Anthology Film Archives

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

Ken Kobland
THE COMMUNISTS ARE COMFORTABLE
1984-88, 55 minutes, video.
Part Bronx reminiscence, part landscape fantasy; part morality play, part melodrama. A film in many parts with monologue segments written by James Strahs for Willem Dafoe, Spalding Gray, Ron Vawter, Peyton Smith, and Luche Sacker.
“Filmed and acted with insinuating skill, it invites analysis but operates most powerfully on a visionary level, transforming ideas and emotions into a haunting reverie on childhood and its reverberating memories.” –David Sterritt
&
Burt Barr and James Benning O PANAMA (1985, 27.5 minutes, video)
This collaboration between video artist Burt Barr and filmmaker James Benning features Willem Dafoe as a man confined to his apartment on a winter day as he suffers through an illness. Built on the polarity between hot and cold, the tedious reality of the man’s sickness and the vivid hallucinatory visions of his delirium, O PANAMA conveys the workings of the subconscious. The contrast between the bleak urban winterscape and the vibrancy of Dafoe’s imagination fuels the dramatic progression.

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 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!

RAYMUNDO GLEYZER AND CINE DE LA BASE
Argentine filmmaker Raymundo Gleyzer was the founder of the Cine de la Base, a group dedicated to bringing revolutionary films to the people. In 1976, like 30,000 of his fellow countrymen, he was abducted and murdered by the country’s military dictatorship. But before his death he created a number of films which reveal his commitment to social reform in Latin America, a commitment he gave his life for. MEXICO, THE FROZEN REVOLUTION uses rare newreel footage of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata to connect the betrayal of the 1910 Mexico Revolution with the failed revolution of Gleyzer’s own time, while THE LAND BURNS boldly exposes the inequities of land ownership in Brazil, where 2% of the population owns 80% of the usable land. These rare screenings are not to be missed!
Presented by Juana Sapire, Gleyzer’s wife and producer.

THE LAND BURNS / LA TIERRA QUEMA (1964, 12 minutes, 35mm-to-video, b&w)
SWIFT, COMUNICADO CINEMATOGRÁFICO DEL ERP N°5 Y 7 (1971, 12 minutes, 16mm-to-video, b&w)
&
MEXICO, THE FROZEN REVOLUTION / MÉXICO, LA REVOLUCIÓN CONGELADA
1970, 66 minutes, 16mm. With English narration.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!

A high society wedding, a movie set, a beauty salon, a women’s weightlifting competition: these are a few of the many places in Uganda visited in Kimi Takesue’s feature documentary, Where Are You Taking Me? Employing an observational style, Takesue travels through the vibrant streets of Kampala to the rural quiet of Hope North, a refuge and school for survivors of civil war. Where Are You Taking Me? offers multi-faceted portraits of Ugandans and their country, exploring the complex interplay between the observer and the observed. This stunningly beautiful cinematic journey challenges notions of the familiar and the exotic. Where are we going... and what will we find?

“Stellar…. Takesue’s documentary takes the explosive subject of former Ugandan child soldiers in an unexpected direction; instead of choosing the usual routes of investigative journalism or bombastic commentary, the film keeps its distance from the traumatized youngsters and observes them with detached empathy as they readjust to ‘normalcy’.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

“Beautifully meditative…an enriching experience.” –Jay Weissberg, VARIETY

Check out the trailer for the film!

Takesue will be present at the following screenings for Q&As:
Friday, March 2nd: 7:00pm
Friday, March 2nd: 8:45pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 7:00pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 8:45pm

INTERNATIONALIST VISUAL ANALYSIS OF THE 60s:
Carolee Schneemann VIET FLAKES (USA, 1965, 7 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Masahori Ôe THE GREAT SOCIETY (USA/Japan, 1967, 17 minutes, 16mm-to-video)
Edouard de Laurot BLACK LIBERATION aka SILENT REVOLUTION (1967, 40 minutes, 16mm-to-video, b&w)
L.A. Newsreel REPRESSION (USA, 1970, 13 minutes, 16mm-to-video, b&w)

“Born in 1928 and still at work, René Vautier is the dean of French committed cinema. Author of a hundred films, all his life he has fought on the side of the oppressed against capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. In the course of his lifelong investigation into the necessity and relativity of images, Vautier has explored a vast array of different possible articulations between visual document and visual argument. Taken as a whole, then, Vautier’s work of the last fifty years constitutes the backbone of cinema understood in terms of its ethical and political responsibility. In the process, it has expanded more than any other single work the range of cinematic forms of critical investigation, from poetry to raw document, from pedagogical essay to experimental fiction.” –Nicole Brenez

AFRIQUE 50 (1950, 17 minutes, video. In French with English subtitles.)
The first French anti-colonial film.
LE GLAS (1964, 5 minutes, video. In French with English subtitles.)
A visual poem against Apartheid, narrated by filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety, with music by the Black Panthers.
&
René Vautier, Brigitte Criton, Buana Kabue and Olivier Tambo
FRONTLINE
1976, 75 minutes, video. In French with English subtitles.
An analysis of the causes and effects of the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

All the films in this program were subtitled by students/interns of Virginia Commonwealth University, The University of Richmond, and the VCU & RU French Film Festival. Thanks to the students/interns, and to Peter S. Kirkpatrick.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!

A high society wedding, a movie set, a beauty salon, a women’s weightlifting competition: these are a few of the many places in Uganda visited in Kimi Takesue’s feature documentary, Where Are You Taking Me? Employing an observational style, Takesue travels through the vibrant streets of Kampala to the rural quiet of Hope North, a refuge and school for survivors of civil war. Where Are You Taking Me? offers multi-faceted portraits of Ugandans and their country, exploring the complex interplay between the observer and the observed. This stunningly beautiful cinematic journey challenges notions of the familiar and the exotic. Where are we going... and what will we find?

“Stellar…. Takesue’s documentary takes the explosive subject of former Ugandan child soldiers in an unexpected direction; instead of choosing the usual routes of investigative journalism or bombastic commentary, the film keeps its distance from the traumatized youngsters and observes them with detached empathy as they readjust to ‘normalcy’.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

“Beautifully meditative…an enriching experience.” –Jay Weissberg, VARIETY

Check out the trailer for the film!

Takesue will be present at the following screenings for Q&As:
Friday, March 2nd: 7:00pm
Friday, March 2nd: 8:45pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 7:00pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 8:45pm

A documentary film about the academic and political tribulations of Angela Davis, the UCLA instructor and radical activist. Du Luart, a former student of Davis’s, initiated the project at the Department of Film at UCLA, where Davis was embroiled in a conflict with the University’s regents thanks to her Communist party membership, and eventually had to complete it independently, with the help of her fellow filmmakers and film students, including Charles Burnett and Hailé Gerima. It was completed only three weeks before the hijacking of a courtroom in San Rafael, California, which Davis was accused of helping to plan, leading to her eventual flight, capture, trial, and acquittal.

“A classic documentary on the struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique, focusing on the organization of civil life in the liberated areas. Filmed in 1970, in Niassa province, it was made with the support and co-operation of the Mozambican liberation movement, FRELIMO.” –DOCLISBOA

RAYMUNDO GLEYZER AND CINE DE LA BASE
Argentine filmmaker Raymundo Gleyzer was the founder of the Cine de la Base, a group dedicated to bringing revolutionary films to the people. In 1976, like 30,000 of his fellow countrymen, he was abducted and murdered by the country’s military dictatorship. But before his death he created a number of films which reveal his commitment to social reform in Latin America, a commitment he gave his life for. MEXICO, THE FROZEN REVOLUTION uses rare newreel footage of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata to connect the betrayal of the 1910 Mexico Revolution with the failed revolution of Gleyzer’s own time, while THE LAND BURNS boldly exposes the inequities of land ownership in Brazil, where 2% of the population owns 80% of the usable land. These rare screenings are not to be missed!
Presented by Juana Sapire, Gleyzer’s wife and producer.

THE LAND BURNS / LA TIERRA QUEMA (1964, 12 minutes, 35mm-to-video, b&w)
SWIFT, COMUNICADO CINEMATOGRÁFICO DEL ERP N°5 Y 7 (1971, 12 minutes, 16mm-to-video, b&w)
&
MEXICO, THE FROZEN REVOLUTION / MÉXICO, LA REVOLUCIÓN CONGELADA
1970, 66 minutes, 16mm. With English narration.

One of the most important films on black resistance in Africa. Set just before the 1961 uprising against the Portuguese colonialists, SAMBIZANGA centers on a young woman’s search for her jailed husband. Through first-time director Maldoror’s skill, this tale of separation and brutality becomes overwhelmingly affirmative. Co-scripted by Maldoror’s resistance leader husband.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!

A high society wedding, a movie set, a beauty salon, a women’s weightlifting competition: these are a few of the many places in Uganda visited in Kimi Takesue’s feature documentary, Where Are You Taking Me? Employing an observational style, Takesue travels through the vibrant streets of Kampala to the rural quiet of Hope North, a refuge and school for survivors of civil war. Where Are You Taking Me? offers multi-faceted portraits of Ugandans and their country, exploring the complex interplay between the observer and the observed. This stunningly beautiful cinematic journey challenges notions of the familiar and the exotic. Where are we going... and what will we find?

“Stellar…. Takesue’s documentary takes the explosive subject of former Ugandan child soldiers in an unexpected direction; instead of choosing the usual routes of investigative journalism or bombastic commentary, the film keeps its distance from the traumatized youngsters and observes them with detached empathy as they readjust to ‘normalcy’.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

“Beautifully meditative…an enriching experience.” –Jay Weissberg, VARIETY

Check out the trailer for the film!

Takesue will be present at the following screenings for Q&As:
Friday, March 2nd: 7:00pm
Friday, March 2nd: 8:45pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 7:00pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 8:45pm

Frank Pineda and Florence Jaugey
(LA HORA DE LOS GENERALES)
UK, 1992, 20 minutes, video. In English and Spanish.

This documentary reflects the career and personality of what was the Sandinista Popular Army, which was born of a guerilla movement and was once the youngest and largest army in Central America. It follows its evolution from its origins to its dramatic reduction since 1990.

PLUS: SANDINISTA FILMS
Presented by Jonathan Buchsbaum, author of CINEMA AND THE SANDINISTAS: FILM IN REVOLUTIONARY NICARAGUA, 1979-1990.

Frank Pineda, Ramiro Lacayo, Raúl Perez Ureta NOTICIERO 1. NACIONALIZACIÓN DE LAS MINAS (1979, 10 minutes)
Maria Jose Alvarez / Frank Pineda NOTICIERO 5. INICIA CRUZADA NACIONAL DE ALFABETIZACIÓN (1980, 10 minutes, b&w)
Emilio Rodriguez HISTORIA DE UN CINE COMPROMETIDO (1983, 15 minutes, b&w)
Ivan Argüello & Ronal Porras ROMPIENDO EL SILENCIO (1983, 14 minutes, b&w)

LAURA WADDINGTON

CARGO (Netherlands, 2001, 29 minutes, video)
“A powerful adventure on the Mediterranean with undocumented sailors, by one of the most brilliant and courageous filmmakers of her generation, worthy heir to Henri Storck, Paul Strand, Marcel Hanoun.” –Nicole Brenez
BORDER (France, 2004, 27 minutes, video)
BORDER is a personal account of the plight of the Afghan and Iraqi refugees of the Sangatte Red Cross camp in France, and of the police violence that followed the camp’s closure.
STILL (2010, 7 minutes, video)
Made for a collective French film created to protest the police violence that ensued when a policeman shot a young man with a Flash-ball cartridge in July 2009, causing him to lose his eye.
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!

A high society wedding, a movie set, a beauty salon, a women’s weightlifting competition: these are a few of the many places in Uganda visited in Kimi Takesue’s feature documentary, Where Are You Taking Me? Employing an observational style, Takesue travels through the vibrant streets of Kampala to the rural quiet of Hope North, a refuge and school for survivors of civil war. Where Are You Taking Me? offers multi-faceted portraits of Ugandans and their country, exploring the complex interplay between the observer and the observed. This stunningly beautiful cinematic journey challenges notions of the familiar and the exotic. Where are we going... and what will we find?

“Stellar…. Takesue’s documentary takes the explosive subject of former Ugandan child soldiers in an unexpected direction; instead of choosing the usual routes of investigative journalism or bombastic commentary, the film keeps its distance from the traumatized youngsters and observes them with detached empathy as they readjust to ‘normalcy’.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

“Beautifully meditative…an enriching experience.” –Jay Weissberg, VARIETY

Check out the trailer for the film!

Takesue will be present at the following screenings for Q&As:
Friday, March 2nd: 7:00pm
Friday, March 2nd: 8:45pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 7:00pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 8:45pm

“November 2007: I have been asked to go and film a Kurdish battalion of the Iraqi army. This battalion is located in Mossoul. I have 48 hours to make a decision. I decide to go. There, a friend gives me his old Hi8 camera with ten tapes. I am a photographer. I have never filmed anything. I have never seen War. For a whole month, I remain close to these soldiers and I film their everyday life, in spite of everything. Long waits, times out, endless wanderings through the city, looking for untraceable terrorists.” –E.B.

Florent Marcie
SAÏA
Afghanistan/France, 2000, 30 minutes, video.
“Florent Marcie on the front lines in Afghanistan, like Fabrice at Waterloo but like Stendhal at the same time.” –Nicole Brenez
&
Olivier Dury
MIRAGES
France, 2009, 46 minutes, video.
Every day, dozens of people are driven by an incredible sense of hope to set out on a journey from Niger, with the intention of arriving in Europe. During the first few days of their crossing into Algeria, these emigrants are forced to confront the time of the desert with its stases, its brutal accelerations, and its mineral inertia. The ordeal they undergo turns them into undocumented immigrants. But during their journey, this film considers them as individuals and for a brief moment steals them from the invisibility that awaits them.

“Florent Marcie undertook his first voyage to Chechnya in 1996. ITCHKÉRI KENTI resulted from ten years of reflections and voyages to the heart of the Chechen resistance, for a fresco on a people struggling against the central power since the end of the 18th century. Images of Russians in Chechnya, images of Chechens according to the Russians, ethnographic films from the past, videotapes of a present simultaneously experienced and meditated, as if Stendhal’s Fabrice del Dongo was looking to the battlefield in extreme close-up and in wide angle…. [A] subjective history of a collective situation, [it] takes the time to expose and to decry the different forms of conflicts, material, cultural, temporal, sometimes simple but sometimes very unexpected, which structure a popular struggle.” –Nicole Brenez

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!

A high society wedding, a movie set, a beauty salon, a women’s weightlifting competition: these are a few of the many places in Uganda visited in Kimi Takesue’s feature documentary, Where Are You Taking Me? Employing an observational style, Takesue travels through the vibrant streets of Kampala to the rural quiet of Hope North, a refuge and school for survivors of civil war. Where Are You Taking Me? offers multi-faceted portraits of Ugandans and their country, exploring the complex interplay between the observer and the observed. This stunningly beautiful cinematic journey challenges notions of the familiar and the exotic. Where are we going... and what will we find?

“Stellar…. Takesue’s documentary takes the explosive subject of former Ugandan child soldiers in an unexpected direction; instead of choosing the usual routes of investigative journalism or bombastic commentary, the film keeps its distance from the traumatized youngsters and observes them with detached empathy as they readjust to ‘normalcy’.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

“Beautifully meditative…an enriching experience.” –Jay Weissberg, VARIETY

Check out the trailer for the film!

Takesue will be present at the following screenings for Q&As:
Friday, March 2nd: 7:00pm
Friday, March 2nd: 8:45pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 7:00pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 8:45pm

“U.S. soldiers [in Iraq] are not allowed to film the war. They do it anyway, spreading and broadcasting images without permission, violating the orders and restrictions imposed by their superiors. Videos that show the real war, with casualties on both sides, scary situations and the horror of the day-by-day in occupied Iraq. IRAQI SHORT FILMS is the result of a long-term investigation of the propaganda generated by all the forces implicated in the conflict: the private security contractors, the U.S.-led occupation army, and the militias resisting the invasion.”

ANDERS OESTERGAARD AND ANONYMOUS
BURMA VJ: REPORTING FROM A CLOSED COUNTRY
This award-winning documentary provides a rare glimpse into the 2007 uprising in Myanmar. While 100,000 people took to the streets to protest the country’s repressive regime, foreign news crews were banned and the Internet was shut down. Nevertheless, the Democratic Voice of Burma, a collective of 30 anonymous and underground video journalists (VJs) recorded these historic and dramatic events on handycams and smuggled the footage out of the country, risking torture and life imprisonment.

Followed by:
Anonymous CET ENDROIT C’EST L’IRAN (France, 2009, 10 minutes, video)

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!

A high society wedding, a movie set, a beauty salon, a women’s weightlifting competition: these are a few of the many places in Uganda visited in Kimi Takesue’s feature documentary, Where Are You Taking Me? Employing an observational style, Takesue travels through the vibrant streets of Kampala to the rural quiet of Hope North, a refuge and school for survivors of civil war. Where Are You Taking Me? offers multi-faceted portraits of Ugandans and their country, exploring the complex interplay between the observer and the observed. This stunningly beautiful cinematic journey challenges notions of the familiar and the exotic. Where are we going... and what will we find?

“Stellar…. Takesue’s documentary takes the explosive subject of former Ugandan child soldiers in an unexpected direction; instead of choosing the usual routes of investigative journalism or bombastic commentary, the film keeps its distance from the traumatized youngsters and observes them with detached empathy as they readjust to ‘normalcy’.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

“Beautifully meditative…an enriching experience.” –Jay Weissberg, VARIETY

Check out the trailer for the film!

Takesue will be present at the following screenings for Q&As:
Friday, March 2nd: 7:00pm
Friday, March 2nd: 8:45pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 7:00pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 8:45pm

Marylène Negro selected a number of documentaries, some well-known, some shamefully neglected, from the counter-culture movement of the 60s and 70s – films against Vietnam, films of the Black Liberation Movement, films in support of the marginal and excluded – and assembled extracts into a powerful and complex study of power and resistance.

“From each of the ten films I’ve retained extracts that particularly affect me and they appear in superimposition chronologically. Things happen, rise up out of the confusion, get isolated, stand out for an instant, answer or echo one another, then return to chaos.” –M.N.

“X+ plays its part in the contemporary spontaneous movement of films that attempt to re-appropriate and transmit the memory of people’s struggles, a work in progress claimed in the USA by Malcolm X, taken up by the Weathermen in their manifesto ‘Prairie Fire’ (whose cover can be seen in X+), then by Howard Zinn: films such as PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND, by John Gianvito (2007), THE DYSTOPIA FILES by Mark Tribe (a series in progress since 2009), or FILM SOCIALISME by Jean-Luc Godard (2010).” –Nicole Brenez

ANNE-LAURE DE FRANSSU AND MORY COULIBALY

“I met Mory during winter 2008. He was among one thousand Cachan squatters who were roughly evacuated from their homes; among them, ten Malians were finally deported to their home country. On the spot, Mory instinctively filmed it all. When he showed me his film footage, we talked about his deep need to share these images, to let them speak for themselves, he told me how much he wanted to show them to Africans. So, together, we have imagined a grand Mali tour with the CNA (Cinema Numerique Ambulant).

Two years after our first meeting, I grab my camera and I go along with Mory on a screening tour of his achieved film around Mali. During our crossing of Mali, each night, men are coming back under duress from Europe and, each night, their words echo in Mory and disclose new destinies. The film takes us slowly to the heart of the country where dialogues are held, between men, around the hope of a coming departure for some of them, the expectations that have led them to France for others, as well as the wandering of the expelled. Claims and local development solutions are expressed to work out a common fight that would allow each of them to find their place with dignity.” –Anne-Laure de Franssu

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!

A high society wedding, a movie set, a beauty salon, a women’s weightlifting competition: these are a few of the many places in Uganda visited in Kimi Takesue’s feature documentary, Where Are You Taking Me? Employing an observational style, Takesue travels through the vibrant streets of Kampala to the rural quiet of Hope North, a refuge and school for survivors of civil war. Where Are You Taking Me? offers multi-faceted portraits of Ugandans and their country, exploring the complex interplay between the observer and the observed. This stunningly beautiful cinematic journey challenges notions of the familiar and the exotic. Where are we going... and what will we find?

“Stellar…. Takesue’s documentary takes the explosive subject of former Ugandan child soldiers in an unexpected direction; instead of choosing the usual routes of investigative journalism or bombastic commentary, the film keeps its distance from the traumatized youngsters and observes them with detached empathy as they readjust to ‘normalcy’.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

“Beautifully meditative…an enriching experience.” –Jay Weissberg, VARIETY

Check out the trailer for the film!

Takesue will be present at the following screenings for Q&As:
Friday, March 2nd: 7:00pm
Friday, March 2nd: 8:45pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 7:00pm
Saturday, March 3rd: 8:45pm

Philippe Grandrieux & Masao Adachi

Grandrieux’s experimental portrait of the revolutionary artist and filmmaker Masao Adachi recently received the CPH DOX New Vision Award. The jury highlighted the film’s interweaving of Adachi’s aesthetic concerns with the social and political histories he lived through. In the jury’s words, “Rather than a typical director/subject relationship, this is a collaboration between both directors, where authorship moves back and forth.”

“Not only in the Japanese cinema scene but also in the world, Adachi is exceptional in the sense that he was miraculously able to traverse filmmaking and politics, expression and revolution. I do not know anyone except Adachi who was fully engaged in the revolutionary struggle and then made a return to filmmaking.” –Go Hirasawa

Loosely inspired by Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Menkes’s most recent film combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black-and-white realism to explore the condition of violence that permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot in Yafo (the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv), the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption, of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played brilliantly by Didi Fire.

Check out the trailer for Dissolution!

One of the most important films on black resistance in Africa. Set just before the 1961 uprising against the Portuguese colonialists, SAMBIZANGA centers on a young woman’s search for her jailed husband. Through first-time director Maldoror’s skill, this tale of separation and brutality becomes overwhelmingly affirmative. Co-scripted by Maldoror’s resistance leader husband.

Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
This film was inspired by a real event – a US Marine, recently back from the Gulf War, was found digging a grave for his murdered wife in the middle of the California Mojave. This elliptical, hypnotic, deeply original film is a mesmerizing look at the desolation of violence.

“One of the year’s best films from one of my favorite filmmakers.” –Gus Van Sant

Click here to check out the Trailer!

A documentary film about the academic and political tribulations of Angela Davis, the UCLA instructor and radical activist. Du Luart, a former student of Davis’s, initiated the project at the Department of Film at UCLA, where Davis was embroiled in a conflict with the University’s regents thanks to her Communist party membership, and eventually had to complete it independently, with the help of her fellow filmmakers and film students, including Charles Burnett and Hailé Gerima. It was completed only three weeks before the hijacking of a courtroom in San Rafael, California, which Davis was accused of helping to plan, leading to her eventual flight, capture, trial, and acquittal.

Brand new print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Shot on location in Israel and North Africa, the film traces the solitary, mystical journey of a Jewish girl (Tinka Menkes) who leaves Jerusalem for Arab lands. ZOHARA won awards at the San Francisco and Houston International Film Festivals and was named “One of the Decade’s Best Films” by director Allison Anders.

Preceded by:
A SOFT WARRIOR (1981, 11 minutes, Super-8mm-to-16mm)
Restored by the Academy Film Archive. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Made at the UCLA Film School, this was Nina’s first cinematic collaboration with her sister, Tinka Menkes. The film documents a serious illness suffered by Tinka as experienced by her sister Nina. In the movie, Tinka plays Nina – not for the last time.

“In April 1968, at the highpoint of the war in Vietnam and the Black Power movement, only days before the general strike in France and weeks before the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, students at New York’s Columbia University were galvanized in protest and for a week occupied several buildings on campus, bringing the focus of the world’s media on a few square acres of northern Manhattan. By re-evaluating this brief moment in America’s history, TIME TO STIR moves beyond the romantic and journalistic accounts of that era by penetrating deep into the real, nuanced politics of the time. No mere time capsule, this project speaks to our contemporary culture of dissent and the current global situation where American soldiers are again fighting a war many miles from home.

Loosely inspired by Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Menkes’s most recent film combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black-and-white realism to explore the condition of violence that permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot in Yafo (the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv), the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption, of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played brilliantly by Didi Fire.

Check out the trailer for Dissolution!

Brand new print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

Shot in East LA, this film is about the inner life of a prostitute, imprisoned for killing her pimp. Winner of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for “Best Independent/Experimental Film of the Year”, MAGDALENA was featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial exhibition and in over forty international film festivals.

Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Filmed on location in Las Vegas, QUEEN revolves around the life of an alienated blackjack dealer. Starring Tinka Menkes as the intense, damaged dealer, the film was named one of the year’s Ten Best by the LOS ANGELES TIMES and FILM COMMENT.
“May become for America in the 90s what JEANNE DIELMAN was for Europe in the 70s – a cult classic using a rigorous visual composition to penetrate the innermost recesses of the soul.” –Bérénice Reynaud

A documentary essay exploring circumstances of toxic contamination around the former US military bases in the Philippines as the locus for a meditation on historical amnesia, colonial privilege, and the consequences of unchecked militarism. VAPOR TRAIL (CLARK) is an attempt to construct a work capable of rendering some measure of this human and environmental tragedy and the complexities of its remedy.

Loosely inspired by Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Menkes’s most recent film combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black-and-white realism to explore the condition of violence that permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot in Yafo (the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv), the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption, of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played brilliantly by Didi Fire.

Check out the trailer for Dissolution!

Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
A surreal psychodrama about a young woman trapped within a suffocating family, PHANTOM LOVE is a powerful evocation of one woman’s descent into self.
“Menkes adds another masterwork to her extraordinary oeuvre. Its story of a woman’s trauma and healing is told with a virtuosic use of fundamental film techniques: black-and-white 35mm photography, exquisite framing, and resonant sound design. It is a triumph of visual intelligence and aesthetic integrity.” –David E. James

Click here to check out the trailer!

“Born in 1928 and still at work, René Vautier is the dean of French committed cinema. Author of a hundred films, all his life he has fought on the side of the oppressed against capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. In the course of his lifelong investigation into the necessity and relativity of images, Vautier has explored a vast array of different possible articulations between visual document and visual argument. Taken as a whole, then, Vautier’s work of the last fifty years constitutes the backbone of cinema understood in terms of its ethical and political responsibility. In the process, it has expanded more than any other single work the range of cinematic forms of critical investigation, from poetry to raw document, from pedagogical essay to experimental fiction.” –Nicole Brenez

AFRIQUE 50 (1950, 17 minutes, video. In French with English subtitles.)
The first French anti-colonial film.
LE GLAS (1964, 5 minutes, video. In French with English subtitles.)
A visual poem against Apartheid, narrated by filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety, with music by the Black Panthers.
&
René Vautier, Brigitte Criton, Buana Kabue and Olivier Tambo
FRONTLINE
1976, 75 minutes, video. In French with English subtitles.
An analysis of the causes and effects of the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

All the films in this program were subtitled by students/interns of Virginia Commonwealth University, The University of Richmond, and the VCU & RU French Film Festival. Thanks to the students/interns, and to Peter S. Kirkpatrick.

Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
This film was inspired by a real event – a US Marine, recently back from the Gulf War, was found digging a grave for his murdered wife in the middle of the California Mojave. This elliptical, hypnotic, deeply original film is a mesmerizing look at the desolation of violence.

“One of the year’s best films from one of my favorite filmmakers.” –Gus Van Sant

Click here to check out the Trailer!

STRANGE ATTRACTORS: INVESTIGATIONS IN NON-HUMANOID EXTRATERRESTRIAL SEXUALITIES
“My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” –J. B. S. Haldane, Evolutionary Biologist
A screening/reading featuring highlights from STRANGE ATTRACTORS, a book and DVD containing art, writing, and film that envisions the sexualities of beings that may some day be encountered – if not in outer space than at least in our dreams! Here we present an extraordinary range of expressions that expand our conception of the possibilities of alien life forms and the nature of sexual desire. What kinds of sentient beings, what types of sexualities, how many erogenous zones and types of erotic pleasure exist out there in the cosmos?

STRANGE ATTRACTORS is a collaboration between Encyclopedia Destructica (Christopher Kardambikis and Jasdeep Khaira) and The Institute of Extraterrestrial Sexuality (Suzie Silver).
The program will include works by:
Peggy Ahwesh, Scott Andrew, Jacob Ciocci, Hilary Harp/Suzie Silver, Hooliganship, Jen Inman/Tom McConnell, Amy Johnson, Michael Mallis/Mikey McParlane, Darrin Martin/Torsten Zenas Burns, Shana Moulton, Larry Shea, Joshua Thorson/Mike Harringer.

With live readings from:
Anselm Berrigan & Christine Kelly.
Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.

Brand new print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Shot on location in Israel and North Africa, the film traces the solitary, mystical journey of a Jewish girl (Tinka Menkes) who leaves Jerusalem for Arab lands. ZOHARA won awards at the San Francisco and Houston International Film Festivals and was named “One of the Decade’s Best Films” by director Allison Anders.

Preceded by:
A SOFT WARRIOR (1981, 11 minutes, Super-8mm-to-16mm)
Restored by the Academy Film Archive. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Made at the UCLA Film School, this was Nina’s first cinematic collaboration with her sister, Tinka Menkes. The film documents a serious illness suffered by Tinka as experienced by her sister Nina. In the movie, Tinka plays Nina – not for the last time.

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS A DOUBLE FEATURE
DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Lorna Ventura
THE DANCER CHRONICLES
2010, 60 minutes, video.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Kirsten Stoffa VIOLET TO EARTH (2011, 23 minutes, video)
Peter Valente & Jillian McManemin SATURNALIA (2011, 11 minutes, video)
Titania Haq LET’S GO (2011, 11 minutes, video) 

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
J. R. Sawyers
NERVE
2011, 93 minutes, video.
A young man obsessed with classical music battles his anxiety issues with the help of a female psychology student, ending up with more than he bargained for.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Conrad Stojak
100 PROOF
2011, 80 minutes, video.
Georgi and his mother Cathy run the local liquor store, where the patrons are just as bad as the hooch. But Georgi can’t stand serving the endless parade of bums and dregs that stumble in and out of the store, and after one fateful night, he strays down a dark path no one could have foreseen.

Loosely inspired by Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Menkes’s most recent film combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black-and-white realism to explore the condition of violence that permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot in Yafo (the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv), the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption, of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played brilliantly by Didi Fire.

Check out the trailer for Dissolution!

Brand new print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

Shot in East LA, this film is about the inner life of a prostitute, imprisoned for killing her pimp. Winner of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for “Best Independent/Experimental Film of the Year”, MAGDALENA was featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial exhibition and in over forty international film festivals.

NEWFILMMAKERS WELCOMES BACK THE WOMEN FILMMAKERS GROUP AND PRESENTS THE FILM OF THE MONTH
DOCUMENTARY SERIES

Bert Shapiro
SPEAKING FOR MYSELF
2010, 70 minutes, video.

SPECIAL PROGRAM
ANOTHER EXPERIMENT BY WOMEN FILM FESTIVAL (THE MISSING 3rd FESTIVAL SHOW)
With Women’s Filmmakers Group, curated by Lili White.

Mercedes Sader MIEDOS (FEARS) (2 minutes, video)
Maria Niro TORSO (3 minutes, video)
Charmaine Ortiz SEASONAL JOY (3 minutes, video)
Matoula Eolou Gekko THIS IS A TEST REEL (3 minutes, 8mm)
Muriel Montini A COLD PLACE (4 minutes, video)
Yana (Ioanna) Sakellion MY FATHER'S LETTERS (2 minutes, video)
Kyja Kristjana SVEIT (9 minutes, video)
Nandita Kumar BIRTH of BRAINFLY (6 minutes, video)
Charlotte Pryce CURIOUS LIGHT (4 minutes, 16mm)
Courtney Krantz LOST COLLECTION (3 minutes, 16mm)
Caryn Cline IN THE CONSERVATORY (5 minutes, 16mm)

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Claire Ensslin TERMINATION (2011, 7 minutes, video)
Zachary Kerschberg ANGELS (2011, 11 minutes, video)
Alexandra Naides KNEE HIGH (2011, 13 minutes, video)
N. W. Douglas BROTHER’S KEEPER (2011, 15 minutes, video)
Yasmin Al Rihawi ANNA (2011, 17 minutes, video)

FILM OF THE MONTH SCREENING
The most popular NewFilmmakers Online Film during June 2011.
Kris De Meester
FOUR ROSES
2011, 81 minutes, video.
One night at a hotel on the outskirts of an industrial city, twelve very different people in six rooms share hilarious, intimate, and unforgettable moments.

Loosely inspired by Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Menkes’s most recent film combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black-and-white realism to explore the condition of violence that permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot in Yafo (the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv), the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption, of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played brilliantly by Didi Fire.

Check out the trailer for Dissolution!

Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Filmed on location in Las Vegas, QUEEN revolves around the life of an alienated blackjack dealer. Starring Tinka Menkes as the intense, damaged dealer, the film was named one of the year’s Ten Best by the LOS ANGELES TIMES and FILM COMMENT.
“May become for America in the 90s what JEANNE DIELMAN was for Europe in the 70s – a cult classic using a rigorous visual composition to penetrate the innermost recesses of the soul.” –Bérénice Reynaud

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS A DOUBLE FEATURE AND THE RETURN OF OUR SHORT SHORT PROGRAM. FOURTEEN FILMS IN ABOUT AN HOUR AND SEE BILL DO THE WORLD’S FASTEST Q&A.

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Eric Mahoney
NORTH DIXIE DRIVE
2011, 52 minutes, video.

SHORT SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Thirteen Film in about an Hour!

Andreas Goldfuss MY APOLOGIES (2009, 10 seconds, video)
Srikanth Appataraju MY COWBOY (2011, 2 minutes, video)
Chloe Lee SPIDER (2010, 3 minutes, video)
Mary Twohig THE GAMES I MADE UP (2010, 3 minutes, video)
Dana Sara LA FEMME ENFANT (2011, 3 minutes, video)
Genevieve Gilbert-Quash OSTEO (2009, 3 minutes, video)
Rachael Sonnenberg THE LOCKET (2011, 4 minutes, video)
Raissa Contreras A GREAT DAY IN CHARM CITY (2008, 5 minutes, 16mm)
Victoria Campbell LOOSE CHANGE (2011, 5 minutes, video)
Peter Parlegreco ELK CITY’S 2010 (2011, 5 minutes, video)
Jake Diamond WEIGHT DOWN (2011, 6 minutes, video)
Shane Kinsler LANGUAGE OF LOVE (2011, 7 minutes, video)Keith Johnson THE FOUR IMMEASURABLES (2010, 7 minutes, 16mm)
Eddy Falconer PERSONAL REVOLTS (2011, 7 minutes, 8mm)

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
C. Andrew Hall
FROGTOWN
2010, 111 minutes, video.
One night Cassie indulges in some old habits and passes out in an alley. When she wakes, she finds in her pocket a strange Polaroid of herself with a mysterious man. This brush with the unknown draws her down a rabbit hole peopled with urchins, dealers, and a host of characters that the rest of the world has forgotten.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Matthew Hahn
A FINE LINE
2011, 60 minutes, video.
Chance is a driver for his drug-dealer uncle Marty. Marty’s old friend from out west is coming to sell new merchandise, while Chance’s brother-in-law is getting out of prison. These two seemingly unrelated events soon cause trouble for Chance and his uncle.

Monika Borgmann, Lokman Slim, Hermann Theissen & Nina Menkes

An experimental documentary feature, shot and co-created by Nina Menkes. This film explores brutal violence through in-depth interviews with six mass murderers, who participated personally in the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre in Beirut, Lebanon. Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival.

Loosely inspired by Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Menkes’s most recent film combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black-and-white realism to explore the condition of violence that permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot in Yafo (the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv), the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption, of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played brilliantly by Didi Fire.

Check out the trailer for Dissolution!

Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
This film was inspired by a real event – a US Marine, recently back from the Gulf War, was found digging a grave for his murdered wife in the middle of the California Mojave. This elliptical, hypnotic, deeply original film is a mesmerizing look at the desolation of violence.

“One of the year’s best films from one of my favorite filmmakers.” –Gus Van Sant

Click here to check out the Trailer!

SCREEN LOUD FILM FESTIVAL 2012:
FOREIGN COMMUNIQUÉ
Starting in 2009, the Screen Loud Film Festival has been committed to programming a broad range of short fiction and documentaries that explore the theme of being a ‘foreigner’ searching for a way to express oneself in a new world. Traversing the barriers of cross-cultural communication, the foreigner is one who explores ways beyond words to express him- or herself and SCREEN LOUD. Emphasizing the universality of the image over the singularity of each culture and language, we are screening a selection of shorts that use film as a ‘visual Esperanto’ that defies linguistic, cultural, and geographical barriers and speaks to all through the language of cinematography.

Program 1:
Nuno Portugal
HEPICAT
Portugal, 2010, 12 minutes.
A film about the incommunicability of two worlds.

Iona Uricaru
STOPOVER
Romania/Italy, 2011, 15 minutes.
Ingrid, a Romanian woman married to a Norwegian man, returns home to Oslo after a trip to Romania. As she is waiting for her connecting flight in an Italian airport, her wallet is stolen and she is left without passport, money and boarding pass. A stranger, a Romanian of Roma ethnicity, offers his help and seems to know a little too much about missing wallets.

Juan de Dios Martil Atienza
HOMELAND
Spain/Czech Republic, 2009, 6 minutes.
A touching story of the silent and simple acts that represent a friendship between the most diverse of creatures.

Claudia Vásquez
VIVIANA, AN INTIMATE JOURNEY
Colombia, 2011, 23 minutes.
Viviana is a young Colombian-born woman who, adopted at the age of two by Norwegian parents, grew up far from her land of birth. At the age of 28, she returns to Columbia to find her roots and her biological parents. What she doesn't expect is the great revelation this search will bring.

Loosely inspired by Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Menkes’s most recent film combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black-and-white realism to explore the condition of violence that permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot in Yafo (the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv), the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption, of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played brilliantly by Didi Fire.

Check out the trailer for Dissolution!

SCREEN LOUD FILM FESTIVAL 2012:
FOREIGN COMMUNIQUÉ
Starting in 2009, the Screen Loud Film Festival has been committed to programming a broad range of short fiction and documentaries that explore the theme of being a ‘foreigner’ searching for a way to express oneself in a new world. Traversing the barriers of cross-cultural communication, the foreigner is one who explores ways beyond words to express him- or herself and SCREEN LOUD. Emphasizing the universality of the image over the singularity of each culture and language, we are screening a selection of shorts that use film as a ‘visual Esperanto’ that defies linguistic, cultural, and geographical barriers and speaks to all through the language of cinematography.

Iva Radivojevic
NELSON
USA, 2010, 4 minutes.
Ik Nam Cho (Nelson) spends his days behind the counter of a Lexington Ave deli in NYC. Now a senior citizen with a bullet permanently residing in his back, he carries his past.

Cristina Escoda
ALIJUNA
Colombia, 2011, 18 minutes.
The senator is nervous. She's been waiting for this moment for a long time and now she feels the tension. Her chauffeur, Nelson, a wayúu Indian who's been working for her several years, is her contact. He will guide her through the desert to settle the deal.

Michele Catalano
ORA TI VEDO
Italy, 2011, 14 minutes.
Pregnant and busy at work, Lulù is distracted from so many other issues. A series of apparently fortuitous events prevents her from eating for a whole day. As the food disappears, dreamlike images of Africa try to attract her attention, leading Lulù on a journey for the awareness so hard to understand.

Àlex Lora
ODYSSEUS GAMBIT
USA/Spain, 2011, 12 minutes.
A “gambit” is a chess opening in which a player sacrifices a pawn with the hope of achieving a resulting advantageous position. Saravuth Inn is a Cambodian-American chess player that sacrifices himself in the hopes of finding a better position on the board of life.

No dialogue.
“In this evocative work, we hear and see the interactions of a man and a woman in a pristine forest. We gain a sense of intimacy with them and nature. … There are suggestions and onsets of a storyline, but almost everything remains a mystery for our encountering.” –SAN JOSE FILM FESTIVAL
Preceded by:
STAATZ ENDE (1989, 4 minutes, 35mm. No dialogue.)
Both prints courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum.

Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
A surreal psychodrama about a young woman trapped within a suffocating family, PHANTOM LOVE is a powerful evocation of one woman’s descent into self.
“Menkes adds another masterwork to her extraordinary oeuvre. Its story of a woman’s trauma and healing is told with a virtuosic use of fundamental film techniques: black-and-white 35mm photography, exquisite framing, and resonant sound design. It is a triumph of visual intelligence and aesthetic integrity.” –David E. James

Click here to check out the trailer!

Monika Borgmann, Lokman Slim, Hermann Theissen & Nina Menkes

An experimental documentary feature, shot and co-created by Nina Menkes. This film explores brutal violence through in-depth interviews with six mass murderers, who participated personally in the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre in Beirut, Lebanon. Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival.

Minimal dialogue; intentionally unsubtitled.

“For many years now, I have wanted to go back to some early materials I keep in my archive. I started out with a 1969 b&w self-portrait shot on Single-8mm film (12/02/43) and then turned to P.R.A.T.E.R. from 1964, my first ‘real’ work on film. … Looking back at the weeks I worked on my montage of these images and sounds, it seems this film materialized without any special efforts. It could not have taken on another form: images and sounds appeared to fit together in a natural way. Somehow, the film solidified of its own accord while my sense of time and self dissolved.” –M.P.

Preceded by:
PARK OF REMEMBRANCE / PARCO DELLE RIMEMBRANZE (1988, 14 minutes, 16mm. No dialogue.)

ALL TICKETS $6!

A true epic if ever there was one, PARTS AND LABOR documents in minute detail the complete removal and replacement of an automobile engine. Shot entirely in close-up to exploit the visceral hyperrealism of HD video, we watch the oil-stained hands of an amateur mechanic move in and out of frame, straining and struggling to dislodge blackened, rusted engine parts from the contours of the auto body. After an extensive, surprisingly dramatic struggle, the aged relics are replaced with pristine new parts as the engine is painstakingly re-assembled. Out-Warholing Andy, PARTS AND LABOR was shot over 2 years and is 13 hours long, an 8-hour workday plus overtime. For this unique, superlong screening Anthology will offer a discounted ticket that allows viewers to come and go throughout the day and evening. Anyone who watches PARTS AND LABOR all the way through will receive a very special prize!
Jesse Cain is a NYC-based artist born and raised in the Twin cities of Minnesota. His work includes 16mm films, videos, and installations. Cain recently received his MFA in Film/Video from the Milton Avery Graduate School of Art at Bard College and screened his short SLOW BURN in the 2011 ‘Views From the Avant-Garde’ program at Lincoln Center.

Pilz drives through NYC with a very unusual taxi driver: filmmaker, one-time Fluxus artist, and Anthology associate Jeff Perkins. Sitting by his side, high-8 camera in hand, Pilz documents Perkins’s observations and interactions as they glide through the night.

No dialogue.

“In May, 2006 I traveled around Iran, a small camera always close at hand, and experienced some of the most memorable ‘magical moments’ of my life. … I edited this succession of images and made it last 18 minutes. Then I added five duplicates of the resulting footage and inserted an additional close-up between them, which shows Arabic calligraphy of one of Hafez’s most famous poems that is inscribed on his tomb.” –M.P.

(HIMMEL UND ERDE)

In German with English subtitles. Print courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum.

An epic documentary, in two parts, about life in the Styrian mountain village of St. Anna. The film is a documentary in the best sense of the word – a meditation on time, on nature and the struggles of man, as well as a record of a lifestyle ceasing to exist.

“[A] fascinating portrait of a mountain village fighting to survive against the powers of nature as well as against economic pressures from outside. A profound reflection on the meaning of life and work, the necessity for relationships and the definite character of our world. Slow and lengthy, this film stands out for its beauty and poetry.” –14th Festival International de Cinéma, Nyon, Switzerland

“If you let it happen, the film will pull you into its cosmos; it is one of those works that teaches you to see and listen again.” –Ulrich Gregor

(HIMMEL UND ERDE)

In German with English subtitles. Print courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum.

An epic documentary, in two parts, about life in the Styrian mountain village of St. Anna. The film is a documentary in the best sense of the word – a meditation on time, on nature and the struggles of man, as well as a record of a lifestyle ceasing to exist.

“[A] fascinating portrait of a mountain village fighting to survive against the powers of nature as well as against economic pressures from outside. A profound reflection on the meaning of life and work, the necessity for relationships and the definite character of our world. Slow and lengthy, this film stands out for its beauty and poetry.” –14th Festival International de Cinéma, Nyon, Switzerland

“If you let it happen, the film will pull you into its cosmos; it is one of those works that teaches you to see and listen again.” –Ulrich Gregor

EARLY ABSTRACTIONS (1941-57, 23 min, 16mm) Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
MIRROR ANIMATIONS (extended 1979 version, 11 min, 35mm) NEW PRINT!
LATE SUPERIMPOSITIONS (1964, 28 min, 16mm)
OZ, THE TIN WOODMAN’S DREAM (1967, 15 min, 35mm)
“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.” –Harry Smith
Total running time: ca. 80 min.

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

PIECES OF DREAMS
2000, 55 minutes, video.
“Pilz observes the theater director Jack Garfein preparing a Beckett piece (“Ohio Impromptu”) in his hotel room. The room is filled with dialogue and concentration, the manic repetitions of a single text fragment gives way to long passages of tense silence. For a while Pilz appears in the picture himself and becomes an impresario – part of the act in a chamber theatre formation – in that the documentary almost takes on fictional characteristics.” –Mark Stöhr, SCHNITT – DAS FILMMAGAZIN
&
WINDOWS, DOGS AND HORSES
2006, 40 minutes, video. In German with English subtitles.
“This very personal film is based on material that Michael Pilz shot over a decade, starting in 1994, in various locations around the world, including Africa, southern India, Turkey, and Cuba. The director combines shots to form a subjectively authentic unit, which draws on the non-linear and dispersed thought processes and imagination of the human mind.” – Petr Kubica, INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL JIHLAVA

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS A DOUBLE FEATURE

FIRST SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Theo Stefanski DOPPELGANGER (2010, 5 minutes, 35mm)
Gianpaolo Gonzalez CAGED IN (2011, 5 minutes, video)
Emily Wilson RUPERT, RUPERT (2011, 7 minutes, video)
Martin Ahlin TIMES NEW ROMANCE (2011, 7 minutes, video)
Azmi Mert Erdem NARCOSSIST (2011, 10 minutes, video)
Peter Valente REQUIEM (2011, 5 minutes, video)
Peter Valente PHOENIX (2011, 8 minutes, video)
Peter Valente SOLAR (2011, 4 minutes, video)

SECOND SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Nayeem Mahbub ATTACK OF THE KILLER MUTANT CHICKENS (2011, 15 minutes, video)
Nick Perlman HAZARD (2011, 10 minutes, video)
Michael Nicholls PALE (2011, 15 minutes, video)
Damon Mohl THE DUST MACHINE (2011, 15 minutes, video)

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
Raj Reddy
NO ONE WILL KNOW
2011, 86 minutes, video.
A bickering young couple must work together to cover up a murder at their own engagement party. Their secret is safe as long as they can stick together.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATIONLanier Westmoreland
HOW I KILLED MY ROOMMATE
2011, 73 minutes, video.
Mob hitman Angelo wants to retire. Before the Don will grant him his walking papers and $6.3-million pension he must meet two conditions: knock off the famed actor Bryce Flavor and refrain from violence for the following six months while cohabitating with Vlad, the roommate from hell.

In English and Shona; intentionally unsubtitled.

In the summer of 1997, Pilz, along with composer Klaus Hollinetz and photographer Werner Puntigam, visited the African musician Simon Mashoko (Gwenyambira), a virtuoso mbira player and a catechist of the Roman Catholic Church who lived in seclusion in the south of Zimbabwe. Five years later, the unforgettable experience resulted in a multimedia installation that attempted to transcend geographic borders as well as the borders between the individual arts. Pilz’s film captures the mystery of an ordinary day, the interior of music, the creation of play, faith, and imperceptible dance.

In English and Malayalam; intentionally unsubtitled.

Without recourse to off-screen commentary or ‘staged’ conversations, Pilz creates the chronology of his stay in India and his medical treatment there in INDIAN DIARY: one recognizes the same people and places, participates in everyday life and excursions, and at some point the radio croaks “What a difference a day makes.”

AMERICAN MAVERICKS
PROGRAM 1: JOHN CAGE 100TH BIRTHDAY SCREENING!!!
Absolutely wild in oh-so-many ways, this tape is artist Jud Yalkut’s video realization of Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik’s concert performance of John Cage’s composition 26’1.1499” FOR A STRING PLAYER. The images, which are grandly manipulated and synthesized by Yalkut, never stop flowing in this sublime performance by the landmark performance art/new music duo. Paik and Moorman play Cage’s score on a collection of ‘instruments’ that include a pistol, a dish of mushrooms, balloons, a practice aerial bomb, and a telephone call to President Nixon. Far better and more revealing than any audio recording could ever be, you are guaranteed to have never seen a Cage composition performed quite like this….
To round out the program we will also screen a majorly entertaining, long-unseen work featuring Cage and a very special partner…prepare to be surprised.

In English, Russian, Dutch, and German with English subtitles.

“[A documentary about the] inhabitants of a small village called Apanas, who are covered with snow and cut off from the rest of the world for six months a year. The harsh climate dictates the tone of the film, as if the geographical location itself contributed to its radical aesthetics. … Pilz regards a film as a tool for mutual understanding within the memory of history and culture.” –Petr Kubica, INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL JIHLAVA

AMERICAN MAVERICKS
PROGRAM 2:
SNEAK PREVIEW EVENT!
Skillfully assembled from over 300 hours of footage and more than two decades of documentation and research, this film paints an intimate portrait of an extraordinary American composer who followed his own dreams with unbridled style. Trading a fast-paced NY career for a remote cabin in the woods to recover from a breakdown, Harrison (1917-2003) confronted his demons by writing beautiful music. Bucking the dissonant sound of the times, he embraced “delight over duty”, freely combining western, eastern, and custom-made instruments built by his partner, William Colvig. Harrison’s artistic curiosity and courage produced one of the great trans-cultural visions and musical legacies of the 20th century. This engaging documentary deftly manages to capture the spirit of the unique artist.

In English and Arabic; intentionally unsubtitled.

“In April 2006, my friend and I flew to Sana’a, the capital of the Republic of Yemen, and traveled to Shibam, the legendary mud-brick skyscraper city, the ancient ‘Manhattan of the Desert’. As usual, I filmed whatever caught my eye. It’s a very personal travel journal, and despite these enchanting sites, it lets you forget about where you are. A film for meditation.” –M.P.

Photography by Philip Makanna.

Eva Soltes
ON CONLON NANCARROW
1983, 12min, video.
Highlights the life and work of reclusive expatriate American composer Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997), who hunkered down in Mexico City after fighting in the Spanish Civil War and hand punched player piano rolls, becoming a visionary of the computer music era. His percussive studies for player piano feature pieces that were unplayable by human hands, often hitting over 100 notes per second! Composer György Ligeti described Nancarrow’s music (during the 1980s) as “the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives…something great and important for all music history! His music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed, but at the same time emotional…for me it’s the best music of any composer living today.” In 1982, Conlon Nancarrow became the first artist to receive a MacArthur “genius” award. This piece features the voices of Conlon Nancarrow and John Cage.
&
Michael MacIntyre & Eva Soltes
WEST COAST STORY: FRONTIERS OF NEW MUSIC
1986, 75 minutes, video.
Years before the phrase “Pacific Rim” reached our homes, prime-time television audiences throughout Great Britain were treated to this program presenting an overview of a golden era of new music where a California musical aesthetic developed. FRONTIERS OF NEW MUSIC is the first program of a three part series that explores the question: Is there a West Coast aesthetic in American music? Filled with rare interview footage, beautifully filmed live performances, and California landscapes, FRONTIERS includes composers Lou Harrison, John Cage, Harry Partch, Henry Cowell, Terry Riley, Frank Zappa, John Adams, Daniel Lentz, and Paul Dresher musing on their work and history and answering the question: What is the difference between California and east coast musical traditions?

No dialogue.
A cinematic poem based on the director’s journeys in Iran from 2006-07. By patiently and gently observing both people and place, Pilz collects images and sounds of ravishing beauty.
“In ancient China before an artist began to paint anything – a tree, for instance – he would sit down in front of it for days, months, years, it didn’t matter how long, until he was the tree. He did not identify himself with the tree but he was the tree…and in that state only could he paint.” –M.P.

With Suzanne Fletcher, Ann Magnuson, and Steve Buscemi; screenplay by Sara Driver & Lorenzo Mans. Music by Phil Kline.
“Driver’s first feature – a luminous, oddball comic fantasy about ancient Chinese curses and Xerox machines, set in Manhattan’s Chinatown and its immediate environs – may well be the most visually ravishing American independent film of its year (1986). Set in an irrational, poetic universe that bears a certain relationship to Jacques Rivette’s DUELLE, this dreamy intrigue breaks a cardinal rule of fantasy by striking off in a number of directions: an executive barks in the street, a young Frenchwoman (Magnuson) loses her hair, and machines in a copy shop start to purr and wheeze on their own initiative. The moods that are established are delicate, and not everyone will be able to go with them, but Driver sustains them with beauty and eccentric charm.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

Preceded by:
THE BOWERY – SPRING (POSTCARDS FROM NEW YORK) (1994, 10 minutes, video)
This short film was commissioned by French national television for a series called ‘Postcards from NY’, in which several New York filmmakers were invited to make a ten-minute video about any aspect of the city they chose. Driver’s piece focuses on the history and changing fortunes of the Bowery, and features appearances by Luc Sante, June Leaf, Joe Coleman, and Driver herself.

Friday, Mar 23 and Monday, Mar 26: Sara Driver & Suzanne Fletcher in person!

No dialogue.

“I see that I see.” –Heraklit

“Like all my previous films since HEAVEN AND EARTH (1982), ROMAN DIARY is in a way a tantric exercise or meditation, as defined by one of the oldest tantric texts, the Vijnana Bhairava. If you watch a film in order to ‘learn’ something, then this film is not for you. But if you want to test out what it is possible to experience through film, then this is the right medium for you. Using techniques such as extreme slow motion and irrational, poetic contrast, it is a tool you can use to center yourself, for it speaks more to the heart than the head.” –Michael Pilz, Puttaparthi, Andra Pradesh, India, 15 December, 2011.

With Suzanne Fletcher, Luc Sante, and Nan Goldin; based on the story by Paul Bowles; co-written and shot by Jim Jarmusch; music by Phil Kline.

Feared lost until, in a stranger-than-fiction turn of events, a 16mm print surfaced in Tangier in 2008, among the belongings left behind after his death by writer Paul Bowles (whose short story formed the basis for the film), YOU ARE NOT I is an extraordinary, haunting debut. A proudly low-budget, resourceful piece of work, it immerses us in the inner world of its protagonist, Ethel, a schizophrenic young woman recently escaped from a mental hospital, as she wanders through the landscapes of rural New Jersey. As embodied by actress Suzanne Fletcher, her strange, deeply unsettling presence gives the film much of its uncanny force. YOU ARE NOT I is a unique, sui generis film that reflects Driver’s fascination with the films Jacques Tourneur made for producer Val Lewton (including CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE). Anthology is thrilled to host a full week of screenings of this newly rediscovered masterpiece.

Sara Driver, actress Suzanne Fletcher, and archivist Francis Poole in person on Friday, March 23!

Ron Rice
CHUMLUM (1964, 23 min, 16mm)
With Jack Smith, Mario Montez, Gerard Malanga.
“One of the underground’s best and most influential films.” –Peter Gidal

Hans Richter
RHYTHMUS 21 (1921, 3 min, 16mm, b&w, silent)
“Its content is essentially rhythm, the formal vocabulary is elemental geometry, and the structural principle is counterpoint of contrasting opposites.” –Standish Lawder
EVERYTHING REVOLVES, EVERYTHING TURNS / ALLES DREHT SICH, ALLES BEWEGT SICH (1929, 9 min, 16mm, b&w, silent)

Paul Sharits
N:O:T:H:I:N:G (1968, 36 min, 16mm)
Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
“Based in part on the Tibetan Mandala of the Five Dhyani Buddhas/a journey toward the center of pure consciousness (Dharma-Dhatu Wisdom)/space and motion generated rather than illustrated/time-color energy create virtual shape/in negative time, growth is inverse decay.” –P.S.
“In essence there are only three flicker films of importance, ARNULF RAINER, THE FLICKER, and N:O:T:H:I:N:G… In terms of the subject we have discussed here, it is Sharits’ N:O:T:H:I:N:G that opens the field for the structural film with a flicker base.” –P. Adams Sitney
T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (1969, 12 min, 16mm)
Newly preserved print!
Starring poet David Franks whose voice appears on the soundtrack/an uncutting and unscratching mandala.
“Merges violence with purity.”  –P. Adams Sitney
“Surrealist tour de force.” –Parker Tyler

Total running time: ca. 90 min.

SARA DRIVER SELECTS:
SPIDER BABY, or THE MADDEST STORY EVER TOLD
With Lon Chaney Jr. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Inbreeding, murder, and madness are just a few of the more notable things to be found in this blackly comedic horror film about a chauffeur who looks after a demented trio of adult siblings. Shot in just 12 days and saddled with a variety of titles (including CANNIBAL ORGY), SPIDER BABY’s status as a mind-boggling cult classic is well-deserved.

SENSELESS
1962, 28 min, 16mm
“Consisting of a poetic stream of razor-sharp images, the overt content of SENSELESS portrays ecstatic travelers going to pot over the fantasies and pleasures of a trip to Mexico.... Highly effective cutting subtly interweaves the contrapuntal development of themes of love and hate, peace and violence, beauty and destruction.” –David Brooks
&
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.
“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.

(SARA DRIVER SELECTS)
With Simone Simon. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress.
One of the greatest and spookiest collaborations between director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton, CAT PEOPLE tells the story of an American, Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), who marries a Serbian, Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon, in a career-defining performance). As it turns out, Irena is cursed to become a murderous panther (literally) whenever she gets intimate with a man…

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’ESSPRESSO

With Suzanne Fletcher, Luc Sante, and Nan Goldin; based on the story by Paul Bowles; co-written and shot by Jim Jarmusch; music by Phil Kline.

Feared lost until, in a stranger-than-fiction turn of events, a 16mm print surfaced in Tangier in 2008, among the belongings left behind after his death by writer Paul Bowles (whose short story formed the basis for the film), YOU ARE NOT I is an extraordinary, haunting debut. A proudly low-budget, resourceful piece of work, it immerses us in the inner world of its protagonist, Ethel, a schizophrenic young woman recently escaped from a mental hospital, as she wanders through the landscapes of rural New Jersey. As embodied by actress Suzanne Fletcher, her strange, deeply unsettling presence gives the film much of its uncanny force. YOU ARE NOT I is a unique, sui generis film that reflects Driver’s fascination with the films Jacques Tourneur made for producer Val Lewton (including CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE). Anthology is thrilled to host a full week of screenings of this newly rediscovered masterpiece.

Actress Suzanne Fletcher in person on Sat & Sun, Mar 24 & 25!

(SARA DRIVER SELECTS)
35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Norman Z. McLeod’s classic comedy finds Cary Grant and Constance Bennett behaving beyond the pale…from beyond the grave. As stockholding hedonists whose reckless passion for pleasure leads them to bite the dust in a car accident, the couple makes their mischievous return in order to introduce some necessary chaos to the dull life of their bank’s president.

Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
“A conceptual lap dissolve from ‘water currents’ to ‘film strip currents’/Dedicated to my son Christopher.” –P.S.
“Yes, S:S:S:S:S:S is beautiful. The successive scratchings of the stream-image film is very powerful vandalism. The film is a very complete organism with all the possible levels really recognized.” –Michael Snow

With Alfred Molina, Marianne Faithfull, Seymour Cassel, and Rachel Bella; shot by Robby Müller; music composed by Joe Strummer.

“Sara Driver’s principal films are surrealist works whose images tend to linger like half-remembered dreams. … WHEN PIGS FLY – set in an east-coast port town, though filmed in Gemany – is a whimsical ghost story inspired by TOPPER. If the tone seems light, the images, filmed by the great Robby Müller, nevertheless persist. The hero, beautifully played by Alfred Molina, is a sweet-tempered jazz musician who subsists mainly on the money he earns from giving music lessons and is sustained by the companionship of a dog (whose jazz-inspired dreams, rendered by Driver in full, are as lyrical as the hero’s). Some of the action takes place in a shabby Irish pub lorded over by Seymour Cassel, and when a barmaid gives Molina’s character an old rocking chair, he inherits a pair of ghosts (Marianne Faithfull and child actress Rachel Bella) along with it. …[A] sweet mood piece that, like some English comedies, is driven more by character than by plot.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

Followed by:
A half-hour film, shot by Jim Jarmusch, documenting Joe Strummer as he composes the music to WHEN PIGS FLY.

Sara Driver and writer Ray Dobbins in person on Sunday, Mar 25!

SCOTCH TAPE
1962, 3 min, 16mm
Junkyard musical.
&
FLAMING CREATURES 
1963, 45 min, 16mm, b&w
“FLAMING CREATURES graced the anarchic liberation of new American cinema with graphic and rhythmic power worthy of the best of formal cinema. He has attained for the first time in motion pictures a high level of art which is absolutely lacking in decorum; and a treatment of sex which makes us aware of the restraint of all previous filmmakers.” - FILM CULTURE

“WAVELENGTH is without precedent in the purity of its confrontation with the essence of cinema: the relationships between illusion and fact, space and time, subject and object. It is the first post-Warhol, post-Minimal movie; one of the few films to engage those higher conceptual orders which occupy modern painting and sculpture. It has rightly been described as a ‘triumph of contemplative cinema.’” – Gene Youngblood, L.A. FREE PRESS, 1968

“...This neat, finely tuned, hypersensitive film examines the outside and inside of a banal
prefab classroom, stares at an asymmetrical space so undistinguished that it’s hard to believe the whole movie is confined to it, and has this neckjerking camera gimmick which hits a wooden stop arm at each end of its swing. Basically it’s a perpetual motion film which ingeniously builds a sculptural effect by insisting on time-motion to the point where the camera’s swinging arcs and white wall field assume the hardness, the dimensions of a concrete beam.
“In such a hard, drilling work, the wooden clap sounds are a terrific invention, and, as much as any single element, create the sculpture. Seeming to thrust the image outward off the screen, these clap effects are timed like a metronome, sometimes occuring with torrential frequency.” –Manny Farber, ARTFORUM

With Suzanne Fletcher, Luc Sante, and Nan Goldin; based on the story by Paul Bowles; co-written and shot by Jim Jarmusch; music by Phil Kline.

Feared lost until, in a stranger-than-fiction turn of events, a 16mm print surfaced in Tangier in 2008, among the belongings left behind after his death by writer Paul Bowles (whose short story formed the basis for the film), YOU ARE NOT I is an extraordinary, haunting debut. A proudly low-budget, resourceful piece of work, it immerses us in the inner world of its protagonist, Ethel, a schizophrenic young woman recently escaped from a mental hospital, as she wanders through the landscapes of rural New Jersey. As embodied by actress Suzanne Fletcher, her strange, deeply unsettling presence gives the film much of its uncanny force. YOU ARE NOT I is a unique, sui generis film that reflects Driver’s fascination with the films Jacques Tourneur made for producer Val Lewton (including CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE). Anthology is thrilled to host a full week of screenings of this newly rediscovered masterpiece.

Actress Suzanne Fletcher in person on Sat & Sun, Mar 24 & 25!

With Suzanne Fletcher, Ann Magnuson, and Steve Buscemi; screenplay by Sara Driver & Lorenzo Mans. Music by Phil Kline.
“Driver’s first feature – a luminous, oddball comic fantasy about ancient Chinese curses and Xerox machines, set in Manhattan’s Chinatown and its immediate environs – may well be the most visually ravishing American independent film of its year (1986). Set in an irrational, poetic universe that bears a certain relationship to Jacques Rivette’s DUELLE, this dreamy intrigue breaks a cardinal rule of fantasy by striking off in a number of directions: an executive barks in the street, a young Frenchwoman (Magnuson) loses her hair, and machines in a copy shop start to purr and wheeze on their own initiative. The moods that are established are delicate, and not everyone will be able to go with them, but Driver sustains them with beauty and eccentric charm.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

Preceded by:
THE BOWERY – SPRING (POSTCARDS FROM NEW YORK) (1994, 10 minutes, video)
This short film was commissioned by French national television for a series called ‘Postcards from NY’, in which several New York filmmakers were invited to make a ten-minute video about any aspect of the city they chose. Driver’s piece focuses on the history and changing fortunes of the Bowery, and features appearances by Luc Sante, June Leaf, Joe Coleman, and Driver herself.

Friday, Mar 23 and Monday, Mar 26: Sara Driver & Suzanne Fletcher in person!

With Suzanne Fletcher, Luc Sante, and Nan Goldin; based on the story by Paul Bowles; co-written and shot by Jim Jarmusch; music by Phil Kline.

Feared lost until, in a stranger-than-fiction turn of events, a 16mm print surfaced in Tangier in 2008, among the belongings left behind after his death by writer Paul Bowles (whose short story formed the basis for the film), YOU ARE NOT I is an extraordinary, haunting debut. A proudly low-budget, resourceful piece of work, it immerses us in the inner world of its protagonist, Ethel, a schizophrenic young woman recently escaped from a mental hospital, as she wanders through the landscapes of rural New Jersey. As embodied by actress Suzanne Fletcher, her strange, deeply unsettling presence gives the film much of its uncanny force. YOU ARE NOT I is a unique, sui generis film that reflects Driver’s fascination with the films Jacques Tourneur made for producer Val Lewton (including CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE). Anthology is thrilled to host a full week of screenings of this newly rediscovered masterpiece.

Sara Driver & actress Suzanne Fletcher in person!

NYWIFT's Member Screening Series provides members with the opportunity to show their work in a theatrical setting. Screenings take place at Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Avenue (at 2nd Street). There will by a Q&A following the screening, and an after-party with cash bar and complimentary food at Dempsey's Pub, 61 2nd Avenue, between 3rd and 4th Streets.

Join us for a screening of The Tollbooth, an feature written, directed and produced by NYWIFT member Debra Kirschner. This highly entertaining ensemble film comically explores a Jewish family from Brooklyn through the eyes of Sarabeth Cohen, a struggling painter in her first year out of art school. Sarabeth and her older sisters come of age and question the values of their traditional parents. 

Sarabeth’s first revolutionary act is scoring a job as a waitress and moving across the river to Manhattan. Even though she is less than 10 miles from her parents, she feels like a pioneer—ready to take on the New York art community, and maybe even the world. Though she wants to rebel, she instead learns from her family: her well-meaning but traditional-and-loud-about-it mother; her holocaust-obsessed, philosopher-quoting father; her two sisters, Becky, a lesbian medical student, and the self-sacrificing Raquel; and Raquel’s sweet but misguided husband. She also learns some tough lessons from her boyfriend from art school, who chooses the suburbs, a good job, and an entertainment center over a life filled with uncertainty in New York City.

Debra Kirschner wrote, directed and independently produced The Tollbooth, which stars Marla Sokoloff (The Practice), Rob McElhenney (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Idina Menzel (Wicked, Glee), and Tovah Feldshuh (Kissing Jessica Stein). Released in 2008, The Tollbooth DVD is distributed by Peace Arch and Castle Hill Productions and is available at major retailers. The film ran theatrically in art houses in New York, Long Island and Florida as well as festivals worldwide. It currently plays on The Jewish Channel and On Demand in Canada. To learn more, visit thetollboothmovie.com. Kirschner has two original pilot scripts in development: Frog Kissers and In Transit. Earlier in her career, she wrote and directed the short film Changing Clothes, which toured festivals around the world. She also collaborated with Emmy-nominated, DGA-winning director Tasha Oldham to write the short film Pickled, which Oldham directed in the AFI Directing Workshop for Women.

Directed by Charlotte Zwerin and produced by Clint Eastwood and Bruce Ricker, this film juxtaposes archival footage of Monk’s performances with posthumous interviews conducted with his friends and family to yield a dazzling portrait of one of the most inventive jazz musicians of all time.

These screenings are presented in honor of Bruce Ricker, the co-producer of STRAIGHT NO CHASER (and the director or producer of several music and film documentaries), who passed away last spring.

With Suzanne Fletcher, Luc Sante, and Nan Goldin; based on the story by Paul Bowles; co-written and shot by Jim Jarmusch; music by Phil Kline.

Feared lost until, in a stranger-than-fiction turn of events, a 16mm print surfaced in Tangier in 2008, among the belongings left behind after his death by writer Paul Bowles (whose short story formed the basis for the film), YOU ARE NOT I is an extraordinary, haunting debut. A proudly low-budget, resourceful piece of work, it immerses us in the inner world of its protagonist, Ethel, a schizophrenic young woman recently escaped from a mental hospital, as she wanders through the landscapes of rural New Jersey. As embodied by actress Suzanne Fletcher, her strange, deeply unsettling presence gives the film much of its uncanny force. YOU ARE NOT I is a unique, sui generis film that reflects Driver’s fascination with the films Jacques Tourneur made for producer Val Lewton (including CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE). Anthology is thrilled to host a full week of screenings of this newly rediscovered masterpiece.

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS HORROR AND SCIENCE FICTION FILMS

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Michael Corriere
ALIEN CONNECTION
2011, 49 minutes, video.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
John Goras GHOST TANK (2011, 7 minutes, video)
Tim O’Connor THE THING IN THE LAKE (2010, 6 minutes, 16mm)
Ryan Wilson AD NOCTUM (2011, 10 minutes, video)
Matthew Simon THE TURN (2011, 13 minutes, video)
Natasha Kermani THE TURNING LOVE AFFAIR (2010, 15 minutes, video)

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
Adam Pitman
PAPER DOLLS
2008, 90 minutes, video.
Two high school friends, Travis and Nate, are on a road trip to Canada when they’re attacked by mysterious and vicious creatures. Nate is stolen into the woods and Travis will stop at nothing to rescue him.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Neil Meschino
MOLD!
2010, 85 minutes, video.
Set in 1984, when the war on drugs was at its height, the story concerns a strain of mold developed by the government to wipe out Colombian coca fields. Unfortunately, the mold gets out of control and proves to be deadly to more than just vegetation.

With Alfred Molina, Marianne Faithfull, Seymour Cassel, and Rachel Bella; shot by Robby Müller; music composed by Joe Strummer.

“Sara Driver’s principal films are surrealist works whose images tend to linger like half-remembered dreams. … WHEN PIGS FLY – set in an east-coast port town, though filmed in Gemany – is a whimsical ghost story inspired by TOPPER. If the tone seems light, the images, filmed by the great Robby Müller, nevertheless persist. The hero, beautifully played by Alfred Molina, is a sweet-tempered jazz musician who subsists mainly on the money he earns from giving music lessons and is sustained by the companionship of a dog (whose jazz-inspired dreams, rendered by Driver in full, are as lyrical as the hero’s). Some of the action takes place in a shabby Irish pub lorded over by Seymour Cassel, and when a barmaid gives Molina’s character an old rocking chair, he inherits a pair of ghosts (Marianne Faithfull and child actress Rachel Bella) along with it. …[A] sweet mood piece that, like some English comedies, is driven more by character than by plot.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

Followed by:
A half-hour film, shot by Jim Jarmusch, documenting Joe Strummer as he composes the music to WHEN PIGS FLY.

With Suzanne Fletcher, Luc Sante, and Nan Goldin; based on the story by Paul Bowles; co-written and shot by Jim Jarmusch; music by Phil Kline.

Feared lost until, in a stranger-than-fiction turn of events, a 16mm print surfaced in Tangier in 2008, among the belongings left behind after his death by writer Paul Bowles (whose short story formed the basis for the film), YOU ARE NOT I is an extraordinary, haunting debut. A proudly low-budget, resourceful piece of work, it immerses us in the inner world of its protagonist, Ethel, a schizophrenic young woman recently escaped from a mental hospital, as she wanders through the landscapes of rural New Jersey. As embodied by actress Suzanne Fletcher, her strange, deeply unsettling presence gives the film much of its uncanny force. YOU ARE NOT I is a unique, sui generis film that reflects Driver’s fascination with the films Jacques Tourneur made for producer Val Lewton (including CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE). Anthology is thrilled to host a full week of screenings of this newly rediscovered masterpiece.

JIM DAVIS AND ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES
Twenty years ago Anthology began a project of examining and preserving the films of abstract filmmaker Jim Davis, who from 1946 until just before his death in 1974 created a fascinating series of films, most of which were never distributed. Davis was a pioneer of abstract experimental film, greatly admired by Stan Brakhage, Len Lye, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Since 1992, Anthology’s Director of Library Collections, Robert Haller, has been researching Davis’s films, supervising their preservation, examining the filmmaker’s papers, photographs, and paintings, and writing the forthcoming book JIM DAVIS: DANCING WITH LIGHT. In anticipation of the book’s publication, and in tribute to Davis’s niece, Elizabeth Guiher, who passed away in 2011, Haller will present a selection of Davis’s films, all preserved by Anthology.

IMPULSES (1959, 9.5 minutes, 16mm)
PENNSYLVANIA – CHICAGO & ILLINOIS (1958, 7 minutes, 16mm, silent)
A DREAM OF SPACE (1959, 11 minutes, 16mm, silent)
BECOMING (1955, 8.5 minutes, 16mm, silent)
PATH OF MOTION (1950, 8 minutes, 16mm, silent)
SEA RHYTHMS (1971, 9.5 minutes, 16mm, silent)
Total running time: ca. 60 minutes.

(SARA DRIVER SELECTS)
With Simone Simon. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress.
One of the greatest and spookiest collaborations between director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton, CAT PEOPLE tells the story of an American, Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), who marries a Serbian, Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon, in a career-defining performance). As it turns out, Irena is cursed to become a murderous panther (literally) whenever she gets intimate with a man…

With Suzanne Fletcher, Luc Sante, and Nan Goldin; based on the story by Paul Bowles; co-written and shot by Jim Jarmusch; music by Phil Kline.

Feared lost until, in a stranger-than-fiction turn of events, a 16mm print surfaced in Tangier in 2008, among the belongings left behind after his death by writer Paul Bowles (whose short story formed the basis for the film), YOU ARE NOT I is an extraordinary, haunting debut. A proudly low-budget, resourceful piece of work, it immerses us in the inner world of its protagonist, Ethel, a schizophrenic young woman recently escaped from a mental hospital, as she wanders through the landscapes of rural New Jersey. As embodied by actress Suzanne Fletcher, her strange, deeply unsettling presence gives the film much of its uncanny force. YOU ARE NOT I is a unique, sui generis film that reflects Driver’s fascination with the films Jacques Tourneur made for producer Val Lewton (including CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE). Anthology is thrilled to host a full week of screenings of this newly rediscovered masterpiece.

SARA DRIVER SELECTS:
SPIDER BABY, or THE MADDEST STORY EVER TOLD
With Lon Chaney Jr. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Inbreeding, murder, and madness are just a few of the more notable things to be found in this blackly comedic horror film about a chauffeur who looks after a demented trio of adult siblings. Shot in just 12 days and saddled with a variety of titles (including CANNIBAL ORGY), SPIDER BABY’s status as a mind-boggling cult classic is well-deserved.

SPECIAL SCREENINGS!

John Zorn’s TREATMENT FOR A FILM IN 15 SCENES premiered at the 2011 ‘Views From the Avant-Garde’ component of the New York Film Festival, TREATMENT FOR A FILM IN 15 SCENES is a fascinating multi-filmmaker project that could only come from the wild imagination of John Zorn, Anthology’s Composer-In-Residence. Conceived in the early 80s as a list containing 254 distinct shots, the script is much like one of Zorn’s famous game scores in that it sets strict parameters for a filmmaker without telling them exactly how to approach their shots or subjects. The selected filmmakers took radically different approaches, in the end creating an overall work that is overflowing with a variety of possibilities, interpretations, differences, and similarities.

As an added bonus, we are thrilled to premiere a brand-new 35mm blow-up of Henry Hills’s classic film MONEY, a major work of the 1980s avant-garde.

“Henry, KimSu, Joey, and Lewis are all brilliant filmmakers with strong personal styles. Each has approached the scenario using a unique visual sensibility and an original sense of drama and pacing. Joey and KimSu connected immediately to the script and completed their films in a matter of months, while Henry and Lewis took years. Although the image sequence is the same from film to film, it is remarkable how different the results, how surprising. None are even remotely like what I would have created on my own (in some ways the most successful projects are also the most surprising) and this project is filled with the kind of surprises that result from careful thought and rich imagination.” –John Zorn

Henry Hills and Gobolux will be here in person on Friday, March 30!  Unfortunately, John Zorn will not be able to be here as previously announced - we apologize for any inconvenience.

Henry Hills
ARCANA
2011, 33 minutes, video.

Gobolux (KimSu Theiler & Andrew Nelson)
15 SCENES: 254 SHOTS
2011, 15 minutes, video.

Lewis Klahr
WELL THEN THERE NOW
2011, 19.5 minutes, video.

Joey Izzo
BARE ROOM
2011, 31.5 minutes, video.

Preceded by:
Henry Hills
MONEY
1985, 15 minutes, 16mm-to-35mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
A radically-composed time capsule, a rapid-fire portrait of the innovative ‘downtown’ Lower Manhattan community of poets, musicians, dancers, and personalities active in the early-to-mid-1980s. As much a sound work as it is a film, MONEY features John Zorn, Christian Marclay, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, Abigail Child, Charles Bernstein, and an extraordinary cast of luminaries.
Total running time: ca. 120 minutes.

In Japanese with English subtitles.

In war-torn medieval Japan, a demon haunts the Rajomon Gate, ripping out the throats of samurai in the grove beyond. The governor sends a war hero to confront the spirit, but what the man finds are two beautiful women who look just like his lost mother and wife. Both a chilling ghost story and a meditation on the nature of war and social hypocrisy, KURONEKO mixes stunning visuals, an evocative score, and influences from traditional Japanese theater to create an atmospheric, haunting, and emotionally devastating masterpiece.

Directed by Charlotte Zwerin and produced by Clint Eastwood and Bruce Ricker, this film juxtaposes archival footage of Monk’s performances with posthumous interviews conducted with his friends and family to yield a dazzling portrait of one of the most inventive jazz musicians of all time.

These screenings are presented in honor of Bruce Ricker, the co-producer of STRAIGHT NO CHASER (and the director or producer of several music and film documentaries), who passed away last spring.

With Suzanne Fletcher, Ann Magnuson, and Steve Buscemi; screenplay by Sara Driver & Lorenzo Mans. Music by Phil Kline.
“Driver’s first feature – a luminous, oddball comic fantasy about ancient Chinese curses and Xerox machines, set in Manhattan’s Chinatown and its immediate environs – may well be the most visually ravishing American independent film of its year (1986). Set in an irrational, poetic universe that bears a certain relationship to Jacques Rivette’s DUELLE, this dreamy intrigue breaks a cardinal rule of fantasy by striking off in a number of directions: an executive barks in the street, a young Frenchwoman (Magnuson) loses her hair, and machines in a copy shop start to purr and wheeze on their own initiative. The moods that are established are delicate, and not everyone will be able to go with them, but Driver sustains them with beauty and eccentric charm.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

Preceded by:
THE BOWERY – SPRING (POSTCARDS FROM NEW YORK) (1994, 10 minutes, video)
This short film was commissioned by French national television for a series called ‘Postcards from NY’, in which several New York filmmakers were invited to make a ten-minute video about any aspect of the city they chose. Driver’s piece focuses on the history and changing fortunes of the Bowery, and features appearances by Luc Sante, June Leaf, Joe Coleman, and Driver herself.

SPECIAL SCREENINGS!

John Zorn’s TREATMENT FOR A FILM IN 15 SCENES premiered at the 2011 ‘Views From the Avant-Garde’ component of the New York Film Festival, TREATMENT FOR A FILM IN 15 SCENES is a fascinating multi-filmmaker project that could only come from the wild imagination of John Zorn, Anthology’s Composer-In-Residence. Conceived in the early 80s as a list containing 254 distinct shots, the script is much like one of Zorn’s famous game scores in that it sets strict parameters for a filmmaker without telling them exactly how to approach their shots or subjects. The selected filmmakers took radically different approaches, in the end creating an overall work that is overflowing with a variety of possibilities, interpretations, differences, and similarities.

As an added bonus, we are thrilled to premiere a brand-new 35mm blow-up of Henry Hills’s classic film MONEY, a major work of the 1980s avant-garde.

“Henry, KimSu, Joey, and Lewis are all brilliant filmmakers with strong personal styles. Each has approached the scenario using a unique visual sensibility and an original sense of drama and pacing. Joey and KimSu connected immediately to the script and completed their films in a matter of months, while Henry and Lewis took years. Although the image sequence is the same from film to film, it is remarkable how different the results, how surprising. None are even remotely like what I would have created on my own (in some ways the most successful projects are also the most surprising) and this project is filled with the kind of surprises that result from careful thought and rich imagination.” –John Zorn

Henry Hills and Gobolux will be here in person on Friday, March 30!  Unfortunately, John Zorn will not be able to be here as previously announced - we apologize for any inconvenience.

Henry Hills
ARCANA
2011, 33 minutes, video.

Gobolux (KimSu Theiler & Andrew Nelson)
15 SCENES: 254 SHOTS
2011, 15 minutes, video.

Lewis Klahr
WELL THEN THERE NOW
2011, 19.5 minutes, video.

Joey Izzo
BARE ROOM
2011, 31.5 minutes, video.

Preceded by:
Henry Hills
MONEY
1985, 15 minutes, 16mm-to-35mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
A radically-composed time capsule, a rapid-fire portrait of the innovative ‘downtown’ Lower Manhattan community of poets, musicians, dancers, and personalities active in the early-to-mid-1980s. As much a sound work as it is a film, MONEY features John Zorn, Christian Marclay, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, Abigail Child, Charles Bernstein, and an extraordinary cast of luminaries.
Total running time: ca. 120 minutes.

(SARA DRIVER SELECTS)
With Simone Simon. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress.
One of the greatest and spookiest collaborations between director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton, CAT PEOPLE tells the story of an American, Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), who marries a Serbian, Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon, in a career-defining performance). As it turns out, Irena is cursed to become a murderous panther (literally) whenever she gets intimate with a man…