Anthology Film Archives

NEWFILMMAKERS WELCOMES BACK DIGITAL FILM ACADEMY AND PRESENTS THE FILM OF THE MONTH

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Vinit Parmar
LIVING RIVER
2011, 59 minutes, video.

DIGITAL FILM ACADEMY PROGRAM

FILM OF THE MONTH SCREENING
The most popular NewFilmmakers Online Film during May 2011.
Anthony Pedone, Eli Higgins & Stephen Floyd
THE WHY
2011, 89 minutes, video.
Blaming himself for the rape and murder of his true love Lula, Boyo commits suicide. But there is a surprise waiting for him: at the moment he pulls the trigger, his mind explodes and re-forms into the world of The Why; his search for answers and meaning begins anew.

Wednesday, February 1, Documentaries at 6:00, Digital Film Academy Program at 7:15, Film Of The Month at 9:15.

(ÜBERLEBEN IN NEW YORK)
Print courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
The successes, trials, and tribulations of three young German women trying to conquer the New York City jungle. Claudia, Uli, and Anna have very different backgrounds and deal with big-city challenges in very different ways; but all agree that the fascination of New York outweighs its frustrations, heartaches, and dangers.

Twenty years after his documentary SURVIVAL IN NEW YORK, von Praunheim returns to the city which provided him some of the most exciting years of his life. Remembering his own experiences in the wild 70s, and recollecting the big changes in the 80s when AIDS started to take its toll, Rosa meets his former protagonists and goes on a personal journey to discover what has become of ‘his’ New York.

(STAUB)

Having devoted his career to crafting essayistic treatments of oft-overlooked aspects of the material world, Bitomsky turns his attention to a presence so miniscule as to go unnoticed, despite the fundamental role it plays in our social and aesthetic lives – dust. DUST elevates its microscopic subject to a position of cosmic importance.

“Devoting itself to the tiniest ‘visible subject’ that a film can have, DUST manages to be philosophical without seeming pedantic. … [It] is characterized by its clean cinematography, uncluttered compositions, and unceasing dialectic.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

Karl Valentin
CONFIRMATION DAY / DER FIRMLING
1934, 23 min, 35mm, b&w. In German with no subtitles; English synopsis available.
A father and son, celebrating the son’s confirmation, go to a fancy restaurant and drink all day. They want to order Emmentaler cheese, but can only find Affentaler wine on the menu. How did the Affentaler, which they think is cheese, get into the bottle? They keep on drinking away, attracting attention and causing more and more confusion.
“Valentin plays a drunken father treating his giggly young son to lunch, and the inspired muddle he creates out of a table, two chairs, an umbrella, and a watch chain rivals some of Laurel and Hardy’s best moments.” –J.R. Jones, CHICAGO READER
&
Jean Vigo
ZERO FOR CONDUCT / ZÉRO DE CONDUITE
1935, 44 min, 35mm, b&w. In French with no subtitles; English synopsis available.
An eloquent parable of freedom versus authority, Vigo’s film is set at a boys’ boarding school and undoubtedly echoes Vigo’s own unhappy experiences as a child. Under the pressure of various civic groups the film was removed from screens several months after its release in 1933. It was branded “anti-French” by censors and was not shown again in Paris until 1945.
Total running time: ca. 70 min.

(MAT)
Based on the novel by Maxim Gorky.
With the simple theme of a working-class mother growing in political consciousness through participation in revolutionary activity, this film established Pudovkin as one of the major figures of the Soviet cinema. A student of Kuleshov and an admirer of Griffith’s films, he was writing his first book of film theory at the same time he was making MOTHER. His expert cutting on movement and his associated editing of unrelated scenes to form what he called a “plastic synthesis” are amply demonstrated here. Although in direct opposition to Eisenstein’s shock montage, Pudovkin used a linkage method advanced far beyond Kuleshov’s theories.

People, monsters, sensations. The beguiling images in PRATER transform the legendary Viennese attraction into a cinematic experience. The film brings together the cultural history of the oldest amusement park in the world with brilliant insights into the changeability of technological attractions. We are introduced to the people for whom the Prater is a place of amusement, memory, or quite simply the center of life.

(ZUM VERGLEICH)

For his most recent film, Farocki observes the process of manufacturing bricks, in various cultures, and across different modes and scales of production.

“I wanted to make a film about concomitance, and about contemporary production on a range of different technical levels. So I looked for an object that had not changed too much in the past few thousand years. This could have been a shoe or a knife, but a brick becomes part of a building and therefore part of our environment. So the brick appears as something of a poetic object. I follow its mode of creation and use in Africa, India, and Europe.” –H.F.

NIGHT LUNCH
1975, 32 minutes, 16mm.
&
BLANK GENERATION
1976, 55 minutes, 16mm.
Poe’s first two works, both made in collaboration with Ivan Král, are lo-fi concert films that are invaluable documents of the 1970s NYC downtown music scene. Featuring performances by the Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, the Talking Heads, Television, David Bowie, the New York Dolls, Wayne County, Freddie Mercury, Johnny Thunders, and others, they are unforgettable testaments to a period of unparalleled vitality and creativity.

(DAS NETZ)

A subversive history of the Internet, this insightful documentary traces contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution via an inquiry into the rationale of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber, who grew to oppose the late-20th-century web of technology. Dammbeck’s conceptual quest links multiple nodes of cultural and political thought in the manner of the Internet itself. THE NET exposes a hidden matrix of revolutionary advances, coincidences, and conspiracies.

With Eric Mitchell, Patti Astor, and Deborah Harry.
“[A] reinvention of the nouvelle vague in the context of New York. I wanted to start where Godard started, to go back to basics: innocence, romanticism, bohemianism, all the things that made up NYC for me at that time. It is the story of an artist: a medium, an ego, and a changed society. He thinks his camera is a gun, he thinks he is Belmondo, and he thinks NY is Paris. His fate is therefore doomed. So when Godard and his pals at the Cinémathèque saw Sirk, Hawks, etc, they tried to make films like that – but they failed. Instead they created the New Wave. My attempt created a kind of New Wave in New York.” –A.P.

(BLACK BOX BRD)

In November 1989, the chairman of the board of Deutsche Bank was killed in a terrorist attack ascribed to the RAF. Four years later, Wolfgang Grams, a suspected RAF member, was killed in a gun battle with the police. This acclaimed film intertwines the two life stories without implying any explicit connection. The decisive context lies in the late-1980s era of the Federal Republic, in which both men featured as prominent representatives of diametrically opposed ideologies.

(DER KICK)

In July 2002 two teenage brothers and their friend brutally tortured and, with a fatal kick to the head, killed a 16-year-old boy in a town north of Berlin. When the body was found and the three skinheads were charged with his murder, widespread public outrage ensued. The media debated the causes of this horrific crime – racism, social deprivation, binge drinking, or the influence of violent films. Veiel’s approach to the story, however, is a far cry from media sensation and public hysteria. Interviews and court records formed the basis for an experimental stage play and subsequently a ‘docu-play’. Veiel’s provocation lies in the radical form and the way he provides the biographies behind the crime.

With Eric Mitchell, Patti Astor, and Deborah Harry.
“[A] reinvention of the nouvelle vague in the context of New York. I wanted to start where Godard started, to go back to basics: innocence, romanticism, bohemianism, all the things that made up NYC for me at that time. It is the story of an artist: a medium, an ego, and a changed society. He thinks his camera is a gun, he thinks he is Belmondo, and he thinks NY is Paris. His fate is therefore doomed. So when Godard and his pals at the Cinémathèque saw Sirk, Hawks, etc, they tried to make films like that – but they failed. Instead they created the New Wave. My attempt created a kind of New Wave in New York.” –A.P.

A film about the indigenous community of the Kollas of Tinkunaku, a region in northern Argentina. Without recourse to dialogue, the film conveys the life of this community. We accompany the seasonal journey of Viviano and Ramona from the valley up to the village of Santa Cruz, 3000 meters above sea level, where they spend the summertime. Through their experiences, the film portrays the story of the day-to-day disappearance of an indigenous group.

With Eric Mitchell, Patti Astor, and Deborah Harry.
“A year later I made THE FOREIGNER, a film about a European coming to NY. In this case Max Menace (Eric Mitchell), a German terrorist who is trying to find a place to hide. But you can’t hide in jungleland! He is terrorized, and ripped to bits. This is the story of the other side of the American dream; the foreigner who doesn’t make it. A nightmare film in an existential philosophical context, a world where less is more.” –A.P.

(HOLUNDERBLÜTE)

A journey into the land of childhood, to that magical place where past, present, and the future meet – where everything is still possible, still thinkable, and where longings and expectations are still part of one’s experience. The film deals with the lives of children in and around Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave that belonged to East Prussia before the Second World War.

Koepp’s latest film – his most personal to date – is brave, sad, funny, and rebelliously hopeful. Visiting significant places from his personal life and from his earlier films, he ponders questions of home and identity, and how wars and the passage of time can affect landscapes and people. It is a historical panorama of a country torn apart.

With Eric Mitchell, Patti Astor, and Deborah Harry.
“A year later I made THE FOREIGNER, a film about a European coming to NY. In this case Max Menace (Eric Mitchell), a German terrorist who is trying to find a place to hide. But you can’t hide in jungleland! He is terrorized, and ripped to bits. This is the story of the other side of the American dream; the foreigner who doesn’t make it. A nightmare film in an existential philosophical context, a world where less is more.” –A.P.

“It starts with the laughter of children. Images from the late 80s in the GDR to the immediate present of the year 2008 in Germany. Those residual images have besieged my head, constantly reassembling themselves into new shapes that are further and further removed from their original meaning and function. They remain in motion. They become history. The material remains incomplete. It consists of what I held on to, what remained important to me. It is my picture.” –T.H.

NIGHT LUNCH
1975, 32 minutes, 16mm.
&
BLANK GENERATION
1976, 55 minutes, 16mm.
Poe’s first two works, both made in collaboration with Ivan Král, are lo-fi concert films that are invaluable documents of the 1970s NYC downtown music scene. Featuring performances by the Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, the Talking Heads, Television, David Bowie, the New York Dolls, Wayne County, Freddie Mercury, Johnny Thunders, and others, they are unforgettable testaments to a period of unparalleled vitality and creativity.

(DER TAG DES SPATZEN)

DAY OF THE SPARROW is a political wildlife documentary. It tells the story of a country where the border between war and peace is disappearing. On November 14, 2005, a sparrow is shot dead in Leeuwarden, and in Kabul a German soldier dies. These competing headlines are the starting point for Scheffner to trace the war using the methods of an ornithologist. In Germany, not in Afghanistan, since it is here that we are faced with the question: Are we living in a state of peace or war?

(ZUM VERGLEICH)

For his most recent film, Farocki observes the process of manufacturing bricks, in various cultures, and across different modes and scales of production.

“I wanted to make a film about concomitance, and about contemporary production on a range of different technical levels. So I looked for an object that had not changed too much in the past few thousand years. This could have been a shoe or a knife, but a brick becomes part of a building and therefore part of our environment. So the brick appears as something of a poetic object. I follow its mode of creation and use in Africa, India, and Europe.” –H.F.

NEWFILMMAKERS WELCOMES BACK NEWLATINO FILMMAKERS

NEWLATINO FILMMAKERS PROGRAM

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Will Fonseca
CHANGING DIEGO
2011, 118 minutes, video.
The story of Diego Morales, a shy, young paralegal who lives with his parents and his eccentric grandmother who believes in the supernatural. When the girl he loves reveals a crushing secret, Diego turns to his grandmother and the supernatural world.

Tuesday, February 8, NewLatino Filmmakers Program at 6:00, Feature Presentation at 9:00.

FILMMAKER IN PERSON!

Carey Burtt began producing short works in the late-70s, and has been making his mark on the underground film festival circuit for the last two decades. His darkly funny, deeply creepy films and videos have much in common with the Cinema of Transgression movement of the 80s; however they are completely products of his own twisted imagination. Rarely seen all together, this program offers viewers an opportunity to enter Burtt’s delightfully deranged world.

“My films are very personal. All of them are a form of therapy and reflect my state of mind at the time of inception – or address an issue that obsesses me. I have spent a lot of time in isolation – so fear of people and feelings of alienation have been strong for me throughout my life. I often make films about what I am most afraid of.” –Carey Burtt

Writer, musician, and filmmaker Bruce Bennett will host a Q&A with Carey Burtt after the screening.

HITCHHIKE (1979, 4 minutes, video)
HEY MISTER, YOU’RE IN THE GIRLS’ ROOM (1991, 4 minutes, video)
THE PSYCHOTIC ODYSSEY OF RICHARD CHASE (1998, 6 minutes, 16mm)
THE DEATH OF SEX (1998, 4 minutes, 16mm)
MIND CONTROL MADE EASY OR HOW TO BECOME A CULT LEADER (1999, 13 minutes, 16mm)
THROUGH A GASH DARKLY (2006, 6 minutes, video)
DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN (2010, 10 minutes, video)
THE DISSOCIATIVE DISORDER MOVIE (2010, 10 minutes, video)
HOW NOT TO BE STUPID (A GUIDE TO CRITICAL THINKING) (2010, 8 minutes, video)
BLOOD AND FIRE (2011, 10 minutes, video)
HELPING: WITH TRAVIS (2011, 12 minutes, video)
Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

PROGRAM 1: A PACKAGE OF STARS FROM GEORGE AND THE VDB GANG

For more than 25 years, the Video Data Bank team measured the passing of the seasons by the titillating titles received from George Kuchar: weather diaries, class pictures, summer visits to friends in NY and Cape Cod, winter holiday festivities, festival visits….

George transitioned from using film to video in 1985 and VDB has distributed his work ever since, with the archive now housing all 275 of his videos. During 2005 VDB was delighted to collaborate with him on a box set of his work, making it possible for a wider audience to appreciate his treasures. To represent George’s work and to interact with him day-to-day was a delight; in addition to his undoubted artistic talents, he was funny, modest, grateful, and a real human being. This program presents just a few of the shining stars that make up George’s galaxy.

POINT ‘N SHOOT (1989, 5 minutes, video)
ROUTE 666 (1994, 8 minutes, video)
SEASON OF SORROW (1996, 12.5 minutes, video)
UNCLE EVIL (1996, 7 minutes, video)
HONEY BUNNIES ON ICE (2001, 7 minutes, video)
BURNOUT (2003, 20 minutes, video)
HOTSPELL (2011, 26 minutes, video)
Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

PROGRAM 2: THE FILM-MAKERS’ COOP PRESENTS: 1960s-70s GEORGE KUCHAR TRIBUTE

As the original distributor of George Kuchar’s work, the Coop is honored to present this program in celebration of his amazing life and career. Here is a quote from Ken Jacobs: “We [Ken and Flo Jacobs] were having open screenings in 1963, and Bob Cowan, a Canadian filmmaker, showed up with George and Mike. To them, our place was very exotic; and they were exotic to us. Cowan had met them at an amateur 8mm film club in the Bronx (where they were considered odd). We showed various stuff, including PUSSY ON A HOT TIN ROOF. We were knocked out! I said to Jack Smith, ‘You have to see this guy’s stuff.’ I also told Jonas to check them out, and they all did. And history began. We then invited George and Mike to join the Film-Makers’ Coop.”

MOSHULU HOLIDAY (1966, 9 minutes, 16mm)
ECLIPSE OF THE SUN VIRGIN (1967, 15 minutes, 16mm)
KNOCTURNE (1968, 8.5 minutes, 16mm)
THE SUNSHINE SISTERS (1972, 36 minutes, 16mm)
I, AN ACTRESS (1977, 9 minutes, 16mm)
WILD NIGHT IN EL RENO (1977, 6 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

THE GREAT BLONDINO
1967, 42 min, 16mm. Newly preserved print; thanks to the Academy Film Archive!
“The original Blondino was a 19^th-century tightrope artist who among other feats crossed Niagara Falls trundling a wheelbarrow. In this film, Nelson sees Blondino as a metaphor for those who still try. Too subtle to be allegorical, the picture is in the shape of a quixotic search in which the goal is the journey and the means is the end.” –Museum of Modern Art
“It is…difficult to get at the rich visual texture that is the film’s most striking attribute. Long stretches are concerned with Blondino’s visions, dreams, and dreams within dreams. The film unfolds in brief recurring patterns of imagery. Even the more straightforward sections are dense with interpolated newsreel and TV commercial footage, visual gags, and homemade special effects. The net effect is funny, seamless, and elusive.” –J. Hoberman, “A Filmmakers Filming Monograph”
&
BLEU SHUT
1970, 33 min, 16mm. Newly preserved print; thanks to the Academy Film Archive!
“Boat-name quizzes, dogs, cuts from Dreyer’s JOAN OF ARC in montage with a sultry whore, a car running up a ramp and crashing, pornography, a passionate embrace by a thirties hero and heroine; all somehow implicating Dreyer and Joan in the perverse synthesis of sex and technology. What’s happening here? Basically Nelson is leaving things unsaid.” –Leo Regan
Total running time: ca. 80 min.

PROGRAM 3: FROM THE SHELVES OF EAI

“In the mid-1980s, George Kuchar acquired an 8mm camcorder and began producing an extraordinary series of video diaries, chronicling a singular, ongoing personal history. Exhibiting the rawness of video vérité and the theatricality of fiction, his self-narrated tapes record close-up observations of the personal routines and social interactions of Kuchar’s daily life. These remarkable video journals often resonate with an unexpected poetry.

“During this time, George would often come to EAI to personally deliver the masters of his video works. He would then sit down and, on the spot, hand-write on note-paper wonderful descriptions of his pieces, three of which are reprinted here.” –Lori Zippay, Executive Director, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)

CULT OF THE CUBICLES
1987, 46 minutes, video.
It’s New York in the summer and I set out to track down some high school friends who have burrowed deep into the ‘big apple.’ The viewer gets to see how far they’ve eaten their way to the core in this 45-minute study of urban denizens in the grip of Newtonian damnation.

RAINY SEASON (1987, 28.5 minutes, video)
The rains come and a chill sets in as I explore the dark and dank pockets of things best left in the closet. A parade of faces pass or drop by to bring sunshine, but the glow only makes the shadows appear darker in this study of things that hump and bump in the night.

THE CREEPING CRIMSON (1987, 13 minutes, video)
It is fall and Halloween and mom is in the hospital. The leaves are red and the mood is blue but life drips on, pizza is devoured and the mall must be frequented. A stroll among the foliage reveals bitter fruit yet sweetness lies just around the corner where the Bronx meets Westchester and whiteness constipates.

Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

PROGRAM 4: TREASURES FROM CANYON CINEMA

For many years, Canyon Cinema was George’s local distributor. He moved from NY to San Francisco in the early 70s and quickly found himself at the center of a new filmmaking scene. As a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute he left an indelible mark on generations of filmmakers with his legendary production course. A distributor and catalyst long at the center of SF’s flourishing cinema community, Canyon Cinema offers many Kuchar films that one would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. This selection of favorites features works that are relatively little-seen, and which bring us up-to-date with what George was doing in film in the late 70s and 1980s, before his turn to video.

BLIPS (1979, 30 minutes, 16mm)
CATTLE MUTILATIONS (1983, 25 minutes, 16mm)
ASCENSION OF THE DEMONOIDS (1985, 45 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

“My magnum opus. Travels over four continents in six years.” –W.S.
“With CARRIAGE TRADE, Sonbert began to challenge the theories espoused by the great Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s; he particularly disliked the ‘knee-jerk’ reaction produced by Eisensteinian montage. In both lectures and writings about his own style of editing, Sonbert described CARRIAGE TRADE as ‘a jig-saw puzzle of postcards to produce varied displaced effects.’ This approach, according to Sonbert, ultimately affords the viewer multi-faceted readings of the connections between shots through the spectator’s assimilation of ‘the changing relations of the movement of objects, the gestures of figures, familiar worldwide icons, rituals and reactions, rhythm, spacing, and density of images.” –Jon Gartenberg

MY HUSTLER is one of the classics of gay cinema. It is the story of a sexual triangle in which Ed Hood competes with his Fire Island neighbors, Joe Campbell and Genevieve Charbin, for the attentions of Paul America, whom he has rented for the weekend from “Dial-a-Hustler”. The realism of the scenario is due largely to the absence of a script and performances by actors essentially playing themselves.

PROGRAM 5: OUT OF THE ARCHIVES: ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES AND HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE

Programs 5 and 6 of our tribute series bring together works from the Kuchar collections of Anthology, Harvard Film Archive, and Pacific Film Archive. We all possess substantial holdings of George’s many films and videos, and tonight screen some personal favorites, as well as brand-new preservations.

From Anthology Film Archives:
THE ONEERS (1982, 17 minutes, 16mm)
LEISURE (1966, 9.5 minutes, 16mm)
ANITA NEEDS ME (1963, 16 minutes, 8mm-to-16mm blow-up)
Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Avant-Garde Masters Program of The Film Foundation, administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation.

From Harvard Film Archive:
CLUB VATICAN (1984, 13.5 minutes, 16mm)
THE CARNAL BIPEDS (1973, 22 minutes, 16mm)

Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.

Andy Warhol
EAT (1963, 35 min, 35mm, b&w, silent)
John and James Whitney
FILM EXERCISES 1-5 (1943-45, 18 min, 16mm)
James Whitney
LAPIS (1963-66, 10 min, 16mm, silent)
Total running time: ca. 65 min.

PROGRAM 6: PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

THE DEVIL’S CLEAVAGE
1973, 108 minutes, 16mm. Preserved by Pacific Film Archive with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
“Toward the end of this paralytically funny film, a Kucharian buck blurts out, ‘If there’s no food for the peasants, give them cheesecake, give them beefcake.’ Fortunately, there’s plenty of both: cheesecake in the form of luscious, high-cholesterol drama, and beefcake in the form of firmly faceted physiques swathed in the attire of shame. Kuchar’s heady brew froths around a pent-up nurse named Ginger whose marriage is on the rocks when she would prefer it to be straight up. Leaving behind the heaving hills of San Francisco, she heads for new misadventures in the rollicking town of Blessed Prairie, Oklahoma. Kuchar’s rousing cast, including the ever-pouty Ainslie Pryor and the provocatively prim Curt McDowell, pass through a jungle of moodily-lit interiors whose effect is dime-store von Sternberg, a creeping claustrophobia of dark shadows and cheap trinkets. Lifting lavishly from Sirk and the circus, Kuchar, that great impresario of the inappropriate, has immortalized ‘a biped in heat.’” –Steve Seid, PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

NEWFILMMAKERS CELEBRATES VALENTINE’S DAY

FIRST SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Al Lewis TRUE LOVE (2010, 16 minutes, video)
Chance Muehleck SPONGE (2010, 14 minutes, video)
Farouk Thoyer LOVE IS REAL (2006, 27 minutes, 8mm)

SECOND SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Connor Owens LOVE PROOF (2010, 11 minutes, video)
Yana Zosya INSURANCE (2010, 16 minutes, video)
Ed Blythe BOFFIN & BOFFIN (2010, 15 minutes, video)
Angelique Letzia SARINA’S SON (2010, 16 minutes, video)

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
Blayne Weaver
6 MONTH RULE
2010, 100 minutes, video.
A realistic, funny, and at times heart-breaking look at dating, love, and friendship told from the point of view of Tyler, a perpetual bachelor.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Julian Renner
THE THREE WAY
2011, 90 minutes, video.
Mike arrives home to discover his girlfriend, Tasha, is back early. Chaos erupts when Tasha discovers some condoms and a love note in Mike’s jacket. Mike insists it’s all a misunderstanding until an unexpected male friend arrives at the front door.

Wednesday, February 14, First Short Film Program at 6:00, Second Short Film Program at 7:15, First Feature at 8:30, Second Feature at 10:30.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Allan Sekula will be present for the opening night screenings on Wednesday!

Special thanks to Allan Sekula, and to Joost Verheij, Frank van Reemst, Suzanne Meijer, and Pascale Veerling (Doc.Eye Film).
The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss.
THE FORGOTTEN SPACE follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains, and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. And in Bilbao, we discover the most sophisticated expression of the belief that the maritime economy, and the sea itself, is somehow obsolete.
Using a range of materials – including descriptive documentary, interviews, archive stills and footage, and clips from old movies – Sekula and Burch have created an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes that affects us today, a film that seeks to understand and describe the contemporary maritime world in relation to the complex symbolic legacy of the sea.

“To say that the subject is the global transformation of labor caused by container cargo shipping is like saying that WAGON MASTER is a Western. Burch and Sekula’s essay film is a journey around the world, to the ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bilbao – each a trove of stories, encounters, and observations at times angry and at times wry. The whole thing is held together by Sekula’s adventure-happy, politically astute, partisan commentary, which itself is a masterpiece of nonfiction.” –Olaf Möller, FILM COMMENT

“An epic view and urgent analysis of the follies of global capitalism…a prime example of essayistic and political cinema. It creates a complex tapestry of powerful images and language.” –Mike Hoolboom

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Allan Sekula will be present for the opening night screenings on Wednesday!

Special thanks to Allan Sekula, and to Joost Verheij, Frank van Reemst, Suzanne Meijer, and Pascale Veerling (Doc.Eye Film).
The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss.
THE FORGOTTEN SPACE follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains, and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. And in Bilbao, we discover the most sophisticated expression of the belief that the maritime economy, and the sea itself, is somehow obsolete.
Using a range of materials – including descriptive documentary, interviews, archive stills and footage, and clips from old movies – Sekula and Burch have created an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes that affects us today, a film that seeks to understand and describe the contemporary maritime world in relation to the complex symbolic legacy of the sea.

“To say that the subject is the global transformation of labor caused by container cargo shipping is like saying that WAGON MASTER is a Western. Burch and Sekula’s essay film is a journey around the world, to the ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bilbao – each a trove of stories, encounters, and observations at times angry and at times wry. The whole thing is held together by Sekula’s adventure-happy, politically astute, partisan commentary, which itself is a masterpiece of nonfiction.” –Olaf Möller, FILM COMMENT

“An epic view and urgent analysis of the follies of global capitalism…a prime example of essayistic and political cinema. It creates a complex tapestry of powerful images and language.” –Mike Hoolboom

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Allan Sekula will be present for the opening night screenings on Wednesday!

Special thanks to Allan Sekula, and to Joost Verheij, Frank van Reemst, Suzanne Meijer, and Pascale Veerling (Doc.Eye Film).
The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss.
THE FORGOTTEN SPACE follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains, and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. And in Bilbao, we discover the most sophisticated expression of the belief that the maritime economy, and the sea itself, is somehow obsolete.
Using a range of materials – including descriptive documentary, interviews, archive stills and footage, and clips from old movies – Sekula and Burch have created an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes that affects us today, a film that seeks to understand and describe the contemporary maritime world in relation to the complex symbolic legacy of the sea.

“To say that the subject is the global transformation of labor caused by container cargo shipping is like saying that WAGON MASTER is a Western. Burch and Sekula’s essay film is a journey around the world, to the ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bilbao – each a trove of stories, encounters, and observations at times angry and at times wry. The whole thing is held together by Sekula’s adventure-happy, politically astute, partisan commentary, which itself is a masterpiece of nonfiction.” –Olaf Möller, FILM COMMENT

“An epic view and urgent analysis of the follies of global capitalism…a prime example of essayistic and political cinema. It creates a complex tapestry of powerful images and language.” –Mike Hoolboom

PROGRAM 1: THREE PLACES IN RHODE ISLAND & FUTURE REAL MOMENTS 1
An evening of clips from the seminal 1970s trilogy, comprised of SAKONNET POINT, RUMSTICK ROAD, and NAYATT SCHOOL, as well as POINT JUDITH (an epilog). These pieces draw partly from the autobiographical impulses of Spalding Gray, and also incorporate material from sources as diverse as Mary Baker Eddy, T.S. Eliot, James Strahs, Arch Oboler, and Eugene O’Neill.

“When the trilogy was performed together for a two-month run in the winter of 1978-79…its imaginative use of film, dance, music, child actors, and non-linear texts confirmed its stature as one of the most impressive and innovative theater events of the ‘70s.” –VILLAGE VOICE

THREE PLACES IN RHODE ISLAND will be followed by FUTURE REAL MOMENTS 1 - a work-in-progress by theatre-video artist and filmmaker Zbigniew Bzymek. This new piece is based on the Group’s online Dailies that grapple with presenting the work and behind-the-scenes life of The Wooster Group. Posted every workday since Oct 2010, the Dailies include footage from the Group in and out of performance, on tour and at home. For FUTURE REAL MOMENTS 1 Bzymek has edited an installment of these short films about art for the big screen, in which the Group encounters and consumes the filmmaker as a wannabe auteur.
"New York's the Wooster Group is a company that has online flair in bucketloads…these abstract shorts convey a palpable flavour of the company, fostering an online relationship with their audience that bridges the Atlantic." – THE GUARDIAN

PROGRAM 2: THE ROAD TO IMMORTALITY
A program of clips from ROUTE 1 & 9, L.S.D. (…JUST THE HIGH POINTS…), and FRANK DELL’S THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTONY. The 1980s trilogy features fierce juxtapositions and syntheses of theater, video, music, dance, raucous vaudeville, stilted TV soap opera, naked talk shows, and meditations on lust and death, religious ecstasy, and social repression. This fusion of high and low art incorporates materials from Thornton Wilder, “Pigmeat” Markham, Arthur Miller, Michael Kirby, Timothy Leary, Gustave Flaubert, Ingmar Bergman, and Lenny Bruce. In 1990 the VILLAGE VOICE called the trilogy, “The most significant body of theater work created in this country in the past decade.”
“TWG’s theatrical collages present the violent inexplicable collision of cultures and artistic materials without prettification or overt moralizing, although the work resonates with a post-countercultural despair. […] TWG represents the darker vision of New York’s theatrical avant-garde.” –NEW YORK TIMES

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Allan Sekula will be present for the opening night screenings on Wednesday!

Special thanks to Allan Sekula, and to Joost Verheij, Frank van Reemst, Suzanne Meijer, and Pascale Veerling (Doc.Eye Film).
The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss.
THE FORGOTTEN SPACE follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains, and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. And in Bilbao, we discover the most sophisticated expression of the belief that the maritime economy, and the sea itself, is somehow obsolete.
Using a range of materials – including descriptive documentary, interviews, archive stills and footage, and clips from old movies – Sekula and Burch have created an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes that affects us today, a film that seeks to understand and describe the contemporary maritime world in relation to the complex symbolic legacy of the sea.

“To say that the subject is the global transformation of labor caused by container cargo shipping is like saying that WAGON MASTER is a Western. Burch and Sekula’s essay film is a journey around the world, to the ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bilbao – each a trove of stories, encounters, and observations at times angry and at times wry. The whole thing is held together by Sekula’s adventure-happy, politically astute, partisan commentary, which itself is a masterpiece of nonfiction.” –Olaf Möller, FILM COMMENT

“An epic view and urgent analysis of the follies of global capitalism…a prime example of essayistic and political cinema. It creates a complex tapestry of powerful images and language.” –Mike Hoolboom

PROGRAM 3: BRACE UP!
The Wooster Group’s eerie deconstruction of Anton Chekhov’s THE THREE SISTERS, in a translation by Paul Schmidt, BRACE UP! incorporates selections from popular and obscure postwar Japanese film and performance. This footage is from the Group’s 2003 revival.“Chekhov’s vision of lives of missed connections and ambitions devoured by time actually jibes, in a bizarre way, with TWG’s fragmented, disorienting approach. The Group’s trademark use of television screens and microphones, and scrambling of taped and live performances, blurred the line between immediate and mediated reality in ways that gave a new, wicked vitality to Chekhovian lines like ‘Little by little you will disappear’ and ‘When things lose their form, they lose their identity.’ –Ben Brantley, NEW YORK TIMES

PROGRAM 4: TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (PHÈDRE)
This program highlights The Wooster Group’s 2002 OBIE-winning production of Paul Schmidt’s version of Racine’s PHÈDRE, set in a mobile modernist landscape of sliding plexiglass panels, omnipresent monitors, hidden cameras, and badminton….
“This blend of ironic seriousness, heightened theatricality and multimedia ballet has developed into one of the sharpest of theatrical instruments…an ideal scalpel for Racine’s surgical exploration into lust.” –VILLAGE VOICE
“An astonishing invention and completely, utterly nuts. If it weren’t so nuts, it wouldn’t be so astonishing.” –NEW YORK OBSERVER

PROGRAM 5: UNPRODUCED and UNFINISHED
This live, late-night event, hosted by members of The Wooster Group, features Jim Fletcher and Young Jean Lee. Fletcher will read from the short novel WRONG GUYS by Jim Strahs followed by a clip from TWG's unfinished 1997 film version and Lee will read from the unproduced TWG screenplay: KOKAJO, based on the 1964 Kaneto Shindo film, ONIBABA.

PROGRAM 6: HOUSE/LIGHTS
The Wooster Group’s 1999 OBIE-winning collision of Gertrude Stein’s DOCTOR FAUSTUS LIGHTS THE LIGHTS with Joseph Mawra’s B-movie classic, OLGA’S HOUSE OF SHAME.
“[B]edazzling…there’s nothing else like it around; it turns disorientation into a primary sensual pleasure, even as it raises terrifying thoughts about the deeply mixed blessings of technological progress.” –NEW YORK TIMES

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Allan Sekula will be present for the opening night screenings on Wednesday!

Special thanks to Allan Sekula, and to Joost Verheij, Frank van Reemst, Suzanne Meijer, and Pascale Veerling (Doc.Eye Film).
The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss.
THE FORGOTTEN SPACE follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains, and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. And in Bilbao, we discover the most sophisticated expression of the belief that the maritime economy, and the sea itself, is somehow obsolete.
Using a range of materials – including descriptive documentary, interviews, archive stills and footage, and clips from old movies – Sekula and Burch have created an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes that affects us today, a film that seeks to understand and describe the contemporary maritime world in relation to the complex symbolic legacy of the sea.

“To say that the subject is the global transformation of labor caused by container cargo shipping is like saying that WAGON MASTER is a Western. Burch and Sekula’s essay film is a journey around the world, to the ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bilbao – each a trove of stories, encounters, and observations at times angry and at times wry. The whole thing is held together by Sekula’s adventure-happy, politically astute, partisan commentary, which itself is a masterpiece of nonfiction.” –Olaf Möller, FILM COMMENT

“An epic view and urgent analysis of the follies of global capitalism…a prime example of essayistic and political cinema. It creates a complex tapestry of powerful images and language.” –Mike Hoolboom

PROGRAM 7: NORTH ATLANTIC & WRONG GUYS
Two texts by long-time TWG associate James Strahs provided the backbone for these very different productions. This program includes clips from the military comedy, NORTH ATLANTIC as well as the entire 1997 unfinished film, WRONG GUYS, a tale of smuggling and survivalists, adapted from Strahs’s short novel and first shown in the 1997 Whitney Biennial (and rarely seen since). The NEW YORK TIMES said, “Watching NORTH ATLANTIC can feel like channel-surfing, drunk, through a military-themed cinematic menu.”

PROGRAM 8: EUGENE O’NEILL
This program highlights TWG’s many years of engagement with the work of Eugene O’Neill, which has stretched from the late 1970s up to the current production of EARLY PLAYS (an adaptation of O’Neill’s “Sea Plays” and a collaboration with NYC Players). The evening begins with clips of a condensed version of LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT from TWG’s POINT JUDITH (an epilog). Then the focus shifts to THE HAIRY APE – featuring Willem Dafoe and music by John Lurie – and the video reconception of THE EMPEROR JONES – an “explosive, beat driven, in-your-face confrontation” (NEW YORK TIMES) with original music by David Linton and an OBIE-winning performance by Kate Valk in the title role. THE EMPEROR JONES was the opening night selection of the 1999 New York Video festival.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Allan Sekula will be present for the opening night screenings on Wednesday!

Special thanks to Allan Sekula, and to Joost Verheij, Frank van Reemst, Suzanne Meijer, and Pascale Veerling (Doc.Eye Film).
The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss.
THE FORGOTTEN SPACE follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains, and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. And in Bilbao, we discover the most sophisticated expression of the belief that the maritime economy, and the sea itself, is somehow obsolete.
Using a range of materials – including descriptive documentary, interviews, archive stills and footage, and clips from old movies – Sekula and Burch have created an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes that affects us today, a film that seeks to understand and describe the contemporary maritime world in relation to the complex symbolic legacy of the sea.

“To say that the subject is the global transformation of labor caused by container cargo shipping is like saying that WAGON MASTER is a Western. Burch and Sekula’s essay film is a journey around the world, to the ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bilbao – each a trove of stories, encounters, and observations at times angry and at times wry. The whole thing is held together by Sekula’s adventure-happy, politically astute, partisan commentary, which itself is a masterpiece of nonfiction.” –Olaf Möller, FILM COMMENT

“An epic view and urgent analysis of the follies of global capitalism…a prime example of essayistic and political cinema. It creates a complex tapestry of powerful images and language.” –Mike Hoolboom

PROGRAM 9: RUMSTICK ROAD
INTRODUCED BY ELIZABETH LECOMPTE & KEN KOBLAND
A work-in-progress reconstruction of the groundbreaking 1977 TWG production. RUMSTICK ROAD was an attempt to understand Spalding Gray’s mother’s suicide using audio-taped conversations, family letters, dance, slides, and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. This evening’s project aims to recreate that lost performance through archival materials such as Super-8 film, video footage, still photographs, and audio recordings. Elizabeth LeCompte and Ken Kobland will be here to introduce the program and to take questions afterwards.
“A brilliant and engrossing work; one whose abstraction and complexity are at the service of genuine emotion.” –NEW YORK TIMES

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Allan Sekula will be present for the opening night screenings on Wednesday!

Special thanks to Allan Sekula, and to Joost Verheij, Frank van Reemst, Suzanne Meijer, and Pascale Veerling (Doc.Eye Film).
The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss.
THE FORGOTTEN SPACE follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains, and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. And in Bilbao, we discover the most sophisticated expression of the belief that the maritime economy, and the sea itself, is somehow obsolete.
Using a range of materials – including descriptive documentary, interviews, archive stills and footage, and clips from old movies – Sekula and Burch have created an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes that affects us today, a film that seeks to understand and describe the contemporary maritime world in relation to the complex symbolic legacy of the sea.

“To say that the subject is the global transformation of labor caused by container cargo shipping is like saying that WAGON MASTER is a Western. Burch and Sekula’s essay film is a journey around the world, to the ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bilbao – each a trove of stories, encounters, and observations at times angry and at times wry. The whole thing is held together by Sekula’s adventure-happy, politically astute, partisan commentary, which itself is a masterpiece of nonfiction.” –Olaf Möller, FILM COMMENT

“An epic view and urgent analysis of the follies of global capitalism…a prime example of essayistic and political cinema. It creates a complex tapestry of powerful images and language.” –Mike Hoolboom

PROGRAM 10: HULA, FOR THE GOOD TIMES, FISH STORY, & TODAY, I MUST SINCERELY CONGRATULATE YOU
The evening will begin with two TWG dance pieces from the early 80s: Ray Whitfield and the Johnsons in HULA, a record album interpretation of “Hula” by The Waikiki Hula Boys (Columbia LP 565); followed by the almost unknown FOR THE GOOD TIMES, a choreographed dance inspired by “charades.” TODAY… is the Group’s little-seen meta-documentary of daily life in a fading performance troupe. In FISH STORY, subtitled “A Documentary About Theater Life in Eight Dances”, and the companion piece to the Group’s BRACE UP!, the theatrical worlds of Chekhov and Geinin intertwine to form “a richly personal ode to the craft of theater and the transience of life” (NEW YORK TIMES).

NEWFILMMAKERS CELEBRATES THE PERFORMING ARTS

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Bruce Bernstein TWO GROWN MEN (2011, 11 minutes, video)
&
Ana Barredo
THE TABLE
2011, 71 minutes, video.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Colemar Nichols SC&AH AKA FUNNY MAN (2010, 8 minutes, video)
Matt Davies UNTITLED #17 (2011, 9 minutes, video)
Antonia Roman HOLLYWOOD TALE (2011, 19 minutes, video)
Chip Hackler TWO HOURS IN THE DARK (2009, 35 minutes, 16mm)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Thomas Bentey
LOVE CHAOS
2011, 90 minutes, video.
Journalist Joe Lombardi has a shot at a big-time NYC newspaper if he can only write one last home-run article – on the ‘hot-n-sexy’ Jersey Shore dating scene.

Wednesday, February 22, Documentaries at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:30, Feature Presentation at 9:00.

PROGRAM 11: WHITE HOMELAND COMMANDO & RHYME ‘EM TO DEATH
WHITE HOMELAND COMMANDO is TWG’s 1992 full-length video and was originally shown at the NYFF and included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial. Michael Kirby’s teleplay is a cops-versus-white-supremacists tale imagined as a structuralist police procedural, as well as a prescient examination of domestic terrorism and the national security apparatus. RHYME ‘EM TO DEATH, a short black-and-white film shot by Leslie Thornton and inspired by Victor Hugo’s THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and the Salem Witch Trials, was first shown in the 1995 Whitney Biennial.

PROGRAM 12: FILMS FROM
Embedded in much of TWG’s theater pieces are several films that are discreet works of art in their own right. This evening will include screenings of “The Cocktail Party” from NAYATT SCHOOL; “By the Sea” from POINT JUDITH (an epilog); and “Flaubert Dreams of Travel But the Illness of His Mother Prevents It” from FRANK DELL’S THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTONY (all three made in collaboration with filmmaker Ken Kobland).

PROGRAM 1: THREE PLACES IN RHODE ISLAND & FUTURE REAL MOMENTS 1
An evening of clips from the seminal 1970s trilogy, comprised of SAKONNET POINT, RUMSTICK ROAD, and NAYATT SCHOOL, as well as POINT JUDITH (an epilog). These pieces draw partly from the autobiographical impulses of Spalding Gray, and also incorporate material from sources as diverse as Mary Baker Eddy, T.S. Eliot, James Strahs, Arch Oboler, and Eugene O’Neill.

“When the trilogy was performed together for a two-month run in the winter of 1978-79…its imaginative use of film, dance, music, child actors, and non-linear texts confirmed its stature as one of the most impressive and innovative theater events of the ‘70s.” –VILLAGE VOICE

THREE PLACES IN RHODE ISLAND will be followed by FUTURE REAL MOMENTS 1 - a work-in-progress by theatre-video artist and filmmaker Zbigniew Bzymek. This new piece is based on the Group’s online Dailies that grapple with presenting the work and behind-the-scenes life of The Wooster Group. Posted every workday since Oct 2010, the Dailies include footage from the Group in and out of performance, on tour and at home. For FUTURE REAL MOMENTS 1 Bzymek has edited an installment of these short films about art for the big screen, in which the Group encounters and consumes the filmmaker as a wannabe auteur.
"New York's the Wooster Group is a company that has online flair in bucketloads…these abstract shorts convey a palpable flavour of the company, fostering an online relationship with their audience that bridges the Atlantic." – THE GUARDIAN

Screenplay by John Sayles and Terence H. Winkless, based on a novel by Gary Brandner. With Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan, Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, and Slim Pickens.
“A popular Los Angeles TV reporter is given doctor’s orders to visit a remote consciousness-raising retreat called ‘The Colony’ after a traumatic incident with a serial killer. The bizarre behavior of the residents begins to make sense once the reporter discovers that she is staying amidst a community of werewolves! THE HOWLING is not only a great werewolf movie, but also a witty and knowing commentary on the genre itself. The film is as full of impressive werewolf transformation scenes as of social satire, which is no surprise given that the special effects were done by Rob Bottin (THE THING) and the screenplay was written by John Sayles.” –THE WEXNER CENTER

PROGRAM 2: THE ROAD TO IMMORTALITY
A program of clips from ROUTE 1 & 9, L.S.D. (…JUST THE HIGH POINTS…), and FRANK DELL’S THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTONY. The 1980s trilogy features fierce juxtapositions and syntheses of theater, video, music, dance, raucous vaudeville, stilted TV soap opera, naked talk shows, and meditations on lust and death, religious ecstasy, and social repression. This fusion of high and low art incorporates materials from Thornton Wilder, “Pigmeat” Markham, Arthur Miller, Michael Kirby, Timothy Leary, Gustave Flaubert, Ingmar Bergman, and Lenny Bruce. In 1990 the VILLAGE VOICE called the trilogy, “The most significant body of theater work created in this country in the past decade.”
“TWG’s theatrical collages present the violent inexplicable collision of cultures and artistic materials without prettification or overt moralizing, although the work resonates with a post-countercultural despair. […] TWG represents the darker vision of New York’s theatrical avant-garde.” –NEW YORK TIMES

Screenplay by Jeremy Larner. With Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, and Melvyn Douglas.
Left-wing lawyer Bill McKay (Redford), enlisted by a politico (Boyle) to run for the Senate, agrees on the condition that he can say exactly what he thinks. His honesty captivates the electorate, but as he inches up in the polls the corrupting forces of the American political process come into play. Released the fateful year of Richard Nixon’s reelection, the film garnered numerous accolades including the Oscar for Best Screenplay (screenwriter Larner thanked the “politicians of our time” for inspiration).
“THE CANDIDATE managed to garner real followers, if not votes, for its imaginary candidates. Indeed, it was thanks to THE CANDIDATE’s satire of image politics that a good-looking if dimwitted law student named Dan Quayle decided to follow his electoral destiny.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

We regret to announce that the 35mm print that we were expecting to screen is not available; as a result we will have to screen THE CANDIDATE from video. We apologize for this last-minute format change - but please note that all other films in the John Sayles series will be screening from 35mm or 16mm.

PROGRAM 1:

VESTIBULE (in 3 episodes) (1978, 24 minutes, 16mm)
16mm original in various (3) modes of optical re-photography. I think of this as my first ‘real’ film. ‘Real’ for me in the sense that it combines ruminations (philosophical and otherwise), fantasies, memories and the landscape of the city; a field of play I’ve never left.

FRAME (1975, 10 minutes, 16mm)
A first experiment using optical re-photography. I was trying to re-produce the experience of the drive, the movement forwards and back, simultaneously…and at the same time to portray the haunted, desolate beauty of those empty summer cabins at the edge of the sea.

ARISE! WALK DOG EAT DONUT (1999, 20 minutes, video)
A reflection on the daily grind, accompanied by an old Russian melody loosely translated and interpreted 4 or 5 different ways…and a return visit to the landscape of FRAME, 25 years later.

BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS (2003, 45 minutes, video)
5 texts/5 landscapes/5 monologues: Whitman/Ozu, the Dharma/Fellini, Bergman/Tarkovsky, DeLillo/Mann and Chekhov…the city as theater, a desert ruin, meat and pulp…a  mish-mash and mis-read…the unreliable translator…and the landscapes we dream in…

FLUSHED-AT-ONCE (2002, 45 seconds, video)
A short remembrance…a project created for an exhibition in commemoration of the events of Sept. 11.

Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

Screenplay by John Sayles. With Burt Reynolds and Casey Siemaszko.
The second American film by Scottish director Bill Forsyth (GREGORY’S GIRL, LOCAL HERO) portrays the relationship that ensues when professional thief Burt Reynolds and the younger, inexperienced Casey Siemaszko break into the same house. Reynolds decides to take the amateur crook under his wing, and the result is a charming, unexpectedly affecting comedy.
“A subtle, masterly film, a series of life lessons which never ducks the moral ironies, no less precious for their simplicity.” –TIME OUT

John Sayles in person following the screening on Friday, February 24!

The first American film by the great Raul Ruiz (who passed away in August 2011) features appearances by a host of NY underground luminaries, including Jim Jarmusch, Kathy Acker, Annie Sprinkle, and several of the Wooster Group’s actors: Kate Valk, Michael Kirby, Michael Stumm, and Anna Köhler.
“Stars Michael Kirby as a creepy, logorrheic derelict and compulsive slasher – modeled according to Ruiz on Kojak – who leaves a trail of unquiet corpses around Lower Manhattan as he leads a young VILLAGE VOICE rock critic on a quest for God, or maybe a Mexican soap opera star. … In addition to [its] impossible camera angles and loop-de-loop dialogue, the movie is characterized by its bloody tableaux, circular structure, and pervasive hacienda music.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

Screenplay by Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr., based on a novel by Elmore Leonard. With Paul Newman, Fredric March, and Richard Boone. Archival print courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
“Don’t try to wolf it down crudely, the way you do with slapdash Western barbecues. Savor it for its fine ingredients. Let it slowly subdue your appetite. Dwell on its peppery pungence, its blood-red juiciness, its spicy surprises and the warm taste it leaves in your mouth – or, if you insist on being literal, in the pit of your emotions and your mind. For this is a first-rate cooking of a western recipe – not a great Western film nor a creation, but an excellent putting of heat to a fine selected blend.” –Bosley Crowther, NEW YORK TIMES

Richard Serra & Robert Bell
PRISONER’S DILEMMA
1974, 40 minutes, video.
This rare Richard Serra video uses the concept of ‘The Prisoner’s Dilemma’ from game theory as a video experiment to, in Serra’s words, “expose the format of commercial TV.” The video features Spalding Gray, Richard Schechner, Kathryn Bigelow, Leo Castelli, and Bruce Boice, among others.
&
Joan Jonas DOUBLE LUNAR DOGS (1984, 24 minutes, video)
With Spalding Gray and Joan Jonas.
Inspired by the science fiction story “Universe” by Robert Heinlein, this is an Orwellian vision of post-apocalyptic survival aboard a drifting spaceship whose timeless travelers have forgotten the purpose of their mission. To recapture memory and create a continuum between their unknown origin and uncertain destination, the characters in this disjointed, philosophical narrative play metaphorical games with words and archetypal objects.

Screenplay by Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr. With Sally Field, Beau Bridges, Ron Leibman, and Pat Hingle.
The screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr. collaborated repeatedly with director Martin Ritt, working together on, among other films, HOMBRE (also included here), THE LONG HOT SUMMER, THE SOUND AND THE FURY, and HUD. Perhaps their most beloved film, though, was NORMA RAE, with Sally Field as a North Carolina cotton mill worker who fights to unionize her factory. Based on the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton, it’s genuinely stirring without lapsing into easy sentimentality.

With Willem Dafoe.
“Bigelow’s first feature immediately reveals her canny talent for simultaneously fulfilling and deconstructing popular film genres. Set in the 1950s and starring a young, pomaded Willem Dafoe in his screen debut as the charismatic leader of a leather-clad and immoral bike gang, THE LOVELESS deliberately uproots the genre’s traditional embrace of youthful rebellion by introducing a notably noir shading and sharp feminist perspective into its story of generational and gender conflict. Bigelow’s training in painting and experimental cinema informs the film’s (relatively) slow pace, meticulous framing, and sparse, deliberately iconic dialogue – not to mention the evocation of Kenneth Anger’s SCORPIO RISING in the camera’s close attention to the bikers’ gleaming chrome and leather.” –HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE

We regret to announce that the 35mm print that we were expecting to screen is not available; as a result we will have to screen THE LOVELESS  from video. We apologize for this last-minute format change.

Screenplay by John Sayles. With Kevin McCarthy, Keenan Wynn, Dick Miller, and Barbara Steele. Print courtesy of the Joe Dante and Jon Davison Collection at the Academy Film Archive.
“A massive horde of genetically modified piranhas with a taste for human blood is unintentionally released into the waters of a summer resort named Lost River Lake. Do-gooder Maggie teams with Paul, the town drunk, to rid the lake of the razor-toothed menaces before it’s too late! This 1978 cult classic offers more than its fair share of blood, guts, and body parts. But don’t let the dismembered limbs fool you – this campy gorefest is also a smart, thinly-veiled critique of America’s military-industrial complex.” –BLOCK CINEMA

PROGRAM 2:

THE SHANGHAIED TEXT (1996, 30 minutes, video)
Archival footage and the Montana landscape entangled…Excerpts from films by Dovzhenko and Vertov with a musical score from Turandot. A mixed-brew of ecstatic tropes and heroic vistas…16mm film footage processed in an early D-1 Video post-production studio in Montbeliard, France.

THE TOY SUN (2011, 32 minutes, video)
More ruins, time, and memory…buildings come and go, like everything else. A text based on Eliot’s “Four Quartets”…an old man’s ramble…a moving picture book, illustrated with landscapes (from earlier films).

IDEAS OF ORDER IN CINQUE TERRE (2005, 32 minutes, video)
Cinque Terre is a string of towns along Italy’s North coast. An overwhelmingly beautiful place, extraordinary color, light and geometry. Of particular note is the train line which links the towns. It moves like a needle and thread through the mountains…its patterns and lines connect back to earlier Wooster Group rehearsals, which now form an outline of landscape.

Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.

Screenplay by John Sayles. With Robert Forster.
“A very funny meditation on the old ‘what happens when you flush the goldfish down the john?’ nightmare. It is also a formula film that simultaneously demonstrates the specific requirements of the formula while sending them up with good humor. Lewis Teague, the director, and John Sayles, who wrote the screenplay, know exactly what they’re doing. … Though ALLIGATOR is done straight, not as parody, it never for a minute loses its sense of humor.” –Vincent Canby, NEW YORK TIMES

Screenplay by Jeremy Larner. With Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, and Melvyn Douglas.
Left-wing lawyer Bill McKay (Redford), enlisted by a politico (Boyle) to run for the Senate, agrees on the condition that he can say exactly what he thinks. His honesty captivates the electorate, but as he inches up in the polls the corrupting forces of the American political process come into play. Released the fateful year of Richard Nixon’s reelection, the film garnered numerous accolades including the Oscar for Best Screenplay (screenwriter Larner thanked the “politicians of our time” for inspiration).
“THE CANDIDATE managed to garner real followers, if not votes, for its imaginary candidates. Indeed, it was thanks to THE CANDIDATE’s satire of image politics that a good-looking if dimwitted law student named Dan Quayle decided to follow his electoral destiny.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

We regret to announce that the 35mm print that we were expecting to screen is not available; as a result we will have to screen THE CANDIDATE from video. We apologize for this last-minute format change - but please note that all other films in the John Sayles series will be screening from 35mm or 16mm.

Screenplay by Jerry Belson. With Bruce Dern.
“This 1975 satire about a ‘Young American Miss’ beauty pageant and the middle-class mentality of small-town southern California is Michael Ritchie’s best feature, though it hasn’t won anything like the reputation it deserves. … Screenwriter Jerry Belson supplies an unexpected amount of pain and even horror as well as comic nuance.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

With Rosemary Hochschild, Ron Vawter, Will Patton, and Eric Mitchell.
A psycho noir shot in high-contrast black-and-white where stalkers, terrorists and government agents collide.
“It promised pleasure and delivered death… nothing ever happened to her class… there was no reason to feel nervous even in the heart of New York… you push the fourth button and arrive at the fourth floor… she was one more person in personville was one more person too many…”

With Ron Vawter, Rosemary Hochschild, Will Patton, and Gary Indiana.
A sour-spirited foul-mouthed epic of ennui, BLANK is a prescient classic by No-Wave filmmaker Oblowitz. Set in a motel room at NYC’s Kennedy Airport, the film treats two days in the life of a deadbeat couple, an obsessive husband lost in a web of psychotic delusion and his immigrant wife. Great character bits include Ron Vawter forcing Gary Indiana to give him a blowjob in the bathroom.
“A cinephiliac achievement in which the pathology of male sexuality insists to the point of nausea.” –Claire Johnston

Screenplay by John Sayles. With Richard Thomas, Robert Vaughn, John Saxon, and George Peppard.
This Roger Corman-produced mash-up of STAR WARS and THE SEVEN SAMURAI finds seven intergalactic mercenaries teaming up to defend a peaceful planet from the evil tyrant Sador (Saxon). The film’s charming modesty belies the heavy duty talent behind the scenes, including James Cameron (who was responsible for the art direction), composer James Horner (TITANIC), production assistant Gale Ann Hurd (producer of ALIENS), and of course, John Sayles, who contributed the witty, memorable screenplay.

PLEASE NOTE: The 16mm print we were planning to screen is in very poor condition, so we will be screening the movie from Blu-ray instead; we apologize for the format change!

PROGRAM 3:

FOTO-ROMAN (1992, 26 minutes, video)
The text is composed of excerpts of a novel, QUEER AND ALONE, by Jim Strahs (who also plays the John Doe here.) The voice-over is by Vito Acconci. It’s a travelogue of sorts…or a daydream, by a very odd, somewhat unreliable narrator.

LANDSCAPE AND DESIRE (1980, 40 minutes, 16mm)
A (mostly) bus ‘tour’ of the American landscape. But this is the old un-franchised one. Small-town hotels, bus depot waiting rooms, and the endless plains and sky. A scrapbook of the banal and un-dramatic. Now it feels like a souvenir from a more modest world. Photographed in Super-8 and re-printed onto 16mm.

END CREDITS (1994, 7 minutes, video)
Made as the end-credit sequence for a film of Ron Vawter’s performance piece, ROY COHN/JACK SMITH, directed by Jill Godmilow. Ron was an extraordinary performer and actor. The two men he portrays were gay men, at infinitely opposite ends of the spectrum, social, artistic, and human.

PIECE FOR SPALD (2004, 7 minutes, video)
An audio-mix, no image…scraps of Spalding Gray’s comments, from here and there… Assembled as part of a memorial for the storyteller and old friend, who lost himself in New York harbor in January of 2004.

Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.

Screenplay by John Sayles. With Burt Reynolds and Casey Siemaszko.
The second American film by Scottish director Bill Forsyth (GREGORY’S GIRL, LOCAL HERO) portrays the relationship that ensues when professional thief Burt Reynolds and the younger, inexperienced Casey Siemaszko break into the same house. Reynolds decides to take the amateur crook under his wing, and the result is a charming, unexpectedly affecting comedy.
“A subtle, masterly film, a series of life lessons which never ducks the moral ironies, no less precious for their simplicity.” –TIME OUT

John Sayles in person following the screening on Friday, February 24!

Screenplay by Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr. With Sally Field, Beau Bridges, Ron Leibman, and Pat Hingle.
The screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr. collaborated repeatedly with director Martin Ritt, working together on, among other films, HOMBRE (also included here), THE LONG HOT SUMMER, THE SOUND AND THE FURY, and HUD. Perhaps their most beloved film, though, was NORMA RAE, with Sally Field as a North Carolina cotton mill worker who fights to unionize her factory. Based on the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton, it’s genuinely stirring without lapsing into easy sentimentality.

Bette Gordon ANYBODY’S WOMAN (1981, 25 minutes, Super-8mm-to-video)
“I asked my friend Nancy Reilly to talk about her porn fantasies in front of the [Variety Theater]. And I asked my friend Spalding Gray to do the same. … I wanted to hear women talk dirty and to see what kind of power that might yield. I wanted women to look back instead of being looked at.” –B.G.
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Bruce & Norman Yonemoto SPALDING GRAY’S MAP OF L.A. (1984, 27.5 minutes, video)
The Yonemotos collaborated with Gray and actors Mary Woronov and Marshall Efron on this satire of the mythology of Los Angeles, juxtaposing a parodic fictional narrative with Gray’s autobiographical monologues.
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Skip Blumberg SPALDING GRAY’S “A PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN THEATER” (1985, 27 minutes, video)
Taking his cues from a stack of cards with the names of plays in which he performed throughout the 1960s and 70s, Gray turns each tidbit of information into an inspired anecdote and becomes animated with recollection, presenting a microcosm of the relentless and self-conscious experimentation of this period of American theater.

Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

Bruce & Norman Yonemoto
MADE IN HOLLYWOOD
1990, 56 minutes, video. With Patricia Arquette, Michael Lerner, Ron Vawter, Mary Woronov, Michael Smith, and Mike Kelley.
Steeped in irony, this video depicts the personal and cultural mediation of reality and fantasy, desire and identity, by the myths of television and cinema. Quoting from a catalogue of popular styles and sources, from TV commercials to THE WIZARD OF OZ, the Yonemotos construct a parable of the Hollywood image-making industry from a pastiche of narrative clichés. With deadpan humor and hyperbolic visual stylization, the Yonemotos layer artifice upon artifice, constructing an image-world where reality and representation, truth and simulation, are meaningless distinctions.
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Mark Rappaport POSTCARDS (1990, 27 minutes, video)
This short piece by Mark Rappaport, his first work in video (he would go on to create the seminal video essays ROCK HUDSON’S HOME MOVIES and FROM THE JOURNALS OF JEAN SEBERG) features Ron Vawter as a traveling salesman whose romance with Janet is depicted entirely through the postcards he sends her from the road.

Screenplay by Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr., based on a novel by Elmore Leonard. With Paul Newman, Fredric March, and Richard Boone. Archival print courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
“Don’t try to wolf it down crudely, the way you do with slapdash Western barbecues. Savor it for its fine ingredients. Let it slowly subdue your appetite. Dwell on its peppery pungence, its blood-red juiciness, its spicy surprises and the warm taste it leaves in your mouth – or, if you insist on being literal, in the pit of your emotions and your mind. For this is a first-rate cooking of a western recipe – not a great Western film nor a creation, but an excellent putting of heat to a fine selected blend.” –Bosley Crowther, NEW YORK TIMES

The first American film by the great Raul Ruiz (who passed away in August 2011) features appearances by a host of NY underground luminaries, including Jim Jarmusch, Kathy Acker, Annie Sprinkle, and several of the Wooster Group’s actors: Kate Valk, Michael Kirby, Michael Stumm, and Anna Köhler.
“Stars Michael Kirby as a creepy, logorrheic derelict and compulsive slasher – modeled according to Ruiz on Kojak – who leaves a trail of unquiet corpses around Lower Manhattan as he leads a young VILLAGE VOICE rock critic on a quest for God, or maybe a Mexican soap opera star. … In addition to [its] impossible camera angles and loop-de-loop dialogue, the movie is characterized by its bloody tableaux, circular structure, and pervasive hacienda music.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

Screenplay by John Sayles. With Robert Forster.
“A very funny meditation on the old ‘what happens when you flush the goldfish down the john?’ nightmare. It is also a formula film that simultaneously demonstrates the specific requirements of the formula while sending them up with good humor. Lewis Teague, the director, and John Sayles, who wrote the screenplay, know exactly what they’re doing. … Though ALLIGATOR is done straight, not as parody, it never for a minute loses its sense of humor.” –Vincent Canby, NEW YORK TIMES

With Ron Vawter, Kate Valk, Jim Clayburgh, Peyton Smith, Jeff Webster, and Anna Köhler.
The only theatrical feature film by renowned avant-garde stage director Peter Sellars is this dialogue-free quasi-remake of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, set on and around Wall Street and featuring performances from Mikhail Baryshnikov, Joan Cusack, Peter Gallagher, Sellars himself, and a significant portion of the Wooster Group’s company of actors: Ron Vawter, Kate Valk, Jim Clayburgh, and Peyton Smith.
“The film is a series of layered and parallel episodes that will be experienced and interpreted somewhat differently by each viewer. They are linked in a world of pure color, sound, light, emotion and human presence.” –P.S.

Screenplay by John Sayles. With Kevin McCarthy, Keenan Wynn, Dick Miller, and Barbara Steele. Print courtesy of the Joe Dante and Jon Davison Collection at the Academy Film Archive.
“A massive horde of genetically modified piranhas with a taste for human blood is unintentionally released into the waters of a summer resort named Lost River Lake. Do-gooder Maggie teams with Paul, the town drunk, to rid the lake of the razor-toothed menaces before it’s too late! This 1978 cult classic offers more than its fair share of blood, guts, and body parts. But don’t let the dismembered limbs fool you – this campy gorefest is also a smart, thinly-veiled critique of America’s military-industrial complex.” –BLOCK CINEMA

Screenplay by Jeremy Larner. With Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, and Melvyn Douglas.
Left-wing lawyer Bill McKay (Redford), enlisted by a politico (Boyle) to run for the Senate, agrees on the condition that he can say exactly what he thinks. His honesty captivates the electorate, but as he inches up in the polls the corrupting forces of the American political process come into play. Released the fateful year of Richard Nixon’s reelection, the film garnered numerous accolades including the Oscar for Best Screenplay (screenwriter Larner thanked the “politicians of our time” for inspiration).
“THE CANDIDATE managed to garner real followers, if not votes, for its imaginary candidates. Indeed, it was thanks to THE CANDIDATE’s satire of image politics that a good-looking if dimwitted law student named Dan Quayle decided to follow his electoral destiny.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

We regret to announce that the 35mm print that we were expecting to screen is not available; as a result we will have to screen THE CANDIDATE from video. We apologize for this last-minute format change - but please note that all other films in the John Sayles series will be screening from 35mm or 16mm.

With Rosemary Hochschild, Ron Vawter, Will Patton, and Eric Mitchell.
A psycho noir shot in high-contrast black-and-white where stalkers, terrorists and government agents collide.
“It promised pleasure and delivered death… nothing ever happened to her class… there was no reason to feel nervous even in the heart of New York… you push the fourth button and arrive at the fourth floor… she was one more person in personville was one more person too many…”

With Ron Vawter, Rosemary Hochschild, Will Patton, and Gary Indiana.
A sour-spirited foul-mouthed epic of ennui, BLANK is a prescient classic by No-Wave filmmaker Oblowitz. Set in a motel room at NYC’s Kennedy Airport, the film treats two days in the life of a deadbeat couple, an obsessive husband lost in a web of psychotic delusion and his immigrant wife. Great character bits include Ron Vawter forcing Gary Indiana to give him a blowjob in the bathroom.
“A cinephiliac achievement in which the pathology of male sexuality insists to the point of nausea.” –Claire Johnston

Screenplay by John Sayles and Terence H. Winkless, based on a novel by Gary Brandner. With Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan, Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, and Slim Pickens.
“A popular Los Angeles TV reporter is given doctor’s orders to visit a remote consciousness-raising retreat called ‘The Colony’ after a traumatic incident with a serial killer. The bizarre behavior of the residents begins to make sense once the reporter discovers that she is staying amidst a community of werewolves! THE HOWLING is not only a great werewolf movie, but also a witty and knowing commentary on the genre itself. The film is as full of impressive werewolf transformation scenes as of social satire, which is no surprise given that the special effects were done by Rob Bottin (THE THING) and the screenplay was written by John Sayles.” –THE WEXNER CENTER