PAST SCREENINGS March 5th, 2010 FOOTBALL AS NEVER BEFORE Hellmuth Costard's Rare 1970 soccer Film Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA For the rest of the world, "football" equals soccer and passions and obsessions run deep. It's hard to imagine an American filmmaker focusing on a single player for an entire game or match, but that's just what German filmmaker Hellmuth Costard did in 1970 - filmed Manchester United star George Best for an entire match (long before British artist Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno made their 2006 variant "Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait"). FOOTBALL AS NEVER BEFORE (1970, 105 mins, 16mm on video, Germany), is legendary among soccer aficionados and one of the great works of post-WWII German cinema, but is little known here and rarely screened (no prints are available in the U.S.). White Light Cinema is pleased to provide an alternate sports-fix to baseball spring training. Like the film, director Hellmuth Costard (1940-2000) is little known in the U.S. He was part of the vibrant New German Cinema movement of the 1960s and 70s - which included Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and others - that revitalized and revolutionized German film. Costard was more of an avant-gardist than the better-known names of the period, and his work is more often aligned with Alexander Kluge, Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, and Klaus Wyborny. His work ranges from experimental films, allusive narratives, documentaries, children's television and a child's storybook, to magazine cartoons. "The sun shone on Old Trafford on 12th September 1970 as Manchester United beat Coventry 2:0 in a league match. It was not an important victory; that season Man Utd would only be also-rans in the race for the championship. But a record was preserved of the match that is probably unique in the history of film and television. Using eight 16mm cameras, Hellmuth Costard, one of the most important experimental filmmakers in German cinema of the 60s and 70s, followed every move over the 90 minutes of the man in the red jersey with the number 11 - traditionally associated with the conventional outside left, but here worn by the mercurial George Best." (Goethe Institut) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 28th, 2010 THE ROCK-AFIRE EXPLOSION A Documentary by Brett Whitcomb & Bradford Thomason In the early eighties, kids all over the US flocked to Showbiz Pizza for the rides, games, and the animatronic rock band, The Rock-afire Explosion. Created by 23-year-old computer prodigy, Aaron Fechter, The Rock-afire Explosion mesmerized many and scared some children and adults alike before being mysteriously pulled from showrooms and eventually replaced by the now popular Chuck-E-Cheese in the early nineties. Nearly twenty years later, still profoundly affected by his experience at Showbiz Pizza, smal town disc-jokey Chris Thrash sought out Fechter and purchased a Rock-afire band of his own. After some clever programming on Chris' part the band was once again performing for millions, this time on YouTube. The Rock-afire Explosion reveals how Chris came to revive this fallen 80's gem, explores his and a number of other fan's obsessions with the animatronic band, and chronicles the rise and fall of Showbiz Pizza and the invention that was once a 20 million dollar per year venture for Fecther. A free-wheeling tour through our love of nostalgia, a compelling story of 80's capitalism, and the eternal quest to stay young, THE ROCK-AFIRE EXPLOSION has something for everyone. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 23rd, 2010 YOU TUBE ASSEMBLY Hosted by local data-bender, Jon Satrom Presented by Homeroom Chicago The YouTube Assembly is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of viral video in a live event. The event consists of screening web-based video for a live, participating audience. Like karaoke or a traditional performance open mic, the YouTube Assembly creates a situation in which people take turns entertaining each other, in this case, by sharing their favorite Youtube clips. In the spirit of the popular YouTube interface, audience members will be encouraged to comment on the videos they watch, except out loud and in real time with no anonymity. Each screening will feature a pair of hosts from different artistic backgrounds that will share their YouTube video picks and help facilitate the evening's open mic portion. Jon Satrom is a Chicago-based artist and educator that performs experimental realtime video/audio and creates single-channel and installation-based video and new-media artworks. He enjoys exploring the systems of failure present within our culture's relationship to computers. He is also a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, runs a small production studio called Studio Thread that caters to non-profits and arts organizations, and is involved in various solo and collective dirty new-media efforts. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Sunday, February 21st, 2010 THE FILMS OF STUART SHERMAN Presented by Hopscotch Cinema With Skype'd intro from John Matturri Renowned performance artist, conceptual artist, and filmmaker of extraordinary talents, Stuart Sherman was beloved in the downtown New York arts scene until his death in 2001. Sherman was most well known for his small-scale "Spectacles," in which he would manipulate common objects on a simple table-top. He also created tiny, marvelous, imaginative, and uniquely cinematic films that have been very difficult to see until a recent revival of his work in New York allowed for a new appreciation of his work. "Stuart Sherman was like no other artist I've ever known. A sweet and gentle man whose art was nevertheless honed with a rigor and discipline that was almost frightening in its iron-clad integrity. Because instead of being shaped by the hurricane winds of the world, the minute and pure crystals of Stuart's art were able to proliferate in a thousand scattered localesÑtheir diamond-like glitter being the manner in which such detailed miniaturization testified to a defiance of received opinion and accepted artistic styles." -Richard Foreman Titles include: Globes (1977); Scotty and Stuart (1977); Skating (1978); Tree Film (1978); Edwin Denby (1978); Camera/Cage (1978); Flying (1979); Baseball/TV (1979); Fountain/Car (1980); Rock/String (1980); Elevator/Dance (1980); Hand/Water (1979); Piano/Music (1979); Roller Coaster/Reading (1979); Theatre Piece (1980); Bridge Film (1981); Racing (1981); Typewriting (Pertaining to Stefan Brecht) (1982); Chess (1982); Golf Film (1982); Fish Story (1983); Portrait of Benedicte Pesle (1984); Mr. Ashley Proposes (Portrait of George) (1985); Eating (1986); The Discovery of the Phonograph (1986) [All on video, unfortunately - it's the only way these titles are distributed currently] ...plus Brian Frye's film portrait of Sherman: Robert Beck is Alive and Well and Living in NYC (2002, 16mm) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 20th, 2010 EDITING AESTHETICS New Film & Video Work from SAIC An evening of new film and video work from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's EDITING AESTHETICS course taught by Michelle Puetz. Featuring brand-spanking-new films and videos from Theodore Darst, Nick Edelberg, Samuel Jacob Eisen, Carlos Enriquez, James Ferguson, Danny Gallegos, Emily Irvine, David Lee, Karina Natis, Matthew O'Shaughnessy, David Olson, Hae Yeon Park, Anthony Rizzo, and Heather Shilling. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 13th, 2010 COLLABOTRONICA: (CHICAGO) New work by Torsten Zenas Burns and friends Torsten Zenas Burns works with lots of different mediums and with lots of different people. COLLABTRONICA is a sample of different projects created in tandem with artists, Anne McGuirre, Darrin Martin, Christian K. Burns, and Halfliffers. Traversing through the worlds of Choregraphy, Performance, Video, and New Media, he explores the realms of performed identity through fantasy characters and has an interest in re-envisioning educational spaces. Often creating animated counterparts of his collaborators, TZB creates spaces where kinesthetics meets virtual life. For example, WHAT IF?, made with longtime collborator, Darrin Martin utilizes dance software that recreates choreography by Merce Cunningham. Weird and playful, TZB's works feel a bit like a good recess. The pleasure of movement and imaginative improv win the day. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ January 29th, 2010 XPER!MENTS IN REAL TIME Curated by Jon Satrom From hand-built devices to home-grown systems, XPER!MENTS IN REALTIME 2 presents a potpourri of experimental realtime audio/video performances. _ _ _ _ _ _ January 17th, 2010 ZORNS LEMMA Hollis Frampton's 1970 Masterpiece Introduced Live Via Webcam by Michael Zryd Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA As its contribution to the citywide screening series "Critical Mass: Re-Viewing Hollis Frampton" White Light Cinema and The Nightingale are pleased to be presenting one of Frampton's most acclaimed films - ZORNS LEMMA. His first major work, ZORNS (1970, 60 mins., 16mm) is a culmination of many of Frampton's major concerns up to that point - the creation and use of language systems and the idea of seriality in particular. It is both an intellectual exercise and a playful work of gaming (a precursor of sorts to interactivity). The film will be introduced by Toronto-based film scholar Michael Zryd, who will help provide some context for the screening and strategies for viewing. ***** "One of Frampton's monumental achievements, a playful puzzle of a film, full of wry autobiographical allusion, in which the artist experiments with systems of learning and language; narrative, action, and seriality; the disjunctive rhythms of sound and image; and the sensuous and the intellectual." -Museum of Modern Art ***** "ZORNS LEMMA is divided into three sections: an initial imageless reading of the Bay State Primer; a long series of silent shots, each one second photographed signs edited to form one complete Latin alphabet; and finally a single shot of two people walking across a snow-covered field away from the camera to the sound of a choral reading. The first of several intellectual orders which Frampton provides as structural models within the film is, of course, the alphabet. The Bay State Primer announces, and the central forty minutes of this hour long film elaborates upon it. Within that section a second kind of ordering occurs; letters begin to drop out of the alphabet and their one-second pulse is replaced by an image without a sign. The first to go is X, replaced by a fire; a little later Z is replaced by waves breaking backwards. Once an image is replaced, it will always have the same substitution; in the slot of X the fire continues for a second each time, the sea roll backwards at the end of each alphabet once the initial substitution occurs. On the other hand, the signs are different in every cycle. The substitution process sets in action a guessing game and a device. Since the letters seem to disappear roughly in inverse proportion to their distribution as initial letters of words in English, the viewer can with occasional accuracy guess which letter will drop out next. He also suspects that when the alphabet has been completely replaced, the film or the section will end. A second timing mechanism exists within the substitution images themselves, and it gains force as the alphabetic cycles come to an end. Some of the substitution images imply their own termination. The tying of shoes which replaces P, the washing of hands (G), the changing of a tire (T), and especially the filling of the frame with dried beans (N) add a time dimension essentially different from that of the waves, or a static tree (F), a red ibis flapping its wings (H), or cat-tails swaying in the wind (Y). The clocking mechanism of the finite acts is confirmed by the synchronous drive toward completion which becomes evident in the last minutes of the section. In ZORNS LEMMA Frampton followed the tactics of his two elected literary masters Jorge Luis Borges and Ezra Pound. From Borges he learned the art of labyrinthine construction and the dialectic of presenting and obliterating the self. Following Pound, Frampton has incorporated in the end of his film a crucial indirect allusion; it is to the paradox of Arnulf Rainer's reduction. In Grosseteste's essay, materiality is the final dissolution, or the point of weakest articulation, of pure light. But in the graphic cinema that vector is reversed. In the quest for sheer materiality - for an image that would be, and not simply represent - the artist seeks endless refinement of light itself. As the choral text moves from Neo-Platonic source-light to the grosser impurities of objective reality, Frampton slowly opens the shutter, washing out his snowscape into the untinted whiteness of the screen." - P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film - - - - - - - - December 18th, 2009 TALES OF THE FORGOTTEN FUTURE A 12 Film Series by Lewis Klahr Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA First Ever Chicago Screening of the Complete Series! Unseen in Chicago in Any Form in over 18 Years! After last December's popular screening of Lewis Klahr's PICTURE BOOKS FOR ADULTS and THE PHARAOH'S BELT, White Light Cinema is again presenting rarely shown early work by Klahr as a holiday treat. Over the past thirty years, Los Angeles-based filmmaker has created a stunning body of work that easily places him at the forefront of avant-garde artists. Moving from the intimacy of his early Super-8 films to his current digital works (with a long sojourn in 16mm), Klahr has always taken advantage of the particular characteristics of his various media. This appreciation of the textures and looks of each format is not surprising, though-Klahr's meticulously constructed films (his early found footage collage works and his more well known cut-out animation films) all benefit from his careful attention to small details. From the constant lookout for source material (old magazines, comic books, diverse other printed matter, photographs, and even occasional three-dimensional objects), the selection of those materials for a particular project, and the combinations and juxtapositions of those materials within a film, Klahr exhibits an unerring eye for the telling, resonant, and evocative. Klahr's films are works of mystery and wonder. More than any other filmmaker working today they are psychic excavations of our shared mid and late-twentieth century cultural memory. PROGRAM DETAILS TALES OF THE FORGOTTEN FUTURE (1988-1991, 131 mins, total, Super-8mm on video) Part 1: The Morning Films LOST CAMEL INTENTIONS (1988, 10 mins) FOR THE REST OF YOUR NATURAL LIFE (1988, 9 mins) IN THE MONTH OF CRICKETS (1988, 14 mins) Part 2: Five O'Clock Worlds THE ORGAN MINDER'S GRONKEY (1990, 14 mins) HI-FI CADETS (1989, 11 mins) VERDANT SONAR (1989, 2 mins) Part 3: Mood Opulence CARTOON FAR (1990, 6 mins) YESTERDAYS GLUE (1989, 14 mins) ELEVATOR MUSIC (1991, 14 mins) Part 4: Right Hand Shade STATION DRAMA (1990, 14 mins) UNTITLED (1991, 21 mins) UNTITLED (1991, 4 mins) - - - - - - - - December 16th, 2009 THREAT LEVEL: An Evening of Queer Shorts A quarterly screening of queer short film and video work hosted for the first time at The Nightingale! After nearly two years of continual success in Chicago, the screening will now be simultaneously held in Chicago and Brooklyn. Live-feed video connection between the two sites will provide the audiences the opportunity to connect with other queer short film appreciators 800 miles away. All proceeds benefit current film projects of MamSir Productions, Moving Train Media and Actor Slash Model. PROGRAM DETAILS: SONG FOR A CITY by Amy Kazymerchyk 575 CASTRO by Jenni Olsen FIVE HAIKUS FOR THE NEW YORK SUBWAY by ZavŽ Martohardjono 3 QUEER MICE by Global Action Project, Youth Making Media GUESS I WON'T MAKE IT TO VEGAS by Sasha Wortzel UNTITLED VIDEO by Lokchi Lam BLACK BOTTLE by Sarah Hagey DIRT AND DESIRE by Diane Busuttil GANG GIRLS by Katrina del Mar - - - - - - - - December 9th, 2009 ANIMATION CREATIONS Presented by UIC School of Art & Design's program in Moving Image Curated by Jodie Mack Please join us for a public presentation of new animations by motion graphics students from the UIC School of Art and Design's program in Moving Image. These nineteen students--once amateurs, now aficionados--have thoroughly explored the possibilities of the art of motion (pencils through pixels). Using things like stacks of cards, analog video quirks, decorative cake sugar, and complex digital software, the projects span flashing octagons, Kanye West scandals, and robot love stories. Please come and support these animators of the future! Featuring works by: Michael Anderson, Evan Behmer, Claudia Bogdan, Christopher Bohlen, Devon Colwell, Tory Davidson-Bell, Arian Fajardo, Cara Frazin, Kristin Higgins, Diana Jurado, Elizabeth Kozikowski, Joseph Lim, Michael Morua, Monica Murillo, John Sano, Jason Sheridan, Dee Williams, Liuna Wu, and Tammy Yu. BLINGEES! PRODUCTION ARTWORK!! VIDEO!!! 16MM!!!! MORE!!!!! - - - - - - - - December 8th, 2009 YOUTUBE ASSEMBLY With Mairead Case & Bryan Wendorf Presented by HOMEROOM The YouTube Assembly is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of viral video in a live event. The event consists of screening web-based video for a live, participating audience. Like karaoke or a traditional performance open mic, the YouTube Assembly creates a situation in which people take turns entertaining each other, in this case, by sharing their favorite Youtube clips. In the spirit of the popular YouTube interface, audience members will be encouraged to comment on the videos they watch, except out loud and in real time with no anonymity. Each screening will feature a pair of hosts from different artistic backgrounds that will share their YouTube video picks and help facilitate the evening's open mic portion. Mairead Case is Managing Editor at Literago.org. The former Managing Editor at Proximity and Books Editor at Venus Zine, she's published fiction and criticism at places like featherproof, Pitchfork, Punk Planet, Village Voice Media, and Vice; started a writing program at an Indiana juvie; sold pumpkin pie wholesale; taught fangst lit to youth in libraries; and curated a radio show about dreams for Neighborhood Public Radio at the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Bryan Wendorf is the Artistic Director of the Chicago Underground Film Festival. - - - - - - - - November 22, 2009 FRIENDSGIVING A Seasonal Potluck Gathering and 2010 Trailer Shoot Before the long winter seduces us into social hibernation, let us all gather together ... We cordially invited you to the second annual FRIENDSGIVING - a seasonal potluck gathering where we share a giant meal and film the 2010 Nightingale trailer. There was a 25 pound turkey (Thanks Chloe!) and a plentiful potluck spread. We broke a lot of plates and committed several of our favorite faces to 16mm. Thanks to everyone- especially the quick-on-their feet crew, Lori, Warren, Jason, Jerzy, Buki, Jodie, Doug, Ed, and Reece. Thanks to James Bond and Chicago Filmmakers for loaning us stuff we needed and thanks to all of you for cleaning your plates (off the floor even) and acting up. We are so very lucky and very grateful. - - - - - - - - November 21, 2009 THE SEARCH New Videos by Kyle Canterbury Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA For the past several years Kyle Canterbury has been quietly, in the shadows, creating a stunning body of work. His videos are among the richest expressions of cinema of the last several decades. His eye for color and texture, rhythm and composition, rival many of the masters of experimental film. But comparisons are facile-Canterbury is working different terrain. He is rooting to the primal essence of the video medium unlike anyone before. In the last year or two, Canterbury has moved from a more formal exploration of video specificity to something less definable. His recent landscape works (for lack of a better description) are ineffable, hauntingly beautiful pieces that frequently operate at the margins of movement. Tiny, almost imperceptible, gestures create micro-rhythms and call for an actively engaged viewer. Whether it is the Utah desert, a formal garden, or the screen of a window, Canterbury is not so much concerned with what we see as he is with how we see it. PROGRAM DETAILS: On the Ground (9 mins, 2008, video) The Search (19 mins, 2008, video) From Fragments (6 mins, 2009, video) Screen (4 mins, 2009, video) Chair (6 mins, 2009, video) January (11 mins, 2009, video) Gardens (24 sec, 2009, video) Utah (10 mins, 2009, video) Garden (10 mins, 2009, video) Program approx. 76 minutes. - - - - - - - - November 10th, 2009 YOUTUBE ASSEMBLY With Eric Graf & Alexander Stewart Presented by HOMEROOM The YouTube Assembly is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of viral video in a live event. The event consists of screening web-based video for a live, participating audience. Like karaoke or a traditional performance open mic, the YouTube Assembly creates a situation in which people take turns entertaining each other, in this case, by sharing their favorite Youtube clips. In the spirit of the popular YouTube interface, audience members will be encouraged to comment on the videos they watch, except out loud and in real time with no anonymity Each screening will feature a pair of hosts from different artistic backgrounds that will share their YouTube video picks and help facilitate the evening's open mic portion. Alexander Stewart lives in Chicago, Illinois. Born in Mobile, Alabama, he attended the University of Richmond and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His film work has screened at film festivals and galleries in the US, Europe, and Japan, including the Tribeca Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Alexander currently teaches at DePaul University, and curates a monthly screening series at Roots & Culture gallery. Eric Graf's bio has been deleted. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ November 7th, 2009 OCCASIONAL PIECES Film and Video by Steve Connolly PROGRAM DETAILS: The Reading Room (3 mins, 2002, 16mm) This film traces the movement of visitors to the British Museum reading room through an entire working day in under three minutes and in silence. The film is an exploration of the changing place of the archive. Using an elevated camera, a single 'master' shot film reveals the layout of the library as a panoptican, a structure envisaged as an ideal prison by Jeremy Bentham (1785). Bentham described his design as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example." Film for Tom (12 mins, 2005, s16/video) A lyrical homage to a friend and formative influence. Tom in voiceover is eloquent and effusive, yet finds no resolution to issues that haunt him. And to whom is he speaking - is the recording we hear a lecture? Near the conclusion of the film, a dramatic offscreen event complicates our understanding of the images and spaces we have seen. "...Connolly's angular, beautifully shot Film for Tom, which broods upon the life and death of a bright, troubled outsider, is breathtakingly measured and sure-footed." -- New Contemporaries by Martin Herbert, Time Out London 15.11.06 Postcard from Istanbul (7 mins, 2002, s8/video) The camera in Postcard from Istanbul seeks out the shoeshines of the city and exchanges the price of a shine for a short portrait on super8. A film shot in mid September 2001 while wandering through Beyoglu and encountering those working there. The Whale (9 mins, 2003, 16mm) "A deliberation on the state of nature and the nature of the State. . . The Whale combines several disparate components (including a parent-child dialogue on the relative threats posed by wild animals, an archival television interview with notorious RAF operative Ulrike Meinhof and citations from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan) to consider the need for a renewed communal sensibility in contemporary society." -- Images Festival, Jeremy Rigsby, Toronto 2005 Great American Desert (16 mins, 2007, 16mm) The camera of Great American Desert observes a scrubby Arizona desert, seasonally occupied by recreational vehicle dwellers. Other elements emerge in juxtaposition, including an account of the men who carried out the Hiroshima bombing and a spectacle staged shortly afterwards in celebration of this event. The film invokes an examination of 'social liberty' in the West in relation to war, spectacle, the environment and consumerism. Más Se Perdió (We Lost More) (14 mins, 2008, 16mm) This piece explores a number of approches to a depiction of contemporary Havana, Cuba. The camera moves between the spaces of the derelict National School of Ballet, documents young athletes at an outdoor stadium, and records a street scene with construction workers - the latter a quotation in homage a similar sequence in Chris Marker's film Letter from Siberia (1957). - - - - - - - - October 27, 2009 PREMIUM & MIRACLE: Two Films By Ed Ruscha Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Picture: copyright Ed Ruscha. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery One of the acknowledged masters of mid and late-twentieth century art, Ed Ruscha has created a powerful body of work that skewers the popular culture and marketing of the time through simple, and now iconic, renderings of signage, gas stations, consumer items, Hollywood imagery, and other modern detritus. Unlike Andy Warhol's works of similar subjects, Ruscha rejects the New York grit for a Los Angeles sheen-much of the power of his paintings comes from the ironic gloss that he gives to his images. As Warhol did in NY, Ruscha has become something of a counterpoint West Coast celebrity and is admired by and hangs out with Dennis Hopper, Mick Jagger, and others. He, like many of his art world contemporaries in the 1950s-70s, also explored filmmaking. Ruscha's efforts were short-lived-he only made two films as compared to the several hundred Warhol made. But they are idiosyncratic and fascinating evocations of the time and carry-through many of the themes Ruscha developed in his painting. PROGRAM DETAILS: Premium (1971, 24 mins., 16mm) Featuring artist Larry Bell, model Léon Bing, designer Rudi Gernreich, and musician/comedian Tommy Smothers. Based on the Mason Williams short story "How to Derive the Maximum Enjoyment from Crackers." "The immediate source of PREMIUM was a photo-novel, CRACKERS, that Ruscha made in 1969, itself deriving from a story, "How to Derive the Maximum Enjoyment from Crackers,' written by Mason Williams . . . A man played by the artist Larry Bell buys a shopping cart full of tomatoes, lettuce, and other salad foods and five one-gallon cans of dressing. Driving to a skid row flophouse, he rents a $2 room from the desk clerk, played by the designer Rudi Gernreich. In the rat-infested room, he pulls back the covers of the bed and on it very carefully prepares a huge salad, a sculptural composition of greens that flower out symmetrically from its center and then replaces the bed cover." (David E. James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde) We won't spoil the rest. Miracle (1975, 28 mins., 16mm) "Features artist Jim Ganzer and actress Michelle Phillips in a tale about a strange day in the life of an auto mechanic." (Harvard Film Archive) These films are Copyright Ed Ruscha, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ October 23-24, 2009 EXPRESSIVE MEDIA EXPRESS Curated by jonCates, Christy LeMaster, and Nicholas O'Brien Expressive Media Express is a weekend long interactive slate of programs designed to encourage creative use of digital tools and simultaneously showcase Chicago's energetic New Media community. It will include two workshops, a screening, live performances and an ongoing media installation online and at The Nightingale, curated by Jon Cates (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Christy LeMaster (The Nightingale), and Nicholas O'Brien (Interactive Art and Media, Columbia College). Friday, October 23, 8 pm, $5 suggested donation Screen.Grab2 | CHIcast :: PART I - ONSCREEN PART II - OFFSCREEN ABOUT Screen.Grab2: Screen.Grab2 presents a sampling of Video and New Media work using the visual vocabulary of network and digital culture. From glitch to screen savers to realtime audio-video noise to experimental dance pop movies, CHIcast converses with the multi-vocal presence of screen based art located within Chicago. In PART I of Screen.Grab2, Nicholas O'Brien has curated a screening program of digital works by artists based in Chicago. For PART II of Screen.Grab2, jonCates has organized a series of performances of digital and analog computers and electronics that will pop offscreen and into the physical space of the Nightingale. ARTISTS INCLUDED IN PART I: Nick Briz jonCates Jake Elliott Arend Gegruyter-Helfer Emily Kuehn Jesse McLean Michael Morris Jon Satrom Micah Schippa ARTISTS INCLUDED IN PART II: Rainbo Video Tyler St Clair (Stagediver/Dispyz) Aaron Zarzutzki Mark Beasley and Tamas Kemenczy MORE INFO ON PART I: "Although Screen.Grab is designed to enable a dialog between New Media and Experimental Cinema, this installment is also intended to bring together discourses from various mediums through creatively engaging in the familiar frameworks of online and digital tools. The ubiquity of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and digital iconography evident in CHIcast is approached with a playful inquisitiveness and criticality. The work examines our digital interactions through questioning the supposition of the reliable, accurate, personal, and informative qualities found in New Media environments. In repositioning these characteristics away from the initial excitement and subsequent skepticism of New Media, the material found in this screening steer the conversation into a more colloquial and casual shared exploration." - Nicholas O'Brien MORE INFO ON PART II: Rainbo Video (dance pop audio video from Chicago) Rainbo Video is a musician, filmmaker, and audiovisual artist based in Chicago. Forging everything from dance party pop to euphoric mash-ups and melodic ambient, he makes brightly colored candy for the ears. His films and art are just as kaleidoscopic, integrating optical illusions, cognitive puzzles, found footage, guessing games, cryptograms, and 3-D excursions into surrealism. Tyler St Clair (breakcore on obsolete hardware from Milwaukee) Tyler St Clair uses modified and circuit-bent gear including (but not limited to) a VIC-20 & MC-505. He also began work on several Atari 2600 sample playback utilities back in 2003 and has even been seen as a supporter of the UK hacking scene, evidenced by musical submissions to the Hackervoice UK podcast. Aaron Zarzutzki (realtime noise and glitchery from Chicago) Aaron Zarzutzki builds homebrew and hacked electronics, mixing together mechanics and codecs and causing analog and digital noise to feedback into each other. He also organizes The Myopic Music Series with Fred Lonberg-Holm and Brian Labycz. Mark Beasley and Tamas Kemenczy (minimal VGA and CRT hacks from Chicago) Mark Beasley and Tamas Kemenczy bend naive cathode rays using Arduino microcontrollers handbuilt into VHS video cassette cases, Python programming and old CRT monitors from the beige days of computing. Saturday, October 24, 10 am & 2 pm, Free The Workshops: Many media savvy parents wrestle with how to help their kids safely participate with computer and internet technology. Expressive Media Express aims to assist parents and youth by moving the conversation away from technophobia into creative energy. Two free workshops with accompanying take-home curriculum are available for students ages 8-15. Alex Inglizian's BentBox workshop at 10 am gives youth the opportunity to open up everyday toys and to sonically modify them for their own creative purposes. Similarly, Jake Elliott's Step Mania School at 2 pm relocates youth from passive game players to active game makers, as well as lays the foundation for using free alternative software. Participants will work with an open source dance dance revolution program. Both sessions are free and provide access to an expandable set of skills, as well as teach the importance of community and collaboration. Both workshops are suggested for kids aged 8-15 and each workshop participant will work with their own adult preceptor for the duration of the lesson. Workshops will run from three to four hours in length. Parents are encouraged to attend. All materials are provided. Workshops will be held at The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee, Chicago, IL 60642) An educational media art installation will also be up on site, showing the vibrant history of electronic arts in Chicago through an interactive time-line of tactile technology. Kids will be able to interact with modified computers from several different eras of computer history to see first hand the progression of this technology and the art affiliated with it. There will also be an outdoor installation by inflatable artist, Seth Bro. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ October 21, 2009 ARS ELECTRONICA re:shaping a city's culture A Talk presented by Austrian New Media Scholar, Nina Wenhart Abstract: 30 years ago the first Ars Electronica festival took place in Linz, Austria. Ars has grown to be one of the most influential Media Art festivals and centers in the world. But while much has been written about it, and still more will be talked about its history when Ars celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2009, there has not yet been a comprehensive study about Ars Electronica's influence on the local community and its impact on the cultural development of Linz. This paper investigates the socio-cultural, artistic and geographic traces Ars Electronica has left on the city of Linz. This Media Art historical account also details a very personal history, as the author, being four years old at the time of the first festival and amazed by its fireworks display, remembers the festival's beginnings from her personal experience and Ð having worked for Ars Electronica's Futurelab for many years - from a professional perspective as well. The main question of this talk is how the then marginal field of art, science and technology, placed in an even more marginal, working-class and steel-producing city contributed greatly to the creation/development of a new cultural identity of the city, the art scene and the community as a whole. My investigation into the histories of this cultural institution focuses on the regional impact, regional being interpreted as geographically located/rooted as well as interpersonally built. Keywords: Ars Electronica, history, art, science, technology, regional context, regional history, institutional history, community, media art institution, media art festival, cultural festival, open space, public space Bio: Nina Wenhart is an instructor for the "Prehystories of New Media" class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an independent artist/researcher. She is a graduate student at Prof. Oliver Grau's Media Art Histories program at the Danube University in Krems. For many years, she was the head of the Ars Electronica Futurelab's videostudio, where she created their archives and primarily worked with the historical material. She was four years old, when Ars Electronica started and has stayed connected with it ever since. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ October 17, 2009 WINNIPEG BABYSITTER By Daniel Barrow When SHAW cable purchased Winnipeg's local cable station VPW, a rumour was circulated that SHAW had destroyed the public access television archives and were systematically dismantling the public access services. Shortly thereafter, Daniel Barrow began researching, compiling and archiving a history of independently produced television in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In the late '70s and throughout the 80s, Winnipeg experienced a "golden age" of public access television. Anyone with a creative dream, concept or politic would be endowed with airtime and professional production services. A precedent that went far beyond standard television formula was set in the late '70s when the infamous Winnipeg performance artist Glen Meadmore sat in front of a television camera and silently picked at his acne for 30 minutes each week in a program called The Goofers (later The Glen Meadmore Show). Winnipeg Babysitter traces this and other unique vignettes from a brief synapse in broadcasting history when Winnipeg cable companies were mandated to provide public access as a condition of their broadcasting license. Because, the local public access archives were destroyed programs could only be found in the VHS collections of the original producers. In cases when these producers did not save their own work, Barrow had to rely on television collectors, fans and enthusiasts. In this regard, Winnipeg Babysitter is an archival project that restores a previously lost history. Daniel Barrow travels to each screening providing an overhead projected commentary/context, tracing the histories of public access television in Manitoba, and describing the various and outrageous biographies of each television producer and personality. Winnipeg Babysitter is a program that requires 2 screens: the video projection on a main theatre screen, with Barrow's hand crafted, overhead-projected liner notes on an adjacent, smaller screen. This style of commentary is deliberate; it is less intrusive and more respectful of the video images than a voice-over. In this regard, Winnipeg Babysitter is also a documentary, curatorial, and performance project. Featuring: Survival (Greg Klymkiw and Guy Maddin 1982-87) Features Maddin's earliest recorded performances Metal Inquisition (Fearless Pig and Terrible Dog, 1986) Delirious Photoplay (Myles and Drue Langlois of the Royal Art Lodge 1999) The Pollock & Pollock Gossip Show (Natalie and Ronnie Pollock 1986-89) and many more. Winnipeg-based artist Daniel Barrow uses obsolete technologies to present written, pictorial and cinematic narratives centering on the practices of drawing and collecting. Since 1993, he has created and adapted comic book narratives to "manual" forms of animation by projecting, layering and manipulating drawings on overhead projectors. He variously refers to this practice as "graphic performance or manual animation." Barrow has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad. Barrow is the 2007 winner of the Canada Council's Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton award and the 2008 winner of the Images Festival's "Images Prize". Barrow is represented by Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ October 10, 2009 GATHERING PIXELS: The Ceibas Cycle & The Appreciation of a Migratory Archive A Lecture and Media Presentation by Evan Meaney Part exhibition, part artist talk. Part technical demonstration, and part histiography; this lecture introduces Meaney's work in a context of post-structuralism and cinema history. Borrowing from media theorists (Frampton, Ong, Ulmer, Foucault, Baudrillard, Shannon, Derrida and Bergson) Meaney positions the audience to view his work as, not only works of cinema, but critiques of mismanaged and mislabeled memory - be they personal, technological or something in between. PROGRAM DETAILS: CEIBAS: PROLOUGE/HOW MAYANS LOVERS MIGHT FIND THE NEXT LIFE (6 min, video) LECTURE (live talk, 20 min) CEIBAS: BENEATH THE PRESSURE OF THE SKY (12 min, video) CEIBAS: PORTRAIT (1 min, video) CEIBAS: SHANNON'S ENTROPHY (6 min, video) CEIBAS: PORTRAIT (2 min, video) CEIBAS: PROTOCOL FOR A TEMPORARY BURIAL (11 min, video) CEIBAS: THE UNSEEABLE EXCHANGE OF OUR PARTS (3 min, video) CEIBAS: SIGMA FUGUE (12 min, video) Born in Whitestone, New York in the 1980's and raised in the Hudson Valley, Evam Meaney has been working in film and video for the better part of a decade. He was educated at Binghamton University and Ithaca College from which he graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2007 with a degree in Cinema and Photography. His current interest include post-structuralist media theory, break dancing, and the poetry of hexadecimal code. Evan is currently enjoying a graduate fellowship at The University of Iowa's Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature where he continues his research and artistic development. _ _ _ _ _ _ October 9, 2009 A WELL-TIMED VISIT Old & New 16mm Films By Robert Todd LATE SHOW! Robert Todd, a prolific 16mm artist, creates delicate work often concerned with the subtle play of depth, texture, and light that only celluloid can capture. Often using the close up to build emotive alien landscapes out of everyday materials, our visiting friend seems almost a merry scientist- constantly framing his life in a series of of deft camera experiments that leave us breathless. _ _ _ _ _ _ September 26th, 2009 LIGHT BEHIND THE EYES Curated by Todd Mattei Amalgamated reflection: "soul" or "spirit" technology. We of several splits of being. We of illuminating imbalance. Obsolete practices make fire. In the space outside of absent myth, along myth's ancient trajectories, still moving. The rivers, too, still moving a little while. The truth must be gathered. Smash up the thing. What is the human being? What are its limits? Not limits like climbing Mount Everest: the limits that traverse us and map what it is that we are: the limits that old stories have run through our blood on a collision course with an unimaginable present. Human is animal, image, material, lingual, molecular, motive, technological, spiritual, political, social, sexual, commodifiable and ultimately unidentifiable. An invisible image is what's sought in the present program of videos. A future. Including work by: Celeste Neuhaus, Jose Versoza, Wes Kline, Todd Mattei, Doug Ischar, Anneka Herre, and Mathias Kristersson. _ _ _ _ _ _ September 18th, 2009 THE TIME MACHINE With Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat A Special CUFF 2009 Rescreening THE TIME MACHINE is your guide through the fourth dimension! Watch and learn about Real-Time Rendering, Quartz, and Max patches as Sabine Gruffat steers you through the sensory drone of the digital and analog hyperspace. Bill Brown takes you on a guided tour of memory's roadside attractions by way of scratchy records and the hazy glow of 35mm slides, narrating the interspatial monuments of our extemporary voyage. PROGRAM DETAILS: THE TIME MACHINE (2009, Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat, USA, 60 min.) _ _ _ _ _ _ August 21st, 2009 SILVER TRACES: Films by Bruce Wood Presented by White Light Cinema Introduced by Bruce Wood Live Via Webcam! For a short period in the 1970s, then-Chicago-based filmmaker Bruce Wood created several amazing and intensely beautiful black and white abstract films. And then he stopped; not an uncommon story. In recent years growing attention has been paid to "forgotten" regional filmmakers around the country - and Chicago is no exception. Hidden gems are being rediscovered and shining again years after they were made. White Light Cinema and The Nightingale are pleased to be part of this process by screening this program of four of Wood's final films. Bruce Wood studied painting, printmaking, and filmmaking at the Massachusetts College of Art (BFA) and enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA), to study filmmaking under Stan Brakhage. It's easy to see the painterly qualities in his films. One can feel possible influences from Malevich and Mondrian on one side to the abstract expressionism of Pollack and De Kooning on the other. But Wood's films also hint at a wide history of experimental filmmaking as well, from early abstract pioneers such as Vikking Eggeling and Hans Richter to the lyrical work of Bruce Baillie and Stan Brakhage to the then-current work of Structuralist filmmakers. Despite the many threads to be found in Wood's films, they aren't "poor copies" of other artists' work - he has a style and feel that seems quite unique and individual. Bruce Wood writes: "Unlike my contemporaries who approached film as extensions of poetry, drama, science, or music, I concentrated on finding a film structure which had purely visual influences. I was obsessed with expanding the legacy of Abstract Expressionist painting, and with using light as a medium for achieving that goal. I worked to create a visual language of film which was "Pure." In that quest, I stripped film down to its basic qualities: Light, Dark, and Motion. Each film is silent, to avoid any misconception that the image had been edited to match the rhythm of music. I also experimented with creating images primarily through the manipulation of light and film stock, in an attempt to keep them non-referential. The titles alone are poetic, and were provided after the creation of the films to set a tone of undefined mystery. My films are literally extensions of the aesthetics made popular by the Abstract Expressionist painters. The influence of Franz Klein is most evident, as the films are totally devoid of color. However, the influence of Op artists like Vassarelli and Albers is also there, evident in colors which are produced in the retinas of the viewers." "Bruce Wood's films are among the most sensual of any "abstract" animated work ever made. Projected, they generate a fluid stream of organic images in a carefully controlled post-cubist space comparable to the work of painters like Jackson Pollock. Viewed one frame at a time, (which is the way much of the footage is shot), they recall the rich lines and textures of such master etchers as Rembrandt. Wood's use of camera movement during the exposure of each individual frame - like drawing - together with the illusion of movement in projection make his films both beautiful and unique." (Bill Judson, Curator of Film, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute) PROGRAM DETAILS: BETWEEN GLANCES (1978, 14 mins., 16mm, b&w, silent) "BETWEEN GLANCES . . . plays with the illusion of depth, with interactions between apparent upper and lower planes. Strong blacks and whites bound the range of grays they encompass, while, periodically, black and white stills devoid of gray tones and of motion demarcate the film's progress." (B. Ruby Rich) THE BRIDGE OF HEAVEN(1977, 33 mins., 16mm, b&w, silent) FROZEN FLIGHT (1977, 32 mins., 16mm, b&w, silent) "Bruce Wood, in the few short years he has been working in film, has produced an amazing body of work. He is practically alone in a genre (black and white silent abstractions) which has its antecedents in the likes of Eggeling, Richter and Leger. What I find most interesting in his work, amid the concern with textures, shape and space, is his ability to produce works of even tension. Doing away with concepts of beginning, middle and end, he presents a broad landscape, piece by piece, until he has exhausted the source of his subject matter and the whole scene lies there naked and revealed." (Carmen Vigil, Director, The Cinematheque, San Francisco Art Institute) THE SMELL OF DEATH - World Premiere Screening! (1977, printed and "released" 2004, 16 mins., 16mm, b&w, silent) "The Smell of Death is the only film I made which started with a non-visual idea. It actually started with a title before anything else, and marked a change in my approach to film. Maybe that is why it was the last one for twenty-five years. When it was done, I returned to painting. The title refers to the death of one of my uncles. My father found him minutes later, and described "the smell of death" which he had experienced before. That event set the tone in my mind for this film. Each preceding work was preoccupied with beauty and illusion. This one I wanted to be strong and austere, a statement of life and death. In that way, The Smell Of Death is closest in structure to poetry than any of my previous works. I found that concept totally unsettling, considering how I had abhorred narrative structure." _ _ _ _ _ _ August 15th, 2009 BEHIND THE FANGS Presented by Death By Design for threewalls Did you get your fang-on this spring at threewalls' annual fundraiser, the deadly You Oughta Be in Fangs, designed and directed by Death by Design? Or did you miss out on sinking your teeth into a good time? Join Death by Design and threewalls for the release of Death by Design's Behind the FANGS - Document of the Undead. This documentary captures the frolicking with vampires, magicians, side-show acts and burlesque naughtiness that our absinthe blurred memories missed the first time! Also look for a reprise by FANGS performers Sanjula Vamana and The Amazing Tomas (the geek magician) with some old-timey tunes spinning on the 78 player. Screenings are at 7:30, 9:30 and 10:30 pm. Watch yourself on the big screen in the Karaoke Zone or struggling to find the last piece in the scavenger hunt! Our cameras captured it all! Purchase your FANGS DVD at the after-after party for only $10! Special DVD price for this night only! Death by Design will have 50 dvds on hand, so reserve your copy today with an email to teena@deathbydesign.info Come and enjoy a chilled Grolsch swingtop or glass of wine as we raise the dead! _ _ _ _ _ _ August 14th, 2009 SCREEN GRAB.1 A fundraiser for Expressive Media Express Screen Grab, a new series curated by jonCates and Nicholas O'Brien for The Nightingale, aims to bring New Media Art to experimental cinema audiences. The Screen Grab series considers Web-based Digital Art through the lens of cinema. By moving New Media Art works from their native singular computer screens into a collective viewing experience, Screen Grab invites open dialogs. Some works in this program need little help with this process. Oliver Laric's Versions, for instance, is as much a nod towards Chris Marker as it to 4chan (a message board that serves as a meme breeding ground). Travess Smalley's Liquify can certainly be connected to durational films without much hesitation, not to mention its direct like with psychedelic cinema of the 60s and 70s; Photoshop is the new overhead projector. Petra Cortright's Dragon_Ball_P also fuses the psychedelic with technological. In utilizing the campy preset effects of webcam software, Cortright creates a lo-fi dance that seems like a Skype ritual ceremony. Dennis Knopf's Office Party borrows from flicker films and the superimposition that occurs through the use of this cinema device. However, Knopf's work shows what was once sensational (i.e. Paul Sherit's T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G), might have become bland (corporate office portraits). Guthrie Lenrgan's 3 Notes, on the other hand, references the emerging hybridity that is found in digital environments. The youtube collage of sound in this piece exemplifies the subtle juxtapositions that can occur through online communities. Likewise, Rick Silva (releasing previous projects under the pseudonym Abe Linkoln) uses glitch aesthetics in AntlersWifi to contemplate the abundance of blog culture. He uses these spaces as a medium for calculated data dumping, noise compacting, and saturation zones where he crafts a new cinema dialog of image corruption and sonic dissonance. Screen Grab.1 as well as being the inaugural show for the series, will also raise funds for an upcoming collaborative project called Expressive Media Express that will occur during Chicago Artists Month in October. This initiative is designed to encourage creative use of digital tools and simultaneously showcase Chicago's energetic New Media community to youth in the city. By creating a weekend-long interactive slate of programs - including workshops, a screening, and a historical timeline installation of Digital Media Arts in Chicago and abroad - organizers jonCates, Christy LeMaster, and Nicholas O'Brien hope to provide software and hardware skills that put the basic tools of digital media in the hands of kids at an early stage and reposition the conversation away from technophobic fear and into playful discovery. ARTISTS INCLUDED: Petra Cortright Dennis Knopf Oliver Laric Guthrie Lonergan Travess Smalley Rick Silva _ _ _ _ _ _ July 24th, 2009 SAMAD Underground Iranian Films Curated by Shirin Mozaffari & Ehsan Ghoreishi Regardless of media control and censorship in Iran, the underground film movement is strong and thriving. These films, banned from screening publicly in their home country due to their "inappropriate content", shed light on the youth culture of Iran by representing more controversial perspectives in contemporary Iranian cinema. PROGRAM DETAILS: UNTITLED by Sarvenaz Karimianpour (2007, 5m 28s,video) An animation piece that explores different body forms LADY by Shirin Zahiri (2008, 5m 51s, film on video) A comment on the way Iranian women have to dress in public vs. private and the consequences of inappropriate clothing in public SHINY MUDDY BEAST by Mehdi Zaringhalam (2006, 8m 49s, video) A woman falls from the sky into the bathroom of a young man resulting in an unexpected ending 3x4 by Milad Mahdavi (2008, 5m 51 s, film on video) A subtly erotic film exploring the repression of homosexuality in Iran MONO POP by Navid Fashami (2007, 2m 32s, film on video) An audiovisual collage commenting on the variety of the contemporary lifestyles in Tehran BULLSHITS by Sadaf Ahmadi (2007, 7m 40s, video) A young Iranian woman builds a space for self-exploration within the limits of her car _ _ _ _ _ _ July 20th, 2009 AN INTERPRETATION OF LIFE & DEATH A five part video by the students of Crane High School The Nightingale is pleased to host the premiere of this video project written and produced by students from Crane High School, in partnership with The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Urban Gateways Center for Arts Education. Over the course of an intensive two-week video course students have worked collaboratively to create a work that explores and chronicles the progressive stages of life. Co-Sponsored by The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Urban Gateways Center for Arts Education. _ _ _ _ _ _ July 7th, 2009 THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC with live cello score composed and performed by Lori Goldston Seattle cellist, Lori Goldston, cofounder of The Black Cat Orchestra, is a frequent collaborator in dance, film and music projects. A frequent collaborator, she has played with Nirvana, David Byrne, Cat Power, Mirah, John Doe, the Wedding Present, Laura Veirs, Larry Barrett and many others. Lori has played on more than 40 albums, written scores for more than 40 silent films, and has composed and performed commissioned pieces for dance companies around the country and internationally. Lori brings her solo cello score for Theodor Dreyer's LA PASSION de JEANNE d'ARC (1928) to Chicago for one night only. Lori's goal in composing silent film scores is to add a voice that amplifies the mood and clarifies the action. "The grammar of editing has changed over the years so sometimes it's hard for people to watch silent films," she says. Studying the film and the filmmaker, she uses music to translate the movie's original intent, helping people appreciate mood, pace and timing. The film will be presented on 16 mm. "Goldston's music constituted a kind of physical enactment of listening. She began in silence - absorbing the moment and the film - and then her sound emerged, shifting and responding to what she took in. . . Perhaps her affection for the film is what allowed her to become its full collaborator . . . The resultant dialogue - a counterpoint of acquiescence and resistance - was deeply ambivalent, complex." -Matthew Stadler, writing about Goldston's LA PASSION de JEANNE d'ARC for Artforum _ _ _ _ _ _ _ July 5th, 2009 ANIMATION DOUBLE FEATURE Recent Animation Work from Chicago & Seattle Curated by Jodie Mack & Stefan Gruber Chi(a)nimation All Stars: Frame-by-Frame Explorations From Chicago Jodie Mack lives and animates in Chicago--where the diverse community of animators constantly inspires her. Tonight, she will share a collection of animated shorts made in Chicago during her time in the Windy City (2005-present). From hand-drawn character animations, to lush abstractions, to puppet or paint-on glass animation, to glitch video processing--this program illustrates a multitude of midwestern motion experiments! AND Seatt(a)nimation all stars: Frame-by-Frame Explorations From Seattle Stefan Gruber lives and animates in Seattle--where the diverse community of animators constantly inspires him. Tonight, he will share a collection of animated shorts made in Seattle during his time in the Emerald City (1975-present). From hand-drawn character animations, to lush abstractions, to X-ray or manipulated cinematic animation, to a collaborative video project--this program illustrates a multitude of Northwestern motion experiments! _ _ _ _ _ _ _ June 18th, 2009 Group Show One: PAST PERFECT Presented by the Onion City Film Festival PROGRAM DETAILS: THE SCENIC ROUTE by Ken Jacobs (2008, 25 mins., video, US) "A work of genuine hypnosis. Ken Jacobs tears open a scene from the film The Barbarian (1933). Like so many of his found-footage experiments, it is a movie about the shadows people leave behind - here, quite literally." (International Film Festival Rotterdam) DISTANT THINGS by Katy Woods (2006, 10 mins., video, UK) "Woods animates micro film by standing a video camera in front of the monitor and speedily flicking through thousands of images. She then pauses for a few seconds resting on an image she likes the look of. Woods has an eye for a satisfying image. She loves a bird. Images of birds are paused at frequently. In a world saturated with visual images how does one make a choice? Ones own intuition seems as successful as any." (Olsen) BERNADETTE by Duncan Campbell(2008, 37 mins., video, UK) "When the Northern Irish Republican political activist Bernadette Devlin was prohibited from speaking in parliament after Bloody Sunday, she punched the home secretary and proclaimed she only regretted she 'didn't get him by the throat.' The firebrand Devlin is obviously hard to historically pin down: a fact that the video artist Duncan Campbell here fully recognises in his celebration of her political spirit. Working with mediated images of her, he mixes fact and fiction, documentary footage with animation and scripted voiceover to create an intriguing portrait of a committed individual." (LUX) Group Show Two: VISION QUEST Presented by the Onion City Film Festival PROGRAM DETAILS: SPIRIT by Dominique Furge (2005, 8 mins., video, France) Luminous colored dots or blobs move, connect, combine, and separate against a white background as excerpts from Orson Welles' radio play The War of the Worlds imparts a narrative impulse to their activity. Music by Legeti and snippets from David Bowie and others complete the spare, but carefully crafted, soundtrack. THE SEASONS by Makino Takashi (2008, 30 mins., video, Japan) Made in collaboration with musician Jim O'Rourke, this is a stunning impressionistic work that becomes more than just a nature-piece of trees and water. Takashi's images, rhythm, and editing work in synergy with the score, each complementing the other, to create a video of surprising emotion and power. CHROMATIC COCKTAIL by Kerry Laitala (2009, 10 mins., 3D video, US) A merry-go-round of circles, and squiggles, and more dance before the eyes, quite literally it seems, in this abstract 3D animation. DIRTY GOGGLES OF PERCEPTION (LEFT AND RIGHT) by Joe Grimm (2009, 25 mins., double 16mm live projector performance, US, World Premiere) "A synaesthetic performance for modified 16mm projectors and audio circuitry, this piece negotiates the space between the physically real and the perceptually real; between noumena and phenomena. Photosensitive circuitry translates light waves into sound waves, sonifying flickers that are sometimes slow enough to be visible to the eye-and sometimes fast enough to be perceived only by the ear. A monolithic light/noise blast that goes literally to the limits of the senses and beyond them, provoking a confrontation with that ultimate unattainable reality: The World of Things In Themselves. In memoriam Immanuel Kant. Warning: Unsuitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy." _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ June 17th, 2009 PONYTAIL by Barry Doupe Presented by the Onion City Film Festival PROGRAM DETAILS: PONYTAIL by Barry Doupe (2008, 92 mins., video, Canada) This astonishing computer-animated feature is a tour-de-force of technique and cryptic storytelling as it follows a set of Sims-like characters struggling against inaction. "This feature-length video follows several inflicted characters and recounts the ways in which they find resolve. A series of entropic scenarios held together by an attraction to failure and its spectacle describe the characters' malfunction - their inability to fulfill personal desire. Compelled by the consequences and rewards of their attempts they question their own trajectory. Using elements of melodrama, performative monologue and traditional narrative structure Ponytail presents a unique society of characters that destroy the distinction between memory and invention." (Doupe) Preceded by: UP THE RABBIT HOLE by Asa Mori (2008, 5 mins., video, Canada) In this deliberately crudely animated work a "six-nippled creature finds herself trapped in a capsule with a dead rabbit and a bloody hole." (Video Out) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ June 5th, 2009 PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL Leslie Thorton's Contemporary Experimental Classic Presented by White Light Cinema A post-apocalyptic fairy tale for the modern age. Now more than 25 years in the making, Leslie Thornton's extraordinary film and video serial PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL (1984-2008, approx. 90 mins., video) screens in it's most recent configuration. Featured last year at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, PEGGY AND FRED has morphed and changed over the years, growing as Thornton incorporates new technology into her production. Originally shown with both 16mm and video parts, it is currently exhibited as a single-channel video work. PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL follows two children, the eponymous Peggy and Fred, as they wander and make discoveries in an unspecified future. Part science-fiction, part comedy, part coming-of-age tale, part social critique, PEGGY AND FRED stands as one of the most inspired and consequential experimental works of the last quarter century. "PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL, Thornton's ongoing and open-ended series, maps a surreal, quasi-apocalyptic realm littered with the detritus of a pop culture bursting at the seams. Castaways in this wilderness of signs, Peggy and Fred are, as Thornton states, 'raised by television,' their experience shaped by a palimpsest of science and science-fiction, new technologies and obsolete ones, half-remembered movies and the leavings of history. An exploration of the aesthetics of narrative form as well as the politics of the image, Thornton's rigorously experimental oeuvre has forged a unique and powerful syntax." (Electronic Arts Intermix) "PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL is one of the strangest cinematic artifacts of the last 20 years, revealing the abuses of history and innocence in the face of catastrophe, as it chronicles two small children journeying through a post-apocalyptic landscape to create their own world. Breaking genre restrictions, Thornton uses improvisation, planted quotes, archival footage and formless timeframes to confront the viewer's preconceptions of cause and effect." (Video Data Bank) - - - - - May 30th, 2009 UIC 2009 MFA THESIS SCREENING a screening of single-channel video works by recently graduated MFA students from UIC. PROGRAM DETAILS: Works by Charlie Deets ALABAMA (2009, 1m, HD) COFFEE ADVENTURE (2009, 2m, DV) ENTENMANN'S FRESHLY BAKED CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES (2008, 1m, HD) JOHN-PAUL WOLFORTH THINKS THIS IS A GOOD VIDEO (2009, 1m, HD) I'M JUST LOOKING FOR WHATS GROOVY AROUND HERE (2009, 1m, HD) - - - - - Works by Jesse McLean THE BEARING WITNESS TRILOGY PART ONE: THE ETERNAL QUARTER INCH(2008, 9m, Video) Dipping between ecstasy and despair, transcendence and absurdity, this movie journeys to a hidden space where you can lose your way, lose yourself in the moment, lose your faith in a belief system. An exhausted and expectant crowd waits on this narrow span. It is not a wide stretch, but it can last forever. PART TWO: SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW (2009, 6m, Video) Standing on the brink of elimination, the suspense threatening to fracture their composure, contestants wait and see if they will be going home. The audience at home is also waiting . . . PART THREE: THE BURNING BLUE (2009, 9m, Video) A video that observes the thrill, terror and boredom found in watching mass spectacles and the strange loneliness when you accidentally miss them. - - - - - Works by Ryan Murray VANISH (2008, 0:38m, Video) A mentor/wizard character speaks his last words before succumbing, vanishing, and sending the viewer on their quest. BALSAM OF LIFE (2009, 1:25m, Video) An attempt is made to redeem the power of the lava lamp by bottling its magical fluids as the Balsam of Life. Things get messy. - - - - - - Work by Chris Tourre IL TRABATORE ON LAWNMOWER (2008, 3:35m, Video) The rural countryside of western Pennsylvania offers a rare bit of opera. - - - - - Works by Steve Zieverink GOOD LUCK WOTH YOUR HORN (2008, 5:21m, Video) Shot in 16mm at magic hour, the piece documents a pilgrimage and the experiential landscape via the horn as a mobile device, taking the object from place and locality to non-site. The blast exemplifies our existence and state of being in the universe through a simple gesture of "yelling out" into a wide expansive space. SIX SCENES (2008, 13m, HD video) The work "Six Scenes", documents the contemporary and affected landscape through a restrained and distanced lens. The issue of an encompassing designed world is questioned as these islands of industry and reclaimed nature connect and disconnect. The matter of intention related to this is also explored focusing on the extent that this harsh treatment in decision making is seen as "progress" - human or otherwise. NOVEMBER 23rd, 2008 (2009, 21m, HD video) "November 23rd, 2008" is an experimental documentary about the dichotomy between established paths - the natural and atypical - with the seemingly futile human gesture. Human invented tracking devices and means, in addition to documented routes, are utilized in an effort to understand the overwhelming effect of the information age upon the land and it's inhabitants. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ May 29th, 2009 ROOM TONE a screening of new film and video work from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago PROGRAM DETAILS: NAMES by Melissa Kim (16mm on MiniDV, 3m, color, sound) Portrayal of different people who have the same names. HIS CHEAP OLD BLUE JEANS by Zaven Najjan (16mm on MiniDV, 8m, b/w, sound) Dan, 24, remembers everything he hated about his father. HOUSE FUCK by Lyra Hill (16mm, 5m, color, silent) The body of the house is the home, and the body is the home; this house is full of things and bodies. SAM'S HEALTH CARE by Daehyuk Yun (16mm on MiniDV, 10m, b/w, sound) It's about a man who is undernourished. He joins the show who looks like Johnny Depp. CENTRAL (B) EMERGES FROM ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL CUP by Andrew Kim (MiniDV, 5m, b/w, sound) Derived from textbooks, Central (b) emerges from its physiological cup examines that which swims beneath unfamiliar surfaces: loligo opalescens live in depths that range between 65 and 850 feet. On average, they weigh 3.3 lbs and measure 16 inches in length. These creatures have been harvested for many years now. This movie is a tale for fishermen. FOR THE LOVE OF THE GLOVE by Justyn Mainard (MiniDV, 9m, color, sound) When habit turns to addiction, is the scope of pleasure compromised? Can a man overcome his sense of taste and make a change for the better. A change for the love of the glove. GIMMICK by Justyn Mainard (16mm on MiniDV, 6m, color, sound) When one has an opportunity of a lifetime, you have to be quick, thorough, and on time. Two magicians, what's the Gimmick? INTERVIEW by Bum Joo (Monty) Kim (MiniDV, 10m, color, sound) Interview with a man with a speech impediment. DON'T LET THEM BITE by Craig Pessolano (MiniDV, 3m, color, sound) An experimental video about fear-mongering. DESPRECIO MARIA by Francisco Cordero Oceguera (16mm on MiniDV, 6m, color, sound) Desprecio Mar’a is a portrait of two men and their mutual desire for three different women. FOR MY PSYCHOPOMP by Lyra Hill (16mm on MiniDV, 10m, b/w, sound) Psychopomp: literally, 'soul conductor', an escort to the afterlife. In Jungian psychology, the mediator between conscious and unconscious minds. He came in a recurring nightmare between years four and twelve, was forgotten, then remembered again at twenty in paintings and prints, a costume, and a film. Bogeyman, muse, and friend; all that we dream is only another part of ourselves. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 24th, 2009 LOCATIVE ENIGMA - FRAMESHAPE OF HARD METTLES - A PERSONAL PROBLEM Projection Performance by Bruce McClure Presented by White Light Cinema photo by Robin Martin Bruce McClure will beat us down with light and sound and we will like it. White Light Cinema is extremely pleased to present Brooklyn-based experimental filmmaker Bruce McClure in his first Chicago appearance in over four years. McClure will be performing two brand-new live projection performances (in advance of his April 26 performance as the opener for the band Throbbing Gristle at Logan Square Auditorium). McClure is a moving-image magician, who forges stunning and immersive light and sound works from a motley assortment of specially-modified 16mm projectors, film loops, transformers, and guitar effects pedals. These live works (McClure manipulates the projectors, light, and sound in much the same way an improvisatory musician does his instrument) create a pulsing, flickering environment filled with a minimal percussive beat. Over the last several years McClure's work has become as much about the sound as they are the "image" (there are tentative plans to release a recording of "soundtracks"). "Producing a totally sensory experience, McClure's projector performances are informed by the way the brain reacts to light and sound. Using an array of modified 16mm projectors, film loops, and guitar pedals, his work challenges cinematic conventions. Film loops patterned with patches of emulsion on a translucent base are combined with an optical soundtrack to create a physically intense adventure. His performances have amazed audiences at the Whitney Biennial and the Rotterdam Film Festival, and have garnered him the 2008 Alpert Award in the Arts." (Walker Art Center) "Incandescent Machine Age - At the circus, in the safety of our seats, we watch the elephant coaxed into intemperate feats. As the lights come up we realize that we never left the velveteen plush of the movie house. Products of the 19th century, incandescent light and its offspring, the movie projector, were given a voice in the 1920's by optical sound. These revolutionary technologies may be languishing at the edge of extinction but will be celebrated and preserved as echoes and afterimages of the machine age resonating in the vitality of 21st century consciousness. This Living Hand - The movie camera engraves light traces on silver lockets. I prefer the giving company of a movie projector that can paradoxically transubstantiate still births reviving them in the minds of the living. My "Projection Performances" are a call to witness the discreet and yet simultaneous actions of shuttered lamplight through the body of film and the glissando of light along the register of optical sound shading its substrate. I am fortunate to share the reciprocity of this fascinating machine and our senses. With everyone on this side of the picture plane, however, there is a real possibility of losing control. The room, the projector, the projectionist, the screen, an audience of nerve fibers and all cinematic presuppositions are brought to bear on the moment. Danger is indispensable to my projection performances. This living hand - see, here it is - I hold it toward you. Timekiller To His Spacemaker - Three modified 16 mm. projectors fitted with folliums and loops, bipacked or otherwise, will hurl bombolts shaped by hand and guitar effects windowed by loudspeakers. Vouchsafe me more soundpicture! It gives me furiously to think. This brilling waveleaplights! They arise from a clear springwell in the near of our park which makes the daft to hear all blend. This place of endearment! Only in darkness is your shadow clear. Monster magnet, "I can see by the hole in your head that you want to be friends you're the right one baby. Dopes to infinity. Muttaliter foretold within wheels and stucks between spokes . . . now measure your length. Now estimate my capacity. Is this space our couple of hours too dimensional for you, temporizer? Will you give up?" (Bruce McClure) PROGRAM DETAILS: That Bright Soasuch to Slip (2009, 30 mins.) Barra di Torsione (2009, 30 mins.) ARTIST BIO: Bruce McClure is a licensed architect living in Brooklyn, NY. In 1994 he began working with stroboscopic discs as an entry to cinematic pursuits. Since 1995 his film and live projector performances have been exhibited at numerous venues and festivals around the world, including the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival's "Views of the Avant-Garde," the Whitney Biennial, the Walker Art Center, the Wexner Center for the Arts, as well as in the UK, Italy, Australia, and elsewhere. Locally, he has performed at Chicago Filmmakers and at the Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago. More on Bruce McClure here: Cinemascope: Reading Between the Lines with Bruce McClure by Andrea Picard The Brooklyn Rail: Bruce McClure with Brian Frye - - - - - - - April 18th, 2009 I PITY THE FOOL Filmmaker Brent Coughenour in person to present a narrative city-poem exploring the devastation left by post-industrial collapse in the city of Detroit SYNOPSIS: In 2005, in an effort to improve its image for the nationwide attention brought to the city by the hosting of the 2006 Super Bowl, the city of Detroit began demolishing long-vacant buildings, hastening the natural slow decay caused by decades of industrial collapse. As the city dismantles itself, clues to its past resurface. Collections of scraps sifted from rubble-an archeology of unanswered questions-combine to tell a surrogate narrative filled with missing pieces and forgotten motives, old letters, photographs, and home movies. Fractured moments occurring on one summer day echo events from thirty years earlier. The day is sunny, but it is humid, and clouds are gathering. It is going to rain. "Like the pieces of a puzzle, I PITY THE FOOL gradually accrues more elements as it goes on: fragments of narrative combine with other fragments that at first have no obvious connection. As opposed to story-lines in many feature-length films that gradually tie up and resolve their different threads, the focus of the film continues to broaden and expand, becoming more complex, open-ended and mysterious. Undertaking a kind of archaeological search for things nearly recent and long past, the film attempts to re-capture the marginalized and defiantly minor histories of [the city's] forgotten tenants . . . . I PITY THE FOOL is essential viewing to anyone interested in, among other things, urban space, post-industrial landscapes, psycho-geography, found objects, DIY filmmaking, super 8, experimental narrative, and radical film form." -Luke Sieczek, Northwest Film Forum PROGRAM DETAILS: I PITY THE FOOL (Super 8 film presented on video, 83 min, 2007) ARTIST BIO: Born in the Motor City (USA) but raised in the suburbs, Brent Coughenour currently lives in Cream City (USA) which recently erected a bronze statue in honor of a fictional character from a 1970's American television sitcom. As a film and videomaker, his work has dealt largely with various attempts at wresting narrative cinematic language away from a dependence on drama and plot. His most recent work incorporates computer programming for audio and video manipulation into projects designed for live performance. He is also an occasional member of the Milwaukee Laptop Orchestra (MiLO). - - - - - - - April 11th, 2009 THE FREE TRANSLATORS Radical Videos and Performances by Miss Reading and Miss Recognition The Intelligence Community Presents: THE FREE TRANSLATORS Reminiscent of the DIY approach of the Riot Grrrl movement, this Spring two feminist provocateurs are taking their multimedia show on the road. Mary Billyou and Sabine Gruffat are hailing from Brooklyn, NY and Madison, WI to present "The Free Translators," with their program of radical videos and performances. The Free Translators are inspired by widely accessible texts and produce meaning through Free Association, Free Verse, Free Jazz, and Free Mumia! The artists perform in many of their own videos, sometimes enacting the news, dictating words written by the Marquis de Sade, and excerpting from Virginia Woolf's anti-war essays. By interpreting the texts for the audience, the videos explore notions of feminist identity, the quality of attention in the midst of multiple authorial sources, and the diminishing space of communication around the monologue of mass media. In between video screenings, The Free Translators present two live tactical translations: The Romance of Infidelity and Dance Craze. Through matching headsets, Miss Reading and Miss Recognition simultaneously communicate and educate through their expansive library of text, sound, and image. PROGRAM DETAILS: HEADLINES: BAGHDAD (TRT 3:00, silent, Dir: Sabine Gruffat) The films in this trilogy were made by cutting up The New York Times newspaper articles. The semi-automated animation process resulted in sentence combinations that sometimes make sense while randomly emphasizing certain words and images. PERHAPS THE SINGER IS DEAD (TRT: 6:00, sound, Dir: Mary Billyou) A series of close-ups from indy and foreign films are pieced together with a rich soundtrack of words and waves, accusing its audience, "You'd make a terrible witness." HEADLINES: BOMB PARTS (TRT 3:00 silent, Dir: Sabine Gruffat) THE WONDER OF IT ALL (TRT 19:00 sound, Dir: Mary Billyou) AP photographs are placed, one on top of another, of war, conflict, and border crossings. Over these is the sound of a nine-year old reading aloud from Virginia Woolf's anti-war essays. This video is grounded strictly within the American amnesiac arenas of cash money and the rat race. PERFORMANCE I : THE ROMANCE OF INFIDELITY PERFORMANCE II : DANCE CRAZE TO THE SOUTH WAS 72 (TRT 11:00 sound, Dir: Sabine Gruffat) "A personal guided tour of the largest prehistoric city north of Mexico..." This experimental documentary disorders and recasts an audio tour of a prehistoric site that is visited, preserved, and endlessly repeated via prescribed routes and prerecorded narratives. The footage captures the remnants of a lost civilization identifiable only by humble signposts that use an alienating system of letters to mark the space. HEADLINES: BROKEN (TRT 3:00 silent, Dir: Sabine Gruffat) CASE STUDY #8 (TRT 7:30 sound, Dir: Mary Billyou) A documentation of the story of A., a young female subject, who is an artist. The video describes a dialogue that took place one afternoon, during which A. reveals her frustration in her inability to communicate, and the lack of interest she finds within her relationships with her parents and friends. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 10th, 2009 ZOOM BACK, CAMERA Films/Videos by Lori Felker Felker's work is interested in the space in between the audience and the film. Often using herself as an actor, she builds a meta-cognition, asking the audience to recognize simultaneously that they are watching the piece's creator but she is not herself. Humor is prevalent in this program, as Lori's wry self deprecating tone finds outlets in themes of failure, hostility, and insignificance. The emotions regularly kept in check by societal politeness are put on display in Felker's work through genre mimicry- one step removed as a framework for ideas, game play, and cognitive challenge. ARTIST BIO Born in 1978 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Ventured into filmmaking in 2001 in Pittsburgh. Started grad school for Film Video & New Media in 2005 in Chicago. Lives, makes films, collaborates, teaches, projects, volunteers for film festivals, and mothers a very odd cat named Czubek currently in Chicago. PROGRAM DETAILS: START (Play This Game) (16mm, 2004, 7 min.) Play this game. Instructions and game pieces are provided. MILLIMETERS (16mm/DV, 2008, 47 min.) A hinged triptych portraying the paths of the unfinished, the failed, the finite and the infinite. THIS IS MY SHOW (HDV, 2009, 15 min.) Only the best in high definition gardening television. GAVE ATTITUDE TO A CLOWN (DV, 2009, 5 min.) She's worth the effort. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 4th, 2009 OUT OF THE SHAWDOWS; Or Light is Just Around the Corner The Nightingale First Anniversary Show and Party Curated by and in benefit of our good friend, Patrick Friel Help us celebrate our one year anniversary as we help Patrick pay his rent in this new economy. "This show features several personal favorites from the many hundreds (thousands?) of works I've been able to share with Chicago audiences over the past thirteen years. Most of these have only shown once in town, so here is a rare opportunity to catch up with or re-see an eclectic selection of some strange and wonderful films and videos made over the last twenty years or so. There may even be a few surprise bonus works!"- Patrick Friel PROGRAM DETAILS: Module 1: Nature Vanquished THE KISS (1999, 5 mins., video, UK) John Smith & Ian Bourn. A fragile blossom. GT GRANTURISMO (2001, 5 mins., video, Austria) Gunther & Loredana Selichar. The ultimate splatter film transforms into Abstract Expressionism. NAKED (2005, 11 mins., video) Pawel Wojtasik. Some animals are just plain creepy. Module 2: Seeing Is Believing CLUT (2007, 5 mins., video, UK) Joe Gilmore & Paul Emery. Hard-edged abstraction for the digital age. TABULA RASA (2004, 8 mins., video) Vincent Grenier. The past revealed. man.road.river (2004, 10 mins., video, Brazil) Marcellvs L. The journey has just begun. Module 3: Dis-Ease letters, notes (2000, 4 mins., 16mm) Stephanie Barber. Epistolary miniatures. ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY (1999, 11 mins., 16mm) Brian Frye. All the world's a stage. I'LL WALK WITH GOD (1994, 8 mins, 16mm) Scott Stark. The stars my destination. Module 4: The State of Things THE WORLD IS ALL THAT IS THE CASE (2003, 2 mins., video, Germany) Eva Teppe. Hanging in the balance. NATIONAL ARCHIVE v. 1 (2001, 15 mins., video) Travis Wilkerson. Death from above. Module 5: The Kids Are Alright MY NAME IS PAULO LEMINSKI (2004, 5 mins., video, Brazil) Cezar Migliorin. Children should be heard and not seen. PEGGY AND FRED IN KANSAS (1987, 11 mins., video) Leslie Thornton. Future imperfect. Very Special Thanks to all of the artists screening! _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 1st, 2009 FOR BETTER OR WORSE Bad Movies Made by Good People Presented by SpiderBug The FOR BETER OR WORSE short film screening will feature a variety of films that reached for greatness, but somehow fell a bit short in the attempt. Some works in the program are among the earliest made by their respective filmmakers, while others are the first and last of an artists' endeavors in film and video. We invite the audience to boo, hiss and applaud all those glorious moments that make each of these films special. PROGRAM DETAILS: Damon Bishop & Lindsay Bishop- Picnic (4:30) Christopher Santiago- The Creep Motel (5:00) John Aselini- Seriously Sirius (5:14) Jon Bollo- They All Mean Thank You (16:20) Dewey Ward- A Day with Cocaine (5:15) Carrie Ruckel- Cherri Rocker (3:15) Morgan Bass & Adam Ebert- Star Fungus (7:43) Michael Morris & Michael Rich- Severed Feet and Sack Lunches (6:00) Robb Gelletta- Our Love Was Taboo (5:35) Brett Williams- Brett (:30) Clara Alcott- Untitled (3:00) Meg Duguid- Video (2:45) Robert Heishman & Shawn Old- The Death of an Art Project (2:25) April Chan- Wolniak (4:40) Catie Olson Lambosaurus Returns (2:15) Crispn' Credible & Pippa Possible The Summer of Twenty '02 (7:46) Ralph Syverson- Destruction (2:20) John Curtis- Unholy Cow (2:30) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 27th, 2009 INSIDE OUT The Work of Darrin Martin Darrin Martin in person! Darrin Martin's videotapes, sculptures and installations metaphorically explore the distance between common and scientific knowledge and investigate the intersection between speculative fiction and autobiography. His latest trilogy of experimental short videos examines the relationship between interiority and exteriority through subjects of hearing loss and tinnitus, a constant ringing in one's head. He also has an ongoing collaboration with Torsten Zenas creating artworks about re-imagined educational programs that tap into subjects as diverse as psychology, polygamy and the occult. He studied video with Peter Bode at The School of Art and Design, Alfred University receiving his BFA in 1992 and digital media with Lev Manovich at UC San Diego, MFA 2000. His videos and performances have been exhibited internationally at museums and festivals, including the DIA Center for the Arts, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Arts, Pacific Film Archives, The European Media Arts festivals in Germany and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. PROGRAM DETAILS: THE KNOCKING (2001/07, 15 minutes, video) VOLCANICA (2004, 9:30 minutes, video) MONOGRAPH IN STEREO (2004/5, 17:20 minutes, video) LEARNING STALLS, LESSON PLANS Collaboration with Torsten Zenas Burns, excerpt (variable times, video) EVERY (Movie, Sound, Image, Text) on my cell phone (2008, 8 minutes, video) WHAT IF? Collaboration with Torsten Zenas Burns (2009, 15ish minutes, video) FRAGMENTS work in progress (2009, 8ish minutes, video) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 28th, 2009 I'M LESS SHY THAN HE IS: The Worlds of Adam Paul and Jerzy Rose Adam Paul and Jerzy Rose in person! Adam Paul and Jerzy Rose are separate moving image artists whose work, although created almost 15 years apart, both trade in genre-play and themes of failed masculinity. Paul's work, made primarily on film, and Rose's video work both exhibit highly personal and imaginative visual worlds built informed by popular movie imagery. Both appear as characters in their own films and both flaunt a dark humorful satire of the Golden Age Hollywood genre hero. Paul graduated from the Univeristy of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Film department in 1997, Rose graduated School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Both artists will be premiering new work. PROGRAM DETAILS: PART ONE: Adam Paul BAPTISM (VHS, 8 minutes) SPARE RIBS (16mm-DS, 4 minutes) RED HERING (16mm-DS, 8 minutes) SOUND FILM (16mm-DS, 5 minutes) FOOD FOR WORMS (16mm-DS, 10 minutes) MISSING LINK (16mm-print, 6 minutes) LOST IN SPACE (miniDV-laptop, 12 minutes) PART TWO: Jerzy Rose FAREWELL TO TARAWATHIE (video, 9 minutes) RUBY KEELER: GHOST OF SPACE (video, 3 minutes) EVERYBODY YOU LOVE IS IN A CULT: THE GRAVEROBBERS (video, 3 minutes) THE UNIVERSE &YOUNG PILOT NELSON (video, 13 minutes) EVERYBODY YOU LOVE IS IN A CULT: ANCIENT ROME (video, 3 minutes) THREE DAYS & NIGHTS AT THE HARLEQUIN REGAL (video, 4 minutes) ALL GHOST WOMEN PLAY THE THEREMIN (video, 13 minutes) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 1st, 2009 Special Field Trip Screening at Heaven due to flooding DEFECTIVE: DEBUGGING MEDIA MYTHS Video Screening & Live Video Performances Curated by Nicholas O'Brien We are currently engrossed in a swamp of media myth. The myths are precisely those that follow Roland Barthes' MYTHOLOGIES in that we have come to understand our media and all its manifestations as being a natural part of our cultural economy. The methods in which these myths populate our minds and envelope our space is through virtual experiences. These interactions can happen through memory, technology, and "sculpted space." Now however, we begin to see ruptures in our virtual interactions. These disturbances occur when our mythological expectations of media are left unfulfilled or torn apart. The fragility of these myths leaves them ripe for breaking. These fissures can be found in Morgan Higby-Flowers' SYSTEM_PAINTING 1, where the fabric of his studio fractures into cascades of glitch. Mark Beasley and Aleksandra Domanovic take mythic media objects and distort our expectations by creating hypertexts of signs and symbols that reprogram the documents original content and context. Likewise, Nicholas O'Brien takes the cinematic spaces shared between blockbuster movies and nature documentaries and renders their landscapes as being somehow both epic and transient. Jon Satrom approaches these myths with a playful skepticism and makes us question the reliability and the absurd nature of our digital interactions and appliances. In FRIENDLY FIRE, Shane Mecklenburger creates a serene field of guns doing what they do best in video games: shoot. In doing so, he takes on a role of showing the bizarre pairing of beauty and violence in certain aspects of game culture. Defective approaches the breaching of myths in our virtual surroundings by exhibiting the necessity of play and feedback in our otherwise stagnant media interactions. PROGRAM DETAILS: FLOWERS_SYSTEM PAINTING by Morgan Higby-Flowers (2009) THE NATURAL by Nicholas O'Brien (2008) ANHENDONIA (Excerpt) by Alexsandra Dominivic (2007) MEHOH by Jon Satrom (2009) m4shupz.app by Mark Beasley (2008) FRIENDLY FIRE by Shane Mecklenburger (2008) Very Special Thanks to Dave Dobie and Joe Jeffers for hosting the screening. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 27th, 2009 Special Field Trip Screening at Heaven due to flooding KEN JACOBS X 3: OLD & NEW Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA For more than fifty years Ken Jacobs has been at the forefront of experimental filmmaking. From his early anarchist-comic films with Jack Smith and others, to portraiture, quasi-structural works, audacious epics, live cine-performances, and now digital investigations his works have managed to stay exciting, inspired, and relevant. His classic Tom, Tom the Pipers Son has been named to the National Film Registry; his recent Star Spangled to Death and Razzle Dazzle were named best experimental works by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics, respectively; and his early short Little Stabs at Happiness will be included on the impressive DVD set "Treasures IV: Avant-Garde American Film 1947-1986," coming out in March from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Jacobs and his wife Flo recently co-starred in their son Azazel Jacobs' acclaimed feature Momma's Man. This program, admittedly a hodge-podge, features two of his lesser-known 16mm films and a stunning recent digital video. PROGRAM DETAILS: WINDOW (1964, 12 mins., 16mm, color, silent) "The moving camera shapes the screen image with great purposefulness, using the frame of a window as fulcrum upon which to wheel about the exterior scene. The zoom lens rips, pulling depth planes apart and slapping them together, contracting and expanding in concurrence with camera movements to impart a terrific apparent-motion to the complex of the object-forms pictured on the horizontal-vertical screen, its axis steadied by the audience's sense of gravity. The camera's movements in being transferred to objects tend also to be greatly magnified (instead of the camera the adjacent building turns). About four years of studying the window-complex preceded the afternoon of actual shooting (a true instance of cinematic action-painting). The film exists as it came out of the camera barring one mechanically necessary mid-reel splice." (KJ) GLOBE (1971, 22 mins, 16mm, color, sound on cassette) (Previously titled: EXCERPT FROM THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION) "Flat image (of snowbound suburban housing tract) blossoms into 3D only when viewer places Eye Opener before the right eye. (Keeping both eyes open, of course. As with all stereo experiences, center seats are best. Space will deepen as one views further from the screen.) The found-sound is X-ratable (not for children or Nancy Reagan) but is important to the film's perfect balance (GLOBE is symmetrical) of divine and profane." (KJ) KRYPTON IS DOOMED (2005, 34 mins., video, sound, color) "This work is derived from one of my Nervous Magic Lantern performances, which are created with a hand-manipulated projector and use neither film nor video. Highly stroboscopic and hallucinatory, these kinetic performances result in otherworldly spaces and plays of near-abstraction and suggestive imagery. In Krypton Is Doomed, the audio accompaniment to the shifting visuals is an installment of a Superman radio play - the first ever broadcast, in 1940." (KJ) Very Special Thanks to Dave Dobie and Joe Jeffers for hosting the screening. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 13, 2009 GAEA GIRLS By British documentarian, Kim Longinotto Co-presented by Chicago Filmmakers GAEA GIRLS (2000, 106 min.) shows the grueling training process of becoming a female Japanese wrestler. Enduring ridicule and injury, young women battle to transform their bodies and steady their wills to prepare for contest against other women in the ring. The stringent lifestyle they endure seems at times to both challenge and reinforce the conventional view of docile and subservient women in Japan. British documentarian, Kim Longinotto's work is interested in groups of people, often women, who by choice or force, live outside of traditional societal systems and build their own communities on their own terms. I often think of her as a recorder of contemporary utopias; she captures the always intricate, sometimes absurd, and very often inspiring new spaces people invent for themselves when the world they are born into does not provide for or satisfy them. Gaining apparently limitless access to very closed populations all over the world, Longinotto captures full and compex portraits of her subjects. Several of her documentaries have garnered international attention, namely DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE (1998) and SISTERS IN LAW (2005) and her latest film ROUGH AUNTIES (2008) is screening this month at the Sundance Film Festival. Kim Longinotto studied camera operating and directing at the National Film School of England from 1975-1978. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ January 31, 2009 ELECTRIC LIGHTS: Films from Newfoundland, Windsor, & Chicago; Dance from Vancouver Curated by Max Alexander Davy Bisaro, a newly expatriated Canadian, presents two dances for tremendously small spaces in her Chicago premiere, accompanied by distorted disco balls, interactive video, and music by Max Alexander. Before this, films by Matthew Kelly, Andrea Savic, Shirin Mozaffari and Adam Neese will be screened, which share Bisaro's sense of pure light and movement, though their respective approaches to landscape, architecture, fable, and color. PROGRAM DETAILS: DIVIDING LIGHT by Adam Neese (6 mins, 2008) I INHERIT MY GRANDMOTHER'S FEAR by Shirin Mozaffari (3 mins, 2008) RUINS by Matthew Kelly (6 mins, 2008) PORTOFINO: MODEL HOME by Andrea Slavic (13 mins, 2008) FEARFUL GHOST OF FORMER BLOOM by Davy Bisaro (10 mins, 2008) REPLACED BY ELECTRIC LIGHTS by Davy Bisaro (14 mins, 2009) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ January 21, 2009 WHITE HEART: A Rare Masterpiece by Daniel Barnett Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA WHITE HEART is one of those 'famous' films that practically no one knows about. But its advocates are passionate about it (mostly other filmmakers - it's greatly admired by Nathaniel Dorsky, Phil Solomon, and Saul Levine, for example). "Daniel Barnett is a leading experimental filmmaker who develops complex metaphors in his films out of rephotography and other post-production techniques. [ . . .] White Heart is his longest and most ambitious work. 'Barnett's film consists of many disparate images, chosen for their strong sensual qualities, coupled with a labyrinthine and equally sensual soundtrack. After establishing the basic images, Barnett begins to interweave them, exaggerating certain qualities (color, texture) during printing. A mundane shot of a man jerkily spraying down an empty lot is adjusted so his shirt becomes a brilliant red glare. A super close-up of a fingertip holding a match is contrasty enough so every particle of sweat glistens in the lens. Concurrent sounds are similarly exaggerated and contribute to the sensual wash.... Shots are joined so that each moment resonates differently in time.' (Steve Anker, in Visions). White Heart takes off from a series of Wittgensteinian monologues which illustrate, as Konrad Steiner writes in Cinematograph (1985), 'the huge difference in the quality of knowledge we have about the experience of others, and that which we have about our own.' It goes on to investigate meaning, in a manner which Steiner likens to the painter Cezanne: '[The film has a] chaotic livelihood, [a] sense of gathering meanings right before my eyes. In this way the film is ABOUT the genesis of meaning.... [Cezanne's] still lifes and landscapes depict a threshold of vision or perhaps an ur-vision, before the objects of that vision have been fully assimilated into the familiar, expected appearances through the action of the eye-mind. Likewise, Barnett's film depicts a threshold of meaning. We are presented with a weave of sound and image not committed to a precisely rigid message....'" (Pacific Film Archive) Daniel Barnett studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has taught filmmaking at SUNY Binghamton and at Massachusetts College of Art, and the San Francisco Art Institute. In addition to being an experimental film and video maker, he has worked professionally as a film editor and optical printing specialist and was the Executive Producer for Educational Projects at bePictures. He recently published the book Movement as Meaning: In Experimental Film. PROGRAM DETAILS: WHITE HEART (1975, 53 minutes, vintage 16mm reversal print, color, sound): Directed by Daniel Barnett. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2008 saw the first 9 months of The Nightingale's existence and it has only been possible because of the help of so many people. We would like to heartily thank all of the following folks for their participation, expertise and support. Josh Mabe . . . Reece Thornbery . . . Tim Weidelman . . . Jennfier Fieber . . . Jason Halprin . . Patrick Friel and WHITE LIGHT CINEMA . . . ONION CITY . . . Bryan Wendorf and Chloe Connelly and CUFF . . . Darnell Witt and CINE-FILE . . . James Bond and CINEMA BOREALIS . . . Ben Russell . . . JESS IS DEAD . . . Amy Beste and CATE . . . Todd Lillethun and CHICAGO FILMMAKERS . . . Gabe Klinger and CHICAGO CINEMA FORUM . . . Alexander Stewart and ROOTS AND CULTURE . . . Ed Mar and SELECT MEDIA . . . Dave Dobie, Clara Alcott and HEAVEN GALLERY . . . UIC FILM and VIDEO BFA Program . . . Video Data Bank . . . SAIC Dept. of Film Video and New Media . . . Celeste Neuhaus . . .Lori Felker . . . Jodie Mack . . . Scott Foley . . . Jim Trainor . . . Mary Robnett . . . Marshal Greenhouse and Shannon Smiley . . . Colin Palombi . . . Thomas Comerford . . . Bill Stamets . . . Michelle Citron . . . Robert Snowden . . . Eric Fleischauer . . . Latham Zearfoss . . . Ethan White . . . Lauren Carter . . . Joe Grimm _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ December 17, 2008 PICTURE BOOKS FOR ADULTS & THE PHARAOH'S BELT: Early Films by Animator Lewis Klahr Introduced by University of Chicago Professor Tom Gunning Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA PICTURE BOOKS FOR ADULTS (1983-85), an eight film series, is Klahr's earliest work available for screening. In a very rare presentation, it will be shown it its original Super-8mm format-the first time anywhere in almost a decade. Still one of Klahr's major works, THE PHARAOH'S BELT (1994) was a breakthrough film, both in its length (43 minutes) and in establishing Klahr's signature cutout animation style. Over the past thirty years, Los Angeles-based filmmaker has created a stunning body of work that easily places him at the forefront of avant-garde artists. Moving from the intimacy of his early Super-8 films to his current digital works (with a long sojourn in 16mm), Klahr has always taken advantage of the particular characteristics of his various media. This appreciation of the textures and looks of each format is not surprising, though-Klahr's meticulously constructed films (his early found footage collage works and his more well known cut-out animation films) all benefit from his careful attention to small details. From the constant lookout for source material (old magazines, comic books, diverse other printed matter, photographs, and even occasional three-dimensional objects), the selection of those materials for a particular project, and the combinations and juxtapositions of those materials within a film, Klahr exhibits an unerring eye for the telling, resonant, and evocative. Klahr's films are works of mystery and wonder. More than any other filmmaker working today they are psychic excavations of our shared mid and late-twentieth century cultural memory. Program Details: PICTURE BOOKS FOR ADULTS (1983-85, 37 mins., Super-8mm) Including: Deep Fishtank Birding (1983, 3 mins, b/w, sound) Enchantment (1983, 2.5 mins., color, sound) Pulls (1985, 5 mins., color, sound) What's Going on Here, Joe? (1985, 5 mins, color, sound) The River Sieve (1984, 5 mins., color, sound) Candy's 16! (1984, 2.5 mins., color, sound) Deep Fishtank Too (1985, 5.5 mins., b/w, sound) 1966 (1984, 8 mins., color, sound) THE PHARAOH'S BELT (1993, 43 mins., 16mm) We will also show uncut footage from our recent Friendsgiving trailer shoot immediately before the program. Extra Special Thanks to James Bond for the new wall damper. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ December 14th, 2008 WHILE WE WERE WORKING: a YouTube curatorial endeavor Curated by Robert Snowden and Eric Fleischauer The internet's unwanted or digital detritus is constantly being scraped off the web's cluttered floor and being broken apart and frankensteined into the new. Definitions over ownership and authorship are being elasticized and altered by this constant meddling and re-arranging, and in the process, the line between viral video, Art Art, and just plain unwanted is being happily smudged. So how do we culture-makers address our new medium, venue, and potential audiences? How do we incorporate and process this superstructure of meaning, whether we are dilettantes, starry-eyed devotees or television-loyalists? And how can you find that good, weird shit out there when there is so much to look at? Internalizing media's place in our everyday lives is already assured, but thankfully these videos go above and beyond to perform the inevitable. By extricating the banal and taking it to its logical end, these artists create bizarro worlds of displacement and repetition. As those who stare at computers all day, we feel guilty about this misspent time wandering the internet. By creating a perpetual side project of cataloging, archiving and presenting the best the internet has to offer, we are slowly turning procrastination into productivity. While We Were Working is exemplary for using our time wisely so you don't have to. Featuring: Martin Arnold Trisha Baga Blue Noses John Michael Boling John Cage Nicholas Cage DustoMcNeato Daniel Eatock Andrew Filippone Jr. Martijn Hendriks John Kilduff Oliver Laric Kalup Linzy Guthrie Lonnergan Pablo Picasso David Leye Roth Fernando Sanchez Nicholas Wylie YeayloBoy127 TRT 57 min Special thanks to INCUBATE for their support of this program. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ December 11th, 2008 PARADISE (WORK IN PROGRESS) Director, Michael Almereyda in person! Co-presented by CHICAGO CINEMA FORUM The filmmaker considers the episodes in this movie to be like pages torn from a sketchbook, a visual diary kept over many years. Each episode runs about the length of a pop song. Friends and strangers, kids and adults, are featured in roughly equal proportions, in settings split between familiar American cities - New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans - and unlikely, far-flung places: Tehran, Krakow, Seoul. The film's fragmentary nature is held in check by thematic contrasts and links - between innocence and experience; art and commerce; searching and finding. There's also the overarching idea that life is made up of brief paradisiacal moments - moments that are often taken for granted, and always slipping away, but which can, on occasion, be captured and shared. Michael Almereyda is best-known for his version of HAMLET (2000) set in contemporary New York City and starring Ethan Hawke. He is also the director of ANOTHER GIRL ANOTHER PLANET (1992), shot entirely in Pixelvision, NADJA (1994), a lyrical vampire film produced by David Lynch, THIS SO-CALLED DISASTER (2003), filmed around the rehearsals of Sam Shepard's The Late Henry Moss, and WILLIAM EGGLESTON IN THE REAL WORLD (2005), a cine-essay and conversation with the photographer of the title. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Saturday, December 6th, 2008 EPIC JOURNEY: New Curator's Fest (PART ONE) Fading out / Fading in: Identities in Transit Curated by Casey Gibbs & John Lou This program explores aesthetics in contemporary Asian-American video: considerations of identity, family, relationships, transition, adaptation, and mutation. Program Details: ANOTHER CLAPPING by Chi Jang Yin (2000, 25:00, mini-DV) PICTURING ORIENTAL GIRLS: A (RE) EDUCATIONAL VIDEOTAPE by Valerie Soe (1992, 12:00, mini-DV) RGB by Kerry Yang (2007, 4:00, mini-DV) FOR THE UNSEEN by Chi Jang Yin (2007, 12:00, mini-DV, originally DV) COUPLE by Hanspeter Ammann (1998, 11:00, mini-DV) Youthful Perspectives: Obsessions, Obstacles, and Growing Up Pop Curated by Sasha Samochina & Danielle Kramer This collection of work explores the experience of growing up engulfed in television and music culture. The imprint is sometimes subliminal, blurring the boundaries of reality in our memories and stories. We identify, communicate, and express with bits of digested media. Advertisements that our young minds have absorbed float in and out as we daydream. Many consciously collect in an attempt to recreate these memories, feeding the longing of nostalgia established by years of media culture exposure. We chose these pieces for their exploration into these media memories, examining how they shape our ideas and identities, helping us discover who we are, and sometimes who we are not. Program Details: IDENTITY CRISIS by Mindy Faber (1990, 3:00, mini-DV) BALLET SUIT by Sasha Samochina (2006, 3:11, mini-DV) 9 MINUTES OF KAUNAUS by Dani Levanthal (6:30, mini-DV) TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS by Jennifer Montgomery (2000, 18:00, mini-DV) TARGET by Animal Charm (1999, 8:30, mini-DV) LULLABY by Jennifer Reeder (2007,18:00, mini-DV) A LOVE STORY PART 1 & 2 by Kali Heitholt (2007, 3:20, mini-DV) LIGHT IS WAITING by Michael Robinson (2007, 11:00, mini-DV) In Passing, In Permanence Curated by Mirek Choma & Tommy Heffron By force, by convention, by choice, we isolate the physical, emotional and political variables that sum up our private and social identities. Identities that can be as fleeting as they are immutable. With equal immediacy, the mixture of the recent and the not-so-recent works in this program explore that intangible and often unnerving isolation. Program Details: TANGO by Zbigniew Rybczynski (1981, 8:10, 35mm to video) LAUGHING NO MORE by Mirek Choma (2007, 2:05, video) SPRINGTIME by Tommy Heffron / Galit Seifan (2008, 2:00, video) BETWEEN THE SHEETS by Warren Cockerham (2007, 6:30, video) A REPRESENTATION by George Monteleone (2008, 4:10 Ð Super8 to video) OJ, NIE MOGE SIE ZATRZYMAC (OH, I CAN'T STOP!) by Zbigniew Rybczynski (1976, 10:07, 35mm to video) PASSION FOR ABOLITION by Snorre Sjonost Henriksen (2008, 8:31, video) i03-04 by Heidi Neubauer-Winterburn (2008, 10:22, video) MEDIA by Zbigniew Rybczynski (1980, 1:35, 35mm to video) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Sunday, December 7th, 2008 EPIC JOURNEY: New Curators' Fest (PART TWO) The Web of Cokaygne; Candle and Bell Curated by Dain Oh THE WEB OF COKAYGNE; CANDLE AND BELL is a screening of various web-based moving images curated by Dain Oh. This program investigates the production, distribution and cultural stigma that is held uniquely by different web-based medium including open source data bases, cliparts and animated GIFs. By placing them in relation to the history of the moving image as a new form of expression, they are brought to the table as their own distinctive language tools as well as borrowing some from previous mediums of revolution such as photo, film, video etc. Program Details: ][]P3|\|.|=r@/\/\3.\/\/()r|<][ (aka 0P3NFR4M3W0RK aka open frame work) initiated by Jon Satrom (2006) 787 CLIPARTS by Oliver Laric (2006) GIF ANIATION SCREENING, a curatorial experiment by Dain Oh (2008) Including the works of artists: Petra Cortright, Olia Lialina, Guthrie Lonergan, Tom Moody, Jon Satrom and Paul Slocum. Stuffed: An exploration of food and sexuality Curated by Holly Foster & Michael Cone Program Details: HEY! BABY CHICKEY by Nina Sobell (1978, 7:15, mini-DV) HARD FAT by Frederic Moffet (2002, 23:00, min-DV) MEASUREMENTS by Ivy (2004, 3:55, mini-DV) MEASURING TAPE by Ivy (2008, 2:54, mini-DV) FEEDERISM FACTS by Ivy (2006, 9:21, mini-DV) BUTTER BALLS by George Kuchar (2003, 25:00, mini-DV) Beginner's Luck Curated by KEVIN RONN They say knowledge is power, but they also say power corrupts. This show will consist of young artists spreading their wings for the first time in film, animation, and other things that at the time were alien to them. These films are not the most polished from the artists' career, but they show the uncorrupted vision they once had. Including work by Vicky Yen, Emily Wang, Marko Jevtic, & Petrina Chiu. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Sunday, November 23th, 2008 FRIENDSGIVING A Seasonal Potluck and 2008 Nightingale Trailer Shoot We cordially invited you to FRIENDSGIVING - a seasonal potluck gathering. The kitchen was crazy. Turkey and tofurkey, hot cider, cashew gravy, drunken pears. It was truly a feast. Special thanks to Chloe Connelly for helping to prepare that glorious bird. And before, during and after we ate, we shot the first ever Nightingale trailer- a stop motion animation hamhock on 16 mm. Thanks for lending your faces to the piece and a special shout-out to our first rate crew, Jodie Mack, Chloe Connelly, Tim Weidelman, and Scott Foley led by the fearless and beautiful Lori Felker. Thanks also to Jason Halprin for lab help. Be on the lookout at The Nightingale in early 2009 to see what we made. We're looking at you Jason (whether we want to or not.) -------- Friday, November 21st, 2008 CHANNELING: An Invocation of Spectral Bodies and Queer Spirits Curated by Latham Zearfoss and Ethan White CHANNELING is an entryway into the spirit realm and the queer body politic: a program of experimental moving image work that calls up the ghosts of the past and the specters of the future. The intent of the program is to re-imagine film and video as occult technologies that allow us to connect with the bodies, experiences, and emotions that are often invisible, ghostly even, in everyday life. In this sense, both the camera and the ghost stories it captures can serve as powerful instruments in the act of queer worldmaking. The works in the program take a personal approach in dealing with the political and historical problems that haunt the queer experience: the AIDS pandemic (Renwick, DiStefano), the body in transition (Montague), the idealized nuclear family (Pena, Robinson, Rosenfeld), and the narrow cultural standards of desirability (EMR, Moulton). CHANNELING presents emerging and established artists critically engaging with these concerns on their own campy, poetic, sexual, humorous, and even utopian terms, using a variety of aesthetic approaches such as digital video, homemade effects, saturated 8mm, home movies, animation, green screen, and more. PROGRAM DETAILS: 9 IS A SECRET by Vanessa Renwick (2002, 6:00, video) WELL DRESSED by Elliot Montague (2006, 10:00, Super 8mm on video) WHISPERING PINES #7 by Shana Moulton (2006, 5:00, video) CAROL ANNE IS DEAD by Michael Robinson (2008, 7:30, video) don't do as i do : do as i say by Liz Rosenfeld (2008, 15:00, video) SOMETHINGS GONNA SOON by EMR (Math Bass & Dylan Mira) (2008, 4:00, video) SOME GHOSTS by Aay Preston Myint (2007, 2:00, video) COMPROMISE by Jillian Pera (2005, 10:00, video) (tell me why): The Epistemology of Disco by John Di Stefano (1990, 24:00, video) Total Running Time: 83 min. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Thursday, November 20th, 2008 NEW NEW VIDEOS Presented as part of SELECT MEDIA 7: Infoporn The cholos at The Co-Prosperity Sphere move the SELECT MEDIA party north on Thursday. New new videos by Yoshi Sodeoka, Ben Jones, Devin Flynn, Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker, Eric Fensler, Ara Peterson, Billy Grant and Takeshi Murata. PROGRAM DETAILS: ESCAPE SPIRIT VIDEOSLIME by Takeshi Murata, Sound by Robert Beatty (6:30 min, 2007) Stop motion animation from HALLOWEEN SABBATH COMPILATION by Melissa Brown and Siebren Versteeg (:30 sec, 2006) Y'ALL SO STUPID #10 (3:30 min, 2008) and LADY PANTS (2:20 min, 2008)by Devin Flynn UNTITLED (Work in Progress) by Ara Peterson and Dave Fischer (Silent, 4:00 min, 2008) TWO MEN IN JAIL by Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker (4:30 min, 2008) PSYCHDELIC DEATH VOMIT by Yoshi Sodeoka (4:50 min, 2008) TIMEWARP EXPERIMENT, 3's COMPANY by Takeshi Murata (2:40 min, 2007) FACEMAKER by Ben Jones (1:30 min, 2007) SUNSET FEELINGS by Eric Fensler (1:30 min, 2006) UNTITLED (Work in Progress) by Billy Grant (1:30 min, 2008) -------- Saturday, November 8, 2008 FILMS & VIDEOS by Julie Murray With Julie Murray in person! Using combinations of found and original footage, Irish-born New Yorker Julie Murray makes subtle and eloquent films that imbue banal images and everyday sounds with an other-worldly charge, a sense of mystery and menace. -Chris Gehman, Cinematheque Ontario Born in Dublin, Ireland, Murray received a Bachelors Degree in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. While creating and exhibiting paintings and photographs in San Francisco she extended her investigations into the area of experimental filmmaking. In 1993 Murray moved to New York and since that time her work has screened at the New York Film Fesitval, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the San Francisco Cinematheque, Centre George Pompidou, Paris, and the London Filmmakers Co-op. The Museum of Modern Art Archives has acquired Murray's films for their archives. She is currently living and working in Milwaukee. PROGRAM DETAILS: Fl Oz (16mm, silent, 7 min, 2003) I Began to Wish . . . (16mm, silent, 5 min, 2003) Micromoth (16mm, color, sound, 6 min, 2000) YSBRYD (spirit) (DV, sound, 8 min, 2008) Detroit Park (DV, sound, 8 min, 2005) Deliquium (16mm, color, sound, 15 min (but represents 8oo years), 2003) ORCHARD (16mm, color,sound, 8 min, 2004) . . .plus other original rolls (serendip + SF horses) -------- Tuesday, November 4, 2008 A NIGHT OF HOPE & FEAR: Election Night Watch Party Yes We Can! We will throw the breaking coverage up on the big screen, participate in loads of patriotically themed parlor games and (technology permitting) provide on the ground audio updates from the rally itself reported by Nightingale housemate, Christy. And you won't want to miss the obligatory balloon drop. -------- Saturday, October 11, 2008 SEASONS WITH STAN: An Evening with Phil Solomon With Phil Solomon in person! Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Colorado-based filmmaker Phil Solomon, presents a very special program about his collaborations and friendship with Stan Brakhage. In addition to films Solomon and Brakhage made together and a few solo-Brakhage films, Solomon will also be sharing some tantalizing rarities. Since the late 1970's, Solomon has been crafting visually stunning works, first in 16mm and now in digital video. His early films were mesmerizing tactile landscapes of crackled emulsion, which complimented the complicated nostalgic tone of his imagery. A sense of longing and inevitable decay gave his work a distinct and unique voice in avant-garde cinema. More recently, Solomon has been mining the rich and evocative images found in the Grand Theft Auto video game series, by-passing the violence of the originals to create mournful eulogies for an end time. Solomon teaches at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where he worked alongside the master experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. The two developed a deep friendship and influenced each other's work; they also collaborated on several films. Solomon's program tonight is presented in the spirit of Brakhage's legendary salon screenings, where a small group would gather in an intimate space to share in a love for film and in honor of the city where Brakhage spent a large part of his life teaching - at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The program will include (with other unannounced items): SEASONS... by Phil Solomon and Stan Brakhage (1998, 16 mins., 16mm) CONCRESCENCE by Phil Solomon and Stan Brakhage(1996, 3 mins., 16mm) ROCKET BOY vs BRAKHAGE by Phil Solomon (1973-88, 30 mins., 16mm on digi vid) CHARTRES SERIES by Stan Brakhage (1994, 9 mins., 16mm) STELLAR by Stan Brakhage (1993, 3 mins., 16mm) Plus rare footage of Brakhage at work: Painting downtown (mini dv) Editing Elementary Phrases with clips (mini dv) And even rarer footage and audio of Brakhage: Audio of Stan singing as boy soprano (disc) Audio of Brakhage at Binghamton, circa 1973 (mini dv) Video clip compilation from the Sunday salons (mini dv) Home video excerpts (mini dv) -------- Sunday, October 5, 2008 CHICAGO PRIMER, OCTOBER SCREAMER Presented as part of Chicago Artists Month Chicago is proud to boast an active community of diverse animation artists working in both traditional and experimental modes. This program highlights a broad section of the city's animators, all whose individual styles create starkly imaginative and visual other worlds. In order to gear up for Halloween, we have chosen some of the quirkiest, quietest, and creepiest short work to stimulate your amygdala region. PROGRAM DETAILS: ERRATA by Alexander Stewart (2005, 6:30, 16 mm) LILLY by Jodie Mack (16 mm, 6:00, 16 mm) LEAFY LEAFY JUNGLE by Jim Trainor (2006, 3:00, 16mm, silent,) IN THE FOREST by Yoonah Nam (2008, 2:51, mini-dv) BIRDCATCHER by Chris Hefner (2006, 7:30, mini-dv) AND THE BIRDS FLEW FROM THE TREES by Sean Buckelew (2008, 2:00, mini-dv) TEAR BRICK by Seungwon Lee (2006, 6:00, mini-dv) ED GOES HOME by Jason Halprin (2003, 3:00, mini-dv) TREPAN HOLE by Andy Cahill (2008, 6:00, mini-dv) FLUTE BABIES by Gretta Johnson (2008, 4:25, mini-dv) THE UGLY TURKEY by David Essman (2008, 4:00, mini-dv) Very Special Thanks to programmer, Joe Baldwin. -------- Friday, October 3, 2008 15 YEARS OF THE CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL Festival Director Bryan Wendorf in person! Roger Ebert once said of the Chicago Underground Film Festival, "What you get for your money is not just admission to the films, but admission to a subculture." For 15 years, CUFF has exhibited the vibrant media emerging from ChicagoÕs schools, production houses, music and performance scenes, and occasionally, from out-of-the-blue. Both programs, co-curated by CUFF co-founder and Artistic Director Bryan Wendorf and Amy Beste, curator of the Conversations At The Edge Series, charts the festival's history through the city's own. PROGRAM DETAILS: 1999 - THE BATS by Jim Trainor 1999 - MEAT FUCKER by Shawn Durr 2000 - THE LESTER FILM by Heather McAdams 1999 - DANCE HABIBI DANCE by Usama Alshaibi 2003 - TEAM by Dean Rank 2006 - HOW SHE SLEPT AT NIGHT by Lili Carre 2007 - IT WILL DIE OUT IN THE MIND by Deborah Stratman 2007 - ALLA TE ALCANZO (I'LL SEE YOU THERE) by Luis Sanchez Ramirez Very Special Thanks to programmers, Bryan Wendorf and Amy Beste. -------- Saturday, September 27 POWERS OF THREE: The Films of Robert Schaller With Robert Schaller in person! This screening promises to be a luminal adventure in handmade emulsions, homemade pinhole cameras, dance, and rhythm. The work of Robert Schaller is an exploration of the possibilities inherent in the nature of light, lenses, and emulsion that make film work along with a new relationship between filmmaker and instrument. His unique approach produces films that pulsate and crackle with a living surface that reflects the essence of the world. Featuring a trio of triple-projection pieces, along with several other works, this program gives us a glimpse into a practice that denies any division exists between art and science, experiment and pastime, or invention and chance. Originally from Seattle, WA, Schaller worked at a bio-chemistry laboratory in Germany before pursing an MFA in Fine Arts from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He has taught courses at CU-Boulder, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Toussaint L'Ouverture School of Arts and Social Justice in South Florida, and in 2003 he founded the Handmade Film Institute in order to extend and explore the possibilities of film as an artistic medium. The Institute hosts a weeklong Film Camp every summer at its home base outside of Ward, CO, and in 2008 initiated the Wilderness Filmmaking Expedition, spending a week in the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness area near Steamboat Springs, CO. In addition to his experimental work, Schaller makes documentary film, composes music, and collaborates with other artists such as dancers and kite makers. PROGRAM DETAILS: Triangle(16mm x 3, B+W silent, 3 min, 2008) If Not One and One (16mm x 3, color sound, 15 min, 1999) Triptych (16mm x 3, B+W silent, 3 min, 1996) Walk (16mm x 2, color silent, 5 min, 2003) To The Beach (16mm color sound, 10 min, 1998) Phrase (16mm Black and White silent, 8 min, 2007) My Life As A Bee (16 mm color silent, 6 min, 2002) Mountain Home (16mm color silent, 10 min, 2007) Very Special Thanks to programmer, Jason Halprin. -------- Friday, September 26, 2008 THE GITS Presented by DECIBELLE Music and Culture Festival Rumored to have been descended from Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, the incredibly magnetic frontwoman of The Gits, Mia Zapata, had a powerful, soulful voice that belied her inherent shyness and distinguished The Gits from other punk bands of her day. This riveting documentary is part musical history and part murder mystery, brimming with rare performance footage dating from their Antioch College days through their subsequent move to Seattle just before the world's ears suddenly tuned into the emerging Northwest music scene. The Gits would become an integral and influential part of the milieu if largely unsung in comparison to fellow Seattle bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden. Just as they were about to make it big, the band was dealt a mighty blow with the sudden, violent loss of their friend and band member whose lyrics eerily foreshadowed events to come. Mia's murder became a rallying point for Seattle's music scene. As the investigation ripped through the community with devastating results, many female musicians turned the disempowerment and insecurity they felt into an aggressive rock movement that would resonate with women the world over. The movie is a vibrant celebration of Mia's life as well as a testament to the band's greatness as a whole. The interviews of those who knew her reflect the enormous respect and love Mia's peers had for her and also the sadness over her absence that still haunts them today. -------- Wednesday, September 24, 2008 CARTUNE XPREZ 2008 AMRCAN FALL TOUR A roadshow of animated videos and multi-media 3-D performances From September to November of 2008, the Portland-based multimedia dance duo Hooliganship (Peter Burr and Christopher Doulgeris) toured the country presenting the freshest incarnation of "Cartune Xprez", a 70-minute program of short animated videos that celebrates the wilderness of imagination through motion pictures. Featured artists include Bruce Bickford, Eric Dyer, Shana Moulton, Takeshi Murata, Paper Rad and more. Alongside this cartoon theater they will be performing their most recent piece entitled "Realer" in which audiences strap on a pair of 3D glasses to bear witness to a televised parade gone awry. The touring program, which roughly mirrors the 2008 Cartune Xprez DVD publication, will provide a rare opportunity to see videos by emerging artists as well as internationally known artists. Collectively, their resume includes collaborations with Frank Zappa and major exhibitions at the Whitney Biennial, the MOMA in New York, the Sundance Film Festival, and many other institutions throughout the world. PROGRAM DETAILS: UNTITLED (PINK DOT) by Takeshi Murata SHAME FELLOW by Adrian Freeman MUTO by Blu THE COMIC THAT FRENCHES YOUR MIND by Bruce Bickford BOOTY by Paper Rad SINGSONG by Jeff Kricshun THE MOUNTAIN WHERE EVERYTHING IS UPSIDE DOWN by Shana Moulton ASPHALT WATCHES by Shayne Ehman + Seth Scriver and TRASH & REALER Performances by Hooliganship -------- Sunday, September 21, 2008 DAUGHTER RITE With Michele Citron in person! Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Daughter Rite is one of the key films from the 1970s alternative film scene- a time when feminism, theory, progressive politics, queer issues, and a general sense of questioning of experimental, documentary, and narrative norms were all being felt. Daughter Rite combines many of these concerns to create a fascinating and influential hybrid, a genre-bending film that remains a vibrant and timely exploration of reality and fiction 30 years after it was made. "Daughter Rite is a classic, the missing link between the 'direct cinema' documentaries and the later hybrids that acknowledged truth couldn't always be found in front of a camera lens. Scandalous in its day for bending the rules of representation to enlighten its audience about filmmaking, Daughter Rite has a lot to teach folks hooked on reality TV, too. Citron's documentary inquiries into feminism, women in the trades, and feminist approaches to media representation are time capsules that merit re-opening." (B. Ruby Rich, author of Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement) Michelle Citron is an award-winning media artist whose work includes Daughter Rite and What You Take For Granted? (films), and As American As Apple Pie, Cocktails & Appetizers, and Mixed Greens (CD-ROMs). She is the author of the prize-winning book, Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions, and she's received grants from the NEA, NEH, and Illinois Arts Council. She is Chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Arts, Columbia College, Chicago. PROGRAM DETAILS: DAUGHTER RITE by Michelle Citron (1978, 53 mins., 16mm) -------- Saturday, September 20, 2008 NO DISTANCE Moving Image Work by Asian-American Women of SAIC No Distance is a screening of short films and animations by young female Asian filmmakers who are alumni and students of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Rather than attempting to blanketly represent Asian women, the pieces explore the filmmakers' common tonalities of solitude and uneasiness through different mediums and content. Through diverse works and characters, the artists are inviting the audiences into their inner minds presented in moving image. Curated by Angela Kim, Emily Wang, Yating Hsu, Jaling Hsu, Yoonah Nam, and Seungwon Lee. PROGRAM DETAILS: ID by Yoonah Nam (4:10, Experimental Stop-Motion Animation) THE DOUBLE HAPPINESS by Emily Tzuhan Wang (5:45, Experimental Narrative) THE BOOK by Doyeon Angela Kim (8:30, Experimental Narrative) IN THE FOREST by Yoonah Nam (3:00, Experimental Stop-Motion Animation) BEST WISHES by Ko Kaleng (10:30, Experimental Narrative) TEAR BRICK by Seungwon Lee (6:00, Experimental Stop-Motion Animation) NOWHERE ISLAND by Yating Hsu (25:00, Short Narrative) -------- Saturday, September 13, 2008 The SOUND and LIGHT SHOW Expanded Cinema Performance by Lauren Carter, Joe Grimm, and Ben Russell In the grand tradition of the Pyramids at Giza (home of "The Sound and Light Show"), the London Filmmakers Co-Operative, Tony Conrad and Bruce McClure and _____, your friends at the Nightingale Theatre are bringing a triple-header EXPANDED CINEMA show to your own Midwestern backyard. In what promises to be a loud, flickering, and thoroughly LIVE event, Itinerant Chicagoan Ben Russell joins forces with New Chicagoans Joe Grimm and Lauren Carter (welcome!) for a 4-part performance involving Multiple Projectors, Thumb-Piano Drones, Resonant Frequencies, Stroboscopic Action, A Rubber Mask, Red Underwear and A Massive Gong! Burn some ear candles, visit your eye doctor, and prepare to have your senses be overwhelmed! PROGRAM DETAILS: NATURE ILLUSION by Lauren Carter (6:00, 16mm, live sound, 2007) Diseased Oak leaves from the floodplains of New Orleans are transformed into a cameraless 16mm string of geometrical forms, pushed through the night air by live drones and hypnotic tones. EPIPHENOMENAL BOOGIE: LIGHT-SOUND SINGULARITIES IN PATTERNED TIME by Joe Grimm (25:00, live triple-projector performance, 2008) Using three 16mm projectors, black-and-white loops are projected through primary-colored gels to produce various mixed color phenomena at the screen. Noisy audio is produced by a circuit matrix that uses screen-mounted light sensors to modulate the feedback within projectors' built-in audio circuits. Sound is played back through a massive, resonant gong. A psychedelic, stroboscopic exploration of the physical qualities of light, electricity, shaking metal, and vibrating air. THE RED AND BLUE GODS by Ben Russell w/Joe Grimm (8:00, 16mm, live sound, 2005) An ethnographic field report in which the Anthropologist describes the mythic creation of an unnamed 'sun-scraping structure' through the ritualized actions of the Red and the Blue Gods. Featuring live narration by Ben Russell and sound by Joe Grimm. THE BLACK AND WHITE GODS by Ben Russell (25:00, live double-projector performance, 2008) Using a short segment of Russell's early ethnographic film DAUMË as its foundation, this double-projection performance employs a variety of 16mm film loops, hand-built electronics, prismatic lenses, and analog components to create an audiovisual feedback loop that edges steadily towards the phenomenological. With echoes of Tony Conrad's The Flicker and William Basinski's Disintegration Loops, THE BLACK AND THE WHITE GODS seeks to interrogate the possibility of representation via the abstracted field of bodily experience. Very Special Thanks to programmer, Ben Russell. -------- Friday, September 12, 2008 FILMS by THOMAS COMERFORD, 1997-2005 With Thomas Comerford in person! Presented By ROOTS and CULTURE GALLERY Chicago's own Thomas Comerford will present a retrospective of his work since 1997. Largely an exploration of landscape, Comerford's early work pares down the technology of filmmaking to examine media's role in the construction of place and history. By using a pinhole camera and home made noise machines, in his CINEMA OBSCURA series, Comerford creates otherworldly landscapes out of ordinary locations. His more recent work leaves behind the len-less camera in favor of the standard 16 mm lens, turned toward some of Chicago's pre-urban stories in order to "explore the evidence, revision and erasure of histories in the landscape." PROGRAM DETAILS: Sisyphus's Cinema (1997), 16mm sound, b&w, 4 mins. ILLA CAMERA OBSCVRA (2001), 16mm sound, b&w, 12 mins Depart (2000), 16mm sound, color, 6 mins Figures in the Landscape (2002), 16mm sound, color, 12 mins Land Marked/Marquette (2005), 16mm sound, b&w/color, 23 mins Chicago-Detroit Split (2005), unsplit 8mm, silent, 10 mins (w/Bill Brown) Very Special Thanks to programmer, Alexander Stewart. And Thanks to printmaker, Colin Palombi for creating posters. -------- Sunday, August 24, 2008 EATING TOO FAST and MARIO BANANA (No.1) by Andy Warhol Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Warhol, one of the key visual artists of the 20th Century, was also a prolific and equally talented filmmaker. It is only fairly recently, as his work has started to become available again (or available for the first time), that the larger body of his films (beyond the well-known titles such as "Sleep," "Empire," "Blow Job," and "My Hustler") are finally being recognized in their own right as major works of the American avant-garde. Warhol is being discovered as an important cinema stylist, whose seeming "bad" technical elements really are in the service of a profound understanding of cinema form. Over the past decade, myths and chronically perpetuated bad information about Warhol's films have been dissolving, thanks to the careful and detailed research of Callie Angell of the Andy Warhol Film Project. Angell has not only been correcting and disproving inaccuracies about Warhol and his films (such as that he had very little involvement in their production leaving the work to assistants - not true!) but has also been uncovering many previously unknown or unseen films made by Warhol, including EATING TOO FAST. White Light Cinema and The Nightingale are pleased to be presenting one of the very few public screenings of EATING TOO FAST, the little-known "sequel" to his infamous classic "Blow Job". This is a rare opportunity to see Warhol re-interpreting one of his own classic films. PROGRAM DETAILS: EATING TOO FAST (1966, 66 mins., 16mm, sound, black and white) by Andy Warhol "EATING TOO FAST, also called BLOW JOB NO. 2, is an ironic remake, with sound, of Warhol's 1964 minimalist classic; it is also a stunningly beautiful portrait film. Art critic and writer Gregory Battcock faces the camera in close-up, determined, it seems, to show little response to the sex act taking place below the frame. For most of the first reel, there is no camera movement, no dialogue, and little perceptible action, until a phone call prompts a humorous downward pan. Battcock's animation during this phone conversation is in stark contrast to the resignation with which he returns to the tedium of sex. The unclimactic second reel contains many pans and other camera movements, suggesting that this film may have been intended for double-screen projection." (Callie Angell) MARIO BANANA (NO. 1) (1964, 4 mins., 16mm, silent, color) by Andy Warhol "Mario Montez, the well-known drag performer who also appeared in many Jack Smith films, suggestively eats a banana in close-up. MARIO BANANA, which won an award at the 1965 Los Angeles Film Festival, is an important precursor to HARLOT, in which Montez elaborates on this performance." (Callie Angell) -------- Sunday, July 27, 2008 RARE AVANT-GARDE MASTERPIECES on the SUBJECT of PAINTING Special Field Trip Screening at Cinema Borealis due to flooding In his time, Jack Chambers was considered among the greatest of Canadian painters. His brilliant films ("Hart Of London," for example) have recently received their belated reputation as some of the greatest film work of the 20th century. Guy Fihman is a filmmaker of great acclaim in France, who co-founded the filmmaking group and journal, "Melba." PROGRAM DETAILS: R-34 (1967, 26m, 16mm) by Jack Chambers, is a two-fold work Ð on the one hand, it is a document of the Canadian artist Greg Curnoe at work; on the other, it is an appropriation of the images of Curnoe's paintings and collages and the action of the artist in motion by Chambers to make a wholly separate work of film art. Filmmaking legend Stan Brakhage says, "R-34 is the greatest film on the creative process I've yet seen." Ultrarouge-Infraviolet (1974, 31m, 16mm) by Guy Fihman is a film that reworks the colors of Pissarro's Les toits rouges. Working from a photo reproduction of the painting, Fihman animates over 20,000 variations of the colors using Xerox pigment. The film uses the materiality of the Impressionist's pigments to explore the immateriality of film's light. It's a classic of French experimental work and of "Structural Film." Very Special Thanks to James Bond for hosting the screening. --------- Saturday, July 12, 2008 SUPER 8 DIARY: Super-8mm films by Jason Halprin Halprin is one of a handful of filmmakers who remain committed to the small gauge format of Super-8 while the surrounding world becomes increasingly digital. Traditionally a format of home-movies and avant-garde filmmakers, Halprin's work takes advantage of the intimacy and flexibility that Super-8 offers. His experimental diary films focus on small details, unobserved moments, and subtle variations of color, texture, and movement that often escape filmmakers working in other formats. From the seemingly mundane activity of repotting houseplants to the impressionistic views of the Nebraska landscape to the hand gestures of politicians giving stump speeches, Halprin provides a lens into a world where the little things are seen to have as great an import as the grandiose. PROGRAM DETAILS: Madison Farmer's Market -July 2005, 4 min 45 sec Skyview I -November 2002, 1 min 45 sec Winter Weather and My Soul: Part I -December 2003, 2 min Winter Weather and My Soul: Part II -December 2003, 2 min 45 Small Gauge Politics -October 2004, 2 min 45 sec Brooklyn Prospect -October 2007, 3 min 20 sec Wisconsin Desert Beach -July 2003, 2 min, 45 sec Harlem to Valhalla -October 2007, 3 min 20 sec Apostate Unveiling -October 2007, 3 min 20 sec The Dead in Amber -August 2007, 3 min 30 sec Old Soul Markers -November 2007, 2 min NYC Imagine -January 2004, 45 sec Pop Bridge -July 2007, 3 min 15 sec Great Nebraska Highway -October 2005, 2 min 45 sec Potted Plants II -July 2003, 2 min Peak to Peak: Autumn –September 2005, 3 min 50 sec Skyview II (fire on the water) –December 2007, 3 min Boulder Falls Falling -May 2007, 3 min 20 sec --------- Friday, June 20, 2008 Chicago Filmmakers presents The 20th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival Featuring BEN RUSSELL and SHANA MOULTON ETHNOGRAPHIC ASIDES: Films by Ben Russell Ben Russell in Person! Co-presented by THE NIGHTINGALE For nearly a decade, film and video maker Ben Russell has been pushing the boundaries and definitions of ethnographic film, peeking in the corners and skirting along the margins to explore subjects and cross-genre approaches to illuminate and raise questions about this field and the idea of representation more generally. Working primarily in an experimental mode, his films have a rigor in their approach, a formal beauty uncommon to ethnography, and frequently display a sly humor at odds with an area of investigation traditionally rooted in the sciences. PROGRAM DETAILS: Black and White Trypps Number Four (2008, 11 mins., 16mm, US): Trypps #5 (Dubai) (2008, 3 mins., 16mm, US): Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai) (2008, 8 mins.. 16mm, US): The Wet Season [Tj·ba TÈn] (Co-directed by Ben Russell and Brigid McCaffrey, 2007, 47 mins., 16mm, US/Suriname) CYNTHIA'S MOMENT: Screening & Live Performance by Shana Moulton Co-presented by CHICAGO CINEMA FORUM and The NIGHTINGALE The work of Brooklyn-based videomaker and artist Shana Moulton might be considered post-post-modern: while she uses odd detritus of pop culture - Angela Lansbury work out videos, Crystal Light drink mix, dimestore tchotchkes, Donald Duck educational cartoons, and more - her videos and performances are infused with an unexpected sincerity and hint at new and strange feminist aesthetic. Her alter-ego Cynthia is searching for some kind of meaning in her life and, despite her eccentricities and attraction to self-help and new age remedies, Moulton treats her with respect and a sympathetic understanding of her desires. Moulton seemingly lives through her character in some ways and invites the audience to question their own wants and desires by welcoming them to share in Cynthia's Moment. PROGRAM DETAILS: Electric Blanket Temple Altar (2005, 6 mins., video) Whispering Pines #8 (2006, 8 mins., video) Whispering Pines #4 (2007, 12 mins., video) Body ˜ Mind + 7 = Spirit (15 mins., live performance with video) Feeling Free w/ 3D Magic Eye Remix (9 min, live performance / video) --------- Friday, May 30, 2008 THE NEW NEWNESS: A Video Exhibition of Work by Emerging Chicago Media Makers PROGRAM DETAILS: Thought Crime by Sean Stearns (5:30) Keep Your Eyes Opened by Laureen Haag (4:26) The Dead Sea by Eddie Saleem (24:00). Meditations on Shadows of Ghost City Fallujah by Christopher Wiersema (7:14) Bedtime Story by Laureen Haag (5:41) Suffocating Life by Erica Lopez (2:46) Transgenre by Jules Rosskam (20:00) Answers by Hadassah B. (3:33) Purge by Josh Golden (1:00) Truth Through a Camera by Dan Hahn (7:30) Three Cheers of Alienation by Mookie Ninjak (7:00) Fatso by Robert Lindsey (5:20) Spiral by Matt Palenske (1:00) Television Now by Eamonn Sexton (4:17) --------- Sunday, May 16, 2008 TEAROOM by William E. Jones With Los Angeles Filmmaker, William E. Jones In Person. Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Tearoom (1962/2007, 56 mins., video), which was selected for the 2008 Whitney Biennial, is a provocative act of appropriation. Jones presents original 1962 police surveillance footage of a men's bathroom with only very minor intervention. The images are raw and powerful and the film invites exploration from a number of perspectives: portraiture, queer history, anthropology, sociology, documentary, voyeurism, structural film, and ever kinesthetics. It is a rich work, both fascinating and disturbing. Jones writes: "Tearoom consists of footage shot by the police in the course of a crackdown on public sex in the American Midwest. In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio Police Department photographed men in a restroom under the main square of the city. The cameramen hid in a closet and watched the clandestine activities through a two-way mirror. The film they shot was used in court as evidence against the defendants, all of whom were found guilty of sodomy, which at that time carried a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in the state penitentiary. The original surveillance footage shot by the police came into the possession of director William E. Jones while he was researching this case for a documentary project. The unedited scenes of ordinary men of various races and classes meeting to have sex were so powerful that the director decided to present the footage with a minimum of intervention. Tearoom is a radical example of film presented 'as found' for the purpose of circulating historical images that have otherwise been suppressed." Jones has published a companion book Tearoom (2nd Cannons Publications), which contains many historical texts relating to the Mansfield cases, as well as over 100 frame enlargements from the video. Limited copies of the book will be available for sale at the screenings. Showing with Tearoom is a short experimental video Jones made from the original footage: Mansfield 1962 (2006, 9 mins., video). William E. Jones has been making work for nearly twenty years. His films Massillon (1991) and Finished (1997) were both highly acclaimed documentary-essay works and his recent video v.o. (2006) has had great success on the film festival circuit and at film venues around the world. His films and videos were the subject of a retrospective at the Tate Modern in London in 2005. He works in the adult video industry under the name Hudson Wilcox and teaches film history at Art Center College of Design under his own name. --------- Friday, May 15, 2008 FUTURE SCHLOCK 2 DVD Release Party Future Schlock is a locally made video compilation of cracked out tv clips. The party celebrates the DVD release of Future Schlock Volume 2 and will include a screening of FUTURE SCHLOCK 1. --------- Friday, May 9, 2008 CAMPAIGN TRAIL DOCUMENTS by Bill Stamets Presented by ROOTS AND CULTURE GALLERY As the 2008 presidential campaign plods on, perhaps it's time for a flashback to the dark days of late-20th-century campaigning. Chicago documentarian, Bill Stamets brings out three campaign-trail treasures: primary, caucus, convention, and inauguration footage shot in '88, '92 and '96. With a light touch reminiscent of Frederick Wiseman, these documents provide a look back at recently-forgotten political landscapes. In the first few minutes of these films, we get a distinct impression that the players rotate, but the political game stays the same. But after a half-hour of watching Stamets's films, and recognizing politician after politician, it becomes clear that the faces of our political landscape really haven't changed in twenty years: Al Gore, Bob Dole, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Hillary Clinton, Pat Buchannan. What really changes in this quadrennial game? Armed with a Super-8 and later a Hi-8 camera, Stamets embeds with the press-corps using these amateur cameras to notice moments at the margins of the "real" reportage. In this day of incessant, round-the-clock audio and video coverage of all candidates, Stamets's films have a strange sense of prescience to them. On one hand, they anticipate the intense coverage of unscripted moments with cell phones and miniature digital camcorders that cam make or break a candidate who slips even the tiniest bit. But more interestingly, they are situated in a historical moment when that type of equipment was available for those purposes, but before it became so common that politicians learned to fully protect themselves or manipulate it. The masterful charisma of Bill Clinton is striking in these films, as is a fleeting moment of what looks like boredom mixed with dread that crosses Jesse Jackson's face in the midst of an Iowa meet' n' greet. Bill Stamets is a Chicago-based writer, reviewer, photographer and filmmaker. He has pointed lenses at the presidential candidates, Mayor Harold Washington, the Comsky-Dahl anti-disco riot, and local neo-Nazis. He reviews films for the Chicago Sun-Times and New City, and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. PROGRAM DETAILS: Iowa and its Presidents (Super 8, sound, 1988) Presidential Appearances (Super 8, silent, 1988-1992) Primary Visibility (DV, 1996) Very Special Thanks to programmer, Alexander Stewart. --------- Sunday, April 27, 2008 YEAR OF THE RAT: New Films/Videos from the UIC BFA Program "First in the cycle of 12 animal signs, YEAR OF THE RAT is an auspicious occasion for (media viewing) of every sort. It is a (screening) associated with aggression, wealth, charm, and order as well as with death, war, the occult, pestilence, and atrocities. In the Chinese Zodiac, the YEAR OF THE RAT is associated with (the apex of training in the media arts, courtesy of the BFA program at the UIC School of Art and Design)." – Wikipedia, Rat (Zodiac) From Mr.Polar Bear to glittering gum, Yayoi Kusama to TV reporters with tear-off faces, and hand-drawn tree songs to an abstract treatise on nationalism, the 16 short works in this program are yours, compliments of a new cross-generational generation of media artists. Working across a variety of platforms and techniques, the 8 artists represented here offer nothing less than a long hard look into the face of media-making today. This is YEAR OF THE RAT, and it is Auspicious, indeed. PROGRAM DETAILS: Sky Piece for Yayoi Kusama No. 1 by Orson Panetti (4:00, DV, 2005) bubble gum by Rafael Barontini (2:00, video, 2008) Caprice Rainbow by Joseph Baldwin (4:00, video, 2007) Port Manteux by Chris Perkowitz-Colvard (5:00, video, 2008) Limping Twins by Chris Perkowitz-Colvard (5:00, video, 2008) Fade by Jerry Leu (8:45, video, 2008) What time is it? by Joseph Baldwin (:19, video, 2008) Jingo by Mir H. Nourahmadi (4:15, video, 2008) Means and Ends by Nicholas Sgarioto (6:00, video, 2008) Through Doors by Rafael Barontini (3:30, video, 2008) Days End Tree Chant by Christopher Perkowitz-Colvard (3:00, 16mm, 2007) Mysterioso by Christine Sorich (5:00, video, 2008) Growth by Nicholas Sgarioto (5:00, video, 2008) Beverly by Chris Perkowitz-Colvard (4:00, video, 2007) Sojourn in a Foreign Land by Joseph Baldwin (4:00, video, 2008) Sky Piece for Yayoi Kusama No. 2 by Orson Panetti (9:00, 16mm, 2007) Very Special Thanks to Ben Russell for inviting his students to share their work. --------- Sunday, April 6, 2008 BEARDED CHILD FILM FEST "Central States Tour" with Dan Anderson Opening Exhibit: Sustained by Visions by Jeremiah Barber This looping video installation explores the affinity that people often feel towards one specific animal. A friend volunteers to act out their own interpretations of an animal that they greatly identify with, which is recorded on video. Through a combination of voice, costume and performance, this work travels the nebulous boundary between the human and the animal. About Bearded Child: Northern Minnesota's Bearded Child Film Festival will be taking Midwestern America by storm this April with a collection of experimental, bizarre, and obscure short films. Based out of rural Grand Rapids, Minnesota (pop. 8000), the festival has been scouring the globe for far-out flicks since 2001. --------- OPENING NIGHT! Friday, April 4th, 2008 AH, LIBERTY! Films by Ben Rivers WITH UK FILMMAKER BEN RIVERS IN PERSON! Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Rivers' films tend to fall into two categories: minimal, moody riffs on horror film traditions and tropes - particularly those of 1930's Hollywood; and lyrical, poignant experimental documentary portraits of people and places in the British Isles. PROGRAM DETAILS: Old Dark House – 2003, 4 min, 16mm, b/w House - 2005, 5 min, 16mm, b/w The Bomb with a Man in his Shoe – 2005, 15 min, 16mm, b/w The Coming Race - 2006, 5 min, 16mm, b/w This Is My Land - 2006, 14 min, 16mm, b/w Dove Coup/Greenhouse 2007, 2 min each, 16mm, b/w + Ah, Liberty! - 2008, 20 min, anamorphic 16mm, b/w Very Special Thanks to Patrick Friel, Ben Russell and Jennifer Fieber for their invaluable assistance in making this program possible.

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