Al Wong: Twin Peaks

Experience Al Wong’s 1977 film Twin Peaks in the museum’s Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium, presented for the first time on a digital LED screen. A masterpiece of subtle shifts in light and tone, the film takes the idea of an endless journey as its form: The camera is set inside a Volkswagen bus slowly traveling the road that winds around Twin Peaks, the topographical center of San Francisco. The drive unfolds in a hypnotic figure-eight pattern during morning and night, summer and winter, in rain and in sunshine. Wong’s conceptual meditation creates a stunning work of non-narrative cinema outside of the movie theater.

Twin Peaks, restored in 16mm by the Pacific Film Archive and now digitized for presentation in a museum setting, highlights SFMOMA’s commitment to the history of Bay Area art.