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SAT. 9/24: HELEN HILL'S THE FLORESTINE COLLECTION + JEREMY ROURKE +OC is honored to host the NorCal premiere of animator Helen Hill's last film, The Florestine Collection, the piece she was working on at the time of her death. Helen was of course much loved in the film community for her ingenious and generous DIY aesthetic, advanced in her legendary book Recipes for Disaster. With friends like Alfonso Alvarez (in person), Helen's husband Paul Gailiunas was able to usher the half-hr. work to completion. ALSO a whole bouquet of other (mostly new) animation, including Jeremy Rourke in person, singing and playing guitar to his own shorts! PLUS Martha Colburn's Anti-Fracking; Kelly Sears' Cover Me, Alpha; Jim Trainor's The Bats; and Janie Geiser's Lost Motion. Come early for our season-opening reception with Jeremy's singing bowls, the Dream Machine, and free sangria!
SAT. 10/1: SAM GREEN'S UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE + L'INTERNATIONALE + Our good man Sammy Green returns to Frisco with the world premiere of his half-hr. cine-essay on Esperanto, a language designed to be spoken by all the planet's peoples, and whose remaining adherents afford an inspiring face of utopianism. After Green's in-person intro, we look at two other internationalist pieces: Peter Miller's L'Internationale, a fascinating--and moving--history of this famous "people's anthem," and Philip Stapp's artful animation Picture in Your Mind, an epic allegory on the human potential for war and peace. NOTE: BOOK POTLATCH! Bring in your used books to trade with others!! $7.
SAT. 10/8: RIP IN PIECES AMERICA + DEAR BILL + DEAR STEVE + ANONYMOUS +A program on the politics of social media: Dominic Gagnon's Rip is a riveting compilation of "extremist" videos removed from YouTube (for ideological, not sexual content). ALSO: Still making headlines, Steve Jobs is the addressee in Herman Asselberghs' Dear Steve, a trenchant analysis of the "new hegemony" of new media, whilst we witness the disassembly of one of Jobs' laptops! AND Sarah Christman's Dear Bill, emailed to--you guessed it--Bill Gates, taken to task for his less-than-accessible archival empire. PLUS Greg Berger's inspirational interview with a Cairo blogger/activist, Egypt: How We Did It; Julian Assange in a WikiLeaks infomercial; and an open letter from the hactivist group, Anonymous. Come early for cheap spiked coffee and Andrew Wilson's Global Countdown.
SAT. 10/15: GERRY FIALKA'S PXL THIS 20 FEST!Honoring media-theorist Marshall McLuhan as part of a worldwide centenary, we welcome back one of his fiercest and funniest proponents with a program of videos made on audio-cassette! This current iteration of Fialka's long-running fest embodies McLuhan's bold ideas about democratic communication tools. Among the movies made with the Fisher-Price PXL 2000 toy camcorder are: Jesse Drew's Dolby, Mariko Drew's It's a Lemonhead, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE's Philosopher's Union, and other pieces by Gerry himself, Paolo Davanzo, and a sneak preview of Michael Koshkin's feature-doc on this cult format. Come early for 2-bit beer, free vinyl records, and David Cox playing the Optigan (another media-archeological oddity) to a McLuhan montage.
SAT. 10/22: ANOMALIES OF THE ARCHIVE: IZZO / MORI / ZORN'S BARE ROOM +Here's an odd lot of obscure films, either "as-is" or perversely repurposed. Joey Izzo personally introduces his found-footage noir, based on a John Zorn "score" and with an Ikue (DNA) Mori track, sampled from the source footage! ALSO: After Sarah Wood's For Cultural Purposes Only (on the Palestinian film archive lost in the '82 Beirut bombing), David Blair's Telepathic Cinema of Manchuria, and Bryan Boyce's Whisper Hungarian in My Ear, we showcase two artifacts from OC's own archive: The Quitter--an anti-smoking proto-cult-jam drawn from Peter Lorre's tour-de-force in M--and Richard Evans' Toys on a Field of Blue, a dark Beat psycho-drama way, way outside of its intended educational use. PLUS Rick Prelinger's network-news report on Trip Down Market Street, and the oh-so-apt Treasures in a Garbage Can.
SAT. 10/29: CHRISTIAN DIVINE'S ECO-HORROR SPOOKTACULAR +Apropos of OC's love of all things psychotronic, thee Area expert on '70s exploitation film enthralls all with a fanboy-critical take on the eco-dystopian genre, that cinematic mutation of the era's budding environmentalism. Divine nimbly negotiates his way through a 2-hour clip-show of that decade's most toxic shockers, parables that parlayed the pollution of nature into an embodied force of evil. Among the jaw-droppers are Them!, Soylent Green, Willard, Piranha, Stalker (!), and Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster. Come early for Doug Katelus on his Mighty Hammond organ, 16mm glimpses of Gamera, and intoxicating witches' brew! $6.66. NOTE: DOORS 7:30, SHOWTIME 8PM.
SAT. 11/5: HISTORIES OF YANQUI WALKER + JESSE LERNER'S MAYA + Here's the Cali premiere of Kathryn Ramey's Yanqui Walker and the Optical Revolution, a revelatory experimental doc on the infamous imperialist adventurer who seized Nicaragua. A hand-processed COLOR 16mm work, Ramey's lyrical essay is preceded by (in person) Martha Wallner and Jeff Skoller's updating of their Xchange TV project--bi-national Nicaraguan history lessons that also address the Walker episode. An excerpt from Alex Cox' legendary Clash-cast Walker completes the triptych. Opening the show, our globe-trotting compadre Jesse Lerner initiates the Central American theme with the book-launch of his Maya of Modernism, on Mayan indigenous design in 20thCentury art and architecture, with copious cultural-anthropological clips and scenes from Eisenstein's ¡Que Viva México!
SAT. 11/12: BILL MORRISON'S SPARK OF BEING + THE MESMERIST + RELEASEWe welcome back Bill Morrison, a master craftsman of archival compilation, for a one-person show--in fact--the SF debut of his hr.-plus "reconstruction" of the Frankenstein story. Cinematic detritus is like clay in the hands of this sublime cine-poet. With original music by Dave Douglas, this long-form gothic is of course an allegory on the suturing of Frankenstein's Monster himself. ALSO two of Bill's earlier experimental assemblages, The Mesmerist (with Boris Karloff and the music of Bill Frisell), and the recent Release, a formal elaboration of footage from Al Capone's prison exit. $7.
SAT. 11/19: REGINATO + BERGER + KASHMERE + MCAFFERYA compass of compelling pieces pivoting on place and the sensibility it in-forms, tonight taking a South/North tack through the the three neighboring nations of North America. The show's starting section looks at Mexico through Angela Reginato's (in person) W-I-P Luna Conejo, a half-hr. coming-of-age in Mexico City. AND Greg Berger flies up from Cuernavaca to debut his Narcomania, a wickedly comic critique of the drug cartels through the Pop-Cult lens of Beatlemania! After intermission, we play with the problematics of Canadian identity in Brett Kashmere's interrogation of their national pastime of hockey, Valery's Ankle. Completing the continental circuit is Brigid McCaffrey's 16mm meditation on SoCal topography, Castaic Lake.
SAT. 11/26: MIMI CHAKAROVA'S THE PRICE OF SEX Introduced by global photo-essayist Mark Brecke, UCB luminary Mimi Chakarova is here with her unprecedented inquiry into a dark side of immigration. A feature doc in its West Coast theatrical premiere, The Price of Sex sheds light on the underground criminal network trafficking Eastern European women, forced into prostitution abroad. Traveling from her home country through Greece, Turkey, to Dubai, Bulgarian-born photo-journalist Chakarova caps years of painstaking on-the-ground reporting--even posing as a prostitute to gather her material--filming undercover with extraordinary access.
SAT. 12/3: DALE HOYT'S BRAILLE + WHAT THE FUTURE SOUNDED LIKE + Dale presents this deadpan video about his father's career at Muzak, revealing some of the machinations behind what became known as "elevator music", preceded by an excerpt from The Joy of Easy Listening, from none other than the BBC. ALSO British-produced is Matthew Bates' What the Future Sounded Like, a look at the early analog synthesizer scene in '60s England, with clips of Dr. Who and Roxy Music-era Brian Eno!! Keith Sanborn's Russian research has unearthed a rare Esfir Shub clip of the revolutionary theremin, followed by Jon Roy's W-I-P on the avant-garde hobo Harry Partch, Bitter Music. In glorious 16mm, surreal post-war Soundies initiate a mini-review of the music-on-film genres: the campiest Scopitones, as well as The World's Worst Music Videos! Free vinyl AND free beer!!
SAT. 12/10: GENDREAU'S PERILS OF THE PHANTOM NEEDLE + VORONINA + GOLDWAVE + Our semi-annual Live A/V program features Michael Gendreau and Lisa Seitz, mixing turntables, infrasound, and a structural "shaker" named Electro-Seis. Opening is Goldwave, performing a live soundtrack to their time-travel omnibus Tempus Fluxus, to be followed by the East Bay's spritely spark of mutant microtones, Lana Voronina/Granny Zebra. Will Erokan deploys a special speaker set-up for his Mechanical Induction, a demonstration of "brain entrainment" by way of Binaural Beats. PLUS Keith Sanborn's re-discovered Soviet theremin material, Len Lye's awesome Storm King clip (in 16mm), and a young Michael Tilson Thomas on prepared piano! Come early for Negativland's Booper how-to's (with free DVDs) and $2 homemade brews at our High-Art-Bar. $7.
SAT. 12/17: NEW EXPERIMENTAL WORKSHere's an energized evening of new cinematic efforts that champion personal expression and radical form. Constituting the season's most exploratory programming initiative--and with many of the makers in person--are Kelly Sears' Once It Started..., Salise Hughes' Erasable Cities, Carl Diehl's Future Affluence, Sylvia Schedelbauer's Sounding Glass, Roger Deutsch's Round Trip, Kathleen Quillian's Fin de Siecle, Zach Iannazzi's Tarp, Doug Katelus' Casino, Christopher Harris' 28.IV.81 Descending Figures, Linda Scobie's Craig's Cutting-Room Floor, and Kim Miskowicz' hand-cranked S8 Saving the Next to Last. PLUS recent pieces by Tommy Becker, Bryan Boyce, Thad Povey, Karl Lind, et alia. Come early for artists' reception, toast 'n' jam, and free pencils!
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