quarterly pdf - Anthology Film Archives

SACRIFICE / GISEI
60s–70s JAPAN, CONT’D
PROGRAM 8: MICHIO OKABE
GENESIS THEORY / TENCHI SZSETSU 1967, 20 min, 16mm, b&w
CAMP / KYANPU 1970, 30 min, 16mm
BOY-TASTE / SHNEN SHIK 1973, 12 min, 16mm
Seen as one of the leading lights of the angura (underground)
and psychedelic arts that proliferated in the late 1960s, Michio
Okabe’s fi lms fi nd their uniqueness in straddling documented
performance and the act of fi lmmaking as performance. The
winner of a prize at the fi rst experimental fi lm festival in Japan
at the Sogetsu Art Center, Okabe’s queer sensibilities, bare-body
rituals, and usurpation of pop songs are reminiscent of Kenneth
Anger’s work.
Total running time: ca. 65 min.
–Sun, February 24 at 8:30.
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PROGRAM 9: BEYOND THE FRAME AND ONTO
NEW SURFACES
Shuji Terayama A YOUNG PERSON’S GUIDE TO THE CINEMA
/ SEISHNEN NO TAME NO EIGA NYMON
1974, 3 min, triple-screen 16mm
Akira Uno TOI ET MOI / OMAE TO WATASHI
1965, 10 min, 16mm, b&w
Tadanori Yokoo ANTHOLOGY 1 1963, 11 min, 16mm
Katsuhiro Tomita THE MARTYR / JYUNKYSHA
1963, 28 min, 16mm, b&w
Shuji Terayama’s triple-projection piece was made for the 100ft
Film Festival hosted by Image Forum and explores imaginary
orgies and strange memories tinted with the three primary
colors. TOI ET MOI by Akira Uno stretches the defi nition of
animation by drawing onto bodies and fogging the images
with smoke, while Tadanori Yokoo remolds his graphic designs
into animation with rhythmic edits. THE MARTYR, a production
closely related to the legendary Nihon University Cinema Club,
boasts a ragged visual fl air.
Total running time: ca. 55 min.
–Mon, February 25 at 7:30.
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PROGRAM 10:
Masao Adachi
GUSHING PRAYER / FUNSHUTSU KIGAN – 15-SAI
NO BAISHUNFU
1971, 72 min, 35mm
A member of Nihon University Cinema Club and scriptwriter for
Nagisa Oshima and Koji Wakamatsu, activist fi lmmaker Masao
Adachi made this unique pink fi lm that is pregnant with political
allegory in the wake of the failed revolution that marked the
1960s. GUSHING PRAYER explores the benumbed disappointment
of failure and the paralysis of youth, depicting teenage
forays into group sex, suicide, and prostitution with a remarkably
desensitized vision.
20
–Tues, February 26 at 7:30.
SERIES
Andrew Sarris
ANDREW SARRIS:
EXPRESSIVE ESOTERICA
February 22-24, March 22-31
With last June’s passing of Andrew Sarris, the global fi lm community suffered a crushing loss. Possibly the
most infl uential of all English-language fi lm critics, Sarris began his career in the pages of FILM CULTURE
(started by Anthology co-founder and Artistic Director Jonas Mekas) and later moved to the VILLAGE VOICE,
where he developed the groundbreaking auteur theory – the notion that directors were the true authors of
motion pictures. Modeled after the CAHIERS DU CINÉMA critics’ Politique des auteurs (Sarris had met Godard
and Truffaut in Paris after WWII), Sarris later admitted the auteur theory was more “a reminder of movies to be
resurrected, of genres to be redeemed, of directors to be rediscovered.”
In 1968, he published the authoritative “The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968,” where
he ranked and grouped fi lmmakers into categories – “Less Than Meets the Eye,” “Lightly Likable”, “Strained
Seriousness” – that often still defi ne (and, in some cases, haunt) them to this day. One of the most important
sections proved to be “Expressive Esoterica” (coming right after “Pantheon Directors” and “The Far Side of
Paradise”): “These are the unsung directors with diffi cult styles or unfashionable genres or both. Their deeper
virtues are often obscured by irritating idiosyncrasies on the surface, but they are generally redeemed by their
seriousness and grace.”
In grouping together the work of such marginalized or undervalued fi lmmakers as Joseph H. Lewis, John M.
Stahl, Phil Karlson, and more, Sarris helped to solidify an alternate critical canon. The auteur theory allowed
Hollywood’s disreputable genre craftsmen and studio journeymen to receive the critical attention they so richly
deserved. In tribute to Sarris’s life and work as a writer and teacher, Anthology is pleased to present a small
selection of Sarris-approved Expressive Esoterica. He anointed all these fi lms with the coveted italics in “The
American Cinema”, and they’re all worthy of resurrection, redemption, and rediscovery.
This series has been curated in collaboration with C. Mason Wells, who also wrote the introduction and all fi lm descriptions.
Special thanks to Julian Antos (Northwest Chicago Film Society), Daniel Bish (George Eastman House), Brian Block (Criterion
Pictures), Chris Chouinard (Park Circus), Steven Hill & Todd Wiener (UCLA), Christopher Lane (Sony), Tim Lanza (Cohen Media
Group), Caitlin Robertson (20th Century-Fox), and Marilee Womack (Warner Bros).
André de Toth
DARK WATERS
1944, 90 min, 35mm. Preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Sarris wrote, “de Toth’s most interesting fi lms reveal an understanding of the instability and outright treachery
of human relationships” – and DARK WATERS offers a moody, Southern Gothic variation on that very dynamic.
After narrowly surviving a steamship accident that kills her parents, traumatized heiress Merle Oberon
develops an extreme fear of water and seeks refuge at her aunt and uncle’s Louisiana plantation. But she
begins to question her sanity once she hears voices coming from the nearby swamp…or is that someone after
her fortune? De Toth’s underrated thriller features a script co-written by Hitchcock collaborator Joan Harrison
and a score by Miklós Rózsa.
–Fri, February 22 at 7:00 and Sat, February 23 at 8:30.
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Stanley Donen
TWO FOR THE ROAD
1967, 111 min, 35mm
Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn star as a successful architect and his wife in perhaps Donen’s greatest nonmusical,
an achronological romantic comedy-drama that tracks the couple’s dissolution over their successive
trips to the South of France. “The director’s serious temperament is well suited to the serious casting of
Hepburn and Finney, the stylishly brittle script of Frederic Raphael (NOTHING BUT THE BEST, DARLING), and the
tinkly romantic score of Henry Mancini” (Sarris).
–Fri, February 22 at 9:00 and Sun, February 24 at 4:30.