Film

Mon, Jan 27, 7:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

Reserve member tickets

Reserve tickets

The Scratchman. 1980. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. Courtesy Chicago Film Society

Heather McAdams joins us to present new 16mm restorations of her irreverent collage films from the 1980s, recently preserved by the Chicago Film Society. Known for her work as a cartoonist and filmmaker, McAdams has long been a fixture of Chicago’s alternative film and music scenes and was once hailed by B. Ruby Rich in the Chicago Reader as combining “the collage finesse of a Bruce Conner with the crude campiness of the Kuchar brothers.” McAdams’s found-footage films mine popular culture, often drawing on her extensive collection of industrials, educational films, advertisements, home movies, and music films. Through scratch animation, hand-painting, and audiovisual collage, these celluloid fragments of Americana are reassembled into feminist send-ups of gender norms, beauty standards, and the nuclear family.

The screening also features McAdams’s personal documentaries, including her offbeat portrait of Bradley Harrison Picklesimer, a Kentucky drag queen who ran his own nightclub in downtown Lexington. Assembling found imagery with footage of Bradley tending bar or reflecting on the goings on at the club, gender expression, and the ups and downs of life, Meet…Bradley Harrison Picklesimer is a memorable entry in queer oral history, brought to life with McAdams’s distinctive DIY sensibility.

The screening is followed by a conversation with the filmmaker and Kyle Westphal, Programmer, Chicago Film Society, moderated by Sophie Cavoulacos, associate curator in the Department of Film.

The Scratchman. 1980. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 3 min.
Scratchman # 2. 1982. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 3 min.
Holiday Magic. 1985. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 7 min.
All Fucked Up. 1983. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 8 min.
Fetal Pig Anatomy. 1989. Directed by Heather McAdams. Sound by Billy DesJardins. 16mm. 6 min.
You. 1983. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 4 min.
Comes to a Point Like an Ice-Cream Cone. 1997. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams, Chris Ligon. 16mm. 18 min.
Meet…Bradley Harrison Picklesimer. 1988. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 32 min.

Program approx. 81 min.

New York restoration premiere. Meet…Bradley Harrison Picklesimer preserved by Chicago Film Society through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. All other films preserved by Chicago Film Society with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Film at MoMA is made possible by CHANEL.

Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. Leadership support for the Annual Film Fund is provided by Debra and Leon D. Black, with major funding from The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), and The Young Patrons Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

This film accompanies Modern Mondays and To Save and Project: The 21st MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation.

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