Anthology Film Archives

See www.NewFilmmakers.com for program details.

Since 2001, Bruce Checefsky has directed seven short experimental films based on lost or destroyed Central and Eastern European avant-garde films from the 1920s and 30s, or on previously published but unmade film scenarios and scripts. Drawing on archival documents to rethink the meaning of identity, history, memory, and loss, Checefsky uses historical artifacts in many of his films, or creates simulations of history, suggesting that even in the trace, or absence of history, there is a type of ‘dark matter’ worth discovering.
This program will feature a selection of Checefsky’s films, alongside pieces by some of the artists whose work plays a crucial role in his research and filmmaking.
“Bruce Checefsky is the Brian De Palma of experimental film.” –Saul Ostrow, BOMB MAGAZINE

BRUCE CHECEFSKY
BÉLA (2010, 7 minutes, 35mm, sound)
Based on Hungarian Dada artist and avant-garde filmmaker György Gerö’s experimental film scenario from 1924.
MOMENT MUSICAL (2006, 6 minutes, 16mm, sound)
A remake of Stefan and Franciszka Themerson’s first sound film, from 1933.
COLORED RHYTHM (2005, 3 minutes, video, silent)
Léopold Survage’s (aka Léopold Sturzwage) attempt to transcend the ‘immobility’ of abstract painting by animating colorful forms through film.
INNI (OTHERS) (2005, 21 minutes, video, in Polish with English subtitles)
An adaptation of Andrzej Pawlowski’s 1958 script from a 1941 diary written by a patient at a psychiatric hospital in Cracow.
A WOMAN AND CIRCLES (2004, 9.5 minutes, 35mm)
Jan Brzekowski’s 1930 non-narrative film script was published in the French magazine CERCLE ET CARRÉ.
PHARMACY (2001, 4.5 minutes, 35mm, silent)
A remake based on Stefan and Franciszka Themerson’s influential 1930 abstract photogram film APTEKA.

STEFAN AND FRANCISZKA THEMERSON
Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, perhaps the most influential of Polish experimental filmmakers, produced five films from 1930 to 1937 that rank with the greatest of the European avant-garde. These five – PHARMACY, EUROPA, MOMENT MUSICAL, SHORT CIRCUIT, and THE ADVENTURE OF A GOOD CITIZEN – revealed moving photograms as a new medium. Sadly, only the last film survived the war.
THE ADVENTURES OF A GOOD CITIZEN (1937, 10 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
CALLING MR. SMITH (1943, 10 minutes, 35mm)
THE EYE AND THE EAR (1944-45, 10 minutes, 35mm, b&w)

ANDRZEJ PAWŁOWSKI
Andrzej Pawłowski (1925-1986) was a painter, sculptor, photographer, and creator of experimental films. His KINEFORMY / CINEFORMS (1957) – improvised, moving images based on light – remains one of the most important achievements in the history of Polish experimental film.
CINEFORMS / KINEFORMY (1957, 7 minutes, video)
HERE AND THERE / TU I TAM (1957, 6 minutes, video)
Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.

“[A] perfect debut: the way it moves, so freely, lively, curiously, inventing itself while progressing thanks to Cook’s spontaneous camerawork; the roughness of its textures; the rawness of its montage (images as well as sounds); and finally, the attention to the authentic, especially in the voices, the way people talk. … [T]here’s a whole other system of anarch(ist)ic ironies and ambiguities that seemingly have little to do with the designated story, tiny tales of chance and fate, tender moments of solidarity that are the film’s true essence…. It’s possible to read something sad or desperate into these scenes, but what comes across the strongest is the gentle and affectionate glow cast over Cook’s often harsh world, in which everybody, no matter how weird or awkward they might look, are wonderful and loveable.” –Olaf Möller, CINEMA SCOPE

“[A]n easy-flowing, unpretentiously complex ‘diary movie’ puzzle about the strange (love) lives of Cook, his friendships and petty feuds with other artists (everybody plays ‘themselves’), the magic of warm beer and languorous summer afternoons, and especially the way light falls and people move through Vienna’s maze of streets in the early 1970s. … Privately financed, cheaply shot on Super-8 and blown up to 35mm, and drawn toward the supposedly insignificant, which becomes mysterious and beautiful, [it] is the quintessential expression of Cook’s drifter spirit. The film was compared to the private filmmaking of Jean Eustache and other great contemporaries, but actually it was (and still is) sui generis.” –Christoph Huber, MOVING IMAGE SOURCE

Tony Conrad
THE FLICKER
1966, 30 minutes, 16mm, sound.
Mathematical and rhythmical orchestration of white and black frames.
&
Ken Jacobs & Bob Fleischner
BLONDE COBRA
1959-63, 35 minutes, 16-to-35mm blow-up. Featuring Jack Smith.
Preserved by Anthology, with the generous support of the Film Foundation, the National Film Preservation Foundation, Simon Lund and Cineric, Inc.
“BLONDE COBRA is an erratic narrative – no, not really a narrative, it’s only stretched out in time for convenience of delivery. It’s a look in on an exploding life, on a man of imagination suffering pre-fashionable Lower East Side deprivation and consumed with American 1950s, 40s, 30s disgust. Silly, self-pitying, guilt-strictured and yet triumphing – on one level – over the situation with style… enticing us into an absurd moral posture the better to dismiss us with a regal ‘screw off.’” –K.J.
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

“In CLINCH, his first ‘big’ feature film, Cook draws the consequences from his previous work. After self-reflection he turns to the working class again, not in a documentary mode but by adapting a novel by Helmut Zenker. CLINCH is no longer a formal hybrid but finds its own modus operandi: neorealism, Vienna style. The film is lyrical, but down-to-earth, its tone is precise without crossing the border to the social grotesque…. And above all: it shows solidarity with the main protagonist without turning him into a poster hero.” –Dominik Kamalzadeh

“[A] perfect debut: the way it moves, so freely, lively, curiously, inventing itself while progressing thanks to Cook’s spontaneous camerawork; the roughness of its textures; the rawness of its montage (images as well as sounds); and finally, the attention to the authentic, especially in the voices, the way people talk. … [T]here’s a whole other system of anarch(ist)ic ironies and ambiguities that seemingly have little to do with the designated story, tiny tales of chance and fate, tender moments of solidarity that are the film’s true essence…. It’s possible to read something sad or desperate into these scenes, but what comes across the strongest is the gentle and affectionate glow cast over Cook’s often harsh world, in which everybody, no matter how weird or awkward they might look, are wonderful and loveable.” –Olaf Möller, CINEMA SCOPE

Viking Eggeling
SYMPHONIE DIAGONALE
1924, 8 minutes, 35mm, silent.
Alberto Cavalcanti
RIEN QUE LES HEURES
1928, 52 minutes, 35mm, silent.
A “city symphony” interweaving documentary, experimental and narrative elements that provide vivid images of Paris in the mid-1920s.
Total running time: ca. 65 minutes.

“[A]n easy-flowing, unpretentiously complex ‘diary movie’ puzzle about the strange (love) lives of Cook, his friendships and petty feuds with other artists (everybody plays ‘themselves’), the magic of warm beer and languorous summer afternoons, and especially the way light falls and people move through Vienna’s maze of streets in the early 1970s. … Privately financed, cheaply shot on Super-8 and blown up to 35mm, and drawn toward the supposedly insignificant, which becomes mysterious and beautiful, [it] is the quintessential expression of Cook’s drifter spirit. The film was compared to the private filmmaking of Jean Eustache and other great contemporaries, but actually it was (and still is) sui generis.” –Christoph Huber, MOVING IMAGE SOURCE

“In CLINCH, his first ‘big’ feature film, Cook draws the consequences from his previous work. After self-reflection he turns to the working class again, not in a documentary mode but by adapting a novel by Helmut Zenker. CLINCH is no longer a formal hybrid but finds its own modus operandi: neorealism, Vienna style. The film is lyrical, but down-to-earth, its tone is precise without crossing the border to the social grotesque…. And above all: it shows solidarity with the main protagonist without turning him into a poster hero.” –Dominik Kamalzadeh

Lou Castel
JUST IN TIME
1998, 13 minutes, video. With Castel, Robert Kramer, Nadine Naous, and Sarah Jalabert.
Castel’s first video, made following an encounter with American independent filmmaker Robert Kramer and realized with his help. It is perhaps a love story, fragments of which are spread over four characters. A common café becomes a conceptual space, which Castel uses as a set for his playful dismantling of the rules of filmmaking.
“Device: the window. Actor and director cross off-screen and on-screen. It’s the first time I direct, so I’m so high and I feel the urge to run wherever and to split myself in two, substituting the image with the invention. Concept: all ethnic culture is against money. Story: none.” –L.C.
&
Lou Castel
PYRAMIDIAL
2005, 90 minutes, video.
Not an experimental film, but a film that turns into an experiment. The camera used as an instrument for the apprehension of physical laws. Almost as if an apple has fallen on his head, a singular light-refraction phenomenon makes Castel begin an independent experiment, carried out with Cartesian accuracy.
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

This screening is part of a Lou Castel retrospective which is co-presented by Anthology and the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF). The retrospective will open at FIAF on Tuesday, December 7, with a screening of Olivier Assayas’s IRMA VEP, followed by a reading of a text by Castel and a Q&A moderated by Sam DiIorio, Associate Professor of French at Hunter College; FIAF will then showcase other selections from Castel’s career as an actor every Tuesday in December (for more info, visit www.fiaf.org).

Here at Anthology, we will be presenting some of the more experimental films and videos he has participated in, as well as six of Castel’s own video works, made between 1998-2005 and comprising almost one-third of his complete videography. This body of work, rarely screened even in France, is at once an intensely personal and fearless research into the possibilities of the art form and a profoundly eloquent record of his own life and ‘philosophy’.

We’re very pleased that Lou Castel will be here at Anthology for the opening night of our series on Wednesday, December 8, as well as for selected screenings on subsequent days.

Curated by Andrea Monti. Special thanks to Lou Castel, Marie Losier (French Institute Alliance Française), Thorsten Wagner, Rainer Huebsch, Philippe Dijon De Monteton, Stefano Canapa, Gérard Courant, Tonino De Bernardi, Alessandro De Francesco, Yuka Toyoshima, and the Lucca Film Festival.

James June Schneider
1, 2, 3, WHITEOUT (aka THE END OF THE LIGHT AGE)
2007, 75 minutes, 35mm. In English and French with English subtitles. With Castel and Karine Adrover.
In a future present, an inventor who has dedicated himself to the cause of a ‘positive’ darkness works to counter the tide of a bright, diffuse, and technologically oriented time. As the story develops, the film expands from the acted scenes into a lyrical universe composed of filmed and found sound and image.
&
Gérard Courant
LOU CASTEL PAR GÉRARD COURANT
1981-86, 12 minutes, Super8mm-to-video, silent.
A compilation of three portraits of Castel by the filmmaker Gérard Courant, who over the past three decades has created more than 2,000 short films featuring various artists and other figures, famous and not-so-famous, as part of his vast CINÉMATON project (which, at 150 hours and counting, has been called the longest film ever created). This compilation encompasses the films CINÉMATON NO. 129, CINÉMATON NO. 501, and COUPLE NO. 10.
&
Stefano Canapa
PROMENAUX
2000-01, 12 minutes, 16mm, b&w.
At first it’s just a take on reality, a game of observation among an anonymous crowd. Then it’s a strange nightfall accompanied by words from Rimbaud, with the search for new images becoming primordial. In the morning we discover a fascinating reality, a space without limits, fluctuating in a dream-like state. Critic and filmmaker Yann Beauvais has written, “There is an elegance in its restraint, and an enchantment with actions and behaviors that have no purpose beyond their presence.”
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

This screening is part of a Lou Castel retrospective which is co-presented by Anthology and the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF). The retrospective will open at FIAF on Tuesday, December 7, with a screening of Olivier Assayas’s IRMA VEP, followed by a reading of a text by Castel and a Q&A moderated by Sam DiIorio, Associate Professor of French at Hunter College; FIAF will then showcase other selections from Castel’s career as an actor every Tuesday in December (for more info, visit www.fiaf.org).

Here at Anthology, we will be presenting some of the more experimental films and videos he has participated in, as well as six of Castel’s own video works, made between 1998-2005 and comprising almost one-third of his complete videography. This body of work, rarely screened even in France, is at once an intensely personal and fearless research into the possibilities of the art form and a profoundly eloquent record of his own life and ‘philosophy’.

We’re very pleased that Lou Castel will be here at Anthology for the opening night of our series on Wednesday, December 8, as well as for selected screenings on subsequent days.

Curated by Andrea Monti. Special thanks to Lou Castel, Marie Losier (French Institute Alliance Française), Thorsten Wagner, Rainer Huebsch, Philippe Dijon De Monteton, Stefano Canapa, Gérard Courant, Tonino De Bernardi, Alessandro De Francesco, Yuka Toyoshima, and the Lucca Film Festival.

Andrew T. Betzer (b. 1974) resides in Jersey City and makes approximately one short film a year. Most of his wonderfully titled and strangely moving movies have a preoccupation with children left to their own devices, broken patriarchs with loose parental morals, impossible expectations, and the inevitable disappointments between children and adults. His SMALL APARTMENT recently won the Grand Jury Award for best narrative short at the 2008 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas while other films have played various venues and festivals ranging from the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, London Film Festival, AFI Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival…and now Anthology Film Archives. Betzer’s work behind the camera actually extends to the laboratory, where he personally undertakes most of the post-production and printing work. A graduate of the University of Maryland film program, Betzer is a true specialist in film restoration who works at New York’s own Cineric Inc. Our screening is rounded out by Betzer’s own selection of “key works” from his cinematic development. Tonight’s show is Mr. Betzer’s self-declared “farewell celebration” to short filmmaking…for now. Expect more from him, hopefully soon.

DIET PINK LEMONADE (1999, 1 minute, 16mm, b&w)
A girl sells lemonade, a man wants to buy it, but something goes terribly wrong.
“A classic! It is the sort of simple, funny oddity that today’s DIY filmmaker might shoot with a phone-camera and upload to the internet, and not think twice about it. But back when DIY filmmakers still spent money and shot film, with sync-sound no less, [this] was a daring production, especially for something so likely to leave many audience members (at the time) scratching their heads.” –Skizz Cyzyk, musician/filmmaker
IVAN RUNS SOME ERRANDS, RUNS AMOK (2004, 14 minutes, 35mm)
Ivan, a stranger in a strange land, steals a car with a child in the backseat. He fulfills his domestic urges and then disappears into the night.
SANS SUPERVISION (2006, 11 minutes, 35mm)
A young couple spend their summer days running away from their responsibilities, but their responsibilities learn how to outrun them.
SMALL APARTMENT (2008, 7.5 minutes, 35mm)
A middle-aged man, his son, and his daughter-in-law explore love and perversion in 700 square feet of space.
“A father, sharing an apartment with his son,…films his son having sex with his girlfriend. After a brief, wordless lunch with the couple, they leave and he masturbates to the tape. The film, despite what I just described, is deeply funny and quite moving, shot by DP Sean Williams with some of the low-fi immediacy he brought to Ronnie Bronstein’s FROWNLAND.” –Brandon Harris, FILMMAKER MAGAZINE
JOHN WAYNE HATED HORSES (2009, 10 minutes, 35mm)
A father and his young son share a house, a yard, and very different ideas about masculinity and appropriate uses of army toys.
Plus:
Walerian Borowczyk THE TIDE / LA MARÊE (1974, 21 minutes, 35mm-to-video)
The first part of Borowczyk’s erotic, period-spanning portmanteau film IMMORAL TALES, THE TIDE is set in the present day, and concerns a student and his young female cousin who, stranded on a secluded beach by the tide, get to know each other better than cousins ought to.
John Heyn & Jeff Krulik HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT (1986, 17 minutes, video)
Heyn and Krulik’s legendary piece of pop anthropology observes the Judas Priest fan in its natural habitat – awaiting a concert in a Maryland parking lot ca. 1986.
Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.

Tonino De Bernardi
SORRISI ASMATICI – FIORI DEL DESTINO
1997, 120 minutes, video. With Castel, Lucas Belvaux, Giulietta De Bernardi, and Inês de Medeiros.
Made by one of the masters of the Italian underground movement, this film is the first in De Bernardi’s ASTHMATIC SMILES trilogy, and stars Castel in one of his most singular and committed performances. In a fateful crossing of individual trajectories, men and women of different origins, like sirens out of their natural element, crawl into the streets of the civilized world only to become targets of mockery. Besides brilliantly symbolizing the experience of alienation within one’s own society and the powerlessness of human communication, this film offers a vision of history that does not exclude the possibility of metamorphosis.

This screening is part of a Lou Castel retrospective which is co-presented by Anthology and the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF). The retrospective will open at FIAF on Tuesday, December 7, with a screening of Olivier Assayas’s IRMA VEP, followed by a reading of a text by Castel and a Q&A moderated by Sam DiIorio, Associate Professor of French at Hunter College; FIAF will then showcase other selections from Castel’s career as an actor every Tuesday in December (for more info, visit www.fiaf.org).

Here at Anthology, we will be presenting some of the more experimental films and videos he has participated in, as well as six of Castel’s own video works, made between 1998-2005 and comprising almost one-third of his complete videography. This body of work, rarely screened even in France, is at once an intensely personal and fearless research into the possibilities of the art form and a profoundly eloquent record of his own life and ‘philosophy’.

We’re very pleased that Lou Castel will be here at Anthology for the opening night of our series on Wednesday, December 8, as well as for selected screenings on subsequent days.

Curated by Andrea Monti. Special thanks to Lou Castel, Marie Losier (French Institute Alliance Française), Thorsten Wagner, Rainer Huebsch, Philippe Dijon De Monteton, Stefano Canapa, Gérard Courant, Tonino De Bernardi, Alessandro De Francesco, Yuka Toyoshima, and the Lucca Film Festival.

On Friday, this program will be introduced by Dudley Andrew, Professor of Comparative Literature and Film Studies at Yale University, and on Sunday by a Yale faculty member or guest speaker TBD.

Late Animated Shorts by Mary Ellen Bute in collaboration with Ted Nemeth:
MOOD CONTRASTS (1956, 7 minutes, 35mm)
IMAGINATION (1958, 3 minutes, 16mm)

GINGER ROGERS; EGGS; WHEELS; 12 ROCKS (1950s-60s, 11 minutes, 16mm)
Four short films produced at Ted Nemeth Studios are linked in this promo reel, including a stop-action dance sequence with Perry Como and Ginger Rogers, and three cute, smart, and fun children’s pieces.

PASSAGES FROM FINNEGANS WAKE
1965, 92 minutes, 35mm.
With a Matching Grant from the NFPF, the Yale Film Study Center’s fine-grain master has been restored with subtitles at Colorlab. According to documents at Yale’s Beinecke Library, this was a 1970 re-edit for European distribution. Several of the subtitle reels were missing and had to be carefully recreated from the script. Beautifully restored image and sound!
Total running time: ca. 115 minutes.

Joanna Grudzinska and Lou Castel
QUARZELL DIT CASTEL
2008, 38 minutes, video.
In front of a hotel, a 12-year-old girl arrives, holding in her hand a tiny suitcase. A 60-year-old man opens the door and lets her in. Hand-in-hand, they enter a huge salon, where the man looks at the garden through the window and stares for a while at the leaves moving on the trees, while the girl collapses on the sofa. Originally a 40-minute-long video, it was later expanded to encompass a performance by Castel addressing the topic of acting in politics, as well as excerpts from some of the films he has appeared in throughout his career. It will here be presented in its definitive 75-minute version.
&
Yuka Toyoshima
LAVRATUS PRODEO
2009, 26 minutes, video.
During this intimate journey, we are invited to listen to Castel’s stories, to watch him painting in his atelier, and to accompany him on a train while he poses constructive questions concerning his work as an actor. The originality of Toyoshima’s ‘portraits’ lies in her way of framing her work and of bringing her own sensitivity into them. Here, her camera doesn’t bother to stay so discreet. And indeed, with Castel – an expert at presenting himself before the camera – discretion is not really the order of the day.
&
Lou Castel
REHEARSAL OF A MONOLOGUE FOR A FILM / PREUVE D'UN MONOLOGUE POUR UN FILM
14 minutes, video, b&w.
&
Angela Christlieb
MY TEETH IN PARIS
2010, 5 minutes, Super8mm-to-video.

Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.

This screening is part of a Lou Castel retrospective which is co-presented by Anthology and the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF). The retrospective will open at FIAF on Tuesday, December 7, with a screening of Olivier Assayas’s IRMA VEP, followed by a reading of a text by Castel and a Q&A moderated by Sam DiIorio, Associate Professor of French at Hunter College; FIAF will then showcase other selections from Castel’s career as an actor every Tuesday in December (for more info, visit www.fiaf.org).

Here at Anthology, we will be presenting some of the more experimental films and videos he has participated in, as well as six of Castel’s own video works, made between 1998-2005 and comprising almost one-third of his complete videography. This body of work, rarely screened even in France, is at once an intensely personal and fearless research into the possibilities of the art form and a profoundly eloquent record of his own life and ‘philosophy’.

We’re very pleased that Lou Castel will be here at Anthology for the opening night of our series on Wednesday, December 8, as well as for selected screenings on subsequent days.

Curated by Andrea Monti. Special thanks to Lou Castel, Marie Losier (French Institute Alliance Française), Thorsten Wagner, Rainer Huebsch, Philippe Dijon De Monteton, Stefano Canapa, Gérard Courant, Tonino De Bernardi, Alessandro De Francesco, Yuka Toyoshima, and the Lucca Film Festival.

MAYA DEREN
MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON
1943, 14 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Co-directed by Alexander Hammid. Music by Teiji Ito from 1959.
AT LAND
1944, 15 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent. Photographed by Hella Heyman and Alexander Hammid.
A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR CAMERA
1945, 3 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent. By Maya Deren and Talley Beatty.
RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME
1946, 15 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent. Choreographic collaboration with Frank Westbrook. Photographed by Hella Heyman. With Rita Christiani and Frank Westbrook.
Total running time: ca. 55 minutes.

Lou Castel
CONVERGENCES
2005, 35 minutes, video.
Throughout a single day, apparently parallel actions lead us by accident to the same place, time, image. The diagonally-divided screen slowly recomposes, the two possible tracks of the same day lived by the same person (or perhaps two?) finally converge as in a cul-de-sac.
&
Lou Castel
REVOYANT
2005, 87 minutes, video.
To re-watch: first of all, for yourself. Images from the past, shot and left aside, all gathered on the same screen, the same surface, each of them telling a different story. Is it possible to rediscover them, to let them be part of your present again? This video is one of the few examples of multi-screen cinema that lets the screens ‘dialogue’ with each other.
Total running time: ca. 125 minutes.

This screening is part of a Lou Castel retrospective which is co-presented by Anthology and the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF). The retrospective will open at FIAF on Tuesday, December 7, with a screening of Olivier Assayas’s IRMA VEP, followed by a reading of a text by Castel and a Q&A moderated by Sam DiIorio, Associate Professor of French at Hunter College; FIAF will then showcase other selections from Castel’s career as an actor every Tuesday in December (for more info, visit www.fiaf.org).

Here at Anthology, we will be presenting some of the more experimental films and videos he has participated in, as well as six of Castel’s own video works, made between 1998-2005 and comprising almost one-third of his complete videography. This body of work, rarely screened even in France, is at once an intensely personal and fearless research into the possibilities of the art form and a profoundly eloquent record of his own life and ‘philosophy’.

We’re very pleased that Lou Castel will be here at Anthology for the opening night of our series on Wednesday, December 8, as well as for selected screenings on subsequent days.

Curated by Andrea Monti. Special thanks to Lou Castel, Marie Losier (French Institute Alliance Française), Thorsten Wagner, Rainer Huebsch, Philippe Dijon De Monteton, Stefano Canapa, Gérard Courant, Tonino De Bernardi, Alessandro De Francesco, Yuka Toyoshima, and the Lucca Film Festival.

On Saturday, this program will be introduced by Michael Kerbel, Director of the Yale University Film Study Center, and on Sunday by a Yale faculty member or guest speaker TBD.

THE BOY WHO SAW THROUGH (1956, 23 minutes, 35mm)
Directed by legendary documentary filmmaker George Stoney (ALL MY BABIES), this film was Bute’s first endeavor producing live action. Ted Nemeth was executive producer and director of photography. Based on a short story and set in Victorian New York, the film stars 13-year-old Ronnie (Christopher) Walken. The film was restored at Cineric Inc., with funding from a NFPF Basic Grant.

TIME PIECE (1965, 9 minutes, 35mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.)
Jim Henson runs, jumps, and flies in this Oscar-nominated Live Action Short Subject film that uses most of Ted Nemeth’s clever cinematography and special effects.

RAMA (1970, 16 minutes, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.)
A cinematic tone poem about a mythological sea goddess. Special filters were developed by cinematographer Nemeth to create the look of a watercolor painting. Sugar Cain stars and recites her lyrical musings.

OUT OF THE CRADLE, ENDLESSLY ROCKING: PASSAGES FROM THE ODYSSEY OF WALT WHITMAN (1980-83, 15 minutes, 16mm)
Principal photography had been completed and completion funds were being sought at the time of Bute’s death in 1983. Never-before-seen, these excerpts are presented as a fitting tribute to the filmmakers’ collaborative legacy.
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

Lou Castel
JUST IN TIME
1998, 13 minutes, video. With Castel, Robert Kramer, Nadine Naous, and Sarah Jalabert.
Castel’s first video, made following an encounter with American independent filmmaker Robert Kramer and realized with his help. It is perhaps a love story, fragments of which are spread over four characters. A common café becomes a conceptual space, which Castel uses as a set for his playful dismantling of the rules of filmmaking.
“Device: the window. Actor and director cross off-screen and on-screen. It’s the first time I direct, so I’m so high and I feel the urge to run wherever and to split myself in two, substituting the image with the invention. Concept: all ethnic culture is against money. Story: none.” –L.C.
&
Lou Castel
PYRAMIDIAL
2005, 90 minutes, video.
Not an experimental film, but a film that turns into an experiment. The camera used as an instrument for the apprehension of physical laws. Almost as if an apple has fallen on his head, a singular light-refraction phenomenon makes Castel begin an independent experiment, carried out with Cartesian accuracy.
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

This screening is part of a Lou Castel retrospective which is co-presented by Anthology and the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF). The retrospective will open at FIAF on Tuesday, December 7, with a screening of Olivier Assayas’s IRMA VEP, followed by a reading of a text by Castel and a Q&A moderated by Sam DiIorio, Associate Professor of French at Hunter College; FIAF will then showcase other selections from Castel’s career as an actor every Tuesday in December (for more info, visit www.fiaf.org).

Here at Anthology, we will be presenting some of the more experimental films and videos he has participated in, as well as six of Castel’s own video works, made between 1998-2005 and comprising almost one-third of his complete videography. This body of work, rarely screened even in France, is at once an intensely personal and fearless research into the possibilities of the art form and a profoundly eloquent record of his own life and ‘philosophy’.

We’re very pleased that Lou Castel will be here at Anthology for the opening night of our series on Wednesday, December 8, as well as for selected screenings on subsequent days.

Curated by Andrea Monti. Special thanks to Lou Castel, Marie Losier (French Institute Alliance Française), Thorsten Wagner, Rainer Huebsch, Philippe Dijon De Monteton, Stefano Canapa, Gérard Courant, Tonino De Bernardi, Alessandro De Francesco, Yuka Toyoshima, and the Lucca Film Festival.

On Friday, this program will be introduced by Dudley Andrew, Professor of Comparative Literature and Film Studies at Yale University, and on Sunday by a Yale faculty member or guest speaker TBD.

Late Animated Shorts by Mary Ellen Bute in collaboration with Ted Nemeth:
MOOD CONTRASTS (1956, 7 minutes, 35mm)
IMAGINATION (1958, 3 minutes, 16mm)

GINGER ROGERS; EGGS; WHEELS; 12 ROCKS (1950s-60s, 11 minutes, 16mm)
Four short films produced at Ted Nemeth Studios are linked in this promo reel, including a stop-action dance sequence with Perry Como and Ginger Rogers, and three cute, smart, and fun children’s pieces.

PASSAGES FROM FINNEGANS WAKE
1965, 92 minutes, 35mm.
With a Matching Grant from the NFPF, the Yale Film Study Center’s fine-grain master has been restored with subtitles at Colorlab. According to documents at Yale’s Beinecke Library, this was a 1970 re-edit for European distribution. Several of the subtitle reels were missing and had to be carefully recreated from the script. Beautifully restored image and sound!
Total running time: ca. 115 minutes.

Lou Castel
OUR TONGUES ARE MOVING
2001, 80 minutes, video. With Castel, Carolina Contreras, Nadine Naous, and Christelle Mari.
Around a table outside a café three women and one man are sitting. The place is not a set for a fiction, and the actors are not the characters of any story. As in a cut-out space-time, the people’s gestures, dialogues, and intentions are subjected to a concern that completely destroys any attempt to construct something, even the project of making a film.
&
Lou Castel
FIN?
2005, 40 minutes, video. With Castel, Fabienne Duszynski, and Sahiri Quarzell.
A domestic improvisation on the process of making a video.
“Through a plot and an editing made in the camera, this is a first humorous approach to the act of appropriation of non-existent images.” –L.C.
Total running time: ca. 125 minutes.

This screening is part of a Lou Castel retrospective which is co-presented by Anthology and the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF). The retrospective will open at FIAF on Tuesday, December 7, with a screening of Olivier Assayas’s IRMA VEP, followed by a reading of a text by Castel and a Q&A moderated by Sam DiIorio, Associate Professor of French at Hunter College; FIAF will then showcase other selections from Castel’s career as an actor every Tuesday in December (for more info, visit www.fiaf.org).

Here at Anthology, we will be presenting some of the more experimental films and videos he has participated in, as well as six of Castel’s own video works, made between 1998-2005 and comprising almost one-third of his complete videography. This body of work, rarely screened even in France, is at once an intensely personal and fearless research into the possibilities of the art form and a profoundly eloquent record of his own life and ‘philosophy’.

We’re very pleased that Lou Castel will be here at Anthology for the opening night of our series on Wednesday, December 8, as well as for selected screenings on subsequent days.

Curated by Andrea Monti. Special thanks to Lou Castel, Marie Losier (French Institute Alliance Française), Thorsten Wagner, Rainer Huebsch, Philippe Dijon De Monteton, Stefano Canapa, Gérard Courant, Tonino De Bernardi, Alessandro De Francesco, Yuka Toyoshima, and the Lucca Film Festival.

On Saturday, this program will be introduced by Michael Kerbel, Director of the Yale University Film Study Center, and on Sunday by a Yale faculty member or guest speaker TBD.

THE BOY WHO SAW THROUGH (1956, 23 minutes, 35mm)
Directed by legendary documentary filmmaker George Stoney (ALL MY BABIES), this film was Bute’s first endeavor producing live action. Ted Nemeth was executive producer and director of photography. Based on a short story and set in Victorian New York, the film stars 13-year-old Ronnie (Christopher) Walken. The film was restored at Cineric Inc., with funding from a NFPF Basic Grant.

TIME PIECE (1965, 9 minutes, 35mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.)
Jim Henson runs, jumps, and flies in this Oscar-nominated Live Action Short Subject film that uses most of Ted Nemeth’s clever cinematography and special effects.

RAMA (1970, 16 minutes, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.)
A cinematic tone poem about a mythological sea goddess. Special filters were developed by cinematographer Nemeth to create the look of a watercolor painting. Sugar Cain stars and recites her lyrical musings.

OUT OF THE CRADLE, ENDLESSLY ROCKING: PASSAGES FROM THE ODYSSEY OF WALT WHITMAN (1980-83, 15 minutes, 16mm)
Principal photography had been completed and completion funds were being sought at the time of Bute’s death in 1983. Never-before-seen, these excerpts are presented as a fitting tribute to the filmmakers’ collaborative legacy.
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

James June Schneider
1, 2, 3, WHITEOUT (aka THE END OF THE LIGHT AGE)
2007, 75 minutes, 35mm. In English and French with English subtitles. With Castel and Karine Adrover.
In a future present, an inventor who has dedicated himself to the cause of a ‘positive’ darkness works to counter the tide of a bright, diffuse, and technologically oriented time. As the story develops, the film expands from the acted scenes into a lyrical universe composed of filmed and found sound and image.
&
Gérard Courant
LOU CASTEL PAR GÉRARD COURANT
1981-86, 12 minutes, Super8mm-to-video, silent.
A compilation of three portraits of Castel by the filmmaker Gérard Courant, who over the past three decades has created more than 2,000 short films featuring various artists and other figures, famous and not-so-famous, as part of his vast CINÉMATON project (which, at 150 hours and counting, has been called the longest film ever created). This compilation encompasses the films CINÉMATON NO. 129, CINÉMATON NO. 501, and COUPLE NO. 10.
&
Stefano Canapa
PROMENAUX
2000-01, 12 minutes, 16mm, b&w.
At first it’s just a take on reality, a game of observation among an anonymous crowd. Then it’s a strange nightfall accompanied by words from Rimbaud, with the search for new images becoming primordial. In the morning we discover a fascinating reality, a space without limits, fluctuating in a dream-like state. Critic and filmmaker Yann Beauvais has written, “There is an elegance in its restraint, and an enchantment with actions and behaviors that have no purpose beyond their presence.”
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

This screening is part of a Lou Castel retrospective which is co-presented by Anthology and the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF). The retrospective will open at FIAF on Tuesday, December 7, with a screening of Olivier Assayas’s IRMA VEP, followed by a reading of a text by Castel and a Q&A moderated by Sam DiIorio, Associate Professor of French at Hunter College; FIAF will then showcase other selections from Castel’s career as an actor every Tuesday in December (for more info, visit www.fiaf.org).

Here at Anthology, we will be presenting some of the more experimental films and videos he has participated in, as well as six of Castel’s own video works, made between 1998-2005 and comprising almost one-third of his complete videography. This body of work, rarely screened even in France, is at once an intensely personal and fearless research into the possibilities of the art form and a profoundly eloquent record of his own life and ‘philosophy’.

We’re very pleased that Lou Castel will be here at Anthology for the opening night of our series on Wednesday, December 8, as well as for selected screenings on subsequent days.

Curated by Andrea Monti. Special thanks to Lou Castel, Marie Losier (French Institute Alliance Française), Thorsten Wagner, Rainer Huebsch, Philippe Dijon De Monteton, Stefano Canapa, Gérard Courant, Tonino De Bernardi, Alessandro De Francesco, Yuka Toyoshima, and the Lucca Film Festival.

Now in its 56th year, the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar is the longest continuously running film event in North America. With our monthly screening series, FLAHERTY NYC, we are able to bring the essential components of the Seminar – ground-breaking cinema and impassioned discussions – to New York City audiences. Each screening will be followed by a dialogue with the filmmaker in which the audience is encouraged to participate. And starting this season, each program will end with a reception where the discussions can continue in a more casual environment.
FLAHERTY NYC is programmed by Penny Lane.

Eric Daniel Metzgar
REPORTER
2009, 92 minutes, BetaSP.
An unforgettable portrait of NEW YORK TIMES columnist Nicholas Kristof, who almost single-handedly sounded the alarm alerting the world to the genocide in Darfur, REPORTER follows Kristof on a harrowing trip to Congo, where a decade of instability and warfare has left 5.4 million innocent people dead of starvation, disease, and violence. Marked by Metzgar’s stunning cinematography and thoughtful first-person narration, REPORTER elevates our understanding of what it takes to look at human suffering. An important, challenging, brilliant film.
DIRECTOR IN PERSON FOR POST-FILM DISCUSSION!

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
About Interesting People.
Claire Rietmann-Grout DEAR DEVILS (2010, 26 minutes, video)
Todd Sokolove IT’S ALL LUCK: WWII MEMORIES WITH GRANDPA MOE (2010, 7 minutes, video)
Kathryn Ramey YANQUI WALKER AND THE OPTICAL REVOLUTION (2009, 33 minutes, video)

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
Matt Rice
FOWL PLAY
2009, 50 minutes, video.
A battle is brewing over the ethics of our food choices. Gone are the days of open pasture and idyllic barnyard scenes. Today, the over nine billion animals reared for food production lead short lives marked by deprivation, confinement, mutilation, and merciless slaughter.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Shannon Keith
SKIN TRADE
2010, 88 minutes, video.
The deceptive and dirty fur industry is exposed through undercover investigations, footage, and interviews with those within the industry itself, with activists, and with celebrities.

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
C. A. Griffith
MOUNTAINS THAT TAKE WING – ANGELA DAVIS & YURI KOCHIYAMA
2010, 97 minutes, video.
Features conversations that span 13 years between two formidable women whose lives and political work remain at the epicenter of the most important civil rights struggles in the U.S.: Angela Davis, an internationally renowned scholar-activist, and 88-year-old Kochiyama, a revered grassroots community activist and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, both of whom speak about their shared experiences as political prisoners and their profound passion for justice.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Jeffrey Bliss TELEFONE (2010, 5 minutes, 16mm)
Bill Sorice VINNY VINO (2010, 10 minutes, video)
Mike Wallach COLE COMPLEX (2010, 13 minutes, video)
Rob Tyler RADICALS (2009, 30 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Louis Mansfield
BIRTH OF SEPARATION
2010, 90 minutes, video.
Follows the daily life of Elizabeth, a pregnant housewife who is preparing to welcome her second child into the world. One morning a young man greets her at the doorstep. His voice drips with despair as he clutches a stack of missing-persons posters. Feeling an affinity for the young man, Elizabeth invites him in for a cup of coffee.

Photographed by Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb, and Richard Bagley.
Directed by Meyers in collaboration with virtually the same team who created IN THE STREET (Levitt, Loeb, and James Agee), this is a compassionate, idealistic film about the Wiltwyck School, a residential institution for delinquent children. Focusing on Donald, a 10-year-old black child whose fractured home life cannot sustain him against the hostile and uncaring environment of the Harlem ghetto, it is a true milestone, acclaimed for its on-location photography, its approach to the docudrama form, and its sensitive account of childhood under siege.
“[It] raises its voice against poverty and despair. It fights for the rights of every child to a full quota of love and understanding. Four people have used their art to smash away at the jungle of slums that litter this country of ours. Their film is a weapon for decency, a milestone in cinema art.” –Walter Rosenblum, PHOTO-NOTES
Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.
Preceded by:
Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb & James Agee IN THE STREET (1948, 16 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
Levitt’s greatest cinematic accomplishment is this sublime short film, a portrait of Spanish Harlem, made in collaboration with Janice Loeb and James Agee, that is to this day one of the finest flowerings of documentary filmmaking.

Preserved and loaned by the Academy Film Archive.
The first and only film on which Strick, Levitt, Maddow, and Meyers all collaborated, this is a fascinating experiment, a portrait of a lost, lonely, middle-aged divorcée who wanders the streets of L.A. engaged in an interior dialogue with her own (male-voiced) conscience. In conception and script it calls to mind 1950s television drama, but the images – shot by Levitt, Jack Couffer, and the great cinematographer Haskell Wexler – constitute a vivid, gorgeously-photographed document of late-50s Los Angeles. An extremely unusual film, half-dated and half-ageless, THE SAVAGE EYE is a strange hybrid of West Coast experimentation and cinema vérité photography at its greatest.
“Documentary is somehow not the right category. [It] is not a document. It is a muffled explosion. The picture is funny, pathetic, cruel, terrible and it is worth going miles to see.” –THE SUNDAY TIMES

Joseph Strick & Irving Lerner MUSCLE BEACH (1948, 9 minutes, 35mm, b&w. Featuring music by Earl Robinson. Preserved and loaned by the Academy Film Archive.)
“In 1948, Strick and co-director Irving Lerner cast a…benign eye on a then-disreputable civic landmark, Muscle Beach, an outdoor gym on the sand with bleachers for spectators, just south of the Santa Monica pier. … [C]aptures a brief moment of innocence and optimism before the Korean War and the politics of hysteria it engendered.” –Thom Andersen
Joseph Strick THE HECKLERS (1966, ca. 40 minutes, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.)
Made for British TV, this is one of the least-known works of Strick’s career, a documentary on a then-ubiquitous feature of politics in the UK, the impromptu, merciless comments directed at campaigning candidates, which often unnerved all but the most experienced and composed of politicians.
Joseph Strick INTERVIEWS WITH MY LAI VETERANS (1971, 22 minutes, 35mm. Preserved and loaned by the Academy Film Archive.)
In this later film by Strick, he speaks to five American soldiers who participated in the 1968 My Lai massacre of villagers during the Vietnam War. A wrenching, vitally important work.
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

Filmmaker in person!
To celebrate the publication of CORRESPONDENCE COURSE: AN EPISTOLARY HISTORY OF CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN AND HER CIRCLE, edited by Kristine Stiles and released by Duke University Press this fall, we will be screening a single-evening selection of Schneemann’s work, including several of her seminal films from the 60s and 70s, as well as premieres of two brand-new video works, ASK THE GODDESS and MYSTERIES OF THE PUSSIES. Schneemann will be here in person to introduce the films and discuss her work.

FUSES (1964-67, 30 minutes, 16mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the University of Chicago Film Studies Center.)
“[A] notorious masterpiece, a silent celebration in color of heterosexual love making, the film unifies erotic energies within a domestic environment through cutting, super-imposition and layering of abstract impressions scratched into the celluloid itself.” –THE GUARDIAN
MEAT JOY (1964/2008, 10.5 minutes, 16mm-to-video)
Preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
“MEAT JOY is an erotic rite – excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chicken, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, brushes, paper scrap. … This video was converted from original film footage of three 1964 performances of MEAT JOY at its first staged performance at the Festival de la Libre Expression, Paris, Dennison Hall, London, and Judson Church, New York City.” –C.S.
KITCH’S LAST MEAL (1973-78, 15-minute extract, Super8mm-to-video. Preserved by Anthology with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.)
The third part of her autobiographical trilogy (including FUSES and PLUMB LINE), KITCH’S documents, among other things, the demise of Schneemann’s cat comrade, Kitch. Presented in varying configurations and lengths over the years, it was shot in Super-8mm and shown simultaneously on two projectors with one image arranged above another. Here we will be screening an excerpt from the DVD transfer that was created as part of Anthology’s preservation of the film.
“Domestic imagery filmed weekly for three years in a country house where my partner and myself are observed by our 19-year-old cat in the normal routine of domestic intimacy and our work as artists. … The ordinariness of the activities of the couple in association with the disjunctive sound builds towards a disconcerting invisibility – beyond what is here manifest.” –C.S.
ASK THE GODDESS (1991/2010, ca. 7 minutes, video)
A document of a provocative performance in which Schneemann interacts with the audience by responding to sexual and psychic dilemmas read from cards they have submitted. A continuous relay of projected slides comprise an iconography of Goddess symbols, taboo and sacred, including images of animal attributes. Schneemann spontaneously reacts to the questions by channeling cogent answers triggered by the unpredictable images, as well as finding herself physically activated in instances where she turns into a howling wolf or crawls across the projection area squealing like a pig.
MYSTERIES OF THE PUSSIES (1998/2010, ca. 7 minutes, video)
This charming and funny piece presents a spontaneous physical and verbal interaction between Schneemann and the very beautiful librarian from Pori Art Museum, Finland. Spoken in both English and Finnish, their dialogue examines a collage of feminist issues contrasted within slide projections of amorous cats.
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

A program of short works directed and/or edited by Sidney Meyers and Ben Maddow, including early works produced by Frontier Films and later films commissioned by a variety of organizations, from the Ford Motor Company to the National Association of Mental Health.
Sidney Meyers & Jay Leyda PEOPLE OF THE CUMBERLAND (1938, 20 minutes, 16mm)
Sidney Meyers, Ben Maddow & Lionel Berman WHITE FLOOD (1940, 16 minutes, 16mm. Musical score by Hanns Eisler.)
Helen Grayson & Larry Madison THE CUMMINGTON STORY (1945, 20 minutes, 35mm. Edited and narrated by Sidney Meyers; musical score by Aaron Copland.)
Sidney Meyers AMERICAN FARMER (1955, ca. 30 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

Archival print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Produced and written for the screen by Ben Maddow, with Helen Levitt acting as assistant director, this version of Jean Genet’s renowned play was arguably Strick’s most successful literary adaptation. With vivid performances from Shelley Winters, Lee Grant, a young Peter Falk, and an even younger Leonard Nimoy, it’s a bold and memorable attempt to transfer to film Genet’s deeply provocative investigation of role-playing and power relations.

“A sprawling, ambitious film that combines newsreel footage of disasters, urban and nature imagery, and footage evoking the cycles of life and death. It is one of those rare films that succeeds precisely because of its sprawl; raw and open-ended almost to the point of anticipating the postmodern rejection of ‘master narratives’, it cannot be reduced to a simple summary, and changes on you from one viewing to the next.” –Fred Camper

Archival print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
“Honorably attempts to transfer to the screen an enormous literary experiment, an excursion into districts of thought and feeling never before explored in fiction. The general shape has been miraculously preserved, the voyage of the central characters through time and memory against the background, both scummy and beautiful, of Dublin in 1904. The achievement of Mr. Strick’s film is to make the relations clear and often moving.” –THE SUNDAY TIMES

Joseph Strick & Irving Lerner MUSCLE BEACH (1948, 9 minutes, 35mm, b&w. Featuring music by Earl Robinson. Preserved and loaned by the Academy Film Archive.)
“In 1948, Strick and co-director Irving Lerner cast a…benign eye on a then-disreputable civic landmark, Muscle Beach, an outdoor gym on the sand with bleachers for spectators, just south of the Santa Monica pier. … [C]aptures a brief moment of innocence and optimism before the Korean War and the politics of hysteria it engendered.” –Thom Andersen
Joseph Strick THE HECKLERS (1966, ca. 40 minutes, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.)
Made for British TV, this is one of the least-known works of Strick’s career, a documentary on a then-ubiquitous feature of politics in the UK, the impromptu, merciless comments directed at campaigning candidates, which often unnerved all but the most experienced and composed of politicians.
Joseph Strick INTERVIEWS WITH MY LAI VETERANS (1971, 22 minutes, 35mm. Preserved and loaned by the Academy Film Archive.)
In this later film by Strick, he speaks to five American soldiers who participated in the 1968 My Lai massacre of villagers during the Vietnam War. A wrenching, vitally important work.
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

Preserved and loaned by the Academy Film Archive.
The first and only film on which Strick, Levitt, Maddow, and Meyers all collaborated, this is a fascinating experiment, a portrait of a lost, lonely, middle-aged divorcée who wanders the streets of L.A. engaged in an interior dialogue with her own (male-voiced) conscience. In conception and script it calls to mind 1950s television drama, but the images – shot by Levitt, Jack Couffer, and the great cinematographer Haskell Wexler – constitute a vivid, gorgeously-photographed document of late-50s Los Angeles. An extremely unusual film, half-dated and half-ageless, THE SAVAGE EYE is a strange hybrid of West Coast experimentation and cinema vérité photography at its greatest.
“Documentary is somehow not the right category. [It] is not a document. It is a muffled explosion. The picture is funny, pathetic, cruel, terrible and it is worth going miles to see.” –THE SUNDAY TIMES

Photographed by Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb, and Richard Bagley.
Directed by Meyers in collaboration with virtually the same team who created IN THE STREET (Levitt, Loeb, and James Agee), this is a compassionate, idealistic film about the Wiltwyck School, a residential institution for delinquent children. Focusing on Donald, a 10-year-old black child whose fractured home life cannot sustain him against the hostile and uncaring environment of the Harlem ghetto, it is a true milestone, acclaimed for its on-location photography, its approach to the docudrama form, and its sensitive account of childhood under siege.
“[It] raises its voice against poverty and despair. It fights for the rights of every child to a full quota of love and understanding. Four people have used their art to smash away at the jungle of slums that litter this country of ours. Their film is a weapon for decency, a milestone in cinema art.” –Walter Rosenblum, PHOTO-NOTES
Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.
Preceded by:
Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb & James Agee IN THE STREET (1948, 16 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
Levitt’s greatest cinematic accomplishment is this sublime short film, a portrait of Spanish Harlem, made in collaboration with Janice Loeb and James Agee, that is to this day one of the finest flowerings of documentary filmmaking.

A program of short works directed and/or edited by Sidney Meyers and Ben Maddow, including early works produced by Frontier Films and later films commissioned by a variety of organizations, from the Ford Motor Company to the National Association of Mental Health.
Sidney Meyers & Jay Leyda PEOPLE OF THE CUMBERLAND (1938, 20 minutes, 16mm)
Sidney Meyers, Ben Maddow & Lionel Berman WHITE FLOOD (1940, 16 minutes, 16mm. Musical score by Hanns Eisler.)
Helen Grayson & Larry Madison THE CUMMINGTON STORY (1945, 20 minutes, 35mm. Edited and narrated by Sidney Meyers; musical score by Aaron Copland.)
Sidney Meyers AMERICAN FARMER (1955, ca. 30 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

“The architect Raimund Abraham, a close and devoted friend of Anthology Film Archives since its inception, died in a car crash on March 4th in Los Angeles. It was Raimund who helped me to acquire from NYC (in an auction) our current, Second Avenue/Second Street building. He also supervised (with no fee) its transformation from a Small Court House (there were 14 prison cells in it) into the film museum/cinema that it is now. And it was Raimund who, while still teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (later he joined the Cooper Union), made a barrel of extraordinary white wine for Anthology’s opening on December 1st, 1970.
“He was a great friend, a great cook, and a great architect. To the city of NY he gave the 52nd Street Austrian Cultural Forum building, which the New York Times described as one of the two most important pieces of modern architecture in NY (the other being Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum). This spring, shortly before his death, Raimund completed designs for an extension to Anthology which would provide a larger library, a cafeteria, and expanded archival spaces. Budgeted at ca. $12,000,000, it is one of Anthology’s next fund-raising challenges.
“Raimund was a very special friend of Anthology’s, and he will be greatly missed.” –Jonas Mekas

In tribute to Abraham, we will be screening selections from Jonas Mekas’s extensive film and video archives showing the transformation of the Second Avenue Courthouse building into Anthology Film Archives, as well as selected scenes from the life of Raimund Abraham.

Archival print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
“Honorably attempts to transfer to the screen an enormous literary experiment, an excursion into districts of thought and feeling never before explored in fiction. The general shape has been miraculously preserved, the voyage of the central characters through time and memory against the background, both scummy and beautiful, of Dublin in 1904. The achievement of Mr. Strick’s film is to make the relations clear and often moving.” –THE SUNDAY TIMES

Archival print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Produced and written for the screen by Ben Maddow, with Helen Levitt acting as assistant director, this version of Jean Genet’s renowned play was arguably Strick’s most successful literary adaptation. With vivid performances from Shelley Winters, Lee Grant, a young Peter Falk, and an even younger Leonard Nimoy, it’s a bold and memorable attempt to transfer to film Genet’s deeply provocative investigation of role-playing and power relations.

Celebrate Christmas with NewFilmmakers as we screen two new shorts and a feature starring Vinny Vela. Vinny was born Vincent Franco Vellacerra in New York City, and is probably best known for his performance as Artie Piscano in Martin Scorsese’s CASINO. He has been in a number of films that have screened at NewFilmmakers, including the documentary HEY VINNY, as well as SPY and NEW YORK BLOOD. He recently played Jimmy Petrille on THE SOPRANOS. Check www.NewFilmmakers.com for more information about the event.

In honor of Jonas Mekas’s birthday (which will officially take place a couple days later, on December 24), Dalius Naujo – percussionist with NOW WE ARE HERE and THE HIMALAYAS, and a familiar face all over the city thanks to gigs with Kenny Wollesen, Lou Reed, and John Zorn – will be present for a solo performance this evening. Come celebrate Jonas’s birthday with this special musical event!