Sunday, February 18, 2018

2/21/18 THE EXILE & BLOOD OF JESUS

Unfortunately, the print of New York Eye and Ear Control was unavailable and was rescheduled to 3/21/18.




Program:


THE EXILE (1931, dir. Oscar Micheaux, 93 min.)

THE EXILE is a 1931 American film by Oscar Micheaux with the co-direction of the Dances and Ensemble by Leonard Harper. A drama–romance of the race film genre, it was Micheaux's first feature-length talkie, and the first African American talkie. Adapted from Micheaux's first novel, The Conquest (1913), it has some autobiographical elements: like the film's central character Jean Baptiste (played by Stanley Morrell), Micheaux spent several years as a cattle rancher in an otherwise all-white area of South Dakota.


BLOOD OF JESUS (1941, dir. Spencer Williams, 57 min.)

American race film written by, directed by, and starring Spencer Williams. It was also released under the alternate title of The Glory Road. The Blood of Jesus was the second film directed by Spencer Williams, who was one of the few African American directors of the 1940s. The Blood of Jesus was produced in Texas on a budget of US$5,000. To present the afterlife, Williams used scenes from a 1911 Italian film called L’Inferno that depicted souls entering Heaven. In addition to Williams, the cast was made up of amateur actors and members of Reverend R.L. Robinson’s Heavenly Choir, who sang the film’s gospel music score. The Blood of Jesus was screened in cinemas and in black churches. The film’s commercial success enabled Williams to direct and write additional feature films for Sack Amusement Enterprises, including two films with religious themes: Brother Martin: Servant of Jesus (1942) and Go Down Death (1944). For years, The Blood of Jesus was considered a lost film until prints were discovered in the mid-1980s in a warehouse in Tyler, Texas. Filmmaker Julie Dash cited the baptismal sequence in The Blood of Jesus as the inspiration for a similar scene from her 1991 feature film Daughters of the Dust. In 1991, The Blood of Jesus became the first race film to be added to the U.S. National Film Registry.


Total Run Time: 100 Minutes

Saturday, February 17, 2018

2/14/18 LOVE AND ...






Program:


Un Chant d’Amour (1950, dir. Jean Genet, 26 min)
Novelist Jean Genet’s only directoral credit, Un Chant d’Amour tells the story, set in a prison with three main characters, a guard and two prisoners, is a voyeuristic, confrontational, poetic masterpiece. “A Song of Love” when translated to english, was long banned in France, and only available in the US through a censored version, the film is now a cult romance classic.


You Take The Escalator, I’ll Take The Stairs (2017, dir. Evan Greene, 13min)
There is no description.


Sanctus (1990, dir. Barbara Hammer, 20 min)
Sanctus is a film of the rephotographed moving x-rays originally shot by Dr. James Sibley Watson and his colleagues. Making the invisibile, visible, the film reveals the skeletal structure of the human body as it protects the hidden fragility of interior organ systems. Sanctus portrays a body in need of protection on a polluted planet where immune system disorders proliferate.




Fuses (1967, dir. Carolee Schneemann, 22 min)
A silent film of collaged and painted sequences of lovemaking between Schneemann and her then partner, composer James Tenney; observed by the cat, Kitch.


Total Run Time: 83 Minutes

Friday, February 2, 2018

2/7/2018 XY CHROMOSOME: Films by Lynne Sachs and Mark Street



Program:

Sliding off the Edge of the World,
by Mark Street, 7 min, 16mm (from 35mm), 2000
Time slows down and silence envelops a series of quotidian moments snatched from transience. The frame line is always moving, and images are stacked like nesting dolls.

Same Stream Twice
by Lynne Sachs, 4 min, 16mm b&w and color on digital, 2012
My daughter’s name is Maya. I’ve been told that the word “maya” means illusion in Hindu philosophy. In 2001, I photographed her at six years old, spinning like a top around me. Even then, I realized that her childhood was not something I could grasp but rather – like the wind – something I could feel tenderly brushing across my cheek. Eleven years later, I pull out my 16mm Bolex camera once again and she allows me to film her – different but somehow the same.


And Then We Marched
by Lynne Sachs, 3 min, Super 8mm on digital, 2017
Filmmaker Lynne Sachs shoots Super 8mm film of the Jan. 21 Women's March in Washington, D.C. and intercuts this footage with archival footage including early 20th Century Suffragists marching for the right to vote, 1960s antiwar activists, and 1970s advocates for the Equal Rights Amendment.
Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor
by Lynne Sachs, 8 min, Super 8mm and 16mm film transferred to digital, 2018
From 2015 to 2017, Lynne visited with Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer and Gunvor Nelson, three multi-faceted artists who have embraced the moving image throughout their lives. From Carolee’s 18th Century house in the woods of Upstate New York to Barbara’s West Village studio to Gunvor’s childhood village in Sweden, Lynne shoots film with each woman in the place where she finds grounding and spark.

Vera Drake, Drowning
by Mark Street, 3 min, digital, 2012
A theatrical trailer buried in the garden for several years.  The vagaries of nature (snow, rain, ice, sun) yield a scrupulous document of the passing of time. Soundtrack made up of ambient musique concrete and snippets of music sung by women.
Zoom
by Mark Street, 6 min, digital, 2018
Painting and bleaching a Dutch/French 35mm film to divulge haunted layers of psychological complexity.


After Synchromy
by Mark Street, 6 min, digital, 2015
An homage and reimagining of Norman McLaren's 1971 film leavened by a cascade of daily quotidian still photography.

Winterwheat
by Mark Street, 7 min, 16mm film, 1989
From an educational film about the farming cycle; a red sky vision emerges from between the tractor blades.

Drift and Bough
by Lynne Sachs, 7 min, Super 8mm, 2014.
“I spent a morning in Central Park shooting film in the snow. The stark black lines of the trees against the whiteness created the sensation of a painter’s chiaroscuro, or a monochromatic tableau-vivant. When I held my Super 8mm camera, I was able to see these graphic explosions of dark and light.” (LS). Music by Stephen Vitiello


Starfish Aorta Colossus
by Lynne Sachs with Sean Hanley, 5 min, 2015
Poetry watches film. Film reads poetry. Paolo Javier’s text is a catalyst for the digital sculpting of an 8mm Kodachrome canvas. Syntactical ruptures and the celebration of nouns illuminate twenty-five years of Lynne's rediscovered film journeys.
The X Y Chromosome Project
by Lynne Sachs and Mark Street, 11 min, 2007
In addition to our two daughters, we make films and performances that use the split screen to cleave the primordial and the mediated.  After returning from an inspiring week long artist retreat at the Experimental Television Center, Lynne asked Mark to collaborate with her on the creation of a piece in which they would each ruminate on the other’s visual, reacting in a visceral way to what the other had hurled on the screen. Lynne would edit; Mark would edit. Back and forth and always forward.  No regrets or over-thinking. In this way, the diptych structure is sometimes a boxing match and other times a pas de deux.  Newsreel footage of Ronald Reagan's assassination attempt is brushed up against hand painted film, domestic spaces, and Christmas movie trailers. Together, we move from surface to depth and back again without even feeling the bends.  


Total Run Time: 67 Min

Bio: Since 2008, filmmakers Lynne Sachs and Mark Street have been showing some of their films together in an attempt to uncover connections and dissonances, pitting the x against the y, the magenta against the green, the hard edged against the ephemeral.  Tonight they present 11 short films (including one they made together) created over the last 25 years.  Loose themes and affinities will unspool-- chimerical traces of their children, women's voices amplified on the screen, quotidian diaristic effusions, found footage movies reimagined, weather as an apocalyptic (bell)weather and finally, the frame as a shifting, malleable grid.

1/31/2018 DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST


Daughters of the Dust (1991, dir. Julie Dash)
At the dawn of the 20th century, a multi-generational family in the Gullah community on the Sea Islands off of South Carolina – former West African slaves who adopted many of their ancestors’ Yoruba traditions – struggle to maintain their cultural heritage and folklore while contemplating a migration to the mainland, even further from their roots.



The first wide release by a black female filmmaker, “Daughters of the Dust” was met with wild critical acclaim and rapturous audience response when it initially opened in 1991. Casting a long legacy, “Daughters of the Dust” still resonates today, most recently as a major in influence on Beyonce’s video album “Lemonade.” Restored (in conjunction with UCLA) for the first time with proper color grading overseen by cinematographer AJ Jafa, audiences will finally see the film exactly as Julie Dash intended.

Total Run Time: 118 Minutes

Bio: Julie Dash (born October 22, 1952) is an American film director, writer, producer, website creator and music video and commercial director. Dash received her MFA in 1985 at the UCLA Film School and is one of the graduates and filmmakers born out of a time known as the L.A. Rebellion.