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HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013
FROM THE FILM AT REDCAT TEAM
AS WE KICK OFF OUR WINTER-SPRING 2013 SEASON Sun Jan 20 | 5 :00 pm | Mon Jan 21 | 8:30 pm | Jack H. Skirball Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
The Art of Vision: Honoring Stan Brakhage
Co-presented with the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and Los Angeles Filmforum
With a lifelong devotion to filmmaking as a radical and resolutely personal practice, Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) completed more than 350 films that explored cinematic vision as a means of poetic expression and pushed the boundaries of cinema as art. Defying traditional film language, his distinctive techniques-expressive camera movement, intricate editing, subtle superimpositions, photographic abstractions and painting directly on the film surface-contributed to a singular, humanizing sensibility. Ten years after his death, Brakhage is celebrated on the occasion of his 80th birthday with two programs of major early works: a rare screening of The Art of Vision (1961-65, 255 mins.), his monumental and deeply meditative deconstruction of Dog Star Man, and a second evening devoted to eight short masterworks newly restored by the Academy Film Archive, from the seminal psychodrama Reflections on Black (1955), to his landmark ode to subjective seeing, Anticipation of the Night (1958).
In person: Curators Steve Anker and Mark Toscano
"There were few filmmakers-film director is too limiting a description-who went so far to train audiences to see differently... For Brakhage, the goal of cinema was the liberation of the eye itself." - The Guardian
Curated by Steve Anker and Mark Toscano.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Mon Feb 4 | 8:30 pm | Jack H. Skirball Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
Jean Rouch on the Gold Coast Jaguar (shot 1954-55, premiered 1967) preceded by Les Maîtres fous (The Mad Masters, 1955)
These two films compose a fascinating portrait of the dislocation created by colonialism in Africa. Once controversial, but now an anthropological classic, Les Maîtres fous (28 mins.) documents a Hauka possession ceremony, during which the participants mimic figures of the colonial power. With Jaguar (90 mins.), Rouch invented ethno-fiction, a mix of ethnology and improvised narrative. A gallant public writer, a shepherd and a fisherman-portrayed respectively by non-professional actors Damouré Zika, Lam Ibrahim Dia and Illo Gaoudel-leave their village to try their luck on the fabled Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana). In Accra Damouré becomes a "jaguar" - a city slicker. As sync sound was not available then, the three buddies jovially comment on the action after the fact, observing that the Brits royally conned Africa out of its gold.
Presented as part of Farther than Far: The Cinema of Jean Rouch, in association with the French Film & TV Office-Consulate General of France in Los Angeles, the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Los Angeles Filmforum. Additional series screenings take place January 25-February 23.
"Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Les Maîtres fous is the way the participants and the settings take on theatrical roles. The film exerted a major influence on Jean Genet when he came to write his play The Blacks." - Jonathan Rosenbaum
"[Jaguar is] Rouch's most thorough examination of the African experience under the colonial regime...The camera's presence is intended to cause those being filmed to react, thus creating, rather than merely recording, events." - Senses of Cinema
Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Wed Feb 6 | 8:30 pm | Jack H. Skirball Screening Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
Alexander Mackendrick: A Centennial Celebration
The esteemed director of Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and The Ladykillers (1955), Alexander Mackendrick (1912-1993) was a pivotal figure in the history of CalArts, and his work and writings remain a major influence on contemporary narrative directors and screenwriters. For this celebration of the artist's multifaceted contributions, Paul Cronin (editor of Mackendrick's seminal book On Film-Making) is joined by two CalArts alums, director James Mangold and author and filmmaker F.X. Feeney. Together they honor the man who, as Dean of the School of Film/Video at CalArts and throughout his more than 30 years of teaching, shaped an institution and inspired generations of filmmakers. This lively discussion reveals Mackendrick through personal reminiscences, film clips and critical observations on his work as a filmmaker, teacher and theorist.
In person: Paul Cronin, James Mangold and F.X. Feeney
" 'Process, not product' was [Mackendrick's] mantra to his students. The creative process-not the creative method, or the creative system. The process. Which never stops." - Martin Scorsese
Presented in collaboration with CalArts School of Film/Video and CalArts Office of Alumni Relations.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Mon Feb 11 | 8:30 pm | Jack H. Skirball Screening Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
Nancy Buchanan: Lines of Enquiry
Since the early 1970s, Nancy Buchanan's work in video has been marked by her consistent exploration of the spaces between political essay, poetry and performance. This screening presents an overview of her remarkable career, starting with early videos that disrupt representational stereotypes through feminist critique, such as Primary and Secondary Spectres (1989), to her polemics of the 1980s and 1990s, that address such issues as real estate speculation and U.S. interventionism in Latin America, including Sightlines (1989) and American Dream #7 (1991). Other pieces combine political awareness with dry humor (Pursed, 2003-4, Horses, 2009), as well as insightful explorations of cultures at times of momentous changes, such as her collaboration with Sandra Agalidi, Windows and Mirrors (1995), shot in Romania.
In person: Nancy Buchanan
"There is an ethical core to her artistic practice... At the same time, a disarming element of 'serious play.' " - Afterall
"Mainstream media... has served well as a target for Buchanan's strategy of black humor and political critique." - Erika Suderburg
Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Mon Feb 25 | 8:30 pm | Jack H. Skirball Screening Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
Ben Russell: Altered States
Los Angeles Premieres
This program, a slightly modified version of one shown at the Centre Pompidou last fall, presents a selection of films from Ben Russell's ongoing TRYPPS series, including River Rites, Black And White Trypps Number Three, Ponce de León, Trypps #6 and Trypps #7. Shot mostly in 16mm, though formally quite distinct, these short films "enunciate a 'psychedelic ethnography'-in which the trip is both the means and the end," Russell writes, noting that his films have "expanded their formal and critical language to include the various poles of action painting, avant-garde cinema, portraiture, stand-up comedy, global capitalism, and trance-dance à la Jean Rouch." The evening concludes with the two-projector performance of The Black and the White Gods. Russell was listed among the "50 Best Filmmakers Under 50," by Cinema Scope.
In person: Ben Russell
"Ben Russell's field studies of transfiguration invoke the magic of cinema with fearsome lucidity." - Cinema Scope
"Ben Russell has invented his own cinematic territory...producing a patently hypnotic result." - Cahiers du cinéma
Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Mon Mar 4 | 8:30 pm | Jack H. Skirball Screening Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
Queer Sex Works: Money Power Sex
Co-presented with Outfest
With a wide range of piercingly personal perspectives, this screening of experimental films made by queer artists explores a markedly different outlook about sex work. Be they strippers, hustlers, rent boys, go-go dancers, escorts, whores, pro-dommes, pornographers or rough trade - they do it for the money. Yet, unlike their straight counterparts, they are "outsiders" in relation to the status quo. Sex work is a job with class, gender, race and power inequality like any other but with added social stigma, legal and, potentially, even physical danger. The program includes a reconstruction of the legendary A Fire in My Belly, A Work in Progress (1986-87) by David Wojnarowicz and The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography (1998) by William E. Jones, among others.
In person: Kristin "KP" Pepe and William E. Jones
"Combines deeply disturbing imagery with genuine insight. Jones's argument reaches past the commodification of sex: smiles and even thoughts are pinned down for the camera like butterflies, youths robbed of their privacy and their souls for 'the money.' " - Fred Camper, Chicago Reader
"Wojnarowicz's imagery pursues the same hallucinatory effect as Rimbaud's poetry-both attempt to break the mold of artistic stereotypes." - Donald Kuspit
Curated by Kristin "KP" Pepe.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Sat Mar 9 | 8:30 pm | Alpert Award Artist-Jack H. Skirball Screening Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
Kevin Jerome Everson Ten Five in the Grass & Other Shorts
U.S. Premiere
With six feature-length films and more than 70 shorts, Alpert Award recipient Kevin Jerome Everson has explored the multiple facets of African American life via a variety of formal approaches. Whether through his signature long shots, collage of archival sources or the re-enactment of fictional material that echoes the lives of his performers, Everson favors a strategy that interrupts the documentary impulse, abstracting everyday actions and statements into theatrical gestures. His work plays with the ambivalent relationship between art and narrative, fact and fiction. This screening includes a selection of shorts, from the Lumière-inspired Workers Leaving the Job Site (2013), to a dark, witty, homage to Chester Himes, Early Riser (2012), to an exploration of the world of black cowboys, Ten Five in the Grass (2012).
In person: Kevin Jerome Everson
"Everson has carved a place for himself outside both the typical expectations of documentary and the conventions of representational fiction." - Artforum
"Everson is astoundingly prolific...From all this remarkable work, much more is sure to emerge, driven by the same restless, probing, experimental impulse." - The New York Times
Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and The Herb Alpert Foundation. The Alpert Award in the Arts, a fellowship program that supports innovative practitioners in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theater and visual arts, is administered by CalArts on behalf of The Herb Alpert Foundation.
Mon Apr 8 | 8:30 pm | Jack H. Skirball Screening Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
Experiences in Transformative Time: New Work by Leighton Pierce
Leighton Pierce's cinema transforms ordinary sounds and visual impressions into ecstatic experiences filled with new kinds of movements and sensory rediscoveries of the world. Often hovering between definition and abstraction, and between gestural implication and narrative meaning, his musical eye and ear find beauty and magic in everyday places and situations. Pierce's work has been shown widely at festivals and museums, and this screening features two early 16mm films along with nine recent digital pieces, including Viscera, described by filmmaker Jon Jost as "an astonishing piece on the recreation of a presence through remnants of their being, memories of their gestures, as molded in the impressionistic contours of light. A film built upon cascading refractions. The film dissolves in the memory as one watches it..."
In person: Leighton Pierce.
"At times, it seems Pierce is capturing the beauty, the ecstasy contained in matter before its inevitable disappearance." - Mubarak Ali, New Zealand Film Festival
Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Mon Apr 15 | 8:30 pm | Jack H. Skirball Screening Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
Cauleen Smith: Black Utopia LP (for Sun Ra)
Los Angeles Premiere
Premiered at Chicago's threewalls artspace, Black Utopia LP is a deeply original off-shoot of the years of research artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith devoted to Afrofuturism, a cultural movement that mixes science fiction, fantasy, non-Western religion and Afrocentrism. Chicago legend Sun Ra (1914-1993) and his Arkestra were a key figure in this movement. Smith produced over 800 35mm slides: images of objects found in archives, recorded in contemporary Chicago or appropriated from occult, astronomical, and historical sources. The slides are projected in a 90 min performance over two sides of an LP she recorded - a collage of lectures, rehearsals and live performances by Sun Ra, mundane ephemera, as well as commissioned contributions from Chicago artists Krista Franklin and Avery R. Young.
In person: Cauleen Smith
"Her constellational approach to filmmaking parallels Sun Ra's freestyle compositions and spiritual belief in the astral world, while reawakening the political possibilities of black experimental culture." - Art in America
Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Mon Apr 29 | 8:30 pm | Jack H. Skirball Screening Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
Cabinets of Wonder: Films and Performance by Charlotte Pryce
World premieres
Charlotte Pryce's exquisitely detailed and evocatively structured short films suggest an alert daydreaming in which the documented and the imagined are juxtaposed. Her films offer fleeting illuminations that hover on the periphery of vision, calling into question the "mechanical eye" of the lens and the chemical composition of the celluloid. The films use 16mm "chrome" stocks-now-extinct reversal color-which are hand-processed and optically reprinted. "Like the items in a Cabinet of Wonder, my subjects are specimens of philosophical musing: rootless plants, mysterious insects and curious glasses," says Pryce. The program includes Concerning Flight: Five Illuminations in Miniature, Discoveries on the Forest Floor, The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly, Curious Light, Looking Glass Insects, A Study in Natural Magic, and a live magic lantern show.
In person: Charlotte Pryce
"Charlotte Pryce's body of work offers the beautiful possibilities of film as miniature, wherein brief filmic glimpses offer depths of suggestion and inquiry." - Chris Kennedy/Vanessa O'Neill
Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
April 30 and May 2-4 Tues & Thurs-Sat 8:30pm FREE | Reservations Recommended
CalArts Film/Video Showcases
Each year the CalArts School of Film/Video presents a juried selection of four special screenings that feature new short and feature-length films by students in its Experimental Animation, Film and Video and Film Directing programs.
May 4-19 TK, 12pm, 1:30 pm and 3:00 pm $5
REDCAT International Children's Film Festival
With three weekends of acclaimed, international short-film programs, the REDCAT International Children's Film Festival returns to delight movie-goers both big and small. This global tour of charming, funny and poignant films-hailing from countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Israel, Iran, Japan, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Taiwan and Vietnam-is an awe inspiring journey for the whole family. Festival highlights include the latest in both live action and animation shorts.
Detailed program information at redcat.org
Funded in part with generous support from Nickelodeon.
"For cultural immersion they'll confuse for fun, take the kids to REDCAT's International Children's Film Festival." - Jewish Journal
"REDCAT's film showcase gives children a chance to see their peers across the globe." - Los Angeles Times
Mon May 20 | 8:30 pm | Jack H. Skirball Screening Series $10 [students $8, CalArts $5]
The Elegiac Visions of Phil Solomon
World Premiere
Since 1975, Phil Solomon has been making films that magically penetrate the surface of images and reveal depths of new poetic meaning. Solomon's 16mm films imbue prerecorded imagery with fantastical sensual and dimensional qualities. His recent work extends these concerns into the digital realm,creating haunting landscapes that reawaken the mysteries of life and death, and of physical reality and alternative states. Solomon presents two masterful films, What's Out Tonight is Lost (1983) and Psalm I: "The Lateness of the Hour" (1999), and four digital works, Innocence and Despair (2002), his tribute to 9/11, and In Memoriam (2005-09), a trilogy in memory of filmmaker Mark LaPore that mystically transforms backgrounds from the video game series Grand Theft Auto.
In person: Phil Solomon
"Phil Solomon is known for his image alchemy, manipulating existing and original footage to create evocative, dreamlike works that reveal subterranean depths in the imagery." - Museum of the Moving Image
Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.
Funded in part with generous support from the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences. REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) is located at 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012 - in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Parking is available in the Walt Disney Concert Hall parking structure and in adjacent lots.
Unless otherwise indicated, tickets are $10 for the general public, $8
for members and students. Tickets may be purchased by calling 213.237.2800,
at www.redcat.org, or in person at the REDCAT Box Office on the corner
of 2nd and Hope Streets (30 minutes free parking with validation). Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat | noon-6 pm and two hours prior to curtain. If you like our programs, please share them with your friends. Click on the "forward email" link below. If this message has been forwarded to you by a friend, and you want to receive announcements about our programs, please contact us at: redcatfilm@earthlink.net and ask to be added to the mailing list. |
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