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BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Robert T. Buck, Jr.
Jonas Mekas, President
Oona Mekas, Treasurer
John Mhiripiri, Secretary
Barney Oldfield, Chair
Matthew Press
Arturas Zuokas
HONORARY BOARD
agns b., Brigitte Cornand, Annette Michelson.
In memoriam: Nam June Paik (1932-2006),
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), Robert Gardner
(1925-2014).
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Richard Barone, Deborah Bell, Rachel Chodorov,
Deborah M. Colton, Ben Foster, Roselee Goldberg,
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Ali Hossaini, Akiko Iimura,
Susan McGuirk, Sebastian Mekas, Sara L. Meyerson,
Benn Northover, Izhar Patkin, Ted Perry, Ikkan Sanada,
Ingrid Scheib-Rothbart, Lola Schnabel, Stella Schnabel,
P. Adams Sitney, Marvin Soloway, Hedda Szmulewicz.
COMPOSER IN RESIDENCE
John Zorn
BOX OFFICE
Josh Anderson, Yara Gharib, Micah Gottlieb, Rachael Guma,
Bora Kim, Marcine Miller, Sean Nam, Fiona Szende, Alan Wertz.
New Filmmakers Coordinators
Barney Oldfield, Executive Producer
Bill Woods, Program Director
Interns & Volunteers: Kayla Becich, Samantha Corsini, Steve Erickson, Sam Fleischner, Timothy Geraghty, Hannah Greenberg,
Martina Kudlek, Philippe Leonard, Zach Lewis, Jeanne Liotta, Bibi Loizzo, Jonas Lozoraitis, Shannon McLachlan, Melinda Shopsin,
Hilary Steadman, Auguste Varkalis, Eva von Schweinitz.
Anthology Film Archives is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and is supported in part by the agns b. Endowment Fund, Andrea
Frank Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, b. forever, Carl Andre and Melissa
Kretschmer Foundation, Cineric, Consulate General of Spain, Criterion, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, David M. Leuschen
Foundation, Driver Family Foundation, Edison Properties, Film Chest Inc/Vinegar Syndrome, The Film Foundation, George Lucas Family
Foundation, Goethe-Institut New York, Greene Naftali, James M. Guiher, Jerome Foundation, an anonymous donor through the Jewish
Communal Fund, Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, National Film Preservation Foundation, public
funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, New York State Council on the Arts with
the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, public funds from NYSCAs Electronic Media and Film (EMF)
Media Arts Assistance Fund & Presentation Funds, regrant programs administered respectively by Wave Farm & The ARTS Council of
the Southern Finger Lakes, New York Women in Film & Television, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Phalarope Foundation, Robert Gore
Rifkind Foundation, Showtime & Sundance Networks, Smells Like Records, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Taipei Cultural Center, Taylor &
Taylor Associates, The Weissman Family Foundation, anonymous donors, and AFAs individual members and contributors.
ESSENTIAL CINEMA
PREMIERES
STATIONS OF THE CROSS
HOME FROM HOME
SONGS FROM THE NORTH
AFA PRESERVATIONS
RE-VISIONS: Tessa Hughes-Freeland,
Marjorie Keller, Luther Price
RETROSPECTIVES
Tom Baker
Edgar Reitz
Robert Ryan
10
ONGOING SERIES
Beyond Cassavetes: LILITH
SHOW & TELL: Rachel Mason,
Xander Marro, Soon-Mi Yoo
Unessential Cinema: Hippie Paranoia?
White Cube/Black Box: East Coast/West Coast
12
CALENDAR-AT-A-GLANCE
15-17
18
SERIES
One-Film Wonders
This Is Celluloid: 35mm
American International Pictures
Beijing Independent Film Festival
Experimental Animation
18
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Vision Festival
Larry Janiak
Dirty Looks: THE DOOM GENERATION
MoreVALUE Film Award
Secret Life of AFA
New York Women in Film & Television
29
NEWFILMMAKERS
INDEX
32
33
11
13
14
21
23
27
28
30
31
ESSENTIAL CINEMA
BLONDE COBRA
ESSENTIAL CINEMA
A very special series of films screened on a repertory basis, the Essential Cinema Repertory collection consists of 110 programs/330 titles assembled in
1970-75 by Anthologys Film Selection Committee James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, P. Adams Sitney, and Jonas Mekas. It was an ambitious attempt to define the art of cinema. The project was never completed but even in its unfinished state the series provides an uncompromising critical
overview of cinemas history.
AND REMEMBER: ALL ESSENTIAL CINEMA SCREENINGS ARE FREE FOR AFA MEMBERS!
Robert Flaherty
Robert Flaherty
MAN OF ARAN
HOLLIS FRAMPTON
ZORNS LEMMA
Marcel Hanoun
Based on a true incident, the film chronicles the wanderings of a woman and child looking for work and
lodging in Paris. This is the only plot, and Hanoun has
little interest in embellishing it with background and
motivation: he never even makes it clear, for example,
whether the woman is the childs mother, guardian
or companion. UNE SIMPLE HISTOIRE is, more than a
narrative, a formal stylistic exercise so rigorously disciplined and understated that it makes the visual asceticism of Robert Bresson seem almost Fellini-esque by
comparison. TIME
Fri, July 31 at 7:30.
The basic idea was to paint continuing pictures on various layers with
plastic paint, adding at times and removing at times, and to a certain
extent these early attempts were successful. D.C.
Dwinell Grant
COMPOSITION #2 CONTRATHEMIS 1941, 5 min, 16mm, silent
An attempt to develop visual abstract themes and to counterpoint
them in a planned, formal composition. D.G.
Ken Jacobs
LITTLE STABS AT HAPPINESS 1959-63, 18 min, 16mm. With Jack Smith.
Material was cut in as it came out of the camera, embarrassing
moments intact. 100 rolls timed well with music on old 78s. I was
interested in immediacy, a sense of ease, and an art where suffering
was acknowledged but not trivialized with dramatics. Whimsy was our
achievement, as well as breaking out of step. K.J.
BLONDE COBRA
ESSENTIAL CINEMA
ENTRACTE
PULL MY DAISY
JEROME HILL
Ken Jacobs
&
FILM PORTRAIT
1971, 81 min, 35mm
JENNINGS / KIRSANOFF /
LGER & MURPHY / CLAIR &
PICABIA
Humphrey Jennings
LISTEN TO BRITAIN 1941, 19 min, 35mm, b&w
Jenningss film is a masterpiece of sound
mixing; it creates an audio landscape of
Britain during the war, with images both
accompanying and conflicting with the multitude of sounds. From the films introduction:
I have been listening to Britain. I have heard
the sound of her life by day and by night.
In the great sound picture that is here presented, you too will hear that heart beating.
For blended together in one great symphony
is the music of Britain at war.
Dimitri Kirsanoff
MNILMONTANT 1924-25, 38 min, 35mm,
b&w, silent
A brief exploration of cubist form, black-andwhite tonalities, and various vectors through
its constant, rapidly cut movements and
compositions. Many of the films forms and
compositions are reflected in or themselves
reflect forms and compositions in Lgers
famous cubist paintings from the period.
THE GENERAL
Larry Jordan
DUO CONCERTANTES 1962-64, 6 min, 16mm, b&w
HAMFAT ASAR 1965, 13 min, 16mm, b&w
GYMNOPEDIES 1968, 6 min, 16mm
THE OLD HOUSE, PASSING 1966, 45 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film
Archives.
Helen Levitt
IN THE STREET 1952, 12 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
Levitts short, lyrical documentary portrait of life in Spanish Harlem. Stealthily shot
by Levitt, Janice Loeb, and James Agee.
Willard Maas
GEOGRAPHY OF THE BODY 1943, 7 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology with
The terrors and splendors of the human body as the undiscovered, mysterious
continent. W.M.
Total running time: ca. 105 min.
Buster Keaton
THE GENERAL
1927, 105 min, 35mm, b&w, silent. With Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavendar, Jim Farley,
and Joseph Keaton.
One of Keatons best silent features, setting comedy against a true Civil War story
of a stolen train and Union spies.
Fri, Aug 21 at 7:30.
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Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are the movies greatest comic duo, the quintessential dumb and dumber odd-couple. Though critically overshadowed by
Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, they were enormously popular, and proved a major
influence on Abbott & Costello, Lucille Ball & Vivian Vance, and Jackie Gleason &
Art Carney, not to mention Samuel Beckett (they were an inspiration for WAITING
FOR GODOT), Roman Polanski (who paid homage to them in his existentialist
short films FAT AND LEAN and TWO MEN AND A WARDROBE), and Ken Jacobs
(whose ONTIC ANTICS deconstructs one of their films). David Mulkins
ESSENTIAL CINEMA
TUSALAVA
Dimitri Kirsanoff
RAPT
KUBELKA / LYE
Peter Kubelka
MOSAIK IM VERTRAUEN / MOSAIC IN CONFIDENCE
Len Lye
TUSALAVA 1929, 10 min, 16mm, b&w, silent
TRADE TATTOO 1937, 5 min, 16mm
RHYTHM 1957, 1 min, 16mm, b&w
FREE RADICALS 1958/79, 4 min, 16mm, b&w
A giant of experimental animation, Len Lye was born
in New Zealand in 1901. He moved to England in the
1920s and subsequently to New York in 1944, where
he spent the last 40 years of his life. A pioneer of
scratch or direct filmmaking, Lye used various tools
to mark patterns, shapes, and images directly onto
the films surface, and often explored the dynamic
energy of abstract images propelled into life by lively
jazz scores or Pacific-inspired rhythms.
Total running time: ca. 55 min.
FLEMING FALOON
All films preserved by Anthology with support from the National Film Preservation
Foundation.
THE NAKED AND THE NUDE 1957, 36 min, 8mm-to-16mm
The oldest surviving Kuchar mini-epic, this patriotic WWII period piece
(made by high schoolers) chronicles the desires and destinies of carnal appetites on the front line.
BigRousingMemorable! The incredible war saga of our own
boys in a Jap-infested jungle in the Botanical Gardens. Hear Lloyd
Thorner sing the title song. Youll come out whistling from both ends.
G.K.
Man Ray
LE RETOUR LA RAISON
TOILE DE MER
CHRISTOPHER MACLAINE
These films are not part of the Essential Cinema. According to Jonas
Mekas, Landow used to show these films along with FLEMING
FALOON at early screenings before he pulled them from his repertoire.
Jonas Mekas
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THE END
sit down, you look back at your day, and you write it all down.
To keep a film (camera) diary, is to react (with your camera)
immediately, now, this instant: either you get it now, or you
dont get it at all. J.M.
I make home movies therefore I live. I live therefore I make
home movies. from the soundtrack
Sat, Sept 12 at 7:30.
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Jonas Mekas
REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNEY TO
LITHUANIA
The film consists of four parts. The first part contains some
footage from my first years in America, 1949-52. The second
part was shot in August 1971 in Lithuania. The third part is
in Elmshorn, near Hamburg, where I spent eight months in a
forced labor camp. The fourth part is in Vienna (1971) with
Peter Kubelka, Nitsch, Annette Michelson, Ken Jacobs, etc. The
film deals with home, memory, and culture. J.M.
Sun, Sept 13 at 7:30.
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Dietrich Brggemann
STATIONS OF THE
CROSS / KREUZWEG
Germany, 2014, 107 min, digital. In German with English subtitles. Distributed by Film Movement; special thanks to Michael
Rosenberg, Clemence Taillandier, Genevieve Villaflor, and Jimmy
Weaver.
PREMIERES
Germany, 2013, 230 min, DCP, b&w/color. In German with English subtitles. Distributed by Corinth Films, and
presented with invaluable support from the Goethe-Institut New York; special thanks to John Poole Jr. (Corinth), and
Wenzel Bilger & Sara Stevenson (Goethe-Institut New York).
Edgar Reitzs monumental HEIMAT films hold a privileged place in postwar German cinema. A precursor to some of the episodic yet cohesively crafted serial dramas that are all the rage in the U.S.
and Europe today, Reitzs enormously ambitious, ever-expanding project began in 1984 with the
15-hour HEIMAT: A CHRONICLE OF GERMANY. Since then, Reitz has added to his career-defining
edifice roughly every ten years, with 1993s HEIMAT II (more than 25 hours long), 2004s HEIMAT
III (11 hours), and now, like clockwork, with HOME FROM HOME, which comes in at a breezy
230 minutes. (This account elides the smaller-scale, in-between work, HEIMAT FRAGMENTS: THE
WOMEN, from 2006)
A prequel to the previous HEIMAT films, HOME FROM HOME turns back the clock to the mid-19th
century, to focus on the ancestors of the Simon family, as they struggle to subsist in the (fictional)
village of Schabbach (familiar from the earlier films). Depicting both the struggles and the deeply
ingrained rituals and sense of community that define their lives, Reitz shows his usual panoramic
flair, bringing to life a host of characters and capturing the rhythms and textures of a whole village.
Nevertheless, the films attention settles on two figures in particular: the sensitive, imaginative, and
restless Jakob, who immerses himself in literature and dreams of emigrating to Brazil, and Henriette, the beautiful daughter of a gem cutter fallen on hard times, who is at once drawn to Jakob
and fated to take a different path. Reitz, as always, is attuned both to his characters daily lives
and to the larger social and historical forces that shape their existence. Here he explores a world
marked by famine and poverty, the stirrings of revolution, and above all the specter of emigration, a
phenomenon that holds the promise of freedom even as it represents a threat to the stability of the
communities that are left behind. Playing out against the backdrop of the mass exodus that saw
hundreds of thousands of German farmers, laborers, and craftsman departing for the New World,
HOME FROM HOME is both a heart-wrenching drama and a penetrating portrait of an historical era.
[E]vocative, surprising and very entertaining. Itmarks the completion of a remarkable achievement. Jonathan Romney, THE GUARDIAN
If youve seen HEIMAT youll spot masses of connections. Yet this stand-alone four-hour mini
epic shot in black-and-white widescreen also makes a great starting-point. [] To see the
wagons rolling out of the Rhineland is a potent image for today a counterblast to the contentious
subject of migration in todays Europe. That immediate relevance deepens the films rich fresco of
historical insight and immersive drama. This is a magnificent, career-capping achievement from
one of the great storytellers of our era. Trevor Johnston, TIME OUT LONDON
AFA PRESERVATIONS
BABY DOLL
GIFT
DIRTY
RE-VISIONS:
AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL FILM 1975-90
With the new monthly series RE-VISIONS: AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL FILM 1975-90, Anthology spotlights the generation(s) of experimental film artists who emerged after the final
formation in 1975 of our Essential Cinema repertory screening cycle. As hotly debated as it was widely celebrated, the EC had a seismic effect (for better or worse) on both cinema
studies scholarship and international film curatorial practice. Even though the EC was intended as a direct response to the exclusion of the avant-garde from official Film History, by so
concisely outlining a canon it effectively shifted critical and public interest away from the still developing experimental film movement and focused attention squarely on certain artists
and works considered to be historically important. Subsequent generations of cinema artists have never received the same level of intellectual/institutional recognition or encouragement. We believe that it is high time for a re-evaluation.
With the support of a significant grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Anthology has been engaged in a multi-year project to preserve significant works by a wide
range of cinema artists who largely became active or reached their prime after 1975. Rather than attempt to amend the EC, RE-VISIONS uses it as a starting point from which to explore
the continuities, fractures, corollaries, and connections between cinema artists of the last 40 years and the previous avant-garde film movements. Much like their predecessors, these
artists continued to tirelessly push at the parameters of cinematic form. While recognized for their accomplishments within the relatively small independent filmmaking community,
their work is still too new, too unruly, or else too marginalized to be sold in galleries, collected by museums, or preserved by most film archives.
RE-VISIONS features single-artist screenings of our new preservations alongside other exemplary and enticing titles spanning each artists career. We are as interested in seeing what
they made way back then as we are in what they are doing today. When possible, artists will appear in person to discuss their work and answer questions.
Special thanks to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Audio Mechanics, BB Optics, Cinema Arts, Cineric, Colorlab, The Film Foundation, FotoKem, the Mike Kelly Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment
for the Arts, the National Film Preservation Foundation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Trackwise, Video and Film Solutions, and all the artists who were involved in this project.
JULY:
TESSA HUGHES-FREELAND
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
One of the defining figures of the No Wave and Cinema of Transgression movements of the 1980s, Tessa Hughes-Freelands powerfully provocative films harness the shock value of
sex and violence and then undercut it with a cool sense of irony. Steeped in the gritty atmosphere of downtown New York, her work radically recontextualizes familiar imagery from
pornography, classic Hollywood films, and mythology to subvert the traditional pleasures of cinematic voyeurism.
Born in England, Hughes-Freeland earned a B.A. in Art History from the University of London and moved to NYC to pursue a masters degree in Cinema Studies at NYU. Unimpressed
with what she saw as the universitys staid approach to film history, she was drawn to the East Villages vibrant cinematic underground. Frequenting screenings at local small clubs
and bars like Club 57, Limbo Lounge, and Chandelier, she got to know the filmmakers associated with the burgeoning No Wave/Cinema of Transgression scene including Nick Zedd,
Richard Kern, Tommy Turner, and Scott B & Beth B many of whom she interviewed for the EAST VILLAGE EYE and Zedds zine, THE UNDERGROUND FILM BULLETIN.
Frustrated that the critical establishment was ignoring challenging, different, and confrontational independent films, Hughes-Freeland, along with fellow underground avant-garde
filmmaker Ela Troyano, co-founded the New York Film Festival Downtown in 1984. The festivals stated goal was to break the stranglehold of ignorance and intolerance that has
confined most of these films to the clubs and performance spaces of downtown New York. The multi-day festival, which ran until 1990, featured an impressive array of artists and
works including Todd Haynes (SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY), Nan Goldin (THE BALLAD OF SEXUAL DEPENDENCY), Peggy Ahwesh (I RIDE A PONY NAMED FLAME), and
Manuel De Landa (JUDGMENT DAY, ISM ISM), among many others.
Hughes-Freelands first major work as a filmmaker is BABY DOLL (1982), a 16mm portrait of two female go-go dancers who speak exasperatedly about the misogynistic expectations
of their male clients. DIRTY (1992), made in collaboration with Annabel Lee, is an adaptation of Georges Batailles BLUE OF NOON, in which a drunken society woman soils herself
and wallows in degradation. GIFT (2010) deconstructs and reassembles ALICE IN WONDERLAND & SLEEPING BEAUTY into something slyly sinister, while WATCH OUT! and INSTINCT:
BITCHES SIDE (2007) both employ a wide range of found footage and multiple layers of images. Rounding out our show are new digital transfers of rarely screened Super 8 documents
from the 1980s, including a seminal performance by the Butthole Surfers and old school graffiti captured on super saturated Kodachrome.
BABY DOLL 1982, 3 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
GIFT 2010, 6 min, Super 8mm & mixed media-to-digital
WATCH OUT! 2007, 3.5 min, Super 8mm & 16mm-to-digital
DIRTY 1993, 17 min, Super 8mm
INSTINCT: BITCHES SIDE 2007, 13 min, Super 8mm-to-digital
THE BUTTHOLE SURFERS 1986, 17 min, Super 8mm-to-digital. Digitized by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
GRAFFITI HALL OF FAME 1984, 7 min, Super 8mm-to-digital. Digitized by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
VIRGINIA TRIPPING FILM 1985, 17 min, Super 8mm-to-digital. Digitized by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Total running time: ca. 90 min.
AFA PRESERVATIONS
OBJECTION
RE-VISIONS, CONTD.
AUGUST:
MARJORIE KELLER
Born in 1950 in Yorktown, NY, Marjorie Keller was a leading scholar of experimental cinema and an accomplished filmmaker whose wondrously impressionistic film diaries record fragments of everyday life that she superlatively transformed through elliptical editing and contrapuntal sound design. Her work, as described by film theorist Robin Blaetz, drew from her
rich domestic world to fashion gemlike renderings of the conflicts and challenges facing a feminist in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1981, critic Amy Taubin praised her as
perhaps the only major filmmaker that the American independent film has produced since the end of the Sixties.
As an undergraduate at Tufts University in the late 1960s, Keller studied with filmmaker Saul Levine and participated in political demonstrations that would ultimately get her expelled
from college. Relocating to Chicago, Keller enrolled at the School of the Art Institute where she studied with Stan Brakhage who, along with fellow film artists like Marie Menken and
Gregory Markopoulos, would have a profound influence on her work. She later moved to NYC and received a PhD in film studies from NYU in 1983. Marrying fellow film scholar P. Adams
Sitney in 1986, Keller associated herself with groups like the Collective for Living Cinema and Film-Makers Cooperative while working as a professor at the University of Rhode Island
from 1975 until her unexpected death in 1994. Her body of work includes 27 films and the 1985 book THE UNTUTORED EYE: CHILDHOOD IN THE FILMS OF COCTEAU, CORNELL, AND
BRAKHAGE. She also authored an animated pop-up book called THE MOON ON THE PORCH (1986) and was in the midst of an unfinished work that was to trace the history of women
avant-garde filmmakers from pioneers like Germaine Dulac and Maya Deren to then-emerging artists such as Peggy Ahwesh and Su Friedrich.
In their day Kellers films were exhibited across North America and Europe. Among Kellers major films, SIX WINDOWS (1979) is a wistful meditation on her childhood and the world outside
her window, punctuated by dreamy dissolves and fades to black. In this and all of her best films, Kellers language is controlled, sophisticated, carefully worked out. Her imagery is a
mosaic of memories and present, both intermingling. The sensibility, primarily, is lyrical, with a good feeling for color and rhythm (Jonas Mekas, SOHO NEWS).
THE OUTER CIRCLE 1973, 6.5 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the
National Film Preservation Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
A conversation in a hair salon.
SIX WINDOWS 1979, 7 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film
Preservation Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
A pan and a dissolve make a window of a wall on film. A portrait of the filmmaker in a luminous
space, synthetically rendered via positive and negative overlays. [] I lived in some rooms by the sea
and watched the inside and the view as well as the window panes that divided and joined them. I was
often lost in thought. The birds would come and make a racket, reminding me I shared that space and
sky with them. The film is a moody record of that place and my peace of mind. M.K.
THE FALLEN WORLD 1983, 9 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
An elegy for a Newfoundland dog named Melville and a portrait of his owner.
AFA PRESERVATIONS
CLOWN
POTATO PIECE
SEPTEMBER:
A stand out figure amongst his peers, Luther Prices images of beautiful decay live and die in an instant onscreen, evoking the fragile, ephemeral nature of both life and cinema itself.
Alternately iconoclastic and nostalgic, his films confront the specters of death, sex, and childhood trauma psychic turmoil that is reflected in the spliced and scarred film stock he
employs. Born in 1962 in Marlboro, Massachusetts, the artist known as Luther Price earned a BFA in Sculpture and Media/Performing Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and
Design. After a near-death experience that involved accidentally being shot in Nicaragua, he made art under a variety of short-lived pseudonyms (including Fag, Brick, and Laija Brie)
before adopting the artistic persona of Tom Rhoads. Between 1987-89, Rhoads created at least eighteen Super 8mm films before being ceremoniously killed off in 1989 via a publicly
staged candy overdose. Luther Price soon emerged and achieved almost immediate notoriety with SODOM (1989), in which footage from hardcore gay porn is edited (with the help of a
hole-puncher) into a pulsating morass of writhing bodies, violent penetration, and faces contorted in agony and ecstasy. Critic and curator Ed Halter has called the result a blasphemous
tour de force, a nightmare of unrepentant darkness that should rank with the best work of Kenneth Anger and Dario Argento.
Prices early Super 8mm films offer a window into his singularly captivating psyche. In these small gauge works he inhabits alter egos like the nightmarish harlequin of CLOWN (1992)
or the unhinged, Joan Crawford-esque drunk in the suicide melodrama A (1995). When multiple family members became ill with cancer in the late 1990s, Price channeled his grief
into domestic horror-shows like the ghostly HOME (1999), a haunted house of eerily flickering family photographs in which images from a childs birthday party take on a diseased,
bloodless look. These painfully personal works took a psychic toll and led to him working with 16mm found footage in the early 2000s as a way, Price has written, for me to still talk
about issuesbut not destroy me. Along with his continued cinematic pursuits over the last few years Price has been actively exhibiting his exquisite super-saturated 35mm slide
collages created from dirt, detritus, and decaying film stock.
These four programs focus on recent film and digital restorations undertaken by Anthology Film Archives and the Bard College Film and Electronic Arts Department. Our screenings
coincide with a Luther Price solo exhibition running from September 17-November 1 at Calicoon Fine Arts located at 49 Delancey St. Please visit callicoonfinearts.com for more info.
Special thanks to Photios Giovanis, Peggy Ahwesh, Tommy Aschenbach, and Ivy Swope of Film and Video Solutions.
PROGRAM 1:
PROGRAM 3:
restored by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts.
1988, 30 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm. Preserved by the Bard College Film & Electronic Arts Department with support from the National
Film Preservation Foundation.
Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for
the Visual Arts.
Archives with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
SODOM 1989, 21 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm. Brand new print made with
support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Total running time: ca. 85 min.
PROGRAM 2:
A
GREEN
The filmmaker inhabits a variety of personas both male and female as necrotic images of death and deterioration are set to a chirpy, 70s AM radio soundtrack.
WARM BROTH
1988, 36 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm. Preserved by the Bard College Film & Electronic Arts Department with support from the National
Film Preservation Foundation.
A pull-string voice and dead-eyed dolls, home movies and the occasional shot of sexual penetration. Like much
of Prices work, the WARM BROTH is at once unsettling and heart-tuggingly poignant.
Total running time: ca. 70 min.
While Price may be best known these days for his complexly edited films and 35mm slide works, he has always
been equally invested in performance, whether staged for a camera or in front of an unsuspecting audience.
This program gathers together early video productions like TOTALLY HOT (1986-87) and HOPELESSLY DEVOTED
(1986), along with selected documentation of memorable, if not scandalous performances such as MEAT (1992)
and GLITTER FAT FASHION MAGGOT (2000). Tonights show will be an eclectic mix specially prepared by Price
for the occasion.
Titles to be included:
RETROSPECTIVES
I, A MAN
Andy Warhol
Norman Mailer
1968, 100 min, 35mm, b&w. Unique archival 35mm print courtesy of The Norman Mailer Estate.
I, A MAN
Norman Mailers belief that were all capable of being either cop or crook was the
impetus for his second feature, which takes place over the course of one feverish
night in a Manhattan police precinct and neighboring bar. The texture of the blackand-white stock coupled with D.A. Pennebakers cinematography offers a sweaty,
intense depiction of the police lineup, lending the film a rugged, documentary feel
years before realist cop shows became a television fixture. In addition to Mailer, who
cast himself as tough-guy Irish cop Francis Xavier Pope, BEYOND THE LAW features
Rip Torn, poet Michael McClure, George Plimpton, and Baker in the role of one of the
precincts nightly catches.
10
Preceded by:
Tom Baker
Bongo Wolf, born William Donald Grollman, was a mythic, eccentric creature living on
the fringes of 1960s Hollywood. Walking with a severe limp after having fallen down
a sidewalk elevator shaft, Bongo trolled The Strip sporting fake porcelain vampire
fangs, a pageboy haircut, and trademark bongo drums. His greatest ambition was
to become a werewolf, fulfilled in part with the help of Baker in this day in the life
portrait. Featuring rock singer P.J. Proby, guitarist Michael Bloomfield, singer-songwriter Jim Ford, and a variety of groupies, hangers-on, and other bloodless vampire
creatures descended from the Hollywood Hills, the film has the distinction of being
shot by The Doors filmmaking team of Paul Ferrara, Babe Hill, and Frank Lisciandro
(FEAST OF FRIENDS, HWY: AN AMERICAN PASTORAL). Unseen for decades, this new
digital transfer was made from a recently discovered work-print in the archives of the
British Film Institute.
Sun, Aug 2 at 7:30.
TABLE OF LOVE
EDGAR REITZ
September 8-10
On the occasion of our week-long premiere run of
his new film, HOME FROM HOME (the continuation of
his monumental HEIMAT saga), we present a weekend of earlier works by Edgar Reitz, a key figure in
postwar German cinema. As one of the signatories
of the Oberhausen Manifesto the group statement
delivered in 1962 that was intended to shake up a
contemporary German commercial cinema that the
signers perceived as tired and aesthetically bankrupt
Reitz was part of the generation of filmmakers who
helped create the New German Cinema movement,
fostering the rise of auteurs like Fassbinder, Werner
Herzog, and Volker Schlndorff. After directing a number of remarkable short films throughout the 1950s
and 60s, he joined forces with Alexander Kluge and
others to found the first German film school, the Institut fr Filmgestaltung in Ulm, where he taught until
it was closed in 1968. He collaborated with Kluge
on several films as well, shooting YESTERDAY GIRL
(1965-66) and later co-directing THE MIDDLE OF THE
ROAD IS A VERY DEAD END (1974).
Though not as well known in the U.S. as some of his
New German Cinema peers, Reitz is legendary in
Germany and among cognoscenti, above all for his
series of HEIMAT films. Beginning in 1984 with the
15-plus hour HEIMAT: A CHRONICLE OF GERMANY,
this series has grown to comprise three multi-episode
series and two shorter (but still epic) feature films,
all of which add up to a total running time of more
than 50 hours. Tracing the history of Germany from
the early 19th century to the present day, HEIMAT is a
towering achievement.
While the HEIMAT films have seen distribution in the
U.S., as well as home-video releases, Reitzs other
films are virtually unknown here. In an attempt to
begin to remedy that, we will be highlighting two of
his feature films from the 1960s and 70s, as well
as presenting a selection of his short films, whose
mastery of documentary and avant-garde techniques
demonstrate Reitzs astonishing versatility.
The Edgar Reitz program is co-presented with the GoetheInstitut New York, and organized with the assistance of Corinth
Films; special thanks to Wenzel Bilger & Sara Stevenson
(Goethe-Institut New York) and John Poole Jr. (Corinth Films),
and to Sylvia Edelmann (ARRI Media).
RETROSPECTIVES
ZERO HOUR
Photography student Elisabeth meets idealistic medical student Rolf. Shes interested in everything he does; they go on outings together and feel like theyre at
the beginning of a great, romantic love story. Children soon follow, one after the
other; Rolf gives up his studies and tries his hand at various menial professions.
It is a marriage that consumes the husband, so to speak Rolf gives his whole
life to Elizabeth and receives children and poetic thoughts of love in return, as the
production notes put it. TABLE OF LOVE presents in exemplary manner the extent
to which the male directors of the New German Cinema were fascinated by strong,
vital female characters full of life, while the male characters were usually held back
by navel-gazing or lachrymosity. (Thomas Kramer) ARSENAL
Tues, Sept 8 at 6:45 and Wed, Sept 9 at 9:15.
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ZERO HOUR takes place in a village outside Leipzig in 1945, in a Germany decimated
by the war and just beginning the long process of reconstruction. With the U.S. Army
having left and the Red Army preparing to take over, the villages inhabitants are
forced to adapt to their new circumstances. Young Joschi, a former member of the
Hitler Youth, decides to go over to the Americans, but first hes determined to find
the money and jewelry that he knows was hidden in the local graveyard by a Nazi
officer. Together with the beautiful Isa, with whom hes fallen in love, the two plot to
escape, only to find themselves falling prey to the chaos of postwar Germany and
the abuses of both the Soviet and American forces. ZERO HOUR is a powerful and
penetrating portrait of a society convulsed by the consequences of war.
Tues, Sept 8 at 9:15 and Thurs, Sept 10 at 6:30.
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Though Reitz is best known for creating HEIMAT, the longest film in the history
of the cinema, his short films rank among the greatest of his works. They range
from deeply perceptive, finely crafted documentaries about the production of cotton
(COTTON) and about the vanished culture of the Maya (YUCATAN), to an impressionistic paean to the unprecedented speed of movement in the modern world
(SPEED CINEMA ONE), to the truly extraordinary achievement that is COMMUNICATION: commissioned by the German post office, this masterpiece of avant-garde
filmmaking is a rapidly edited, associative, purely visual essay on mechanical and
electronic forms of communication that depicts the world of modern technology as
a profoundly dystopic one.
SPEED CINEMA ONE / GESCHWINDIGKEIT KINO EINS 1962-63, 13 min, 35mm, b&w
THE CHILDREN / DIE KINDER 1966, 11 min, 35mm, b&w
SUSANNE DANCES / SUSANNE TANZT 1979, 17 min, 35mm, b&w
Total running time: ca. 105 min.
ACT OF VIOLENCE
ROBERT RYAN:
AN ACTORS ACTOR
Sept 4-10
Robert Ryan (1909-73) started out in movies as a handsome Irish-American good
guy, but that all changed with his Oscar-nominated performance as a fearsome
anti-Semitic murderer in the film noir CROSSFIRE (1947). Over the next 25 years
Ryan created a series of malevolent characters in noirs, westerns, and war movies,
his services prized by such directors as Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, Jacques Tourneur,
Nicholas Ray, Samuel Fuller, and Anthony Mann. Ryan may be best remembered now
as the vain army colonel in THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967) or the guilt-ridden bounty hunter
in THE WILD BUNCH (1969), yet he was an artist of great range and sensitivity; shortly
before his death he gave a moving performance as the disillusioned anarchist in John
Frankenheimers screen adaptation of THE ICEMAN COMETH. No less than Martin
Scorsese has called Ryan one of the greatest actors in the history of American film.
On the occasion of the publication of THE LIVES OF ROBERT RYAN, a remarkable
new biography of the actor by J.R. Jones, film critic for the Chicago Reader, well be
presenting this mini-retrospective showcasing some of the Chicago-born performers
most arresting performances. Ryan left an indelible mark on noir playing a lonely,
violent cop in Nicholas Rays ON DANGEROUS GROUND and a traumatized former
POW in Fred Zinnemanns ACT OF VIOLENCE. He lit up two classic 50s westerns,
as the chuckling, philosophical killer in Anthony Manns THE NAKED SPUR and the
sinister rancher in John Sturgess BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK. But Ryan had a tender
side too: he shines as the wealthy gentleman in Daniel Manns poignant romance
ABOUT MRS. LESLIE and as the crazed country patriarch in Anthony Manns comedy
GODS LITTLE ACRE.
Select screenings will feature live discussions with the actors son Cheyney
Ryan, professor of law and philosophy at University of Oregon and Oxford
University, and J.R. Jones, the author of THE LIVES OF ROBERT RYAN.
Special thanks to Cheyney Ryan and J.R. Jones, as well as to Cassie Blake (Academy Film Archive);
Jack Durwood (Paramount); Kristie Nakamura & Nicki Woods (WB); and Todd Wiener & Steven Hill
(UCLA Film & Television Archive).
Fred Zinnemann
ACT OF VIOLENCE
1948, 82 min, 35mm, b&w. With Ryan, Van Helfin, Janet Leigh, and Mary Astor.
Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is a pillar of the community in his small Southern California
town, but then a bus from NYC brings an unwelcome visitor: Joe Parkson (Ryan), who
knows Enleys dirty little secret from their days together in a German POW camp.
Originally intended for Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart, this sun-washed noir
from MGM was shot immediately after Ryans great success in CROSSFIRE, and he
contributes one of his most iconic performances, limping around in a trenchcoat and
fedora as he thirsts for vengeance.
Fri, Sept 4 at 7:00, Sun, Sept 6 at 4:15, and Tues, Sept 8 at
9:00.
continues on page 12
11
ON DANGEROUS GROUND
John Sturges
1951, 82 min, 35mm, b&w. With Ryan, Ida Lupino, Ward Bond, and Ed Begley.
ON DANGEROUS GROUND
Anthony Mann
1953, 91 min, 35mm. With Ryan, James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Ralph Meeker,
and Millard Mitchell.
Ryan was exceedingly proud of his performance in this noirish western, which gave him a chance to work opposite James Stewart. A
determined bounty hunter (Stewart) succeeds in capturing a murderer at large (Ryan) and his young compatriot (Janet Leigh), but as
he and his partners transport them across the mountains to justice,
the wily killer begins sowing seeds of discontent. Shooting in the
San Juan Mountains in Colorado, director Anthony Mann constructs
a harrowing physical journey for his characters, though his ultimate
focus is the moral and psychological battle between the hunter
and his prey. Ryans outlaw is one of his craftiest, most eccentric
characters, a crackerbarrel comedian who can turn vicious as a
rattlesnake.
Sat, Sept 5 at 4:30, Mon, Sept 7 at 9:00, and
Wed, Sept 9 at 7:00.
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Daniel Mann
1954, 104 min, 16mm, b&w. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. With
Ryan and Shirley Booth.
Ever mindful of being typecast, Ryan gave a marvelously understated performance as a shy business executive in this affecting
womens picture. Shirley Booth had just won an Oscar as the dumpy
wife in Daniel Manns COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA; for this follow-up
Mann cast Booth as the good-hearted owner of a New York rooming house who enjoys a warm but painful affair with a prominent
executive, played by Ryan. Adapted from a novel by Vina Delmar, the
story was bowdlerized by Paramount Pictures to satisfy the Production Code Administration, but even in its diminished form it tells an
affecting tale of two lovers who are forced to wait, until time finally
runs out.
Sat, Sept 5 at 6:45 and Thurs, Sept 10 at 9:00.
12
Anthony Mann
1958, 118 min, 35mm, b&w. Restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. With
Ryan, Aldo Ray, Buddy Hackett, Tina Louise, Jack
Lord, Vic Morrow, and Michael Landon.
LILITH
BEYOND
CASSAVETES:
LOST LEGENDS OF THE NEW YORK FILM
WORLD (1945-70)
In-between Hollywood and the emerging cinematic underground, New York in the 1950s and 60s was home to a littleknown but vibrant feature film industry. Beyond bigger names
like John Cassavetes and Morris Engel, scores of hopeful, independent filmmakers cobbled together low-budget productions
with few prospects for critical or commercial success. From
waterfront wise guys to Village beatniks, from film noir to existential comedies, Made in New York signified a quirky, vibrant,
indie aesthetic that in many ways laid the foundation for later
New York-based auteurs like Martin Scorsese, Abel Ferrara, Jim
Jarmusch, and Spike Lee, among others. This ongoing series
will expose and explore New Yorks pioneering contributions to
the low-budget independent feature.
LILITH
1964, 114 min, 35mm, b&w. With Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, Peter Fonda,
Kim Hunter, Anne Meacham, Jessica Walter, and Gene Hackman.
Dogged by rumors of on-set friction, then summarily withdrawn from the Venice Film Festival after nasty comments
by the festivals director, LILITH is one of those marvelously
fractured and unrepeatable little films so typical of New York
production in the Sixties. Directed by Hollywood blacklistee
Robert Rossen (whose previous feature, THE HUSTLER, had
also been lensed entirely in New York), the majority of the film
was shot at the newly opened Meyerberg Studio on Long Island
(the first feature shot there), as well as on the vacant Killingworth estate in Lattingtown. Warren Beatty gets top billing, but
its Peter Fonda and an astonishingly demonic Jean Seberg, as
denizens of an elite psychiatric hospital, who steal the show. A
bewitching meditation on madness and sexuality, and certainly
Rossens most personal effort, LILITH typifies the kind of edgy,
off-center spirit that seemed to infect even studio-backed New
York features.
ONGOING SERIES
LEYE
Each of our quarterly calendars contains hundreds of films and videos all grouped into a number of series or categories. Along with preservation screenings, theatrical premieres,
thematic series, and retrospectives, were equally dedicated to presenting work by individuals operating at the vanguard of non-commercial cinema. Each month we showcase
at least one such program, focusing on moving-image artists who are emerging, at their peak, or long-established but still prolific. These programs are collected under the rubric
SHOW & TELL, to emphasize the presence of the filmmakers at each and every program.
This calendar brings visits from artist and songwriter Rachel Mason, who will present her singular cinematic rock opera performance THE LIVES OF HAMILTON FISH; Xander
Marro, multi-media artist and co-founder of the feminist art collective, Dirt Palace, in Providence, RI; and South Korean-raised, Cambridge, MA-based filmmaker, Soon-Mi Yoo, who
will present a program of short films in conjunction with our week-long run of her new feature-length essay film, SONGS FROM THE NORTH.
JULY:
AUGUST:
Xander Marro (American b. 1975) has been living the good life in the feminist sub-underground for too
many years to count on her long bony fingers. She draws pictures (usually narrative), makes movies (usually
not narrative), produces plays with elaborate sets and costumes (usually narrative, but confusing), and then
makes stuff like quilts and dioramas (probably narrative?). Her work is often about spiritual relationships to the
material stuff of this world. Co-founder of the Dirt Palace in 2000 AD (feminist cupcake-encrusted netherworld
located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket River, which is to say in Providence, RI, USA). Her
studio (and heart) is there still. X.M.
RACHEL MASON
XANDER MARRO
Marro is an artist, community activist, performer and filmmaker steeped in the underground of Providence,
RI. As co-founder of the Dirt Palace, a feminist art collective, Marro is equally diverse in her artistic practices.
Her work ranges from printmaking to puppetry to performance to film animation and installation and is loosely
gathered under a distinctive sensibility that has been described as a blend of girly Victorian dreaming, Monty
Python cartoons, Russian onion domes, beehive hairdos, Pee Wees Playhouse, Barbarella, and Dr. Seuss
(Greg Cook, Boston Pheonix).
Marros work is generally low-tech and handmade and embedded with a community of collective art-making.
Typically using arcane pieces of visual culture to create strange and fantastic worlds, this almost Luddite
approach presents an alternative to todays fast-paced media-driven environments. Dina Deitsch, DECORDOVA SCULPTURE PARK AND MUSEUM
ONGOING SERIES
UNESSENTIAL CINEMA
ISM ISM
SEPTEMBER:
SOON-MI YOO
The lyrical short films of Soon-Mi Yoo give haunting life to the fleeting shadows and ghosts of Korean
history, using avant-garde forms to open unwritten
chapters from her countrys traumatic past. Yoos
early training as a still photographer and time studying under experimental filmmakers Saul Levine and
Mark LaPore clearly inform her poetic and essayistic
approaches. Yoos films seek a different kind of
moving image, one able to render vivid the deep
emotional resonance of the past. Yoos spellbinding
DANGEROUS SUPPLEMENT makes remarkable use of
footage from American fighter planes bombing North
Korea to capture the dark sublimity of war through
fragmentary landscapes that tip away as soon as they
appear, haunting us with afterimages of beauty and
destruction. The ghosts and ghostly memories of war
are also the subject of ssitkim: talking to the dead,
which courageously takes on the taboo and long suppressed subject of South Koreas collaboration with
the American war against Vietnam. Fiercely contesting any notion of cinema as a tool for the smooth narrativization of official histories, ssitkim interweaves
the incontestable facts of the Vietnam War with the
dreams and supernatural visions of its victims.
Haden Guest, HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE
2004, 35 min, video, b&w/color. In English, Korean, and Vietnamese with English subtitles.
This film explores the dark legacy of the mass Vietnamese civilian killings committed by South Korean
soldiers from sizable Korean forces who fought for
hire for the U.S. from 1965-73. Calmly reexamining
aural and visual evidence of the little-known war
crime, Yoos poetic essay film bravely uncovers layers of personal and historical memory, tracing the
physical and psychological scars of the trauma and
discovering a means of history able to speak to the
still-living spirits of the dead.
DANGEROUS SUPPLEMENT
2006, 14.5 min, video, b&w/color
Edward Snowden isnt the first whistleblower to warn us that big brother is watching. To prove this point, tonights edition
of UNESSENTIAL CINEMA presents a hairy array of conspiracy and agitprop films made by camera-wielding outsiders.
Trippy and dippy, paranoid and prophetic, the hippies and weirdoes who made these far out flicks were more or less onto
somethingor at least smoking something.
Bridging the gap between the white walls of the gallery and the immersive darkness of a movie theater, Anthologys ongoing
series WHITE CUBE / BLACK BOX seeks to create a dialogue between films made by visual artists with a focus on historical
works that continue to go largely unseen in cinema spaces and works by experimental filmmakers.
Curated by Ava Tews.
Robert Smithson & Nancy Holt EAST COAST, WEST COAST 1969, 22 min, video, b&w
Robert Smithson & Nancy Holt SWAMP 1971, 6 min, 16mm
Marie Menken GO! GO! GO! 1964, 12 min, 16mm, silent
Henry Hills RADIO ADIOS 1982, 11 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts and the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Manuel DeLanda ISM ISM 1979, 8 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Gary Beydler HAND HELD DAY 1975, 6 min, 16mm, silent
Total running time: ca. 70 min.
26
14
TUESDAY
15
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS,
p 32
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS,
p 32
WEDNESDAY
16
THURSDAY
11
SATURDAY
17
18
10
FRIDAY
20
27
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS,
p 32
22
28
30
7:15 Whale KISS BEFORE
THE MIRROR, p 21
24
31
23
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS,
p 32
29
21
AUGUST 1
25
5:00 Macpherson
6:45 & 9:00 Bruggemann 6:45 & 9:00 Bruggemann 6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS,
6:45 & 9:00 Bruggemann 7:00 Chamberlain BRAND X,
BORDERLINE, p 19
STATIONS OF THE CROSS,
STATIONS OF THE CROSS,
p 32
STATIONS OF THE CROSS,
p 18
5:30 EC: Flaherty NANOOK
p5
p5
p5
OF THE NORTH, p 2
6:45 & 9:00 Bruggemann
7:30 BEYOND CASSAVETES: 6:30 Murch RETURN TO OZ,
STATIONS OF THE CROSS, 7:15 Schiller NOTHING
Rossen LILITH, p 12
p 19
p5
LASTS FOREVER, p 18
7:30 BEYOND CASSAVETES:
9:15 Isou VENOM AND
Rossen LILITH, p 12
9:15 Lambert ANOTHER SKY,
ETERNITY, p 19
p 18
9:00 Carey WORLDS
GREATEST SINNER, p 19
13
MONDAY
7:15 Macpherson
BORDERLINE, p 19
5:30 EC: Flaherty MAN OF
ARAN, p 2
9:00 Murch RETURN TO OZ,
7:00 Schiller NOTHING
p 19
LASTS FOREVER, p 18
7:30 Larry Janiak PGM, p 30
9:00 Guercio ELECTRA
GLIDE IN BLUE, p 19
19
12
SUNDAY
JULY 2015
MONDAY
10
16
24
31
30
23
17
SUNDAY
AUGUST 2015
25
18
27
20
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS, p 32
26
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS, p 32
19
15
22
28
29
21
14
8
5:00 EC: Genet/Frank & Leslie
PGM, p 3
6:45 Huang, Xu & Sniadecki
YUMEN, p 27
7:00 Harrington QUEEN OF
BLOOD, p 24
8:45 Chai FOUR WAYS TO DIE IN
MY HOMETOWN, p 27
9:00 Bava BLACK SABBATH, p 24
SATURDAY
FRIDAY
13
THURSDAY
12
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS, p 32
WEDNESDAY
11
TUESDAY
27
29
28
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS,
p 32
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS,
p 32
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS,
p 32
30
23
6:00 NEWFILMMAKERS,
p 32
16
15
FRIDAY
31
24
SATURDAY
18
26
6:45 Oshima CEREMONY, p 22
25
19
12
11
17
10
22
THURSDAY
21
WEDNESDAY
20
TUESDAY
14
13
MONDAY
SUNDAY
SEPTEMBER 2015
AFA MEMBERS
ONLY
FREE SCREENING!
CHANTAL AKERMANS JEANNE
DIELMAN
BRAND X
ONE-FILM WONDERS
July 16-23, August 13-19, and Sept 1-3
Most great filmmakers spend an entire career developing a signature style and coherent themes, experimenting and exploring
and refining their craft over the course of several movies. But there is another brand of auteur, far more elusive and remarkable:
the director who establishes a fully formed cinematic vision with their first full-length credit, only to never make another feature.
The One-Offs, as Andrew Sarris labels them in a chapter of THE AMERICAN CINEMA. The One-Film Wonders.
Once every calendar we offer a special, AFA Members-Only screening, featuring sneak-previews of
upcoming features, programs of rare materials
from Anthologys collections, in-person filmmaker
presentations, and more! The benefits of an
Anthology membership have always been plentiful: free admission to over 100 Essential Cinema
programs, reduced admission to all other shows,
discounted AFA publications. But with these
screenings free and open only to members we
sweeten the pot even further.
Almost exclusively misunderstood or underappreciated in their time by critics, the public, or both these singular artists never
assembled a full-blown oeuvre. Some gave up, disinterested in the process of directing or disillusioned by the hardships of the
industry. Some moved on, finding success in another field. Some kept trying, struggling and failing to get a follow-up project off
the ground. Some simply met a premature demise. No matter the story, a combination of circumstance and chance has unfairly
relegated these directors achievements to the footnotes of film history.
Chantal Akerman
Co-curated by C. Mason Wells, who also wrote the series introduction and all film descriptions. Special thanks to Carmen Accaputo (Cineteca di Bologna);
Brian Belovarac (Janus Films); Daniel Bish (George Eastman House); Cassie Blake (Academy Film Archive); Margaret Bodde (The Film Foundation);
Romeo Carey; Sam Chamberlain; Pip Chodorov (Re:Voir); Chris Chouinard (Park Circus); Jack Durwood (Paramount); Tiffany Greenwood (Swank Motion
Pictures, Inc.), Kristie Nakamura & Nicki Woods (WB); Todd Wiener & Steven Hill (UCLA Film & Television Archive); and Mike Williams (Strand Releasing).
Anthology is thrilled to finally give these 17 visionaries their due with 17 complete retrospectives. The One-Film Wonders
appear in all forms industry insiders, regional upstarts, avant-garde iconoclasts and hail from different countries and time
periods, but they remain united by a go-for-broke ambition, an ability to pack a lifetimes worth of images and ideas into a single
feature. They may not have enjoyed long careers, but as THE HONEYMOON KILLERS Leonard Kastle remarked, One thing I can
always say and not every director can say this I never made a bad film.
Tom Schiller
Wynn Chamberlain
1984, 82 min, 35mm. With Zach Galligan, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Mort Sahl.
A member of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVEs original writing staff in 1975, Tom Schiller,
like Albert Brooks, cut his filmmaking teeth directing shorts for the Not Ready for
Primetime Players. He transitioned to features in the early 80s with this retrofuturist fable about a wide-eyed aspiring artist (a pre-GREMLINS Zach Galligan)
who comes to New York to make it big, but finds himself on an oddball journey
from the Holland Tunnel to an underground artists colony to a bus to the moon
(driven by Bill Murray). This strangely funny, highly stylized pastiche of outdated
tropes (shot by THE KING OF COMEDY d.p. Fred Schuler and intercut with clips
from old films) tested so poorly at preview screenings that its producer, MGM,
declined to release it. Schiller continued to work in the shorter form for SNL, and
has since directed hundreds of commercials, but never another feature.
Thurs, July 16 at 7:15, Sun, July 19 at 7:00, and
Tues, July 21 at 9:15.
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Gavin Lambert
ANOTHER SKY
1955, 86 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National
Film Preservation Foundation.
In the middle of his stint as editor for SIGHT & SOUND, Gavin Lambert (onetime
Oxford chum of future filmmakers Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson) tried his
own hand at directing. Inspired by the writing of Paul Bowles (whod later become
a close friend of Lamberts in Tangier) and beautifully filmed by Walter Lassally
(THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER), ANOTHER SKY trails a white
governess brought to Morocco for work who gradually falls under the spell of the
music, culture, and men of Marrakesh. But this mesmerizing slow-burn romance
would prove Lamberts only effort as director; he opted instead for a successful
career as screenwriter (Nicholas Rays BITTER VICTORY), novelist (INSIDE DAISY
CLOVER), and biographer (of George Cukor and Natalie Wood).
Thurs, July 16 at 9:15 and Sun, July 19 at 5:00.
BRAND X
Downtown fixture Elwyn Wynn Chamberlain painted Frank OHara and Allen
Ginsberg, produced an early Charles
Ludlam play, and turned to film in 1970
with this crude, merciless consumerist
satire. Inspired by a snowed-in weekend
stuck watching television, BRAND X gleefully parodies boob-tube banality with
copious nudity, a wicked sense of humor,
and a whos-who cast featuring Taylor
Mead, Sally Kirkland, Sam Shepard,
Abbie Hoffman, and Candy Darling. The
first truly entertaining Entertainment film
of the new consciousness, heralded
Jonas Mekas, but Chamberlain moved
on, burning his paintings and relocating
his family to India in the mid-70s. His
latter-day artistic output consisted solely
of a series of novels.
SERIES
RETURN TO OZ
Isidore Isou
Walter Murch
BAVE ET DTERNIT
Kenneth Macpherson
BORDERLINE
RETURN TO OZ
Timothy Carey
Heavily inspired by Eisenstein, Kenneth Macpherson founded British cinema journal CLOSE UP in
1927 and began his own filmmaking practice
soon after, directing three poetic experimental
shorts in as many years. As its title suggests,
Macphersons feature debut is a movie at a crossroads, a defiantly silent experiment made at the
cusp of cinemas transition to sound. BORDERLINE
takes a fairly conventional love triangle plot and
complicates it through radical editing patterns, a
clatter montage where adjacent images butt up
so close against one another they nearly overlap.
The content of Macphersons film is equally startling, unafraid to explore simmering racial tensions
(two of its characters are played by Paul Robeson
and his wife Eslanda) and fluid notions of sexuality.
After BORDERLINE met a harsh critical reception,
Macpherson retired from directing and withdrew
his film from circulation it wouldnt be rediscovered for another 50 years.
James William Guercio first came to prominence in the music biz: he wrote a
Chad and Jeremy hit, collaborated with Frank Zappa, produced Chicago and
Moondog, and even played bass for the Beach Boys. His only directing credit,
ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE, suggests he couldve enjoyed an equally fruitful film
career. Robert Blake stars as a pint-sized Arizona motorcycle cop who dreams
of making detective, only to find a department festering beneath layers of corruption. Gorgeously shot by Conrad Hall (who Guercio afforded by taking a $1
directing salary) to recall John Ford epics, this bleakly funny hybrid of police
procedural and Western combines a distinctly 70s cynicism with a handsome
cinematic classicism. Guercio would produce another Robert Blake vehicle a
few years later Hal Ashbys SECOND-HAND HEARTS but then moved toward
a career in cattle ranching and oil drilling.
Sun, July 19 at 9:00 and Tues, July 21 at 7:00.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Laughton
1955, 92 min, 35mm, b&w. Restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive;
restoration funding provided by The Film Foundation. With Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters,
and Lillian Gish.
Over the course of a 30-plus year career, the British-born Charles Laughton
established himself as one of Hollywoods most versatile performers, a
scene-stealer of unmatched grace, intelligence, and range. But nothing about
Laughtons beloved acting couldve prepared audiences for the sheer ferocity
of his directing in this expressionist Southern Gothic nightmare. Its good vs.
evil: Lillian Gish struggles to protect two innocent orphans from the clutches of
crooked preacher and murderer Robert Mitchum, chasing after the loot stolen
by the childrens imprisoned father. Elegantly written by famed critic and novelist James Agee and shot in high-contrast black-and-white by Stanley Cortez
(THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS), Laughtons sole effort behind the camera
has a baroque, brooding style unlike anything before or since. It was understandably greeted with confusion in 1955 but is universally celebrated today,
with CAHIERS DU CINMA naming it the second most beautiful film of all time.
Thurs, Aug 13 at 7:00, Sun, Aug 16 at 9:00, and
Tues, Aug 18 at 7:00.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Norman Lear
COLD TURKEY
19
SERIES
PHASE IV
WANDA
PINK NARCISSUS
Saul Bass
James Bidgood
Barbara Loden
WANDA
PHASE IV
Herk Harvey
CARNIVAL OF SOULS
Herk Harvey had amassed several years of filmmaking experience by the time he made CARNIVAL OF
SOULS in 1962. A prolific writer, director, and producer of industrial films for Kansass Centron Films,
Harvey was renowned for his ingenuity and efficiency,
qualities hed bring to his feature-length debut. The
story of a young blonde (onetime Lee Strasberg
student Candace Hilligoss) who emerges from a car
accident to find herself haunted by demons, CARNIVAL OF SOULS uses its limitations a low budget,
tight shooting schedule, non-professional supporting players, unpolished tech credits as strengths,
showing an almost Val Lewton-esque ability to
wring atmospheric dread from few resources. The
film would eventually find a cult fan base thanks to
late-night TV, but its failure to catch on discouraged
Harvey. Production was aborted on his attempted scifi follow-up THE RELUCTANT WITCH in the late-60s,
and he continued his work for Centron.
Sat, Aug 15 at 9:15 and
Wed, Aug 19 at 7:00.
20
PINK NARCISSUS
Parsons grad James Bidgood made a name for himself with his fantastical gay erotic photographs; in 1963, he embarked on a cinematic
project in a similarly gauzy style. A wordless (and often clothes-less)
study of a dark-haired young man cruising through seedy nightclubs,
city streets, and forests, PINK NARCISSUS was shot on 8mm entirely
on bejeweled plastic sets constructed in Bidgoods tiny apartment,
the director operating as one-man-band. Filmed over seven years,
this handmade epic wasnt finished so much as confiscated by its
financier and cut against Bidgoods wishes. It was initially shown
without a directors credit, leading some to speculate it was a secret
Warhol project, but reemerged decades later as Bidgoods creation
and a pioneering work of the queer avant-garde. After a long hiatus,
Bidgood returned to photography in 2005, but not, as of yet, filmmaking.
Tues, Sept 1 at 7:00 and Wed, Sept 2 at 9:15.
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Mario Peixoto
LIMITE
1931, 114 min, 35mm-to-DCP, b&w. Print courtesy of the Cineteca di Bologna.
During a stint in Europe in the 1920s, a young Mrio Peixoto discovered the cinema of Lang, Murnau, and Pudovkin. Upon returning to
his native Brazil, he decided to make a film of his own. A silent flood
of poetic imagery sans intertitles, LIMITE uses flashbacks to recount
the oblique narrative of a man and a woman ending up lost at sea.
Produced in close collaboration with the Rio de Janeiro art scene,
this radical experiment went undistributed for fear itd provoke riots,
and was unseen for so long some thought its very existence was
apocryphal. It reemerged as a favorite of cine-clubs, collecting fans
from Orson Welles to Sergei Eisenstein to David Bowie, and now
enjoys a reputation as one of the greatest works of Brazilian cinema.
After struggling for decades to make a second film, Peixoto focused
on literary work, writing poetry, plays, and novels.
Tues, Sept 1 at 8:45, Wed, Sept 2 at 6:45, and
Thurs, Sept 3 at 9:15.
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Leonard Kastle
1969, 108 min, 35mm. With Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco.
SERIES
3 GODFATHERS
BARRY LYNDON
John Ford
Stanley Kubrick
1948, 106 min, 35mm. With John Wayne, Pedro Armendriz, Harry Carey
Jr., and Ward Bond.
1975, 183 min, 35mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. With Ryan ONeal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Kruger,
and Leonard Rossiter.
3 GODFATHERS
Douglas Sirk
1954, 92 min, 35mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. With Jeff
Chandler and Jack Palance.
Douglas Sirks very first CinemaScope film was also his only
foray into the swords-and-sandals genre. Though it would be a
stretch to call it a perfect fit, SIGN OF THE PAGAN displays his
usual intelligence and precision, boasts a genuine fascination
with its historical era that sets it apart from most of the rest of
the genre, and features an unforgettable, larger-than-life performance by Jack Palance as Attila the Hun. Strutting around
with shoulder-length hair, a Fu Manchu mustache, and brownish skin, Palance makes Attila not only truly ferocious, but also
vulnerable and psychologically complex.
Fri, July 24 at 9:15 and Mon, July 27 at 7:30.
BARRY LYNDON
All of Kubricks features look better now than when they were first released, but BARRY LYNDONremains his
most underrated. It may also be his greatest. This personal, idiosyncratic, melancholy, and long (three hours)
adaptation of the Thackeray novel is exquisitely shot in natural light (or, in night scenes, candlelight) by John Alcott,
with frequent use of slow backward zooms that distance us, both historically and emotionally, from its rambling
picaresque narrative about an 18th-century Irish upstart (Ryan ONeal). Despite its ponderous, funereal moods and
pacing, the film is a highly accomplished piece of storytelling, building to one of the most suspenseful duels ever
staged. It also repays close attention as a complex and fascinating historical meditation, as enigmatic in its way as
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER
Sat, July 25 at 7:15 and Sun, July 26 at 4:45.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEEL MY PULSE
1928, 63 min, 35mm, b&w, silent. Preserved by the Library of Congress. With Bebe Daniels, Richard Arlen, and William Powell.
This silent comedy gem by the great and still-underappreciated Gregory La Cava (MY MAN GODFREY, STAGE
DOOR, UNFINISHED BUSINESS) features the incomparable Bebe Daniels as a hypochondriac heiress who retreats
to a sanitarium that, unbeknownst to her, has become a hideout for bootleggers. William Powell is the gangs heavy
who plays along until the truth comes out, culminating in an unforgettable slapstick crescendo.
Wed, July 29 at 7:15 and Thurs, July 30 at 9:00.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1933, 67 min, 35mm, b&w. Preserved by the Library of Congress. With Nancy Carroll, Frank Morgan, and Paul Lukas.
A dark and highly stylized psychodrama, THE KISS BEFORE THE MIRROR traces the breakdown of a lawyer who
begins to suspect his wife of infidelity, even as he is defending a friend on trial for having murdered his wife. For
this operatic material, Whale sought out famed German cinematographer Karl Freund to produce another visually
striking and rhapsodically cinematic masterpiece, complete with complicated tracking shots and 360-degree pans,
one that (in the words of a critic of the day) might well have come from the UFA studios a dozen years earlier.
Whale remained rightfully proud of this still largely unknown gem. HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE
Wed, July 29 at 8:45 and Thurs, July 30 at 7:15.
21
SERIES
RIVERS EDGE
CELLULOID, CONTD.
Allan Dwan
Henry Hathaway
1957, 87 min, 35mm. Archival print courtesy of 20th Century Fox. With Ray Milland, Anthony Quinn,
Debra Paget, and Harry Carey Jr.
1956, 88 min, 35mm. Archival print courtesy of 20th Century Fox. With Van Johnson, Joseph Cotten,
Jack Carson & Margaret Lindsay.
Ray Milland stars as an anxious thief on the lam, fleeing to Mexico after lifting
a million dollars from a U.S. bank. He solicits the help of border guide Anthony
Quinn to lead him through the California wilderness and to freedom theres only
the small matter of Quinns exasperated wife Debra Paget, who just so happens
to be Millands ex-girlfriend. Shooting on location and in CinemaScope, the madly
prolific Dwan transforms this crime-melodrama quickie into another of his terrific
B-movies. Sarris grouped the film alongside the directors SILVER LODE and THE
RESTLESS BREED, and said they represent a virtual bonanza of hitherto unexplored
classics. [I]t may very well be that Dwan will turn out to be the last of the old
masters. C. Mason Wells
Wed, Sept 23 at 7:15 and Sun, Sept 27 at 9:00.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Hunter
RIVERS EDGE
1986, 99 min, 35mm. Archival print courtesy of the North Carolina School of the Arts. With Daniel
Roebuck, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Crispin Glover, and Dennis Hopper.
Based on a true story, this disturbing teen film is one of the darkest commercial
films of the 1980s, a chilling alternative to the likes of THE BREAKFAST CLUB or
PRETTY IN PINK. When sullen high-schooler John kills his classmate Jamie, far from
keeping it a secret he brags about the crime to his friends (played by Keanu Reeves,
Ione Skye, and Crispin Glover, among others) and takes them to see the body. Rather
than report the crime or struggle with guilt at their association with the killer, they
react with morbid curiosity or misplaced loyalty. Without denying its characters a
measure of sympathy or understanding, RIVERS EDGE is a deeply unsettling depiction of teenage alienation and moral paralysis.
Wed, Sept 23 at 9:15 and Sun, Sept 27 at 6:45.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Sarafian
VANISHING POINT
1971, 99 min, 35mm. Archival print courtesy of 20th Century Fox. With Barry Newman, Cleavon
Little, Dean Jagger, and Severn Darden.
22
Nagisa Oshima
CEREMONY / GISHIKI
Widely acclaimed as Nagisa Oshimas most ambitious film, THE CEREMONY takes
as its subject the entire history of postwar Japan, as embodied by the fortunes of the
powerful Sakurada family from 1946 to the present. Through the eyes of the familys
Manchurian-born heir apparent, we move through a dense, flashback-punctuated
procession of weddings and funerals that escalates into a vertiginous indictment of
the madness of contemporary Japan.
Fri, Sept 25 at 6:45, Sat, Sept 26 at 9:00, and
Sun, Sept 27 at 4:00.
SERIES
ROGER CORMAN WILL BE HERE IN PERSON ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, TO PRESENT HIS FILM, X: THE MAN WITH THE
X-RAY EYES, AND FOR A SPECIAL CONVERSATION FOLLOWING THE FILM. HE WILL ALSO BE HERE ON SATURDAY,
AUGUST 22, FOR THE SCREENINGS OF BUCKET OF BLOOD AND TOMB OF LIGEIA.
Stay tuned for much more AIP madness bikers, blaxploitation, and more this Fall!
The AIP series is sponsored by Ninkasi Brewing; for more info, visit: http://www.ninkasibrewing.com.
Special thanks to Roger Corman, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, Susan Nicholson-Hofheinz, William Lustig, Martin Scorsese, and Jacques Boyreau & Scott Moffett (Cosmic Hex), as
well as to Brian Belovarac (Janus Films); Daniel Bish (George Eastman House); Cassie Blake (Academy Film Archive); Cynthia Brown (New Horizons Picture Corp.); Robert Cashill;
Chris Chouinard (Park Circus); Harry Guerro; and Andr Schublin (Cinmathque suisse).
SHOCK AFTER SHOCK AFTER SHOCK as Desire drives a bargain with DEATH!
This brutal chiller, which AIP picked up for distribution, marked the first significant big-screen role in more than a decade for Hollywood legend Gloria Grahame, after years spent
almost entirely on theater and TV work. Grahame is unforgettable as Mrs. Deere, the sadistic director of a nightmarish orphanage where the films protagonist, teenage Ellie Masters,
finds herself banished after her prostitute mother is killed by a hammer-wielding maniac.
I first saw BLOOD AND LACE in 1971 when it played bottom-billed with VAMPIRE LOVERS at the Academy of Music on E. 14th St. The opening hammer murder scene had me riveted
to the film! Im totally convinced the scene inspired a more famous horror films opening scene a few years later! I saw this film a few times later on 42nd St. and then it disappeared,
popping up occasionally on bootleg VHS and DVD. This is a great opportunity to see this lost film projected. William Lustig
Fri, July 31 at 7:00, Sun, Aug 2 at 9:00, and Sun, Aug 9 at 9:00.
23
SERIES
DEMENTIA 13
AIP, CONTD.
BLACK SABBATH
QUEEN OF BLOOD
AUTEURS AT AIP:
Mario Bava
Vincente Minnelli
DEMENTIA 13
Edgar G. Ulmer
BLACK SABBATH
Martin Scorsese
BOXCAR BERTHA
1972, 88 min, 35mm. With Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, and John Carradine. Produced by Roger Corman.
A MATTER OF TIME
Curtis Harrington
QUEEN OF BLOOD
1966, 81 min, 16mm. With John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, and Dennis
Hopper.
SERIES
Brian De Palma
SISTERS
1973, 93 min, 35mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. With Margot Kidder, Jennifer
Salt, and Charles Durning.
EARLY SCI-FI/HORROR:
Roger Corman
Ray Milland
1962, 92 min, 35mm, b&w. With Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, and Frankie Avalon.
Roger Corman
A BUCKET OF BLOOD
Roger Corman
CAT or WOMAN or a thing too evil to mention? Listen for the SCREAM in the night,
look into the eyes of the creature who rules the land of the living dead!
Written by future CHINATOWN screenwriter Robert Towne, LIGEIA is perhaps the most faithful
of the Poe adaptations. In this final film in the cycle, Price stars as the widower Verdon Fell,
who is convinced that his wifes spirit has not found peace; when he reluctantly decides to
remarry, sinister events suggest that his suspicions may be well-founded
Here at last Mr. Corman has done what it always seemed he might be able some time to
do: make a film which could without absurdity be spoken of in the same breath as Cocteaus
ORPHEUS. THE LONDON TIMES
Sat, Aug 22 at 9:00, Tues, Aug 25 at 7:00, and Sun, Aug 30 at 5:00.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bert I. Gordon
SERIES
THE SHE-CREATURE
AIP, CONTD.
Herbert L. Strock
Ib Melchior
Sidney Hayers
Edward L. Cahn
THE SHE-CREATURE
1956, 77 min, 16mm, b&w
SERIES
YUMEN
FEMALE DIRECTORS
Luo Li
Yang Mingming
Wang Xiaozhen
YUMEN
Two Chinese avant-garde artists and an American experimental filmmaker have collaborated
on a stunningly beautiful Chinese experimentalfiction-documentary that dazzlingly combines
ghost stories and ruin porn to form a celluloid
psycho-collage. Shot on 16mm film, its set
in the largely abandoned oil drilling town of
Yumen a place with an ancient, poetic history
in Chinas western Gansu province and takes
us through trashed, desolate urban spaces abandoned by Chinese socialism. But the filmmakers
bring these places alive with their cast of ghosts,
artists, vagabond dancers, and singers.
Sat, Aug 8 at 6:45 and
Tues, Aug 11 at 9:00.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chai Chunya
TIANYUAN JIANG WU
Two brilliant young women, art school graduates with deliciously profane vocabularies and supreme confidence, talk sex, cinema, and power, as they wield their shared
video camera like a scalpel. Yangs superb debut is hilarious, moving, and subversive.
&
Wen Hui
A language written by women confronts official ideology in Wens film. She starts
from stories her 83-year-old great-aunt tells her of being tortured as a class enemy
during Maos China: the result is poetry, an experimental documentary that combines
testimony and dance-like gesture, in black-and-white and color.
Sun, Aug 9 at 5:30 and Wed, Aug 12 at 9:00.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ai Weiwei
PINGAN YUEQING
The documentaries produced by Ai Weiweis studio are closer to investigative journalism than to conceptual art. This film concerns the mysterious death by road accident of a village leader, Qian Yunhui, an activist who stood up for his fellow villagers
when their land was confiscated without compensation by the local government.
Qians death in 2010 quickly became a cause clbre online in China. Ai and his team
take up the challenge of determining what really happened, and dig deep into the
land dispute lying behind what looks like the convenient murder of a rights advocate.
Sun, Aug 9 at 8:00 and Thurs, Aug 13 at 6:30.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bi Gan THE POET AND THE SINGER / JINGANGJING 2012, 26 min, digital
A visually splendid poem that provocatively but elegantly juxtaposes a poet, a singer,
a river, a pair of murderers, and the Diamond Sutra.
Zhi Jun DISMANTLING CLEMATIS #16 / CHAI TIESI #16 2014, 30 min, digital
After a fire, scarred bonsai trees are meticulously freed of their supporting wires by
medical professionals.
Chen Zhou IM NOT NOT NOT CHEN ZHOU 2013, 34 min, digital
The color yellow, as well as artist Chen Zhou and his alter ego(s), star in this droll,
playfully conceptual tour de force.
Total running time: ca. 95 min.
27
SERIES
DEAR JANICE
RHYTHMUS 21
EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION
August 28-30
Published in 1976, EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION was among the first texts to trace the trajectory of the kinetic art form by directly linking the abstract work of early pioneers
(e.g., Eggeling, Richter, Fischinger) to the technological breakthroughs of the 1960s and 70s (e.g., Whitney, Vanderbeek, Emshwiller). The book was a collaborative effort
between Robert Russett (1935-2015), an animator and scholar, and Cecile Starr (1921-2014), a critic, teacher, and filmmaker, who combined their expertise of contemporary
practices and early animation respectively to compile this definitive, yet highly accessible, volume.
Russett and Starr ingeniously mapped this history by featuring a multi-generational selection of 38 innovative artist-filmmakers. Each artist was highlighted in a chapter of
their own with a short introduction and a collection of primary source materials including illuminating stills, interviews, and statements. All 38 artists are represented in this
series alongside program titles and descriptions from the book.
This series represents a tribute to Russett and Starr, both of whom we sadly lost within the last year, as well as a celebration of their influential volume.
Special thanks to Cassie Blake, May Haduong & Mark Toscano (Academy Film Archive); Aram Boyajian; Kitty Cleary (MoMA); Kathy Elder (York University); Clint Enns; Robert Haller; Mark Johnson (Harvard
Film Archive); Denah Johnston & Antonella Bonfanti (Canyon Cinema); Jodie Mack; Cheryl Petrie (University of Waterloo); James Roberts (National Film Board of Canada); and MM Serra & Josh Guilford
(Film-Makers Coop).
While the work of pioneer abstract animators in Europe is of inestimable historical importance as a movement, it is the quality of their artistry that deserves our greatest
attention. Many of the films are individually striking, even dazzling achievements. They remain unrivalled by the subsequent works of later innovators, growing rather than
diminishing in value with the passing of time, like all works of art.
Lotte Reiniger THE STOLEN HEART / DAS GESTOHLENE HERZ 1934, 11 min, 16mm, b&w
Berthold Bartosch THE IDEA / LIDEE 1932, 25 min, 16mm, b&w
Alexandre Alexeieff & Claire Parker EN PASSANT 1943, 2 min, 16mm, b&w
Total running time: ca. 75 min.
LAPIS
PROGRAM 3:
Mary Ellen Bute SYNCHROMY NO. 4: ESCAPE 1937-38, 4 min, 35mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
Douglass Crockwell THE LONG BODIES 1947, 4 min, 16mm, silent
Dwinell Grant ABSTRACT EXPERIMENTS 1941-42, 8 min, 16mm, silent
Francis Lee LE BIJOU 1946, 8 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
Building on the historic and artist tradition of the early pioneers, experimental animators working in the
post-1950s began to create new kinds of content and meaning by investigating the interior logic of nonnarrative and perceptual concepts of cinema. [] Working outside the mainstream of commercial cinema,
these contemporary imagists, like the experimental pioneers before them, have contributed to a rigorous
tradition of independence, originality and esthetic inquiry that has always been the concern of experimental
animation.
Robert Breer 70 1970, 5 min, 16mm-to-35mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Harry Smith FILM NO. 16: OZ: THE TIN WOODSMANS DREAM ca. 1967, 14 min, 35mm, silent. Preserved by
Anthology Film Archives.
Carmen DAvino PIANISSIMO 1963, 6 min, 35mm. Archival print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Jerome Hill CANARIES 1968, 4 min, 35mm. The 35mm print is the result of a recent preservation project undertaken
by the Museum of Modern Art.
Tony Conrad STRAIGHT AND NARROW 1970, 10 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with
funding provided by The National Film Preservation Foundation.
Larry Jordan ORB 1973, 5 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
Paul Sharits PIECE MANDALA/END WAR 1966, 5 min, 16mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
Total running time: ca. 80 min.
PROGRAM 4:
VISIONS
VISION FESTIVAL
Susan Littenberg
VISIONS
Recorded during the 2nd Annual Vision Festival held in the Lower East
Side from May 27-June 1, 1997, VISIONS contains powerful and rare
performances by underground artists who have mastered their disciplines over the past 25-30 years, but have largely been ignored by
the mainstream. Featuring performances and interviews with William
Parker, David S. Ware, Matthew Shipp, Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter,
Cooper-Moore, Amiri Baraka, Patricia Nicholson, Assif Tsahar, John
Tchicai, and more.
Sun, July 5 at 9:15.
29
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
ADAMS FILM 1963, 9 min, 16mm. Preserved by Chicago Film Archives with support from
the National Film Preservation Foundation.
LIFE & FILM 1965, 4.5 min, 16mm, b&w. Made in collaboration with Robert Stiegler and
Jeffrey Pasco.
30
Gregg Araki
1995, 83 min, 35mm. With Rose McGowan, James Duval, Jonathan Schaech, and Parker Posey.
Hit the road with Jordan White, Amy Blue, and Xavier Red, when a couple of
angst-fueled teenagers rescue a wayfaring stranger from a gang of homophobic
goons (played by Skinny Puppy). After a pit stop at a Quickie Mart turns homicidal,
these lovers-on-the-lam are forced to coast through the candy colored hell of
New Queer Cinema auteur Gregg Arakis first heterosexual film. Former lovers
emerge challenging Amys claims of virginity and go in hot pursuit of these
lusty ones. Blending his early Godardian formal approaches with an MTV flair for
blood, guts, and stunt casting (look out for appearances by Margaret Cho, Porno
For Pyros Perry Farrell, Heidi Fleiss, and former cast members of THE LOVE BOAT,
THE BRADY BUNCH, and HERBIE, THE LOVE BUG), Arakis THE DOOM GENERATION
is the ultimate midnight movie of the 90s, a total cult sensation, and the central
installment in Arakis Teen Apocalypse Trilogy. There just is no place for us in
this world
Thurs, July 23 at 8:00.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
MACONDO
EDENS EDGE
Since 2011, each annual edition of the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival) has featured the granting of the
MoreVALUE Film Award to one or more Austrian filmmakers whose films are included within the festival. Designed to
showcase the best of Austrian cinema, the Award was founded by Erste Bank, the Viennales main sponsor, and is
awarded according to the findings of an independent jury. The Award brings a cash prize as well as a one-month residency as a visiting film scholar hosted and organized by the Deutsches Haus at NYU. The screenings are co-organized
by the Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Anthology has presented the award-winning
films in the past, and we continue the tradition this year with special screenings of both of the 2014 winners: Sudabeh
Mortezais docudrama MACONDO and Gerhard Treml & Leo Calices experimental landscape film EDENS EDGE. All three
filmmakers will be here in person to present their work!
This program is co-presented by Erste Bank, Deutsches Haus at NYU, and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.
Special thanks to Sudabeh Mortezai; Gerhard Treml & Leo Calice; Juliane Camfield & Sarah Girner (Deutsches Haus at NYU); Ruth Goubran (Erste
Bank); and Christine Moser, Judith Brand & Chris Zimmerman (Austrian Cultural Forum NY).
JULY:
AUGUST:
MACONDO
EDENS EDGE
Sudabeh Mortezai
2014, 98 min, digital. In Chechen and German with English
subtitles.
ECHOES
NEW YORK
WOMEN IN FILM
& TELEVISION
PRESENTS
NARRATIVE SHORTS
Marissa Kelton KISSED BY INSPIRATION
2013, 10 min, digital
NEWFILMMAKERS
NEWFILMMAKERS NY SERIES
The NewFilmmakers Screening Series selects films and videos often overlooked by traditional film festivals. The NewFilmmakers Series began in 1998 and over the past sixteen
years has screened over 800 features and 3,000 short films. In 2002 we started NewFilmmakers Los Angeles. Many well-known shorts and features have had their initial screenings
at NewFilmmakers, including THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and TOO MUCH SLEEP.
NewFilmmakers LA now screens monthly at the AT&T Center. Recently we began NewFilmmakers Online, which gives filmmakers the opportunity to exhibit and distribute their films
directly to the public. NewFilmmakers also programs the Soho House Screening Series in New York & Los Angeles.
Programs are subject to change; check our schedule online at www.NewFilmmakers.com for updated information. NewFilmmakers is sponsored by Barney Oldfield Management,
Angelika Entertainment, Prophet Pictures, SXM, and H2O Distribution.
Please note that the NewFilmmakers series is not programmed or administered by Anthology Film Archives staff; for further information, please address
questions via telephone or email as listed below.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Bill Woods, New York Director
Larry Laboe, Los Angeles Director
Bill Elberg, NewFilmmakers Online Co-Director
Jessica Canty, NewFilmmakers Online Co-Director
NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS A
NIGHT OF WOMEN FILMMAKERS
Wed, July 8, Special Program at 6:00,
Short Film Program at 7:15, Feature at
8:30.
NEWFILMMAKERS NIGHT OF
CHRISTIAN SEX
Wed, July 15, First Short Film Program
at 6:00, Second Short Film Program at
7:15, Feature at 8:30.
NEWFILMMAKERS NIGHT OF
BROOKLYN FILMS
Wed, July 22, Short Film Program
at 6:00, First Feature at 7:15, Second
Feature at 9:00.
NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS A
ROUGH CUT SCREENING OF GRINDER
Wed, July 29, Short Film Program at
6:00, Special Program at 7:00, Feature
at 8:45.
NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS A
NIGHT OF SCIENCE FICTION
Wed, Aug 19, Special Program at 6:00,
Short Film Program at 7:00, Feature at
8:15.
NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS A
NIGHT OF WOMEN FILMMAKERS
Wed, Aug 26, Special Program at 6:00,
Short Film Program at 7:00, Feature at
8:45.
32
NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS A
NIGHT OF OFFBEAT FILMS
Wed, Sept 16, Short Film Program
at 6:00, First Feature at 7:15, Second
Feature at 9:00.
NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS A
NIGHT OF WOMEN FILMMAKERS
Wed, Sept 30, Special Program at
6:00, Short Film Program at 7:15,
Special Program at 8:30, Feature at
9:45.
INDEX
3 GODFATHERS, July 24, 26, p. 21
I, A MAN, Aug 1, p. 10
SISTERS, Aug 3, 7, 9, p. 25
LIMITE, Sept 1, 2, 3, p. 20
CORMAN, ROGER, Aug 21, 22, 25, 26, 29, 30, Sept 1 p. 23-25
VISIONS, July 5, p. 29
X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, Aug 21, 26, 30,
p. 25
ES
A R C HI
FIL
HOLO
NT
32 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10003
Dated Material
Anthology Film Archives opened on November 30, 1970, at Joseph Papps Public Theater. In 1973 it relocated to 80 Wooster Street. Pressed
by the need for adequate space, in 1979 it acquired Manhattans Second Avenue Courthouse building. After an extensive renovation, the
building was adapted in the mid-1980s to house two motion picture theaters, a reference library, a film preservation department, administrative
offices, and an art gallery. Anthology opened at its current location on October 12, 1988.
EXHIBITION PROGRAM
Our theaters are equipped with 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, Super-8mm, and video projection. Besides the daily screenings of new and classic works
programmed by the staff, Anthology is a home to many guest curators and film festivals. Anthologys programming is unusually rich and varied.
Individual retrospectives, special national and minority surveys, and thematic festivals are exhibited regularly.
A very special series of films screened on a repertory basis, the Essential Cinema repertory collection consists of 110 programs/330 titles
assembled in 1970-75 by the Film Selection CommitteeJames Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, P. Adams Sitney, and Jonas Mekas.
It was an ambitious attempt to define the art of cinema. The project was never completed, but even in its unfinished state the series provides
an uncompromising critical overview of cinemas history.
REFERENCE LIBRARY
Anthologys reference library contains the worlds largest collection of materials documenting the history of American and international avantgarde/independent film and video. The holdings include books, periodicals, photographs, posters, recordings of lectures and interviews,
distribution and festival catalogs, as well as files on individual filmmakers and organizations. The files contain original documents, manuscripts,
letters, scripts, notebooks, clippings, and other ephemera. We are now working to make much of these unique materials available online.
FILM PRESERVATION
Anthology has also saved tens of thousands of films from disposal and disintegration, principally by housing materials in our historic East Village
Courthouse building. We have been steadfastly committed to the preservation and exhibition of work by the most important American independent
and experimental filmmakers of the last half-century. Films preserved by Anthologyover 1000 to dateinclude those of Stan Brakhage, Shirley
Clarke, Joseph Cornell, Maya Deren, George & Mike Kuchar, Marie Menken, Paul Sharits, and Harry Smith, among many others.
COVER: Sabrina Gschwandtner, Quilts, Dresses, Arts and Crafts (for Rollins), 2014. 16mm polyester film, polyester thread, lithography
ink. 53 high x 77 3/16 wide x 6 1/8 deep. Photo by Tom Powel Imaging. Collection of the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art
at Rollins College.
Directions
Subway: F train to 2nd Avenue, walk two blocks north on
2nd Avenue to 2nd Street.
#6 to Bleecker St., walk one block North on Lafayette, two
blocks east on Bond St. (turns into 2nd St.) to 2nd Avenue.
Bus: M15 to 3rd Street.
Become a Member!
Ticket Prices
$10 General
$8 Essential Cinema (Free for members)
$8 Students & Seniors
$6 AFA Members & Children (12 & under)
$250 Donor
$1,000 Preservation Donor
$2,500 Archival Donor
$10,000 Partner
$50,000 Leadership Circle