Film Screenings / Programs / Series
MOTION(LESS) PICTURES
February 28 – March 4
February 28-March 4, 2014
The concept of motion is, by most estimates, one of the foundational elements in any definition of the cinema, the quality that fundamentally distinguishes it from photography, the medium out of which it was born. “Motion pictures”, “movies”: the idea of motion as intrinsic to the medium is inscribed even within the names by which it’s most popularly known. But this conviction that motion is a sine qua non of the “motion picture” has often been challenged by filmmakers, especially within the realm of avant-garde or experimental cinema. In fact, “experimental films” most fully live up to their name when systematically testing the limits of the medium, searching for the cinema’s essence by stripping away some of its most apparently indispensible qualities. And one of the most radical ways filmmakers have tested these limits is by making films using, or even constructed entirely from, still images.
Culling a host of films that investigate the cinematic use of still images, this series demonstrates the remarkably multifarious ways they can be appropriated by cinema – including feature narratives from sci-fi to comedy, essay films, collage works, structuralist experiments, and radical newsreels – and shows how paradoxically cinematic the results can be. Or perhaps not so paradoxically: calling attention to the fact that all movies are, after all, nothing more than a collection of still images, the films in this series unmask the hidden stillness underlying the cinematic illusion of motion.
At once questioning conventional ideas about filmmaking and exploring the rich and complex relationship between the mediums of photography and cinema, these exhilaratingly original, often witty, and ceaselessly inventive works are wondrous demonstrations of the cinema’s ever-surprising versatility.
Special thanks to James Benning, Steve Cossman, Robert Downey Sr., Ken Jacobs, Peter Bo Rappmund, Lucy Raven, Brian Belovarac (Janus Films), Rebecca Cleman (Electronic Arts Intermix), Jonathan Howell (New Yorker), Denah Johnston (Canyon Cinema), Elena Rossi-Snook (New York Public Library), Regina Schlagnitweit & Markus Wessolowski (Austrian Film Museum), MM Serra (Film-Makers’ Coop), Mark Toscano (Academy Film Archive), George Watson (BFI), and Travis Wilkerson.
PROGRAM 1:
Chris Marker
LA JETÉE
1962, 28 min, 35mm, b&w. In French with English subtitles. Print courtesy of the British Film Institute.
Perhaps the most renowned of all “motionless pictures,” Chris Marker’s legendary film is a science-fiction masterpiece constructed almost entirely from still images. Far from a gimmick, its form dovetails perfectly with its themes: LA JETÉE is a haunting investigation of memory, time, and loss, and its use of still images beautifully conveys the elusive, irrevocable nature of remembered experience.
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Robert Downey Sr.
CHAFED ELBOWS
1966, 57 min, 35mm, b&w/color
Hapless Walter Dinsmore undergoes his annual November breakdown at the 1954 World’s Fair, has a love affair with his mother, recollects his hysterectomy operation, impersonates a cop, is sold as a piece of living art, goes to heaven, and becomes the singer in a rock band. But not necessarily in that order. A manic comedy made for a whopping $25,000, CHAFED ELBOWS was a commercial success that raised the flag of the underground film scene. Downey photographed most of the movie with a still 35mm camera and had the film processed at Walgreens. These pictures were animated alongside a few live-action scenes and almost all the dialogue was dubbed to rather hilarious effect.
Fri, Feb 28 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 2:
BOTH FILMMAKERS IN PERSON!
Both Lucy Raven’s CHINA TOWN and Peter Bo Rappmund’s work exist at the very junction of photography and the cinema, sharing an approach whereby what appears at first to be motion picture footage is in fact photographed frame-by-frame. For CHINA TOWN, which documents the global production of copper, following the raw material from the open-pit copper mines of Nevada to China where it’s transformed into electrical wire, Raven edited together more than 7,000 photographs. Rappmund uses a nearly identical approach – he shoots his works single frame using a DSLR camera and an intervalometer, using various methods to achieve a quality of ‘animation’ – to create works that are similarly concerned with the interaction between civilization and natural landscapes. In VULGAR FRACTIONS, he documents seven intersections along the border of Nebraska.
Lucy Raven
CHINA TOWN
2009, 51.5 min, digital
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Peter Bo Rappmund
VULGAR FRACTIONS
2011, 27 min, digital
Sat, Mar 1 at 5:30.
PROGRAM 3:
Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin
LETTER TO JANE
1972, 52 min, 16mm, b&w. Print courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
In their infamous film, Godard and Gorin subject a famous image of Jane Fonda, taken during a trip to Hanoi, to a brilliantly sustained and penetrating political analysis. A tour de force in which a single frame generates more ideas, insights, and drama than most feature films.
John Baldessari THE MEANING OF VARIOUS NEWS PHOTOS TO ED HENDERSON 1973, 15 min, digital, b&w
Baldessari introduces eight news photos to Ed Henderson – ranging in subject matter from geese at the zoo to an accidental electrocution – and asks him to identify them. Henderson’s associative responses suggest the projection of unconscious desires and fears onto these arbitrary images, which are removed from their original contexts.
Santiago Alvarez LBJ 1968, 18 min, 16mm-to-digital, b&w
One of the key works of Cuban filmmaker Santiago Alvarez, a master of short-form political cinema who made dozens of films using still images, famously declaring, ‘Give me two photos, music, and a moviola, and I’ll give you a movie.’
Total running time: ca. 90 min.
Sat, Mar 1 at 7:45.
PROGRAM 4:
James Benning
AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST AND FOUND)
1984, 55 min, 16mm-to-35mm. Restored print courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum.
“As the soundtrack unfolds a collage of popular songs (Peggy Lee, Charlie Rich, Bob Dylan…) and public speeches recorded from 1954 to 1976 (McCarthy hearings, radio announcement of the Kennedy assassination, an address by Malcolm X…), the screen is filled with images of baseball cards spanning the career of Hank Aaron, while at the bottom Benning has optically printed handwritten excerpts of the diary of Arthur Bremer, who shot Governor Wallace in 1972, faithfully reproducing its idiosyncrasies and misspellings. Each of these elements defines its own imaginary landscape. The soundtrack suggests an ideological ‘map’ of America at the time. The visuals imply a gap between a successful home run champion and a (failed) white drifter-turned-assassin, one hitting the American dream and the other missing it.” – Bérénice Reynaud, FILM COMMENT
Sun, Mar 2 at 6:30.
PROGRAM 5:
The films in this program all find the filmmakers utilizing or commenting on particular still photographs. In Fisher’s wittily self-reflexive film, the only images are a sequence of nine Polaroids that show Fisher and the crew making the film itself. Similarly, in PASADENA FREEWAY STILLS, Beydler holds up a succession of still images, which gradually merge with the film we’re watching. Snow’s piece is constructed from still photographs of potential sites for a monument in Montreal, while in SUBJECT Feingold conceals different parts of a photograph with his hands, so that the whole is revealed piecemeal but never all at once. And in THE MOVIE SET, Ault films a still frame from Griffith’s INTOLERANCE with the same model of 35mm Pathe camera used to shoot the original film.
Morgan Fisher PRODUCTION STILLS 1970, 11 min, 16mm
Gary Beydler PASADENA FREEWAY STILLS 1974, 6 min, 16mm
Michael Snow ONE SECOND IN MONTREAL 1969, 26 min, 16mm, b&w
Ken Feingold SUBJECT 1974, 5.5 min, 16mm
William Ault THE MOVIE SET 1964, 10 min, 16mm, b&w
Total running time: ca. 65 min.
Sun, Mar 2 at 8:00.
PROGRAM 6:
Hollis Frampton
HAPAX LEGOMENA I: (nostalgia)
1971, 36 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
“The time it takes for a photograph to burn (and thus confirm its two-dimensionality) becomes the clock within the film, while Frampton plays the critic, asynchronously glossing, explicating, narrating, mythologizing his earlier art, and his earlier life, as he commits them both to the fire of a labyrinthine structure.” –P. Adams Sitney
Nancy Holt UNDERSCAN 1974, 9.5 min, digital, b&w
Holt presents her Aunt Ethel’s home in New Bedford, MA, by means of still images and excerpts from letters to the artist from her aunt. Holt pays particular attention to her aunt’s poignant story of aging, altering the images by ‘underscanning’ them, building an intrinsic limitation into the tape: the compression of time and personal history represented by the images and narrative.
Lynda Benglis DOCUMENT 1972, 6 min, digital, b&w
With Benglis standing in front of a photograph of herself, which is then affixed to a monitor bearing her image, the notion of ‘original’ is complicated, making the viewer acutely aware of the layers of self-images and layers of ‘self’ that are simultaneously presented.
Total running time: ca. 60 min.
Mon, Mar 3 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 7:
These films subject their found images – whether postcards (Sonbert and Fruhauf), ViewMaster cells (Cossman), or stereographic photos (Stark and Jacobs) – to rapid editing, juxtapositions, or other manipulations that bring the films near to animation or otherwise transform the original images in ways that expand our perception and blur the line between stillness and motion.
Jeff Scher POSTCARDS FROM WARREN 1998, 3 min, 16mm
Siegfried A. Fruhauf MOUNTAIN TRIP / HOEHENRAUSCH 1999, 4 min, 16mm, b&w
Steve Cossman TUSSLEMUSCLE 2007-09, 4 min, 16mm
Scott Stark SATRAPY 1988, 13 min, 16mm
Scott Stark ANGEL BEACH 2001, 18 min, 16mm, silent
Ken Jacobs CAPITALISM: SLAVERY 2006, 3 min, digital, b&w
Ken Jacobs CAPITALISM: CHILD LABOR 2006, 14 min, digital
Ken Jacobs NYMPH 2007, 2 min, digital, silent
Ken Jacobs THE DAY WAS A SCORCHER 2009, 8 min, digital, silent
Total running time: ca. 75 min.
Tues, Mar 4 at 7:30.
