Anthology Film Archives

Rick Harlow
THE BLACK LINE JOURNEY
2010, 28 minutes, video.
This deeply impacting film brings the viewer on a sacred journey into the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, in Colombia, South America. The Grand Mamo (traditional elder) Sewkukuy (Norberto Torres) of the Indigenous Arhuaco, as well as Mamos of the Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo tribes, perform their sacred ceremonies to harmonize all of life. Never before have we been privileged to observe the ceremonies of these ancient people, the caretakers of the ‘Heart of the World’. Their inherent legacy designates them as our ‘Elder Brothers’ whose sense of urgency regarding the present challenge to life on Earth is a message to all of Humanity. The Sierras – the highest coastal mountain range in the world – are the home to these Indigenous people who are on the brink of extinction and who struggle to preserve their traditions and their law of origins.

The film’s director Rick Harlow and Grandmother Barbara Threecrow formed THE ELDERS PROJECT in 2009 upon the request of the Indigenous Mamos to assist their people in upholding their ancient culture. Following the screening, there will be a Q&A with Rick and Grandmother.

A renowned artist living in Amherst, MA, Rick Harlow spent 23 years living and working with the Indigenous tribes in Colombia. Grandmother Threecrow is Nanticoke – Deleware/Lenape and a ceremonial leader in the Lakota tradition. She is the author of MENDING THE HOOP and THE RETURN OF THE SACRED FEMININE & TEACHINGS OF THE GRANDMOTHERS and resides in the Hudson valley.

To donate to THE ELDERS PROJECT go to Earthaction at www.earthaction.org/the-elders-project.html

With James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, and Bob Dylan.
“May be the most beautiful and ambitious film that Peckinpah ever made. The time is 1881. Powerful interests want New Mexico tamed for their brand of progress, and Sheriff Pat Garrett (Coburn) is commissioned to rid the territory of his old gunfighting comrades. He serves fair notice to William Bonney – Billy the Kid (Kristofferson) – and his Fort Sumter cronies, but it’s not in their nature, or his, to go quietly. Peckinpah’s theme, more than ever, is the closing of the frontier and the nature of the loss that that entails. But this time his vision takes him beyond genre convention, beyond history and legend, to the bleeding heart of myth – and surely of himself. This is one strange and original movie.” –Richard T. Jameson

–On Friday, April 29, Wurlitzer will appear along with Will Oldham for a reading and conversation to mark the release of Oldham’s recent audio book version of SLOW FADE (Drag City). With musical accompaniment by Ben Chasny (SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE) and photographs by Lynn Davis. The reading will begin at 7:30 with the PAT GARRETT screening to follow.

Robert Frank & Rudy Wurlitzer
KEEP BUSY (1975, 30 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Print courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.)
An improvised story about a group of people (including Richard Serra, Joan Jonas and Joanne Akalaitis) living on an island off Nova Scotia. Obsessed with daily aspects of their lives and the cycles of nature, the group is subjugated by a lighthouse keeper and his messenger, who have access to the only radio and therefore control the news.
&
Robert Frank, Rudy Wurlitzer, and Gary Hill
ENERGY AND HOW TO GET IT (1981, 28 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Print courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.)
What began as a film about Robert Golka, an engineer who was experimenting with ball lightning and the development of fusion as an energy force, was turned into a spoof on the documentary form, inserting fictional characters into the story such as the Energy Czar (William Burroughs) and a Hollywood agent (filmmaker Robert Downey Sr.).
&
BIRTH OF THE FLAG PARTS I AND II (1965/74, 38 minutes, 16mm-to-video, b&w, silent. Photographed by Stan VanDerBeek, Diane Rochlin, and Sheldon Rochlin. Produced by Rudy Wurlitzer and Richard Wexler. Screened courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art.)
This two-part film documents one of artist Claes Oldenburg’s legendary Happenings, this one taking place in upstate New York and, unlike most of his performance pieces, designed specifically to be filmed, without the presence of a live audience.
Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.

After far too much dreaming Anthology is finally dedicating a program to the singularly delightful, dizzying, and downright FUN animated films of Sally Cruikshank. As Cruikshank aficionado extraordinaire Skip Elsheimer notes, “Cruikshank is a one-woman Fleischer Studio. Her characters – Anita, Quasi, and Snazzi – are 1970s homages to Betty Boop, Bimbo, and Koko the Clown, albeit more new wave and personal. Her most popular cartoon, QUASI AT THE QUACKADERO, reads as if Betty Boop and friends went to a psychedelic 1930s World’s Fair. The characters are confronted with new and wonderful technologies that allow them to look to the future and past and record their deepest fantasies and thoughts.” The eternally amazing QUASI was listed in Jerry Beck’s seminal book THE 50 GREATEST CARTOONS and more recently honored by being voted onto the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2009. Tonight’s chock-full program contains Cruikshank’s main body of work (some in 35mm prints!) as well as videos and other crazy assignments made for SESAME STREET and elsewhere. As an ultra-special treat we will also be presenting an interview with Cruikshank recorded specifically for this momentous screening. This is a show for cool kids and strange adults alike!
DUCKY (1971, 3 minutes, 16mm)
FUN ON MARS (1971, 4.5 minutes, 16mm)
CHOW FUN (1972, 5 minutes, 16mm)
QUASI AT THE QUACKADERO (1975, 10 minutes, 35mm)
MAKE ME PSYCHIC (1978, 8 minutes, 35mm)
QUASI’S CABARET TRAILER (1980, 3 minutes, 16mm)
FACE LIKE A FROG (1987, 5 minutes, 35mm)
Plus…videos galore…and more…more…more…!

With Ed Harris and Peter Boyle; written by Rudy Wurlitzer.
An hallucinatory biopic that breaks all cinematic conventions, WALKER tells the story of nineteenth-century American adventurer William Walker, who abandoned a series of careers in law, politics, journalism, and medicine to become a soldier of fortune, and for several years dictator of Nicaragua. Made with mad abandon and political acuity – and the support of the Sandinista army and government during the Contra war – the film uses this true tale as a satirical attack on American ultrapatriotism and a freewheeling condemnation of ‘manifest destiny.’

With James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, and Warren Oates.
“[An] exciting existentialist road movie by Monte Hellman, with a swell script by Wurlitzer and Will Corry and my favorite Warren Oates performance…. Taylor and Wilson are the drivers of a supercharged ’55 Chevy, and Oates is the owner of a new GTO (these nameless characters are in fact identified only by the cars they drive); they meet and agree to race from New Mexico to the east coast, though an assortment of side interests periodically distracts them, including various hitchhikers (among them Laurie Bird). (GTO hilariously assumes a new persona every time he picks up a new passenger, rather like the amorphous narrator in Wurlitzer’s novel NOG.) The movie starts off as a narrative but gradually grows into something much more abstract – it’s unsettling but also beautiful.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

Co-written by Rudy Wurlitzer.
Jim McBride’s first commercial film portrays the odyssey undertaken by the last bewildered survivors of an atomic holocaust, as they stumble through the wreckage of a vanished civilization. Neither moralizing sci-fi nor melodrama, despite its fanciful premise, the film is rather like a cinéma vérité doomsday documentary – a parable in newsreel form. Of all the films Wurlitzer was involved with, GLEN AND RANDA most closely resembles the tone and spirit of his own novels.
“Unaccountably disregarded by critics, this is a poisoned idyll of two young people in an America destroyed by atomic war…. A paraphrase of the counterculture’s sensibilities, the film’s subversive potential lies in its straightforward acceptance and naturalistic portrayal of the destructability of eternal American symbols: a destroyed Howard Johnson restaurant is more difficult to take than newspaper articles warning about the dangers of atomic war.” –Amos Vogel, FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART

–On Saturday, April 30, Rudy Wurlitzer will be here for a dialogue with friend and colleague Robert Downey Sr. after the 8:00 screening of GLEN AND RANDA.

Check www.newfilmmakers.com for updated program information.

–Tuesday, May 3, Documentaries at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:00, Feature Presentation at 8:30.

With Ed Harris and Peter Boyle; written by Rudy Wurlitzer.
An hallucinatory biopic that breaks all cinematic conventions, WALKER tells the story of nineteenth-century American adventurer William Walker, who abandoned a series of careers in law, politics, journalism, and medicine to become a soldier of fortune, and for several years dictator of Nicaragua. Made with mad abandon and political acuity – and the support of the Sandinista army and government during the Contra war – the film uses this true tale as a satirical attack on American ultrapatriotism and a freewheeling condemnation of ‘manifest destiny.’

With Kevin J. O’Connor, Harris Yulin, Tom Waits, Bulle Ogier, Roberts Blossom, Jim Jarmusch, David Johansen, Arto Lindsay, Joe Strummer, Rockets Redglare. Print courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
“Autumnal, verging on wintry, CANDY MOUNTAIN is a film of off-putting attitude and unobtrusive splendor. This Robert Frank/Rudy Wurlitzer collaboration resurrects the ghost of beatnik aspiration – it’s as mocking and elegiac as befits the testament of two reclusive counter-culture heroes. … As beautiful as it is mannered, as sad as it is funny, [this] is a film about the end of the road, the end of America, the end of Endsville. Incandescently nondescript, this may be the first movie to make Canada seem uncanny.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

The annual NEW YORK POLISH FILM FESTIVAL offers hundreds of diverse viewers in the NYC area the chance to celebrate Polish cinema, and the rare opportunity to interact with the filmmakers themselves. NYPFF showcases acclaimed features, shorts, and documentaries, all created by distinguished Polish filmmakers, both new and long-established. NYPFF is the largest festival promoting and presenting Polish films on the East Coast.
In homage to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s prolific career, this year’s festival, its seventh edition, will be dedicated to documentary, short, and independent films in particular. On the occasion of Kieslowski’s 70th birthday, and the 15th anniversary of his death, NYPFF is proud to present the filmmaker’s early works, including his striking student films and documentaries. NYPFF invites all to join in the celebration of Polish cinema!
For updates and further details on the upcoming festival, please visit www.NYPFF.com.

Co-written by Rudy Wurlitzer.
Jim McBride’s first commercial film portrays the odyssey undertaken by the last bewildered survivors of an atomic holocaust, as they stumble through the wreckage of a vanished civilization. Neither moralizing sci-fi nor melodrama, despite its fanciful premise, the film is rather like a cinéma vérité doomsday documentary – a parable in newsreel form. Of all the films Wurlitzer was involved with, GLEN AND RANDA most closely resembles the tone and spirit of his own novels.
“Unaccountably disregarded by critics, this is a poisoned idyll of two young people in an America destroyed by atomic war…. A paraphrase of the counterculture’s sensibilities, the film’s subversive potential lies in its straightforward acceptance and naturalistic portrayal of the destructability of eternal American symbols: a destroyed Howard Johnson restaurant is more difficult to take than newspaper articles warning about the dangers of atomic war.” –Amos Vogel, FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART

–On Saturday, April 30, Rudy Wurlitzer will be here for a dialogue with friend and colleague Robert Downey Sr. after the 8:00 screening of GLEN AND RANDA.

With James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, and Bob Dylan.
“May be the most beautiful and ambitious film that Peckinpah ever made. The time is 1881. Powerful interests want New Mexico tamed for their brand of progress, and Sheriff Pat Garrett (Coburn) is commissioned to rid the territory of his old gunfighting comrades. He serves fair notice to William Bonney – Billy the Kid (Kristofferson) – and his Fort Sumter cronies, but it’s not in their nature, or his, to go quietly. Peckinpah’s theme, more than ever, is the closing of the frontier and the nature of the loss that that entails. But this time his vision takes him beyond genre convention, beyond history and legend, to the bleeding heart of myth – and surely of himself. This is one strange and original movie.” –Richard T. Jameson

–On Friday, April 29, Wurlitzer will appear along with Will Oldham for a reading and conversation to mark the release of Oldham’s recent audio book version of SLOW FADE (Drag City). With musical accompaniment by Ben Chasny (SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE) and photographs by Lynn Davis. The reading will begin at 7:30 with the PAT GARRETT screening to follow.

The annual NEW YORK POLISH FILM FESTIVAL offers hundreds of diverse viewers in the NYC area the chance to celebrate Polish cinema, and the rare opportunity to interact with the filmmakers themselves. NYPFF showcases acclaimed features, shorts, and documentaries, all created by distinguished Polish filmmakers, both new and long-established. NYPFF is the largest festival promoting and presenting Polish films on the East Coast.
In homage to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s prolific career, this year’s festival, its seventh edition, will be dedicated to documentary, short, and independent films in particular. On the occasion of Kieslowski’s 70th birthday, and the 15th anniversary of his death, NYPFF is proud to present the filmmaker’s early works, including his striking student films and documentaries. NYPFF invites all to join in the celebration of Polish cinema!
For updates and further details on the upcoming festival, please visit www.NYPFF.com.

Robert Frank & Rudy Wurlitzer
KEEP BUSY (1975, 30 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Print courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.)
An improvised story about a group of people (including Richard Serra, Joan Jonas and Joanne Akalaitis) living on an island off Nova Scotia. Obsessed with daily aspects of their lives and the cycles of nature, the group is subjugated by a lighthouse keeper and his messenger, who have access to the only radio and therefore control the news.
&
Robert Frank, Rudy Wurlitzer, and Gary Hill
ENERGY AND HOW TO GET IT (1981, 28 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Print courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.)
What began as a film about Robert Golka, an engineer who was experimenting with ball lightning and the development of fusion as an energy force, was turned into a spoof on the documentary form, inserting fictional characters into the story such as the Energy Czar (William Burroughs) and a Hollywood agent (filmmaker Robert Downey Sr.).
&
BIRTH OF THE FLAG PARTS I AND II (1965/74, 38 minutes, 16mm-to-video, b&w, silent. Photographed by Stan VanDerBeek, Diane Rochlin, and Sheldon Rochlin. Produced by Rudy Wurlitzer and Richard Wexler. Screened courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art.)
This two-part film documents one of artist Claes Oldenburg’s legendary Happenings, this one taking place in upstate New York and, unlike most of his performance pieces, designed specifically to be filmed, without the presence of a live audience.
Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.

With Kevin J. O’Connor, Harris Yulin, Tom Waits, Bulle Ogier, Roberts Blossom, Jim Jarmusch, David Johansen, Arto Lindsay, Joe Strummer, Rockets Redglare. Print courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
“Autumnal, verging on wintry, CANDY MOUNTAIN is a film of off-putting attitude and unobtrusive splendor. This Robert Frank/Rudy Wurlitzer collaboration resurrects the ghost of beatnik aspiration – it’s as mocking and elegiac as befits the testament of two reclusive counter-culture heroes. … As beautiful as it is mannered, as sad as it is funny, [this] is a film about the end of the road, the end of America, the end of Endsville. Incandescently nondescript, this may be the first movie to make Canada seem uncanny.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

The annual NEW YORK POLISH FILM FESTIVAL offers hundreds of diverse viewers in the NYC area the chance to celebrate Polish cinema, and the rare opportunity to interact with the filmmakers themselves. NYPFF showcases acclaimed features, shorts, and documentaries, all created by distinguished Polish filmmakers, both new and long-established. NYPFF is the largest festival promoting and presenting Polish films on the East Coast.
In homage to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s prolific career, this year’s festival, its seventh edition, will be dedicated to documentary, short, and independent films in particular. On the occasion of Kieslowski’s 70th birthday, and the 15th anniversary of his death, NYPFF is proud to present the filmmaker’s early works, including his striking student films and documentaries. NYPFF invites all to join in the celebration of Polish cinema!
For updates and further details on the upcoming festival, please visit www.NYPFF.com.

The premiere of luminous new preservation prints of truly Essential classics of avant-garde cinema! Sidney Peterson produced a good many of these films while directing the Workshop 20 at the California School of Fine Arts, today known as the venerable San Francisco Art Institute. Working in collaboration with students, Peterson created a series of complex, lyrical, and visually expansive films that are prime examples of American surrealism at its finest. Wonderfully mad and looking better than ever, this is a perfect chance to revisit these deservedly canonical classics.
THE POTTED PSALM, THE CAGE, and THE PETRIFIED DOG have been preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation. MR. FRENHOFFER… and THE LEAD SHOES have been preserved by Anthology with support from The National Film Preservation Foundation.
THE POTTED PSALM (1946, 19 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Co-made with James Broughton.)
THE CAGE (1947, 28 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
THE PETRIFIED DOG (1948, 19 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
MR. FRENHOFFER AND THE MINOTAUR (1949, 21 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
THE LEAD SHOES (1949, 17 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Total running time: ca. 110 minutes.

This event will celebrate poet Robert Kelly’s work, his 75th birthday, and his 50 years mentoring writers and teaching literature. A longtime friend of Anthology Film Archives, Robert Kelly’s poetry is noted for its filmic impression on consciousness.

A readerly conversation among poets and scholars around the extraordinary spectrum of experience, worlds, and histories that Robert Kelly’s poetry engages in its making, THE LOGIC OF THE WORLD will include: Robert Kelly, Jonas Mekas, Vyt Bakaitis, Phong Bui, Mary Caponegro, Carey Harrison, Pierre Joris, Tom Meyer, Nicole Peyrafitte, Kristen Prevallet, George Quasha, Elizabeth Robinson, Carolee Schneemann, Charles Stein, David Levi Strauss, Peter Lamborn Wilson, John Yau, and others to be announced.

This all-day event, to be held on Saturday, May 7 in the Maya Deren Theater, will be open to all and free of charge.

The annual NEW YORK POLISH FILM FESTIVAL offers hundreds of diverse viewers in the NYC area the chance to celebrate Polish cinema, and the rare opportunity to interact with the filmmakers themselves. NYPFF showcases acclaimed features, shorts, and documentaries, all created by distinguished Polish filmmakers, both new and long-established. NYPFF is the largest festival promoting and presenting Polish films on the East Coast.
In homage to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s prolific career, this year’s festival, its seventh edition, will be dedicated to documentary, short, and independent films in particular. On the occasion of Kieslowski’s 70th birthday, and the 15th anniversary of his death, NYPFF is proud to present the filmmaker’s early works, including his striking student films and documentaries. NYPFF invites all to join in the celebration of Polish cinema!
For updates and further details on the upcoming festival, please visit www.NYPFF.com.

Kerry Laitala RETROSPECTROSCOPE (1997, 5 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
Joanne Kyger DESCARTES (1968, 11 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Alice Anne Parker Severson RIVERBODY (1970, 7 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Mike Henderson DUFUS (1970, 8 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Theresa Cha MOUTH TO MOUTH (1975, 8 minutes, video, b&w)
Lynn Hershman CONFESSIONS OF A CHAMELEON (1986, 10 minutes, video)
Anne McGuire ALL SMILES AND SADNESS (1999, 8 minutes, video, b&w)
Michael Wallin DECODINGS (1988, 15 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Gunvor Nelson TIME BEING (1991, 8 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
Scott Stark I’LL WALK WITH GOD (1994, 8 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

SELECTIONS FROM TARGET VIDEO (1977-80, 20 minutes) will be interspersed throughout the program.
Dale Hoyt YOUR WORLD DIES SCREAMING (1981, 5 minutes, video)
Richard Gaikowski DEAF/PUNK (1979, 8 minutes, 16mm)
Ivar Smedstad HIGH FIDELITY (1987, 4 minutes, video)
Barney Haynes THOUGHT CRIMES IN THE SATIATION POOL (1988, 7 minutes, video)
Scott Ryser and Rachel Webber THE UNITS’ TRAINING FILM (1980, 12.5 minutes, 16mm)
Ivar Smedstad BRENT ASKE (1987, 6.5 minutes, video)
The Residents THIRD REICH AND ROLL (1977, 4 minutes, 16mm)
Mindaugis Bagdon LOUDER, FASTER, SHORTER (1979, 17 minutes, 16mm)
Dale Hoyt DANCING DEATH MONSTERS (1981, 5 minutes, video)
Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

The annual NEW YORK POLISH FILM FESTIVAL offers hundreds of diverse viewers in the NYC area the chance to celebrate Polish cinema, and the rare opportunity to interact with the filmmakers themselves. NYPFF showcases acclaimed features, shorts, and documentaries, all created by distinguished Polish filmmakers, both new and long-established. NYPFF is the largest festival promoting and presenting Polish films on the East Coast.
In homage to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s prolific career, this year’s festival, its seventh edition, will be dedicated to documentary, short, and independent films in particular. On the occasion of Kieslowski’s 70th birthday, and the 15th anniversary of his death, NYPFF is proud to present the filmmaker’s early works, including his striking student films and documentaries. NYPFF invites all to join in the celebration of Polish cinema!
For updates and further details on the upcoming festival, please visit www.NYPFF.com.

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

As part of the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for the New City, the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) presents an evening of videos about the inner workings of some of NYC’s hidden systems. Ever wonder where your garbage goes when you’re done with it? Why you shouldn’t go swimming after a heavy rainfall? Who owns the Internet? Find out with these infrastructure documentaries, produced as collaborative research and design projects with artists and NYC public high school students. The crews headed to the streets and looked for answers from city officials, sandhogs, community organizations, and policy wonks; and they’ve created stop-motion animations, puppets, and historical re-enactments to teach you about the social and political networks that shape the city.

Films to be screened include GARBAGE PROBLEMS (2002), THE INTERNET IS SERIOUS BUSINESS (2008), and THE WATER UNDERGROUND (2006).

CUP is a nonprofit organization that uses design, art, and visual culture to improve the quality of public participation in shaping the city.

Taking place from May 4-8, the Festival of Ideas for the New City is a major new collaborative initiative between scores of downtown organizations, from large universities to arts groups and community organizations, and will bring together artists, architects, designers, and others to consider how to better leverage innovative thinking, creativity, and new technologies to improve everyday life in this cultural capital. The Festival will focus on four themes: The Heterogeneous City; The Sustainable City; The Reconfigured City; and The Networked City. For more info, visit: www.festivalofideasnyc.com.

Special thanks to Valeria Mogilevich (CUP) and Corinne Erni (New Museum).

Filmmaker in person!
In the heart of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, UN soldiers guard a heavily fortified building known as the “special court.” Inside, Issa Sesay awaits his trial. Prosecutors say Sesay is a war criminal, guilty of heinous crimes against humanity. His defenders say he is a reluctant fighter who protected civilians and played a crucial role in bringing peace to Sierra Leone. With unprecedented access to prosecutors, defense attorneys, victims, and, from behind bars, Sesay himself, WAR DON DON puts international justice on trial for the world to see, finding that in some cases it is not just painful, but also opaque.
“One of the most viscerally compelling documentaries of the year. It will leave you haunted.” –Mary Anderson Casavant, FILMMAKER MAGAZINE

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Alicia Naqueira WOODSY (2010, 9 minutes, video)
Yara Hannema THE FOSTER PARENT OF IRON (2010, 12 minutes, video)
Heather Spilkin ABOVE BROOKLYN (2010, 46 minutes, video)

SPECIAL PROGRAM
THE WOMEN’S FILMMAKER GROUP AND ‘EYE:AM’ PRESENTS ‘ANOTHER EXPERIMENT BY WOMEN’
Curated by Lili White.
Alice Cohen MIRROR MOVES FOR PRIVATE EYES (14 minutes, video)
Ariane Loze PURSUIT (7 minutes, video)
Angeliki Malakasioti STANDSTILL (8 minutes, video)
Tammy A. Kinsey SACRED (16 minutes, video)
Melanie Crean CHIROS (8 minutes, video)
Nandita Kumar TENTACLES OF DIMENSIONS (14 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
WONDER…
2009, 73 minutes, video.
Directed by Dutch Doscher, Shari Carpenter, Jordan Horowitz, Ian Fischer, Peggy Chane, Jason Hayes, Don Puglisi, Evan O’Brien, and Annetta Marion.

–Wednesday, May 11, Documentaries at 6:00, Special Program at 7:30, Feature Presentation at 9:00.

Anthology Film Archives and the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York are excited to present this follow-up to last year’s highly successful one-night program of films from the New York area’s diverse community of archives, museums, and libraries. The screening presents a singular combination of home movies, documentaries, educational and industrial films, and narrative filmmaking, and provides a truly unique opportunity to experience the diversity of the various institutions that care for collections of cultural and historical significance in metropolitan New York. A glimpse into New York’s vault! We hope you will join us for this very special screening.
The Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York (ART) has been the primary, local membership organization for professional archivists in NY for over thirty years. Although membership is primarily comprised of archivists working and living within the five boroughs, ART membership encompasses New Jersey, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester Counties, in addition to western Connecticut. In addition to practicing archivists, members include graduate students from local universities, librarians, records managers, historians, curators, administrators, retirees, and volunteers. ART is honored to host this screening at Anthology Film Archives.
For further information about ART, please visit: www.nycarchivists.org

“Angus MacLise was the Velvet Underground’s first drummer. He withdrew when he found out that at a paying job he had to start and stop playing when told to. No one told Angus to stop playing. So the job of a working musician was impossible for Angus, and taught us all a lesson about purity of spirit. Angus was a dream percussionist. A dream person.” –Lou Reed

As part of DREAMWEAPON, a city-wide exhibition curated by Johan Kugelberg and Will Cameron dedicated to mythic artist/poet/composer Angus MacLise (1938-79), Anthology is pleased to host an evening of films in homage to one of the most mercurial figures to emerge from the New York underground of the 1960s and 70s.

Screening this evening will be Ira Cohen’s counterculture classic, THE INVASION OF THUNDERBOLT PAGODA (1968), showcasing the music of Angus MacLise and the Universal Mutant Repertory Company, alongside works by Piero Heliczer and recently discovered Portapak video taken by Marty Topp inside Cohen’s Jefferson St. loft (1971-72). The evening concludes with the worldwide premiere of a new film by Cohen, HEAVY CANON (1968/2011), comprised of unseen 16mm footage shot in Cohen’s Mylar Chamber and scored with previously unreleased tapes from the Angus MacLise archive.

“[INVASION is] so High ’60s that you emerge from its 20-minute vision perched full-lotus on a cloud of incense, chatting with a white rabbit and smoking a banana…. INVASION is a languidly opiated costume ball in which an assortment of masked and painted bohos, some sporting outsize elf ears, loll about a candlelit, Mylar-lined set, blowing soap bubbles and nibbling majoon. … What saves INVASION from preciosity is the vague menace of Angus MacLise’s improvised pan-piping, tabla-tapping, creature-yipping score. Although this masterpiece of Tibetan-Moroccan-Druidic trance music was reissued on CD several years ago, it truly blossoms in conjunction with the exotic smorgasbord served at Cohen’s psychedelicatessen.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

This program includes films utilizing two different 3-D methods: Pulfrich 3-D, in which a single dark filter is placed before one eye; and Eternalism 3-D, which is based on a flicker effect.
GLOBE (1969, 22 minutes, video, Pulfrich 3-D)
Flat image (of snowbound suburban housing tract) blossoms into 3-D only when viewer places Eye Opener before the right eye. The found-sound is X-ratable.
LOOTING FOR RODNEY (1994-95, 11 minutes, video, silent, Pulfrich 3-D)
NEW YORK STREET-TROLLEYS 1900 (1999, 11 minutes, video, b&w, Eternalism 3-D)
LET THERE BE WHISTLEBLOWERS (2005, 18 minutes, video, b&w/color, Eternalism 3-D, music by Steve Reich)
DISORIENT EXPRESS (1996, 30 minutes, 35mm, b&w, silent)
In this film a strong 3-D impression is created without physical aid. Jacobs reproduces a sequence of 1906 film shots depicting a journey by train, optically reprinting the footage with different formal manipulations.
Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

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

TIME SQUARED
ca. 60 minutes.
In the last number of years Ken Jacobs’s NERVOUS MAGIC LANTERN performances have become a thing of legend. Space, time, and light sculpted, expanded, and exploded. Like nothing you could ever expect, or will see anywhere else.

The performance will be preceded by:
‘a loft’ (2010, 16 minutes, video)
and will be followed by:
THE GREEN WAVE (2011, 5 minutes, video)
Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.

The films in this program involve indicated depth, with no depth illusion.
WINDOW (1964, 12 minutes, silent)
&
THE SKY SOCIALIST
1964-68, 140 minutes.
An historic record of Lower Manhattan before it was torn down in the name of progress, and one of Jacobs’s most important, engaging long-form works.
Total running time: ca. 155 minutes.

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

A program of Eternalism 3-D and Anaglyph (red/green filters) 3-D films.
THE SCENIC ROUTE (2008, 25 minutes, video, b&w/color, Eternalism 3-D)
&
THE GUESTS
2008, 89 minutes, video, b&w, Anaglyph 3-D.
A mesmerizing reworking of 10 seconds from the Lumière brothers’ ENTRÉE D’UNE NOCE À L’ÉGLISE. Unforgettable in every way.
Total running time: ca. 120 minutes.

Anthology and MIX NYC co-present this program devoted to Jerry Tartaglia, a filmmaker who has established himself as an important figure in the realm of avant-garde and Queer cinema, thanks to his writings, his part in restoring and preserving the films of the great Jack Smith, his co-founding of Berks Filmmakers in Pennsylvania (one of the oldest existing micro-cinemas in the U.S.), and, not least, for his own highly accomplished and deeply committed body of film work. For four decades he has been exploring the potential inherent in experimental cinema to open up questions relating to gay identity and culture, producing films that are as radical socially and politically as they are aesthetically.

“Each of my films portrays some aspect of gay consciousness, sexual representation, or self-identity. At the same time, each film utilizes the medium’s unique potential as visual metaphor. I am not very interested in creating narrative forms, which generally are used to show how gay people are supposed to become lavender carbon copies of straight people. Instead, I work with short, personal, experimental forms which explore and celebrate another kind of conscious human identity.” –Jerry Tartaglia

Co-sponsored by MIX NYC, presenter of the NY Queer Experimental Film Festival (www.mixnyc.org); special thanks to Stephen Kent Jusick.

A.I.D.S.C.R.E.A.M. (1988, 6 minutes, 16mm)
A.I.D.S. has become a convenient excuse to desexualize gay men and thereby destroy gay liberation. This experimentally processed film expresses Queer anger and rage at the no-win constructs of straight culture’s refusal to acknowledge the political impact of the disease.

ECCE HOMO (1989, 6 minutes, 16mm)
Interweaves images from Genet’s masterpiece, UN CHANT D’AMOUR, with images from gay male sex films. It asks the viewer to question their role as spectator in looking at ‘pornographic’ images. Is the taboo against gay sex or against seeing gay sex?

REMEMBRANCE (1990, 5 minutes, 16mm)
A short remembrance of growing up gay and looking for identifiable images on the movie screen. The film includes images from Bette Davis’s performance in ALL ABOUT EVE and some home movies.

HOLY MARY (1991, 5 minutes, 16mm)
A collage film which looks at gender, fashion, and the head of the world’s largest gay male sex club. This found-footage piece uses imagery and sounds of Fashion experts alongside images of Pope John Paul II’s first visit to the USA.

1969 (1991, 12 minutes, 16mm)
A personal recollection of a time past, when gay identity was a source of joy rather than of mourning. The film explores the fictional nature of personal history and the unreliability of memory.
“A fearless, aggressive film. A barbed critique of political amnesia.” –Manohla Dargis, VILLAGE VOICE

IS WHAT WAS (2008, 23 minutes, video)
This film began as a visual diary of a visit to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Around the same time I had begun to find vernacular photographs (snapshots) of Nazi soldiers that had been taken by their compatriots…. The contradiction between the Nazi persecution of gay men and the visual evidence in the photographs prompted an inquiry into the context in which sexual identity is formulated.

THE MYSTERY SCHOOL (2009, 24 minutes, 16mm)
This film was created from discarded 16mm educational films dealing with hygiene, religion, reading skills, philosophy, history, and gay sex education.

REMAINS TO BE SEEN (2009, 5 minutes, video)
Featuring Jack Smith, this video is part of the installation SHARDS & REMAINS, which was created for ‘Live Film! Jack Smith!’ at the Arsenal, Berlin, 2009. It is a capsule summary of my experience in restoring the films of Jack Smith for 17 years: litigation, verbal recriminations, broken friendships.
“Please – stay there and restore it!” “What a horrible story.” –Jack Smith

Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

TIME SQUARED
ca. 60 minutes.
In the last number of years Ken Jacobs’s NERVOUS MAGIC LANTERN performances have become a thing of legend. Space, time, and light sculpted, expanded, and exploded. Like nothing you could ever expect, or will see anywhere else.

The performance will be preceded by:
‘a loft’ (2010, 16 minutes, video)
and will be followed by:
THE GREEN WAVE (2011, 5 minutes, video)
Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.

A program of Eternalism 3-D and (partly) Pulfrich 3-D films.
ANOTHER OCCUPATION (2010, 15 minutes, video, b&w/color, silent, Eternalism 3-D)
&
ONTIC ANTICS STARRING LAUREL AND HARDY; BYE, MOLLY
2005, 86 minutes, video, b&w/color, Pulfrich 3-D (last 15 minutes only).
“In the first section of this three-part film, Jacobs radically reworks this original sequence of Laurel and Hardy film, so that they end up flipping and twirling around each other. The second section plays back the original film in its entirety. The viewer suddenly realizes how movement, space, and time have been radically transformed by Jacobs’s creative vision. In the final part of the film, the iconic images of Laurel and Hardy struggle to resolve themselves against the prominence of the digital pixels. The experience is further enhanced by the use of individual dark filters creating a 3-D effect.” –Jon Gartenberg
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

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

All the films in this program are Anaglyph 3-D.
GIFT OF FIRE: NINETEEN (OBSCURE) FRAMES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD (2007, 38 minutes, video, b&w)
Originally presented as an installation in the exhibition Evolution 2007 at Lumen in Leeds, GIFT OF FIRE devotes fetishistic attention to what is probably the first film in history: Louis-Aimé-Augustin Le Prince’s 1888 footage of traffic crossing Leeds Bridge.
“SLOW IS BEAUTY” –RODIN (2009, 51 minutes, video)
Video documentation transformed by Jacobs, who shot a 2004 re-presentation of a 2-D and 3-D shadow play originally from 1974.
AMERICA AT WAR, THE HOME FRONT: FILM OPENING (2011, 30 minutes, video)
Total running time: ca. 125 minutes.

Anthology and MIX NYC co-present this program devoted to Jerry Tartaglia, a filmmaker who has established himself as an important figure in the realm of avant-garde and Queer cinema, thanks to his writings, his part in restoring and preserving the films of the great Jack Smith, his co-founding of Berks Filmmakers in Pennsylvania (one of the oldest existing micro-cinemas in the U.S.), and, not least, for his own highly accomplished and deeply committed body of film work. For four decades he has been exploring the potential inherent in experimental cinema to open up questions relating to gay identity and culture, producing films that are as radical socially and politically as they are aesthetically.

“Each of my films portrays some aspect of gay consciousness, sexual representation, or self-identity. At the same time, each film utilizes the medium’s unique potential as visual metaphor. I am not very interested in creating narrative forms, which generally are used to show how gay people are supposed to become lavender carbon copies of straight people. Instead, I work with short, personal, experimental forms which explore and celebrate another kind of conscious human identity.” –Jerry Tartaglia

Co-sponsored by MIX NYC, presenter of the NY Queer Experimental Film Festival (www.mixnyc.org); special thanks to Stephen Kent Jusick.

A.I.D.S.C.R.E.A.M. (1988, 6 minutes, 16mm)
A.I.D.S. has become a convenient excuse to desexualize gay men and thereby destroy gay liberation. This experimentally processed film expresses Queer anger and rage at the no-win constructs of straight culture’s refusal to acknowledge the political impact of the disease.

ECCE HOMO (1989, 6 minutes, 16mm)
Interweaves images from Genet’s masterpiece, UN CHANT D’AMOUR, with images from gay male sex films. It asks the viewer to question their role as spectator in looking at ‘pornographic’ images. Is the taboo against gay sex or against seeing gay sex?

REMEMBRANCE (1990, 5 minutes, 16mm)
A short remembrance of growing up gay and looking for identifiable images on the movie screen. The film includes images from Bette Davis’s performance in ALL ABOUT EVE and some home movies.

HOLY MARY (1991, 5 minutes, 16mm)
A collage film which looks at gender, fashion, and the head of the world’s largest gay male sex club. This found-footage piece uses imagery and sounds of Fashion experts alongside images of Pope John Paul II’s first visit to the USA.

1969 (1991, 12 minutes, 16mm)
A personal recollection of a time past, when gay identity was a source of joy rather than of mourning. The film explores the fictional nature of personal history and the unreliability of memory.
“A fearless, aggressive film. A barbed critique of political amnesia.” –Manohla Dargis, VILLAGE VOICE

IS WHAT WAS (2008, 23 minutes, video)
This film began as a visual diary of a visit to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Around the same time I had begun to find vernacular photographs (snapshots) of Nazi soldiers that had been taken by their compatriots…. The contradiction between the Nazi persecution of gay men and the visual evidence in the photographs prompted an inquiry into the context in which sexual identity is formulated.

THE MYSTERY SCHOOL (2009, 24 minutes, 16mm)
This film was created from discarded 16mm educational films dealing with hygiene, religion, reading skills, philosophy, history, and gay sex education.

REMAINS TO BE SEEN (2009, 5 minutes, video)
Featuring Jack Smith, this video is part of the installation SHARDS & REMAINS, which was created for ‘Live Film! Jack Smith!’ at the Arsenal, Berlin, 2009. It is a capsule summary of my experience in restoring the films of Jack Smith for 17 years: litigation, verbal recriminations, broken friendships.
“Please – stay there and restore it!” “What a horrible story.” –Jack Smith

Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

TIME SQUARED
ca. 60 minutes.
In the last number of years Ken Jacobs’s NERVOUS MAGIC LANTERN performances have become a thing of legend. Space, time, and light sculpted, expanded, and exploded. Like nothing you could ever expect, or will see anywhere else.

The performance will be preceded by:
‘a loft’ (2010, 16 minutes, video)
and will be followed by:
THE GREEN WAVE (2011, 5 minutes, video)
Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.

All the films in this program are Anaglyph 3-D.
BERKELEY TO SAN FRANCISCO (2009, 25 minutes, video)
DR. TOOTHY'S NEW ENTRANCEWAY (2010, 10 minutes, video)
TOOTHY TWO ((2010, 8 minutes, video)
ELBOW DANCE (2010, 8 minutes, video)
THE NEAR COLLISION (2010, 30 minutes, video)
Total running time: ca. 85 minutes.

ANAGLYPH TOM (TOM WITH PUFFY CHEEKS)
2008, 118 minutes, video, b&w/color. Music by Malcolm Goldstein, Nisi Jacobs, Aida Rose, and Michael Schumacher.
“The real subject…is depth-perception itself. Our beloved performers from the 1905 TOM, TOM, THE PIPER’S SON again encapsulate human absurdity for our amusement but this time in entirely illusionary 3-D. They step from –and back onto – the screen surface. This is cosmic play with all strings pulled.” –K.J.

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Anthony Desiato
MY COMIC SHOP DOCUMENTARY
2010, 87 minutes, video.

DIGITAL FILM ACADEMY SPECIAL PROGRAM
See www.newfilmmakers.com for details.

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Michael Harkins POSTGRADUATE (2010, 1 minute, video)
&
Zachary Raines
FREELOADER
2010, 77 minutes, video.

–Wednesday, May 18, Documentaries at 6:00, Digital Film Academy Program at 7:45, Feature Presentation at 9:45.

SINGLE FRAME, Anthology’s latest series, focuses exclusively on another type of moving image, namely the slide. Each show features an illuminated presentation of slide projection works from artists, collectors, and amateurs. On this calendar we gladly host the eminent Ken Jacobs for our first foray into the third dimension. Jacobs’s digital explorations of the last decade have, at times, returned to older works, many of which were films – but a number of his video works find their origins in slides. Tonight’s presentation, unseen since the mid-80s, brings back a work lost deep in Ken’s sprawling repertoire. For those of us too young to have witnessed many of Ken’s significant slide show and paracinema performances, this is a rare opportunity to finally see an old work in new light.

“SPITTING IMAGE. Haven’t performed this since the lovely Collective for Living Cinema was brutally and wrongly defunded. Damn. I began photographing in stereo many years ago. This performance requires two stereo slide-projectors to rapidly alternate their images with very unexpected results. We see not merely an alternation of pictures but of spaces.”

All the films in this program are Eternalism 3-D.
PUSHCARTS OF ETERNITY STREET (2006, 11 minutes, video, b&w, silent)
THE PUSHCARTS LEAVE ETERNITY STREET (2010, 15 minutes, video, b&w/color, music by David Moss)
AMOROUS INTERLUDES: HIS FAVORITE WIFE, IMPROVED (OR THE VIRTUE OF BAD RECEPTION (2008, 2 minutes, video, b&w)
HANKY PANKY JANUARY 1902 (2007, 1 minute, video, b&w, silent)
NYMPH (2007, 2 minutes, video, silent)
ALONE AT LAST (2008, 2 minutes, video, b&w, silent)
THE DISCOVERY (2008, 5 minutes, video, b&w, silent)
WE ARE CHARMING (2007, 1 minute, video, b&w, silent)
WHAT HAPPENED ON 23RD STREET IN 1901 (2009, 14 minutes, video, b&w, silent)
CAPITALISM: SLAVERY (2006, 3 minutes, video, silent)
CAPITALISM: CHILD LABOR (2006, 14 minutes, video)
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

FAIR AND WHITE (Parts I, II, III, and Extra)
2010, 120 minutes, video, Anaglyph 3-D.
“‘FAIR AND WHITE’ is the name of a line of beauty parlors in Paris largely catering to an African-French clientele. No-one apparently goes berserk seeing the signs. We were visiting Pip Chodorov in the Latin Quarter and found ourselves walking through a concentration of such establishments. I had my 3-D outfit, two small Vado video-cameras mounted side-by-side for the capture of stereo images. There is a law in France against photographing people without their expressed agreement, a decent law, right? And I broke it and I’ll break any such law that forbids memory, corpuscular or mechanical. The movie’s been on our shelf for a year, aging to gather more fragrance. No, the problem was that I originally edited it for ‘free-view’ in which the viewer is expected to cross eyes to overlap two images side-by-side into one 3-D image. When even Fred Worden confessed he couldn’t do it I enlisted my friend Anaglyph to come to the rescue.” –K.J.

Still best known for creating the infamous 1964 “Daisy” presidential campaign ad, Tony Schwartz primarily earned a living in advertising and media consultancy, but his true passion was recording the sounds and people of New York City. He began his career as a sound recordist just as television was supplanting radio, and brandished the tape recorder as others did cameras. From the 1940s on, Schwartz made tens of thousands of recordings, excerpts of which were included in his decades of WNYC radio broadcasts and numerous record albums.
Schwartz embraced the mundane as much as the exotic, and filled his listeners’ ears with the bustling sounds of the city and its inhabitants: a street musician with homemade instruments named “Moondog”, children skipping rope, members of a guild for the blind discussing their favorite sounds, the spontaneous polyrhythms made by a group of teenagers in a basement room that he passed, and the opinions and anecdotes of countless taxi drivers. He made a special point of recording what he called “endangered sounds” before they could no longer be heard, such as the drip of water from an old icebox, or the many horns, bells, and whistles of early automobiles at an exhibit. When he learned that the Lincoln Square area near his own home would be bulldozed to build Lincoln Center, he documented the wide range of culture and expression found there, creating a sound portrait of the neighborhood that provided the setting for “West Side Story.”
In 2007, the Library of Congress acquired the Tony Schwartz Collection and undertook the enormous task of cataloging and preserving it. Tonight’s program will be presented by Matt Barton, Curator of Recorded Sound at the Library of Congress, and will comprise an illustrated audio/visual tour of Schwartz’s work in a field that he largely created.

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

Taking place from May 20-29, the third annual MIGRATING FORMS FESTIVAL will present a ten-day program of premieres, retrospectives, and special programs, bringing artists from a broad range of venues – festivals, biennials, microcinemas, galleries, etc. – into the common context of the cinema.
Complete program information available at migratingforms.org.

Taking place from May 20-29, the third annual MIGRATING FORMS FESTIVAL will present a ten-day program of premieres, retrospectives, and special programs, bringing artists from a broad range of venues – festivals, biennials, microcinemas, galleries, etc. – into the common context of the cinema.
Complete program information available at migratingforms.org.

Distributed by dGenerate Films; special thanks to Ariella Tai, Karin Chien, and Kevin Lee.
“One of the most mesmerizing films I’ve seen in ages.” –Hua Hsu, THE ATLANTIC
This one-of-a-kind news documentary captures, with remarkable freedom, the anarchy, violence, and seething anxiety animating China’s major cities today. As urbanization in China advances at a breakneck pace, Chinese cities teeter on the brink of mayhem. One man dances in the middle of traffic while another tries to jump from a bridge before dozens of onlookers. Pigs run wild on a highway while dignitaries swim in a polluted river. These scenes, unshowable on China’s heavily controlled television networks reflect an emerging underground media, one that can truly capture the ground-level upheaval of Chinese society.
In DISORDER, Huang Weikai takes footage collected from a dozen amateur videographers and weaves them into a unique city symphony of social dysfunction. Huang shatters and reconstructs a world that’s barely comprehensible, though one whose energy is palpable: vibrant, dangerous, and scary.

“Huang inaugurates a new genre: the City Cacophony Film. Taking Canton as his subject, he explodes the Romantic lyricism of Ruttmann and Cavalcanti into oblique shards as China’s third largest city, polarized by tradition and globalization, becomes a study in existential absurdity. A patchwork of amateur footage offers a berserk, scattershot glimpse into the public and private spheres of this modern metropolis. A distant cousin of Godard’s WEEKEND, shot through with Keystone Kops, discontented citizens, and a renegade pig, DISORDER is an original, terrifying portrait of a society on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” –Michael Chaiken, FILM COMMENT

Taking place from May 20-29, the third annual MIGRATING FORMS FESTIVAL will present a ten-day program of premieres, retrospectives, and special programs, bringing artists from a broad range of venues – festivals, biennials, microcinemas, galleries, etc. – into the common context of the cinema.
Complete program information available at migratingforms.org.

Distributed by dGenerate Films; special thanks to Ariella Tai, Karin Chien, and Kevin Lee.
“One of the most mesmerizing films I’ve seen in ages.” –Hua Hsu, THE ATLANTIC
This one-of-a-kind news documentary captures, with remarkable freedom, the anarchy, violence, and seething anxiety animating China’s major cities today. As urbanization in China advances at a breakneck pace, Chinese cities teeter on the brink of mayhem. One man dances in the middle of traffic while another tries to jump from a bridge before dozens of onlookers. Pigs run wild on a highway while dignitaries swim in a polluted river. These scenes, unshowable on China’s heavily controlled television networks reflect an emerging underground media, one that can truly capture the ground-level upheaval of Chinese society.
In DISORDER, Huang Weikai takes footage collected from a dozen amateur videographers and weaves them into a unique city symphony of social dysfunction. Huang shatters and reconstructs a world that’s barely comprehensible, though one whose energy is palpable: vibrant, dangerous, and scary.

“Huang inaugurates a new genre: the City Cacophony Film. Taking Canton as his subject, he explodes the Romantic lyricism of Ruttmann and Cavalcanti into oblique shards as China’s third largest city, polarized by tradition and globalization, becomes a study in existential absurdity. A patchwork of amateur footage offers a berserk, scattershot glimpse into the public and private spheres of this modern metropolis. A distant cousin of Godard’s WEEKEND, shot through with Keystone Kops, discontented citizens, and a renegade pig, DISORDER is an original, terrifying portrait of a society on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” –Michael Chaiken, FILM COMMENT

Taking place from May 20-29, the third annual MIGRATING FORMS FESTIVAL will present a ten-day program of premieres, retrospectives, and special programs, bringing artists from a broad range of venues – festivals, biennials, microcinemas, galleries, etc. – into the common context of the cinema.
Complete program information available at migratingforms.org.

Taking place from May 20-29, the third annual MIGRATING FORMS FESTIVAL will present a ten-day program of premieres, retrospectives, and special programs, bringing artists from a broad range of venues – festivals, biennials, microcinemas, galleries, etc. – into the common context of the cinema.
Complete program information available at migratingforms.org.

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Hedvika Havackova IMAGINEER: A SORT OF ROAD MOVIE (2010, 18 minutes, video)
A portrait of Czech artist Petr Nikl.
&
Bert Shapiro
SPEAKING FOR MYSELF
2010, 70 minutes, video.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Zachary Honea THE ROOT AND THE OFFSPRING (2010, 12 minutes, video)
Jhoe Davis A STRANGE CONFESSION (2010, 14 minutes, video)
Matt Porter MORE PERFECT UNION (2010, 30 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Andrew Malecki IN FRAME (2010, 22 minutes, 35mm)
&
Derek Stonebarger
I. M. CARAVAGGIO
2010, 93 minutes, video.

–Wednesday, May 25, Documentaries at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:45, Feature Presentation at 9:00.

Taking place from May 20-29, the third annual MIGRATING FORMS FESTIVAL will present a ten-day program of premieres, retrospectives, and special programs, bringing artists from a broad range of venues – festivals, biennials, microcinemas, galleries, etc. – into the common context of the cinema.
Complete program information available at migratingforms.org.

Taking place from May 20-29, the third annual MIGRATING FORMS FESTIVAL will present a ten-day program of premieres, retrospectives, and special programs, bringing artists from a broad range of venues – festivals, biennials, microcinemas, galleries, etc. – into the common context of the cinema.
Complete program information available at migratingforms.org.

EARLY ABSTRACTIONS (1941-57, 23 min, 16mm) Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
MIRROR ANIMATIONS (extended 1979 version, 11 min, 35mm) NEW PRINT!
LATE SUPERIMPOSITIONS (1964, 28 min, 16mm)
OZ, THE TIN WOODMAN’S DREAM (1967, 15 min, 35mm)
“My cinematic excreta is of four varieties: – batiked animations made directly on film between 1939 and 1946; optically printed non-objective studies composed around 1950; semi-realistic animated collages made as part of my alchemical labors of 1957 to 1962; and chronologically super-imposed photographs of actualities formed since the latter year. All these works have been organized in specific patterns derived from the interlocking beats of the respiration, the heart and the EEG Alpha component and should be observed together in order, or not at all, for they are valuable works, works that will forever abide – they made me gray.” –Harry Smith
Total running time: ca. 80 min.

Taking place from May 20-29, the third annual MIGRATING FORMS FESTIVAL will present a ten-day program of premieres, retrospectives, and special programs, bringing artists from a broad range of venues – festivals, biennials, microcinemas, galleries, etc. – into the common context of the cinema.
Complete program information available at migratingforms.org.

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

On the occasion of filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Exhibition and Residency at the New Museum this month, New York City will be graced with a very rare appearance by avant-garde master Bruce Baillie, who Apichatpong has long proclaimed as a crucial influence on his own remarkable films.
Thanks to Apichatpong’s devotion to his work, Baillie will be appearing on Thursday, May 26 at the New Museum, for a screening of his seminal, feature-length QUICK BILLY (1967-70). And the next evening, on Friday, May 27 at 9:00pm, we will welcome him here at Anthology Film Archives, where he will present a selection of his masterful short films. Anthology has been passionately committed to Bruce Baillie’s work since our founding 40 years ago – several of his films screen annually as part of our Essential Cinema Repertory collection – and we are overjoyed to host him here for the first time in many a moon!

Program details:
TO PARSIFAL (1963, 16 minutes, 16mm)
MASS FOR THE DAKOTA SIOUX (1964, 20 minutes, 16mm)
YELLOW HORSE (1965, 8 minutes, 16mm)
TUNG (1966, 6 minutes, 16mm)
CASTRO STREET (1966, 10 minutes, 16mm)
ALL MY LIFE (1966, 3 minutes, 16mm)
STILL LIFE (1966, 2 minutes, 16mm)
ROSLYN ROMANCE (IS IT REALLY TRUE?) (1978, 17 minutes, 16mm)

Presented in conjunction with the New Museum’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul Exhibition and Residency, and the Asia Society’s “Blissfully Thai” film series:

New Museum:
May 19-July 3, 2011
“Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Primitive” will be the first New York exhibition devoted to the work of the internationally acclaimed Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. PRIMITIVE (2009)—which is having its American debut at the New Museum—is his most ambitious project to date: a multi-platform work consisting of an installation of seven videos and related pieces.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Weerasethakul will also be in residency at the New Museum, participating in a series of public screenings and conversations.
For more information, please visit: http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/439/apichatpong_weerasethakul_primitive

Asia Society:
“Blissfully Thai”
May 13-June 17, 2011
The emergence of some of the world’s most original cinematic voices since the late 90s, notably Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, and Wisit Sasanatieng, has put Thai cinema on the international map. This series presents works made since 2000 by six filmmakers, all born in the 60s and 70s, and provides New York audiences with a rare opportunity to sample a diverse group of films from Thailand. Several of the programs will attended by the directors and cast.
For more information, please visit: http://asiasociety.org/arts-culture/film/film-series-blissfully-thai

Taking place from May 20-29, the third annual MIGRATING FORMS FESTIVAL will present a ten-day program of premieres, retrospectives, and special programs, bringing artists from a broad range of venues – festivals, biennials, microcinemas, galleries, etc. – into the common context of the cinema.
Complete program information available at migratingforms.org.

Shown with two intermissions.

“Most simply described, Tarr’s masterpiece – adapted from a much esteemed, if still untranslated, novel by László Krasznahorkai – is a bleakly comic allegory of social disintegration on the muddy puszta. Set on an entropic collective farm during the last years of Hungarian Communism, it’s a mordant, characteristically Eastern European tale of hapless peasants and charismatic swindlers.
“[It] is essentially experiential – meant to be seen in a single viewing. Even so, two hour-long chunks would be remarkable movies in their own right. In one, a fat, drunken doctor spies on his neighbors, taking notes like a character in an Alain Robbe-Grillet novel, then runs out of booze, and makes an epic trek through torrential rain to get another bottle. In the other, a 10-year-old girl poisons a cat and then herself. Around halfway through, it becomes apparent that, despite its minimal montage, SÁTÁNTANGÓ is an exercise in parallel action – much of what happens happens simultaneously.
“Despair has never been more voluptuously precise. SÁTÁNTANGÓ has cast its spell on cineastes as varied as the late Susan Sontag and the rejuvenated Gus Van Sant. If you have a day to devote to it, the same might happen to you.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

“Tonic, voluptuous, funny and horrifying, SÁTÁNTANGÓ is that rare thing in contemporary cinema: an authentic event.” –James Quandt, CINEMATHEQUE ONTARIO

Taking place from May 20-29, the third annual MIGRATING FORMS FESTIVAL will present a ten-day program of premieres, retrospectives, and special programs, bringing artists from a broad range of venues – festivals, biennials, microcinemas, galleries, etc. – into the common context of the cinema.
Complete program information available at migratingforms.org.

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

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

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.
Screening details to be announced – please visit: www.nywift.org for program updates.