“Ventana al Sur: An Evening of  Argentine Experimental Films”
curated by Mark Street and Lynne Sachs

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES, NYC   SATURDAY FEBRUARY 21, 2009  8PM
http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

We will serve Yerba Mate tea in a communal gourd and sweet dessert churros in the lobby before the show.

This rollicking evening of challenging, expressive and oppositional Argentine cinema offers a window onto makers shredding formal niceties, relishing in risk and daring to access the sublime.  From an achingly beautiful evocation of an hourglass to a darkly humorous evisceration of the tenets of the stock market, this program will take us to the land where summer is winter and winter is summer and render our souls topsy-turvy for a bit too.  Last summer NYC experimental filmmakers Mark Street and Lynne Sachs immersed themselves in the Buenos Aires film community through a variety of collaborative cinematic endeavors.  In addition to shooting Super 8 movies with their artist peers in town, Street and Sachs spent time meeting and watching the works of local moving image makers – some young bucks and some veterans who have been expanding the parameters of the medium since the early 1960s.   (72min TRT.)

“Los Angeles” (5 min., 16mm, 1976) by Leandro Katz
Portrait of a small community living by the railroad tracks in the banana plantation region of Quiriguá, Guatemala. Originally a single take, this film is composed of alternating equal number of moving frames and frozen frames as the camera tracks alongside the train station.

“Workshop” (10 min.,16mm 1977) by Narcisa Hirsch
A structuralist vision as conceived by one of South America’s most beloved experimentalists, Narcisa Hirsch.  One wall of the filmmaker’s studio as seen through a fixed camera. We see photos she’s stuck on the wall, then there is a dialogue with a male friend to whom she is describing the rest of the walls that you don’t see. A “one upmanship” of a similar film by Michael Snow where he describes a wall of his studio- workshop, by describing what one CAN see.

“Aleph” (1 min., 16mm) by Narcisa Hirsh
In the blink of the eye – 1440 frames in one minute – the rituals of childhood and adolescence give a magical and haunting rhythm to daily life.

“El Eroticismo del Tiempo” ( 1 min., video, 2005) by Narcisa Hirsch
Like the curves of the body, an hour glass can both seduce and repel us.

“Bajo Tierra” (4 1/2 min., Super 8, sound on CD, 2007) by Pablo Marin
A film portrait of filmmaker Claudio Caldini: in the industrial town of General Rodriguez, Buenos Aires, a man makes a new cinematic offering in front of the no-longer-industrialized Kodachrome.

“Sin título(Focus)” (4 min., Super 8, b&w, silent, 2008,) by Pablo Marin
Shot on a rooftop in Buenos Aires, this film truncates space in ever inviting ways using a dizzying array of formal tropes.

“Equivale a mentir” (3 min, Super 8 to video, sound, 2001) by Macarena Gagliardi.
A meditation on the four elements, and various aspects of fusion—a sensual evocation of the process of change.

“Espectro” (6 min, super 8 with separate sound on CD, 2008) by Sergio Subero.
Abstract images shimmer and shift on the screen.  We are invited to look within as we enter an unfamiliar and unpredictable realm.

“Montevideo” (4 minutes, DVD, 2008) by Leandro Listorti
The capital of Uruguay reveals, briefly, its characteristic of a Doppelgänger City: a single place cut in two spaces where two pairs of creatures explore the limits of the travelogue.

“Stock” (5 minutes, 2007, mini DV ) by Ruben Guzman
A boy from La Cruz walks to school to read aloud the stock market report from the newspaper. We are witness to the last day of capitalism.

“El Guardian” (5 min., video, 2008) by Ruben Guzman
A fantasmic guardian coddles and keeps the images of the world.

“Nunca Fuimos Allah Luna” (7 min., 35mm, 2008) by Ernesto Baca
Two characters on split screens collide, converse and argue as the city unspools kinetically behind them.

“For You/Para Usted” (16 minutes, video, 1999) by Liliana Porter
A witty and wry comparison of linguistic and visual modes of expression through a series of pithy and provocative animated vignettes.

Related posts:

1. Thoughts on Argentine Cinema by Lynne Sachs and Mark Street An Argentine excursion: film frames, talk therapy, and ice cream....

In celebration of PS 1’s WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution:

“Flower Power Movie Flicks” selected by Maya and Noa Street-Sachs

PS 1 Contemporary Art Center Cafe
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th St.
Long Island City
www.PS1.org

Ask any American child today to name his or her favorite woman director and you’ll probably be left with a long embarrassing silence.  Okay then, let’s try again. Name one woman filmmaker, dead or living.  Again, no response.  It’s a troubling situation that the New York Filmmakers Cooperative has been trying to rectify for the last four decades.  In the spirit of PS 1’s WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, young movie enthusiasts Maya and Noa Street-Sachs, daughters of two Brooklyn experimental filmmakers, have put together a splendid afternoon of films by seven of Americas’ most awe inspiring women directors.

From an early garden dance tour-de-force by avant-garde film’s grand-dame Maya Deren to a 1968 political manifesto dressed in visual whimsy, these movies may not be very well known but they are sure to entertain any adventurous 1 to 100 year old child.

“We chose seven fantastic avant-garde films that we thought would fit the theme of flower power.  Every one of these movies is made by a woman who experiments by mixing sound, color and image – like a witch stirring her cauldron.  We had a great time picking these shorts we hope other children will like as much as we did.”           -Maya and Noa Street-Sachs
Films:

“Rat Life and Diet” by Joyce Wieland (16 min., 1968)
“Glimpse of the Garden” by Marie Menken (5 min., 1957)
“Bridges Go Round” by Shirley Clarke (18 min., 1958)
“Les Tournesols”  by Rose Lowder (3 min., 1982)
“Duck” by Amy Taubin (2 min., 1975)
“Adventure Parade” by Kerry Laitala (5 min., 2000)
“Study in Choreography for Camera” by Maya Deren (3 min., 1945)

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PS1 and the Film-Makers’ Cooperative present

Matinee Movies: Mystery, Magic and Marigolds.
Films Selected by and for Kids!!

Curated and Hosted by Maya and Noa Street-Sachs

Sat., October 27th at 4pm

We are thrilled to put together a program of Film-Makers’ Cooperative movies that will wow, tickle, spook and surprise a matinee audience of boys and girls who may or may not have ever encountered the splendor of the avant-garde cinema.

Gulls and Buoys (1972) by Robert Breer – 8 minutes
It reminds us of a flipbook with fabulous drawings of nature.
The Red Book (1994) by Janie Geiser – 10 minutes
Spectacular animated cut-outs with lots of color and mysterious images of hands, books, keys and doors.
Little Red Riding Hood (1978) by Red Grooms – 16 minutes
Elaborate costumes and colorful, dramatic scenes with a scary wolf and a nice little girl in red.
Earth Song of the Crickets (1999) by Stan Brakhage – Silent – 3 minutes
Dancing handpainted abstraction with a magical sparkle.
Fragment of an Unidentified Horror Show (1993) by Danny Woodruff – 2 minutes
A creepy weirdo comes across a skeleton in this suspensful masterpiece.
Evil of Dracula (1998) by Martha Colburn – 2 minutes
An animated movie of happy faces with long pointy teeth.
Moshulu Holiday (1966) by George Kuchar – 9 minutes
Set in the Bronx, with hilarious scenes of city life.  You’re gonna love the ending.

Maya and Noa are 12 and 10 years old and have grown up in Brooklyn watching avant-garde films with their artist parents – Mark Street and Lynne Sachs.

Program organized by M.M. Serra as part of an ongoing series titled “Cafe Cinema: Cinema of the Unusal”.

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” A CINEMA FOR PEACE!  FOR LIFE, AGAINGST THE WAR … AGAIN!”         78 min. DVD 2007
Curator: Lynne Sachs

“In 1967, with the Vietnam War escalating wildly, an invitation was issued to filmmakers to create works running under three minutes in protest against the accumulating carnage. The original organizers chose the rubric For Life, Against the War, and eventually compiled sixty films from the likes of Robert Breer, Shirley Clarke, Storm De Hirsch, Ken Jacobs, Larry Jordan, Jonas Mekas, Stan Vanderbeek, and many others. Now, decades later, an invitation to protest yet another war seemed sadly urgent, inspiring filmmaker Lynne Sachs to ring the clarion once “. . . Again.” The response was overwhelming, with submissions from several generations of artists unified by a singular disgust for the war in Iraq and the foreign policy that perpetuates it. Compiled with works from the overtly angry to the formally forceful, For Life, Against the War boldly announces that artists can take a stand, again and again.”  — Steve Seid, Curator, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley Art Museum

Filmmaker Participants on DVD: Kevin Barry, Bosko Blagojevic, Elle Burchill, Jim Costanzo, Bradley Eros, Jeanne Finley, Martha Gorzycki, Alfred Guzzetti, Barbara Hammer, Ken Jacobs, Douglas Katelus, Lynn Marie Kirby, Ernie Larsen, David Leitner, Les Leveque, Cynthia Madansky, Rohesia Hamilton Metcalfe, Sheri Milner, John Muse, Martha Rosler, Lynne Sachs, MM Serra, Jeff Silva, Jeffrey Skoller, Mark Street, Cara Weiner, Lili White, Artemis Willis.

Filmmakers Cooperative  www.film-makerscoop.com   212 267 5665
108 Leonard Street, the Clocktower Bldg., 13th Fl. New York, NY 10013
NTSC DVD  TRT:  88 min.

Film-makers’Coop Executive Director: MM Serra

The Village Voice
Film Review
Pro-Life
Artists return to the Vietnam protest model with For Life Against the War . . . Again
by Ed Halter

“Iraq is not Vietnam, as the Bush administration and other Republicans have generously taken pains to remind us over the last half decade, but good luck trying to convince today’s artists of that. Not the kind of artists typically touted at white-shoe galleries, of course, too busy creating precious objects for clueless investors: Far more potent demonstrations of protest and disgust emerge from the rag-tag networks of micro-budgeted experimental filmmakers. With little or no market for experimental filmmaking, the scene consists of only the most devoted individuals, with nothing to lose from saying whatever they wish. The art they create can thereby be rough or polished, face-slappingly blunt or poetically subtle, stridently collectivist or stewed in lonely isolation. For Life Against the War . . . Again, a recent omnibus produced in response to Iraq, includes all these extremes, but nevertheless coalesces into a potent time capsule of how today’s war has churned our inner lives.

For Life updates a concept first enacted in 1967, at the height of the previous debacle. Then, an event called The Week of Angry Art asked 60 filmmakers to make 16mm works of three minutes or less in response to the war in Vietnam; participants included a collection of now-canonical figures such as Jonas Mekas, Robert Breer, and Shirley Clarke, as well as less well-remembered names. Last year, avant-garde film distributor The Film-Maker’s Co-op issued a similar open call for new works about today’s war, resulting in a program of 25 video shorts; both the 1967 and 2007 editions screen at Anthology this week.

A number of the newer videos look to past conflicts as a means of understanding the present: Jeffrey Skoller shoots two-and-a-half unedited minutes of a busy Hanoi street, juxtaposed to a prophetic poem by Ho Chi Minh; Bosko Blagojevic contemplates growing up in the U.S. during the Balkan wars; Lynne Sachs’s The Small Ones remembers her Hungarian cousin, a doctor tasked with reconstructing the bones of American soldiers killed in World War II. Other selections groove on expressive abstraction: Les LeVeque’s nervy STOP THE WAR strobes variations of those three words set to radically altered audio clips of protest chants, while Mark Street contributes a silent flutter of red flowers pressed against 35mm film. Martha Rosler skews patriotism by taping a creepy musical soldier doll blurting “God Bless America,” then revealing its prosthetic-style mechanical leg; M. M. Serra sics her cats on a dopey-faced George Bush toy. But sometimes the crudest are actually the most effective: Witness Jim Costanzo’s The Scream: 21st Century Edition, which blue-screens the artist yelling in pain over news footage of Bush speeches and Baghdad shock-and-awe. Three decades from now, when future media archivists try to understand what it was like for sane Americans to experience the war, Costanzo’s video will remain an effective and emotional artifact.”

————————————————
For Life Against the War Again!
DVD – TRT: 88 minutes

List of Films in Order:

1. The Scream: 21st Century Edition     Jim Costanzo
As in the Edvard Munch painting, the artist expresses anger and frustration at America’s illegal war and the attack on our civil liberties. (3 min.)

2. PSA # 11 Fallout     Cynthia Madansky
This public service announcement is part of a series of 15 short films that speak out against the American occupation of Iraq and the act of war. (3 min.)

3. LOST     Jeanne C. Finley & John Muse
Audio diaries of Chaplin Major Eric Olson combine with a single landscape shot. The implications of an Iraqi’s death reveal the complications and tragedy of war.
(3:48 min.)

4. Graven Images     Sherry Millner & Ernie Larsen
The artists’ ongoing “Sight Gag” series views patriotism (particularly post-9/11) as a form of hysterical blindness. (4:31 min.)

5. Words on PEACEpiece     Lili White
Only by dealing with one’s “shadow” can one arrive at peace; a flower chain made by  children during “Culture Day” — in Slovenian, a national holiday. (1.33 min.)

6. Our Grief Is Not A Cry For War     Barbara Hammer
October 11, 2001, Times Square. An ad hoc artist group, puts on a silent demonstration for peace in a time of national war hysteria. Lecturer Louise Richardson, Harvard University. (3:45 min.)

7. Unfurling     Martha Gorzycki
Images from visual culture scroll in a mesmerizing rhythm synonymous with the hypnotic effect of endless consumption, inviting viewers to question their own relationship to consumerism. (3 min.)

8. Night Vision     Alfred Guzzetti
Iraq: an apocalyptic landscape.  (2:32 min.)

9. I Shot a Spider     Elle Burchill
Caught in action, a late-night contemplation. (2:40 min.)

10. Star Spangled to Death     Ken Jacobs
Excerpt from 440 minutes shot from 1956 to 2004. (2 min.)

11. For Life  / Against War    Mark Street
Sometimes only flowers will do — pressed against 35mm film emulsion and exposed to the light — to give an unexpected  respite from world horrors. (2:37 min.)

12. Prototype: God Bless America!     Martha Rosler
A fragment of simulated glee produced by a bouncy robot with prosthetic legs, a movie-villain helmet, a brass trumpet — all with “made-in-China” plastic features. (1:09 min.)

13. Description of a Struggle     Bosko Blagojevic
Remembering the 90s, distracted; a single articulation, a way in. (2:55 min.)

14. The Small Ones     Lynne Sachs
A portrait of Sachs’ cousin, Sandor Lenard, a doctor who reconstructed the bones of dead American soldiers during World War II. Composed of abstracted war imagery and children at a birthday party. (3 min.)

15. Untitled     Kevin Barry
Poem on culture clash in Iraq, inherent racism and our own indifference as we use the resources gathered during the conflict. (1:33 min.)

16. STOP THE WAR     Les LeVeque  (3 min.)

17. PEACE in order to achieve PEACE     M M Serra
My reflections on the regime of George W. Bush. (3 min.)

18. Mutable Fire!     Bradley Eros and Erotic Psyche
Totems of destruction & desire, torn between the ecstasy that propels and the horrors that paralyze, we reveal erotic love to be a resistance to tyranny. (4 min.)

19. The Weather is Clearing Up!     Jeffrey Skoller
In the midst of war, Ho Chi Minh has a vision of happiness — 180 seconds shot in
Hanoi 62 years later contain the image of its actualization. (3:42 min.)

20. PEACE IS…     Rohesia Hamilton Metcalfe
Texts returned by a 9/20/06 Google search for the text “peace is” as a meditation on the consciousness of the crowd at this moment in time. (3:03 min.)

21. Sacco and Vanzetti     Douglas Katelus
Summer in NYC. One just might stumble across a bit of anarchy at Union Square: “know that I love you…know that I love you.” (3 min.)

22.  War Montage     Cara Weiner
Altered images of Iraq and war in general merge to create a visual experience. (3 min.)

23. Ashes, Ashes…     Jeff Silva
Using personal and archival footage to ruminate on the subject of war, the residue of past violence permeates into the present. (5 min.)

24. Peace and Pleasure     Artemis Willis and David Leitner
Performance artist Larry Litt leads “A Peace and Pleasure Talisman Charging Ritual” with Santeria drummers and a Voudun priestess to confuse and repel evil  “Fox-y” media demons. (4 min.)

25. Requiescat     Lynn Marie Kirby
1000 Xs scratched on film become prayers for persons killed in Iraq. Punching the machine during video transfer makes a glitch — marking each death anew. (4 min.)

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WITH EYES OPEN:  CINEMATIC VISIONS OF ISRAEL & PALESTINE
A Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives &  BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange

Curated by Lynne Sachs

Film Weekend
Information:  www.kolotchayeinu.org   718.390.7493  info@kolotchayeinu.org

Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of our Lives, a progressive Jewish congregation in Brooklyn, and the BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange present two days of film screenings with the hope of creating an engaged dialogue around the conflicts and the attempts for peace in Israel and Palestine. Focusing on art and politics in our own society and beyond, this mini film festival brings together directors and audience members in a dynamic series of viewings and discussions.  Tackling complicated issues of the day with surprising candor and compassion, these highly acclaimed, visually dynamic movies hail from festivals such as Berlin, Jerusalem and TriBeca.  It certainly will be exciting to see them here in Park Slope!

Saturday, May 20
Kolot Chayeinu Synagogue
1012 Eighth Avenue (btwn 10th and 11th  St.) Brooklyn
6:30 PM Potluck Dinner, followed by Havdallah
Screening #1    8:00 to 9:30 PM   with discussion afterwards
“Zero Degrees of Separation” by Elle Flanders (filmmaker will be present)

ZERO DEGREES OF SEPARATION, a feature documentary, takes viewers on a unique journey through the lives of Israeli and Palestinian gays and lesbians in inter-ethnic relationships. Though living on the margins of society, these couples defy the odds, existing in the midst of conflict with a gentle humanity and mutual respect. Interwoven into these stories is the director’s own rich narrative of growing up with Zionist grandparents intimately involved in the founding of the state of Israel.

Sunday, May 21
All screenings at BAX/ Brooklyn Arts Exchange
421 5th Ave. (btwn 7th & 8th St.)
www.bax.org    718.832.0018           info@bax.org

Screening #2
3:30 to 5:00 PM  with discussion afterwards
“States of UnBelonging” by Lynne Sachs (filmmaker will be present)
with “Encounter Point” (excerpts) by Ronit Avni and Julia Bacha

“Humanist reverie and implicit cautionary tale,”  (Village Voice) STATES OF UNBELONGING is a cine-essay on the violence of the Middle East as seen through a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed on a kibbutz near the West Bank. ENCOUNTER POINT is a true story about everyday Israelis and Palestinians who refuse to sit back as the conflict around them escalates.

Screening #3
6:00 to 7:30 PM with discussion afterwards
“Still Life” by Cynthia Madansky (filmmaker will be present)
“3 CM Less” by Azza El-Hassan (excerpt)
“Olive Press” by Yoram Sabo (excerpt)

In shimmering super 8 film, STILL LIFE hauntingly depicts the landscapes of the Palestinian territories reduced to rubble. Part video diary, part quest for reconciliation,  3 CM LESS portrays two very different Palestinian women attempting to heal the rifts in their families while probing their desire for love and security.  In OLIVE PRESS, Palestinians and Jews partake in the timeless ritual of the olive harvest, recognizing this fruit as a symbol of peace and a tool in the ongoing tensions over land.

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From Ann Arbor to Austin to Arcata, local fimmakers Mark Street and Lynne Sachs have been travelling to film festivals around the country and in Europe this year showing their own work and watching an amazing selection of new alternative cinema.  Tonight they will bring back to Baltimore some of the most compelling, ground-breaking experimental films being made in America today.  A surreal allegory on a Canadian farm, a meditation on Cuban streetlife, an Eastern European tease on the notion of history– the work is audacious, lyrical and on occasion sublime.  Two of the filmmakers — Paula Froehle (Chicago) and Jenny Perlin (New York City) — will attend their Baltimore premieres in order to discuss their work and to answer questions from the audience.

“Chemistries”, Daven Gee, 10 min.
“Meditations on Revolution, Part I” by Robert Fenz, 10 min.
“The Whole History of That” by Jenny Perlin, 17 min.
“We are Going Home” by Jennifer Reeves, 10 min.
“Fever” by Paul Froehle, 6 min.
“Flight” by Greta Snider, 7 min.
“Twilight Psalm II:  Walking Distance” by Phil Solomon, 15min.

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DIS PLACE MENT:
5 States of UnBelonging

LINK Film and Video Program
March 31, 2000

Curated by Mark Street and Lynne Sachs

“Fells Point 99”, Isaac Cynkar, 1999
(4 min. excerpt)

“Sight Unseen (a travelog)”, Jonathan Robinson, 1990
(5 min. excerpt)

“Land Without Bread”,  Luis Bunuel, 1932
(6 min. excerpt)

“Mercy”, Abigail Child, 1989
(3 min. excerpt)

“The Past is a Foreign Country”, Joanna Racynskza, 1998
(5 min. excerpt)

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Recollections on the Flaherty Film Seminar at 40

In 1989 Pearl Bowser invited me to present my film “Sermons and Sacred Pictures” at the Flaherty.  That year the theme of the seminar was African and African-American images in film.  I was thrilled to have the opportunity to present “Sermons”, an experimental documentary on Reverend L.O. Taylor, a black Baptist minister from Memphis, Tennessee (my hometown) who was also an inspired filmmaker with an overwhelming interest in preserving the social and cultural fabric of his own community in the 1930’s and ’40’s.  As programmer of the Flaherty that year, Pearl created an exhilarating, often hotly debated, dialogue around the intention, context, and impact of images made by and about Africans and African-Americans. As a white, American woman, I was curious, exited and, yes, anxious about my Flaherty screening.   My film galvanized a long discussion around the ownership of images, calling to question the notion of an unwritten  contract that surrounds the  possession and use of a photographic representation.  It was a white woman in the audience who seemed most bothered by my making a film about a black minister.  It was black writer Toni Cade Bambara who eventually stood up for the piece.  Recalling her initial impressions of “Sermons and Sacred Pictures”,  I remember her reflecting to the audience on a vocal rhythm in the soundtrack that  danced between the  eleven voices , that gave these reminiscences a poetry and an authenticity that was very specifically connected to the spoken words and music of Reverend Taylor’s community as she’d experienced in the film.  Later I had the chance to talk with film historians Tashomi Gabriel and Abi Ford.  Both men told me choosing not to make “Sermons” because I am white would have been nothing less than patronizing.

To this day,  conversations, observations and friendships from those few days at Wells College linger with me.   Strolling into my first screening, I  immediately recognized  a friend from my freshman year of college whom I had not seen in almost a decade — Zeinabu irene Davis.  After exchanging only a few words, we realized that our lives had followed very similar paths:  that we had both just completed new films as part of our MFA’s; that we were about to start our first college teaching positions in completely new towns;  and, that we were both committed to independent, non-traditional filmmaking.

Pearl planted a seed in many of our traveler’s imaginations by inviting a fascinating group of African filmmakers to the seminar.  Using my minimal college French, I talked often to Cheik Oumar Sissoku, a young non-English speaking  director from Mali who presented his film “Finzan”, a powerful, exquisitely photographed narrative that explores issues around female circumcision .  Pearl didn’t exactly advertise  her  enthusiasm for the Pan-African Film Festival  in  Burkina Faso, but she and the rest of the African film enthusiasts and makers never stopped referring to this almost mythic place, a West-African capitol which was in actuality not all that far from Timbuktu.  Two years later, I found myself on an airplane in Abidjan, Ivory Coast with Zeinabu and many other people who had been a part of the 1989 Flaherty.  It was as if the conversations had never really stopped, the curiosity had intensified and all of our adventurous spirits had drawn us back together — heading to the dusty sub-Saharan town of Ouagadougou to watch  more movies in the most spirited, outdoor theaters I have ever experienced.

Lynne Sachs, 1995

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