This week's revival: Hand-made experimental ANIMATION programmed by animator Karen Yasinsky and sponsored in part by the MICA Animation Department and JHU Film/Media Studies.
A screening of experimental animations from some of the masters. Don't miss this chance to see magicians of the single frame, from Lewis Klahr's bursting collage of image and color to Robert Breer's sublime manipulation of our processing of image through time. Including long lost dolls, operatic divas, sausages and a few surprises. 16 mm.
2 Screenings Only!
Monday, October 5 at 7pm
Thursday, October 8 at 9pm
(No Saturday Show)
Including Lewis Klahr, Janie Geiser, Robert Breer, Adam Beckett and others.
Lewis Klahr: Lulu
"Lewis Klahr has developed a signature style of cutout animation using illustrations from old magazines and, occasionally, photographic cutouts. LULU was commissioned to be shown as an interlude for a Danish production of Alban Berg's opera, and it is a remarkably intricate piece of work. Berg's instructions call for an expository filmic sequence, but Klahr takes a more indirect approach, collaging stills of diva Constance Hauman with iconographic motifs and metaphoric condensations derived from the heroine's lurid fall from grace. A roulette wheel is a central image, at once a harbinger of chance and a catherine's wheel on which the body and soul of this femme fatale is broken. Intensities of color - predominantly gold, red, and blue - join with vertical movements into and out of frame in mirroring the rising and subsiding intensities of Berg's musical phrases. For those familiar with Lulu's dramatic trajectory, it is like watching an implosion of elements drawn to the center from opposite ends of her story, the moment at which Fate drops its mask of neutrality." - Paul Arthur, Film Comment
1996, 16mm, color/so, 3m,
Janie Geiser: The secret story
The Secret Story arose as a response to several beautifully decayed toy figures from the 1930s that were given to me as a gift. These figures, and other toys, objects and illustrations that I found from the period between the world wars, suggested a kind of unearthed hidden narrative which I have attempted to re-piece together, as if these figures were the hieroglyphics of a just-forgotten tongue. The Secret Story revolves around the central figure of the woman, and her girl-double, who look somewhat like versions of Snow White. She wanders through landscapes of rivers and floods, home and war, and memory and illness, culminating in an ecstatic walk in the forest, suggesting both the dark and cathartic trajectories of the richest fairy tales.
1996, 16mm, color/so, 8.5m,
Robert Breer: 69
"It's so absolutely beautiful, so perfect, so like nothing else. Forms, geometry, lines, movements, light, very basic, very pure, very surprising, very subtle." - Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice; "A dream of Euclid." - Donald Richie
Awards: NY Film Festival; London Film Festival; Tours Film Festival; Oberhausen Film Festival.
1968, 16mm, color/so, 5m
Robert Breer: Fuji
"A poetic, rhythmic, riveting achievement (in rotoscope and abstract animation), in which fragments of landscapes, passengers, and train interiors blend into a magical color dream of a voyage. One of the most important works by a master who - like Conner, Brakhage, Broughton - spans several avant-gardes in his ever more perfect explorations." - Amos Vogel, Film Comment
Awards: Oberhausen Film Festival, 1975; Film as Art, American Film/Video Festival.
1974, 16mm, color/so, 8.5m,
Adam Beckett: Sausage City
Newly preserved print courtesy Iota Center and Academy Film Archive, Music: Brillo
Starting with a white screen a city of interlocking boxes evolves, always moving, constantly changing perspective. After a while, this group of sausages begins to emerge. They are a thoroughly rendered (using fancy colored-pencil technique) bunch of sausages. As time passes there get to be a whole bunch of sausages; in fact, the screen becomes one mass of seething, throbbing, pullulating life. The ending is a surprise.
Awards: Humboldt Film Festival, 1974; Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1974.
1974, 16mm, color/so, 5.5m
Lewis Klahr: Lulu
"Lewis Klahr has developed a signature style of cutout animation using illustrations from old magazines and, occasionally, photographic cutouts. LULU was commissioned to be shown as an interlude for a Danish production of Alban Berg's opera, and it is a remarkably intricate piece of work. Berg's instructions call for an expository filmic sequence, but Klahr takes a more indirect approach, collaging stills of diva Constance Hauman with iconographic motifs and metaphoric condensations derived from the heroine's lurid fall from grace. A roulette wheel is a central image, at once a harbinger of chance and a catherine's wheel on which the body and soul of this femme fatale is broken. Intensities of color - predominantly gold, red, and blue - join with vertical movements into and out of frame in mirroring the rising and subsiding intensities of Berg's musical phrases. For those familiar with Lulu's dramatic trajectory, it is like watching an implosion of elements drawn to the center from opposite ends of her story, the moment at which Fate drops its mask of neutrality." - Paul Arthur, Film Comment
1996, 16mm, color/so, 3m,
Janie Geiser: The secret story
The Secret Story arose as a response to several beautifully decayed toy figures from the 1930s that were given to me as a gift. These figures, and other toys, objects and illustrations that I found from the period between the world wars, suggested a kind of unearthed hidden narrative which I have attempted to re-piece together, as if these figures were the hieroglyphics of a just-forgotten tongue. The Secret Story revolves around the central figure of the woman, and her girl-double, who look somewhat like versions of Snow White. She wanders through landscapes of rivers and floods, home and war, and memory and illness, culminating in an ecstatic walk in the forest, suggesting both the dark and cathartic trajectories of the richest fairy tales.
1996, 16mm, color/so, 8.5m,
Robert Breer: 69
"It's so absolutely beautiful, so perfect, so like nothing else. Forms, geometry, lines, movements, light, very basic, very pure, very surprising, very subtle." - Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice; "A dream of Euclid." - Donald Richie
Awards: NY Film Festival; London Film Festival; Tours Film Festival; Oberhausen Film Festival.
1968, 16mm, color/so, 5m
Robert Breer: Fuji
"A poetic, rhythmic, riveting achievement (in rotoscope and abstract animation), in which fragments of landscapes, passengers, and train interiors blend into a magical color dream of a voyage. One of the most important works by a master who - like Conner, Brakhage, Broughton - spans several avant-gardes in his ever more perfect explorations." - Amos Vogel, Film Comment
Awards: Oberhausen Film Festival, 1975; Film as Art, American Film/Video Festival.
1974, 16mm, color/so, 8.5m,
Adam Beckett: Sausage City
Newly preserved print courtesy Iota Center and Academy Film Archive, Music: Brillo
Starting with a white screen a city of interlocking boxes evolves, always moving, constantly changing perspective. After a while, this group of sausages begins to emerge. They are a thoroughly rendered (using fancy colored-pencil technique) bunch of sausages. As time passes there get to be a whole bunch of sausages; in fact, the screen becomes one mass of seething, throbbing, pullulating life. The ending is a surprise.
Awards: Humboldt Film Festival, 1974; Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1974.
1974, 16mm, color/so, 5.5m
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