Film
Material and Illusion
Thursday, Mar 4, 2010
7 p.m.
Participants
Introduction by Steve Anker, Dean Film/Video, CAL ARTS
Additional Info
- Arnulf Rainer, Peter Kubelka, 1958-60, 6.5 min., 16mm
- Mothlight, Stan Brakhage, 1963, 4 min., 16mm
- A Man And His Dog Out For Air, Robert Breer, 1957, 3 min., 16mm
- Colour Flight, Len Lye, 1938, 4 min., 16mm
- Surfacing On The Thames, David Rimmer, 1970, 8 min., 16mm
- Reverberation, Ernie Gehr, 1969, 23 min., 16mm
- Castro Street, Bruce Baillie, 1966, 10 min., 16mm
- Saugus Series, Pat O’Neill, 1974, 18 min., 16mm
- A Study In Choreography For Camera, Maya Deren, 1945, 3 min., 16mm
- Take The 5:10 To Dreamland, Bruce Conner, 1977, 6 min., 16mm
- Frame Line, Gunvor Nelson, 1984, 22 min., 16mm
Total running time: 107 min.
Bruce Conner, TAKE THE 5:10 TO DREAMLAND; courtesy of the Conner Family Trust; © Conner Family Trust. Prints courtesy of Canyon Cinema, The Conner Family Trust, and New York Museum of Modern Art Circulating Film Library.
This survey primarily features non-local, avant-garde artists (Bay Area filmmakers will be the focus of a major Pacific Film Archive and S.F. Cinematheque series in fall 2010). Most of these filmmakers, whose work appeared at the museum between 1965 and 1980, were absorbed with exploring the medium of film itself. This selection includes, among others, the pure abstraction of Peter Kubelka’s flicker film, Stan Brakhage’s seminal direct-film interplay of moths and plants, and David Rimmer and Ernie Gehr’s meditations on the surface of the image. It then shifts to films that challenge the implied truth of what the camera records. The concluding film, Gunvor Nelson’s Frame Line, contemplates various images to create a rumination on displacement. – Steve Anker