INDEPENDENT FILM AND VIDEO PROGRAMS FALL 1998 SCHEDULE
Between the months of October and June, The Department of Film and Video presents the following series of independent film and video work:
Cineprobe. A forum for avant-garde filmmakers to present and discuss their work.
Video Viewpoints. A forum for video artists to present and discuss their work.
New Documentaries. Independently made films and videos with an emphasis on social and political issues and on the arts. Directors often present.
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films. A two-year retrospective of small-gauge films, from the early practitioners of 8mm to artists currently working, ongoing through May 2000. Directors often present.
The fall 1998 schedule for these series is listed below. For ticket information, please see the final page of this release. Please note that all events are subject to change. Members of the public should call 212.708.9400 to confirm.
Thursday, October 1 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films
Conversions. 1971. USA. Vito Acconci. App. 30 min.
Green. 1988. USA. Tom Rhoads. 36 min.
The Pittsburgh Trilogy Part 2: Paranormal Intelligence. 1983. USA. Peggy Ahwesh. App. 10 min.
On-camera subjects confront viewers head-on, exploring their hidden sexual/gender sides. In Conversions, Acconci gradually adjusts the maleness of his naked body into its female counterpart through the gothic heat of a black and white candle; in Green, Rhoads (a. k. a. Luther Price) creates a drug-imbued landscape with mysterious figures enacting trance-like activities; and Ahwesh's Paranormal Intelligence offers a candid verité view of bohemian life and fringe characters in a Pittsburgh loft. Total running time 76 min.
Thursday, October 1 at 6:30 and Friday, October 2 at 3:00
New Documentaries
Soldiers Without Swords--The Black Press. 1997. USA. Stanley Nelson. This film provides the first in-depth examination of the history of African American newspapers from the 1830s to the present. The men and women of the Black press provided a voice for Black America, and Nelson's film reveals their stories. 45 min. Filmmaker present on
October 1.
Monday, October 5 at 6:30
Video Viewpoints
Vera Frenkel. Toronto-based artist Vera Frenkel's videotapes and installations explore the forces at work in human migration, the learning and unlearning of cultural memory through the experience of displacement and deracination, the bureaucratization of everyday life, and the power of absence. Frenkel, one of Canada's video pioneers, will present a survey of her work, including Censored: The Business of Frightened Desires (1987), This is Your Messiah Speaking (1990), Body Missing (1994), and a work-in-progress, The Institute: or What We Do for Love.
Thursday, October 8 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films
One-person presentation: Peggy Ahwesh.
The Fragments Project. 1984-94. USA. App. 45 min.
From Romance to Ritual. 1985. USA. 20 min.
One of the strongest advocates and most innovative users of low-tech aesthetics, Ahwesh unflinchingly examines the split between social convention and individual experience. By documenting people in their own habitats, her home-movie strategies resonate on levels of language, gender, difference, and unguarded behavior, often contrasting adults' and children's experiences, as in From Romance to Ritual, or, as in The Fragments Project, allowing the subjects their own voices.
Thursday, October 8 at 6:30 and Friday, October 9 at 3:00
Another Brother. USA. Tami Gold. 1998. Fraught with heroism and tragedy, Another Brother tells the story of Clarence Fitch and explores a remarkable range of issues--racism, the Black civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and its aftermath, the scourge of drugs, and finally the AIDS crisis. Presented as a part of Reversal to Digital: Third World Newsreel at Thirty (October 2-25, 1998). 51 min. Filmmaker present on October 8.
Thursday, October 15 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films
Shades and Drumbeats. 1964. USA. Andrew Meyer. 25 min.
Anita Needs Me. 1963. USA. George Kuchar. 15 min.
Erotic Trilogy. 1970-1980. Robert Huot. 13 min.
A Place Called Lovely. 1991. USA. Sadie Benning. 14 min.
Me and Joe. 1994. USA. Stuart Sherman. 4 min.
Five short works in which compulsive fantasies are played out, sometimes revealing secret desires, sometimes responding to the real. The 1960s community is revisited as a site of gay lust via Meyer's spontaneous 8mm camera-work, while Kuchar's community is the extended family of a Bronx apartment that performs in his early melodramas with reckless abandon. The darker hues of Huot's fetish and fantasy sexual play-acting, as well as Sherman's video of an obsessive crush, move closer to Benning's devastating, understated account in A Place Called Lovely of sexuality gone awry and community as unsafe. Total running time 61 min.
Thursday, October 15 at 6:30 and Friday, October 16 at 3:00
New Documentaries
Pop. USA. Joel Meyerowitz. 1998.
Pop is a portrait of Hy Meyerowitz, a streetwise and funny eighty-seven-year-old who remains optimistic about life in the face of old age and Alzheimer's Disease. Told in the form of an episodic narrative, the film recounts a two-week road trip, a great adventure, shared by Hy, his son Joel, and his grandson Sasha. 79 min.
Monday, October 19 at 6:30
Cineprobe
For Daniel. 1996. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. For Daniel is composed of images of Gehr's son Daniel, which were shot over a period of four years. Beginning right after Daniel's birth and shot very much in the tradition of early cinema as well as home movies, the film traces the child's increasing consciousness and mobility. 72 min. Filmmaker present.
Thursday, October 22 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films
Presentation by George and Mike Kuchar:
Tootsies in Autumn. 1963. USA. George and Mike Kuchar. 10 min.
A Town Called Tempest. 1961. USA. George and Mike Kuchar. 30 min.
Lust for Ecstasy. 1963. USA. George and Mike Kuchar. 45 min.
This program is a tribute to George and Mike Kuchar, whose regular 8mm home-movie costume-drama epics, beginning in 1957, were among the earliest 8mm films made by artists who would continue making independent films through the 1960s to the current day. Lurid, lush, and always hilarious, the Kuchar brothers' films anticipated the home-spun melodramas of such later directors as John Waters and Andy Warhol, at once reveling in and lampooning the overwrought stylistics of Hollywood movies. Total running time 85 min.
Thursday, October 22 at 6:30 and Friday, October 23 at 3:00
New Documentaries
El dia que me quieras (The Day You'll Love Me). 1997. USA. Leandro Katz. A non-narrative film investigating death and the power of photography, El dia que me quieras is a meditation on the last picture taken of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, as he lay dead on a table surrounded by his captors in Bolivia in 1967. This evocative documentary analyzes the elements of the photograph, taken by photojournalist Freddy Alborta, and its emotional impact, in an investigation of cinematic representation and reality. 30 min. Filmmaker present on October 22.
Monday, October 26 at 6:30
Cineprobe
Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance. 1998. USA. Catherine Gund. Gund's documentary examines the life and work of the controversial performance artist Ron Athey and his stage company, interweaving at-home verité footage and interviews with scenes from Athey's unsettling touring shows. 90 min. Filmmaker present.
Thursday, October 29 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films
Barbara Ward Will Never Die. 1969. USA. Barbara Hammer. 3 min.
Ceci n'est pas. 1996-97. USA. Jeanne Liotta. 7 min.
The Dervish Machine. 1992. USA. Bradley Eros and Jeanne Liotta. 10 min.
Goodbye 42nd Street. 1983. USA. Richard Kern. 6 min.
Letters to Dad. 1979. USA. Beth and Scott B. 15 min.
Fuck Face. 1986. USA. Julie Murray. 10 min.
This program confronts the viewer with the physicality of human existence--sometimes in juxtaposition with ideals, sometimes in relation to memory and death. Stylistically the selection ranges from exquisitely crafted elegiac meditations to in-your-face confrontations with corporeality. Much of the power of these films derives from the controlled, clear-eyed manner with which unsettling sights are presented, forcing us to face our own mortality. Total running time 41 min.
Thursday, October 29 at 6:30 and Friday, October 30 at 3:00
New Documentaries
Aldous Huxley: The Gravity of Light. 1997. Canada. Oliver Hockenhull. An experimental documentary about the great English novelist, essayist, social prophet, and proponent of psychedelic drugs Aldous Huxley. The documentary takes a look back at the author of Brave New World, one of the century's most modern thinkers. 1997. 70 min. Filmmaker present October 29.
Monday November 2 at 6:30
Video Viewpoints
Paul McCarthy. Since the late 1960s, McCarthy has been active in performance, video, and installation work, creating raw, powerful and often frenzied vignettes of Beckett-like absurdity that unveil primeval instincts and taboo gestures. Incorporating such foodstuffs as mayonnaise and hamburger meat and items including stuffed animals and dolls as "paint" and props, McCarthy's art is irreverent and transgressive. His performances have involved impersonations, transsexuality, and parodies drawn from popular culture.
Thursday, November 5 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films
Don't Hang Up the Phone, I'm Freezing. 1993. USA. Stuart Sherman. 4 min.
In the Flesh. 1982. USA. Willie Varela. 3 min.
Low Resolution TV. 1986. USA. Scott Stark. 7 min.
Apologies. 1990. USA. Anne Robertson. 17 min.
Confidential. 1970-80. USA. Joe Gibbons. 50 min.
This evening's film and video makers exploit the private spaces 8mm cameras can create by putting themselves directly into the picture. Sherman and Gibbons position viewers as silent witnesses of self-revealing staged performances; Varela and Stark play with formal qualities of 8mm space, using themselves and their homes as catalysts; and Robertson pushes the 8mm camera-as-confessor to its limits through a series of defiantly frank personal revelations. Total running time app. 81 min.
Thursday, November 5 at 6:30 and Friday, November 6 at 3:00
New Documentaries
O Night Without Objects, A Trilogy. USA. Jeanne C. Finley and John H. Muse. 1998. Three stories--The Adventures of Blacky, Based on a Story, and Time Bomb--explore religious, political, and therapeutic conversion experiences and their relationship to technology, fear, and families. 60 mins. Videomaker Jeanne C. Finley present on November 5.
Monday, November 9 at 6:30
Cineprobe
Persistence. 1997. USA. Directed by Daniel Eisenberg. Shot in Berlin shortly after German reunification, Persistence is a multilayered montage investigating German history. Eisenberg's film combines various kinds of cinematic observation to create a personal portrait reflecting the drastic changes the German capital is undergoing. 86 min.
Thursday, November 12 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films
One-person presentation: Anne Robertson.
Selections from Five Year Diary (1981- ). On November 3, 1981, Anne Charlotte Robertson began her Five Year Diary, an ongoing documentation and examination of her life, now incorporating more than forty hours of material arranged in chronological reels. The audiotaped diary entries and live narration that accompany the film provide both immediate and more reflexive commentary on her experience of everyday life. Anne Robertson is present to screen reels 31 and 81 of Five Year Diary and two new films, Melon Patches and Alien Corn. Total screening time approximately 90 min.
Thursday, November 12 at 6:30 and Friday, November 13 at 3:00
New Documentaries
Da habt ihr mein Leben: Marieluise--Kind von Golzow (Here is My Life: Marieluise--Child of Golzow). 1997. Germany. Directed by Barbara Junge and Winifred Junge. For more than thirty years, the Junges' camera has followed the life of Marieluise, one "destiny" among the others they filmed in the small town of Golzow in East Germany. The heroine, now forty-two, is asked to review her life and to comment on how she has changed. The film includes many sequences that were impossible to show under the GDR regime. This film is shown as a part of Recent Films from Germany. 141 min. Filmmaker present.
Monday, November 16 at 6:30
Video Viewpoints
Burt Barr. New York-based artist Burt Barr is known for his spare and evocative videos that are exhibited as large video projections. His work uses the temporality of video to explore notions of time, human behavior, and interiority. Obsession, repetition, seduction, monotony, and insularity are some of his recurring themes. Barr will discuss and show excerpts from a selection of his installations and single-channel videos made from the early 1980s to the present, including Slo Mo (1997), Bob and Evelyn (1996), Citizen (1996), and The Pool (1995).
Thursday, November 19 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films
Near Windows. 1997. USA. Ken Paul Rosenthal3. 15 min.
Carrie at Still. 1997. USA. Stom Sogo. 27 min.
1997B (Departure). 1997. USA. Steve Polta. 8 min.
Covered Bridge. 1991. USA. Jamie Harrar. 4 min.
'elf. 1991. USA. Jamie Harrar. 4 min.
Cecil in Her Garden. 1977. USA. Adele Friedman. 1 min.
Doug and His Plants. 1977-82. USA. Adele Friedman. 1 min.
Chris in the L.A. Night. 1977-82. USA. Adele Friedman. 1 min.
The Boris Spassky High Frequency Comb. 1993. USA. Michael Johnsen. 8 min.
Pupae Unison Move. 1993. USA. Michael Johnsen. 1 min.
Snow Brakes Pope. 1993. USA. Michael Johnsen. 1 min.
This program includes eleven short, visually concentrated film studies drawing on subjects from the filmmakers' lives, ranging from portraits of self (Harrar), friends (Friedman and Sogo), places (Harrar and Polta), and daily life (Rosenthal) to visions of the microcosmic world of organisms invisible to the naked eye (Johnson). Total running time app. 71 min.
Thursday, November 19 at 6:30 and Friday, November 20 at 3:00
New Documentaries
Auf der Kippe (Wasteland). Romania/Germany. Andrei Schwartz. 1997. This documentary depicts life in and around Dallas, a gypsy settlement on the edge of the vast rubbish dump in Cluj, Romania, named by its residents after the American television series. 75 min.
Monday, November 30 at 6:30
Cineprobe
Troika. 1998. USA. Written and directed by Jennifer Montgomery. Cinematography by Mark Serman, Horacio Marquinez, and Matthew Buckingham. With Jenny Bass, Lev Shekhtman, Marina Shterenberg, Valerie Manenti, and Vitali Baganov. Montgomery's new feature contrasts scenes from two seemingly different situations. By intercutting an interview with right-wing demagogue Vladimir Zhirinovsky and a quarrel between the interviewer and her lesbian lover, she challenges the viewer to find parallels between the political and the private. 96 min. Filmmaker present.
Thursday, December 3 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films
The Filmers Almanac (1988). Presented by Owen O'Toole. Benjamin Franklin's Almanac predicted the weather for each day of the year; The Filmers Almanac shows you a movie of it. By 1988 Owen O'Toole had collected 120 films by 120 filmmakers, each filmed during the course of one day. An international group of makers insures that every film is as singular as the day it documents. 80 min.
Thursday, December 3 at 6:30 and Friday, December 4 at 3:00
New Documentaries
Kisangani Diary. 1997. Austria/France. Hurbert Sauber. This timely documentary follows a UN mercy mission in the Kisangani area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The mission has taken over an old railroad train in order to take supplies to 80,000 Hutu refugees who are barely surviving deep in the jungle. The government army from Kinshasa considers the refugees to be the enemy and carries out a policy of extermination against them. 45 min.
Monday, December 7 at 6:30
Video Viewpoints
Charles Atlas. For more than twenty-five years Atlas has explored the relationship between video and dance performance in "videodance" tapes, as well as in feature films, television, installation, and live video performance. Since his early innovative work, Atlas has continued to expand and find dance in new places and in collaborations. He imaginatively probes the underlying motives of movement, shooting in various locations such as studios, streets, nightclubs, parks, and airports. This will be the New York premiere of several new works, including Teach (1998).
Thursday, December 10 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films
Fragment. 1982-85. USA. Ellen Gaine. 14 min.
Begonia Room. 1985-86. USA. Michael Mideke. 3 min.
Walk. 1985-86. Michael Mideke. 3 min.
Train Ride. 1985-86. Michael Mideke. 3 min.
Unconscious London Strata. 1982. USA. Stan Brakhage. 23 min.
17 Reasons Why. 1985-97. Nathaniel Dorsky. USA. 19 min.
Details of daily life are seen and transformed through movie magic into visually and emotionally charged plays of light: Gaine's Fragment is a rhapsody of water waves; Mideke's three short camera rolls create layered tapestries of different movements within cinematic space; Brakhage's Unconscious London Strata is a 16mm record of the filmmaker's 8mm responses to the dis-ease and dislocation of finding himself on London's streets; and Nathaniel Dorsky's 17 Reasons Why is a dancing interplay of four 8mm images focusing on city-street objects and activities. Total running time app. 65 min.
Thursday, December 10 at 6:30 and Friday, December 11 at 3:00
New Documentaries
Out of Sight Out of Mind. USA. Beth B. 1995. A short experimental piece that looks at the relationship between violence and the media. 6 min.
Voices Unheard. 1997. USA. Directed by Beth B. This investigative documentary explores juvenile sex offenders. Caught in a cycle of violence, and often themselves victims of abuse, these teenagers repeatedly act out the same behavior that was unleashed on them. The film interviews the offenders, the victims, and those who run institutions that encourage early detection and treatment for adolescent sex offenders as well as for older adults. 58 minutes. Videomaker present.
Monday, December 14 at 6:30
Cineprobe
Jeff Scher. Scher presents a selection of his short films, from the miniature city symphony NYC (1976) through the world premiere of BANG-BANG (1998). His films have continuously explored the nature of sequential frame collision with a maximalist pallete of color and form to achieve a uniquely lyrical cinematic idiom.
Thursday, December 17 at 6:00
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm
Once Removed.
Once Removed is a program of mostly 9.5mm films exploring the particular and specific aesthetic of the format; guest curated by Mark McElhattan, teacher and independent curator.
Thursday, December 17 at 6:30 and Friday, December 18 at 3:00
New Documentaries
My America . . . or Honk if You Love Buddha. USA. Renee Tajima-Pena. 1997. Set amidst a new subculture of rappers, debutantes, and freedom fighters, this intoxicating and irreverent feature-length road documentary chronicles the filmmaker's cross-country odyssey in search of Asian-Americans. 87 min.
Scheduling and Admission
Cineprobe and Video Viewpoints programs are held on alternate Mondays at 6:30 p.m.
New Documentaries programs take place on Thursday evening at 6:30 p.m. and the following Friday afternoon at 3:00 p.m.
Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films screens on Thursdays at 6:00 pm in the Museum's Time Warner Screening Room on the fifth floor. Seating is limited.
Ticket for independent film and video programs are available on the day of each program on a first-come, first served basis and are included in the price of admission to the Museum. General admission is $9.50; seniors and students $6.50. Fridays 4:30-8:30 p.m. is pay-what-you-wish. Note: After 6:00 p.m. available tickets for that night's program are free.
Major support for these film and video programs is provided by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and by grants from the Contemporary Exhibition Fund and The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
