Anthology Film Archives

(LE SANG D’UN POÈTE)
“Adolescent angels wandering about, black boxers with perfect bodies taking flight, school-children in capes killing each other with snowballs, a mirror becomes a swimming pool, and the hallways of a furnished hotel turn into a labyrinth.” –Georges Sadoul

(LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE)
With Jean Marais and Josette Day; score by Georges Auric.
“[P]erhaps the most sensuously elegant of all filmed fairy tales. As a child escapes from everyday family life to the magic of a storybook, so, in the film, Beauty’s farm, with its Vermeer simplicity, fades in intensity as we are caught up in the Gustave Dore extravagance of the Beast’s enchanted landscape. …Jean Marais is a magnificent beast.” –Pauline Kael

We’re pleased to present several encore screenings of Immy Humes’s fascinating, revealing documentary about her father, the publisher, novelist, filmmaker, architect, and intellectual Harold L. ‘Doc’ Humes. While the life and career of ‘Doc’ Humes is little-discussed today, he was a crucial figure across many realms of mid-to-late 20th-century American culture. While his main claims to fame lie in his founding of the Paris Review and his authorship of two major works of literature (THE UNDERGROUND CITY and MEN DIE), he played a significant role in the realm of independent cinema, as the director of the long-lost, unfinished film DON PEYOTE, and as one of the founders of the New American Cinema Group, the association of filmmakers, artists, critics, and others, led by Jonas Mekas, which sought to revolutionize American cinema, and which laid the groundwork for the creation of Anthology Film Archives.
With this in mind, it’s only right and proper for Anthology to host these two evenings of screenings of DOC, which we will present alongside Don Drasin’s SUNDAY (which documents the Doc-led protests that ensued when the authorities attempted to ban folk singing in Washington Square Park), and extended excerpts from DON PEYOTE.

“Scientist, novelist, activist, inventor, filmmaker, architect, prophet, healer, and madman Harold L. ‘Doc’ Humes was, by all accounts, an exhilarating, infuriating, and terrifyingly brilliant man. His Oscar-nominated documentarian daughter Immy Humes has gathered testimonials from luminaries including Norman Mailer, William Styron and Timothy Leary, who experienced his erratic genius firsthand, and has skillfully interwoven them with archival footage. … Immy imaginatively segues from unexpected angles, mapping out the complex historical, cultural, and personal synapses that link the man to his times.” –Ronnie Scheib, VARIETY
“He was brilliant. He was one of the few people I have ever met who was essentially, at bottom, more vain, more intellectually arrogant, than I was.” –Norman Mailer
With:
Dan Drasin SUNDAY (1961, 17 minutes, 16mm-to-35mm. 35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive; preservation funded by The Film Foundation.)
Total running time: ca. 120 minutes.

(ORPHÉE)
With Jean Marais.
Orpheus and Eurydice, with Death waiting on the corner. Cocteau said, “Orpheus could only exist on the screen. A drama of the visible and the invisible, ORPHEUS’s Death is like a spy who falls in love with the person being spied upon. The myth of immortality.”

(LE TESTAMENT D’ORPHÉE)
To Cocteau, “poet” meant the creative artist, and the Orpheus of Greek mythology – the god of the lyre, song and poetry – was Cocteau’s personal muse. For Cocteau the plight of the poet was an unending search for truth and immortality, a life of suffering and martyrdom during which the poet must experience many deaths.”

We’re pleased to present several encore screenings of Immy Humes’s fascinating, revealing documentary about her father, the publisher, novelist, filmmaker, architect, and intellectual Harold L. ‘Doc’ Humes. While the life and career of ‘Doc’ Humes is little-discussed today, he was a crucial figure across many realms of mid-to-late 20th-century American culture. While his main claims to fame lie in his founding of the Paris Review and his authorship of two major works of literature (THE UNDERGROUND CITY and MEN DIE), he played a significant role in the realm of independent cinema, as the director of the long-lost, unfinished film DON PEYOTE, and as one of the founders of the New American Cinema Group, the association of filmmakers, artists, critics, and others, led by Jonas Mekas, which sought to revolutionize American cinema, and which laid the groundwork for the creation of Anthology Film Archives.
With this in mind, it’s only right and proper for Anthology to host these two evenings of screenings of DOC, which we will present alongside Don Drasin’s SUNDAY (which documents the Doc-led protests that ensued when the authorities attempted to ban folk singing in Washington Square Park), and extended excerpts from DON PEYOTE.

“Scientist, novelist, activist, inventor, filmmaker, architect, prophet, healer, and madman Harold L. ‘Doc’ Humes was, by all accounts, an exhilarating, infuriating, and terrifyingly brilliant man. His Oscar-nominated documentarian daughter Immy Humes has gathered testimonials from luminaries including Norman Mailer, William Styron and Timothy Leary, who experienced his erratic genius firsthand, and has skillfully interwoven them with archival footage. … Immy imaginatively segues from unexpected angles, mapping out the complex historical, cultural, and personal synapses that link the man to his times.” –Ronnie Scheib, VARIETY
“He was brilliant. He was one of the few people I have ever met who was essentially, at bottom, more vain, more intellectually arrogant, than I was.” –Norman Mailer
With:
Dan Drasin SUNDAY (1961, 17 minutes, 16mm-to-35mm. 35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive; preservation funded by The Film Foundation.)
Total running time: ca. 120 minutes.

(ORPHÉE)
With Jean Marais.
Orpheus and Eurydice, with Death waiting on the corner. Cocteau said, “Orpheus could only exist on the screen. A drama of the visible and the invisible, ORPHEUS’s Death is like a spy who falls in love with the person being spied upon. The myth of immortality.”

(LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE)
With Jean Marais and Josette Day; score by Georges Auric.
“[P]erhaps the most sensuously elegant of all filmed fairy tales. As a child escapes from everyday family life to the magic of a storybook, so, in the film, Beauty’s farm, with its Vermeer simplicity, fades in intensity as we are caught up in the Gustave Dore extravagance of the Beast’s enchanted landscape. …Jean Marais is a magnificent beast.” –Pauline Kael

Havana Film Festival New York (HFFNY), a project of the American Friends of the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba, has presented prominent and emerging Cuban filmmakers as well as screenings of award-winning classic and newly-released Cuban films since 2000, when it hosted its first festival at Anthology Film Archives. In addition to the annual festival in April, HFFNY presents selected films year-round at venues in the New York area. This screening is part of New York City’s Latin Media and Entertainment Week.

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
THE LAST DINNER / LA ÚLTIMA CENA
1976, 120 minutes, 35mm. In Spanish with English subtitles.
In this jewel of 1970s Cuban cinema, directed by one of the country’s most renowned filmmakers and set at the end of the 18th century, a count visits his Havana sugar mill during Holy Week, on a day a slave has run away. The count holds a dinner for twelve of his slaves in order to convince them that happiness is possible in captivity. When the slaves later rebel against the count’s cruel overseer, the count must take sides.

6:00 DOCUMENTARY PROGRAM
Shanna Maurizi
HOW TO MAKE IT IN FILMMAKING
2010, 57 minutes, video.

7:15 SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Alberto Cabrera Bernal CONTRA EL CINE (2010, 10 minutes, 16mm)
Catherine Andre CHASING A PARAGON (2011, 6 minutes, video)
Holle Singer BANG (2011, 7 minutes, video)
Erik Spink CINCH MARK (2010, 8 minutes, video)
Stephanie Owens HOLLYWOOD (2009, 12 minutes, 16mm)
Rebecca Rocheford Davies DREAM THE LIFE (2009, 27 minutes, video)

8:45 FEATURE PRESENTATION
Bana Mugdan
DIRECTOR’S CUT
2010, 96 minutes, video.
A college dropout and ex-film student decides to make a movie in an attempt to turn her dead-end life around. However, her movie is about the Zombie Cannibal Vampire Pirate Queen, and her cast and crew are neurotic and inexperienced, to say the least.

INEXTINGUISHABLE FIRE / NICHT LÖSCHBARES FEUER
1969, 25 minutes, 16mm.
One of Farocki’s earliest works, this film looks at the impact and manufacture of napalm, the deadly chemical weapon used frequently during the Vietnam war, and brings to the surface the hidden relationships between labor, industry, and destruction. Its point of departure is Farocki’s observation that, “When napalm is burning, it is too late to extinguish it. You have to fight napalm where it is produced: in the factories.” Doing just that, Farocki defiantly names names: the producer is Dow Chemical, located in Midland, Michigan.
&
WAR AT A DISTANCE / ERKENNEN UND VERFOLGEN
2003, 58 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Film Funds, 2011.
“In 1991, when images of the Gulf War flooded the international media, it was virtually impossible to distinguish between real pictures and those generated on computer. This loss of bearings was to change forever our way of deciphering what we see. The image is no longer used only as testimony, but also as an indispensable link in a process of production and destruction. This is the central premise of WAR AT A DISTANCE, which continues the deconstruction of claims to visual objectivity Farocki developed in his earlier work.” –Antje Ehmann

Plus, Saturday, October 8 only:
Jill Godmilow
WHAT FAROCKI TAUGHT
1998, 30 minutes, 16mm
WHAT FAROCKI TAUGHT is literally and stubbornly a remake – that is, a perfect replica in color and in English, of Farocki’s black-and-white, German-language film, INEXTINGUISHABLE FIRE. Taking as its subject the political and formal strategies of Farocki’s film about the development of Napalm B by Dow Chemical during the Vietnam War, Godmilow’s unabashedly perfect copy reopens Walter Benjamin’s discussion of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.

BETWEEN TWO WARS / ZWISCHEN ZWEI KRIEGEN
1978, 83 minutes, 16mm
“An essay film about the time of the blast furnaces – 1917-1933 – about the development of an industry, about a perfect machinery which had to run itself to the point of its own destruction. … The clarity and the precise ordering of his black-and-white images, which do not illustrate thoughts but are themselves thoughts, are reminiscent of late Godard. The poverty of this film – its production took six years – is at the same time its strength.” –Hans C. Blumenberg, DIE ZEIT

FILMMAKER IN PERSON FOR BOTH SHOWS!

There is something inexplicable and strangely exquisite about the Super-8mm films of Dutch artist Jaap Pieters. A longtime icon of small-gauge filmmaking who has shown in cinemas, art spaces, and festivals throughout Europe, Pieters is often compared to Warhol because of his preference for single takes and a fixed camera. The films generally focus on the down-and-out passersby on the street outside his home in Amsterdam, and many of the movies are actually shot from his window. Possessed with an empathetic eye and incredible timing, Pieters captures metaphorical images and private performances that transcend the everyday moments in which they were framed. We are thrilled to have Pieters in person to present these two programs featuring a number of 35mm blow-ups made by the EYE Film Institute Netherlands. Rounding out the screenings is an illuminating documentary portrait of Pieters by his colleague Fred Pelon.

This program has been made possible thanks to the generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation; very special thanks to Coby Reitsma (Mondriaan Foundation), and to Claartje Opdam, Marta Jurkiewicz & Anna Abrahams (EYE Film Institute Netherlands), and Travis Bird.
Please note: the films are listed chronologically, but will be screened in a different order.

PROGRAM 1:
All films in this program are on Super-8mm.
THE TROLLEYMAN / DE WINKELWAGENMAN (1991, 3.5 minutes, silent)
WILLIAM THE FIRST, WILLIAM THE SECOND, WILLIAM THE THIRD / WILLEM I, WILLEM II, WILLEM III (1991, 17 minutes)
THE HOGWEED / DE BEREKLAUW (1992, 3.5 minutes, silent)
KIM & STEVEN (1994, 3.5 minutes, silent)
STRINGLESS / SNAARLOOS (1994, 3.5 minutes, silent)
SCREAMMAN / SCHREEUWMAN (1994, 3.5 minutes, silent)
TEARS FROM DADDY’S SUIT / TRANEN UIT PAPA’S PAK (1994, 5.5 minutes, silent)
SUDSCRUBBING / SCHUIMSCHROBBEN (1995, 3.5 minutes, silent)
THE FLYER / DE VLIEGENIER (1995, 3.5 minutes, silent)
MEATTRANSPORT / VLEESVERVOER (1995, 3.5 minutes, silent)
PASSERS-BY ON A SUNDAY / PASSANTEN OP ZONDAG (1996, 3.5 minutes, silent)
CLEAR VIEWS / SCHONE UITZICHTEN (1997, 2.5 minutes, silent)
THE WEIGHT / HET GEWICHT (A.K.A. WHO’S AFRAID OF RED, YELLOW & BLUE) (1998, 6.5 minutes, silent)
SILVER GREY WAVES ON THE LAND, OR THE WHITE SEA (WITH THANX TO TGR) / ZILVER GRIJZE GOLVEN OP HET LAND, OF DE WITTE ZEE (MET DANK AAN TGR) (2000, 3.5 minutes, silent)
SWISSSPIDER / SPINSUISSE (2000, 3.5 minutes, silent)
THE FURIOUS WITH BOTTLE & CAN / DE WOEDENDE MET FLES & BLIK (2002, 1.5 minutes, silent)
MICHEL’S SHADOWWORKS / MICHELSSCHADUWWERKING (2004, 3.5 minutes, silent)
SPACESHIP SUISSE / RAUMSCHIFF SCHWEIZ (1994/2007, 8.5 minutes, silent)
Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

IMAGES OF THE WORLD AND THE INSCRIPTION OF WAR / BILDER DER WELT UND INSCHRIFT DES KRIEGES
1988, 75 minutes, 16mm.
“A fascinating film essay about photography…. Central to the argument of this film are some aerial photographs of Auschwitz taken by American bombers looking for factories and power plants and missing the lines of people in front of the gas chambers – which are contrasted with Nazi photographs and images drawn by an Auschwitz prisoner, Alfred Kantor. Farocki’s provocative reflections on these and related matters and his highly original manipulation of music make this an excellent introduction to his work, which has seldom been visible in this country.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

JEAN-MARIE STRAUB AND DANIÈLE HUILLET AT WORK ON FRANZ KAFKA’S ‘AMERIKA’ / JEAN-MARIE STRAUB UND DANIÈLE HUILLET BEI DER ARBEIT AN EINEM FILM
1983, 26 minutes, 16mm.
At once a self-portrait and an homage to Jean-Marie Straub, Farocki’s role model and former teacher at the Film Academy, this film shows Farocki, under Straub’s direction, rehearsing for his role as Delamarche in the film CLASS RELATIONS (1983).
&
WORKERS LEAVING THE FACTORY / ARBEITER VERLASSEN DIE FABRIK
1995, 36 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Given anonymously in honor of Anna Marie Shapiro, 2011.
Farocki considers the implications of an image that has been depicted throughout cinematic history, starting with the famous Lumiere brothers’ film. Farocki shows several variations of this scene from different films in order to examine its meaning as a historic and filmic trope.

FILMMAKER IN PERSON FOR BOTH SHOWS!

There is something inexplicable and strangely exquisite about the Super-8mm films of Dutch artist Jaap Pieters. A longtime icon of small-gauge filmmaking who has shown in cinemas, art spaces, and festivals throughout Europe, Pieters is often compared to Warhol because of his preference for single takes and a fixed camera. The films generally focus on the down-and-out passersby on the street outside his home in Amsterdam, and many of the movies are actually shot from his window. Possessed with an empathetic eye and incredible timing, Pieters captures metaphorical images and private performances that transcend the everyday moments in which they were framed. We are thrilled to have Pieters in person to present these two programs featuring a number of 35mm blow-ups made by the EYE Film Institute Netherlands. Rounding out the screenings is an illuminating documentary portrait of Pieters by his colleague Fred Pelon.

This program has been made possible thanks to the generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation; very special thanks to Coby Reitsma (Mondriaan Foundation), and to Claartje Opdam, Marta Jurkiewicz & Anna Abrahams (EYE Film Institute Netherlands), and Travis Bird.

Please note: the films are listed chronologically, but will be screened in a different order.

PROGRAM 2:
The 35mm blow-ups presented in this program are courtesy of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands.
THE TINCANMAN / DE BLIKJESMAN (1991, 3.5 minutes, Super8-to-35mm, silent)
JIMMY’S BALLET (1993, 3 minutes, Super8-to-35mm, silent)
THE CUPSDANCE / DE KOPJESDANS (1994, 2.5 minutes, Super8-to-35mm)
ZÜRICH BLISSNESS / ZÜRCHER ZEGNERIN (2000, 3.5 minutes, Super8-to-35mm, silent)
OPWAAIINGEN (2010, 3 minutes, Super8-to-35mm)
WINDE’S BLISS / WINDE’S GELUK (2010, 3 minutes, Super8-to-35mm)
With:
Fred Pelon
JAAP PIETERS PORTRAIT
2006, 45 minutes, video, b&w. In Dutch with English subtitles.
In this video portrait of Pieters, which premiered at the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival, ‘the Eye of Amsterdam’ is filmed in his home, where his moving struggle with the plethora of objects he’s collected becomes a symbol for his inner life. Organizing, controlling, and re-collecting the chaos by means of photography becomes a way of treasure hunting and finding. The filmmaker joins Pieters in the search for his heater, but ends up becoming part of the collection.
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

BEFORE YOUR EYES, VIETNAM / ETWAS WIRD SICHTBAR
1981, 114 minutes, 16mm.
“This film marks a definitive turning point in Farocki’s career. Here he returns to the topic of the Vietnam War, to take stock of the legacy of the student movement, his own earlier ideal of guerilla film production, and the dream of a certain form of didactic cinema. The earlier goal…of a cinema that could ‘bring everything together’ in a totalizing act of cognition has given way to a sense that the given and visible world is too complex and inherently ambiguous for such an aesthetic; guerilla tactics and techniques are shown to be recuperable within the logic of capital; and the ultimate fantasy of the student movement, to reshape the world in the image that it projected, is shown to be an almost arrogant fantasy.” – Christopher Pavsek, ROUGE

HOW TO LIVE IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY / LEBEN – BRD
1990, 83 minutes, 16mm.
“A mordantly comic montage of short scenes taken from 32 instructional classes, as well as therapy and test sessions. The film alternates between two kinds of activity: simulations and exercises carried out by human beings (learning about everything from child care to striptease to war to sales techniques to auto safety) and products being tested without visible human intervention. … The thin line separating socialization from indoctrination is repeatedly traversed – and the implication is that while diverse appliances are being tested for human use, humans are being trained and tested so they can aspire to the performance level of appliances.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

AN IMAGE / EIN BILD
1983, 25 minutes, 16mm.
“Four days spent in a studio working on a centerfold photo for Playboy magazine provided the subject matter for my film. The magazine itself deals with culture, cars, a certain lifestyle. Maybe all those trappings are only there to cover up the naked woman. Maybe it’s like with a paper-doll. The naked woman in the middle is a sun around which a system revolves: of culture, of business, of living! (It’s impossible to either look or film into the sun.) One can well imagine that the people creating such a picture, the gravity of which is supposed to hold all that, perform their task with as much care, seriousness, and responsibility as if they were splitting uranium.” –H.F.
&
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE CONSUMER / EIN TAG IM LEBEN DER ENDVERBRAUCHER
1993, 44 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Given anonymously in honor of Anna Marie Shapiro, 2011.
Farocki plunders 40 years of advertising films, orchestrating them into an ironic 24 hours in the life of the typical consumer. This collage of ‘beautiful images’, gleeful and chaotic, deconstructs not only the domestic reference points which punctuate our daily life, but also gives full rein to an offbeat humor.

IMAGES OF THE WORLD AND THE INSCRIPTION OF WAR / BILDER DER WELT UND INSCHRIFT DES KRIEGES
1988, 75 minutes, 16mm.
“A fascinating film essay about photography…. Central to the argument of this film are some aerial photographs of Auschwitz taken by American bombers looking for factories and power plants and missing the lines of people in front of the gas chambers – which are contrasted with Nazi photographs and images drawn by an Auschwitz prisoner, Alfred Kantor. Farocki’s provocative reflections on these and related matters and his highly original manipulation of music make this an excellent introduction to his work, which has seldom been visible in this country.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

INEXTINGUISHABLE FIRE / NICHT LÖSCHBARES FEUER
1969, 25 minutes, 16mm.
One of Farocki’s earliest works, this film looks at the impact and manufacture of napalm, the deadly chemical weapon used frequently during the Vietnam war, and brings to the surface the hidden relationships between labor, industry, and destruction. Its point of departure is Farocki’s observation that, “When napalm is burning, it is too late to extinguish it. You have to fight napalm where it is produced: in the factories.” Doing just that, Farocki defiantly names names: the producer is Dow Chemical, located in Midland, Michigan.
&
WAR AT A DISTANCE / ERKENNEN UND VERFOLGEN
2003, 58 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Film Funds, 2011.
“In 1991, when images of the Gulf War flooded the international media, it was virtually impossible to distinguish between real pictures and those generated on computer. This loss of bearings was to change forever our way of deciphering what we see. The image is no longer used only as testimony, but also as an indispensable link in a process of production and destruction. This is the central premise of WAR AT A DISTANCE, which continues the deconstruction of claims to visual objectivity Farocki developed in his earlier work.” –Antje Ehmann

Plus, Saturday, October 8 only:
Jill Godmilow
WHAT FAROCKI TAUGHT
1998, 30 minutes, 16mm
WHAT FAROCKI TAUGHT is literally and stubbornly a remake – that is, a perfect replica in color and in English, of Farocki’s black-and-white, German-language film, INEXTINGUISHABLE FIRE. Taking as its subject the political and formal strategies of Farocki’s film about the development of Napalm B by Dow Chemical during the Vietnam War, Godmilow’s unabashedly perfect copy reopens Walter Benjamin’s discussion of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.

IN COMPARISON / ZUM VERGLEICH
2009, 61 minutes, 16mm.
For his most recent film, Farocki observes the process of manufacturing bricks, in various cultures, and across different modes and scales of production.

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

THE APPEARANCE / DER AUFTRITT
1996, 40 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Film Funds, 2011.
“Farocki once again takes us into the world of advertising. An advertising agency has to pitch a marketing concept to an optician’s consortium, represented by the manager who is the first to see the campaign. The logo submitted, ‘Eyedentity’, is examined from every angle: it must simultaneously express both the company’s dynamism and its reliability! A fascinating, dispassionate glimpse behind closed doors, where every detail is dramatized to win that lucrative contract.” –Jörg Becker
&
THE INTERVIEW
1997, 58 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Given anonymously in honor of Anna Marie Shapiro, 2011.
“In the summer of 1996, we filmed application training courses in which one learns how to apply for a job. School drop-outs, university graduates, people who have been retrained, the long-term unemployed, recovered drug addicts, and mid-level managers – all of them are supposed to learn how to market and sell themselves, a skill to which the term ‘self management’ is applied. The self is perhaps nothing more than a metaphysical hook from which to hang a social identity.” –H.F.

HOW TO LIVE IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY / LEBEN – BRD
1990, 83 minutes, 16mm.
“A mordantly comic montage of short scenes taken from 32 instructional classes, as well as therapy and test sessions. The film alternates between two kinds of activity: simulations and exercises carried out by human beings (learning about everything from child care to striptease to war to sales techniques to auto safety) and products being tested without visible human intervention. … The thin line separating socialization from indoctrination is repeatedly traversed – and the implication is that while diverse appliances are being tested for human use, humans are being trained and tested so they can aspire to the performance level of appliances.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

THE CREATORS OF THE SHOPPING WORLDS / DIE SCHÖPFER DER EINKAUFSWELTEN
2001, 72 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Film Funds, 2011.
“Everyone is familiar with this experience [of shopping] and knows what a mall looks like. This self-evident phenomenon is, however, the result of a highly complex process. The designing of shopping malls is overseen by an army of planners, managers and scientists. … Farocki shows how mall producers look at malls when they want to find out, for example, how passers-by move, where they stop and where they reach for an article. He adds these images to the everyday ones – and gives them a magical charge.” –Antje Ehmann

WHAT’S UP? / WAS IST LOS?
1991, 60 minutes, 16mm.
“How a look can be turned toward its goal by grasping and measuring its covetousness is shown in an exemplary fashion in WHAT’S UP? in a motif depicting a postcard of a painting by Titian in an eye-mark recorder. Elsewhere topographical test images of the human brain record stimulus-response patterns during visual trials by measuring brainwaves (calibration curves). Research on the effectiveness of advertising investigates the question of what advertisements affect what regions of the brain, what scenes ‘work’ – images for an ‘inward’ colonization of the human body, at once a commodity and a market.” –Jörg Becker
&
RESPITE / AUFSCHUB
2007, 40 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Film Funds, 2011.
Resurrects footage shot by Rudolf Breslauer, an inmate of a Dutch transit camp for Jews during WWII. The images we see of incoming and outgoing trains, prisoners being processed, and daily camp life are set to Farocki’s silent intertitle commentary.

PRISON IMAGES
2000, 60 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Film Funds, 2011.
“A film composed of images from prisons. Quotes from fiction films and documentaries as well as footage from surveillance cameras. A look at the new control technologies, at personal identification devices, electronic ankle bracelets, electronic tracking devices. The cinema has always been attracted to prisons.” –H.F.
&
NOTHING VENTURED
2004, 50 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Film Funds, 2011.
The film follows the negotiations between a mid-sized company and a venture capital firm as the company looks for capital to start production on its invention. Farocki limits himself to observing events without comment. It’s a microscopic look at one cell of today’s economy, an ethnographic portrait of a commonplace business dealing.

AN IMAGE / EIN BILD
1983, 25 minutes, 16mm.
“Four days spent in a studio working on a centerfold photo for Playboy magazine provided the subject matter for my film. The magazine itself deals with culture, cars, a certain lifestyle. Maybe all those trappings are only there to cover up the naked woman. Maybe it’s like with a paper-doll. The naked woman in the middle is a sun around which a system revolves: of culture, of business, of living! (It’s impossible to either look or film into the sun.) One can well imagine that the people creating such a picture, the gravity of which is supposed to hold all that, perform their task with as much care, seriousness, and responsibility as if they were splitting uranium.” –H.F.
&
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE CONSUMER / EIN TAG IM LEBEN DER ENDVERBRAUCHER
1993, 44 minutes, video. Exhibition copy courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Given anonymously in honor of Anna Marie Shapiro, 2011.
Farocki plunders 40 years of advertising films, orchestrating them into an ironic 24 hours in the life of the typical consumer. This collage of ‘beautiful images’, gleeful and chaotic, deconstructs not only the domestic reference points which punctuate our daily life, but also gives full rein to an offbeat humor.

With Anne Carlisle and Paula E. Sheppard.
Anthology welcomes filmmaker Slava Tsukerman, who will be here in person to present this special screening of his cult classic, LIQUID SKY!
“A science-fiction fantasy with a wonderfully smutty premise: unseen aliens, searching for heroin, land in their tiny flying saucer on the roof of a downtown apartment building and attach themselves to Margaret, a New Wave fashion model whose friends use lots of smack. But the aliens, it turns out, are greedy; they also want a euphoria-inducing chemical secreted by the brain during orgasm, a chemical somewhat similar to heroin.
“The movie becomes even funnier when you reflect that it was made by a group of Soviet émigrés: the filmmakers, like the aliens, are explorers seeking out exotic pleasures denied them in their own arid homeland.
“LIQUID SKY has got to be the funniest, craziest, dirtiest, most perversely beautiful science-fiction movie ever made.” –David Denby, NEW YORK MAGAZINE
“CLOSE ENCOUNTERS for acid casualties.” –TIME OUT FILM GUIDE

This event is co-presented by SNOB, an international project and a one-of-a-kind social medium for people who live in various countries around the world and speak various languages, but think in Russian. On Tuesday, October 11 at 7:00, there will be a private, Russian-language-only event for SNOB participants, with the filmmaker present. For more info, visit: www.snob.ru.

IN COMPARISON / ZUM VERGLEICH
2009, 61 minutes, 16mm.
For his most recent film, Farocki observes the process of manufacturing bricks, in various cultures, and across different modes and scales of production.

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

Anthology hosts the Helsinki-based cooperative FixC for several programs of experimental films and videos.
In psychology ‘fixation’ means the state wherein the individual develops obsessions in relation to somebody or something. It can also mean gestures like maintaining one’s gaze in a constant direction, repetition, and/or rituals. The “Fixation” screening is a brief journey through the diverse worlds of the moving image.
FixC is an independent artist cooperative, which was launched to generate, distribute, and promote video art, media art, and experimental cinema, and to produce curated touring exhibitions and screenings. For more info, please visit: www.fixc.fi
Unless otherwise noted, all works were made and will be presented on video.

PROGRAM 1:
Juha van Ingen FLUTTER (2006, 3.5 minutes)
Seppo Renvall EXOTIQUE (2009, 9 minutes)
Maria Duncker THE HOLY ROAD (2009, 2.5 minutes)
Maria Duncker GO-GO (2002, 3 minutes)
Kari Yli-Annala A LIFE OF ONE’S OWN (2008, 9 minutes)
Maria Duncker BLOOM (2006, 4 minutes)
Jarkko Räsänen IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI (2011, 5 minutes)
Jarkko Räsänen FOLDING (2007-08, 6.5 minutes, silent)
Erkka Nissinen VANTAA (2008, 12 minutes)
Total running time: ca. 60 minutes.

Anthology hosts the Helsinki-based cooperative FixC for several programs of experimental films and videos.
In psychology ‘fixation’ means the state wherein the individual develops obsessions in relation to somebody or something. It can also mean gestures like maintaining one’s gaze in a constant direction, repetition, and/or rituals. The “Fixation” screening is a brief journey through the diverse worlds of the moving image.
FixC is an independent artist cooperative, which was launched to generate, distribute, and promote video art, media art, and experimental cinema, and to produce curated touring exhibitions and screenings. For more info, please visit: www.fixc.fi
Unless otherwise noted, all works were made and will be presented on video.

PROGRAM 2:
Seppo Renvall
EESTAAS
2008, 53 minutes, 16mm-to-video.
‘Eestaas’ means back-and-forth in Finnish. Shot on 16mm, the film is intended to be projected forwards and then backwards. This work combines experimental film with electro-acoustic music. Together, they form a comprehensive experience which adds up to more than the sum of its parts. The music is produced by Samuli ‘Teho’ Majamäki, and the other musicians appearing alongside him are Ilpo Väisänen (Pan sonic), Tapani Rinne, and Verneri Lumi (Rinneradio).

6:00 DOCUMENTARY PROGRAM
Matthew Pollack
RUN RUN IT’S ME
2010, 87 minutes, video.

7:45 SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Simon Tarr INTERRUPTUS (2011, 4 minutes, video)
Alex Lora US (2011, 6 minutes, video)
Mee Jo Kim SINNER’S BAG (2011, 6 minutes, video)
Evan Roberts 33 TEETH (2011, 8 minutes, video)
Michelle Pollino REGRETS (2011, 11 minutes, video)
Ari Aster THE STRANGE THING ABOUT THE JOHNSONS (2011, 28 minutes, 35mm)

9:00 FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
Usama Alshaibi
PROFANE
2011, 78 minutes, video.
This film explores the idea of submission from religious, psychological and sexual perspectives. It’s also a horror film about possession by a jinn (the Islamic equivalent of demons).

10:30 SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Kelvin C Baas
NOCTAMBULOUS
2011, 79 minutes, video.
A lonely, grief-stricken man mourning the death of his wife wanders the streets of Manhattan night after night, suffering from a severe case of sleepwalking. One night, he encounters a mysterious woman who says he has two weeks to find his soul or he will die.

Anthology hosts the Helsinki-based cooperative FixC for several programs of experimental films and videos.
In psychology ‘fixation’ means the state wherein the individual develops obsessions in relation to somebody or something. It can also mean gestures like maintaining one’s gaze in a constant direction, repetition, and/or rituals. The “Fixation” screening is a brief journey through the diverse worlds of the moving image.
FixC is an independent artist cooperative, which was launched to generate, distribute, and promote video art, media art, and experimental cinema, and to produce curated touring exhibitions and screenings. For more info, please visit: www.fixc.fi
Unless otherwise noted, all works were made and will be presented on video.

PROGRAM 3:
Maria Duncker ALUMINIUM (2003, 4.5 minutes)
Maria Duncker HOMECOMING (2005, 4 minutes)
Seppo Renvall BACK TO THE HUMANITY (2007, 4 minutes)
Jarkko Räsänen UNFOLDING (2011, 6.5 minutes, silent)
Juha van Ingen WEB SAFE (2008, 7 minutes, silent)
Kari Yli-Annala GUARDIAN CREATURES (2005, 3 minutes)
Erkka Nissinen NIGHT SCHOOL (2007, 13 minutes)
Erkka Nissinen RIGID REGIME (2009, 17 minutes)
Maria Duncker PORN (2003, 2 minutes)
Maria Duncker FOAM HEAD (2009, 1 minute)
Juha van Ingen TOP-DOWN (2011, 4.5 minutes, silent)
Juha van Ingen (DIS)INTEGRATOR (1992, 4 minutes)
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

Anthology hosts the Helsinki-based cooperative FixC for several programs of experimental films and videos.
In psychology ‘fixation’ means the state wherein the individual develops obsessions in relation to somebody or something. It can also mean gestures like maintaining one’s gaze in a constant direction, repetition, and/or rituals. The “Fixation” screening is a brief journey through the diverse worlds of the moving image.
FixC is an independent artist cooperative, which was launched to generate, distribute, and promote video art, media art, and experimental cinema, and to produce curated touring exhibitions and screenings. For more info, please visit: www.fixc.fi
Unless otherwise noted, all works were made and will be presented on video.

PROGRAM 4:
Seppo Renvall, Juha van Ingen & Jarkko Räsänen
LENKKI
2011, 20 minutes, Super-8mm loops with live soundtrack.
Found ethnological footage of life in Finland projected and tweaked by Seppo Renvall and Juha van Ingen. The live soundtrack, composed by Jarkko Räsänen, combines original sounds from the film footage and field recordings of audio elements suggested by the images.

The most enduring of all Flaherty’s films for its simplicity of purpose, structure, and design. It ennobles its subjects rather than exploiting them. Sharp and uncluttered, the film relies on a few well-developed sequences which remain in the memory of the viewer.
“NANOOK is one of the most vital, dramatic and human films that has ever flashed across the screen.” –Rex Ingram

This fall, agnès b. is proud to present ‘This Side of Paradise’, a photography exhibition from artist, filmmaker, and Anthology co-founder Jonas Mekas, at the recently opened agnès b. Galerie Boutique in Soho. This exhibition, running from September 24-October 30, marks the first time these rare and deeply personal images of the Kennedy and Radziwill families from the early 1970s are on view in NYC in their entirety. The photo prints are taken directly from Mekas’s celebrated film THIS SIDE OF PARADISE: FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED BIOGRAPHY, which he completed in 1999.
On the occasion of the photography exhibition, Anthology presents this special screening of THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, alongside another film featuring appearances by Caroline Kennedy and Tina Radziwill, SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF ANDY WARHOL.
The agnès b. Galerie Boutique is located at 50 Howard Street, between Mercer and Broadway.
Special thanks to agnès b., Elodie Cazes, and Chris Apple.

Jonas Mekas
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
1999, 35 minutes, 16mm.
“For a period of several years [in the] late 60s and early 70s, I had the fortune to spend some time, mostly during the summers, with Jackie Kennedy’s and her sister Lee Radziwill’s families and children. Cinema was an integral, inseparable, as a matter of fact, a key part of our friendship. The time was still very close to the untimely, tragic death of John F. Kennedy. Jackie wanted to give something to her children to do, to help to ease the transition, life without a father. One of her thoughts was that a movie camera would be fun for children. Peter Beard, who was at that time tutoring John Jr. and Caroline in art history, suggested to Jackie that I was the man to introduce the children to cinema. Jackie said yes. And that’s how it all began.
“The images in this film, with a few exceptions, all come from the summers Caroline and John Jr. spent in Montauk, with their cousins Anthony and Tina Radziwill, in an old house Lee had rented from Andy Warhol, for a few summers. Andy himself spent many of his weekends there, in one of the cottages, as did Peter Beard, whom the children had adopted almost like their older brother or a father they missed. These were summers of happiness, joy and continuous celebrations of life and friendships. These were days of Little Fragments of Paradise.” –J.M.

Plus:
Jonas Mekas
SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF ANDY WARHOL
1963-90, 35 minutes, 16mm.
This extraordinary diary film chronicles Warhol’s everyday life and work, and the social and cultural milieu that swirled around him, with appearances from a host of figures including THIS SIDE OF PARADISE participants Caroline Kennedy, Peter Beard, and Tina Radziwill.
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

Flaherty’s third major film portrays the lives of a family of fisher folk on the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway, Ireland. Flaherty selected this location and subjects because of their isolation as the westernmost outpost of European civilization. In addition, the daily struggle between the islanders and the sea perfectly suited his interests and concerns. The scenes at sea are breathtaking.
“His passionate devotion to the portrayal of human gesture and of a man’s fight for his family makes the film an incomparable account of human dignity. Better than anyone, Flaherty knew how to show the true face of Man.” –Georges Sadoul

Contemporary Artist Program:
Sam Anderson – DYING CAT (2011, ca. 7 minutes)
Michel Auder – CAT PIECES (2011, 5 minutes)
Agnès b. - 2000-YEAR-OLD CAT (2010, 1 min 15 sec)
Pola Chapelle – HOW TO DRAW A CAT (1973, 3 minutes)
Lynn Christoffers – THE LONG TAKE – PRISCILLA IN LOBSTERVILLE (1998, 8 minutes)
Brigitte Cornand – [UNTITLED] (2011, 2.5 minutes)
Anne Deleporte – FELIS CATUS (2011, 1.5 minutes)
Tracey Emin – BABY STRANGE (2011, 1 minute)
Paul-Armand Gette – THE CAT GIRL (2011, 2.5 minutes)
Eleanor Hubbard – ART IMITATES CAT (2011, 4.5 minutes)
Joan Jonas – PHILOSOPHER'S WALK (2011, 2.5 minutes)
Jonas Mekas – LIFE, LOVE AND DEATH OF MAXI (2011, 20 minutes)
Carolee Schneemann – MYSTERIES OF THE PUSSIES (1998, 6 minutes)
Rob Wynne – BABY (2011, 1 minute)

The opening-night program at will be a benefit for the cat rescue and adoption group KittyKind.  All tickets to this program will be $12.

IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR?
To celebrate the release of a new book on the work of renowned avant-garde filmmaker Abigail Child, we are pleased to host this very special event. Published in both French and English by MetisPresse, as part of their PLANSécant collection, the book focuses on (and takes its title from) Child’s signature series of films, IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR?, bringing together five essays examining different aspects of the BORN FOR series, an interview with Child, and transcriptions of her texts/poems, which form the soundtracks of the BORN FOR films.
To mark the book’s appearance we will be screening a selection of the films from the BORN FOR series – which film curator Mark McElhatten in 1990 called “one of the most assured and important projects to have emerged over the last decade” – with Abigail Child in person to introduce the screening, sign copies of the book, and discuss her work with some of its contributors, including Thomas Zummer, Melissa Ragona, and Tom Gunning. Please join us to celebrate the publication of this invaluable study of Child’s remarkable work.
PERILS (Part 4) (1986, 3.5 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
COVERT ACTION (Part 5) (1984, 7.5 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
MAYHEM (Part 6) (1987, 16.5 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
MERCY (Part 7) (1989, 10 minutes, l6mm)

20th Century Artist Program:
Joseph Cornell – A LEGEND FOR FOUNTAINS (1957/65, 17 minutes)
Andy Warhol – EAT (1963, 35 minutes)
Elizabeth Fuller Chapman, aka Bobsy Goodspeed – historic footage with Calder, Duchamp, Matisse, Mondrian…
COMMENT VIVRE SANS CHAT / HOW TO LIVE WITH NO CAT (1982, 11 minutes, episode of the tv program "30 Million Friends" with the painter Leonor Fini)
Pierre Jallaud – VERONIQUE AND THE CAT (1964, ca. 15 minutes, with Delphine Seyrig)
Plus other surprises!

Larry Jordan
DUO CONCERTANTES (1962-64, 6 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
HAMFAT ASAR (1965, 13 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
GYMNOPEDIES (1968, 6 minutes, 16mm)
THE OLD HOUSE PASSING (1966, 45 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)
OUR LADY OF THE SPHERE (1968, 9 minutes, 35mm)
“Fantastic landscapes of the mind is what make the unique work of San Francisco animator Larry Jordan so compelling. With a taste for nostalgic romanticism for intricate turn-of-the-century illustrations, Jordan creates a magical universe of work using old steel engravings and collectable memorabilia. His 50-year pursuit into the subconscious mind gives him a place in the annals of cinema as a prolific animator on a voyage into the surreal psychology of the inner self.” - Jackie Leger

Helen Levitt
IN THE STREET (1952, 12 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)
Helen Levitt's short, lyrical documentary portrait of life in Spanish Harlem. Stealthily shot by Levitt, Janice Loeb, and James Agee.

Willard Maas
GEOGRAPHY OF THE BODY (1943, 7 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)
“The terrors and splendors of the human body as the undiscovered, mysterious continent.” - W.M.

Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

Feature Film Program:
Miranda July's THE FUTURE (2011, 91 minutes)
When a couple decides to adopt a stray cat their perspective on life changes radically, literally altering the course of time and space and testing their faith in each other and themselves.

ZORNS LEMMA
1970, 60 minutes, 16mm, color.
“A major poetic work. Created and put together by a very clear eye-head, this original and complex abstract work moves beyond the letters of the alphabet, beyond words and beyond Freud. If you don’t understand it the first time you see it, don’t despair, see it again! When you finally ‘get it,’ a small light, possibly a candle, will light itself inside your forehead.” –Ernie Gehr
&
HAPAX LEGOMENA I: (nostalgia)
1971, 36 minutes, 16mm, b&w.
“Nostalgia, beginning as an ironic look upon a personal past, creates its own filmic time, a past and future generated by the expectations elicited by its basic disjunctive strategy.” –Annette Michelson
“In nostalgia the time it takes for a photograph to burn (and thus confirm its two-dimensionality) becomes the clock within the film, while Frampton plays the critic, asynchronously glossing, explicating, narrating, mythologizing his earlier art, and his earlier life, as he commits them both to the fire of a labyrinthine structure; for Borges too was one of his earlier masters, and he grins behind the facades of logic, mathematics, and physical demonstrations which are the formal metaphors for most of Frampton’s films.” –P. Adams Sitney

Total running time: ca. 100 minutes. 

Anthology welcomes back playwright, actor, and filmmaker Zachary Oberzan, the creator of the acclaimed one-man theater piece RAMBO SOLO and its filmic offshoot FLOODING WITH LOVE FOR THE KID, an adaptation of the novel FIRST BLOOD made entirely in his New York apartment, with Oberzan playing all the roles. His newest film, YOUR BROTHER. REMEMBER? is another cinematic manifestation of a work originally performed live on-stage.
As kids in Maine, Zachary and his older brother Gator loved making home movies of their favorite films, most notably Jean-Claude Van Damme’s karate opus KICKBOXER, and the cult film FACES OF DEATH. Twenty years later, estranged from his family, Zack returned to Maine to re-create these childhood films as accurately as possible – but now with two decades of wear and tear etched into every face, place, body, and soul. Drugs, prison, and depression have taken their toll. But with Jean-Claude and Dr. Francis Gross in their corner, Zack and Gator step into the ring one last time for a title shot at redemption.
“Having made a big Hollywood film (albeit in my apartment for $96, but a big Hollywood film nonetheless,) I figured I’m a Hollywood star now and I should do what Hollywood does, which is to remake its own movies every 20 years or so. But I’m also very fascinated by Before-and-After photos. They are like time machines for me. I wanted to take the concept of the before-and-after photo and move it to the next logical step, the before-and-after film. So although Hollywood remakes its movies by updating the actors and music and locations and hairstyles and body fat ratios, I wanted to use as many of the original variables as possible, to see how they’ve changed, or not changed. It was the aging of 20 years in the faces, the bodies, the movements, the voices, the sets, the props – that’s what I was really interested in.” –Z.O.

Anthology welcomes video pioneer Steina for a special presentation and screening. Born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1940, Steina studied violin and music theory, and in 1959 attended the Czechoslovak State Music Conservatory, where she met her husband Woody Vasulka. Together they moved to the U.S., where they soon became crucial figures in the emerging video-art movement, both through their own work and their founding of The Kitchen, the highly influential and still vitally important interdisciplinary arts institution in downtown Manhattan which was one of the first organizations in America to embrace the emergent fields of video and performance art, as well as dance, music, literature, and film. In recent years, while continuing to create numerous videotapes and installations, Steina has increasingly explored the possibilities of interactive performances in public spaces, playing a digitally-adapted violin which manipulates projected video images.
This evening, Steina will be here in person to demonstrate the digital tools she has been using, as well as some of her environments. Through programs such as IMX, which is an updated version of Image/ine by Tom Demeyer, and El Topo, a software written by Rob Shaw, she has created numerous works, including BOREALIS, PYROGLYPHS, MYND, TOKYO FOUR, and THE WEST, all of which she will demonstrate and discuss during this program.
“Steina’s work is a magical aural and optical journey, carefully formulated through the use of counterpoint between sound and image that uses surveillance, engineering, and physics to capture and present compositions of extreme complexity into environments of compelling beauty.” –Don Metz, BURCHFIELD PENNEY ART CENTER
Special thanks to Steina and Katherine Liberovskaya.

6:00 FIRST SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Aristides Guillen NIGHT HAWKS (2011, 9 minutes, video)
Shane Drewalt THE GONER PROLOGUE (2011, 11 minutes, video)
Nick Boorbaks WORDS AND SILENCES (2011, 12 minutes, video)
Gregorio Smith BIRDS (2011, 36 minutes, video)

7:30 SECOND SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Thomas Caruso THE THORNHILLS OF PARK AVENUE (2011, 6 minutes, video)
Deborah Lohse HUNGER (2010, 10 minutes, 16mm)
Christine Elise McCarthy BATHING AND THE SINGLE GIRL (2010, 11 minutes, video)
Carey Williams THE KISS (2010, 11 minutes, video)
Matthew Tibbenham TAKE TWO (2010, 20 minutes, video)

8:45 FEATURE PRESENTATION
Hugh Mackey
TIES
2010, 84 minutes, video.
As a young couple grows further apart, the boy goes to increasingly great lengths to keep the girl from leaving.

(TODOS VÓS SODES CAPITÁNS)
A further entry in the rapidly proliferating, rich vein of documentary/fiction hybrids, Oliver Laxe’s YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS channels the meta-textuality, genre bending, and sensitivity towards children found in the best work of Abbas Kiarostami and François Truffaut. Laxe himself stars as a self-described “neo-colonialist” filmmaker who goes to Tangiers ostensibly to hold a series of film workshops for disadvantaged street children. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Laxe’s intentions are not purely disinterested, as he begins to turn these children into pawns in the service of his own film. As the kids resist Laxe’s project, the film becomes a fascinating combination of self-reflexivity, self-deprecation, and documentary portraiture (of the children and of life in Tangiers). The winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is a mysterious, whimsical, and unique creation.

“Although it mirrors the Spanish director’s actual experiences teaching filmmaking to children in Tangiers, the film is not a documentary so much as a metafictional provocation. The film-within-a-film changes course – the on-screen Laxe disappears after a midmovie mutiny – and from there the film we are watching only gets harder to categorize and to contain. While movies that reflect on their own making tend to sink into self-conscious paralysis, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is an altogether rarer and headier sort of intellectual exercise, one that matches conceptual rigor with a liberating sense of play and discovery.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM

Written, directed, and edited by Adolfas Mekas. With Pola Chapelle, John Kramer, Ronnie Gilbert, and Tina Stoumen.
“An elegy for a draft dodger.” –A.M.
“WINDFLOWERS is vastly more important than the plethora of sophisticated antiwar films around town. … It is not a portrait of a draft dodger, nor of anyone else, but of a certain American mentality confronted with a situation that challenges its mindsets. … WINDFLOWERS seems to me a tremendously important film because it is the first film, inspired by this war and antiwar activity, to reach into the heart of America.” –Marjorie Heins, RAT
“A macabre lament for an assassinated deserter, WINDFLOWERS is a fugue in two senses of the word. It is a film about a desperate flight and it is a musical film, like a complaint, one of those English ballads of the 18th century that made you cry. Simply, this circular film…is constructed musically.” – Dominique Noguez, CAHIERS DU CINÉMA
Followed by:
THE SAGA OF WINDFLOWERS (2001, 15 minutes, video)
Adolfas speaks about the making of WINDFLOWERS.
Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.

(TODOS VÓS SODES CAPITÁNS)
A further entry in the rapidly proliferating, rich vein of documentary/fiction hybrids, Oliver Laxe’s YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS channels the meta-textuality, genre bending, and sensitivity towards children found in the best work of Abbas Kiarostami and François Truffaut. Laxe himself stars as a self-described “neo-colonialist” filmmaker who goes to Tangiers ostensibly to hold a series of film workshops for disadvantaged street children. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Laxe’s intentions are not purely disinterested, as he begins to turn these children into pawns in the service of his own film. As the kids resist Laxe’s project, the film becomes a fascinating combination of self-reflexivity, self-deprecation, and documentary portraiture (of the children and of life in Tangiers). The winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is a mysterious, whimsical, and unique creation.

“Although it mirrors the Spanish director’s actual experiences teaching filmmaking to children in Tangiers, the film is not a documentary so much as a metafictional provocation. The film-within-a-film changes course – the on-screen Laxe disappears after a midmovie mutiny – and from there the film we are watching only gets harder to categorize and to contain. While movies that reflect on their own making tend to sink into self-conscious paralysis, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is an altogether rarer and headier sort of intellectual exercise, one that matches conceptual rigor with a liberating sense of play and discovery.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM

Filmed by Jonas Mekas and edited by Adolfas Mekas.
“1963 saw the controversial off-Broadway theater production THE BRIG by the Living Theatre. Filmed on stage with the original cast, rarely has there been a more intense cinematic adaptation of a play. … This film is hard as nails.” –MELBOURNE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL
“Made together with brother Jonas. Film of the original production of the Living Theatre with original cast as directed by Judith Malina.” –A.M.
Preceded by:
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AMBASSADOR FROM LAPLAND (1967, 3 minutes, video)
Adolfas starred in, directed, and edited this Vietnam comedy, produced by Pola Chapelle and shot by Jonas. Assistance from Shirley Clarke.
“In these three minutes Mekas is Swift, the horrible and admirable Swift of the ‘Modest Proposal.’ One really must admit that Mekas has made the USA a bit less loathsome.” –Dominique Noguez, CAHIERS DU CINÉMA
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

THE BRIG also screens on Sunday, October 30 at 9:00, as part of the tribute to David C. Stone.

Filmed by Adolfas Mekas & Pola Chapelle; edited by Adolfas.
“A film about childhood memories, life’s hardships, and the durability of families. In 1971, after a 27-year absence, Adolfas and his brother Jonas returned to their birthplace in Lithuania. They had left as young men, destined for a German labor camp. Now they came home, Adolfas with his wife, the singer Pola Chapelle, and in the long northern summer days they sang and walked across golden fields and feasted at crowded tables with family and friends. There are flowers for the dead and for the living in this film; it is full of flowers and songs. … For me, the importance of GOING HOME is its strength in expressing feelings about personal and national identity.” –Emilie de Brigard, MoMA
Preceded by:
HALLELUJAH THE VILLA (28 minutes, video)
A spirited interview with Adolfas, directed and edited by David Avallone.
Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

(TODOS VÓS SODES CAPITÁNS)
A further entry in the rapidly proliferating, rich vein of documentary/fiction hybrids, Oliver Laxe’s YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS channels the meta-textuality, genre bending, and sensitivity towards children found in the best work of Abbas Kiarostami and François Truffaut. Laxe himself stars as a self-described “neo-colonialist” filmmaker who goes to Tangiers ostensibly to hold a series of film workshops for disadvantaged street children. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Laxe’s intentions are not purely disinterested, as he begins to turn these children into pawns in the service of his own film. As the kids resist Laxe’s project, the film becomes a fascinating combination of self-reflexivity, self-deprecation, and documentary portraiture (of the children and of life in Tangiers). The winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is a mysterious, whimsical, and unique creation.

“Although it mirrors the Spanish director’s actual experiences teaching filmmaking to children in Tangiers, the film is not a documentary so much as a metafictional provocation. The film-within-a-film changes course – the on-screen Laxe disappears after a midmovie mutiny – and from there the film we are watching only gets harder to categorize and to contain. While movies that reflect on their own making tend to sink into self-conscious paralysis, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is an altogether rarer and headier sort of intellectual exercise, one that matches conceptual rigor with a liberating sense of play and discovery.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM

With Adolfas Mekas, Frances Stillman, Ben Carruthers, Argus Speare Juilliard, Frank Kuenstler, Louis Brigante, and Allen Ginsberg (narrator). “I assisted my brother Jonas in all stages of production, writing, and editing. I also played one of the leading roles in the film.” –A.M.
“What is the theme of GUNS OF THE TREES? It is the suicide of a young girl. … But, really, the question is posed in a much larger sense, and the theme becomes: “Why do we commit suicide?” The film doesn’t tell the story, it doesn’t even allow us to witness Frances’s suicide; instead, it limits itself to showing the wanderings of the two male protagonists – the negro and the white – through the city and the suburbs, by day and by night. Through these wanderings emerges a very clear answer to Frances’s suicide: we do commit suicide because the modern world, dominated by money and the will for power, leads us to suicide. The moral: we should change the modern world.” –Alberto Moravia

Edited by Adolfas Mekas. Newly preserved print courtesy of George Eastman House; preservation funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Edited by Adolfas, this was the feature-film debut of Philip Kaufman (THE RIGHT STUFF). A fable about an old man with an odd effect on those he encounters, it is a fascinating and vibrant example of early American independent filmmaking, and features a performance from Ben Carruthers, star of Cassavetes’s SHADOWS, and the discovery of Lou Gilbert, later picked by Fellini for a major role in JULIET OF THE SPIRITS. Newly preserved, it is a little-seen gem of 1960s American cinema.
“Gotham filmmaker Adolfas Mekas…did a brilliant job of editing. He has meshed the rambling tale together with firmness and clarity.” –Gene Moskowitz, VARIETY
Preceded by:
ADOLFAS MEKAS ACCEPTS THE BARD AWARD (2004, 12 minutes, video)
Video by Sean Mekas. At the President’s dinner, with Adolfas Mekas, Peter Hutton, and Leon Botstein & David Schwab.
Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.

(TODOS VÓS SODES CAPITÁNS)
A further entry in the rapidly proliferating, rich vein of documentary/fiction hybrids, Oliver Laxe’s YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS channels the meta-textuality, genre bending, and sensitivity towards children found in the best work of Abbas Kiarostami and François Truffaut. Laxe himself stars as a self-described “neo-colonialist” filmmaker who goes to Tangiers ostensibly to hold a series of film workshops for disadvantaged street children. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Laxe’s intentions are not purely disinterested, as he begins to turn these children into pawns in the service of his own film. As the kids resist Laxe’s project, the film becomes a fascinating combination of self-reflexivity, self-deprecation, and documentary portraiture (of the children and of life in Tangiers). The winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is a mysterious, whimsical, and unique creation.

“Although it mirrors the Spanish director’s actual experiences teaching filmmaking to children in Tangiers, the film is not a documentary so much as a metafictional provocation. The film-within-a-film changes course – the on-screen Laxe disappears after a midmovie mutiny – and from there the film we are watching only gets harder to categorize and to contain. While movies that reflect on their own making tend to sink into self-conscious paralysis, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is an altogether rarer and headier sort of intellectual exercise, one that matches conceptual rigor with a liberating sense of play and discovery.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM

Archival print courtesy of the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique.
“An inventive film based on a Mark Twain tale with an oater background. The humor is muted, but amusing throughout. The first half has the deceptively rustic humor of Twain, as a dastardly Northerner marries the daughter of a mellow Southern plantation owner. The man (played by Hurd Hatfield) mistreats the girl to get revenge on the father…even tying her up to a tree with bloodhounds ripping her clothes. All this is done with the right use of mellow silent film techniques of obvious emoting, with the balance of mock seriousness, lampoon, and sentiments sans slush. The father dies of embarrassment, and shortly after she gives birth to a son who, when he grows up, heads west to avenge his mother. Mekas again shows he has a way with parody and he gets disarmingly innocent performances from his actors.” –VARIETY
Preceded by:
SKYSCRAPER (1965, 3 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Directed and produced by Adolfas Mekas for the Broadway show of the same name. A parody of Italian movies written by Peter Stone, and starring Pola Chapelle, Paul Sorvino, Julie Harris, and Charles Nelson Reilly.
“Those responsible for the funny film clip spoofing ‘art’ flickers deserve special praise. It provides just the right touch at just the right time.” –VARIETY
Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

Filmed by Adolfas Mekas & Pola Chapelle; edited by Adolfas.
“A film about childhood memories, life’s hardships, and the durability of families. In 1971, after a 27-year absence, Adolfas and his brother Jonas returned to their birthplace in Lithuania. They had left as young men, destined for a German labor camp. Now they came home, Adolfas with his wife, the singer Pola Chapelle, and in the long northern summer days they sang and walked across golden fields and feasted at crowded tables with family and friends. There are flowers for the dead and for the living in this film; it is full of flowers and songs. … For me, the importance of GOING HOME is its strength in expressing feelings about personal and national identity.” –Emilie de Brigard, MoMA
Preceded by:
HALLELUJAH THE VILLA (28 minutes, video)
A spirited interview with Adolfas, directed and edited by David Avallone.
Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

With Adolfas Mekas, Frances Stillman, Ben Carruthers, Argus Speare Juilliard, Frank Kuenstler, Louis Brigante, and Allen Ginsberg (narrator). “I assisted my brother Jonas in all stages of production, writing, and editing. I also played one of the leading roles in the film.” –A.M.
“What is the theme of GUNS OF THE TREES? It is the suicide of a young girl. … But, really, the question is posed in a much larger sense, and the theme becomes: “Why do we commit suicide?” The film doesn’t tell the story, it doesn’t even allow us to witness Frances’s suicide; instead, it limits itself to showing the wanderings of the two male protagonists – the negro and the white – through the city and the suburbs, by day and by night. Through these wanderings emerges a very clear answer to Frances’s suicide: we do commit suicide because the modern world, dominated by money and the will for power, leads us to suicide. The moral: we should change the modern world.” –Alberto Moravia

(TODOS VÓS SODES CAPITÁNS)
A further entry in the rapidly proliferating, rich vein of documentary/fiction hybrids, Oliver Laxe’s YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS channels the meta-textuality, genre bending, and sensitivity towards children found in the best work of Abbas Kiarostami and François Truffaut. Laxe himself stars as a self-described “neo-colonialist” filmmaker who goes to Tangiers ostensibly to hold a series of film workshops for disadvantaged street children. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Laxe’s intentions are not purely disinterested, as he begins to turn these children into pawns in the service of his own film. As the kids resist Laxe’s project, the film becomes a fascinating combination of self-reflexivity, self-deprecation, and documentary portraiture (of the children and of life in Tangiers). The winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is a mysterious, whimsical, and unique creation.

“Although it mirrors the Spanish director’s actual experiences teaching filmmaking to children in Tangiers, the film is not a documentary so much as a metafictional provocation. The film-within-a-film changes course – the on-screen Laxe disappears after a midmovie mutiny – and from there the film we are watching only gets harder to categorize and to contain. While movies that reflect on their own making tend to sink into self-conscious paralysis, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is an altogether rarer and headier sort of intellectual exercise, one that matches conceptual rigor with a liberating sense of play and discovery.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM

This documentary about the Cuban Revolution portrays the country’s society through the words and experiences of young Cubans. In frank and open discussions, these young compañeras and compañeros explain their third-world consciousness, their theories on guerrilla warfare, their faith, and their commitment toward building Che’s New Man, and illustrate with verve and vitality what the Cuban Revolution is really all about.
“[A]bove all and quite uniquely, a modern political work. That is to say, it offers not merely a transcription of aspiration and achievement, but more urgently, the tracing of the formation and development of a revolutionary consciousness.” –Annette Michelson
Preceded by:
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST. TULA (2003, 24 minutes, 16mm-to-video)
An account of the first appearance to Adolfas Mekas of the mythical St. Tula, Patron Saint of Cinema and Filmmakers.
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

Also screening on Thursday, October 27 at 9:15 and Tuesday, November 1 at 9:00, as part of the David C. Stone retrospective.

Edited by Adolfas Mekas. Newly preserved print courtesy of George Eastman House; preservation funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Edited by Adolfas, this was the feature-film debut of Philip Kaufman (THE RIGHT STUFF). A fable about an old man with an odd effect on those he encounters, it is a fascinating and vibrant example of early American independent filmmaking, and features a performance from Ben Carruthers, star of Cassavetes’s SHADOWS, and the discovery of Lou Gilbert, later picked by Fellini for a major role in JULIET OF THE SPIRITS. Newly preserved, it is a little-seen gem of 1960s American cinema.
“Gotham filmmaker Adolfas Mekas…did a brilliant job of editing. He has meshed the rambling tale together with firmness and clarity.” –Gene Moskowitz, VARIETY
Preceded by:
ADOLFAS MEKAS ACCEPTS THE BARD AWARD (2004, 12 minutes, video)
Video by Sean Mekas. At the President’s dinner, with Adolfas Mekas, Peter Hutton, and Leon Botstein & David Schwab.
Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.

Filmed by Jonas Mekas and edited by Adolfas Mekas.
“1963 saw the controversial off-Broadway theater production THE BRIG by the Living Theatre. Filmed on stage with the original cast, rarely has there been a more intense cinematic adaptation of a play. … This film is hard as nails.” –MELBOURNE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL
“Made together with brother Jonas. Film of the original production of the Living Theatre with original cast as directed by Judith Malina.” –A.M.
Preceded by:
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AMBASSADOR FROM LAPLAND (1967, 3 minutes, video)
Adolfas starred in, directed, and edited this Vietnam comedy, produced by Pola Chapelle and shot by Jonas. Assistance from Shirley Clarke.
“In these three minutes Mekas is Swift, the horrible and admirable Swift of the ‘Modest Proposal.’ One really must admit that Mekas has made the USA a bit less loathsome.” –Dominique Noguez, CAHIERS DU CINÉMA
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

THE BRIG also screens on Sunday, October 30 at 9:00, as part of the tribute to David C. Stone.

(TODOS VÓS SODES CAPITÁNS)
A further entry in the rapidly proliferating, rich vein of documentary/fiction hybrids, Oliver Laxe’s YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS channels the meta-textuality, genre bending, and sensitivity towards children found in the best work of Abbas Kiarostami and François Truffaut. Laxe himself stars as a self-described “neo-colonialist” filmmaker who goes to Tangiers ostensibly to hold a series of film workshops for disadvantaged street children. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Laxe’s intentions are not purely disinterested, as he begins to turn these children into pawns in the service of his own film. As the kids resist Laxe’s project, the film becomes a fascinating combination of self-reflexivity, self-deprecation, and documentary portraiture (of the children and of life in Tangiers). The winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is a mysterious, whimsical, and unique creation.

“Although it mirrors the Spanish director’s actual experiences teaching filmmaking to children in Tangiers, the film is not a documentary so much as a metafictional provocation. The film-within-a-film changes course – the on-screen Laxe disappears after a midmovie mutiny – and from there the film we are watching only gets harder to categorize and to contain. While movies that reflect on their own making tend to sink into self-conscious paralysis, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is an altogether rarer and headier sort of intellectual exercise, one that matches conceptual rigor with a liberating sense of play and discovery.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM

Written, directed, and edited by Adolfas Mekas. With Pola Chapelle, John Kramer, Ronnie Gilbert, and Tina Stoumen.
“An elegy for a draft dodger.” –A.M.
“WINDFLOWERS is vastly more important than the plethora of sophisticated antiwar films around town. … It is not a portrait of a draft dodger, nor of anyone else, but of a certain American mentality confronted with a situation that challenges its mindsets. … WINDFLOWERS seems to me a tremendously important film because it is the first film, inspired by this war and antiwar activity, to reach into the heart of America.” –Marjorie Heins, RAT
“A macabre lament for an assassinated deserter, WINDFLOWERS is a fugue in two senses of the word. It is a film about a desperate flight and it is a musical film, like a complaint, one of those English ballads of the 18th century that made you cry. Simply, this circular film…is constructed musically.” – Dominique Noguez, CAHIERS DU CINÉMA
Followed by:
THE SAGA OF WINDFLOWERS (2001, 15 minutes, video)
Adolfas speaks about the making of WINDFLOWERS.
Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.

In January 2010, Anthology began hosting monthly screenings organized by New York Women in Film and Television. These screenings include works by NYWIFT members as well as from women filmmakers around the world.
Films included in the series must be directed, co-directed, produced, written, edited, or shot by women. Whenever possible, the filmmakers are present for a Q&A following the screening, as well as an after-party with cash bar and complimentary food.
The preeminent entertainment industry association for women in New York City, NYWIFT supports women calling the shots in film, television, and digital media. NYWIFT energizes the careers of women in entertainment by illuminating their achievements, providing training and professional development activities, and advocating for equity. Our membership comprises more than 2,000 women and men working both above and below the line. NYWIFT is part of a network of 40 Women-in-Film organizations worldwide, representing more than 10,000 members.

Harvey Mandlin
ABSOLUTE TRUST
2009, 90 minutes, video.
Top photojournalist David Marshall endures a failed marriage rather than leave the children he loves. His wife Diane, abused in childhood, depressed, drinking and fearful, files unfounded charges of abuse and David’s world shatters. Evicted, friendless, and emotionally battered, his career crumbles and the courts bar him from his children.
David’s struggle to rebuild his life carries him to brilliant psychiatrist, Rebecca Miller. She nurtures abused children but conceals her own shadowy secrets. Katherine Avery, gifted, idiosyncratic Downtown artist offers David a refuge and shares her bed, but she’ll sacrifice anything for success – even love.
Despondent, David is drawn to cyber sex by submissive Internet incarnation, Sublimate. She uncovers his darkest fantasies but frees him to take control of his own life. David finds that love requires absolute truth. But, when his Web fantasy woman enters his real life, the truth, especially about himself, becomes startlingly clear.

Harvey Mandlin is the director and screenwriter Absolute Trust. He has made shorts and education films on zero budgets which took top awards, were broadcast around the world and are still used in schools at all levels. He has also made commercials for Coke, 7UP, Sanka, Excedrin, Kellogg's and others. My reputation was ‘top quality on tough deadlines. He is most excited works are $300 experimental films never intended for broadcast.

Susan Dansker, Producer, Graphic & Web Designer
Susan Dansker is a creative design problem solver. Utilizing web design, graphic design, photographic illustration, video and motion picture production, and the old-fashioned written word, Dansker communicates her clients’ vision. Clients include corporations, not-for-profit institutions and small businesses.

(TODOS VÓS SODES CAPITÁNS)
A further entry in the rapidly proliferating, rich vein of documentary/fiction hybrids, Oliver Laxe’s YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS channels the meta-textuality, genre bending, and sensitivity towards children found in the best work of Abbas Kiarostami and François Truffaut. Laxe himself stars as a self-described “neo-colonialist” filmmaker who goes to Tangiers ostensibly to hold a series of film workshops for disadvantaged street children. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Laxe’s intentions are not purely disinterested, as he begins to turn these children into pawns in the service of his own film. As the kids resist Laxe’s project, the film becomes a fascinating combination of self-reflexivity, self-deprecation, and documentary portraiture (of the children and of life in Tangiers). The winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is a mysterious, whimsical, and unique creation.

“Although it mirrors the Spanish director’s actual experiences teaching filmmaking to children in Tangiers, the film is not a documentary so much as a metafictional provocation. The film-within-a-film changes course – the on-screen Laxe disappears after a midmovie mutiny – and from there the film we are watching only gets harder to categorize and to contain. While movies that reflect on their own making tend to sink into self-conscious paralysis, YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS is an altogether rarer and headier sort of intellectual exercise, one that matches conceptual rigor with a liberating sense of play and discovery.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM

For program details, visit www.newfilmmakers.com.

Filmed by Adolfas Mekas & Pola Chapelle; edited by Adolfas.
“A film about childhood memories, life’s hardships, and the durability of families. In 1971, after a 27-year absence, Adolfas and his brother Jonas returned to their birthplace in Lithuania. They had left as young men, destined for a German labor camp. Now they came home, Adolfas with his wife, the singer Pola Chapelle, and in the long northern summer days they sang and walked across golden fields and feasted at crowded tables with family and friends. There are flowers for the dead and for the living in this film; it is full of flowers and songs. … For me, the importance of GOING HOME is its strength in expressing feelings about personal and national identity.” –Emilie de Brigard, MoMA
Preceded by:
HALLELUJAH THE VILLA (28 minutes, video)
A spirited interview with Adolfas, directed and edited by David Avallone.
Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

Archival print courtesy of the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique.
“An inventive film based on a Mark Twain tale with an oater background. The humor is muted, but amusing throughout. The first half has the deceptively rustic humor of Twain, as a dastardly Northerner marries the daughter of a mellow Southern plantation owner. The man (played by Hurd Hatfield) mistreats the girl to get revenge on the father…even tying her up to a tree with bloodhounds ripping her clothes. All this is done with the right use of mellow silent film techniques of obvious emoting, with the balance of mock seriousness, lampoon, and sentiments sans slush. The father dies of embarrassment, and shortly after she gives birth to a son who, when he grows up, heads west to avenge his mother. Mekas again shows he has a way with parody and he gets disarmingly innocent performances from his actors.” –VARIETY
Preceded by:
SKYSCRAPER (1965, 3 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Directed and produced by Adolfas Mekas for the Broadway show of the same name. A parody of Italian movies written by Peter Stone, and starring Pola Chapelle, Paul Sorvino, Julie Harris, and Charles Nelson Reilly.
“Those responsible for the funny film clip spoofing ‘art’ flickers deserve special praise. It provides just the right touch at just the right time.” –VARIETY
Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

Written, directed, and edited by Adolfas Mekas. Produced by David C. Stone. With Peter H. Beard, Sheila Finn, Martin Greenbaum, Peggy Steffans, Jerome Raphael, Blanche Dee, Jerome Hill, Taylor Mead, and Ed Emshwiller.
Adolfas’s first feature film, HALLELUJAH was selected for the first New York Film Festival, was the hit of the ‘outside-of-competition’ section at the Cannes Film Festival, and won the Silver Sail at Locarno.
“Next to the two big shots of the New York School, Clarke and Cassavetes, he seemed a poor relative, especially since people got him confused with his brother. HALLELUJAH proved clearly that Adolfas is someone to be reckoned with. He is a master in the field of pure invention, that is to say, in working dangerously – ‘without a net.’ His film, made according to the good old principle – one idea for each shot – has the lovely scent of fresh ingenuity and crafty sweetness. Physical efforts and intellectual gags are boldly put together. The slightest thing moves you and makes you laugh – a badly framed bush, a banana stuck in a pocket, a majorette in the snow. He shows life as defined by Ramuz: ‘As with a dance, such pleasure to begin, a piston, a clarinet, such sorrow to be done, the head spins and night has come.’” –Jean-Luc Godard, CAHIERS DU CINÉMA
“A dizzy time capsule of proto-revolutionary anarchy, like bits of youthful, energetic innocence frozen in the snowdrifts of time.” –Ed Halter, VILLAGE VOICE

Preceded by:
ADOLFAS MEKAS ACCEPTS THE BARD AWARD (2004, 12 minutes, video)
Video by Sean Mekas. At the President’s dinner, with Adolfas Mekas, Peter Hutton, and Leon Botstein & David Schwab.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS SCREENING IS ALSO PART OF THE DAVID C. STONE TRIBUTE

The screening will be introduced by film scholar John Pruitt, as well as by Adolfas’s wife Pola Chapelle and producer David Stone’s wife Barbara Stone.

Humphrey Jennings
LISTEN TO BRITAIN (1941, 19 minutes, 35mm, b&w)
Jennings’s film is a masterpiece of sound mixing; it creates an audio landscape of Britain during the war, with images both accompanying and conflicting with the multitude of sounds. From the film’s introduction: “I have been listening to Britain. I have heard the sound of her life by day and by night…. In the great sound picture that is here presented, you too will hear that heart beating. For blended together in one great symphony is the music of Britain at war.”
Dimitri Kirsanoff
MÉNILMONTANT (1924-25, 38 minutes, 35mm, b&w, silent)
A melodramatic story of an orphan girl whose seduction is avenged. Early use of hand-held camera, montage, and superimpositions.
Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy
BALLET MÉCANIQUE (1924, 19 minutes, 35mm, b&w, silent)
Preserved by Anthology Film Archives!
A brief exploration of cubist form, black-and-white tonalities, and various vectors through its constant, rapidly cut movements and compositions. Many of the film’s forms and compositions are reflected in – or themselves reflect – forms and compositions in Léger’s famous cubist paintings from the period.
René Clair & Francis Picabia
ENTR’ACTE (1924, 22 minutes, 35mm, b&w)
A masterpiece of dada, a feat of cinema magic. Made as an intermission entertainment for the Ballet Suédois from an impromptu scenario by Francis Picabia. Music by Erik Satie.
Total program time: ca. 105 minutes.

Newsreel
COLUMBIA REVOLT
1968, 50 minutes, 16mm-to-video, b&w. Co-presented by Third World Newsreel.
David and Barbara Stone were involved with the political filmmaking collective Newsreel in the late 60s, and David was particularly instrumental in helping to edit and distribute this film, a record of one of the first campus revolts of the Civil Rights/Vietnam War era. Narrated by one of the student rebels, this detailed eyewitness account of the event galvanized other campus revolts around the country.
&
Barbara Stone & David C. Stone
COMPAÑERAS AND COMPAÑEROS
1970, 47 minutes, 16mm. In Spanish with English subtitles. Edited by Adolfas Mekas.
The only film directed by David Stone, in collaboration with his wife Barbara and Adolfas Mekas, is this documentary about the Cuban revolution. Having spent five months living in Cuba, the Stones chose to portray the country’s society through the words and experiences of young Cubans. In frank and open discussions, these young compañeras and compañeros explain their third-world consciousness, their theories on guerrilla warfare, their faith, and their commitment toward building Che’s New Man.
“[This] is, above all and quite uniquely, a modern political work. That is to say, it offers not merely a transcription of aspiration and achievement, but more urgently, the tracing of the formation and development of a revolutionary consciousness.” –Annette Michelson

COMPAÑERAS AND COMPAÑEROS also screens on Sunday, October 23 at 6:30, as part of the Adolfas Mekas retrospective.

Distributed in the UK by David C. Stone and Barbara Stone.
Jarman made his feature-film debut with this highly controversial view of the life of the martyred Roman soldier who was sent into exile, tortured, and killed. Jarman’s highly personal style pays tribute to the great classic painters of the Renaissance, demonstrating his uncompromising cinematographic style and at the same time revealing a poetic exploration of homoerotic nudity and sexuality.

These six works are among Wieland’s earliest films. They were completed shortly after her arrival in New York (1962), where she lived with Michael Snow until 1972. These films were conceived and completed exclusively by Wieland, with the exception of BARBARA’S BLINDNESS, which was a collaboration with Betty Ferguson. Wieland’s early New York films already demonstrate her incredible versatility and imagination as a filmmaker, while revealing certain thematic and formal preoccupations that she fully developed in her later films.

LARRY’S RECENT BEHAVIOUR (1963, 16.5 minutes, 16mm)
PEGGY’S BLUE SKYLIGHT (1964, 12 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
PATRIOTISM (1964, 4 minutes, 16mm, silent)
PATRIOTISM PART II (1965, 4 minutes, 16mm)
BARBARA’S BLINDNESS (with Betty Ferguson) (1965, 16 minutes, 16mm)
WATER SARK (1965, 13.5 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

Another program of films produced during Wieland’s New York period. A number of these shorts are among her best-known work, and for good reason. Formally rigorous as well as humorous, these films offer the viewer a unique insight into Wieland’s cinematic and political concerns.

1933 (1967, 4 minutes, 16mm)
CAT FOOD (1967, 13.5 minutes, 16mm)
SAILBOAT (1967, 3 minutes, 16mm)
HANDTINTING (1967-68, 6 minutes, 16mm, silent)
RAT LIFE AND DIET IN NORTH AMERICA (1968, 16 minutes, 16mm)
DRIPPING WATER (with Michael Snow) (1969, 10.5 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Total running time: ca. 60 minutes.

Distributed in the UK by David C. Stone and Barbara Stone.
Often credited as being Britain’s first ever punk movie, Jarman’s JUBILEE is an unequivocally powerful, arresting, and irreverent film that transports Queen Elizabeth I through time to witness the future disintegration of her kingdom, as marauding female punks roam a violent landscape. A thrilling synergy of sight and sound, featuring a score by Brian Eno and performances by luminaries such as Adam Ant and Richard O’Brien, it remains among Jarman’s most committed and fiery works.

(SAIKAKU ICHIDAI ONNA)
Distributed in the UK by David C. Stone and Barbara Stone.
“In 17th-century Japan, an aging prostitute (Kinuyo Tanaka) recalls her unfortunate life. Mizoguchi’s film is stately, controlled, and impeccably constructed. His fascination with the social roles of women leads him, in this film as in many others, to a profound discovery of elevated emotional states. A near-perfect work.” –Dave Kehr

All films preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
VISUAL VARIATIONS ON NOGUCHI (1955, 4 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
HURRY! HURRY! (1957, 3 minutes, 16mm)
GLIMPSE OF THE GARDEN (1957, 5 minutes, 16mm)
DWIGHTIANA (1959, 3 minutes, 16mm, score by Teiji Ito)
BAGATELLE FOR WILLARD MAAS (1961, 5 minutes, 16mm)
NOTEBOOK (1962-63, 10 minutes, 16mm, silent)
MOOD MONDRIAN (1961, 7 minutes, 16mm, silent)
EYE MUSIC IN RED MAJOR (1961, 4 minutes, 16mm, silent)
ANDY WARHOL (1965, 22 minutes, 16mm)
Marie Menken represents the lyrical sensibility in the American avant-garde film. She manages to get the maximum visual intensity from minimally photogenic subjects. Her usage of single-frame and her poetic attitude and purity had a strong influence on many filmmakers of the sixties.
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

Assistant Producers: David C. Stone and Barbara Stone.
This pioneering work in autobiographical cinema masterfully combines actual and staged footage and painting over images. Filmmaker, painter, and composer Jerome Hill was born into the famous James J. Hill railroad-building family and lived on the same street as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Here he re-creates wonderfully – with old family footage – the period and milieu of the American upper class at the beginning of the 20th century.
With:
DEATH IN THE FORENOON (1934/66, 2 minutes, 35mm)
CANARIES (1969, 4 minutes, 35mm)
[Please note: This is an Essential Cinema screening, and is FREE for AFA members!]

LA RAISON AVANT LA PASSION / REASON OVER PASSION
1969, 84 minutes, 16mm.
“REASON OVER PASSION is structured around four distinct sections, with a loosely constructed preface that introduces the motifs Wieland employs consistently throughout the film: strobing images of the Canadian flag; long shots of passing landscapes; and the lyrics to ‘O Canada’, didactically presented as overlayed text. Followed by a silent take of the artist’s face reflected in a mirror, singing the opening lines to ‘O Canada’, the origins of the title of the film are presented: a quote from Trudeau, in which he stated ‘About reason over passion, that is the theme of all of my writings.’” –Anne Low
“Wieland’s major film so far. With its many eccentricities, it is a glyph of her artistic personality; a lyric vision tempered by an aggressive form and a visionary patriotism mixed with ironic self parody. It is a film to be seen many times.” –P. Adams Sitney, FILM CULTURE

Produced by David C. Stone.
This pioneering work is the first of Kramer’s films to blur the boundaries between fiction and documentary, an approach he would pursue throughout his subsequent career. An underground revolutionary group struggles against internal strife and stages guerilla attacks against a fictional fascist regime in the U.S. Kramer intercuts rhetorical sequences that explain the group’s philosophy of radical action and serve to restrain the melodrama inherent in the thriller genre. Shot in the gray landscape of NYC in a gritty cinéma-vérité style, ICE is reminiscent of Godard’s ALPHAVILLE. Jonas Mekas wrote that ICE was “the most original and significant American narrative film of the late sixties.”

“Joyce Wieland’s four films PIERRE VALLIÈRES, A & B IN ONTARIO, SOLIDARITY and BIRDS AT SUNRISE were created when the Canadian Women’s Movement was at its most visible and vocal. They were made as a direct response to hegemony, colonialism, sexism, imperialism and the destruction of the environment – issues that feminists across the country were writing about, protesting about, lobbying around and, in Wieland’s case, making films about.” –Allyson Mitchell

PIERRE VALLIÈRES (1972, 32.5 minutes, 16mm)
SOLIDARITY (1973, 10.5 minutes, 16mm)
A & B IN ONTARIO (with Hollis Frampton) (1984, 16 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
BIRDS AT SUNRISE (1986, 10 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

Distributed in the UK by David C. Stone and Barbara Stone.
“Oshima rose to the challenge of creating a genuinely grown-up ‘adult movie’ by reinterpreting Japan’s most famous sex-crime. In 1936, Kichizo, an innkeeper in the Tokyo suburbs, left his wife and began a torrid affair with one of his employees, a young woman named Sada. When Kichizo died in an erotic climax and Sada was put on trial for his murder, the ‘crime’ gripped the entire nation. Sensuously scored and designed, Oshima’s film stays close to the facts but exalts the power of the imagination. He shows the lovers retreating from the world into their own sexual fantasies – and finds everything from childish play and Oedipal passions to a secret death-wish at the heart of those fantasies.” –Tony Rayns, BFI

(SAIKAKU ICHIDAI ONNA)
Distributed in the UK by David C. Stone and Barbara Stone.
“In 17th-century Japan, an aging prostitute (Kinuyo Tanaka) recalls her unfortunate life. Mizoguchi’s film is stately, controlled, and impeccably constructed. His fascination with the social roles of women leads him, in this film as in many others, to a profound discovery of elevated emotional states. A near-perfect work.” –Dave Kehr

All films preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
WRESTLING (1964, 8 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
MOONPLAY (1962, 5 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
DRIPS IN STRIPS (1961, 3 minutes, 16mm, silent)
GO! GO! GO! (1962-64, 12 minutes, 16mm, silent)
LIGHTS (1964-66, 7 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
SIDEWALKS (1966, 7 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
EXCURSION (1968, 5 minutes, 16mm)
WATTS WITH EGGS? (1967, 12 minutes, 16mm, silent)
ARABESQUE FOR KENNETH ANGER (1961, 4 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

Produced by David C. Stone and Barbara Stone.
A many-faceted portrait of those individuals who sought radical solutions to social problems in the United States during the 1960s and 70s, MILESTONES cuts back and forth between six major story lines and more than fifty characters, and across a vast landscape to explore the lifestyles and attitudes of those survivors of the American left who faced both personal and historic transitions in the period following the Vietnam War. Shot in a documentary style, the film ends with an actual childbirth, which serves in part to symbolize the birth of new forms of cultural resistance and of renewed faith in the possibility of progressive action.
“MILESTONES is as carefully arranged as a piece of music. …[U]sing images, emotions and, most frequently, words as themes, it bursts with unexpected life.” –Vincent Canby, NEW YORK TIMES

THE FAR SHORE
1976, 105 minutes, 35mm.
A consummate expression of Wieland’s artistic sensibility, a gorgeous, painterly film, formal in conception, deliberate in its flagrant symbolism (the rigid imposition of WASP power on French-Canadian culture) and portrayal of Canadian myths (the mystery of Tom Thomson’s drowning in Algonquin Park), and exuding romantic naturalism. This northern love story, rooted in the landscape of the Group of Seven and the realities of the Canadian experience, is a tale of passion both carnal and artistic.
“A vast and epic meditation on all those ‘big’ themes that constantly abound: gender, romance, ethnicity, nationality, French-English relations, and the unsavory relationship between art and commerce. … This is a rare opportunity to experience a seminal oeuvre in the history of Canadian film by one of our country’s most diverse, powerful, patriotic, and renowned artists. The film is not only an agitational look at some of the most omnipresent issues in Canadian popular culture and social life, but also a gorgeous painterly visual object that deserves the full attention of ears and eyes.” –TIFF CINEMATHEQUE

These six works are among Wieland’s earliest films. They were completed shortly after her arrival in New York (1962), where she lived with Michael Snow until 1972. These films were conceived and completed exclusively by Wieland, with the exception of BARBARA’S BLINDNESS, which was a collaboration with Betty Ferguson. Wieland’s early New York films already demonstrate her incredible versatility and imagination as a filmmaker, while revealing certain thematic and formal preoccupations that she fully developed in her later films.

LARRY’S RECENT BEHAVIOUR (1963, 16.5 minutes, 16mm)
PEGGY’S BLUE SKYLIGHT (1964, 12 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
PATRIOTISM (1964, 4 minutes, 16mm, silent)
PATRIOTISM PART II (1965, 4 minutes, 16mm)
BARBARA’S BLINDNESS (with Betty Ferguson) (1965, 16 minutes, 16mm)
WATER SARK (1965, 13.5 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

Produced and distributed by David C. Stone.
“1963 saw the controversial off-Broadway theater production THE BRIG by THE LIVING THEATRE. Filmed on stage with the original cast, rarely has there been a more intense cinematic adaptation of a play. Executed with brutish authenticity, THE BRIG won the Venice Festival Grand Prize for best documentary. A polemic drama with sonic shock waves, it is a nightmare that suggests ‘Kafka with a Kodak.’ The audience is placed in a violently claustrophobic environment, a Marine Corps stockade. Mekas puts aside his poetic sensibilities and ties us to a chair in the blistering sun with no water, no hope, and no mercy. This film is hard as nails.” –MELBOURNE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL

THE BRIG also screens on Thursday, October 20 at 9:15 and Monday, October 24 at 7:00, as part of the tribute to Adolfas Mekas.

Distributed in the UK by David C. Stone and Barbara Stone.
In this rarely-screened film by the important UK avant-garde filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin, “an unfulfilled man renders himself to the unrealized sensuality of four women. In his drifting search he fails and fades in the same loneliness as the women. The film is the reality and a metaphor for the intensities of sexual experience.” –S.D.
“His camera is a never-static instrument of his intrusion into the fantasy/reality of the relationships he is dealing with and forming. … TIMES FOR is one of the few erotic masterpieces.” –NATIONAL FILM THEATRE, LONDON

Another program of films produced during Wieland’s New York period. A number of these shorts are among her best-known work, and for good reason. Formally rigorous as well as humorous, these films offer the viewer a unique insight into Wieland’s cinematic and political concerns.

1933 (1967, 4 minutes, 16mm)
CAT FOOD (1967, 13.5 minutes, 16mm)
SAILBOAT (1967, 3 minutes, 16mm)
HANDTINTING (1967-68, 6 minutes, 16mm, silent)
RAT LIFE AND DIET IN NORTH AMERICA (1968, 16 minutes, 16mm)
DRIPPING WATER (with Michael Snow) (1969, 10.5 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Total running time: ca. 60 minutes.

Produced by David C. Stone.
This pioneering work is the first of Kramer’s films to blur the boundaries between fiction and documentary, an approach he would pursue throughout his subsequent career. An underground revolutionary group struggles against internal strife and stages guerilla attacks against a fictional fascist regime in the U.S. Kramer intercuts rhetorical sequences that explain the group’s philosophy of radical action and serve to restrain the melodrama inherent in the thriller genre. Shot in the gray landscape of NYC in a gritty cinéma-vérité style, ICE is reminiscent of Godard’s ALPHAVILLE. Jonas Mekas wrote that ICE was “the most original and significant American narrative film of the late sixties.”

LA RAISON AVANT LA PASSION / REASON OVER PASSION
1969, 84 minutes, 16mm.
“REASON OVER PASSION is structured around four distinct sections, with a loosely constructed preface that introduces the motifs Wieland employs consistently throughout the film: strobing images of the Canadian flag; long shots of passing landscapes; and the lyrics to ‘O Canada’, didactically presented as overlayed text. Followed by a silent take of the artist’s face reflected in a mirror, singing the opening lines to ‘O Canada’, the origins of the title of the film are presented: a quote from Trudeau, in which he stated ‘About reason over passion, that is the theme of all of my writings.’” –Anne Low
“Wieland’s major film so far. With its many eccentricities, it is a glyph of her artistic personality; a lyric vision tempered by an aggressive form and a visionary patriotism mixed with ironic self parody. It is a film to be seen many times.” –P. Adams Sitney, FILM CULTURE