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WALL OF FAME
We show films every Saturday at ATA Gallery, 992 Valencia (@ 21st).
SHOWTIME 8:00pm. ALWAYS FREE BOOKS, VINYL, VHS, AND WINE.
Despite it all! Yes, in the very midst of our national horror-scape, OC has decided to open its doors, for its 40th season! And join up with good ol' cupid for a Valentines evening dedicated to the redemptive values of LOVE – both its erotic pleasures and its attendant psychological complexity/problems. In fact, we'll have a pair of legendary 60's rarities and arguably a veritable prince of Camp in the person of underground icon Mike Kuchar with his oh so prescient Wendel Samson! Pop Artist Red Grooms stars in this larger-than-life and oh-so-lurid melodrama that sees Grooms grappling with sexual identity issues in this low budget but wildly inventive mise-en-scenographyof this half-hour underground masterpiece, way ahead of its time! CO-BILLED is Jack Smith's very rarely screened Normal Love starring Mario Montez and a giggling gaggle of 1963 Downtown Manhattan queers, here set loose in the “Nature of a Connecticut Woodside”... to tease, cavort, and combine be-wigged bodies in every which way in a quite/rather long plot- and language-less parade of early gay gestural play. Smith's Flaming Creatures had provoked theater closures and court cases a year before, tho this ethical proto-Warholian pillow-party can be understood as another enactment of this visionary outsider aesthetic, formally marginalized but here unashamed and indeed celebratory despite its rock-bottom budget and production values. Free champagne. $11.
This immersive archival documentary takes viewers to the streets of Seattle in 1999 for massive protests that have heavily influenced the current political and protest climate. WTO/99 brings four days in late 1999 back to life and provides insights into the world we live in today. The film shows the results of tens of thousands of people occupying the streets of downtown Seattle to vocalize their concerns about the existence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its impact on the environment, economy, human rights, and labor. Hoping to dissuade world leadership from continued support of the WTO, the protesters were met with extreme violence by a militarized police force. The protests strived to focus the public’s attention on the kind of future the WTO would bring forth—the future we live in today. Created from more than 400 hours of never-before-seen footage, WTO/99 is an immersive visual artifact that reanimates a week that still reverberates over two decades later. PLUS: Introduction by members of that rad media collective Whispered Media, also sharing some of their own WTO clips!
Our annual iteration of local work on SF locales here foregrounds the brave interrogations of changing Bayshore communities by a prodigal photog/filmmaker who's fortunately returned to roost on the City's easternmost side –Bill Daniel unspools two beauties on the Bayshore's, uh, beaches, in tandem with a sneak-peak at Greta Snider's 16mm paean to the same liminal paddlin' zone. Fort Point stalwart Ben Wood steps up with his own 18 min. essay on that same shoreline, though at its northernmost, a downright riveting account of the Irish immigrant who manned the Lifesaving Station at the promontory, who details ship-lore in the dangerous days before the Golden Gate. A Fisherman's Wharf overture celebrates those shallows between those two compass points. This focus on our proud extension into our beloved salt/fresh water pond is complicated by other supporting shorts – from Jim (Angels) Granato, (hopefully) a Thad Povey episode, and, yes, a knee-slapping send-up of Haight/Ashbury stereotypes by decidedly LA-based Damon Packard. Plus a passel of pre-show pieces by the home-team, all to illuminate possible understandings of what “San Francisco” might mean. $12
The first of this Spring's Archive Fever Dreams is blessed by the return of two long-time pillars of the Bay Area underground scene – Rebecca Barten and David Sherman!!..and they're both bringing new works made out of archival material – Rebecca's, a crafty montage on the vagaries of her emotional life, and David's, a rare assembly of 'outs' from the legendary Dion Vigne, North Beach beatnik artiste whose box of raw footage of that community of poets and jazz musicians came as a gift from Vigne's widow herself! PLUS local light Scott Stark's 'found' collection of 3-D slides – a 50s cocktail party in Tulsa, OK!! ALSO in wait is an exquisite cosmic animation whose title must remain under wraps until showtime. AND there's a heap of other treats, intermixing both archival source material and “derivative” found-footage films: Treasures in a Garbage Can, Oscar Meyer Weiners, Mormons in Guatemala, and Bat-Men of Trinidad. PLUS both Hungarian fencing AND cemeteries. $13
Kingdom of Not
In person, Carl Diehl's kaleidoscopic account of creativity, camaraderie, and curiosity begins with the life and times of the late, great magician, vaudevillian, & comedy emcee, Werner “Dorny” Dornfield (1892 -1982), then splinters prismatically into a mosaic of riddles and revelations about artist-led initiatives elsewhen & elsewhere! This experimental ethnography of magic shimmers with ephemera from the Golden Age of stage magic and beyond, and intrigues with insights from magicians, historians, philosophers, and Dorny's oldest surviving relatives. Interviews with musicians, performance artists, and experimental filmmakers conjure connections across contexts of art, magic, and everyday life. PLUS, on our stage!..Thee Amazing Michael Nguyen—SF's master of prestidigitation, here to astonish all using sleight of hand and humor!! $12
SOVIET SILVER
Divya Farias & Alex Mejía bring Sleep When The Baby Sleeps, an audiovisual performance for film, video, saxophone, and voice. Working in high-contrast rhythms of image and sound, the piece explores sleep not as rest but as a paradoxical threshold—where exhaustion breeds agitation, memories loop, and the body resists its own release. Fragmented moving images, opticalpulses, breath, and saxophone lines spiral between tension and surrender, building toward moments of suspension and fragile calm. The performance asks: what does it look like, and what does it sound like, when we finally remember how to let go. PLUS Craig Baldwin's Time Bomb.
This special event brings together Laura Albert, the author of the best-selling JT LeRoy books Sarah, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, and Harold’s End and the subject of Jeff Feuerzeig’s acclaimed 2016 feature-length documentary AUTHOR: THE JT LEROY STORY, with Lucas Celler, award-winning documentary film editor, director, photographer, and motion designer of SHIRKERS and CLAYDREAM, who served as assistant editor and associate producer of AUTHOR. To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the release of AUTHOR, Laura and Lucas will screen the first half-hour of this film and discuss its genesis, making, and reception as well as its impact on their lives and careers. Laura will also read from her soon-to-be-published memoir, and she and Lucas will take questions from the audience.
How do neighborhoods, queer bars, sweaters and scarves, and videotapes hold ghosts? What does it mean to hold the legacy of beloveds on changing formats? Here's an experimental documentary engaging with decades of DIY activist media, two death bed/legacy videos, and the wisdom of many living AIDS workers, as we all sit together in one (changing) format, video— VHS, hi-8, digital, Zoom —to address a raft of questions about mourning...and media. $11
MAY.30: NEW EXPERIMENTAL WORKS
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