quarterly pdf - Anthology Film Archives

More documents

Recommendations

Info

ENTR’ACTE INTRODUCTORY PROGRAM: Dušan Makavejev W.R.: MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM 1971, 84 min, 35mm. In English, German, Russian, and Serbian with English subtitles. [U]nquestionably one of the most important subversive masterpieces of the 1970s: a hilarious, highly erotic, political comedy which quite seriously proposes sex as the ideological imperative for revolution and advances a plea for Erotic Socialism. […] Beneath the film’s light-hearted frivolity and marvelous humor lurks a more serious ideological intent: opposition to all oppressive social systems, East or West, the removal of prurience from sex and a final squaring of accounts by the new radicals with the now reactionary Russian regime. […] Makavejev is quite accurate in describing his film as ‘a black comedy, a political circus, a fantasy on the fascism and communism of human bodies, the political life of human genitals, a proclamation of the pornographic essence of any system of authority and power over others.’ With: René Clair and Francis Picabia ENTR’ACTE 1924, 22 min, 35mm, b&w “A masterpiece of Dada and a feat of cinema magic. Made as intermission entertainment for the Ballet Suédois from an impromptu scene by Francis Picabia.” –AFA –Wed, February 6 at 7:30, Sat, February 9 at 9:15, and Sun, February 10 at 4:00. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– WORLD VIEW Ivo Kohler & Theodor Wrismann LIVING IN A REVERSED WORLD 1955, 11 min, 16mm Fascinating – and unintentionally funny – experiments at Austria’s famed Institute for Experimental Psychology involve a subject who for several weeks wears special glasses that reverse right and left and up and down. Unexpectedly, these macabre and somehow surrealist experiments reveal that our perception of these aspects of vision is not of an optical nature and cannot be relied on, while the unfortunate, Kafkaesque subject stubbornly struggles through a morass of continuous failures. & Herbert Vesely NO MORE FLEEING / NICHT MEHR FLIEHEN 1955, 68 min, 16mm. In German with English subtitles. One of the more important European avant-garde films of the post-war period, this feature-length work SERIES offered a devastating comment on the mid-century European mood. A macabre landscape of impotence and absurdity, peopled by ambiguous travellers, finally explodes into senseless violence. A hypnotic paraphrase of mankind’s atomic cul-de-sac (clearly influenced by existentialism), the film has no conventional plot, dealing instead with day-dreams, associations and déjà vus. Set in a stone-covered, sun-parched desert, with remnants of civilization strewn about, the travellers pass through stations of an illusory voyage that increase the feeling of the absurd. A murder occurs without cause and creates neither guilt nor prosecution. The world has moved beyond good and evil; since life is absurd, crime is inconsequential. The film analyses states of a meaningless existence from which no escape is possible. –Thurs, February 7 at 7:00 and Sun, February 10 at 8:30. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– LEFT AND REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA: THE THIRD WORLD Ousmane Sembene EMITAÏ 1971, 103 min, 35mm. In Wolof and French with English subtitles. An anti-imperialist yet curiously muted evocation of the French colonial period and of the strong yet waning influence of tribal religions. As usual with Sembene, there is much fascinating ethnological detail; more importantly, this is a film by an African for Africans, designed to make them share discovery and revelation, the limitations of myth, the cruelty of the oppressor, the fortitude of the people, and the need for revolution. –Thurs, February 7 at 9:00 and Mon, February 18 at 7:00. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ASSAULT ON MONTAGE Bernardo Bertolucci BEFORE THE REVOLUTION / PRIMA DELLA RIVOLUZIONE 1964, 115 min, 35mm. In Italian with English subtitles. Rarely has a talent burst upon the film scene with such brilliance as Bertolucci did with this film, perhaps the most germinal work of the new cinema. A flood of poetic visuals, montage, and sound, it is a shamelessly passionate, intensely personal statement of political and sexual coming of age. […] The motto that prefaces this film also points to Bertolucci’s dilemma: ‘Only those who lived before the revolution, knew how sweet life could be’ (Talleyrand). Thus Bertolucci is at his best describing, with anguished ambivalence, bitter-sweet episodes of middleclass life…. What is most original in it, however, is his outrageous and exuberant pictorial sense, his (aesthetically) revolutionary attempt to create a poetic-political cinema by means of audacious, violent editing and visual effects, far in advance of anything the commercial cinema has to offer and surpassing many of the most potent achievements of the international avant-garde. –Fri, February 8 at 6:45. EMITAÏ LEFT AND REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA: THE WEST – PROGRAM 1 Kate Millett THREE LIVES 1971, 70 min, 16mm Photographed by an all-female crew and directed by the author of SEXUAL POLITICS, these are autobiographical interviews with three very different women who talk frankly about their lives, conflicts, and contrasting life styles. A proud and uncompromising film. –Fri, February 8 at 9:15 and Tues, February 19 at 7:15. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– AESTHETIC REBELS AND REBELLIOUS CLOWNS Marcel L’Herbier THE LATE MATTHEW PASCAL / FEU MATHIAS PASCAL 1924, 170 min, 16mm Bizarre adaptation of Pirandello’s story of a man who – searching for absolute freedom – is unexpectedly given the opportunity to exercise it. Alberto Cavalcanti’s expressionist distortions of décor and architecture underscore the metaphysical rhythms of this strange, disordered tale. Filled with black humor and semi-surrealist melodrama, this unpredictable adventure in ambiguous freedom, conceived by an arch-skeptic, erupts in a paradoxical denouement. –Sat, February 9 at 3:15. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– DESTRUCTION OF PLOT AND NARRATIVE Richard Myers AKRAN 1970, 110 min, 16mm. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive. Myers is unquestionably a major talent of the American avant-garde and AKRAN one of his most important films. A feature-length deluge of incessant, brilliant bursts of images (short takes and jump cuts, single frames in series, freeze-frames slightly altered between takes) it creates a Joyce-like, dense and somber mosaic of memory and sensory impressions, a texture instead of a plot, a dreamlike flow of visually-induced associations often flashing by faster than they can be absorbed. Described by the director as an ‘anxious allegory and chilling album of nostalgia’, its penetrating monomania is unexpectedly – subversively – realized to be a statement about America today: the alienation and atomization of technological consumer society is reflected in the very style of the film. –Sat, February 9 at 6:45 and Mon, February 18 at 9:15. 13
LEFT AND REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA: THE WEST – PROGRAM 2 Fred Mogubgub THE GREAT SOCIETY 1967, 2 min, 16mm To the strains of ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’, and at the approximate rate of one image per second, the fi lmmaker, without further comment, presents head-on shots of an endless barrage of American consumer goods, packed, frozen, canned or bottled. Newsreel YIPPIE! 1968, 10 min, 16mm True to their joyfully anarchist philosophy of radical politics as ‘theatre’, this is the Youth International Party’s jaundiced view of the 1968 Democratic convention and its concomitant violent demonstrations... A complex, sophisticated example of political fi lmmaking at its best. Pace HOG CALLING BLUES 1969, ca. 10 min, 16mm [T]his is a cry of anguish by the young fi lmmaker at Vietnam and the Kent State University killings of anti-war students by the military. Two young men fi rst decorate a dead pig, placed on an American fl ag, and then (with disjointed expressions of anger, impotence, anguish) remove its eyes, cut off its ears, furiously smash into it with an axe. Finally, shoving the fl ag into the carcass from behind, they cut off its head: ‘The Pig Is Dead.’ Robert Machover & Norman Fruchter TROUBLEMAKERS 1966, 54 min, 16mm One of the best works of the American Left, this is a hard-hitting example of a new kind of political fi lm which avoids both clichés and propaganda. It concentrates instead on a careful exploration of the problems encountered by young SDS militants (including Tom Hayden, then unknown, later a leader of the movement) in organizing the Black Ghetto in Newark around community issues and simultaneously radicalizing them. The painful, diffi cult experiment ends in failure, honestly confronted by an honest fi lm, leaving the viewer with the implicit suggestion that the attempt must be made again; this time perhaps in the direction of revolution rather than reform. 14 –Sun, February 10 at 6:30 and Tues, February 19 at 9:00. SERIES EARLY WORKS A HARD DAY’S NIGHT A TRIBUTE TO AMOS VOGEL CONT’D LEFT AND REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA: THE EAST Zelimir Zilnik EARLY WORKS / RANI RADOVI 1969, 87 min, 35mm-to-digital video. In Serbian with English subtitles. Filmed during the political ferment of 1968, this work explores the radical impulses behind the unrest of the young in a country where the revolutionaries of an earlier generation now form the Establishment. Three young men and a beautiful girl leave home and move across the country in search of a just society and true socialism, only to discover tragically that an unfi nished revolution, while changing the face of power, has failed to change the nature of man. Filled with black humor, frank sex, and bizarre tableaux, the fi lm becomes a revolutionary allegory of the European New Left. Though it brought its director into confl ict with his country’s authorities, the Yugoslav courts subsequently ruled in his favor in a landmark decision. –Thurs, March 7 at 6:45, Sun, March 10 at 3:00, and Wed, March 13 at 9:00. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– AMOS VOGEL ON FILM, PROGRAM 1: Paul Cronin FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART: AMOS VOGEL AND THE CINEMA 16 2003, 56 min, video “An historic documentary about Amos Vogel and the creation of Cinema 16, the fi rst large-scale fi lm society in the United States. Director Paul Cronin records the free-form reminiscences of Cinema 16’s organizers, together with commentary by Vogel scholar Scott MacDonald. Interspersed with clips from movies which were once projected at Cinema 16, Cronin’s fi lm provides a fi rst-hand visual representation of the cutting edge fi lms that Amos Vogel so effectively championed.” –Jon Gartenberg & Andre St. Laurent CAMERA THREE: NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 1963 1963, 28 min, video, b&w In 1963, Amos Vogel and Richard Roud founded the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. In its fi rst fi ve editions (1963-68) Vogel served as Festival Director introducing American audiences to the work of Bernardo Bertolucci, Chris Marker, Werner Herzog, Eric Rohmer, R.W. Fassbinder, and Martin Scorsese. In this episode of CAMERA THREE hosted by James MacAndrew, Vogel is joined by Richard Roud and directors Adolfas Mekas and Joseph Losey in discussing the inaugural season of the New York Film Festival. –Thurs, March 7 at 9:00. THE ATTACK ON GOD Howard Smith & Sarah Kernochan MARJOE 1972, 88 min, 35mm. Archival print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. This deceptively humorous cinéma vérité study of a traveling evangelist emerges as a ruthless exposé of an aspect of America’s national psyche, with implications far beyond its immediate subject matter. […] The revelation of mass manipulation by a charismatic, smiling con-man, the fervor and conservatism of the duped, the intrusion of questions of money and power over others – these American preoccupations are brilliantly refl ected in this outrageous, disturbing black comedy. –Fri, March 8 at 7:00 and Tues, March 12 at 9:15. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– TOWARDS A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS Richard Lester A HARD DAY’S NIGHT 1964, 87 min, 35mm The playful anarchism and exuberant vitality of this work – a thumbing of noses at the ‘straight’ adult world – caught the essence of the Beatle mystique and even reinforced their electrifying presence with machine-gun editing, jump cuts, accelerated speed, quick movements in close-up, and a camera that never stood still. […] The Beatles’ ideological refusal to take the world or themselves seriously, their almost surreal approach to their environment proved a perfect foil for Lester. & Jud Yalkut KUSAMA’S SELF-OBLITERATION 1968, 24 min, 16mm A strangely compelling study of Yayoi Kusama, painter, sculptor and environmentalist, who paints polka dots on fl owers, bodies, water, and grass in a thought-provoking attempt at pantheism and ego transcendence, culminating in relaxed nude body painting and group sex. –Fri, March 8 at 9:00 and Tues, March 12 at 6:45. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– HOMOSEXUALITY AND OTHER VARIANTS – PROGRAM 1: OTTO MUEHL The Austrian avant-gardist Otto Muehl may well be the most scandalous fi lmmaker working in cinema today. […] Muehl’s fi lms… are based on his notorious ‘Materialaktionen’; love happenings, involving nude protagonists in real and extravagant acts of sexual violence and defi lement. Clearly derived from dada-surrealist antiaestheticism, these public performances predictably caused police prosecution, scandals, and near-riots in various countries. They invade the spectator’s defence mechanism and value systems in a manner comparable perhaps only to the slitting of the woman’s eyeball in Buñuel’s UN CHIEN ANDALOU or Franju’s deceptive documentary of the slaughter-houses, THE BLOOD OF THE BEASTS. Kurt Kren 6/64: MAMA & PAPA 1964, 4 min, 16mm & Otto Muehl MATERIALAKTIONSFILME 1970, 47 min, 16mm –Sat, March 9 at 3:45.
Page 1 and 2: Anthology Film Archives Film Progra
Page 3 and 4: 2 ESSENTIAL CINEMA CHUMLUM THE GREA
Page 5 and 6: 4 MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA / THE FIL
Page 7 and 8: ROCK/STRING 6 AFA PRESERVATIONS SPE
Page 9 and 10: ASLEEP EARLY SHORT FILMS: ALONE 196
Page 11 and 12: IMAGINARY FRIEND SHOW & TELL, CONT
Page 13: MIDNIGHT CARNIVAL SANDY REDUX, CONT
Page 17 and 18: SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THU
Page 19 and 20: 18 EMPEROR TOMATO KETCHUP A TRIBUTE
Page 21 and 22: SACRIFICE / GISEI 60s-70s JAPAN, CO
Page 23 and 24: WICHITA 22 SARRIS, CONT’D Jacques
Page 25 and 26: 24 MY MARS BAR MOVIE ENCORE SCREENI
Page 27 and 28: 26 SPECIAL SCREENINGS / NEWFILMMAKE
Page 29 and 30: FEATURE PRESENTATION Eugene Ioannou
Page 31 and 32: 30 ANTHOLOGY’S TWO THEATERS ARE A
Page 33 and 34: 32 ADACHI, MASAO, Feb 26, p. 20 AGE
Page 35: ANTHOLOGY New York, NY 10003 F I L

quarterly pdf - Anthology Film Archives

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?