Anthology Film Archives

The most recent edition of the Views from the Avant-Garde section of the New York Film Festival featured the premiere of newly preserved works by two of contemporary experimental cinema’s most revered artists, Peggy Ahwesh and Joe Gibbons. Pioneers of small-gauge filmmaking since the 1970s, Ahwesh and Gibbons are both superior storytellers who don’t necessarily rely on actors or scripts to tell their inquisitive tales. The filmmakers are longtime friends, and their works have a certain sympathetic resonance. Blown-up to 16mm from Super 8, these crucial pieces have never looked or sounded better. Seen today, the films are as surprising, thoughtful, and darkly funny as they were back in the day.

All films in this program were preserved by Bard College with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Preservation undertaken by BB Optics. Thanks to Peggy Ahwesh, Joe Gibbons, and Vanessa Haroutunian.

Peggy Ahwesh
MARTINA’S PLAYHOUSE
1989, 20 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm blow-up.
“In MARTINA’S PLAYHOUSE everything is up for grabs. The little girl of the title oscillates from narrator to reader to performer and from the role of baby to that of mother. While the roles she adopts may be learned, they are not set, and she moves easily between them. Similarly, in…Ahwesh’s playhouse of encounters with friends, objects aren’t merely objects but shift between layers of meaning. Men are conspicuously absent, a ‘lack’ reversing the Lacanian/Freudian constructions of women as Ahwesh plays with other possibilities.” –Kathy Geritz

Peggy Ahwesh
FROM ROMANCE TO RITUAL
1985, 20 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm blow-up.
“FROM ROMANCE TO RITUAL invokes and inverts the title of the 1920 book by Jessie L. Weston as it, like the book, draws connections between pagan history and ritual and mythology. In one scene, a very animated woman digs and scratches at the earth to give us a show-and-tell history of the megalithic site at Avebury. A bit tongue in cheek like playing around in the backyard (Prehistoric Sandbox 101) but not far from the truth in its reading of the erasure of matriarchal tendencies from traditional histories.” –P.A.

Joe Gibbons
CONFIDENTIAL PART 2
1980, 26 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm blow-up.
“Overtly a portrait of the filmmaker confessing his remorse at the scandalous manner in which he gathered material for his near-classic SPYING, here an eerie interpersonal relationship is developed between the filmmaker and his camera which culminates in violence. The ‘sin’ as act of the imagination and its degenerative effect on the personality.” –Henry Hills

Joe Gibbons
SPYING
1977-78, 31.5 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm blow-up.
“Too controversial to describe in detail, this film reveals the underlying voyeuristic nature of the cinema-phile.” –Joe Gibbons
“An exercise in applied voyeurism – a hilariously perverse MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA – in which the filmmaker secretly observes his neighbors (and their pets) sunbathing, gardening, or gazing out of the window.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

Total running time: ca. 105 min.

(CHICHI ARIKI)
A schoolteacher wants his son to marry before entering military service. A key film in Ozu’s career – many critics feel it is here that his early experimental period ends and his later mature period begins.

(LA RÈGLE DU JEU)
“Detested when it first appeared (for satirizing the French ruling class on the brink of the Second World War), almost destroyed by brutal cutting, restored in 1959 to virtually its original form, THE RULES OF THE GAME is now universally acknowledged as a masterpiece and perhaps Renoir’s supreme achievement. In the four international critics’ polls organized every ten years (since 1952) by SIGHT AND SOUND, only two films have been constant: one is BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, and the other is THE RULES OF THE GAME. And in the 1982 poll, THE RULES OF THE GAME had climbed to second place. Its extreme complexity (it seems, after more than 20 viewings, one of the cinema’s few truly inexhaustible films) makes it peculiarly difficult to write about briefly.” –Robin Wood.

Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was an artist whose astounding body of trailblazing work across numerous mediums – film, drawing, sculpture, and photography to name just a few – has long been celebrated in cinemas, galleries, classrooms, and museums around the world. A puckish iconoclast who adopted numerous styles and identities over the decades, Conner never worried about audience expectations or settled into one groove. He never stopped being completely unpredictable. To celebrate Anthology’s recently completed restorations of five of Conner’s most seminal films, we present two programs that feature brand-new and pristine prints of key works alongside lesser-screened gems.

10 SECOND FILM, REPORT, COSMIC RAY, MEA CULPA, and AMERICA IS WAITING have been preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program funded by The Film Foundation. CROSSROADS was restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive, and funded by the Conner Family Trust and Michael Kohn Gallery.

Special thanks to Michelle Silva and The Conner Family Trust.

PROGRAM 1:

10 SECOND FILM (1965, 10 sec, 16mm)

COSMIC RAY (1962, 5 min, 16mm)

THE WHITE ROSE (1967, 7 min, 16mm)

BREAKAWAY (1966, 5 min, 16mm)

PAS DE TROIS (1964/2006, 8.5 min, 16mm-to-video. Edited by Bruce Conner.)
A rarely seen document photographed by Dean Stockwell of Conner shooting BREAKAWAY with Toni Basil.

LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS (1959-67, 3 min, 16mm)

EASTER MORNING RAGA (1966, 10 min, 8mm)
While Conner produced a digital version of this work in 2008, we will be screening an original 8mm film print.

TAKE THE 5:10 TO DREAMLAND (1978, 5 min, 16mm)

VALSE TRISTE (1978, 5 min, 16mm)

HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW (2006, 4.5 min, digital video)

Total running time: ca. 60 min.

Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was an artist whose astounding body of trailblazing work across numerous mediums – film, drawing, sculpture, and photography to name just a few – has long been celebrated in cinemas, galleries, classrooms, and museums around the world. A puckish iconoclast who adopted numerous styles and identities over the decades, Conner never worried about audience expectations or settled into one groove. He never stopped being completely unpredictable. To celebrate Anthology’s recently completed restorations of five of Conner’s most seminal films, we present two programs that feature brand-new and pristine prints of key works alongside lesser-screened gems.

10 SECOND FILM, REPORT, COSMIC RAY, MEA CULPA, and AMERICA IS WAITING have been preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program funded by The Film Foundation. CROSSROADS was restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive, and funded by the Conner Family Trust and Michael Kohn Gallery.

Special thanks to Michelle Silva and The Conner Family Trust.

PROGRAM 2:

10 SECOND FILM (1965, 10 sec, 16mm)

MEA CULPA (1981, 5 min, 16mm)

MONGOLOID (1978, 3.5 min, 16mm)

AMERICA IS WAITING (1981, 3.5 min, 16mm)

REPORT (1963-67, 13 min, 16mm)

CROSSROADS (1976, 36 min, 35mm)

Total running time: ca. 65 min.

(FRANCESCO, GIULIARE DI DIO)
Francesco (St. Francis of Assisi) comes back to Santa Maria degli Angeli from Rome, journeying with his friars through the rain. When they are driven out of a hut, he begs the brothers’ forgiveness for abusing their obedience. While the monks are finishing the chapel, Brother Ginepro arrives naked again and confesses that the previous night he was tempted by the Devil. Later, he cuts the foot off a pig to feed a sick brother. That evening, Francesco meets a leper and kisses him. Brother Ginepro receives Francesco’s permission to preach and arrives at the camp of Nicolaio, the tyrant of Viterbo, whose cruelty he overcomes with his perfect humility. Francesco teaches Brother Leone that bearing injuries and blows is an example of perfect joy. Francesco sends his brothers out to preach far and wide.

(FRANCESCO, GIULIARE DI DIO)
Francesco (St. Francis of Assisi) comes back to Santa Maria degli Angeli from Rome, journeying with his friars through the rain. When they are driven out of a hut, he begs the brothers’ forgiveness for abusing their obedience. While the monks are finishing the chapel, Brother Ginepro arrives naked again and confesses that the previous night he was tempted by the Devil. Later, he cuts the foot off a pig to feed a sick brother. That evening, Francesco meets a leper and kisses him. Brother Ginepro receives Francesco’s permission to preach and arrives at the camp of Nicolaio, the tyrant of Viterbo, whose cruelty he overcomes with his perfect humility. Francesco teaches Brother Leone that bearing injuries and blows is an example of perfect joy. Francesco sends his brothers out to preach far and wide.

(CHICHI ARIKI)
A schoolteacher wants his son to marry before entering military service. A key film in Ozu’s career – many critics feel it is here that his early experimental period ends and his later mature period begins.

Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was an artist whose astounding body of trailblazing work across numerous mediums – film, drawing, sculpture, and photography to name just a few – has long been celebrated in cinemas, galleries, classrooms, and museums around the world. A puckish iconoclast who adopted numerous styles and identities over the decades, Conner never worried about audience expectations or settled into one groove. He never stopped being completely unpredictable. To celebrate Anthology’s recently completed restorations of five of Conner’s most seminal films, we present two programs that feature brand-new and pristine prints of key works alongside lesser-screened gems.

10 SECOND FILM, REPORT, COSMIC RAY, MEA CULPA, and AMERICA IS WAITING have been preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program funded by The Film Foundation. CROSSROADS was restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive, and funded by the Conner Family Trust and Michael Kohn Gallery.

Special thanks to Michelle Silva and The Conner Family Trust.

PROGRAM 1:

10 SECOND FILM (1965, 10 sec, 16mm)

COSMIC RAY (1962, 5 min, 16mm)

THE WHITE ROSE (1967, 7 min, 16mm)

BREAKAWAY (1966, 5 min, 16mm)

PAS DE TROIS (1964/2006, 8.5 min, 16mm-to-video. Edited by Bruce Conner.)
A rarely seen document photographed by Dean Stockwell of Conner shooting BREAKAWAY with Toni Basil.

LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS (1959-67, 3 min, 16mm)

EASTER MORNING RAGA (1966, 10 min, 8mm)
While Conner produced a digital version of this work in 2008, we will be screening an original 8mm film print.

TAKE THE 5:10 TO DREAMLAND (1978, 5 min, 16mm)

VALSE TRISTE (1978, 5 min, 16mm)

HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW (2006, 4.5 min, digital video)

Total running time: ca. 60 min.

(LA RÈGLE DU JEU)
“Detested when it first appeared (for satirizing the French ruling class on the brink of the Second World War), almost destroyed by brutal cutting, restored in 1959 to virtually its original form, THE RULES OF THE GAME is now universally acknowledged as a masterpiece and perhaps Renoir’s supreme achievement. In the four international critics’ polls organized every ten years (since 1952) by SIGHT AND SOUND, only two films have been constant: one is BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, and the other is THE RULES OF THE GAME. And in the 1982 poll, THE RULES OF THE GAME had climbed to second place. Its extreme complexity (it seems, after more than 20 viewings, one of the cinema’s few truly inexhaustible films) makes it peculiarly difficult to write about briefly.” –Robin Wood.

Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was an artist whose astounding body of trailblazing work across numerous mediums – film, drawing, sculpture, and photography to name just a few – has long been celebrated in cinemas, galleries, classrooms, and museums around the world. A puckish iconoclast who adopted numerous styles and identities over the decades, Conner never worried about audience expectations or settled into one groove. He never stopped being completely unpredictable. To celebrate Anthology’s recently completed restorations of five of Conner’s most seminal films, we present two programs that feature brand-new and pristine prints of key works alongside lesser-screened gems.

10 SECOND FILM, REPORT, COSMIC RAY, MEA CULPA, and AMERICA IS WAITING have been preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program funded by The Film Foundation. CROSSROADS was restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive, and funded by the Conner Family Trust and Michael Kohn Gallery.

Special thanks to Michelle Silva and The Conner Family Trust.

PROGRAM 2:

10 SECOND FILM (1965, 10 sec, 16mm)

MEA CULPA (1981, 5 min, 16mm)

MONGOLOID (1978, 3.5 min, 16mm)

AMERICA IS WAITING (1981, 3.5 min, 16mm)

REPORT (1963-67, 13 min, 16mm)

CROSSROADS (1976, 36 min, 35mm)

Total running time: ca. 65 min.

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS NEW FILMS

FIRST SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Lori Bowen JUSTUS (2011, 6 min, video)
Dee Robertson I KILL FLOWERS TO SAVE THE WORLD (2011, 7 min, video)
Hilton Ruiz 6-6-66 (2012, 8 min, video)
Natalie Smith SHED (2011, 8 min, video)
Travis Greene DEER HEAD VALLEY (2012, 10 min, video)
Gino Gianoli THE GREAT DESTROYER (2010, 20 min, 16mm)

SECOND SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Scott Eriksson THE LEARNING CURVE (2012, 10 min, video)
Javier Melendez MUTE (2011, 16 min, video)
Sal Fusco OFF LIMITS (2012, 30 min, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
TBD – visit newfilmmakers.com for more info.

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

Banned in Yugoslavia, hailed at international film festivals, this is unquestionably one of the most important subversive masterpieces of the 1970s: a hilarious, highly erotic, political comedy which quite seriously proposes sex as the ideological imperative for revolution and advances a plea for Erotic Socialism. […] Beneath the film’s light-hearted frivolity and marvelous humor lurks a more serious ideological intent: opposition to all oppressive social systems, East or West, the removal of prurience from sex and a final squaring of accounts by the new radicals with the now reactionary Russian regime. […] Makavejev is quite accurate in describing his film as ‘a black comedy, a political circus, a fantasy on the fascism and communism of human bodies, the political life of human genitals, a proclamation of the pornographic essence of any system of authority and power over others.
With:
René Clair and Francis Picabia ENTR’ACTE (1924, 22 min, 35mm, b&w)
“A masterpiece of Dada and a feat of cinema magic. Made as intermission entertainment for the Ballet Suédois from an impromptu scene by Francis Picabia.” –AFA

(NICHT MEHR FLIEHEN)
One of the more important European avant-garde films of the post-war period, this feature-length work offered a devastating comment on the mid-century European mood. A macabre landscape of impotence and absurdity, peopled by ambiguous travellers, finally explodes into senseless violence. A hypnotic paraphrase of mankind’s atomic cul-de-sac (clearly influenced by existentialism), the film has no conventional plot, dealing instead with day-dreams, associations and déjà vus. Set in a stone-covered, sun-parched desert, with remnants of civilization strewn about, the travellers pass through stations of an illusory voyage that increase the feeling of the absurd. A murder occurs without cause and creates neither guilt nor prosecution. The world has moved beyond good and evil; since life is absurd, crime is inconsequential. The film analyses states of a meaningless existence from which no escape is possible.
&
Ivo Kohler & Theodor Wrismann LIVING IN A REVERSED WORLD (1955, 11 min, 16mm. Print courtesy of Oddball Films.)
Fascinating – and unintentionally funny – experiments at Austria’s famed Institute for Experimental Psychology involve a subject who for several weeks wears special glasses that reverse right and left and up and down. Unexpectedly, these macabre and somehow surrealist experiments reveal that our perception of these aspects of vision is not of an optical nature and cannot be relied on, while the unfortunate, Kafkaesque subject stubbornly struggles through a morass of continuous failures.

ENCORE SCREENINGS!
Premiered here at Anthology last spring, MY MARS BAR MOVIE, Jonas Mekas’s ode to the now-vanished but never-forgotten local dive bar, is back for two encore screenings!
Our neighbor ever since we moved to the Second Avenue Courthouse building in 1988, the Mars Bar represented an undiluted blast of the old East Village, keeping alive the punk sensibility and anarchic attitude that are increasingly becoming things of the past in this part of the city. Though its site has been occupied by yet another glass condo building, the Mars Bar nevertheless lives on through Mekas’s lens!

“For some twenty years, Mars Bar, at the corner of First Street and Second Avenue, Manhattan, has been my bar. That’s where we went for beer and tequila whenever we had to take a break from our work at Anthology Film Archives, and it was also a bar where most of those who came to see movies at Anthology ended up after the shows. We always had a great time at Mars Bar. It was always open, there was always the jukebox, and very often there was no electricity, and it was old and messy and it didn’t want to be any other way – it was the last escape place left in downtown New York. So this is my love letter to it, to my Mars Bar. Mars Bar as I knew it.” –J.M.

An anti-imperialist yet curiously muted evocation of the French colonial period and of the strong yet waning influence of tribal religions. As usual with Sembene, there is much fascinating ethnological detail; more importantly, this is a film by an African for Africans, designed to make them share discovery and revelation, the limitations of myth, the cruelty of the oppressor, the fortitude of the people, and the need for revolution.

(PRIMA DELLA RIVOLUZIONE)

PLEASE NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond our control, BEFORE THE REVOLUTION will be screening tonight from Blu-ray.  We have re-scheduled the screening of the archival 35mm print for Saturday, March 16 at 4:30.  We apologize for the inconvenience!

Rarely has a talent burst upon the film scene with such brilliance as Bertolucci did with this film, perhaps the most germinal work of the new cinema. A flood of poetic visuals, montage, and sound, it is a shamelessly passionate, intensely personal statement of political and sexual coming of age. […] The motto that prefaces this film also points to Bertolucci’s dilemma: ‘Only those who lived before the revolution, knew how sweet life could be’ (Talleyrand). Thus Bertolucci is at his best describing, with anguished ambivalence, bitter-sweet episodes of middle-class life – an evening at the opera, the raptures of young (bourgeois) love, the despair of an Italian aristocrat whose world is being destroyed by capitalist materialism. The red flag and the poisonous beauty of privileged bourgeois existence are the two constants of Bertolucci’s work.
What is most original in it, however, is his outrageous and exuberant pictorial sense, his (aesthetically) revolutionary attempt to create a poetic-political cinema by means of audacious, violent editing and visual effects, far in advance of anything the commercial cinema has to offer and surpassing many of the most potent achievements of the international avant-garde. Bertolucci’s camera work and montage are entirely unorthodox, yet infused with a lyrical fluidity and depth of feeling untypical for a contemporary of Godard, Robbe-Grillet, and Resnais.

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FOREMAN IN PERSON OPENING NIGHT!
Theater director Richard Foreman is an avant-garde legend whose exceptional stage productions, videos, and writings have had a profound influence on arts culture in New York City and around the world since the late 1960s. ONCE EVERY DAY, his first feature film in 35 years, is a bold and utterly mesmerizing work that pushes his entirely unique theatrical vision into unexplored digital territories.

Highly visual, complexly edited, and without a conventional narrative ‘story’, ONCE EVERY DAY nevertheless circles a secret theme as it zeros in on a group of 25 people acting out a series of semi-ritualistic behavior patterns. But their eccentric impulses are aborted in unpredictable ways with each new attempt at action or development. As the film cuts between colored tableaus, bleached-out action sequences, expressionistic black-and-white confrontations, and slow immersion in pure light, we repeatedly hear the voices of the invisible director (Foreman) and his technicians, whispering off-camera instructions and comments to the characters – who are of course ‘actors’ as well as disturbed and inhibited human beings. The implicit question of the film becomes: could this be life itself – visibly re-making itself as art?

The film was shot in Buffalo, NY as a series of non-connected scenes with multiple performers over only 6 days, with 1 camera controlled by Foreman and 3 or 4 others free to film whatever was transpiring in each room where filming took place. Foreman, who edited the film for well over a year, calls the final result “a time-mosaic of ‘re-formatted consciousness’”. As in much of his theater, the film continuously shifts back and forth between evoking (and echoing) a very particular ‘art-making’ process, while sliding again and again into ecstasy and radical, free-floating anxiety. A major step away from his nearly annual stage productions at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, ONCE EVERY DAY embraces the total possibilities of cinema to continually subvert expectations and tap into liminal states of consciousness.

“No one is better than Mr. Foreman at creating the sense of a confounding universe out of joint and on a slick road to nowhere.” –Ben Brantley, NEW YORK TIMES

The 9PM screening has been cancelled due to the snow. The film will be shown every night at 7:15 and 9:00 through the 14th!

CANCELLED DUE TO THE SNOW STORM

The film is also playing on February 19th, and Millett will be in person to present the film.
Additional screening added on March 16th at 2:45PM. 

Photographed by an all-female crew and directed by the author of SEXUAL POLITICS, these are autobiographical interviews with three very different women who talk frankly about their lives, conflicts, and contrasting life styles. A proud and uncompromising film.

(FEU MATHIAS PASCAL)
Bizarre adaptation of Pirandello’s story of a man who – searching for absolute freedom – is unexpectedly given the opportunity to exercise it. Alberto Cavalcanti’s expressionist distortions of décor and architecture underscore the metaphysical rhythms of this strange, disordered tale. Filled with black humor and semi-surrealist melodrama, this unpredictable adventure in ambiguous freedom, conceived by an arch-skeptic, erupts in a paradoxical denouement.

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FOREMAN IN PERSON OPENING NIGHT!
Theater director Richard Foreman is an avant-garde legend whose exceptional stage productions, videos, and writings have had a profound influence on arts culture in New York City and around the world since the late 1960s. ONCE EVERY DAY, his first feature film in 35 years, is a bold and utterly mesmerizing work that pushes his entirely unique theatrical vision into unexplored digital territories.

Highly visual, complexly edited, and without a conventional narrative ‘story’, ONCE EVERY DAY nevertheless circles a secret theme as it zeros in on a group of 25 people acting out a series of semi-ritualistic behavior patterns. But their eccentric impulses are aborted in unpredictable ways with each new attempt at action or development. As the film cuts between colored tableaus, bleached-out action sequences, expressionistic black-and-white confrontations, and slow immersion in pure light, we repeatedly hear the voices of the invisible director (Foreman) and his technicians, whispering off-camera instructions and comments to the characters – who are of course ‘actors’ as well as disturbed and inhibited human beings. The implicit question of the film becomes: could this be life itself – visibly re-making itself as art?

The film was shot in Buffalo, NY as a series of non-connected scenes with multiple performers over only 6 days, with 1 camera controlled by Foreman and 3 or 4 others free to film whatever was transpiring in each room where filming took place. Foreman, who edited the film for well over a year, calls the final result “a time-mosaic of ‘re-formatted consciousness’”. As in much of his theater, the film continuously shifts back and forth between evoking (and echoing) a very particular ‘art-making’ process, while sliding again and again into ecstasy and radical, free-floating anxiety. A major step away from his nearly annual stage productions at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, ONCE EVERY DAY embraces the total possibilities of cinema to continually subvert expectations and tap into liminal states of consciousness.

“No one is better than Mr. Foreman at creating the sense of a confounding universe out of joint and on a slick road to nowhere.” –Ben Brantley, NEW YORK TIMES

Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
Myers is unquestionably a major talent of the American avant-garde and AKRAN one of his most important films. A feature-length deluge of incessant, brilliant bursts of images (short takes and jump cuts, single frames in series, freeze-frames slightly altered between takes) it creates a Joyce-like, dense and somber mosaic of memory and sensory impressions, a texture instead of a plot, a dream-like flow of visually-induced associations often flashing by faster than they can be absorbed. Described by the director as an ‘anxious allegory and chilling album of nostalgia’, its penetrating monomania is unexpectedly – subversively – realized to be a statement about America today: the alienation and atomization of technological consumer society is reflected in the very style of the film.

Banned in Yugoslavia, hailed at international film festivals, this is unquestionably one of the most important subversive masterpieces of the 1970s: a hilarious, highly erotic, political comedy which quite seriously proposes sex as the ideological imperative for revolution and advances a plea for Erotic Socialism. […] Beneath the film’s light-hearted frivolity and marvelous humor lurks a more serious ideological intent: opposition to all oppressive social systems, East or West, the removal of prurience from sex and a final squaring of accounts by the new radicals with the now reactionary Russian regime. […] Makavejev is quite accurate in describing his film as ‘a black comedy, a political circus, a fantasy on the fascism and communism of human bodies, the political life of human genitals, a proclamation of the pornographic essence of any system of authority and power over others.
With:
René Clair and Francis Picabia ENTR’ACTE (1924, 22 min, 35mm, b&w)
“A masterpiece of Dada and a feat of cinema magic. Made as intermission entertainment for the Ballet Suédois from an impromptu scene by Francis Picabia.” –AFA

Banned in Yugoslavia, hailed at international film festivals, this is unquestionably one of the most important subversive masterpieces of the 1970s: a hilarious, highly erotic, political comedy which quite seriously proposes sex as the ideological imperative for revolution and advances a plea for Erotic Socialism. […] Beneath the film’s light-hearted frivolity and marvelous humor lurks a more serious ideological intent: opposition to all oppressive social systems, East or West, the removal of prurience from sex and a final squaring of accounts by the new radicals with the now reactionary Russian regime. […] Makavejev is quite accurate in describing his film as ‘a black comedy, a political circus, a fantasy on the fascism and communism of human bodies, the political life of human genitals, a proclamation of the pornographic essence of any system of authority and power over others.
With:
René Clair and Francis Picabia ENTR’ACTE (1924, 22 min, 35mm, b&w)
“A masterpiece of Dada and a feat of cinema magic. Made as intermission entertainment for the Ballet Suédois from an impromptu scene by Francis Picabia.” –AFA

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FOREMAN IN PERSON OPENING NIGHT!
Theater director Richard Foreman is an avant-garde legend whose exceptional stage productions, videos, and writings have had a profound influence on arts culture in New York City and around the world since the late 1960s. ONCE EVERY DAY, his first feature film in 35 years, is a bold and utterly mesmerizing work that pushes his entirely unique theatrical vision into unexplored digital territories.

Highly visual, complexly edited, and without a conventional narrative ‘story’, ONCE EVERY DAY nevertheless circles a secret theme as it zeros in on a group of 25 people acting out a series of semi-ritualistic behavior patterns. But their eccentric impulses are aborted in unpredictable ways with each new attempt at action or development. As the film cuts between colored tableaus, bleached-out action sequences, expressionistic black-and-white confrontations, and slow immersion in pure light, we repeatedly hear the voices of the invisible director (Foreman) and his technicians, whispering off-camera instructions and comments to the characters – who are of course ‘actors’ as well as disturbed and inhibited human beings. The implicit question of the film becomes: could this be life itself – visibly re-making itself as art?

The film was shot in Buffalo, NY as a series of non-connected scenes with multiple performers over only 6 days, with 1 camera controlled by Foreman and 3 or 4 others free to film whatever was transpiring in each room where filming took place. Foreman, who edited the film for well over a year, calls the final result “a time-mosaic of ‘re-formatted consciousness’”. As in much of his theater, the film continuously shifts back and forth between evoking (and echoing) a very particular ‘art-making’ process, while sliding again and again into ecstasy and radical, free-floating anxiety. A major step away from his nearly annual stage productions at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, ONCE EVERY DAY embraces the total possibilities of cinema to continually subvert expectations and tap into liminal states of consciousness.

“No one is better than Mr. Foreman at creating the sense of a confounding universe out of joint and on a slick road to nowhere.” –Ben Brantley, NEW YORK TIMES

Fred Mogubgub THE GREAT SOCIETY (1967, 2 min, 16mm)
To the strains of ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’, and at the approximate rate of one image per second, the filmmaker, without further comment, presents head-on shots of an endless barrage of American consumer goods, packed, frozen, canned or bottled.

Newsreel YIPPIE! (1968, 10 min, 16mm)
True to their joyfully anarchist philosophy of radical politics as ‘theatre’, this is the Youth International Party’s jaundiced view of the 1968 Democratic convention and its concomitant violent demonstrations. De Mille footage, Abbie Hoffman, Democratic-party machine politicians, and Allen Ginsberg are cross-cut in a complex, sophisticated example of political filmmaking at its best.

Pace HOG CALLING BLUES (1969, ca. 10 min, 16mm)
[T]his is a cry of anguish by the young filmmaker at Vietnam and the Kent State University killings of anti-war students by the military. Two young men first decorate a dead pig, placed on an American flag, and then (with disjointed expressions of anger, impotence, anguish) remove its eyes, cut off its ears, furiously smash into it with an axe. Finally, shoving the flag into the carcass from behind, they cut off its head: ‘The Pig Is Dead.’

Robert Machover & Norman Fruchter
TROUBLEMAKERS
1966, 54 min, 16mm
One of the best works of the American Left, this is a hard-hitting example of a new kind of political film which avoids both clichés and propaganda. It concentrates instead on a careful exploration of the problems encountered by young SDS militants (including Tom Hayden, then unknown, later a leader of the movement) in organizing the Black Ghetto in Newark around community issues and simultaneously radicalizing them. The painful, difficult experiment ends in failure, honestly confronted by an honest film, leaving the viewer with the implicit suggestion that the attempt must be made again; this time perhaps in the direction of revolution rather than reform.

(NICHT MEHR FLIEHEN)
One of the more important European avant-garde films of the post-war period, this feature-length work offered a devastating comment on the mid-century European mood. A macabre landscape of impotence and absurdity, peopled by ambiguous travellers, finally explodes into senseless violence. A hypnotic paraphrase of mankind’s atomic cul-de-sac (clearly influenced by existentialism), the film has no conventional plot, dealing instead with day-dreams, associations and déjà vus. Set in a stone-covered, sun-parched desert, with remnants of civilization strewn about, the travellers pass through stations of an illusory voyage that increase the feeling of the absurd. A murder occurs without cause and creates neither guilt nor prosecution. The world has moved beyond good and evil; since life is absurd, crime is inconsequential. The film analyses states of a meaningless existence from which no escape is possible.
&
Ivo Kohler & Theodor Wrismann LIVING IN A REVERSED WORLD (1955, 11 min, 16mm. Print courtesy of Oddball Films.)
Fascinating – and unintentionally funny – experiments at Austria’s famed Institute for Experimental Psychology involve a subject who for several weeks wears special glasses that reverse right and left and up and down. Unexpectedly, these macabre and somehow surrealist experiments reveal that our perception of these aspects of vision is not of an optical nature and cannot be relied on, while the unfortunate, Kafkaesque subject stubbornly struggles through a morass of continuous failures.

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FOREMAN IN PERSON OPENING NIGHT!
Theater director Richard Foreman is an avant-garde legend whose exceptional stage productions, videos, and writings have had a profound influence on arts culture in New York City and around the world since the late 1960s. ONCE EVERY DAY, his first feature film in 35 years, is a bold and utterly mesmerizing work that pushes his entirely unique theatrical vision into unexplored digital territories.

Highly visual, complexly edited, and without a conventional narrative ‘story’, ONCE EVERY DAY nevertheless circles a secret theme as it zeros in on a group of 25 people acting out a series of semi-ritualistic behavior patterns. But their eccentric impulses are aborted in unpredictable ways with each new attempt at action or development. As the film cuts between colored tableaus, bleached-out action sequences, expressionistic black-and-white confrontations, and slow immersion in pure light, we repeatedly hear the voices of the invisible director (Foreman) and his technicians, whispering off-camera instructions and comments to the characters – who are of course ‘actors’ as well as disturbed and inhibited human beings. The implicit question of the film becomes: could this be life itself – visibly re-making itself as art?

The film was shot in Buffalo, NY as a series of non-connected scenes with multiple performers over only 6 days, with 1 camera controlled by Foreman and 3 or 4 others free to film whatever was transpiring in each room where filming took place. Foreman, who edited the film for well over a year, calls the final result “a time-mosaic of ‘re-formatted consciousness’”. As in much of his theater, the film continuously shifts back and forth between evoking (and echoing) a very particular ‘art-making’ process, while sliding again and again into ecstasy and radical, free-floating anxiety. A major step away from his nearly annual stage productions at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, ONCE EVERY DAY embraces the total possibilities of cinema to continually subvert expectations and tap into liminal states of consciousness.

“No one is better than Mr. Foreman at creating the sense of a confounding universe out of joint and on a slick road to nowhere.” –Ben Brantley, NEW YORK TIMES

First Annual MagikalCharm Film Festival

"23rd Anniversary  of Magikal Charm’s invocation of the Purgatorial Guide. Join us as the Guide once more channels The Book of the Dead for indication of negotiation of Lives and Dreams on Bardo’s Plain during the next decade."

For more information, please visit: http://www.magikalcharm.com

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FOREMAN IN PERSON OPENING NIGHT!
Theater director Richard Foreman is an avant-garde legend whose exceptional stage productions, videos, and writings have had a profound influence on arts culture in New York City and around the world since the late 1960s. ONCE EVERY DAY, his first feature film in 35 years, is a bold and utterly mesmerizing work that pushes his entirely unique theatrical vision into unexplored digital territories.

Highly visual, complexly edited, and without a conventional narrative ‘story’, ONCE EVERY DAY nevertheless circles a secret theme as it zeros in on a group of 25 people acting out a series of semi-ritualistic behavior patterns. But their eccentric impulses are aborted in unpredictable ways with each new attempt at action or development. As the film cuts between colored tableaus, bleached-out action sequences, expressionistic black-and-white confrontations, and slow immersion in pure light, we repeatedly hear the voices of the invisible director (Foreman) and his technicians, whispering off-camera instructions and comments to the characters – who are of course ‘actors’ as well as disturbed and inhibited human beings. The implicit question of the film becomes: could this be life itself – visibly re-making itself as art?

The film was shot in Buffalo, NY as a series of non-connected scenes with multiple performers over only 6 days, with 1 camera controlled by Foreman and 3 or 4 others free to film whatever was transpiring in each room where filming took place. Foreman, who edited the film for well over a year, calls the final result “a time-mosaic of ‘re-formatted consciousness’”. As in much of his theater, the film continuously shifts back and forth between evoking (and echoing) a very particular ‘art-making’ process, while sliding again and again into ecstasy and radical, free-floating anxiety. A major step away from his nearly annual stage productions at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, ONCE EVERY DAY embraces the total possibilities of cinema to continually subvert expectations and tap into liminal states of consciousness.

“No one is better than Mr. Foreman at creating the sense of a confounding universe out of joint and on a slick road to nowhere.” –Ben Brantley, NEW YORK TIMES

NEWFILMMAKERS CELEBRATES VALENTINE’S DAY

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Ian Savage TIMELESS SEASONS: WOMEN’S HISTORY (2012, 5 min, video)
Pornsak Pichetshote A CONVERSATION ABOUT CHEATING (2012, 8 min, video)
Josh Accardo KILLER EYES (2012, 10 min, video)
Josh Cohen DREAMCATCHERS (2011, 14 min, video)
Yana Alliata di Montereale REQUIEM FOR EMILY (2011, 15 min, video)
Alexa DiCambio OUT OF THE BLUE (2012, 16 min, video)

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
Maja Dueholm SUNFLOWER (2012, 14 min, video)
&
Anthony Misiano
MOONFLOWER
2011, 44 min, video
The story of Scott, a hopeless romantic with a broken heart at a crossroads in his life. Unsure of his every move, Scott is thrown into an unfamiliar world and launched headfirst on a quirky, sometimes surreal adventure.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Darren Press
THERESA IS A MOTHER
2012, 101 min, video
Theresa McDermott has chased her ‘ideal’ life as an urban-dwelling, punk-ish singer/songwriter to its very end. She’s broke, facing eviction, and raising three kids on her own. Her only option is to move back to the rural town and parents she escaped a decade ago….

–Wednesday, February 13, Short Film Program at 6:00, First Feature at 7:30, Second Feature at 8:45.

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FOREMAN IN PERSON OPENING NIGHT!
Theater director Richard Foreman is an avant-garde legend whose exceptional stage productions, videos, and writings have had a profound influence on arts culture in New York City and around the world since the late 1960s. ONCE EVERY DAY, his first feature film in 35 years, is a bold and utterly mesmerizing work that pushes his entirely unique theatrical vision into unexplored digital territories.

Highly visual, complexly edited, and without a conventional narrative ‘story’, ONCE EVERY DAY nevertheless circles a secret theme as it zeros in on a group of 25 people acting out a series of semi-ritualistic behavior patterns. But their eccentric impulses are aborted in unpredictable ways with each new attempt at action or development. As the film cuts between colored tableaus, bleached-out action sequences, expressionistic black-and-white confrontations, and slow immersion in pure light, we repeatedly hear the voices of the invisible director (Foreman) and his technicians, whispering off-camera instructions and comments to the characters – who are of course ‘actors’ as well as disturbed and inhibited human beings. The implicit question of the film becomes: could this be life itself – visibly re-making itself as art?

The film was shot in Buffalo, NY as a series of non-connected scenes with multiple performers over only 6 days, with 1 camera controlled by Foreman and 3 or 4 others free to film whatever was transpiring in each room where filming took place. Foreman, who edited the film for well over a year, calls the final result “a time-mosaic of ‘re-formatted consciousness’”. As in much of his theater, the film continuously shifts back and forth between evoking (and echoing) a very particular ‘art-making’ process, while sliding again and again into ecstasy and radical, free-floating anxiety. A major step away from his nearly annual stage productions at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, ONCE EVERY DAY embraces the total possibilities of cinema to continually subvert expectations and tap into liminal states of consciousness.

“No one is better than Mr. Foreman at creating the sense of a confounding universe out of joint and on a slick road to nowhere.” –Ben Brantley, NEW YORK TIMES

(NOUS NE VIEILLIRONS PAS ENSEMBLE)
With Jean Yanne & Marlene Joubert.
“Far from viewer-friendly, [this film] tells the story of the endless breakups and makeups of a highly unstable yet apparently indissoluble couple. It’s a sort of love story told in inverted terms, depicting the protracted end of a five-year affair, with its arbitrary disagreements, sudden mood shifts, moments of irrational anger, and displays of stinging contempt, presented with a genuine, unmeasured violence. ‘You’ve never succeeded at anything and you never will’, says Jean, a 40-year-old married filmmaker, to his younger, working-class lover Catherine. ‘And do you know why? Because you are vulgar, irremediably vulgar, and not only are you vulgar, you are ordinary.’ These are the film’s most celebrated lines…a sort of brutalist alternative to the famous line from LOVE STORY: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’” –Dave Kehr, FILM COMMENT

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FOREMAN IN PERSON OPENING NIGHT!
Theater director Richard Foreman is an avant-garde legend whose exceptional stage productions, videos, and writings have had a profound influence on arts culture in New York City and around the world since the late 1960s. ONCE EVERY DAY, his first feature film in 35 years, is a bold and utterly mesmerizing work that pushes his entirely unique theatrical vision into unexplored digital territories.

Highly visual, complexly edited, and without a conventional narrative ‘story’, ONCE EVERY DAY nevertheless circles a secret theme as it zeros in on a group of 25 people acting out a series of semi-ritualistic behavior patterns. But their eccentric impulses are aborted in unpredictable ways with each new attempt at action or development. As the film cuts between colored tableaus, bleached-out action sequences, expressionistic black-and-white confrontations, and slow immersion in pure light, we repeatedly hear the voices of the invisible director (Foreman) and his technicians, whispering off-camera instructions and comments to the characters – who are of course ‘actors’ as well as disturbed and inhibited human beings. The implicit question of the film becomes: could this be life itself – visibly re-making itself as art?

The film was shot in Buffalo, NY as a series of non-connected scenes with multiple performers over only 6 days, with 1 camera controlled by Foreman and 3 or 4 others free to film whatever was transpiring in each room where filming took place. Foreman, who edited the film for well over a year, calls the final result “a time-mosaic of ‘re-formatted consciousness’”. As in much of his theater, the film continuously shifts back and forth between evoking (and echoing) a very particular ‘art-making’ process, while sliding again and again into ecstasy and radical, free-floating anxiety. A major step away from his nearly annual stage productions at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, ONCE EVERY DAY embraces the total possibilities of cinema to continually subvert expectations and tap into liminal states of consciousness.

“No one is better than Mr. Foreman at creating the sense of a confounding universe out of joint and on a slick road to nowhere.” –Ben Brantley, NEW YORK TIMES

With Albert Brooks, Kathryn Harrold, Bruno Kirby, George Kennedy, and James L. Brooks. Mint condition print courtesy of Sony Pictures.
MODERN ROMANCE may be Albert Brooks’s least-known film, but arguably it’s his greatest – the most uncompromising and consistent, and, as restrained as it is on the surface, ultimately the most personal and unforgiving in its self-criticism. Brooks is Robert Cole, a film editor who breaks up with his girlfriend only to spend the rest of the movie desperately trying to erase his mistake, and even more desperately trying to contain his jealousy, neediness, and paranoia. Still the great comic portrait of male neurosis, and of emotional and psychological dysfunction, MODERN ROMANCE lays bare its protagonist’s insecurities with an honesty few dramatic films have achieved. Only Brooks could make a deadpan comedy about a man who’s very nearly psychotic. Painfully funny, with the emphasis on ‘funny’.

With Albert Brooks, Kathryn Harrold, Bruno Kirby, George Kennedy, and James L. Brooks. Mint condition print courtesy of Sony Pictures.
MODERN ROMANCE may be Albert Brooks’s least-known film, but arguably it’s his greatest – the most uncompromising and consistent, and, as restrained as it is on the surface, ultimately the most personal and unforgiving in its self-criticism. Brooks is Robert Cole, a film editor who breaks up with his girlfriend only to spend the rest of the movie desperately trying to erase his mistake, and even more desperately trying to contain his jealousy, neediness, and paranoia. Still the great comic portrait of male neurosis, and of emotional and psychological dysfunction, MODERN ROMANCE lays bare its protagonist’s insecurities with an honesty few dramatic films have achieved. Only Brooks could make a deadpan comedy about a man who’s very nearly psychotic. Painfully funny, with the emphasis on ‘funny’.

(NOUS NE VIEILLIRONS PAS ENSEMBLE)
With Jean Yanne & Marlene Joubert.
“Far from viewer-friendly, [this film] tells the story of the endless breakups and makeups of a highly unstable yet apparently indissoluble couple. It’s a sort of love story told in inverted terms, depicting the protracted end of a five-year affair, with its arbitrary disagreements, sudden mood shifts, moments of irrational anger, and displays of stinging contempt, presented with a genuine, unmeasured violence. ‘You’ve never succeeded at anything and you never will’, says Jean, a 40-year-old married filmmaker, to his younger, working-class lover Catherine. ‘And do you know why? Because you are vulgar, irremediably vulgar, and not only are you vulgar, you are ordinary.’ These are the film’s most celebrated lines…a sort of brutalist alternative to the famous line from LOVE STORY: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’” –Dave Kehr, FILM COMMENT

CHUMLUM
1964, 23 min, 16mm. With Jack Smith, Mario Montez, and Gerard Malanga.
“One of the underground’s best and most influential films.” –Peter Gidal
&
THE FLOWER THIEF
1960, 59 min, 16mm, b&w. Starring Taylor Mead. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
[THE FLOWER THIEF is not technically part of the Essential Cinema selection, but we'll be screening it alongside CHUMLUM as a special bonus!]
“In the old Hollywood movie days movie studios would keep a man on the set who, when all other sources of ideas failed (writers, directors), was called upon to ‘cook up’ something for filming. He was called The Wild Man. THE FLOWER THIEF has been put together in memory of all dead wild men who died unnoticed in the field of stunt.” –R.R.

Total running time: ca. 90 min.

(NOUS NE VIEILLIRONS PAS ENSEMBLE)
With Jean Yanne & Marlene Joubert.
“Far from viewer-friendly, [this film] tells the story of the endless breakups and makeups of a highly unstable yet apparently indissoluble couple. It’s a sort of love story told in inverted terms, depicting the protracted end of a five-year affair, with its arbitrary disagreements, sudden mood shifts, moments of irrational anger, and displays of stinging contempt, presented with a genuine, unmeasured violence. ‘You’ve never succeeded at anything and you never will’, says Jean, a 40-year-old married filmmaker, to his younger, working-class lover Catherine. ‘And do you know why? Because you are vulgar, irremediably vulgar, and not only are you vulgar, you are ordinary.’ These are the film’s most celebrated lines…a sort of brutalist alternative to the famous line from LOVE STORY: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’” –Dave Kehr, FILM COMMENT

“The film describes, poetically, a way of living. The film is a protest which is violent, childish, and sincere – a protest against an industrial world based on the cycle of production and consumption.” –Alberto Moravia, L’ESPRESSO

With Albert Brooks, Kathryn Harrold, Bruno Kirby, George Kennedy, and James L. Brooks. Mint condition print courtesy of Sony Pictures.
MODERN ROMANCE may be Albert Brooks’s least-known film, but arguably it’s his greatest – the most uncompromising and consistent, and, as restrained as it is on the surface, ultimately the most personal and unforgiving in its self-criticism. Brooks is Robert Cole, a film editor who breaks up with his girlfriend only to spend the rest of the movie desperately trying to erase his mistake, and even more desperately trying to contain his jealousy, neediness, and paranoia. Still the great comic portrait of male neurosis, and of emotional and psychological dysfunction, MODERN ROMANCE lays bare its protagonist’s insecurities with an honesty few dramatic films have achieved. Only Brooks could make a deadpan comedy about a man who’s very nearly psychotic. Painfully funny, with the emphasis on ‘funny’.

FILM NOS. 1-5, 7, 10 (EARLY ABSTRACTIONS) (1941-57, 23 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.)
FILM NO. 11 (MIRROR ANIMATIONS) (1957, 4 min, 16mm-to-35mm blow-up. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)
FILM NO. 14 (LATE SUPERIMPOSITIONS) (1964, 28 min, 16mm)
FILM NO. 16 (OZ: THE TIN WOODMAN’S DREAM) (1967, 15 min, 35mm, silent)
“My cinematic excreta is of four varieties: – batiked animations made directly on film between 1939 and 1946; optically printed non-objective studies composed around 1950; semi-realistic animated collages made as part of my alchemical labors of 1957 to 1962; and chronologically super-imposed photographs of actualities formed since the latter year. All these works have been organized in specific patterns derived from the interlocking beats of the respiration, the heart and the EEG Alpha component and should be observed together in order, or not at all, for they are valuable works, works that will forever abide – they made me gray.” –H.S.

Total running time: ca. 80 min.

With Albert Brooks, Kathryn Harrold, Bruno Kirby, George Kennedy, and James L. Brooks. Mint condition print courtesy of Sony Pictures.
MODERN ROMANCE may be Albert Brooks’s least-known film, but arguably it’s his greatest – the most uncompromising and consistent, and, as restrained as it is on the surface, ultimately the most personal and unforgiving in its self-criticism. Brooks is Robert Cole, a film editor who breaks up with his girlfriend only to spend the rest of the movie desperately trying to erase his mistake, and even more desperately trying to contain his jealousy, neediness, and paranoia. Still the great comic portrait of male neurosis, and of emotional and psychological dysfunction, MODERN ROMANCE lays bare its protagonist’s insecurities with an honesty few dramatic films have achieved. Only Brooks could make a deadpan comedy about a man who’s very nearly psychotic. Painfully funny, with the emphasis on ‘funny’.

Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation and Cineric, Inc.
“NO. 12 can be seen as one moment–certainly the most elaborately crafted moment–of the single alchemical film which is Harry Smith’s life work. In its seriousness, its austerity, it is one of the strangest and most fascinating landmarks in the history of cinema. Its elaborately constructed soundtrack in which the sounds of various figures are systematically displaced onto other images reflects Smith’s abiding concern with auditory effects.”
– P. Adams Sitney

(NOUS NE VIEILLIRONS PAS ENSEMBLE)
With Jean Yanne & Marlene Joubert.
“Far from viewer-friendly, [this film] tells the story of the endless breakups and makeups of a highly unstable yet apparently indissoluble couple. It’s a sort of love story told in inverted terms, depicting the protracted end of a five-year affair, with its arbitrary disagreements, sudden mood shifts, moments of irrational anger, and displays of stinging contempt, presented with a genuine, unmeasured violence. ‘You’ve never succeeded at anything and you never will’, says Jean, a 40-year-old married filmmaker, to his younger, working-class lover Catherine. ‘And do you know why? Because you are vulgar, irremediably vulgar, and not only are you vulgar, you are ordinary.’ These are the film’s most celebrated lines…a sort of brutalist alternative to the famous line from LOVE STORY: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’” –Dave Kehr, FILM COMMENT

An anti-imperialist yet curiously muted evocation of the French colonial period and of the strong yet waning influence of tribal religions. As usual with Sembene, there is much fascinating ethnological detail; more importantly, this is a film by an African for Africans, designed to make them share discovery and revelation, the limitations of myth, the cruelty of the oppressor, the fortitude of the people, and the need for revolution.

Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
Myers is unquestionably a major talent of the American avant-garde and AKRAN one of his most important films. A feature-length deluge of incessant, brilliant bursts of images (short takes and jump cuts, single frames in series, freeze-frames slightly altered between takes) it creates a Joyce-like, dense and somber mosaic of memory and sensory impressions, a texture instead of a plot, a dream-like flow of visually-induced associations often flashing by faster than they can be absorbed. Described by the director as an ‘anxious allegory and chilling album of nostalgia’, its penetrating monomania is unexpectedly – subversively – realized to be a statement about America today: the alienation and atomization of technological consumer society is reflected in the very style of the film.

Photographed by an all-female crew and directed by the author of SEXUAL POLITICS, these are autobiographical interviews with three very different women who talk frankly about their lives, conflicts, and contrasting life styles. A proud and uncompromising film.

Fred Mogubgub THE GREAT SOCIETY (1967, 2 min, 16mm)
To the strains of ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’, and at the approximate rate of one image per second, the filmmaker, without further comment, presents head-on shots of an endless barrage of American consumer goods, packed, frozen, canned or bottled.

Newsreel YIPPIE! (1968, 10 min, 16mm)
True to their joyfully anarchist philosophy of radical politics as ‘theatre’, this is the Youth International Party’s jaundiced view of the 1968 Democratic convention and its concomitant violent demonstrations. De Mille footage, Abbie Hoffman, Democratic-party machine politicians, and Allen Ginsberg are cross-cut in a complex, sophisticated example of political filmmaking at its best.

Pace HOG CALLING BLUES (1969, ca. 10 min, 16mm)
[T]his is a cry of anguish by the young filmmaker at Vietnam and the Kent State University killings of anti-war students by the military. Two young men first decorate a dead pig, placed on an American flag, and then (with disjointed expressions of anger, impotence, anguish) remove its eyes, cut off its ears, furiously smash into it with an axe. Finally, shoving the flag into the carcass from behind, they cut off its head: ‘The Pig Is Dead.’

Robert Machover & Norman Fruchter
TROUBLEMAKERS
1966, 54 min, 16mm
One of the best works of the American Left, this is a hard-hitting example of a new kind of political film which avoids both clichés and propaganda. It concentrates instead on a careful exploration of the problems encountered by young SDS militants (including Tom Hayden, then unknown, later a leader of the movement) in organizing the Black Ghetto in Newark around community issues and simultaneously radicalizing them. The painful, difficult experiment ends in failure, honestly confronted by an honest film, leaving the viewer with the implicit suggestion that the attempt must be made again; this time perhaps in the direction of revolution rather than reform.

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS NEW JEWISH AND ISRAELI FILMS

FIRST SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Daniela Flynn TWO (2011, 8 min, video)
Benjamin Wlodawer NUMBERS (2011, 9 min, video)
Justin Ostein ADAM’S TALLIT (2010, 17 min, 35mm)
Pearl Gluck WHERE IS JOEL BAUM (2012, 29 min, video)

SECOND SHORT FILM PROGRAM
from Israel
Smadar Zamir BETWEEN THE LINES (2010, 16 min, video)
Lina Gartsman HOUSE WARMING (2010, 25 min, video)
Inbal Gibrolter FLOATING LATZUF (2010, 30 min, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Benjamin Orifici
BROOKLYN BREACH
2012, 94 min, video
Follows the arc of three Brooklyn families whose lives are under constant hidden surveillance. As we voyeuristically examine their secret lives, we follow each family’s descent toward its own life-changing event.

–Wednesday, February 20, First Short Film Program at 6:00, Second Short Film Program at 7:15, Feature Presentation at 8:45.

(KÔYA NO DACCHI WAIFU)
Presented by Go Hirasawa and Julian Ross, co-curators of the program.
The second directorial effort by the screenwriter for BRANDED TO KILL (Seijun Suzuki, 1967) and CHRONICLE OF AN AFFAIR (Koji Wakamatsu, 1965), Atsushi Yamatoya’s surreal pink film navigates a multi-layered and surreal plot with exquisite visual finesse. For a time an assistant director at Nikkatsu studios, Yamatoya took part in Seijun Suzuki’s screenwriting group Guryu Hachiro and wrote under the pen-name Yoshiaki Otani (with Chusei Sone) for Wakamatsu Productions.

(PARUCHIZAN ZENSHI)
Presented by Go Hirasawa and Julian Ross, co-curators of the program.
At the peak of student activism in the follow-up to the renewal of the controversial Anpo: US-Japan Security Treaty, Tsuchimoto’s socially-engaged documentary traces the struggles of the students of Kyoto University from their discussions to preparations for armed action. Produced by Ogawa Productions, the film follows new-left radical Osamu Takita and his debates with students, which are captured with exceptional intimacy.

(MINAMATA: KANJA-SAN TO SONO SEKAI)
When fertilizer company Chisso began depositing wastewater with traces of mercury into the nearby sea, residents of Minimata town in Kyushu began to show symptoms of what came to be recognized as a dangerous disease. The first in a series that lasted until his recent death, Tsuchimoto’s socially committed documentary traces the townspeoples’ struggle to receive a formal apology from Chisso. The film still enrages audiences and provides crucial warnings against the perils of industrial pollution.

Leif Goldberg’s mystifying films present viewers with an ecstatic obstacle course of mutating images and delightfully warped sounds. Densely packed yet ethereally exquisite, often frantic but always focused, Goldberg’s lustrous films present new formal and visual possibilities for animation and collage techniques. In addition to filmmaking, Goldberg is an independent visual artist whose work ranges from drawings and objects to screen prints. He co-published the seminal underground comics tabloid PAPER RODEO and produced the subsequent anthology FREE RADICALS (Pictureboxinc 2005). His drawings and prints have been published in numerous anthologies including KRAMER’S ERGOT and LE DERNIER CRI, while his film work has been exhibited as part of collaborative projects in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and the RISD Museum. A member of the Forcefield collective who was associated with the now legendary Forth Thunder scene in Providence, RI, Goldberg currently resides in Vermont where he teaches 16mm film at a small college and directs a community TV station.

HORSE HOLOGRAPH
1997, 4 min, 16mm
A horse experiences his surrounding life through a sequence of daydreams and quasi-reality. A multimedia animation made on film.

Q-2 IN THE HOUSE OF INFINITE COLORS
1999, 3 min, 16mm
A thousand strobing images set the stage for a future man transported back to an archaic world of colorful junk.

FAKE MAKEBELIEVE
2000, 14 min, video
VHS to VHS Sesame Street rehash with psychedelic overtones. Childhood fever dream.

THIRD ANNUAL ROGGABOGGA MOTION PICTURE
2002, 6 min, 16mm. Made with Forcefield.
16mm stop-motion animated film that was projected for the three-month duration of the Third Annual Roggabogga Installation at the Whitney.

BLOOD ORANGE
2012, 6 min, 16mm
Floating/streaming pumpkin heads caught on film.

IMAGINARY FRIEND
2005, 7.5 min, digital video
Toulouse and friends are in an internal crisis mode. Do they know that they are just puppets living in some shut off reality?

LAWS FOR THE INTERMINABLE
2006, 3.5 min, 16mm
This is an initiation program for one Utrillo Valens, who has been cryogenically preserved until a time deep into the disintegrated future. Now his crumpled, deteriorated body is being awoken to a new world…and these are the things he must know.

LIFE UNDER THE THREE SUNS
2007, 3 min, 16mm
“You know the three suns in the sky. They’ll come together soon…and it’s called the great – great something or other. It’s a prophecy. And he told me I must find the shard…and everything must be done before the three suns join in one…and that’s all…and then he died.”

MOON PULLS
2012 (work in progress), ca. 8 min, 16mm
“As our ship approached touchdown on the floating ground, my eyes were glued shut. The tides were there, pulling us…”

WEE WEE ATTRACTORS
2012 (work in progress), ca. 4 min, digital video/16mm)
Travel inside the unraveling scribble universe.

Total running time: ca. 65 min.

Preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Sarris wrote, “de Toth’s most interesting films reveal an understanding of the instability and outright treachery of human relationships” – and DARK WATERS offers a moody, Southern Gothic variation on that very dynamic. After narrowly surviving a steamship accident that kills her parents, traumatized heiress Merle Oberon develops an extreme fear of water and seeks refuge at her aunt and uncle’s Louisiana plantation. But she begins to question her sanity once she hears voices coming from the nearby swamp…or is that someone after her fortune? De Toth’s underrated thriller features a script co-written by Hitchcock collaborator Joan Harrison and a score by Miklós Rózsa.

Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn star as a successful architect and his wife in perhaps Donen’s greatest non-musical, an achronological romantic comedy-drama that tracks the couple’s dissolution over their successive trips to the South of France. “The director’s serious temperament is well suited to the serious casting of Hepburn and Finney, the stylishly brittle script of Frederic Raphael (NOTHING BUT THE BEST, DARLING), and the tinkly romantic score of Henry Mancini” (Sarris).

The first postwar Japanese film to be shot in South Korea, independent filmmaker Katsu Kanai’s second film, which forms the loosely configured ‘Smiling Milky Way Trilogy’, is an absurdly comic but nevertheless poignant exploration of Japanese-Korean relations and the roots of the Japanese bloodline.
“The film uses surrealism and oneiric imagery as well as the disruptive effects of the performance as happening both to fantasize and to subject to ethnographic scrutiny Japan’s fraught relation to Korea.” –Ryan Cook, Yale University

(TRIUMPH DES WILLENS)
“The official Nazi record of the 1934 Nuremberg Party rally, commissioned by Hitler and directed by Leni Riefenstahl, [it] is one of the most controversial contributions to film history because of its subject matter – her insistence that the film is solely a work of art and not propaganda; and the presentation of the subject matter – the manipulation of reality in this ‘documentary’ record. The contributions to the art of film this work has to offer are closely tied to the controversies. [It] is a masterpiece of style and editing, which in turn are the very techniques used to manipulate reality and create emotionally effective propaganda.” –Marie Saeli

Ray Milland stars as an anxious thief on the lam, fleeing to Mexico after lifting a million dollars from a U.S. bank. He solicits the help of border guide Anthony Quinn to lead him through the California wilderness and to freedom – there’s only the small matter of Quinn’s exasperated wife Debra Paget, who just so happens to be Milland’s ex-girlfriend. Shooting on location and in CinemaScope, the madly prolific Dwan transforms this crime-melodrama quickie into another of his terrific B-movies. Sarris grouped the film alongside the director’s SILVER LODE and THE RESTLESS BREED, and said they “represent a virtual bonanza of hitherto unexplored classics. …[I]t may very well be that Dwan will turn out to be the last of the old masters.”

(SANRIZUKA: HETA BURAKU)
Over the span of ten years and seven films, beginning in 1968, Ogawa Productions documented and participated in the revolt against the building of Narita airport. Ogawa and his team lived communally with the farmers and student activists in Sanrizuka village, which was to be destroyed and replaced by runways. A redefinition of the limits of involvement in documentary filmmaking, SANRIZUKA: HETA VILLAGE provides rare insight into grassroots activism and captures the pressures experienced by the workers’ and the patience required for their revolt.

Con men Flash and Luke (character actor extraordinaire Alan Hale and stuntman Clyde Cook) try to elude the cops by taking jobs at Cleo’s (Renee Adoree) carnival. When the charismatic Flash falls hard for the ravishing Cleo, he vows to help her mission of running a respectable show, but scheming pickpocket Big Flash (the great heavy Fred Kohler) has other plans in mind. Garnett’s suspenseful and evocative second feature “[suggests] that [his] personality is that of a rowdy vaudevillian, an artist with the kind of rough edges that cause the overcivilized French sensibility to swoon in sheer physical frustration” (Sarris).

Preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Sarris wrote, “de Toth’s most interesting films reveal an understanding of the instability and outright treachery of human relationships” – and DARK WATERS offers a moody, Southern Gothic variation on that very dynamic. After narrowly surviving a steamship accident that kills her parents, traumatized heiress Merle Oberon develops an extreme fear of water and seeks refuge at her aunt and uncle’s Louisiana plantation. But she begins to question her sanity once she hears voices coming from the nearby swamp…or is that someone after her fortune? De Toth’s underrated thriller features a script co-written by Hitchcock collaborator Joan Harrison and a score by Miklós Rózsa.

(INABA NO SHIROUSAGI)
Zero Jigen, the most notoriously outrageous performance art group in Japan, described themselves as having ‘raped the city’ with their naked rituals enacted on the streets across Japan. Shot by Masanori Oe, a member of the Newsreel collective in New York, the film documents the group’s happenings, which raged against the commodification of art represented by the Osaka Expo in 1970, and which they attacked in their activities for the ‘Joint Struggle Faction of Crashing Expo ‘70’.

Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn star as a successful architect and his wife in perhaps Donen’s greatest non-musical, an achronological romantic comedy-drama that tracks the couple’s dissolution over their successive trips to the South of France. “The director’s serious temperament is well suited to the serious casting of Hepburn and Finney, the stylishly brittle script of Frederic Raphael (NOTHING BUT THE BEST, DARLING), and the tinkly romantic score of Henry Mancini” (Sarris).

ENCORE SCREENINGS!
Premiered here at Anthology last spring, MY MARS BAR MOVIE, Jonas Mekas’s ode to the now-vanished but never-forgotten local dive bar, is back for two encore screenings!
Our neighbor ever since we moved to the Second Avenue Courthouse building in 1988, the Mars Bar represented an undiluted blast of the old East Village, keeping alive the punk sensibility and anarchic attitude that are increasingly becoming things of the past in this part of the city. Though its site has been occupied by yet another glass condo building, the Mars Bar nevertheless lives on through Mekas’s lens!

“For some twenty years, Mars Bar, at the corner of First Street and Second Avenue, Manhattan, has been my bar. That’s where we went for beer and tequila whenever we had to take a break from our work at Anthology Film Archives, and it was also a bar where most of those who came to see movies at Anthology ended up after the shows. We always had a great time at Mars Bar. It was always open, there was always the jukebox, and very often there was no electricity, and it was old and messy and it didn’t want to be any other way – it was the last escape place left in downtown New York. So this is my love letter to it, to my Mars Bar. Mars Bar as I knew it.” –J.M.

Donald Richie SACRIFICE / GISEI (1959, 10 min, 8mm-to-video, b&w)
&
Chiaki Nagano
THE PORTRAIT OF MR. O / O-SHI NO SHŌZŌ
1969, 59 min, 16mm, b&w
Ankoku Butoh (dance of darkness) was considered the pinnacle of postwar avant-garde arts and continues to thrill the world of modern dance today. Richie’s SACRIFICE is the first filmed document of their activities and a rare insight into the movement’s formative period, while THE PORTRAIT OF MR. O is the first in a series of collaborations between Chiaki Nagano and butoh’s co-founder Kazuo Ohno, whose elegant gestures grace the screen.

Ray Milland stars as an anxious thief on the lam, fleeing to Mexico after lifting a million dollars from a U.S. bank. He solicits the help of border guide Anthony Quinn to lead him through the California wilderness and to freedom – there’s only the small matter of Quinn’s exasperated wife Debra Paget, who just so happens to be Milland’s ex-girlfriend. Shooting on location and in CinemaScope, the madly prolific Dwan transforms this crime-melodrama quickie into another of his terrific B-movies. Sarris grouped the film alongside the director’s SILVER LODE and THE RESTLESS BREED, and said they “represent a virtual bonanza of hitherto unexplored classics. …[I]t may very well be that Dwan will turn out to be the last of the old masters.”

GENESIS THEORY / TENCHI SŌZŌSETSU 1967, 20 min, 16mm, b&w
CAMP / KYANPU 1970, 30 min, 16mm
BOY-TASTE / SHŌNEN SHIKŌ 1973, 12 min, 16mm
Seen as one of the leading lights of the angura (underground) and psychedelic arts that proliferated in the late 1960s, Michio Okabe’s films find their uniqueness in straddling documented performance and the act of filmmaking as performance. The winner of a prize at the first experimental film festival in Japan at the Sogetsu Art Center, Okabe’s queer sensibilities, bare-body rituals, and usurpation of pop songs are reminiscent of Kenneth Anger’s work.

Total running time: ca. 65 min.

Con men Flash and Luke (character actor extraordinaire Alan Hale and stuntman Clyde Cook) try to elude the cops by taking jobs at Cleo’s (Renee Adoree) carnival. When the charismatic Flash falls hard for the ravishing Cleo, he vows to help her mission of running a respectable show, but scheming pickpocket Big Flash (the great heavy Fred Kohler) has other plans in mind. Garnett’s suspenseful and evocative second feature “[suggests] that [his] personality is that of a rowdy vaudevillian, an artist with the kind of rough edges that cause the overcivilized French sensibility to swoon in sheer physical frustration” (Sarris).

Shuji Terayama A YOUNG PERSON’S GUIDE TO THE CINEMA / SEISHŌNEN NO TAME NO EIGA NYŪMON (1974, 3 min, triple-screen 16mm)
Akira Uno TOI ET MOI / OMAE TO WATASHI (1965, 10 min, 16mm, b&w)
Tadanori Yokoo ANTHOLOGY 1 (1963, 11 min, 16mm)
Katsuhiro Tomita THE MARTYR / JYUNKYŌSHA (1963, 28 min, 16mm, b&w)
Shuji Terayama’s triple-projection piece was made for the 100ft Film Festival hosted by Image Forum and explores imaginary orgies and strange memories tinted with the three primary colors. TOI ET MOI by Akira Uno stretches the definition of animation by drawing onto bodies and fogging the images with smoke, while Tadanori Yokoo remolds his graphic designs into animation with rhythmic edits. THE MARTYR, a production closely related to the legendary Nihon University Cinema Club, boasts a ragged visual flair.
Total running time: ca. 55 min.

The NYWIFT Member Screening Series provides members with the opportunity to show their work in a theatrical setting. Following the screening, there will be a Q&A with the filmmakers. Then, join us at a nearby venue for mingling, a cash bar, and complimentary appetizers.

Join us for “Anecdotes of a Nigeria”, a selection of four short films: TRUE STORY NOLLYWOOD by Ihuoma Mambo Atanga, NIGERIA AFTER BIAFRA by Chinonyelum Nono Osuji, FOUR ONE NINE by Alexander Etseyatse, and SAY GRACE BEFORE DROWNING by Nikyatu Jusu.

Ihuoma Atanga TRUE STORY NOLLYWOOD
Depicts the evolution of the world’s most popular African film industry: Nollywood. The Nollywood phenomenon paints a picture of Africa that is seldom acknowledged by the West, and relays narratives often criticized by West Africans themselves. This documentary sheds light on popular opinions, commentaries and often clandestine criticisms regarding the authenticity of the African narrative in Nollywood films.

Nono Osuji NIGERIA AFTER BIAFRA
“As a first generation Nigerian American trying to find a connection to my motherland I discovered that the conflict and division that started the Biafran War and genocide still exists today. This film explores how far Nigeria has come since Biafra and what the future of the country might be if things continue to progress down a path of division and destruction. Could the country be heading in the direction of another Civil War?” –N.O.

Alexander Etseyatse FOUR ONE NINE
Two British-Nigerian brothers – older brother Ade and younger brother Segun – are involved in an illegal family business. Ade is ending it while Segun wants to do just one more job.

Nikyatu Jusu SAY GRACE BEFORE DROWNING
After meeting her African refugee mother for the first time in six years, 8-year-old Hawa is forced to coexist with a woman teetering on the brink of insanity. African nations plagued by civil unrest wage war on women in the form of rape. Grace is one such victim, birthing a daughter, Hawa, as a consequence of this rape. Grace joins Hawa in the U.S. in a new life with her estranged daughter’s surrogate family.

NYWIFT programs, screenings and events are supported, in part, by grants from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

(FUNSHUTSU KIGAN – 15-SAI NO BAISHUNFU)
A member of Nihon University Cinema Club and scriptwriter for Nagisa Oshima and Koji Wakamatsu, activist filmmaker Masao Adachi made this unique pink film that is pregnant with political allegory in the wake of the failed revolution that marked the 1960s. GUSHING PRAYER explores the benumbed disappointment of failure and the paralysis of youth, depicting teenage forays into group sex, suicide, and prostitution with a remarkably desensitized vision.

For more information, please visit: http://dirtylooksnyc.org/

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS A NIGHT OF COMEDY

FIRST SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Lucy Reevely AD ALTA (2012, 9 min, video)
Devin Johnson SUBTERRANEAN VEIN (2012, 15 min, video)
Ellen Jacobs DEAD SERIOUS (2011, 21 min, video)
Ash Blodgett HOLD UP (2011, 28 min, video)

SECOND SHORT FILM PROGRAM
George Basliev (UN)LUCKY (2012, 11 min, video)
Arron Shiver GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKI (2011, 15 min, 35mm)
Justin Miller A LADY CAN LIVE THROUGH ANYTHING (2010, 17 min, video)
Ryan Eggold LITERALLY, RIGHT BEFORE AARON (2011, 23 min, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Joshua Martin
SHOEBOX
2011, 73 min, video
A man and a woman refuse to leave their apartment. They undertake a series of esoteric and nonsensical games to pass the time. Though they run out of food and things to say to each other, they become resigned to never leaving their apartment.

–Wednesday, February 27, First Short Film Program at 6:00, Second Short Film Program at 7:30, Feature Presentation at 9:00.

With Edith Meeks, Dylan McCormick, Peter Joseph, and Renee Bucciarelli.
Mimi and Michael have been close friends since briefly dating years before. The spark between them is re-kindled during a weekend picnic outing, and Mimi, suddenly enthusiastic, proposes to Michael abruptly. The two marry and head off on a honeymoon to Pennsylvania without ever having slept with each other. But the honeymoon goes terribly wrong: in no time the wedding night becomes a nightmare of recriminations and sexual incompatibility. Over the next few days, the couple tries to get past their problems, but Michael’s sexual anxiety and Mimi’s defensive reactions prove a deadly combination, and before long the marriage is hanging by a thread….

“Not many movies are willing or able to hack their way through the tangled, complicated emotional territory of HONEYMOON. This funny, harrowing, lucid movie is so mature about sex and human relations that it puts to shame the bulk of what passes for ‘adult’ entertainment in American cinema. In its deceptively simple way, HONEYMOON pulls off something quite difficult – namely, the illumination of the divide between expectations and reality in the lives of ordinary people.” –Kent Jones

With Strawn Bovee, Edith Meeks, Dylan McCormick, and Lois Raebeck.
Evelyn Bell, a Catholic professor of theology, and her younger sister Virginia are reunited after many years when Virginia returns home mired in a depression after being ejected from a religious cult. At a lakeside retreat in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the sisters try to reestablish their relationship, talking about their very different systems of belief, and about the oppressive childhood that still hangs over them….

“With religious films tending toward either propaganda or satire, ALL THE SHIPS AT SEA arrives like a gust of crisp sea air. With its searching discussion of faith lost and found, this highly impressive second feature by Sallitt follows the tradition of Dreyer, Bergman and Bresson, and is distinguished by two exceptional lead performances and an unusually rigorous aesthetic. … To encounter characters this authentically self-aware and introspective in an American film is rare.” –Scott Foundas, VARIETY

“Watching and listening to Strawn Bovee and Edith Meeks is like listening to two great jazz soloists jamming, in perfect tune with each other. … Woody Allen would cut off his right arm to be able to make a film like this, but he doesn’t have the intelligence, the taste or the actresses.” –Bill Krohn