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SAT. 3/14: FREDDY MCGUIRE + STRUTHERS & FIELDS + + +On the occasion of our 25th Birthday, OC is pleased to present the fabulous duo of Anne McGuire and Wobbly as local cabaret revisionists Freddy (rhymes with “seedy”) McGuire, with sonic pastiche and costume changes galore. These electro-retro superstars introduce a set of delirious Soundies, Scopitones, and musical clips before making way for Struthers & Fields (née Animal Charm) with brand new material after a six-year hiatus.. With a nod to Rod McKuen, they bathe in the adult contemporary beach jazz sound that made them regulars on the Toe Ring Circuit. PLUS Korla Pandit, Sammy Davis, Jr., Betty Boop, Tuxedo Moon, Modernaires, Liberace, and Hawaiian music. Free champagne and popcorn! *$7.77.
SAT. 3/21: CHRIS CARLSSON’S FoundSF + CALIFORNIA COMPANY TOWN + Author of several books, most recently Nowtopia, Mission visionary Chris Carlsson returns from the World Social Forum in Brazil for a report-back on not only that momentous event, but also the auspicious transition of his ongoing Shaping San Francisco to the newly named and Wiki-enabled FoundSF. Chris is a fount of radical historical knowledge and enlightened proposals for the future of our fair City. His themes on the need for local autonomy resonate in the Bay Area premiere of Lee Anne Schmitt’s California Company Town. This 16mm essay film casts a probing, clear-eyed gaze at the landscape of California towns abandoned by the industries that created them—one-time boom-towns now haunted by the twilight of the American promise. PLUS Emperor Norton and other glimpses of the City’s history.
SAT. 3/28: THE POETIC HORROR OF BEN RIVERS In his first-ever visit, this Brighton, UK maker unleashes a creepy lot of sublimely suspenseful, genre-inflected cine-poems. Winner of last year’s Rotterdam Tiger Award, this prolific Brit fashions minimal, moody riffs on horror film tropes. Rivers' work profits from the sheer physical pleasure of the hazy chiaroscuro of desolate and crumbling places. Included on this program of poignant cinema are Old Dark House, a hand-processed tour-by-flashlight of an abandoned, burnt-out building; The Hyrcynium Wood, a B/W “mystery” film shot in 16mm; and The Coming Race, wherein thousands of people climb a rocky mountain terrain – a vague, mysterious and unsettling pilgrimage fraught with unknown intentions. DJ Onanist conjures up a haunted-house FX mix for our artist’s reception.
SAT. 4/4: MELINDA STONE’S HOMESTEAD HOE-DOWN + THE GOAT FAMILY + Come one, come all to a down-home hootenanny of movies, tastings, song, and dance. Howtohomestead.org provides the films and fixin’s to start the benefit night right, and before all seats are cleared for The Goat Family, dishing up foot stomping dance tunes and joyous sing-alongs. Melinda debuts new DIY shorts, including Spinning Out of Control, Wheat for the People (with live music by Didimao), Maya Donelson’s Graze the Roof, Mariana Lopez’ How to Make a Milk-Crate Container Bed, and more surprises. The Goat Family, a nuevo-traditional jug band whose influences range from Leadbelly to Nirvana to The Pogues, then rolls out their barrel of old-timey exuberance and infectious butt-shaking. *10.
SAT. 4/11: LYNNE SACHS & MARK STREET’S GARDEN OF VERSES From archival snips of an educational film on the weather to cine-poems in full blossom, New York film "avant-gardeners" Sachs and Street cultivate an evening of cinematic seeds and mordant vines. Ten short films, both single and double screen, reap audio-visual crops from the fertile soil of the filmmakers' florid imaginations. In this mulch of visual ruminations on nature's topsy-turvy shakeup of our lives, they ponder a city child's tentative excavation of the urban forest, winter wheat, and the great American deluge of the 21st Century (so far). Agricultural relics and small works of farm-cycle literature are provided free.
SAT. 4/18: GIRL TALK in RiP - A REMIX MANIFSTO Created over a period of six years, RiP features the collaborative work of hundreds of people who have contributed to this, the world’s first open-source documentary, about copyright and Remix Culture. Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of intellectual property in the Information Age, mixing up the mediascape and shattering the wall between users and producers. Gaylor’s doc features artists like mash-up master and Illegal Art exponent Girl Talk, who blends samples of existing music into new songs. Engaging interviews with additional creators, lawmakers, companies, and consumers are interspersed with animation, collage, and archival footage in this righteous rave-up.
SAT. 4/25: 3-D Spectacular!We’re honored to have back those 3-D masters from Marin County, Pad McLaughlin and Bob Bloomberg, premiering the latter’s projection-piece on San Andreas temblors, The City Quakes: The San Francisco Earthquakes of 1906 & 1989, with Bob’s original score. Pad has his own short piece, Sketch Pad, a series of experiments with stereographic motion pictures, combining 3-D video and stills. This stereoscopic extravaganza also boasts the debut of Kerry Laitala’s Chromatic Cocktail, a Kodachrome exploration using the eye-po pping Chromadepth process, plus new spatial initiatives! ALSO: Neighborhood flaneur David Cox with 3-D movies made on his iPhone (believe it or not), a 3-D tour of a Viewmaster factory, a rare Hy Hirsch piece from the ‘50s, and views of Burning Man, wrestling matches, and carnivorous plants. Free Wine, 3 different glasses provided *7.
SAT. 5/2 PIPEDREAMS: PTUSHKO & PACKARD+Open sesame! Welcome to a cinematic den where fantasy—yea, delirium—reign! Doug Katelus conjures dark angels through the Optigan, transporting us to the ultra-rare Fairytale World of Alexander Ptushko, a child’s-eye survey of this Russian film wizard’s phantasmagoric special effects. ALSO: Andres Garcia Franco’s haunting The Invention, a marvelous descent into an exotic Mexican demimonde. AND Drew Heitzler’s Night Tide (for Sailors, Mermaids, Mystics), a riff on the 1963 Curtis Harrington film that uses Venice Beach as a backdrop for a surreal dreamscape of Pynchonesque paranoia and comedic horror. PLUS Damon Packard, Busby Berkeley, Houdini, and hallucinatory shorts. Free Wine, Hookah in the house *$6.66.
SAT. 5/9: GENDREAU + CHURCHILL + BUCHLA +
Curated by Christine Metropoulos, OC celebrates the return of an old acquaintance and sonic accomplice, Michael Gendreau, with an evening of unnerving vibrations and sensory destabilization. Ezra Buchla—in a solo detour from Gowns—uses mathematics, a very
small computer, and analog video to synthesize the aural and the optical. Joshua Churchill, known for his site-specific sound and light performances, escalates the tone with an abstract collage of drone, doom, and noise, feeding into electronic-media artist Andrew Benson’s complex video processes. Gendreau releases a ground-shaking psycho-spatial-acoustic composition, designed specifically for the space, and “expanded” to include the ocular realm. The artists commence the event with a unique collaboration. *8.
SAT. 5/16: ANNICE JACOBY’S STREET ART SAN FRANCISCOPresented as a slideshow, this book-release celebration of Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo, proudly represents the very Mission we inhabit— politically and culturally. Edited by Annice Jacoby, with a foreword by Carlos Santana, the photo book is a testimony to the district as a laboratory of cultural activism—dressed and addressed by the neighborhood as a public art site. This comprehensive volume honors decades of sacred and profane urban iconography, showcasing the work of artists from Spain Rodriguez to Shepard Fairey, Twist to Aaron Noble, Rigo to Sara Thustra, Swoon to Susan Cervantes. Welcomed with free wine, an ambient DJ and a recent doc on street art, many of the featured artists will be on hand to talk about their work.
SAT. 5/23: THE END OF THE ANALOG Tonight’s program turns on the uses and abuses of electronic games, gadgets, and gizmos. Headlining this experimental lab is the East Bay A/V crew Killer Banshee, with A Wake for Analog, a live performance reckoning with the ghosts in the machine.
ALSO in person is David Cox with his illustrated history of video games, a fascinating overview of the amazing changes in this modern genre. Following is a sampling of Machinima,
that even newer practice in which video games are hacked to tell new stories. PLUS The premiere of Carl Diehl’s Patrolling the Ether, Cyrus Tabar’s Tunnel Vision installation, circuit-bending shorts, and a goofy introduction to Negativland’s Booper. Come early for Bassline Baseline, Nate Harrison's history of the Roland TB 303.
Here’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 Martha Colburn’s Triumph of the Wild, Dale Hoyt's Male Glaze, Doug Katelus’ Lost in the Flood, Shalo P’s Nevermore, Roger Beebe’s Money Changes Everything, Caspar Stracke’s Zuse Strip, and Karla Betancourt’s Bolivar and Other Interruptions. ALSO recent pieces by Tony Gault, James Hong / Yin-Ju Chen, Karl Lind, Richard Mitchell, et al. *$7. FALL 2008
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