The city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, animation and video art.

Entries from September 2008

October 5 – Stop & Go, an evening of Stop Motion animation curated by Sarah Klein

September 30, 2008 · 3 Comments

Sunday October 5, 2008, 7:00 pm

At the Echo Park Film Center
1200 Alvarado Street (at Sunset, northeast corner)

Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Stop & Go, an evening of Stop Motion animation curated by Sarah Klein
With Sarah Klein in person!

Get caught up in the latest in stop motion animation with a various of toys, clays, cut-outs, natural artifacts, drawings, paintings, back drops, animals, humans, and places!

“Established filmmakers and visual artists use stop-motion techniques to tell stories, examine visual phenomena, and make political statements in this collection of short videos. The animators breathe life into magazine cutouts, homemade drawings, everyday objects, and even the body itself. The result is a selection of videos that are humorous, poignant, and marvelous.” ~ Sarah Klein, Curator

The Stop & Go program features twenty-two pieces from artists across the country (San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Miami, and Vermont) and around the world (Croatia, Brittan, and Japan). Featured artists in the program include Ignacio Alcantara, Tommy Becker, Lilli Carré, Pete Davies, Samara Halperin, Meredith Holch, Sean Horchy, Stephanie Hutin, Andrew Kelleher, Lana Kim, Sarah Klein, Mike Leavitt, Michael McHam, Laurie O’Brian, Saelee Oh, Mel Prest, Clare Rojas, Judith Selby, SAF Cakovec Studio, Jen Stark, Melinda Stone, Claudia Tennyson, Aeneas Wilder, Sherri Wood, and Andrew Jeffery Wright.

“Oakland-based video artist, illustrator, and animator Sarah Klein brings it all back home with this evening of stop-motion shorts created and produced by an international group of artists and filmmakers, each of whom mold the medium to their individual stories and ideas. Micro-narratives, political commentary, and visual observations all transform via the old-fashioned, time-consuming, stop-and-go treatment.” ~ Connie Hwong, Flavorpill

“Nowadays, young filmmakers use software like Stop Motion Pro and MonkeyJam to simulate the organic, roughshod techniques of Harry Hausen, Will Vinton, or Art Clokey, but stop-motion is still not for clockwatchers. It’s for those who can lose themselves in the wrinkle of an eyelid or the shift of a pencil mark, the type of person who might see beauty in the slow rise of naturally leavened bread. No surprise, then, that the curator of the “Stop & Go” animation exhibition is local ‘bread artist’ Sarah Klein.” ~Silke Tudor, SF Weekly

Entire Program = 1hour, 20 minutes

Tonight’s films include:

Camoknit (2008, 18 min) by Claudia Tennyson
This darkly humorous view of knitting unravels the obsessive qualities and enormous popularity of the craft, which seems to coincide with the climate of fear generated by the ‘war on terror.’

[left] For the Birds (2004, 5:50 min) by Lilli Carré.
A high-wire act of sleepy time bears, black birds, and senior folk.

Tumbleweed Town (1999, 16mm, 8 min) by Samara Halperin. Music by Corner Tour. Find true love with Todd the Tonka cowboy on his hitchhiking adventures through the Texas desert.

 

Mammoth Cave (2005, 2:28 min) by Stephanie Hutin.
A fantasy of toys, glitter, paper pieces and natural objects illustrate the music of Holopaw.

[right] Squeak, Chirp, Honk (2006, 1 min) by Saelee Oh & Lana Kim.
A friendly look at one of life’s little troubles from a mouse’s perspective.


The Courtship of the Birdman
(2006, 1:34 min) by Pete Davies.
Sound by Andrew Lynn & Angie Moore.
A timeless tale of love and loss re-told in a saga of epic proportion.
Sewing for Jesus (2005, 2:20 min) by Sherri Wood & Ignacio Alcantara.
The construction of a quilt honoring the missing American and Iraqi citizens who died in the Iraq War.

Howdy Hats (1968, 0:30 min) by Judith Selby.
A meet and greet of chapeau on the green.

Picture Perfect (2006, 7:46 min) by Meredith Holch.
Old postcards and Vermont Life magazines are used to examine the rapidly changing character of life and landscape in rural Northern Vermont.

Poop or Fleur (2003, 1:28 min) by Melinda Stone.
A series of still photographs shot in order and contact printed onto 35 mm film become a guessing game of sorts. Audience participation is requested to help identify what is what.

Dog Judo – Noise Box (2007, 1:15 min) by Andrew Kelleher.
Rexley and Roy, two everyday dogs, both live for judo but have very different ideas on what it is.

[left] Papermation (2007, 1 min) by Jen Stark. Sound by Eddie Alonso.
A stop-motion piece of regurgitating rainbows and mysterious organic structures using intricate paper-cutouts.

 

Black Cat (2006, 2:28 min) by SAF Cakovec Studio.
A darkly funny animation of some characters and their mishaps.

American Bandits (2004, 2:25 min) by Philippe Vendrolini.
A wild ride where altered and animated police risk life-and-limb in pursuit of manic deer.

Pulling Down the Sky to Give You the Sun (2005, 1:45 min) by Tommy Becker.
A celestial piece that combines raw performance, music, and costume.

The Making of the Kozik Action Figure (2006, 1:28 min) by Mike Leavitt.
Another action figure in Mike’s ever-expanding Art Army.

Alarm Clock (2004, 2:15 min) by Sean Horchy.
Time makes it’s own music.

Untitled #90 (2002, 1:27 min) by Aeneas Wilder.
Using only red tape and four architectural posts, Aeneas Wilder creates an inspired series of configurations based on addition and subtraction.

Arithmetic (2006, 4:47 min) by Laurie O’Brien. Sound by Michael McHam.
An adaptation of In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan with puppetry, paper cutout animation, found sound, and homemade instruments.

Wanderlust (2008, 5:10 min) by Sarah Klein.
Daily routine motivates the modern day woman to take a trip around the world.

Ich Bin Ein Manipulator (2003, 4:30 min) by Clare Rojas & Andrew Jeffrey Wright.
Altered, collaged and manipulated images from fashion magazines create an entirely different story.

Immigrant Song (2008, 2:25 min) by Mel Prest.
This sequence chronicles the creation of a painting from spelled-out lyrics.

On Sarah Klein:

Sarah Klein uses hand-drawn animation to create humorous and often dark narratives on domestic life and related themes. Klein has widely presented her work both nationally and internationally in a variety of settings including exhibitions, performance, and screenings.
(more…)

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September 26 and 28 – Two nights of Craig Baldwin!

September 23, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This coming weekend, Filmforum will copresent the work of master collage filmmaker Craig Baldwin on two different nights, both co-presented with REDCAT:

Friday, September 26 – Hallucinogenic California: The Alternate Worlds of Craig Baldwin and Damon Packard

Sunday, September 28 – Mock Up On Mu, the newest film by Craig Baldwin

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September 28 – Mock Up On Mu, the newest film by Craig Baldwin

September 23, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Sunday September 28, 2008, 7:00 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Mock Up On Mu, the newest film by Craig Baldwin
In collaboration with REDCAT

Mock Up On Mu

Mock Up On Mu

Filmforum welcomes the latest work from master collagist and filmmaker Craig Baldwin – Mock Up On Mu (2008, 109 min., color and b/w).

A radical hybrid of spy, sci-fi, Western, and even horror genres, Craig Baldwin’s Mock Up On Mu cobbles together a feature-length “collage-narrative” based on (mostly) true stories of California’s post-War sub-cultures of rocket pioneers, alternative religions, and Beat lifestyles. Pulp-serial snippets, industrial-film imagery, and B- (and Z-) fiction clips are intercut with newly shot live-action material, powering a playful, allegorical trajectory through the now-mythic occult matrix of Jack Parsons (Crowleyite founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab), L.Ron Hubbard (sci-fi author turned cult-leader), and Marjorie Cameron (bohemian artist and “mother of the New Age movement”). Their intertwined tales spin out into a speculative farce on the militarization of space, and the corporate take-over of spiritual fulfillment and leisure-time.

Please note that Baldwin will not be present at this screening.

“…an allegorical cyclone of images and ideas haunted by sardonic humor and gnostic longing” — Erik Davis, Techgnosis

Director, Producer, Writer: Craig Baldwin
Director of Photography: Bill Daniel
Editor: Sylvia Schedelbauer
Cast: Damon Packard as L.Ron Hubbard; Michelle Silva as Marjorie Cameron, Kal Spelletich as Jack Parsons, Stoney Burke as Lockheed Martin

More Mock Up On Mu here.

MORE ON CRAIG BALDWIN:
Born in Oakland California, USA, Craig Baldwin attended the University of California at Santa Barbara, University of California at Davis, and San Francisco State University (Masters, 1986). In the Dept. of Cinema there, he studied under Bruce Conner and became increasingly drawn to collage film form.

His interest in the re-contextualization of “found” imagery led him to the theories of the Situationists, and to various practices of mail art, ‘zines, altered billboards, and other creative initiatives beyond the fringe of the traditional fine-arts curriculum. His desire to liquidate the formal distinctions between high/low and private/public categories through a proliferation of discursive modes expressed itself in several photo-essay, installation, video, and Super-8 projects previous to his first16mm production, Wild Gunman (18 min.,1978). This dense montage of cowboy iconography, advertising campaigns, and geopolitical conflicts features playful optical printing of trailers, newseels, and penny-arcade amusements. Baldwin’s audio-visual argument against neo-colonialist ideology was further developed in RocketKitKongoKit (30 min.,1986), which utilizes several narrative voices in an accelerating cinematic broadside. His next film, Tribulation 99 (48 min.,1991) unspooled a satiric psycho-political rant on millenarianism, xenophobia, and CIA covert-action in Latin America, with flying saucer simulations and the hypnotic music of Yma Sumac. A picture-book version of the work was published by Ediciones la Calavera. The SF Bay Guardian bestowed their annual Goldie award on Baldwin that same year.

Mock Up On Mu

Mock Up On Mu

His following project, ¡O No Coronado! (40 min.,1992) inter-cut live-action Conquistador vignettes with archival footage, video-to-film FX, and a time-warped musical mix in a black-comic critique of the Conquest. The SF Foundation recognized the effort with the 1992 Phelan Award in Film Art. His 1995 film Sonic Outlaws is an experimental documentary on the emerging “electronic folk culture”, exploring the legal, political, and artistic implications of the audio-collage work of culture-jamming collectives like Negativland, Tape-beatles, Emergency Broadcast Network, and the Barbie Liberation Organization. The piece was named Best Independent Film of the Year by the LA Film Critics Circle.

In 1999, Mr. Baldwin completed Spectres of the Spectrum, a sci-fi spoof utilizing early educational kinescopes to criticize the corporate control of electronic/communication technologies. Grants from the Alpert Foundation and Creative Capital supported the production of this feature-length “compilation narrative” and its eventual international screening tour and distribution on DVD.

Working under a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, Baldwin has recently completed Mock Up On Mu, an experimental/speculative treatment of California’s post-War subcultures of sci-fi, aerospace, Beat art, and cult-religion, played out against the impending militarization of space.

Mock Up On Mu will also be screening at REDCAT on Friday, September 26 with Craig Baldwin and Damon Packard in person

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September 26 – Hallucinogenic California: The Alternate Worlds of Craig Baldwin and Damon Packard

September 23, 2008 · 2 Comments

Friday September 26, 2008, 8:30 pm

At the REDCAT Theater in downtown LA

Film at REDCAT presents, in collaboration with Los Angeles Filmforum
Hallucinogenic California: The Alternate Worlds of Craig Baldwin and Damon Packard
Craig Baldwin and Damon Packard in person!

Jack H. Skirball Series
Admission: $9 (students $7)

Two of California’s most notorious underground filmmakers unleash a pair of deliriously subversive visions of Los Angeles culture—past and present—as poverty-row sci-fi thrillers.

Bricolage wizard Craig Baldwin, of Tribulation 99 (1991) fame, takes his culture-jamming to a new orbit with Mock Up On Mu.  The film (showcased in the New York and Vancouver film festivals) is a frenzied collage narrative following the far-flung exploits of L. Ron Hubbard, master of the Empire of Mu (aka the moon) in the year 2019, as he schemes with and against Marjorie Cameron, Jack Parsons and Aleister Crowley to make havoc on the terrestrial homeland. Baldwin’s twisting plot uses B-movies, self-help infomercials, pulp serials, aerospace promo films and otherworldly footage shot by Baldwin to spin an allegorical yarn of subterranean cults, government secrecy, and the co-opting of utopian visions by the military.

Mock Up on Mu is preceded by Damon Packard’s SpaceDisco One (2007, 42 min). The director, writer and star of the paranoid freakout Reflections of Evil (2002), Packard (who also plays L. Ron Hubbard in Baldwin’s film) gives a frightening and hilarious depiction of Los Angeles as an Orwellian land of split realities: placid suburban routines under invisible but inextricable mind control.

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September 14 and 21 – Best of Ann Arbor Film Festival on two nights!

September 4, 2008 · Leave a Comment

On two dates in September, Filmforum is proud to present the touring program of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which features some of the festival’s best independent, experimental and animated short films.

Program 1: September 14 at the Echo Park Film Center

Program 2: September 21 at the Egyptian Theater

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September 21 – Best of Ann Arbor Film Festival, Part 2

September 4, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Sunday, September 21, 2008, 7:00 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum presents
46th Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour (Part 2)
Best of Independent, Experimental & Artistically-Inspired Short Films

The AAFF Tour is a program of many of the finest cutting-edge, creative and artfully crafted independent films from the most recent festival. Many of the films included on the tour won awards at the 46th AAFF, as well as at other notable festivals such as Rotterdam, Sundance, Slamdance, and Black Maria. The program serves as an inspired alternative to the Oscar®-nominated shorts program, which also travels across the U.S. each year.

The program opens with Chel White’s A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process (left), based on an unpublished satirical essay by poet Scott Poole, in which the writing process is rendered in animated images straight from the subconscious… or somewhere. Also featured are Andrew Cahill’s Spontaneous Generation (below left), a clay animation short that took the Best Animated Film award, and Thorsten Fleisch’s Energie! (below right), for which Fleisch won Best Emerging Experimental Video Artist. A full list of films can be found here.

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September 14 – Best of Ann Arbor Film Festival, Part 1

September 4, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Sunday, September 14, 2008, 7:00 pm

At the Echo Park Film Center
1200 Alvarado Street (at Sunset, northeast corner)

Los Angeles Filmforum presents
46th Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour (Part 1)
Best of Independent, Experimental & Artistically-Inspired Short Films

**NOTE THE CHANGE IN LOCATION**

The AAFF Tour is a program of many of the finest cutting-edge, creative and artfully crafted independent films from the most recent festival. Many of the films included on the tour won awards at the 46th AAFF, as well as at other notable festivals such as Rotterdam, Sundance,  Slamdance, and Black Maria. The program serves as an inspired alternative to the Oscar®-nominated shorts program, which also travels across the U.S. each year.

Animated masterpiece Yours Truly (left), by British filmmaker Osbert Parker, uses innovative techniques to create a funny and shocking film noir mash-up. Catherine Chalmers’s Safari (lower right) vividly brings us into the world of insects and reptiles in a way that is creepy, artfully gorgeous and beyond anything shown on National Geographic. Opening the program is Doxology (lower left), by Michael Langan, which explores reverential inspiration through cutting-edge and humorous animation techniques.

Since its inception in 1964, the AAFF tour has showcased hundreds of influential works by filmmakers such as Barbara Hammer, Gus Van Sant, Sally Cruikshank, Don Hertzfeldt, Bill Brown, Ross McLaren, Paul Winkler, James Duesing, and Jay Rosenblatt.

Tonight we will be featuring Program 1 of the touring festival, which includes several experimental shorts, animation, documentary shorts and others.  A full list of films can be found here.

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