June 29 – Owen Land – New and In Person!

Sunday June 29, 2008, 7:00 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Owen Land - New and In Person!

Filmforum is delighted to host the legendary filmmaker Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow). This is the first appearance he has made at a screening in Los Angeles since the late 1990s. We’re delighted to host the World premiere of two new works:

Why Do We Disrespect Our Genitals? (an episode from Dialogues, or A Waist Is A Terrible Thing To Mind) (2008, video, 4 min.) , and Undesirables (Condensed Version) (2008, video, 14 min.)

Why Do We Disrespect Our Genitals? (an episode from Dialogues, or A Waist Is A Terrible Thing To Mind) (2008, video, 4 min.)

“DIALOGUES is an autobiographical feature inspired by Plato’s dialogue Phaedo. The subtext is that the female human body is a manifestation of God. The film begins with quotations from the Song of Solomon, and Bud Fisher, creator of ‘Mutt and Jeff.’ The ancient Hebrew concept of the Shekinah was the female as a visible manifestation of the divine presence. In Tantra, it’s called Shakti.” -Owen Land (at right, Melissa Paradise, featured in “Dialogues”)

Undesirables (Condensed Version) (2008, video, 14 min.)
The screenplay was originally written (in 1997) as a response to a semi-serious remark made by Stan Brakhage in 1971: “Someday Hollywood will probably make a film about us, the American experimental
film-makers of the 1960s. I wonder which movie stars they will cast to play us.” It incorporates all of the paranoid conspiracy theories that have been around for the last three decades. -Owen Land

Land will also be signing copies of his book Two Films by Owen Land, which will be available for sale. Come and be delighted and surprised!

Also screening, at Land’s request, are two avant-garde classics:

Thanatopsis by Ed Emshwiller (1962, 16mm, black and white, sound, 5 min)

An expression of internal anguish. The confrontation of a man and his torment. Juxtaposed against his external composure are images of a woman and lights in distortion, with tension heightened by the sounds of power saws and a heartbeat.

Critical Mass (Hapax Legomena III) by Hollis Frampton (1971, 16mm, black and white, sound, 25.5 min.)

As a work of art I think (Critical Mass) is quite universal and deals with all quarrels (those between men and women, or men and men, or women and women, or children, or war). It is war!… It is one of the most delicate and clear statements of inter-human relationships and the difficulties of them that I have ever seen. It is very funny, and rather obviously so. It is a magic film in that you can enjoy it, with greater appreciation, each time you look at it. Most aesthetic experiences are not enjoyable on the surface. You have to look at them a number of times before you are able to fully enjoy them, but this one stands up at once, and again and again, and is amazingly clear.” — Stan Brakhage

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.

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.

June 15 – A Tribute to the the Creative Film Society, featuring selections from the CFS collection and more

Sunday, June 15, 2008, 7:00pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood

LA Filmforum presents
A Tribute to the the Creative Film Society, featuring selections from the CFS collection and more
Former CFS Director Angie Pike in person

The Creative Film Society (CFS) was founded in 1957 by Robert Pike, with the intention of “consolidating the efforts of the individual West Coast film artists in terms of aiding closer communication of ideas, films and equipment, as well as distributing the finished works of the members.” The CFS was one of the key distribution organizations of the Los Angeles avant-garde film movement in its time. According to historian David James, CFS played “a major role in publicizing experimental film and in bringing the Los Angeles avant-garde film communities together,” and helped lay the groundwork for later organizations like the Los Angeles Independent Film Oasis and, of course, Los Angeles Filmforum.

The films screening tonight, selected by Angie Pike and Mark Toscano, include films associated with the Creative Film Society. Most are part of the CFS Collection. Although the CFS collection, now partially housed at the iotaCenter, once boasted the work of many representative West Coast filmmakers such as Curtis Harrington, Hy Hirsh, and the Whitney brothers, tonight’s screening will also feature some of the lesser-known works in the collection and beyond. Several of these were recently restored at the Academy Film Archive.

Tonight’s films include:

Logos (1957, 16mm, 2 min) and Odds and Ends (1958, 16mm, 5 min) by Jane Conger Belson Shimané

Things to Come (1953, 16mm, 3 min) and Obmaru (1953, 16mm, 4 mins) by Patricia Marx

Wu Ming (1977, 16mm, 17 min) by James Whitney

S.W.L.A. (1971, 16mm) by Rob Thompson.

108 Movements by Peggy Wolff

Death of the Gorilla (1965-66, 16mm, 16 min) by Peter Mays

Furies (1982, 16mm, 3 min) by Sara Petty

Mirror People (1974, 16mm, 6m) by Kathy Rose

Plus several more to be announced!

June 8 – Tearoom, a document presented by William E. Jones

Sunday June 8, 2008, 7:00 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Tearoom, a document presented by William E. Jones
Followed by a discussion with Jones and Bruce Hainley

Tearoom (1962/2007, 16mm film transferred to video, color, silent, 56 minutes)

Tearoom consists of footage shot by the police in the course of a crackdown on public sex in the American Midwest. In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio Police Department photographed men in a restroom under the main square of the city. The cameramen hid in a closet and watched the clandestine activities through a two-way mirror. The film they shot was used in court as evidence against the defendants, all of whom were found guilty of sodomy, which at that time carried a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in the state penitentiary. The original surveillance footage shot by the police came into the possession of director William E. Jones while he was researching this case for a documentary project. The unedited scenes of ordinary men of various races and classes meeting to have sex were so powerful that the director decided to present the footage with a minimum of intervention. Tearoom is a radical example of film presented “as found” for the purpose of circulating historical images that have otherwise been suppressed.

More on the film can be found here.

The book Tearoom, available now from 2nd Cannons Publications, contains many historical texts relating to the Mansfield cases, as well as over 100 frame enlargements from the video.

Screenings of Tearoom: 2008 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente de Buenos Aires, Argentina; InDPanda International Short Film Festival, Hong Kong; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Eyedrum, Atlanta

William E. Jones grew up in Ohio and now lives and works in Los Angeles. He has made two feature length experimental films, Massillon and Finished, several short videos, and the feature length documentary Is It Really So Strange?. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His films and videos were also the subject of a retrospective at Tate Modern, London, in 2005. He was included in Biennial Exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1993 and 2008. He has published two books, Is It Really So Strange? (2006) and Tearoom (2008). He teaches film history at Art Center College of Design. More can be found on Jones on his website.

Bruce Hainley is a contributing editor at Artforum and teaches in the MFA program at Art Center College of Design. His has written for Frieze, Bidoun, Parkett, The Nation, and The New York Times. His recent books include Foul Mouth, published by 2nd Cannons, and, with John Waters, Art – A Sex Book, published by Thames & Hudson. He is at work on a book to be called Sturtevant’s Eclipse, which will be the first monographic examination of the American artist, Sturtevant.

REVIEWS OF TEAROOM: