Filmmakers Showcase (Firm)
Description
UNSEEN CINEMA: EARLY AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE FILM 1894-1941 is the ground-breaking retrospective that explores long-forgotten American experimental films made in the United States and Europe during the formative period of cinema. Arranged into thematic programs, the digital version consists of over 140 films, newly preserved and restored in 35mm and 16mm film prints. The series postulates an innovative and often controversial view of experimental cinema...
Description
Offers an essential collection of 21 short art film experiments in HD to 5K scans made from 35mm and 16mm picture elements.Highlights include brand new digital restorations of classic experimental films, Manhatta (1921), The Enchanted City (1922), Return to Reason (1923), Ballet Mechanique (1924, 1931), The Twenty-Four Dollar Island (1925), Eisenstein Mexican Footage (1930), Escape (1938), The Eclipse (1936-1949), Look Park (1973), and Tenga fe (2022)....
Description
16mm 1.37:1 color sound, 11:46 minutes; music Bumblebees Sip Honey by Peliatan Gamelan; mastered from a composite print; courtesy of the filmmaker, Chicago Film Archives. DL2 reflects the influence of the American Bauhaus movement in Chicago introduced by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy during the late 30s/early 40s. The film was made by shocking 10-foot strips of unprocessed black and white film into tanks of cold water, fixer, hot water, developer and then repeating...
Description
16mm 1.37 black & white sound, 12:39 minutes; dancer Bettie de Jong; music by McNeil Robinson. The sensation of our own movement and the perception of movement in the world around us are very primal experiences from early infancy. It is in this world of movement (the kinesthetic experience) that film and dance make their most exciting and unique contributions. -_Hilary Harris_
6) Ch'an
Description
1941 was Francis Lee’s first film; CH'AN his last. In between, he became an expert Sumi-e watercolorist and here combines eloquent ink paintings with masterful animation methods. The film moves through mysterious shapes, taking the viewer on an explosive meditative journey across the imagi- nary landscapes of his creations. Music by Christopher Atwood.
Description
16mm 1.37:1 black & white with color tint silent 18fps, 6:07 minutes; completed by Lawrence Jordan; new music vintage circus organ; courtesy of Lawrence Jordan. Cornell's editing tactic is to seduce through the use of dislodged movie tropes. Hence the viewer is cut loose from any normal meanings to pursue the snippets of clips and fragments taken from long-forgotten obscure movies. One is encouraged to let the Cornellian montages wash over them in...
Description
35mm enlarged from 16mm with 2K digital insert from 16mm 1.37:1 black & white sound, 12:27 minutes; production assistance Miriam Arsham, Alexander Hammid; with Chao-li Chi; music a mix of Chinese classical flute and drums recorded in Haiti by Maya Deren; preserved by Bruce Posner and Anthology Film Archives at Cineric, Inc. and Trackwise from camera original, optical negative and composite prints with funding provided by the Women's Film Preservation...
Description
16mm 1.37:1 color sound, 4:27 minutes. Filmmaking was a natural evolution while I was engaged in painting, particularly since I was primarily concerned in capturing light, its effect on textured surfaces, its glowing luminescence in the dark, the enhancements of juxtaposed color, persistence of vision and eye fatigue. -_Marie Menken_
Description
35mm from 16mm 1.37:1 color sound, 9:14 minutes; preserved by Lawrence Jordan and Michael Hinton from camera originals and magnetic soundtrack; distributor Canyon Cinema; courtesy of the filmmaker. Alchemical images of transformation fill the screen in Lawrence Jordan's magical collage animation where several ambiguous characters - a boy, a deep-sea diver and a Lady with the orbital head - make a surrealistic dream-like journey. Produced from line...
Description
16mm 1.37:1 black & white intentionally silent 16fps, 8:09 minutes; courtesy of the filmmaker. Photographer Rudy Burckhardt shows us the ebb and flow of people rushing about Manhattan. Equally exhilarating in his novel approach to snap images quickly on the run, a method he inaugurated and that continues to the present day. In film, he added slow and fast motion, split-screens and superimpositions to his repertory.
12) Transport
Description
16mm 1.37:1 color sound, 5:43 minutes; camera Sandy D'Annunzio; music Indiran; with Lee Vogt, Amy Greenfield, Chuck Williams, Steven Holly, Joel Polinsky, Don Young, Tom Vint; preserved by Amy Greenfield at WRS Film Lab from camera originals; courtesy of the filmmaker. _Transport_ came out of many influences in the early 1970s: the dead of Vietnam; the poem by my poetry teacher Anne Sexton, _For God While Sleeping_; the post-modern dance experiments...
13) Love It/Leave It
Description
16mm 1.37:1 color sound, 14:07 minutes; music by Ray Whilding White; preserved by Chicago Filmmakers at Cineric, Inc. from camera originals and magnetic soundtrack with funding provided by National Film Preservation Foundation; courtesy of the filmmaker. The love of events that bring people together, revealing at once the absurdities and tenderness of the human comedy, plus a sharp eye for Americana, characterize and permeate the Palazzolo films....
14) Castro Street
Description
16mm 1.37:1 color sound, 9:59 minutes; preserved by Academy Film Archive in 1999 at Triage Motion Picture Services from camera original sand magnetic soundtrack archived at Pacific Film Archives; mastered from the 35mm preservation negative; 1080p digital restoration by Bruce Posner at DuArt Video, FilmVideoDigital, and Gustavo Matamoros; courtesy of the filmmaker.
16) Anémic cinéma
Description
35mm 1.33:1 black & white silent 20fps, 6:40 minutes; production assistance Man Ray, Marc Allégret; new music by Gustavo Matamoros; preserved by Det Danske Filminstitut. Thought provoking and offensive are possible ways to interpret the ten optical discs and corresponding puns displayed in the film. The word play fo French syllogisms gleefully collides with the protruding-receding optical illusions of the rotating spheres. Julien Levy called the...
Description
35mm 1.33:1 black & white silent 24fps, 8:53 minutes; new music by Donald Sosin; preserved by Gosfilmofond of Russia. The most fantastic effects were secured in shooting sheer heights ... It was partly the architectural wonder of New York that made the film so stirring, but, really, it was the artist's touch that moved one, the catching of mood, line, color, and feeling in the strange, walled city.-_Marguerite Tazelaar_
18) Gyromorphosis
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16mm 1.37:1 color sound, 6:40 minutes; music _Django_ by John Lewis, played by the Modern Jass Quartet; courtesy of Angeline Pike, Creative Film Society. _Gyromorphosis_ strives to bring into actuality the inherent kinetic qualities seen in the construction-sculpture of Constant Nieuwenhuys of Amsterdam. To realize [sic] this aim I have put into motion, one by one, pieces of this sculpture and, with colored lighting, filmed them in various detail,...
19) An Optical Poem
Description
35mm 1.33:1 color sound, 7:02 minutes; production assistance John Cage; music_Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2_by Franz Liszt; courtesy Warner Bros.,Turner Entertainment Co. A milestone in object animation, Fischinger manipulated hundreds of paper cutouts hung on invisible wires and shot a frame-at-a-time in close synchronization to Liszt's rhapsody. The dance of shapes resembles a voyage through an imaginary space where "the keen sensation of depth becomes...
Description
16mm 1.37:1 black & white sound, 14 minutes; production Farallone Films; with Anna Halprin, Welland Lathrop, John Graham; music by William O. Smith._Game Little Gladys, The Gardner's Son; Princess Printemps_and_The Aging Balletomane_. Delightful and sentimental, the interludes date back to silent cinema full of playful mime and dreamy reverie. As such the vignettes offer a welcome antidote to the high-mindedness of most avant-garde films.
