HOME
CALENDAR
ABOUT OC
OCD STORE
OTHERZINE
FILMOGRAPHY
LINKS
CONTACT
OLD SITE
SEPT.10: YARD DOGS ROAD SHOW + CIRCUS DELIRIUM +Without a doubt, here's a truly authentic first-person account of the Performing Life! With cameo appearances by Ken Kesey, Michael Franti, and Speed Levitch, director Flecher Fleurdujon (in person) manages to capture thee genuine San Fran spirit in his rag-tag troupe's audacious risk-taking, insane ingenuity, and joyous community. This home-grown feature details how a gang of poets and musicians turned a pile of puppets into an international touring New Vaudeville sensation, the YARD DOGS! Flecher, Zebu Recchia, and Miguel Strong gathered up a freaky tribe of musicians, jugglers, and nu-burlesk dancers who embodied the Wild West underground tradition, who barely survived 2 tech crunches, and who then summoned up the guts to take their Dionysian carnival on the road in a big magic bus! Season-opener is set up with a sampling of vintage circus shorts, Incredibly Strange Music (live and on 16mm), and a free-champagne reception for OtherZine#31.
MAYAN APOCALYPSE
Flying up from Lima is Rotterdam's Tiger Award-winner Juan Daniel Molero, with the US theatrical premiere of this long-overdue look at the contemporary lives and loves of Peruvian youths, coming of age in the globalized era of the internet, cybersex, and psychedelic drugs. Hooking up online, his slacker teens trip into a delusional world of Google Glass porn, Mayan Apocalypse, conspiracy theories, and real corruption in the post-modern Latino metropolis. OPENING are local brujos Gustavo Vazquez and Guillermo Galindo, live-mixing Mexican horror, sci-fi, Santo, and even Z musicals, their soundtracks processed in situ through Gal*in_dog's analog-synth rig. The big-screen mash-up is fronted by Gustavo's perverse dance moves and mischievous mis-translations. *$6.66
SEPT.24: HIDDEN RHYTHMS + JEREMY ROURKE + COLBURN +An eye-poppin' program of Pixilation Prodigies that includes TWO live performances!!: Bryan Boyce, Adrianne Finelli, and octogenerian Jackie Jones stage a shadow-play that animates the Hidden Rhythms of the grand dame's singing saw...AND Jeremy Rourke debuts his Djerassi-seeded magnum opus Falling Piano Piece, another record-toppling live-musical animation, a genre he practically re-invents every outing! PLUS North American premiere of Martha Colburn's sex-ed Pug Adventures, West Coast debut of Kelly Gallagher's More Dangerous than a Thousand Rioters (on Lucy Parsons), Kelly Sears' In the Vicinity, Janie Geiser's Ghost Algebra, Ja'Tovia Gary/Alice Coltrane's An Ecstatic Experience, James Braithwaite's I Met the Walrus, Salise Hughes' Antarctica, and a pair of brain-fryers by Jake Fried. Free toast'n'jam of course. *$8.88
OCT.1: TONY CONRAD + JOHN DAVIS + CYRUS TABAR +Our tri-part OPTRONICA series--OC's semi-annual fest of Audiovisual-Fusion--opens with a tribute to recently deceased drone demigod Tony Conrad, the minimalist confederate of Faust, La Monte Young, and the Velvet Underground. Tonight we groove both on his hypnotic performances-documented by SFAI grad Tyler Hubby-and on local A/V avatars John Davis and Cyrus Tabar, performing pieces honoring Conrad's legacy. They collaborate on Tony! Tony!, alive-violin cascade of resonating overtones, amidst flickers of Strings instructionals.Davis also debuts an analog-synth score to the found Super8 sci-fi anomaly Silver Robot, as well as re-tracking a mid-century Soviet-tech rarity, per his obsession. Cyrus rounds out his third with a trio of asynchronous tracks--an oneiric take on Craig Baldwin's twin-projection Milk of Amnesia (world premiere), the second an homage to Kalle Lasn's undersung Ritual Tokyo, and finally, a new soundscape to Jean-Gabriel Periot's meta-memorial 200,000 Phantoms. *$8
BATTLE OF THE PROJECTORS
OCT.8: LAITALA & WOBBLY VS. VARGA & YOUNG +Our second LIVE A/V installment celebrates Expanded Cinema: Kerry Laitala West-Coast-premieres her 25-min. Astro Trilogy, a transporting triple-projection live-accompanied by the sonic superstar we call Wobbly. These two psychonauts transport us way past Pluto to finally shed some light on all this so-called Dark Energy! Dominating the second half are the downright dangerously hacked audiovisuals of the long-missed Lori Varga, setting up her own battery of sprocketed spitfires, her dense visual matrix matched by the knobbing, potting, and looping of East Bay glitch whiz Kit Young! ALSO: the BBC's Delian Mode doc on Radiophonic royalty Delia Derbyshire, Mary Ellen Bute's stereoscopic treat, Craig Baldwin's filmstrip-tease, and the Dream Machine!! *$8
MEDIA-ARCHEOLOGY
OCT.15: GRETA SNIDER + KATHLEEN QUILLIAN + LILLIAN SCHWARTZ 3-DOur 3 Live Cinema artistes marvelously re-mediate excavations from the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries! Bernal genius Greta Snider graces our gallery with a premiere and two other meta-marvels: Retinal Rivalry is used to transformative effect in Gloria, a 35mm slide consideration of 40s starlet Gloria Grahame, while her Rendition layers photochemical on digital in a cross-platform outcry against state terrorism. AND another debut TBA. ALSO premiering is Kathleen Quillian's The Speed of Disembodiment, a live multi-media meditation on Muybridge, time, and technology (gracias Solnit). PLUS two more on our weird Eadweard, by Ben Wood (in person) and Drew Christie, and a spotlight on early'puter muse Lillian Schwartz, comin' atcha in ChromaDepth! Earlybirds catch Michael Winslows beat-box History of Typewriters. *$8
OCT.22 JOHN LAW's HISTORY OF PRANKS + YES MEN +Thee pre-eminent raconteur on all things Trickster, John Law (AKA Jack Napier) instigates a laff-riot of public put-ons and sub-cult capers that carries on the momentum from the recent Joey Skaggs biopic. In fact, a couple of classic Skaggs gags are in John's video mix tonight, but not before the spoofing scene is set with nods to Duchamp/Dada, the Situationists, the Diggers, the Yippies, Alan Abel, et al. In SF, pranksters were certainly set free with the infamous Suicide Club and its more broad-based offspring, the Cacophony Society-in fact the subject of John's book and the inspiration for Fight Club! ALSO: John's own gang the Billboard Liberation Front, Agent Apple the pie-throwing Avenger, the Guerrilla Girls, Gay Shame, SubGenius, Militant Librarians, Banksy, Barbie Liberation Organization, Yes Men, and culture-jammers galore...even streakers! PLUS our bank-robbing film-maker Joe Gibbons!! *$7.77
OCT.29: HAXAN WITCHES & ASTRAL VISIONSAfter 2 epic Autumns in the East Bay, the Häxän Project now sets up stakes in the Mission, to initiate a Big-City audience into its irresistible cycle of wicca-ed cinema, with a tent-full of works--all women--made-capped by a provocative live performance! Curators Courtney Fellion, Phaedra Restad, and Hannah Schulman have hand-picked the very best work from their wildly creative coven, including transformative pieces from Gina Basso, Karissa Hahn, Leslie Supnet, Sarah Rooney,Natalie Tsui, Nazar Soares, Laura Conway, Lili White, and Julia Triangular-all to be consummated in the rites of the Church of Color and Light, whose overhead projections and hypnotic incantations promise a path to thee metaphysical via our beloved smoke machine! Free mulled wine. *$9
ELECTION ANGST
Kick-starting our Scritti Politti specials, 2 Saturdays straddling the US election: the West Coast theatrical premiere of Johan (Dial HISTORY) Grimonprez' searing indictment of the sleeeazy underworld of global weapons dealers, and the corrupt political/military leaders awash in their slush-funded kick-backs and call-girls! Based on Andrew Feinstein's book and with help from Eduardo Galeano, Seymour Hersch, Chris Hedges, and Jeremy Scahill, this archive-heavy assemblage is preceded by a brill rally of feisty political satire, crystallizing our collective anxiety on the eve of this Presidential fiasco: Bryan Boyce's Stupidity and WrestleMania Inauguration, Martha Colburn's Drumpf and Hillary Hip-Hop, Mark Boswell's Trust But Verify, and Hoover/Scantlebury's Survival Oblivious. Early show-time to smash the Trump piñata ! *8PM
GLOBAL FOIBLES
Our second round of Poli-Sci-Cinema mirrors last week's: A half-hour of political "briefs" sets up a long-form compilation-doc...in tonight's case, Curtis' recent, riveting Bitter Lake! Experimental collage-cum-critical essay, our fave avant-garde broadcaster takes on the tangled triangle of power relations between the US, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. Curtis manages to connect all the dots—and then some—in this spot-on demonstration of TV-archival research turned to anti-imperialist ends. Not shown outside the UK because of copyrights, this sneak peek affords a blinding light on the Endless War of our generation. OPENING are Mark Brecke's (in person) Lost Leader (on Somalia), Laura Poitras' Death of a Prisoner (on Guantanamo), Dana O'Keefe's Vladimir Putin in Deep Concentration, and CGB's 35mm live-mix C.I.A.S.U.X. *8PM
NOV.19: PRELINGER's SORTING THE ARCHIVES + YOUR FILM LIBRARY+ Arguably America's most enlightened mind on Archival Film, we're honored to host this principal of the SF-based Internet Archive, Mr. Rick Prelinger, with another relaxed exchange on cultural history and its easy and useful access. His talk turns away from the idea of "repositories of the past" towards understanding them as pointers to the future. And on that note: Here Come the Librarians--Mark Wilson, Brain Darr, Claire Bain--our activist cultural saviors fer sure, with a half-hour opener on the SF Public Library's film collection! YOW!! We're in for some City-owned 16mm treats, plus a marvelous personal-research story on the Ghost of Charles S. Capp (Street). And HEY!: Bring books to give away at our annual Potlatch, and take Others home! *$8 if book-bound or $9 if not.
NOV.26: VANESSA RENWICK + S.GREEN + M.STONE +Tonight's stars align! Cosmic forces effect the intersection of four vets of cross-country film-touring, materializing simultaneously at our 992 address: Vanessa Renwick, the prolific Portland pilgrim delivering Vanloads of nuanced non-fiction to Western cities for decades, rolls in with a half-hour of psycho-geographies, as well as the Cali premiere of Next Level Fucked Up, her latest 20-min. triumph. A second-half All-Star game includes Sam Green's N-Judah, Danny Plotnick'sTour Tips, Doug Katelus' Van Oh Van!, Ellie Vanderlip's The Human Motor, and Melinda Stone & Igor Vamos' Photo Spots. Frito Pies and rodeo clowns!! *$9
Back with the finale of his Rocket Opera trilogy is Mission Renaissance man David Cox! His ensemble epic consummates his quest for a musical translation of the Space Race, especially in the figures of Tereshkova and Ride. His keys cue collaborators John Smalley, Rachel Levin, Jonathan Parnell, Zac Fisher, Jono Jones, Molly Hankwitz, and Simon Cox. After intermission, the focus moves from outer to inner space: Beaming in from LA, Andre Perkowski premieres his VR Stigmata of Palmer Luckey, an immersive exploration of the Augmented-Reality revolution in the offing! Andre's adroit editing and bottomless humor are in full effect in this inside (and over-the-top) scoop on our new virtual-reality wunderkind. ALSO erotic VR! AND Welles' Future Shock, Rosentrater's Star Wars Wars, Henning Frederik Malz' Rest in Me, speculative treats from Soda_Jerk and Jordan Belson, Remotely Controlled Aerial Vehicle, ad astra. *$9
One of the most visible and articulate "video essayists" alive today, the SF-born Lee demonstrates both his Theory and his Practice of the newest genre within film criticism. Instead of merely writing a text on a work of cinema, today's media-savvy critics might now make their points on time-based platforms through audiovisual "quotations" from the movie itself. Kevin introduces a half-dozen of his own 7-min. faves (including ones on Tarantino and Spielberg), before giving the screen over to an undisputed master of the Essay Film, the late Harun Farocki. As the very first Scholar-in-Residence at Berlin's new Farocki Institute, it is Kevin's--and our--pleasure to premiere one of Harun's last pieces, a 40-min. "formal" critique of video games!
An energized evening that champions personal expression and radical form, with most makers in the flesh: Featured are in-person premieres of Kate McCabe's You And I Remain, Scott Stark's Is It True What They Say?, Mike Kuchar's Sleepwalkers, Tommy Becker's Exiting the Zoo (World Premiere), Ken Paul Rosenthal's Sally, Faith Arazi's Seasonal, and Emily Drummer's Histories of Simulated Intimacy. ALSO Soda Jerk's The Was, Katherin McInnis' Children of Lir, Julie Murray's Photogram, Vicki Bennett's Shopping, Carl Elsaesser's Vague Images, Aaron Kutnick's Sound Film, Sara Tochetti's Proon, Valerie Soe's Ode (World Premiere), Ellie Vanderlip's When There's No Man Around (World Premiere), Craig Baldwin's Advance through the Air, Alfonso Alvarez' Take (World Premiere), and Kevin Gourvellec/Anne Piette's (in person) It's So Sweet (US Premiere). Come early for free pencils and 3-D fly-through from Bryan Boyce. *$9.99
PREVIOUS CALENDARS
FALL 2016
SPRING 2016
FALL 2015
SPRING 2015
FALL 2014
SPRING 2014
FALL 2013
SPRING 2013
FALL 2012
SPRING 2012
FALL 2011
SPRING 2011
FALL 2010
SPRING 2010
FALL 2009
SPRING 2009
FALL 2008
SPRING 2008
FALL 2007
SPRING 2007
FALL 2006
SPRING 2006
FALL 2005
SPRING 2005
FALL 2004
SPRING 2004
FALL 2003
SPRING 2003
FALL 2002
SPRING 2002
FALL 2001
SPRING 2001
FALL 2000
SPRING 2000