Angeles artists featuring prints restored by the Academy and making their Los Angeles restoration premieres. But in addition to highlighting the important work of the Academy–and by this selection of film artists, in particular–this series aims to contribute to the growing recognition of Los Angeles, then and now, as a significant center of avant-garde production.

Phi Phenomenon (1968)

Thom Andersen and Morgan Fisher:

For the last 45 years, Morgan Fisher and Thom Andersen have been filmmakers, collaborators and friends.

In brilliantly lucid and conceptually rich films and media installations, Fisher has deeply and thoughtfully explored the many facets of the medium and the cinematic experience itself with great wit, intelligence and epiphany.

Andersen, perhaps best known for his most recent, internationally acclaimed film, Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), also produced a vital body of short experimental work in the 1960s that exhibits a powerful combination of rigorous artistic clarity and profoundly felt humanism.

This evening’s program offers a very rare opportunity not only to see newly restored prints of Fisher and Andersen’s early film work, but to meet the artists in person for a discussion about their ideas, their films and their friendship and collaboration over the years.

Melting (1964-65, 6 min., 16mm, color, sound)
Directed by Thom Andersen
“Melting is remarkable for its alluding to a forgotten history and its prescience of history to come. Thirty-odd years after Bataille announced the informe, and 32 years before Bois and Krauss brought the informe back from history, and before Bois characterized melting in this way, Thom made his film. What Thom calls the sundae’s passage from edibility to waste, perfectly embodies the entropic. What once could have been eaten now cannot. Waste is something that nothing more can be made of; it has no further use.” –Morgan Fisher

Olivia’s Place (1966/74, 6 min., 16mm, , color, sound,)
Directed by Thom Andersen
“Olivia may have felt no need to change, but the world around her was not bound by such an impractical sentiment. Olivia’s Place is gone. The site where it used to stand is now a sort of plaza between two large old wood frame houses that were moved to their present location from elsewhere in the city. One of these houses is occupied by a restaurant, the other is occupied by the California Heritage Museum.” –Morgan Fisher

--- ------- (1966-67)

— ——- (1966-67, 12 min., 16mm, color, sound)
Directed by Thom Andersen and Malcolm Brodwick
“I consider Thom and Malcolm’s film to be groundbreaking in its brilliant demonstration of the power of a rule to construct a film that unifies shots taken at different times and places. And it is also noteworthy for the new model of the documentary film that it proposes. The brilliance of — ——- is that it refuses the power of montage as that idea has been conventionally understood, only to rediscover its power in a different form, on a new plane. Somewhere Eisenstein describes montage as that mode of construction that goes beyond representing the appearance of an event to capture the feeling of it. — ——- operates in this way, but in a realm that is particularly resistant to representation by means of images, that of memory.” –Morgan Fisher

Documentary Footage (1968, 11 min., 16mm, color, sound)
Directed by Morgan Fisher
Naturalness willfully corrupted by inevitable self-consciousness, unwittingly corrupted by unavoidable naturalness, a role played with incredible nuance and complexity by Maurine Connor.

Production Footage (1971, 10 min., 16mm, color & B/W, silent)
Directed by Morgan Fisher
“The cinematic mechanism cannot be completely deconstructed without resort to other means of mechanical image reproduction; a double system of representation is required; the apparent naturalness of the cinematic sign must be put into question by other indexical signs.” –Thom Andersen

Phi Phenomenon (1968, 11 min., 16mm, B/W, silent)
Directed by Morgan Fisher
The phi phenomenon is a perceptual illusion (first described in 1912 by Max Wertheimer) in which a succession of still images produces a disembodied perception of motion. “Phi Phenomenon is astonishing precisely because its object is so familiar, and it fascinates me because it is a motion picture in which there is movement but no apparent movement.” –Thom Andersen

Turning Over (1975, 13 min., Video, B/W, sound)
Directed by Morgan Fisher
Documented live to tape in San Francisco, October 17, 1975.

Total running time of films: approx. 70 min.

Funding for this series was provided by the UCLA Arts Initiative.