PAST SCREENINGS December 18th, 2011 VALKOINEN PEURA (THE WHITE REINDEER) **Screens at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee, 4th Floor)** Presented by NORTHWEST CHICAGO FILM SOCIETY When her deadbeat Lapland Shepard husband takes off and leaves her hungry and heartbroken, Mirjami Kuosmanen (director Erik Blomberg's real world wife) seeks the help of a local shaman who turns her into a white reindeer vampire. Adapted from a Finnish folk tale, the film is beautifully shot against staggering Finnish snowscapes and herds of reindeer who don't have marital problems. The Finnish entry at the 1953 Cannes film festival won the award for Best Fairy Tale film with Jean Cocteau as the president of the mostly french Jury, and made its way to the US as THE WHITE REINDEER in 1957 as a limited release. Also on the bill tonight is a 16mm kinescope of the SPACE PATROL episode, A CHRISTMAS PARTY FOR HAPPY originally aired on Christmas Day 1954, and featuring (briefly) a reindeer driven spaceship. (JA) Program Details: VALKOINEN PEURA (THE WHITE REINDEER) Directed by Erik Blomberg (1953, 67 mins., Junior-Filmi, 35mm) Print courtesy of Douris Corp. Special thanks to Tim Lanzas The Northwest Chicago Film Society is an Illinois Not-For-Profit Organization. It exists to promote the preservation of film in context. Films capture the past uniquely. They hold the stories told by feature films, but also the stories of the industries that produced them, the places where they were exhibited, and the people who watched them. We believe that all of this history-not just of film, but of 20th century industry and culture-is more intelligible when it's grounded in unsimulated experience: seeing a film in a theater, with an audience, and projected from film stock. Films are programmed and projected by Julian Antos, Becca Hall, and Kyle Westphal. http://northwestchicagofilmsociety.org _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ December 10th, 2011 NO SKIN OFF MY ASS Directed by Bruce La Bruce Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Nothing says holiday-time like gritty, punky, black and white, queer Canadian quasi-porn! We are pleased to present a rare screening of Bruce La Bruce's (Super 8 1/2, Hustler White, LA Zombie) first feature film, NO SKIN OFF MY ASS (1991). Not available on DVD in the U.S., NO SKIN was made during the burgeoning of the New Queer Cinema "movement" of the late 1980s/early 90s (Gus Van Sant, Gregg Araki, Christopher Munch, Todd Haynes, etc.). But La Bruce was on the fringe of even that fringe: his film drew from Canadian underground Queercore, punk, skinhead, music, and zine scenes and struck a decidedly more strident and in-your-face tone than his American travelling companions. But NO SKIN was not just radical posturing and provocation; it was also a personal, and at times sweet (see Amy Taubin quote), film, and this is what helps it still feel fresh twenty years later. "Sweeter than Warhol, subtler than Kuchar, sexually more explicit than Van Sant." (Amy Taubin, Village Voice) "Triple X-rated, NO SKIN OFF MY ASS is a gay remake of Robert Altman's THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK. Director Bruce LaBruce plays the Karen Carpenter-loving hairstylist who is helplessly attracted to the lonely and stoic skinhead he finds and invites to his home. This very sexually explicit comedy is really for anyone - male or female, straight or not - who is a bit curious and wants to see a movie that offers something...a little different."(Film Threat) "In the early 1990s, while the New Queer Cinema was busy trying to sell fags 'n dykes to mainstream audiences, Canadian Bruce La Bruce was happily preaching to the queer choir. NO SKIN OFF MY ASS wasn't his first film - it followed a handful of Super 8 shorts - but it was the one that got him attention and fixed his image as a talented trashmeister willing to mix it up with social satire, homo camp, and hardcore sex. NO SKIN OF MY ASS, a low-rent remake of Robert Altman's THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK, is a typical Brucian effort, with the usual pleasures and pitfalls. Bruce, who wrote, directed, and photographed, also stars here as a hairdresser who obsesses over skinheads. Luckily, right near his apartment he finds a handsome specimen, sitting silently on a park bench. Before you can say "wash and set," Bruce has lured "Skinhead Guy," as he's known, into his apartment. There Bruce gives the bald beauty a bath (using Mr. Bubble), after which he locks his new pal in a bedroom. Of course, this being a Bruce La Bruce movie, Skinhead Guy quickly and easily escapes for a visit to his sister, a lesbian activist filmmaker and graffiti artist. But soon Bruce and Skinhead are reunited for more edgy fun. Shot in extra-grainy Super 8 and blown up to 16mm, and mostly lacking synch sound (Bruce's voiceovers occupy much of the soundtrack), NO SKINN OFF MY ASS has the look and feel of a low-rent porn flick, with Bruce's love object the ultimate wish-fulfillment fantasy - a mindless stud who lets Bruce take every imaginable liberty with him, from boot-licking to urinal caressing to straightforward blow jobs. And like much porn, this one has stretches of dullness that will endear some viewers to their fast-forward. As gorgeous as Skinhead Guy is, the camera's endless slow crawl over his fetching flesh as he bathes, lounges, and lusts becomes numbing after awhile. Still, Bruce gets points for daring to bare all, and doing it with humor. A zany soundtrack that includes such il--matched talents as Karen Carpenter, the Subhumans, and Tiny Tim adds to the foolish fun." (Gary Morris, Bright Lights Film Journal) Program Details: NO SKIN OFF MY ASS Directed by Bruce La Bruce (1991, 73 mins., 16mm, Canada, Black & White) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ November 20th, 2011 FRIENDSGIVING Our Annual Seasonal Potluck Please feel invited to our 4th annual seasonal potluck. Friendsgiving is when we all gather together, eat too much, and film the trailer for The NIGHTINGALE's next season. On board this year is a trampoline, some slow motion 16mm, and some bright colors. Wear you fancy duds, cheer shorts, dangly earrings, and long hair. Please bring a dish to share. There will be vegan and omnivore main courses. Just a few notes on our upcoming shoot/party. 1.There will be a specific shoot time. From 4pm-5pm we will be getting your pretty faces on film and there is quick bit of instruction and people ordering to do ahead of time so to make sure you are included please arrive no later than 4 pm! 2. It is going to look the best if you guys wear solid colors or patterns that are monochromatic enough to represent mainly a solid color. And we are hoping for a variety of colors- Bold, Bright, Try to avoid white or neutral tones. Some folks wearing black/gray will be okay but if you have the big colors wear em! And we have decided it is not as important to be fancy as it is to be colorful. I am so grateful for all of you. This place is just a dark room without you guys. Thanks for supporting Chicago Cinema. -*-*-*- November 15th, 8:00 pm YouTube ASSEMBLY: POWER Featuring Daniel Tucker and Deborah Stratman Presented by HOMEROOM CHICAGO Local artist and activist Daniel Tucker has teamed up with filmmaker Deborah Stratman to present a challenging program on the theme of "POWER: On and Off the Grid". Its got some Foucault, some sound cannons, and some totally funny stuff too! In this day and age what else could you want. . .? This is the final YTA of the season, so don't miss it! Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker interested in landscapes and systems. Her films, rather than telling stories, pose a series of problems - and through their at times ambiguous nature, allow for a complicated reading of the questions being asked. Many of her films point to the relationships between physical environments and the very human struggles for power, ownership, mastery and control that are played out on the land. Most recently, they have questioned elemental historical narratives about freedom, expansion, security, and the regulation of space. She has exhibited internationally at venues including the Whitney Biennial, MoMA, the Pompidou, Hammer Museum and many international film festivals including Sundance, the Viennale, Ann Arbor and Rotterdam. pythagorasfilm.com Daniel Tucker has worked as a cultural and political organizer in Chicago for over ten years, initiating a number of large-scale local projects and events. His particular focus has been on documenting social and cultural movements and the places from which they emerge. Most of his work exists in a blurry line between documentary, advocacy, journalism, curating and art-making and deals with themes of political imagination, localism, hidden history, economy and community. All of his projects utilize careful consideration of audience and distribution and involve significant research and relationship building to have effective and lasting impact. miscprojects.com The YTA consists of screening web-based video for a live and participating audience. Each YTA features 2 hosts that use YouTube to elaborate on a point of interest relevant to their artwork or creative practice. After the "talk" the assembly opens for dialog, giving audience members the opportunity to pull up videos in response or that are relevant to the topic. It's halfway between an artist talk and film screening; yet goes beyond their conventions by channeling the social possibilities of the medium. -*-*-*- November 13th, 2011 TV ON FILM **Screens at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee, 4th Floor)** Presented by NORTHWEST CHICAGO FILM SOCIETY In its heyday, TV meant more than just microwaves and antennae. Video was in its infancy and local stations built broadcast schedules from mountains of 16mm film-Saturday morning cartoons, syndicated sit-coms, local newsreels, commercials, dramatic anthologies in re-run, C&C Movie Time feature presentations, and much more. Harried studio technicians threaded up each print in real time on an industrial-strength projector with its lens aimed squarely at a TV camera. (Imagine the pressure: if the film breaks, every rugrat in metro Detroit sees your mistake!) These prints have survived the ravages of time and surly station managers to form a foundation for the film collectors' underground. In an attempt to bridge the gap between couch potatoes and cinephiles, we present a marathon of TV on Film, recreating an imagined broadcast evening wholly through 16mm (and rare 35mm!) prints at Cinema Borealis, Chicago's favorite and coziest living room. Program includes Superman, Rod Serling, the mind-frying Cattanooga Cats, and plenty of surprises. Continuous screeninge from 6pm through 11pm. Come and go as you please. Stay if you dare! The Northwest Chicago Film Society is an Illinois Not-For-Profit Organization. It exists to promote the preservation of film in context. Films capture the past uniquely. They hold the stories told by feature films, but also the stories of the industries that produced them, the places where they were exhibited, and the people who watched them. We believe that all of this history-not just of film, but of 20th century industry and culture-is more intelligible when it's grounded in unsimulated experience: seeing a film in a theater, with an audience, and projected from film stock. Films are programmed and projected by Julian Antos, Becca Hall, and Kyle Westphal http://northwestchicagofilmsociety.org -*-*-*- November 11th, 2011 The 2011 FLAHERTY ON THE ROAD SERIES CITY SYMPHONIES featuring the work of Laura Kissel and Tan Pin Pin Drawn from the program of the 57th Annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar programmed by Dan Streibel, the 2011 Flaherty on the Road film series explores the audio dimension of documentary. In these selections we encounter sound in its various roles in nonfiction film: as an element to confirm the fidelity of visual evidence (synch sound), as the conveyor of narrative (the voice-over), as evidentiary recording (the interview) and as a creative tool to counterpoint images. In a thoughtfully curated program, combining long-form pieces with shorts, the 2011 Flaherty on the Road series reveals how sound recording and design can help capture a cultural environment, sculpt a sense of place or evoke a historical period. And it urges us to see the contradictions that arise as music is added to the mix and moments of truth are either powerfully underscored or called into question. PROGRAM DETAILS: CITY SYMPHONIES (72 min) WINDOW CELEANING IN SHANGHAI by Laura Kissel (USA, 2010, 3 min, in Chinese; English subtitles) Media artist Laura Kissel describes her subjects simply as "two workers I met, hanging off the edges of my apartment building in Shanghai." This arresting video verite moment captures places, people and events that suggested the qualities of everyday life in contemporary Shanghai. A work self-aware of the verite tradition it inhabits, Window Cleaning uses only location sound and defers to long takes. Yet Kissel also has a photographer's eye for composition, structuring her window on the world in ways that are beautiful, honest and only occasionally ironic. TAN MIAN HUA by Laura Kissel (USA, 2011, 15 min, in Chinese; English subtitles) While documenting the contemporary textile industry in Shanghai, Kissel found on Chongming Island the Zhu family, whose members demonstrated the disappearing art of making a quilt with simple tools. Tan mian hua (beating cotton) is the process of assembling this type of handcrafted quilt. SINGAPORE GAGA by Tan Pin Pin (Singapore, 2005, 54 min, in English, Mandarin, Arabic; English subtitles) Tan Pin Pin's work shows a studied devotion to the audio dimension of contemporary life, particularly as experienced in her home city. Official declarations (school songs, patriotic parades) are heard in contrast to marginalized voices (a wheelchaired busker, avant-garde musicians) and the multilingual polyphony of everyday life. Explaining her chosen title, Tan said, "I wanted a name that was nonsensical, because Singapore GaGa was a rattlebag of random sounds." Tan told MTV Asia that she first conceived of the project as an audio CD collection of things in her surroundings, to be called Sounds I Can't Live Without, "featuring distinctly local sounds, like MRT announcements, or the sugar cane juice grinder, school cheers." But, she continued, "It grew into a documentary about sounds of Singapore, and then into a documentary about what it means to be Singaporean." Laura Kissel is a documentary filmmaker and Director of the Film and Media Studies Program at the University of South Carolina. Her media work explores social/cultural landscapes, the representation of history and the use of orphan films. Kissel's Cabin Field (2005), a nonfiction essay about farm workers in rural Georgia, was honored with three festival awards, including the Jurors' Citation Award at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. Her educational travelogue Beyond the Classroom: China (2007) was nominated for an Emmy and awarded a CINE Golden Eagle and three Telly Awards. A South Carolina Arts Commission's Media Arts Fellow and Fulbright Award recipient, she is currently work on Cotton Road, a documentary connecting South Carolina cotton farmers, Chinese textile workers and global consumers. Tan Pin Pin is one of Singapore's best-known filmmakers, whose films explore Singapore's diverse histories, contexts and limits, and the collective memories and artifacts inscribed on the urban landscape. Her films have screened at notable international festivals including Berlin, Pusan, Full Frame, South by Southwest, Rotterdam and Visions du Reel, as well as in theatrical release and at Singapore's The Art House and Singapore Art Museum and at Berlin's Aedes Gallery. Pin Pin's latest works include the shorts The Impossibility of Knowing and Snow City. -*-*-*- GLITCH -*-*-*- Sunday, October 23, 2011 CHARLIE IS MY DARLING and ROCK-A-BYE **Screened at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee, 4th Floor)** Presented by NORTHWEST CHICAGO FILM SOCIETY Two rare rock documentaries presented by Ryan Daly of the Louisville Film Society. Never officially in circulation, the first documentary ever made about the Rolling Stones, CHARLIE IS MY DARLING follows the band on their two day tour of Ireland during September 1965. The film includes interviews, a bizarre Elvis impersonation, and live performances (some in whole and some in part) of "Get Off of My Cloud", "Heart of Stone", "Play with Fire", "I'm Alright", "The Last Time", and "Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner". ROCK-A-BYE documents the rock music scene of the early 1970s--the Rolling Stones, the Stampeders, Whiskey Howl, Alice Cooper--they're all here! Along with classic footage from concerts and recording sessions, ROCK-A-BYE looks behind the scenes at record companies and radio studios. Ronnie Hawkins chats from the back seat of a Rolls-Royce, and Zal Yanovsky of The Lovin' Spoonful tells hilarious anecdotes of his rise to fame, which lasted only 18 months. The camera also goes into a small New York club where Muddy Waters sings and plays guitar. The film ends with Alice Cooper singing "Dead Babies" with a doll and a hatchet. PROGRAM DETAILS: CHARLIE IS MY DARLING Directed by Peter Whitehead, (1966, 60 min, 16mm) ROCK-A-BYE Directed by Jacques Bensimon, (1973, 50 min, 16mm) The Northwest Chicago Film Society is an Illinois Not-For-Profit Organization. It exists to promote the preservation of film in context. Films capture the past uniquely. They hold the stories told by feature films, but also the stories of the industries that produced them, the places where they were exhibited, and the people who watched them. We believe that all of this history-not just of film, but of 20th century industry and culture-is more intelligible when it's grounded in unsimulated experience: seeing a film in a theater, with an audience, and projected from film stock. Films are programmed and projected by Julian Antos, Becca Hall, and Kyle Westphal http://northwestchicagofilmsociety.org -*-*-*- October 21st, 2011 CHICAGO 8: A SMALL GAUGE FILM FESTIVAL Opening Night Screenings **Screened at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee, 4th Floor)** Presented by CHICAGO 8 Chicago 8, a fest founded this year by S8 makers Karen Johannesen, JB Mabe, and Jason Halprin, is dedicated to exhibiting works by small gauge filmmakers as they were intended to be seen: on film. This festival has been created to celebrate small gauge filmmaking, to offer a unique event for Super 8 filmmakers to exhibit their work in its original format, and for viewers to experience the joy of seeing S8 the way it was intended. Opening night of the festival will feature an exciting selection of S8 film from Chicago-based filmmakers, both new and old. S8 has an intimacy and charm that comes from its home movie history, it's personal diaristic sensibility, its small compact size, and it's unmistakable visual presence. Highly identifiable, S8 is known for its vibrant color, surface, texture, and unmistakable grain. Our goal is to keep small gauge filmmaking alive, to encourage further activity in this format, and to provide an opportunity for these rare gems to be seen by the Chicago community. By fostering a continued interest in S8 as a viable, affordable, and a uniquely personal way in which to explore image making, we hope to inspire the next generation of small gauge filmmakers. 8:00 pm OPENING NIGHT PROGRAM A survey of small gauge films from Chicagoans past and present opens our first annual Chicago 8 Small Gauge Film Festival. This show includes work spanning four decades of local filmmakers, from the old guard to current residents. Filmmakers in this program include Saul Levine, Michael Robinson, Joann Elam, Adele Friedman, Bill Staments, Lori Felker, Adam Paradis, Karen Johannesen, and Jason Halprin. 9:30pm JAAP PIETERS & TRAVIS BIRD & EVAN LINDORFF ELLERY Dutch S8 filmmaker, Jaap Pieters' ethereal, intimate films are highly personal of his surroundings. Limiting himself to the duration of the 3-minute Super 8 reel, he uses minimal equipment and editing. Often filming from his apartment window, he may focus on unusual people seen on the street, or on recurring characters both known and unknown. In the manner of a home screening, Pieters will be present to give commentary on his program. Bird and Lindorff-Ellery, who collaborate in their originally Chicago-based sound duo Dense Reduction, will improvise accompaniment to the silent films. They will incorporate both musical and nonmusical elements to interact with the visual environments presented in Pieters' work. Jaap Pieters has been taking photographs and making Super 8 films for the last three decades, and is a well-known presence in Europe. Beginning with his first solo program in Istanbul in 1997, he has shown regularly throughout virtually all corners of Europe, including on tours of Switzerland, Germany, and Spain, as well as in Paris, Athens, Copenhagen, and many more. He is also a fixture at IFF Rotterdam, and has shown at all manner of alternative venues along the way. Travis Bird, is a guitarist, composer, and writer focused on both songwriting and improvisation. Active in Chicago since 2007, he has worked in a wide variety of musical environments and has played at venues across the U.S. on several occasions, as well as pursuing an active release schedule. In addition to his musical activities, he co-curates Notice Recordings (est. 2010), a boutique cassette label that has released his own work as well as that of other experimental musicians. Evan Lindorff-Ellery, currently based in his native Vermont, is developing a uniquely abstract yet deliberate style in both visual and sound art. As de facto art director of Notice Recordings, his original drawings adorn most of the label's releases; they have also been published in online and in print form, most recently by the artist Jez Riley French. Musically, Lindorff-Ellery works with consumergrade and analog electronics, recordings of his surroundings, and layered processes to craft subtle yet richly layered sound environments connoting both isolation and home. -*-*-*- October 18th, 2011 YouTube ASSEMBLY: NSFW Featuring Adebukola Bodunrin and Fred Sasaki Presented by HOMEROOM CHICAGO Make sure the boss isn't looking! This YouTube Assembly is NSFW! Adebukola Bodunrin and Fred Sasaki have compiled the best of the worst, horrible to hilarious, boredom busting videos. An evening ranging from the tragic to the comedic; Fred will present the fabulous taboo, featuring hot Jewish girls, a Japanese erection, and dancing! Keep watching as Buki sticks it to the man with a collection featuring regular folks making videos while on the clock, those damn kids subverting and taking advantage of corporate identity, and even more dancing! Adebukola Bodunrin is a film, video, and installation artist who explores language, culture, and media. Bodunrin completed her Master of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been screened or exhibited nationally and internationally at venues that include the Jersey City Museum of Art, the Scope Art Fair, Onion City Film Festival, the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Festival Animator, Poland. She lives and works in Chicago. Fred Sasaki publishes humorous writing in places like Roctober, the Iowa Review, and MAKE. He is the associate editor of Poetry magazine. The YTA consists of screening web-based video for a live and participating audience. Each YTA features 2 hosts that use YouTube to elaborate on a point of interest relevant to their artwork or creative practice. After the "talk" the assembly opens for dialog, giving audience members the opportunity to pull up videos in response or that are relevant to the topic. It's halfway between an artist talk and film screening; yet goes beyond their conventions by channeling the social possibilities of the medium. -*-*-*- October 16th, 2011 NE CHANGE RIEN (CHANGE NOTHING) by Pedro Costa **Screened at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee, 4th Floor)** Post Screening Discussion by Johanthan Rosenbaum and Gabe Klinger Pedro Costa's most recent feature, Change Nothing, details the rehearsals and performances of singer-songwriter Jeanne Balibar and her group of avant-pop musicians, including French experimental rock icon Rodolphe Burger (Kat Onoma). Balibar, best-known in the U.S. as an actress in films by Arnaud Desplechin, Olivier Assayas, Jacques Rivette and others, has also led an experimental music career since 1999, producing two full-length albums and contributing to various soundtracks and collective works. Jonathan Rosenbaum writes of Change Nothing: "Leave it to Pedro Costa (In Vanda's Room, Colossal Youth) to achieve a painterly beauty with the oddest of formats, black-and-white digital video; his low-contrast imagery isolates the subjects in pools of warm shadow and gives them the haunting sense of existing outside of time. More an experimental feature than a documentary, the movie depicts [the band's] creative process as a series of discrete actions, each with its own logic. The results are mesmerizing, though rarely abstract: Costa, a former rock musician himself, understands the democratic impulse behind any good band and the simple grace of hard work." PROGRAM DETAILS: NE CHANGE RIEN (CHANGE NOTHING) directed by Pedro Costa (Portugal/France, 2009, 98 mins, black and white, digital video finished and presented in 35mm) Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic at The Chicago Reader for over 20 years, is the author of many important cinema texts including Midnight Movies (with J. Hoberman, 1983), Film: The Front Line 1983, Greed (1991), This is Orson Welles (as editor, 1992), Placing Movies, (1995), Movies as Politics (1997), Dead Man (2000), Movie Wars (2000), Abbas Kiarostami (with Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa), Movie Mutations (coedited with Adrian Martin, 2003), Essential Cinema (2004), Discovering Orson Welles (2007), The Unquiet American (2009), and Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia (2010). He was consultant in 1997-98 on a new version of Touch of Evil based on Orson Welles' postproduction memos, and in 2008 he established his own web site at jonathanrosenbaum.com. Gabe Klinger is a contributor to publications such as Cahiers du cinema Spain, Cinema Scope, Film Comment, Moving Image Source, and Sight & Sound. Special thanks to Jon Vickers and the Indiana University Cinema, whose retrospective of the films of Pedro Costa made this screening possible, and to Adam Sekuler of the Northwest Film Forum, Jonathan Rosenbaum, James Bond, Jeanne Balibar, and Pedro Costa. For more info on the IU Series: http://www.cinema.indiana.edu/?post_type=series&p=330 -*-*-*- October 12, 2011 VIDEO MUSICS II: SUN WU-KONG An Animated Video Opera by Alexis Gideon Building on his genre-busting animated/stop motion video opera Video Musics (2009 Sickroom(US) / Africantape(EU)), Alexis Gideon, after two years of dogged research and collaboration, is set to premiere that work's follow-up, Video Musics II: Sun Wu-Kong. A one-hour multimedia video opera based on the 16th-century Chinese novel The Journey to the West, Video Musics II joins the brightest lights of contemporary animation (Becca Taylor (Punk Planet, Arthur); Cynthia Star (Coraline, Moral Orel, Robot Chicken); Ezra Claytan Daniels (The Changers and Black Violet)) with the most promising talents of contemporary music (Rachel Blumberg (M Ward, Arch Cape); Cory Gray (Norfolk & Western, Carcrashlander); Shelley Short (Hush)) to create an aural and visual universe that gleefully transcends both media. Is it film or music, high art or pop? Gideon's work would fit snugly at either the Whitney Biennial or SXSW, which is to say it cannot be contained, really, by either venue. Marked throughout by the ambition, commitment to detail, and refusal to settle that have earned Gideon a cult following on both sides of the pond. Alexis Gideon has toured nationally with Dan Deacon and Shelley Short as well as played with Barr, Marnie Stern, Panther, Tune Yards Parts and Labor, Zs, People, Matt and Kim, and many, many others. -*-*-*- October 9th, 2011 CORN'S-A-POPPIN' **Screened at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee, 4th Floor)** Presented by NORTHWEST CHICAGO FILM SOCIETY A regional independent film? A country western musical? An early Robert Altman script? A roman a clef about real-life popcorn baron Charles Manley? A masterpiece? Corn's-A-Poppin' is all these things and more. Produced on the cheap in a Kansas City TV station (economically, it's also set largely in a TV station) by a band of young talent schooled in the production techniques of The Calvin Corporation, the Midwest's most innovative industrial film studio, Corn's-A-Poppin' is just about the most free-wheeling and sing-able hour of cinema we've ever seen. Down-home crooner Jerry Wallace plays Johnny Wilson, the star of the Pinwhistle Popcorn Hour, a half-pint (and half-hour) variety show with acts ranging from pro-hog caller Lillian Gravelguard to Hobie Shepp and His Cow Town Wranglers. Might the cornpone bookings be an act of sabotage by rogue PR man Waldo Crummit in a bid to gut the Pinwhistle Empire? It's up to Little Cora Rice to save the day. Songs include: "On Our Way to Mars," "Running After Love," and "Want a Balloon." Financed largely by regional showmen and probably not seen anywhere outside of Kansas City until 2007, Chicago's new cult classic will receive one triumphant last public screening before going on the restoration docket. Panel discussion to follow. PROGRAM DETAILS: CORN'S-A-POPPIN' Directed by Robert Woodburn, (1956, 58 min) Commonwealth Amusements Co., 35mm from Radio Cinema Film Archive The Northwest Chicago Film Society is an Illinois Not-For-Profit Organization. It exists to promote the preservation of film in context. Films capture the past uniquely. They hold the stories told by feature films, but also the stories of the industries that produced them, the places where they were exhibited, and the people who watched them. We believe that all of this history-not just of film, but of 20th century industry and culture-is more intelligible when it's grounded in unsimulated experience: seeing a film in a theater, with an audience, and projected from film stock. Films are programmed and projected by Julian Antos, Becca Hall, and Kyle Westphal http://northwestchicagofilmsociety.org -*-*-*- Tuesday, October 4, 2011 CHRIS CUELLAR Presented by Upgrade! Chicago Chris Cuellar is a Los Angeles (previously Chicago) based new-media artist, writer and provocateur. His works occupy various media simultaneously including www, installation, social-media and printed texts. His pieces, occasionally brain-busting but often conceptually simple, deal with themes of digital identity, distribution of information, labor, spam, networks and telepresence in a way that never fails to incite a re-evaluation of these issues. He has worked and performed for the Austin New Music Co-op in Austin, TX; the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hyde Park Art Center; the Red Rover Reading Series in Chicago; and Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn. Chris Cuellar will be presenting on a series he recently organized for the Art21 blog where he transformed the guest column into "a practical art-making resource" as well as a "vehicle for the undistribution of existing works." He asked a small group of artists to give away their secrets in the form of online tutorials. "Each how-to is meant to give the reader enough information to accurately reproduce the project presented." Furthermore, "in order to reduce issues of artistic ownership, each artist's contribution has been more or less 'anonymized' before posting, with as many overt references to the the individual artist or original project removed as possible." Cuellar asks why display a work when you can use a work? Why distribute copies when you can distribute a process? "Why buy a work, when you can just make it yourself?" Upgrade! Chicago is the local Chicago-based node of the international Upgrade! network, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. Upgrade! Chicago presents new media projects, engages in informal critique, and fosters dialogue and collaboration between individual artists. Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year. http://upgradechicago.org -*-*-*- September 27, 2011 FURY AT SHOWDOWN **Screened at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee, 4th Floor)** Presented by NORTHWEST CHICAGO FILM SOCIETY A severely underrated mini-masterpiece of a Western made by a director who would work in relative obscurity making some of the best episodes of The Fugitive, The Outer Limits, and Perry Mason a decade later, Fury at Showdown stars John Derek as a gunslinger looking to give up his life of crime and settle down on a cattle ranch. The best laid plans fall apart when Derek's brother is murdered on the orders of the town's land hungry lawyer Gage Clarke. Equally sincere, William S. Hart's 1915 two reeler The Ruse will precede the film, with live accompaniment by Seth Vanek on piano. Hart is a reformed gunfighter turned prospector, who travels to Chicago to collect on a business deal with a mine promoter who turns out to be crooked. PROGRAM DETAILS: FURY AT SHOWDOWN directed by Gerd Oswald (1957, 75 min, Robert Goldstein Productions, 16mm from the Radio Cinema Film Archive) Preshow Short: "The Ruse" directed by William S. Hart (1915, 16mm) With live accompaniment by Seth Vanek The Northwest Chicago Film Society is an Illinois Not-For-Profit Organization. It exists to promote the preservation of film in context. Films capture the past uniquely. They hold the stories told by feature films, but also the stories of the industries that produced them, the places where they were exhibited, and the people who watched them. We believe that all of this history-not just of film, but of 20th century industry and culture-is more intelligible when it's grounded in unsimulated experience: seeing a film in a theater, with an audience, and projected from film stock. Films Are Programmed and Projected by Julian Antos, Becca Hall, and Kyle Westphal -*-*-*- September 17th, 2011 GATE SHOCK New and Rare Films by Luther Price Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA For more than twenty-five years, Boston-area filmmaker, Luther Price, has been creating a raw and visceral body of work that challenges, infuriates, shocks, fascinates, and, sometimes, soothes viewers who have think they've seen it all. His is a gritty cinema: initially made in the intimate Super-8 format and now mostly in 16mm. It is a handcrafted cinema, with dozens of splices (which seem to want to fly apart at any moment), decayed and distressed footage (buried in the ground), and hand-painted frames (which shed a fine dust when projected). His is a scrappy cinema, which is mostly composed from found science, educational, porn, and other orphan films. Images are cobbled together between generous sections of leader and sound slug. His is a fuck-you cinema, which plunges head first into uncomfortable sexual imagery, discomforting medical footage, heartbreaking tales of loneliness and isolation, and a disdain for social mores. His is also a deeply moving, intimate, revelatory, soul-searching, and profound cinema, that often passes through the darkest dark to find some light, however faint. It is a cinema of catharsis. Program details are still in flux, but the screening will feature work that has never shown in Chicago before (and some that has never shown anywhere). It will be comprised mostly of brand new work, but may also include a few extremely rare earlier films. -*-*-*- September 16th, 2011 QUICKTIME PLAYBACK DEMO AND NETWORKING SESSION With Andrew Norm Wilson Andrew Norman Wilson will demonstrate how to play a variety of video formats with Quicktime Media Player. The videos themselves, several of which are brand new, will be informative and entertaining. They will highlight the following topics : -mobilizing people -demands for liberation -being someone and being flexible -negotiating the commodity sphere -demands for differentiation and demassification -anxiety about relationships: between friendship and business DJ Office Maxx (Benjamin Pearson) will crossfade the audio from the last video into his DJ set. This crossfade will commence the informal networking session, for which Heineken will be available. Andrew Norman Wilson currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.S. from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School of Public Communication. He is a 2011 recipient of the Dedalus Foundation MFA fellowship and the Edward Ryerson Fellowship. He has worked as a curator for Artists' Television Access in San Francisco, a video editor for Google at their headquarters in Mountain View, a researcher for the labor union UNITE HERE, and a video editor for filmmaker Craig Baldwin. Past exhibitions and presentations include the De Young Museum, The Banff Center, UCLA, UCSD, The Academy of Fine Arts Finland, The Sullivan Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, threewalls Gallery, and Other Cinema. http://andrewnormanwilson.com/ http://www.apple.com/quicktime/ http://andrewnormanwilson.com/ -*-*-*- September 13, 2011 THE INCIDENT **Screened at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee, 4th Floor)** Presented by NORTHWEST CHICAGO FILM SOCIETY Two young thugs (Tony Musante and Badlands' Martin Sheen in his first on screen role) terrorize passengers on a late night subway ride in New York City. What begins as a standard piece of inner city pulp quickly spirals into a delicate microcosm of New York City under pressure. Not available on DVD and reportedly never screened in England due to issues with the censors (surprising, as it shares a lot of political similarities with Lindsay Anderson's If... released just a year later), The Incident has maintained a small cult following from late night screenings on TV, but theatrical screenings are few and far between. This particular print last played at the New York Transit Museum and we can only assume that the attendees all took cabs home. With Beau Bridges, Ruby Dee, Jack Gilford, Thelma Ritter, and Jan Sterling. (JA) PROGRAM DETAILS: THE INCIDENT directed by Larry Peerce (1967, 107 min, 20th Century Fox, 16mm, permission Criterion) Preshow Cartoon: "Jerry's Cousin" (1951, Joseph Barbera, William Hanna, 35mm Technicolor) The Northwest Chicago Film Society is an Illinois Not-For-Profit Organization. It exists to promote the preservation of film in context. Films capture the past uniquely. They hold the stories told by feature films, but also the stories of the industries that produced them, the places where they were exhibited, and the people who watched them. We believe that all of this history-not just of film, but of 20th century industry and culture-is more intelligible when it's grounded in unsimulated experience: seeing a film in a theater, with an audience, and projected from film stock. Films Are Programmed and Projected by Julian Antos, Becca Hall, and Kyle Westphal -*-*-*- September 10th, 2011 pm POWER UP! A Chiptunes Events to Benefit PLAYPOWER.ORG A Chiptunes Concert, 8-bit Programming Workshop, & Sharing of Works/Wares 3.00pm-6.00pm - 8bit game design workshop w/ no-carrier ($25) 7.30pm - Doors open for performances (Tickets $10) 8.00pm-8.30pm - 8-bit open mic 8.30pm - Audio/Visual performances CHIPTUNES BY: Environmental Sound Collapse, Saskrotch, Kkrusty, Stagediver, Nom Star, & Ungertron REALTIME VIDEO BY: no-carrier, jon.satrom, & E.S.C PLAYPOWER is a non-profit organization that supports the creation and distribution of affordable, effective, fun learning games; using an existing $10 TV-computer as a platform for learning games in the developing world. It's hard to believe, but 8-bit home computers are still being sold. Millions of low-income kids in developing countries are enjoying systems that cost less than $10 and plug into a TV. PLAYPOWER wants to help kids by creating new 8-bit learning games. We've teamed up with awesome 8-bit artists, musicians and hackers to create an easier development toolkit and game design workshops. So far, we've accomplished a lot, designing, developing and field-testing games to teach typing, fun science facts, and malaria prevention-we've even got a prototype for teaching a bit of BASIC programming. We need your help to raise the funds to reach our goal! We've got a plan to reach one million children.. and it might just work. Here goes: 1. Order 10,000 custom cartridges (loaded with our games) from the pirate 8-bit game manufacturers in China 2. Resell the cartridges to wholesalers we've found in India, where they will end up in the market, reaching at least 10,000 kids... 3. Then, *if our games are good enough*, we sit back and let the manufacturers start pirating our games. Bing! One million points. I mean kids :) The equation is simple, even if it takes a bit of unpacking: PLAYPOWER = new 8-bit learning games * ($10 computer + millions of children) http://playpower.org/ http://powerup.playpower.org -*-*-*-*-*- September 8th, 2011 YOUTUBE ASSEMBLY: A 10 COURSE MEAL Featuring Catie Olson and Meg Duguid Presented by HOMEROOM CHICAGO The YTA consists of screening web-based video for a live and participating audience. Each YTA features 2 hosts that use YouTube to elaborate on a point of interest relevant to their artwork or creative practice. After the "talk" the assembly opens for dialog, giving audience members the opportunity to pull up videos in response or that are relevant to the topic. It's halfway between an artist talk and film screening; yet goes beyond their conventions by channeling the social possibilities of the medium. Meg Duguid was raised in Columbus, Ohio, and received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA in from Bard College. She has performed and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, the DUMBO Arts Festival in Brooklyn, and 667 Shotwell in San Francsiso. Duguid has screened work at Synthetic Zero in New York, Spiderbug in Chicago, and at the Last Supper Festival in Brooklyn. Duguid lives and works in Chicago, IL where she runs Clutch Gallery, a 25 square-inch white cube located in the heart of her purse. Catie Olson is multi-disciplinary artist born in Decatur, Illinois, the pleasant home of two chicken cars. She received her BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995 in Agriculture, ventured to Chicago and received her BFA at the School of the Art Institute in 2000. Catie organizes SpiderBug, a mobile short film festival, along with her husband, EC Brown. The pair also run Floor Length and Tux, an apartment art space. Catie has an animation that will be shown in the International Pancake Film Festival in Boston upcoming in July. She has shown work in Chicago including Heaven, Swimming Pool, antena and minidutch galleries. http://www.catieolson.com http://www.floorlengthandtux.com http://www.spiderbug.org -*-*-*-*-*- August 28th, 2011 ODE By Kelly Reichardt Introduced by Elena Gorfinkel Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Based on Herman Raucher's novel and screenplay (themselves based on Bobbie Gentry's song), Reichardt updates the narrative to the late 1990s and refocuses the theme to one of repressed gay sexuality. ODE (and two shorts which are currently officially unavailable) was made after Reichardt's first feature, RIVER OF GRASS (1996), while she was trying to secure funding for her next film, OLD JOY (2006)."Fleshed out by the languorous performances of Heather Gottlieb and Kevin Poole and keyed to a languid soundtrack by Will Oldham, ODE's chronicle of dim repression and dusky sexuality haunts its Southern landscape." (Pacific Film Archive) "Based on Herman Raucher's Ode to Billie Joe, which was inspired by Bobbie Gentry's hit song of the same name, ODE forms a link between Reichardt's debut RIVER OF GRASS and the better known OLD JOY. While trying to scrape together funds to make another feature film, Reichardt enlisted the help of her friend Susan Stover to make this Super 8-shot account of the legendary Billy Joe McAllister, who jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge in Mississippi in the 1960s. Transposing this Southern Gothic tale to the present day, ODE takes an unadorned yet lyrical approach to its exploration of gay sexual repression and teenage suicide." (Ontario Cinematheque) PROGRAM DETAILS: ODE (1999, 48 mins, color, video - shot on Super-8mm), Directed by Kelly Reichardt and produced by Susan Stover. Featuring Kevin Poole, Heather Gottlieb, and Jon Wurster. Elena Gorfinkel is Assistant Professor in Art History & Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. With John David Rhodes, she has edited Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image (University of Minnesota Press, Nov 2011). Her writing on cult, experimental and art films, cinephilia, women's filmmaking and corporeal cinema has appeared in Framework, Cineaste, World Picture, Electric Sheep, Camera Obscura (forthcoming) and in several edited collections. She is currently writing a book about 1960s sexploitation films. -*-*-*-*-*- August 27th, 2011 JUANJOSE RIVAS Presented by UPGRADE! CHICAGO Juanjose Rivas is a is a Noise && Dirty New Media Artist based in Mexico City. His experimental music, video art projects, and realtime audio video performances have been screened and performed internationally. From his recent performance at BENT Festival in NYC to his current and previous engagements in the Chicago scene, Rivas brings a visceral digitalPunk energy to every event. For his screening at the Nightingale, he will be showing selections from his personal and collaborative projects. Rivas teaches video and cybernetics at Universidad Centro in Mexico City, runs dorkbot Mexico City and will be participating in the Festival de Mœsica Electr—nica Latina while in Chicago. http://www.juanjoserivas.info http://www.dorkbotcdmexico.org http://fmelchicago.org -*-*-*-*-*- July 30th, 2011 OH, THE PLACES I'VE BEEN Films by Jason Halprin The Nightingale says Happy Trails to a trusty friend Though he is best known for his commitment to the small gauge format of Super-8mm, Halprin began as a video artist, and still occasionally strays into optically printed and hand-processed 16mm work. Made over the past 14 years in over 35 US states and a few foreign countries, this program highlights his continued exploration of how geography, both physical and creative, is manifested in the moving image. Halprin's work is influenced by the way humans are affected by their immediate surroundings, and how the shape of a location can impact social interaction and lifestyle. Though his cinematic journey has a strong presence in urban environments, Halprin says, the open air is really where his artistic heart lies: "cities and wilderness both open cerebral pathways that might otherwise not be taken, and the movement between them has a profound impact on thought patterns...as for me, I am haunted by landscape." Work Included: Untitled #1 (1997, 2 min, video) God Lives In My Pocket (1998, 5 min, video) Willie J.C. as Prey (1998, 3 min, video) Summer Home (2001, 5 min, 16mm/Super 8 on video) Babbette's Folly w/ Jeremy Bessoff & Kate Raney (2004, 8 min, video) Twin Propellers (2010, 3 min, dual-projection Super 8) Mylar Balloon Rip-off (2007, 3 min, Super 8) Shoot Out the Star (2010, 4 min, Super 8) War Heb Je Voor Het Gekeken (2004, 8 min, 16mm) Agnes & Me: a self-portrait (2011, 7 min, 16mm on video) Marathon Day '08 (work-in-progress, 12 min, Super 8 on video) I Colonize the Golden Triangle (from behind glass) (work-in-progress, 7 min, Super 8 on video) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ July 22nd, 2011 MUSIC ON TV An Outsider's History, 1965-1975 Curated by Jeff Martin & Carolyn Faber "In the 1960s, American television was dominated by three networks, who showcased major stars in slick, glossy shows with high production values. But from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s alternatives to network music shows began to appear. Regional programming and syndicated shows featured a range of stellar talent that the networks ignored, while local programs featured purely local talent aimed at developing new audiences. Some devised entirely new means of visualizing music in ways that closely paralleled the work of pioneering video artists like Nam June Paik, Joan Jonas, et. al. This screening will showcase rarely seen programs demonstrating a short-lived period of innovation and creativity in television, where performers outside the American network mainstream reached audiences that the mass media were ignoring.' "The program will start with the high-budget network shows of the mid-1960s-including clips from the pioneering but rarely-seen ABC show "Shindig," move through syndicated shows ranging from the first true music videos ever seen on television, to a right-wing singing group performing "Crystal Blue Persuasion" on a show called "America's Young Majority," and local shows including "Startime," a Knoxville show sponsored by a mobile-home company that featured Tennessee's version of the Partridge Family singing "Funk #49"-not to mention Chicago's own "Kiddie A Go-Go." -Carolyn Faber & Jeff Martin Jeff Martin has been working in archives for two decades, beginning with a stint as a $5/hour intern at WPA Film Library in lovely suburban Alsip, where he spent hours viewing 1950s Kodachrome stock footage, British newsreels, and best of all, vintage 1960s music TV shows featuring everyone from Etta James to Michael Landon-some of which will be included in the screening. He now works primarily in conserving video and film installation art, and is currently carrying out projects at the Smithsonian Institution, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Seattle Museum of Art. Recent projects include an assessment and preservation plan for the audiovisual materials in the archive of Nam June Paik. Carolyn Faber also cut her teeth at the WPA Film Library starting in the mid-1990s. She managed 60+ film and video collections including: the acquisition of 2,000 2" masters of country music television shows owned by Willie Nelson; a full run of The!!!!Beat; Hullabaloo; Soul!; Scopitones, Soundies and other gems. Over the past 9 years she has worked on archival projects for National Geographic, The Smithsonian Institution, the Chicago Film Archives, the Media Burn Independent Video Archive and others. Currently she is the Film and Media Technician at the School of the Art Institute's Flaxman Library, and works with Kartemquin Films towards preserving their extensive archive of landmark documentary films. She is weeks away from completing a Masters degree in Library and Information Science. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 23rd, 2011 PERFORMANCE POST APPROPRIATION Exchange Screening Chicago-Berlin Curated by Rebecca Loyche Organized by Eric Fleischauer Introduced by Jason Burgess from MMX Performance art is still thriving despite the bombardment of an oversaturated media culture, where so called reality is pumped out of TV shows and do it yourself web video postings. Artists are turning to devices that surround our everyday lives and using them as their props, their sets, and mediums to make performance work. This screening program shows a wide range of performances either made in front of the camera, to document the actions or manipulating found footage of others performing. Performing is all about the staging of the action and this selection of videos embraces the exciting diversity of just that. The videos in this program are part of a Berlin/Chicago Exchange between Eric Fleischauer and the one-year art space MMX Open Art Venue in Berlin. PROGRAM DETAILS: IT'S THREE IN THE AFTERNOON by Andrew de Freitas (1:21) POP ACTIVISM by Elizabeth Wurst (7:13) ART APPRECIATION (Jeff Koons) by Eric Fleischauer (1:00) KOOL-AID MAN IN SECOND LIFE: In Search of the Virtual Sublime by Jon Rafman (11:43) MIM ANDAR AVENIDA CANADA (video documentation for an action) by Zachary Fabri (3:45) TELL ME THE TRUTh by Inez de Vega (2:39) BUSCANDO al Sr. GOODBAR by Michelle Teran (5:00) I HATE THIS TOWN by Nicolas Provost (2:00) BALANCE STUDY by Jacob Tonski (1:00) KISS (from The Pocahontas State Park Series) by Cari Freno (1:50) PUKE NARRATION by Hugh Walton (4:18) GESICHTSMUSIK by Ben Kinsley (2:22) BLISS AND HEAVEN by Jesper Just (7:42) LOOKING THROUGH TOM CRUISE'S EYES by David Sherry (3:50) MMX Open Art Venue is an artist run, non-profit space that existed for one year in Berlin's commercial gallery street Linienstrasse in Mitte. It occupied the one of the last untouched, unrenovated buildings left on Linienstrase. The art space transformed out of a squatted dilapidated building into one of Berlin's most popular alternative art scenes overnight. During its one-year tenure MMX concentrated on presenting talented but underexposed art throughout their +1000sqm space with it's several gallery rooms, video screening room, a music venue space, a back courtyard, and one of the only front gardens in the district. MMX brought people and art together by presenting exhibitions, film screenings, lectures, musical and dance performances, and unique weekly events. Last summer, as part of MMX Show V, Eric Fleischauer curated a screening of Chicago-based artists whose work addressed ideas around lacking and longing. Titled DEFENESTRATION the program featured videos by Jesse McLean, Yoni Goldstein & Meredith Zielke, Steve Reinke, Ben Russell, Chelsea Welch, Warren Cockerham, Todd Simeone, and Jason Lazarus playing on a continuous loop in the gallery's screening room. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 16th, 2011 THE COMPLETE FILMS OF FRED CAMPER Program Two: SN Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA White Light Cinema and The Nightingale are extremely pleased to present these very rare public screenings of the complete films of Fred Camper. Camper has been a thoughtful and articulate writer on film for over forty years (much of his writing is available on his website) and, more recently, has been producing an astonishing body of digital artworks. His earlier filmmaking practice, however, is little known. Long out of distribution (some never in distribution), his short 16mm and Super-8mm films have not been publicly screened for decades. And this presentation of his stunning feature-length Super-8mm film SN is only its third-ever public showing. These films may not be screened again for many years, due to their irreplaceability. PROGRAM DETAILS: SN (1984, c.110 mins., S8, silent) "SN was born out of an intense personal despair, and a desire to depict a failure of the self, coincident with my discovery of super-8 as a medium completely different from 16mm, well suited to a kind of analog for the written diary. Its images' natural lack of illusionistic presence and authority contributes to the failure theme. The original plan for the film would have required perhaps twenty years of full time work and a great deal of money, leading to a very long film only a small part of which would have been screened each time, selections made with a controlled use of random numbers. What I show now is in ten sections, and in the eighth, on three short reels, a tiny piece of the original plan survives: sixteen shorts serve as the source for this section, and which three are screened and the order in which they are screened at each showing is determined randomly. I have no final prints of any of SN; most sections are edited workprint or edited original, and are thus not exactly as they were intended to look. Still, I believe in it as a film. In part a portrait of Manhattan's constricted spaces, and more generally of the way humans occupy space, it also presents the failed journey of a self to organize, or become present in, the world. The film has only been screened publicly twice before, and will likely only be screened rarely in its original format in the future." (Fred Camper) Fred Camper has been writing and publishing on cinema since the late 1960s, and on art since the late 1980s. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, and presented film programs throughout the world. For the last six years, he has mainly concentrated on making his own art, mostly photo based digital prints; cinema is one key inspiration. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 15th, 2011 FIREWALL OF SOUND Presented as part of CIMMfest The internet has destroyed the music industry. The internet has revitalized the music industry. These contradictory statements are equally true, and Firewall of Sound charts the efforts of independent bands, labels, and retailers to navigate this ever-changing landscape, each trying to embrace (or at least stay ahead of) developments from MySpace to viral marketing to underground venues. Features interviews with Neutral Milk Hotel, the Mountain Goats, the AV Club's Nathan Rabin, and others. PROGRAM DETAILS: FIREWALL OF SOUND directed by Devin DiMattia (2010, USA, 63 min., Video, Documentary, Chicago premiere) Director Devin DiMattia, AV Club writers Nathan Rabin and Josh Modell in person! _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 15th, 2011 DREAM FACTORY Presented as part of CIMMfest "If these guitars are produced under poor working conditions, can you still enjoy playing them?' Laid-off workers for the South Korean guitar company that makes budget lines for the world's major brands occupy their factory, attracting the attention of crusading musicians Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) and Wayne Kramer (The MC5). Beyond their status as displaced workers, Dream Factory reveals these workers as people with dreams that may not have included breathing toxic varnish fumes so that Western workers wouldn't have to. It also reveals the next generation of outsourcing, as countries who received the first wave of industrial manufacturing jobs find themselves losing those industries to even less developed labor markets. PROGRAM DETAILS: DREAM FACTORY directed by Kim Sung-Kyun (2010, South Korea, 85 min., Video, Documentary, US Premiere) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 8th & 9th, 2011 THE CITY IN WHICH A Chicago Cine Poem based on the work of Lee Young-Li THE CITY IN WHICH is an expanded cinema project based on Chicago poet Li-Young Lee's "The City In Which I Love You". The intersections: Where the curiosity and vision of twelve emerging filmmakers meet a poem set in our hometown. How a whirring projector sings with verses read aloud. Where image and language stride side streets together, navigating an intimate and abstract emotional topography of our city. Joshua Dumas and Christy LeMaster distributed fresh rolls of 16mm film to a dozen experimental filmmakers, asking them to respond to the poem and to their own experience of living and making in Chicago. The resulting footage will be spliced into a combined short accompanied by a reading of the poem by Joshua, a performance built from and informed by the filmmakers' images. A program of cine-poems, curated by Christy, will round out the evening. The screening will include work by Humprey Jennings, Stan Vanderbeek, Michael Langan, and Jennifer Reeves, among others. Participating Filmmakers: Melika Bass MCA 12x12 artist, Ann Arbor Film Festival's 48th AAFF Tour Jeremy Bessoff 2010 Artist-in-residence at High Concept Labs Thomas Comerford Conversations at the Edge, Siskel Film Center 2010 Carolyn Faber Views From The Avant-Garde 2009, Onion City 2009 Lori Felker Rotterdam International Film Festival 2011 Scott Foley Wisconsin Film Festival, Ohio International Doc Film Fest Jason Halprin Images Festival 2009, Media City 2008, CUFF 2008 Emily Irvine Student SAIC Marianna Milhorat Best Experimental- CUFF 2010 Kate Raney Broad Shoulders Tour 2010 Jerzy Rose Best Narrative Short-Chicago Underground Film Festival 2009 Daniéle Wilmouth Conversations at the Edge, Siskel Film Center 2010 Joshua Dumas is a composer, artist, and writer in Chicago. He co-founded the street performance troupe the Summer is for Fireflies, and has played on a dozen records and in dingy rock clubs nationwide. Recently he has had honor of composing for Caffeine Theatre, New Beast Theatre, Vintage Collective, and Theatre Run. Dumas was composer and co-devisor of an experimental semi-opera that the Chicago Reader named "Best New Theatrical Form 2010." He podcasts poems at Pieces of the Storm _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ The NIGHTINGALE TURNS 3! Gear Up For a Musical Birthday Weekend! ~~~~~~~***~~~~~~~ April 3rd, 2011 WILLIE NELSON'S 4th OF JULY CELEBRATION **Screened at Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee, 4th Floor)** As a gift for our birthday, a friend of The Nightingale will present a well-kept 35mm print of the rarely seen WILLIE NELSON'S 4th OF JULY CELEBRATION, a filmed document of one of Willie's legendary picnics/concerts/free-for-alls. Long embroiled in a dispute between the director and financier, the film is essentially unavailable anywhere on video. "At Willie's bash, whilst tens of thousands of Texas bumpkins party and picnic all national holiday-long, Russell progressively becomes the true character and star of the show by gradually becoming drunker and, inevitably, more entertaining to watch. The toe-tapping litany of Willie's assembled musical guests perform on a red, white and blue stage sponsored by Lone Star Beer, and Russell is never seen without a can-full of the stuff, in hand (though, he eventually graduates to Budweiser, then a suspiciously discreet Coca-Cola cup). Roving the stage, Russell hovers unawares of his own presence-often, obstructing sightlines and pestering performers (this includes undressing some as they play). He doesn't even really make it through a whole song, by himself. It's wonderful. Willie, for his part, is the smooth 1970s country crooner: hunk-ily handsome and heartbreakingly good; not yet his gentle stoner-Gramps-self of today. Those unfamiliar with Willie's live performances will marvel at the fireworks display his chops ignite on that beat-up Spanish guitar. The film's music is infective, especially when Doug "the Ragin' Cajun" Kershaw shows up in full Austin Powers velour and pirate-dickie, and-full of all the swirling energy of a 'Looze-ana' hurricane-steals the show with his brand of wild bayou fiddling. Willie's dear compadre Waylon Jennings shows up, too, performing several hits including his Willie-hommage, Willie the Wandering Gypsy. As the show climaxes with the requisite 'everyone-on-stage' finale, even Jennings has become pretty recreationally zonked, with his half-open eyelids giving him a devilish aura." -Walter Forsberg "...WILLIE NELSON'S 4th OF JULY CELEBRATION was already nostalgia when it premiered in the summer of '79, around the same time that Willie was becoming an actor in earnest and recording Tin Pan Alley schmaltz. The film flashes back to the second picnic, an open-air affair in College Station, Texas, 1974, at the crossover moment of longhair outlaw country... Nelson's setlist draws heavily on the previous year's album, Shotgun Willie, with a jam-extended "Funny How Time Slips Away"/"Night Life" medley prototyping the one on 1976's The Sound in Your Mind. There's dark, grave, steady Waylon Jennings, his rhythm section seeming an unbending, eternal fact of life, and gamboling fiend-with-a-fiddle Doug Kershaw, dressed in the bayou version of Edwardian dandyism, winking, bounding his big bouffanted head, enunciating with delectation, hotfoot jigging, and shredding bows on "Diggy Diggy Lo." Nelson, Jennings, and Kershaw, all prewar-born with pre-hippie hits, hold the stage with an authority that featured young'uns B.W. Stevenson and Michael Martin Murphey haven't earned; the Lost Gonzo Band, though, reconciles palatably 'literate' lyrics with shitkicker swing."- Nick Pinkerton, Villlage Voice PROGRAM DETAILS: WILLIE NELSON'S 4TH OF JULY CELEBRATION Directed by Werner Brandt (1979, 100 minutes, 35mm) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ The NIGHTINGALE TURNS 3! Gear Up For a Musical Birthday Weekend! ~~~~~~~***~~~~~~~ April 2nd, 2011 GIANT SYSTEM Featuring JOAN OF ARC Help us celebrate our third birthday! The genius boys behind GIANT SYSTEM will present a screening of their favorite vids- all featuring Chicago bands we know and love. Then after the screening, we will take a quick break and make room for JOAN OF ARC. Giant System will shoot their next episode with The Nightingale crowd playing a studio audience. Plenty of chaos and cake ahead! GIANT SYSTEM makes motion pictures of bands playing their songs in their spaces. Each episode is shot live in Chicago with a small hardworking crew of folks who are stoked to be creating something unique with each band. This project is Kyle Obriot's baby and the god-child of Justin Schmitz. The two have been working on films together since '04, with Obriot as the director and Schmitz as the Director of Photography. Rounding out the team is Jon "Zeke" Zychowski on Camera and Sound Engineer, Zach Goheen. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 23rd, 2011 I AM BACK Recent Work by Nicholas O'Brien During the course of the evening, Nicholas O'Brien will weave a conversation and lecture around his recent screen based works. These routes will range from a reading of an online conversation about mediated spatial awareness, screening samples from an ongoing video blog, presenting a pecha-kucha style lecture on the show Breaking Bad, as well as showing a VHS love letter sent to a distant, yet familial, stranger. The evening will enfold over the course of interlinking monologues discussing loss/return, finding sincerity in flippant formats, discovering self through cultural history, excavating digital landscapes, and employing wit to both disarm and embrace. Nicholas O'Brien is a writer, curator, and artist currently living and working in Boulder and online. He received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently getting his MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder where he also teaches Digital Art production and theory. His work has appeared both nationally and internationally, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Xth Biennial in Lyon, The Interferenze Festival in Bisaccia, Italy, and USC's Ed and Gayle Roski MFA Gallery. doubleunderscore.net _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 20th, 2011 KITTENS, BISCUITS, & BLOTS Films by Luther Price Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA One of the key experimental film artists of the last 25 years, Luther Price gained notoriety for his late 80s and early 90s Super-8mm films, works that pushed the boundaries of good taste with their deliberately crude construction (mostly from found footage) and their often troubling imagery (extreme gay porn, surgical footage, etc.). Over the past decade or so he has switched to 16mm and if his source material is tamer, the intensity of his films is not. Price continues to create a raw, visceral cinema full of uneasy tensions and heartbreak. Tonight's program features one of his most ambitious films of recent years, KITTENS GROW UP, in which Price intercuts two found films, one about kittens and one about an alcoholic husband and father, finding strange connections and shared themes. It is an unexpectedly moving and resonant film about innocents. Also showing are two films from the extended "Biscuit" series. Price utilizes multiple prints about elder care, disassembling and reassembling them in fragmented, staccato form to find a strange musicality and beauty in the unexceptional documentary footage. Price does not resort to irony or ill attempts at humor. Instead the elders in the films are presented with remarkable grace and humaneness, accentuated by Price's editing. The final films on the program are examples of Price's recent practice of either handpainting directly on found film (the Inkblot films), finding visual rhythms and textures very different from Stan Brakhage's handpainted works, or burying films in the ground to destabilize the emulsion, which sloughs off in random patches to beautiful effect. "In the near future, perhaps "a Luther Price film" will consist of getting a speck of dust in your eye in some dark alley. Late at night. Far from home. That's a compliment." (Michael Sicinski, 2007) PROGRAM DETAILS: KITTENS GROW UP (2007, 30 mins., 16mm) THE BISCUIT DAY (2007, 12 mins., 16mm) SUFFERING BISCUITS (2007, 20 mins., 16mm) THE BISCUIT SONG (INKBLOT #11) (2008, approx. 8 mins., 16mm) SAL MINEO AT SEA (INKBLOT #19) (2008, approx. 8 mins., 16mm) AFTER THE GARDEN OF EADEN (2007, approx. 8 mins., 16mm) DUSTY RICKETS (2007, approx. 8 mins., 16mm) This program is drawn from two screenings in the Walking Picture Palace series, programmed by Mark McElhatten and presented at Anthology Film Archives in 2010. Special thanks to Mark McElhatten, Steve Polta (San Francisco Cinematheque), and Luther Price. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 8th, 2011 I LOVE PRESETS With DUPLICATES After battling a renegade tribe of yetis hell-bent on stealing I Love Presets's gear during Chicago's Snowpocalypse 2011, Rob Ray, Jon Satrom, and Jason Soliday are back at the Nightingale for an evening of realtime audio/video. Duplicates, a collaboration between: Joseph Kramer and Ryan Dunn will kick off the evening at 8:00 p.m. - - - - - March 7th, 2011 UPGRADE! CHICAGO Featuring Jon Satrom & Ben Syverson What happens when artists build a computer to crash? Jon Satrom and Ben Syverson have designed an entire operating system for just such a purpose, to make Glitch Art from a "100% problem-based operating system"! These two Chicago based artists and programers have exhibited their work internationally, most recently exhibited in the Funware exhibition at MU in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Combining humor and criticality, Satrom and Syverson's projects cross boundaries between computer programming, commercial software design, Glitch Art, Noise and New Media Art. Satrom and Syverson will present and discuss their work at the Upgrade! Chicago, an ongoing series of New Media Art events at The Nightingale. Jon Satrom and Ben Syverson created the sOS or Satromizer Operating System, which was recently exhibited and performed in the Funware exhibition at MU in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Combining humor and criticality, Satrom and Syverson's projects cross boundaries between code-based approaches, functional commercial artware, Glitch Art, Noise and New Media Art: http://satromizer.com/sOS/ http://aaaan.net/funware/mu-eindhoven-nl-funware/ Jon Satrom performs realtime audio/video, spends time data-bending, makes kludgey work-flows, creates colorful glitch-ware: http://jonsatrom.com Ben Syverson created the Satromizer for iPhoneª, the world's first multitouch glitch tool: http://satromizer.com Nick Briz, an organizer of GLI.TC/H and curator/participant in the Critical Glitch Artware event, will moderate the discussion following presentations by the artists: http://www.nickbriz.com Upgrade ! Chicago is the local Chicago-based node of the international Upgrade! network, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. Upgrade! Chicago presents new media projects, engages in informal critique, and fosters dialogue and collaboration between individual artists. Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year. It is organized by jonCates. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 4th, 2011 THE COMPLETE FILMS OF FRED CAMPER Program One: A Sense of the Past Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Fred Camper has been a thoughtful and articulate writer on film for over forty years (much of his writing is available on his website) and, more recently, has been producing an astonishing body of digital artworks. His earlier filmmaking practice, however, is little known. Long out of distribution (some never in distribution), his short 16mm and Super-8mm films have not been publicly screened for decades. PROGRAM DETAILS: JOAN GOES TO MISERY (1967, 8 minutes, 16mm, sound) A SENSE OF THE PAST (1967, 4 minutes, 16mm, silent) DAN POTTER (1968, 39 minutes, 16mm, silent) WELCOME TO COME (1968, 3 minutes, 16mm, sound) BATHROOOM (1969, 25 minutes, 16mm, silent) GHOST (1976, 1 minute, super-8, silent) "My five early 16mm films were made in a two year period when I was between 19 and 21, after I had been interested in cinema for only a few years. Each of my early films is somewhat different. JOAN GOES TO MISERY was actually commissioned by a television show that wanted an "underground" film. It's my only film with a narrative, one with psychological overtones, and, like the others, shows influences from both classical Hollywood and avant-garde filmmaking. A SENS EOF THE PAST was shot without pre-planning during a long weekend reading Henry James, and I would like to think that its form was somewhat influenced by his passive descriptions that seem to both evoke and conceal great, not fully articulated, traumas. DAN POTTER, showing a young man in the woods, was shot over many months as the landscape changes from summer to winter. Though not a portrait, it was inspired by the way Gregory J. Markopoulos's portraits in Galaxie intermingle the identities of his figures with objects around them; less obvious influences are F.W. Murnau's Tabu and the relationships between figures and backgrounds in the films of Howard Hawks. WELCOME TO COME, which depicts a somewhat mysterious transformation of the image in the course of a single zoom, was my only film to achieve a small measure of "popularity," with a short write up in Variety and prints purchased by several film teachers who still show it today. BATHROOM shows a somewhat seedy bathroom, beginning with a stab at seeing it "objectively" that soon fails; the forms descend into what I hope is a terrifying, even self-destroying irrationality. One inspiration was the long take depiction of madness at the end of Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour; another, the two out-of-focus shots of the altar near the end of Douglas Sirk's The First Legion. The program ends with my less-than-one-minute long super-8 film Ghost, which leads to a fleeting final image I hope worthy of its title, and which will be screened twice in a row, my usual practice with this film." (Fred Camper) Fred Camper has been writing and publishing on cinema since the late 1960s, and on art since the late 1980s. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, and presented film programs throughout the world. For the last six years, he has mainly concentrated on making his own art, mostly photo based digital prints; cinema is one key inspiration. His Web site is www.fredcamper.com. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 2nd, 2011 AN INJURY TO ONE An Experimental Doc by Travis Wilkerson Shown In Solidarity Possible Second Screening Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA White Light Cinema and The Nightingale are pleased to present Travis Wilkerson's stunning 2002 experimental essay/documentary film AN INJURY TO ONE. Given the current events in our neighboring states to the north and east, this powerful film about a compelling episode in early labor rights and union organizing history is timely and telling. PROGRAM DETAILS: AN INJURY TO ONE by Travis Wilkerson (2002, 53 mins., 16mm) "AN INJURY TO ONE provides a corrective-and absolutely compelling-glimpse of a particularly volatile moment in early 20th century American labor history: the rise and fall of Butte, Montana. Specifically, it chronicles the mysterious death of Wobbly organizer Frank Little, a story whose grisly details have taken on a legendary status in the state. Much of the extant evidence is inscribed upon the landscape of Butte and its surroundings. Thus, a connection is drawn between the unsolved murder of Little, and the attempted murder of the town itself. Butte's history was entirely shaped by its exploitation by the Anaconda Mining Company, which, at the height of WWI, produced ten percent of the world's copper from the town's depths. War profiteering and the company's extreme indifference to the safety of its employees (mortality rates in the mines were higher than in the trenches of Europe) led to Little's arrival. "The agitator" found in the desperate, agonized miners overwhelming support for his ideas, which included the abolishment of the wage system and the establishment of a socialist commonwealth. In August 1917, Little was abducted by still-unknown assailants who hung him from a railroad bridge. Pinned to his chest was a note that read 3'-7'-77", dimensions of a Montana grave. Eight thousand people attended his funeral, the largest in Butte's history. The murder provides AN INJURY TO ONE with a taut, suspenseful narrative, but it isn't the only story. Butte's history is bound with the entire history of the American left, the rise of McCarthyism, the destruction of the environment, and even the birth of the detective novel. Former Pinkerton detective Dashiell Hammett was rumored to have been involved in the murder, and later depicted it in Red Harvest. Archival footage mixes with deftly deployed intertitles, while the lyrics to traditional mining songs are accompanied by music from William Oldham, Jim O'Rourke, and the band Low, producing an appropriately moody, effulgent, and strangely out-of-time soundtrack. The result is a unique film/video hybrid that combines painterly images, incisive writing, and a bold graphic sensibility to produce an articulate example of the aesthetic and political possibilities offered by filmmaking in the digital age." (Icarus Films) "A deft, ambitious exercise in old-school socialist agitprop crafted with the precise multimedia flair of a corporate PowerPoint presentation, Travis Wilkerson's An Injury to One retells the gritty class struggles of the previous century through smoothly contemporary digital means. It chronicles the saga of environmentally devastated Butte, Montana, by focusing on the murder of Frank Little, spitfire World War I-era Wobbly organizer. Via Wilkerson's parade of archival dataÑphotos, songs, landscapes, quotations, text, and charts-the Little affair grows into a metaphor for the greater course of American and global capitalism." (Ed Halter, Village Voice) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 26th, 2011 THE AGONAL PHASE By Jennifer Montgomery Showing with DECODINGS by Michael Wallin Post-screening conversation with Gregg Bordowitz PROGRAM DETAILS: THE AGONAL PHASE by Jennifer Montgomery (2010, HD video, 44 minutes) "In the aftermath of a death things may seem very quiet, but there are struggles going on so deep not even those who struggle can recognize them. This film looks and listens for signs of those struggles. Psychoanalytic interjections consider the nature of time and rumination, and are used to step outside of the terribly interiorized state of mourning." -JM "The agonal phase: the visible events that take place when life is in the act of extricating itself from protoplasm too compromised to sustain it any longer. They are like some violent outbursts of protest arising deep in the primitive unconscious raging against the too-hasty departure of the spirit; no matter its preparation by even months of antecedent illness, the body often is reluctant to agree to the divorce." -Sherwin Nuland, from How We Die DECODINGS by Michael Wallin (1988, b/w 16mm sound, 16 minutes) "Wallin's achievement in Decodings is to create a powerfully inventive work that conveys with dramatic intensity strong feelings of remembrance and loss from images that have been extracted from the culture. ... Wallin has succeeded in creating from various film sources a work that emphasizes the fragility and ultimate vulnerability of human expression and relationships." - John G. Hanhardt, Whitney Biennial catalogue, 1989 "Michael Wallin's Decodings is a profoundly moving, allegorical search for identity from the documents of collective memory, in this case, found footage from the '40s and '50s. ... The search for self ends in aching poignancy with stills of a boy and his mother at the kitchen table, catching the moment that marks the dawning of anguish and loss; desire becomes imprinted on that which was long ago." - Manohla Dargis, The Village Voice Jennifer Montgomery's film titles include Deliver (2008), Notes on the Death of Kodachrome (2006), Threads of Belonging (2003), Transitional Objects (2000), Troika (1998), Art For Teachers of Children (1995), I, a Lamb (1992), Age 12: Love With a Little L (1990), and Home Avenue (1989). Her newest film, The Agonal Phase (2010), recently premiered at the New York Film Festival. These films range from experimental essays to experimental features, and are distributed by Zeitgeist Films, Waterbearer Films, Women Make Movies, and Video Data Bank. Her work has shown at international festivals, as well as the 2008 Whitney Biennial (NYC), MoMA (NYC), the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago), the ICA (London), and the Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis). She has been the recipient of many grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. She currently lives in Chicago. Michael Wallin has been at the nerve center of San Francisco filmmaking since the late sixties, when he studied with Bruce Baillie, James Broughton and Peter Kubelka; he was for years a co-manager of the Canyon Cinema Cooperative. He wasa recipient of the 1988 Phelan Art Awards in Filmmaking. Robert Anbian in Release Print described Wallin's films as "intensely personal, autobiographical works [which] seek a kind of metaphoric transformation in the manipulated film image." Gregg Bordowitz is a writer and artist. His most recent project is an opera conceived as a collaboration with the artist Paul Chan, titled "The History of Sexuality Volume One By Michel Foucault: An Opera," which premiered October 1 and 2, 2010 in Vienna, Austria. Bordowitz is the director and librettist for the opera. Afterall Books published his most recent book titled Imagevirus (2010), about the Canadian conceptual art group General Idea. Volition (2009), published by Printed Matter is a volume consisting entirely of questions. It's a work of philosophy, poetry, or neither depending on how you look at it. The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings 1986-2003 was published by MIT Press in the fall of 2004. His films, including Fast Trip Long Drop (1993), A Cloud In Trousers (1995), The Suicide (1996), and Habit (2001) have been widely shown in festivals, museums, movie theaters and broadcast internationally. Professor Bordowitz is currently the Chair of the Film, Video, New Media, and Animation Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he is on the faculty of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 25th, 2011 DEVELOPING YOUR PROJECT FOR ITVS With Richard Saiz Part of IFP/Chicago's 2011 Producers' Series As the single biggest funder of independent documentaries on television, the Independent Television Service is indispensable for filmmakers seeking major funding for their projects. This three-hour seminar hosted by IFP, is a rare opportunity for independent directors and producers to learn the essential concepts and principles that could help make your documentary project more competitive. Case studies, video samples, and valuable handouts will help prepare you for the Open Call application process. Richard Saiz is Senior Programming Manager for ITVS, managing Open Call, the organization's largest funding initiative. Each year, he reviews more than 400 proposals from independent filmmakers throughout the country. He has more than 35 years experience as a broadcast journalist, producer, director and writer. His documentaries have won numerous awards, including the DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton and Best TV Documentary from the San Francisco International Film Festival. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 20th, 2011 Screened at CINEMA BOREALIS THE GRANDFATHER TRILOGY By Allen Ross Preservation Prints Presented by Carolyn Faber PROGRAM DETAILS: PAPA, THANKSGIVING 1979, & BURIELS (U.S., 1979-81, 65m, 16mm) Allen Ross was at the center of Chicago's independent film community during the 1980s and early 90s. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he co-founded Chicago Filmmakers in 1973. His most accomplished film, Grandfather Trilogy is one of the most significant, under-recognized films to come out of the Chicago experimental filmmaking community. It is a deeply personal and resonant example of cinematic portraiture that is unlike any of his other work. In his own words, "One of the ways I see the trilogy is as a radical approach to portraiture. Most of Papa was shot without looking through the viewfinder. There were, however, many accidents that happened while the camera was turned on. The film plays for me as a long sustained accident. I am grateful for this photographic record of a divinely shadowed presence. It is a reflection of a kind of space my grandfather generated." "The Grandfather Trilogy is a portrait of Allen Ross's grandfather in Bowling Green, South Carolina. It is described as a 'profoundly moving work, an attempt to come to terms with death as an event in the living world...The films abound with images which suggest stasis, absence, silence, horizontality, oneness with the earth: a catalog of the conditions of death from the point of view of the living.'" - Nosowitz, Millenium Film Journal The film was preserved by Chicago Filmmakers, with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation and support from the Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago. Preservation work done by Bill Brand (BB Optics). Project coordination by archivist Carolyn Faber and Chicago Filmmakers' Executive Director Brenda Webb. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 11th, 2011 CREATIVE CAPITAL GRANT INFO SESSION Presented by Ruby Lerner IFP/Chicago, The Chicago Documentary Society, & The Nightingale are delighted to welcome Ruby Lerner, Chief Executive Officer/President of Creative Capital to Chicago. Creative Capital is now accepting Letters of Inquiry for grants in Film/Video and Visual Arts. The Inquiry Form will be available online until March 1. Please visit creative-capital.org/apply to read the grant guidelines and access the Inquiry Form. Creative Capital provides integrated financial and advisory support to artists pursuing innovative and adventurous projects. We support artists whose work is provocative, timely and relevant; who are deeply engaged with their forms, yet also boldly original; who create work that carries the potential to reshape the cultural landscape. To be eligible to apply, an artist must be: -- A U.S. citizen or permanent legal resident -- At least 25 years old -- A working artist with at least five years of professional experience -- Not a full-time student About Ruby Lerner: Ruby Lerner is the founding Executive Director and President of Creative Capital. Prior to Creative Capital, Lerner served as the Executive Director of the Association of Independent Film and Videomakers (AIVF) and as Publisher of the highly regarded Independent Film and Video Monthly. Having worked regionally in both the performing arts and independent media fields, she served as the Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS, a coalition of Southeastern performing artists, and IMAGE Film/Video Center, both based in Atlanta. In the late 1970s, she was the Audience Development Director at the Manhattan Theatre Club, one of New York's foremost nonprofit theaters. A native of North Carolina, Lerner worked in the state's visiting artist program following graduate work in theater at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her undergraduate degree is in comparative religion from Goucher College. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ February 4th, 2011 PUSH AND PLAY Curated by Shirin Mozaffari & Oli Rodriguez Given that there are 94 different definitions of play, this screening includes videos that investigate the multiplicities of play. Whether sexual, familial, childish and ultimately complicated in their layers of functionality, this show highlights the intermingling of pleasure, pain, role-play and the altered realities of play. With work by: Stephanie Burke Gonzalo Escobar Carolina Gonzalez Valencia Samantha Lotti Shirin Mozaffari Oli Rodriguez Tessa Siddle Vicky Yen - - - - - January 30th, 2011 DAS SCHLEYERBAND Directed by Klaus vom Bruch Introduced by Therese Grisham Presented by White Light Cinema PROGRAM DETAILS: Das Schleyerband (1977-78, 112 mins., video, Germany), by Klaus vom Bruch. "Das Schleyerband (The Schleyer Tape) is a compilation of television and news footage comprising two hours of media accounts regarding the infamous Baader-Meinhof gang. Klaus vom Bruch's material begins with the September 1977 kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the dramatic news reportage from the scene of the car accident in Cologne where Schleyer was abducted. Vom Bruch then proceeds to chronologically relay footage from official press conferences, talkshow speculation, public interviews and the news, giving a broad and detailed account of the events leading up to the final downfall of the Red Army Faction and group suicide of Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and other RAF leaders. Bruch contrasts this with short episodes from other aspects of popular culture: a fashion commercial advertising lipstick, images of a space shuttle launch, disco shows and John Lennon's song 'Working Class Hero.'" (Klaus vom Bruch) "All representations of the RAF are the RAF. They made and starred in what Timothy Leary called a 'reality movie.'" (Matthew Todd Grant, Critical Intellectuals and the New Media) On Klaus vom Bruch: "Klaus vom Bruch works in video and multi-media installation. His video works of the 1980s engage in a provocative analysis of identity in relation to Western cultural mythology and history. This often ironic discourse is presented as a direct confrontation between the self and the theater of collective memory, which vom Bruch posits as an archive of media images - television advertising, Hollywood cinema, World War II archival films. Subjectivity is located in a violent confluence of the spectacles of war, technology, and capital. Aggressively deconstructing representations of the military and mass media apparatuses, vom Bruch's videotapes take the form of propulsive, nonverbal collages. Relentless in their obsession and repetition, his signature visual systems exploit both the one-on-one directness of video and its relation to the mass media apparatus. In an exacting fusion of structure and content, his formal strategy is to use rapid-fire video switching to alternate repetitively between two visual sources - one appropriated, one a "live" self-image - so that they are seen simultaneously as composite texts. Rhythmically inserting flash-frames of his face into tightly edited, stutter- step fragments of archival films, cinema or advertising, he constructs associative, metaphorical meaning. Reductive, hypnotic soundtracks heighten the tension as self-portraits interrupt repeated images of war and mass media technologies. Vom Bruch's early works are compelling inquiries into postwar German identity. The mythic past collides with the media present as the artist is seen in collusion with World War II bomber pilots, wartime destruction, and TV advertising. Collapsing the personal and the historical, conflating subjectivity and history, desire and the cinematic apparatus, or the body and communications technologies, vom Bruch's potent analytical systems expand on the theories of Paul Virilio. Producing tapes, installations and performances since the mid-1970s, vom Bruch has focused in recent years on mixed media installations that analyze the public and private spheres of communications technologies, including radar and satellites. Klaus vom Bruch was born in 1952. He studied with John Baldessari at the California Institute of the Arts from 1975-76, after which he studied philosophy at the University of Cologne." (Electronic Arts Intermix) Therese Grisham has a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Seattle, and was awarded a Fulbright lectureship to the University of Dresden in Germany, where she remained for three years, winning a teaching award in film studies. She has taught the history of German cinema in Seattle, Dresden, and Chicago, with a specialization in the New German Cinema of the 1960s-80s. Grisham now teaches in the Cinema Studies program at Columbia College Chicago and in Media and Cinema Studies at DePaul University. She has given public lectures on German film and terrorism, and offers classes on directors and movements in German, Italian, and French cinemas at the Film School at Facets Multi-Media. Special thanks to Klaus vom Bruch, Therese Grisham, Redmond Entwhistle, and Thomas Beard & Ed Halter (Light Industry). _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ December 18th, 2011 ANDY WARHOL'S FACE & THE VELVET UNDERGROUND IN BOSTON Two New Preservations! Presented in Memory of Callie Angell Presented by White Light Cinema Andy Warhol's filmography continues to produce unknown and barely-known films as films are slowly preserved and released. FACE is one of those barely-known titles - it was publicly shown but little seen before Warhol withdrew all of his films from distribution. Starring the magnetic Edie Sedgwick, who comes closest to being a muse for Warhol of all the Factory regulars, FACE is an extreme example of Warhol's interest in portraiture: the film is a nearly 70 minute extended "close-up" of Sedgwick as she performs a variety of mundane tasks, converses with an off-screen Chuck Wein, and just is herself. Also showing is another newly preserved film, THE VELVET UNDERGROUND IN BOSTON, featuring the band in concert. This program is presented in memory of Callie Angell (1948-2010). Angell was a film curator, writer, researcher, and project director. She worked at Anthology Film Archives and the Whitney Museum in New York City and for the past ten years was the director of the Andy Warhol Film Project, where she was preparing a two-volume catalog raisonée on Warhol's films (volume one, on the Screen Tests, was published in 2008; volume two was nearing completion). Angell had become the foremost expert on Warhol's films and was a tireless champion of his work. FACE (1965, 66 mins., 16mm, new preservation print) "Featuring two fixed-frame shots of Warhol's socialite superstar Edie Sedgwick, FACE captures what the singer and poet Patti Smith described as Sedgwick's ability to radiate 'intelligence, speed, and being connected with the moment.'" (MoMA) "In FACE, Warhol focuses exclusively on a closeup of Edie's face for the entire 66-minute film, thereby demonstrating that his most famous superstar had the ability to command an audience's attention while merely playing music, applying makeup and accessories, smoking marijuana, talking on the phone with a friend, and conversing with Chuck Wein, who, as usual, remains an elusive figure offscreen." (J.J. Murphy) THE VELVET UNDERGROUND IN BOSTON (1967, 33 mins., 16mm, new preservation print) The film "which Warhol shot during a concert at the Boston Tea Party, features a variety of filmmaking techniques-sudden in-and-out zooms, sweeping panning shots, in-camera edits that create single frame images and bursts of light like paparazzi flash bulbs going off-that mirror the kinesthetic experience of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, with its strobe lights, whip dancers, colorful slide shows, multi-screen projections, liberal use of amphetamines, and overpowering sound of The Velvet Underground." (MoMA) - - - - - - December 11th, 2010 A FIRE IN MY BELLY A Program Celebrating David Wojnarowicz Presented in cooperation with P.P.O.W Gallery David Wojnarowicz's 1987 video A FIRE IN MY BELLY was recently removed from the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute's exhibition Hide/Seek under pressure from the Catholic League and conservative politicians. In response, The Nightingale will screen the work on Saturday, December 11 at the top of every hour starting at 1 pm through Midnight and at 7pm will present a program of queer portraits including work by Nick Edelberg, Neil Bartlett, Chris Spinelli, Dorian Bonelli & Siegfried Konig. The screening was co-curated by Ethan White, Threat Level, and Christy LeMaster with the support of the P.P.O.W Gallery and The Video Data Bank. IN ADDITION: The Eye & Ear Clinic (SAIC 112 S. Michigan) will present the work at 4:45pm on Wednesday, December 15. Artist-activist, and chair of the dept of Film, Video, New Media and Animation, Gregg Bordowitz will present this screening. Jonathan D. Katz, curator of Hide/Seek, will skype in for a chat at 4:45 exactly! The Student Union Galleries (SUGs) of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago SUGs will dedicate their video monitor and space to the exhibition of this work starting Wednesday, December 8th! Chances Dances will screen the work during their regular Dance Party on Monday, December 20th at Subterranean (2011 W. North). If you are interested in finding out how to show this work yourself, contact the Estate of David Wojnarowicz at info@ppowgallery.com. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ December 10th, 2010 THE UNINTENTIONAL ART OF DIGITAL CULTURES & COMMUNITIES From 4chan to cam4 & beyond Presented by Upgrade ! Chicago Natacha Stolz, Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin In Person! Natacha Stolz performed her Interior Semiotics project at an exhibtion/event called FOREVER(21) in Chicago, Illinois on March 27, 2010. Stolz uploaded video documentation of the performance to YouTube on May 8. Then, as Know Your Meme reports, "During the week of August 5th, the video was posted to 4chan. Many more threads were posted and the video soon went viral." The collective entity/4chan-/b/-based identity known as Anonymous mobilized, responding to the video in various ways including threatening Stolz with violence and rape. Anonymous posted her personal contact information online to facilitate these threats, leaking personal photos that Stolz had previously posted to Facebook while her YouTube video continued to climb in popularity, at one moment gaining 200,000 views in 48 hours. Stolz watched within the feedback and feedforward loops of Digital Culture and responded as all of this activity occurred. Her online responses complicated and confounded Anonymous, enfolding 4chan into her project and causing many to speculate that she was in fact 'trolling the trolls' or in other words, entangling 4chan in her performative art process and practice: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/interior-semiotics Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin interact with the online community of cam4 in explicitly Performance Art oriented interventions. The website cam4 describes itself accurately as being dedicated to "Free Live Sex Webcams - Free Live Cams Sex Chat". Lin and Jiaxin's performances play with the expectations and limits of the cam4 community, flowing in and out of variously experimental erotic, comedic and theatrical moments. Their collaborative performances have been met with enthusiasm, attention, dismissal and denial. In particular, their works, although all performed live and in realtime, are often accused of being video playback and therefore violating the rules of the cam4 site and community. This tension between the expectations, realities and performativity of their projects underscores the complexity of their relationships to power exchanges in art and pornography: http://www.vimeo.com/linmiao Natacha Stolz, Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin will present their work, discussing the intended and unintended results of their projects. Nick Briz will facilitate a discussion following their presentations. Nick Briz, an organizer of GLI.TC/H and curator/participant in the Critical Glitch Artware event, will moderate the discussion following presentations by the artists. Upgrade ! Chicago is the local Chicago-based node of the international Upgrade! network, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. Upgrade! Chicago presents new media projects, engages in informal critique, and fosters dialogue and collaboration between individual artists. Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year. It is organized by jonCates. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ December 9th, 2010 FIGHT/FLIGHT A Meeting of the Dil Pickle Club The Dil Pickle Club to be revived at the Nightingale Radical Chicago Renaissance nightspot starts again again ...How to Take a Punch by Bill Hillmann with an interlude about Chicago Park District Boxers by Fred Sasaki & Jacob S. Knabb Flight Painting by Peggy Macnamara and notes on Nathan Leopold's Warblers by Paul Genesius Durica Rocket Launch by Kenneth Morrison Special guest appearance from Sinterklaas Plus more! plus DJ Emerson Dameron The Dil Pickle Club will be a discussion group with prominent invited speakers. Subjects to be discussed will be controversial, off-beat, and intellectual. Tonight, emphasis will be placed on FIGHT/FLIGHT. St. Nicholas Day will also be celebrated! Bring a pair of clean, polished shoes (clean like they're the only pair you've got to wear) for donation to the Share Your Soles Foundation. Donors get a surprise from Sinterklaas. FEATURED SPEAKERS: Bill Hillmann is a writer and storyteller from Chicago. He is contributing editor for F Magazine and the staff writer for Criminal Class Press. His award-winning audio essays have appeared on WBEZ, NPR, and PRI. He is also the founder and host of the Windy City Story Slam. Peggy Macnamara has been the artist in residence and associate of the Zoology Department at the Field Museum for the past twenty years, where she also teaches drawing and painting for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of Painting Wildlife in Watercolor, Illinois Insects and Spiders, and Architecture by Birds and Insects. The Art of Migration is due out in 2011. Thanks to co-conspirators Mairead Case, Emerson Dameron, Paul Durica, Rob Funderburk, Fred Sasaki, Nell Taylor, and especially Christy LeMaster and Kenneth Morrison. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Saturday, December 4th at 7:00 pm, Free UIC KARAOKE SHOWDOWN! Join us for a night of karaoke with specially crafted videos from the Moving Image students at University of Illinois at Chicago. Deborah Stratman and Jesse McLean proudly present a collection of original karoake videos created by their students in Moving Image 1 and Introduction to Time-Based Arts respectively. You will not be disappointed! Videos by: Maria Alejos, Christine Anderson, Jesse Banwart, Yesenia Bueno, Jin-Kyu Choi, Sarah Chung, Megan Convey, Neal Crowley Caroline Dodd, Cassie Fikes, Bryan Forsyth, David Fredericksen, Michael Garcia, Jeremy Garven, Joseph Grover, Mitch Gummerson, Donya Hammad, Lauren Harnisch, Gregg Hecht, Yazmin Hidalgo, Sarah Horbaczewski, Meg Huntsman, Alejandro Jimenez, Stephanie Jones, Colleen Kane, Bill Klazura, Joe Klomes, Asja Lausevic, Jessica Ledbetter, Meaghan Lee, Erin Miller, Nathan Miller, David Mizak, Michael Napierala, Christian Norcross, Gosia Pis, Chris Siska, Tim Steadman, Maira Stukas, Kevin Ticas, Mike Trofimuk, Juan Villalobos, Mike Watson, Lucy Welsh, Dee Williams _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ December 3rd, 2010 STARING INTO THE SUN An Ethno-Folk Documentary by Olivia Wyatt Ethiopia is known to be one of the oldest areas inhabited by humans and presently has over 80 diverse ethnic groups. Photographer/filmmaker Olivia Wyatt explores 13 different tribes throughout Ethiopia in this visually stunning film. Traveling from the northern highlands to the lower Omo Valley, Wyatt brings together the worlds of Zar spirit possession; Hamer tribal wedding ceremonies; Borena water well polyphonic singing; wild hyena feedings; and bizarre Ethiopian TV segments; presenting an enchanting look at these ethereal images, landscapes and sounds from the horn of Africa. The tribes featured in this film are captured with an unflinching sense of realism and poetic admiration resulting in a visual and aural feast of the senses. Also screening will be her short SEEKING THE SPIRIT, an experimental documentary about a group of Celestial Church of Christ practitioners originally from the Republic of Benin, who meet on Rockaway Beach, NY to worship each night for one month between the hours of midnight and 6 am. This denomination incorporates elements of Yoruba into their practices and from a distance resembles Vodou or Santeria, which were also influenced by the Yoruba Religion of Nigeria and Benin. To read more about her trip, check out this article in xlr8r. Olivia Wyatt is the most recent contributer to the Sublime Frequencies collective. She is formally trained in still photography and worked for the past 5 years as a multimedia producer for Magnum In Motion at Magnum Photos. She also co-produced a children's television show and has created several short documentaries and animations. Through December 31st, 2010 Alibi Fine Art (1966 W. Montrose) will also be exhibiting 30 polaroid photographs from Wyatt's stay in Ethiopia. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ November 21st, 2010 FRIENDSGIVING Seasonal Potluck and Trailer Shoot The Nightingale has a lot to be grateful for. Friendsgiving is our annual chance to gather together, share a meal, and make something large and unwieldy. Think living portraiture. Think you and the camera alone in a deadlocked stare. Think Sears Portrait Studio. Wear your prettiest duds this year won't be messy (unless you are just naturally so). We might ask you to wear a funny shirt, or a tube top, or to write on your chest. Adventurous, camera loving types check in with Christy upon arrival. Friendsgiving will be a potluck affair with vegan and meaty entrees provided by us. Please bring a side dish to share. And beverages- the adult kind. - - - - - - November 19th, 2010 BORN TO BE A STAR Recent Works From Montréal Curated by Marianna Milhorat Inaugural Screening of the CHICAGO LOVES... Series BORN TO BE A STAR travels a broken universe to bring you a program of recent works from Montréal. From 16mm film to hand-drawn animations, this program introduces the breadth of both new and established talent emerging from the home of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinéma, Double Negative Collective, and a wide array of public support for the arts. From photograph as epitaph in Mike Rollo's stunning ode to Saskatchewan ghost towns in Ghosts and Gravel Roads to gesture as poetics in Richard Kerr's Universe of Broken Parts, these films index and honor a few stars. Program Details: OPARINE by Stephane Calce (2009, 10min, 16mm, color, mono) Combining camera obscura images with re-photographed film and video images, Oparine revisits the story of film within contemporary media art history. Through the use of manipulated and disjointed sounds, latent meanings are extracted from the story, bringing out the marginal and omitted tales embedded in the original. ASTRONOMY LESSON NO. 1 by Neely Goniodsky (2007, 1:30min, DV, color, stereo) A very important lesson in the workings of the universe. UNIVERSE OF BROKEN PARTS by Richard Kerr (2007, 11min, DV, color, stereo) Inspired by Beat Poet Ed Dorn's assertion that a poem is a 'document,' Universe of Broken Parts reflects Richard Kerr's interest in the poetics of image and sound. Transitioning from a balletic dance of shadows playing basketball, to pure abstraction of shape and color, and cresting with images of police in riot gear, Universe amalgamates Kerr's painterly and documentarian impulses into a contrapuntal, yet fluid whole. BORN TO BE A STAR by Gina Dionne (2007, 3min, 16mm to DV, color and b&w, silent) Starring Natacha Thermitus and introducing her daughter Alex Grignard. A silent experiment, a spontaneous attempt to encapsulate the raw energy and vibrancy of a dying friend. L'INTERNATIONALE by Marianna Milhorat (2010, 9min, 16mm to DV, color and b&w, stereo) In a foreign landscape, futuristic factories and boreholes harvesting geothermal steam serve as beacons of familiarity in the face of an unknown future. Awarded Best Experimental Ð Chicago Underground Film Festival. UNTITLED 3 (STONE KILLER) by Solomon Nagler (2006, 5:30min, DV, b&w, silent) The colonial division between landscape and body has been rejected, and the politics of a new topology, one concerning a failed geometry imposed onto Canada's Great Plains has emerged. This film is a Portrait that has been sketched into an infinite horizon, where a body becomes one with the landscapes it has fallen into. GHOSTS AND GRAVEL ROADS by Mike Rollo (2008, 16:00min, s16mm to DV, color, stereo) An inventory of lost memories and places, the sun bleached landscape of Saskatchewan serves as a metaphor for displacement, a framing of emptiness and absence. Traveling to forgotten towns and channeled through old family photographs the camera catalogs the haunting remnants of the past, frail monuments and communities laid bare, broken under economic collapse. Under the weight of the prairie skies a visceral, personal encounter is revealed in the solace of open space. Awarded CanadaÕs Top Ten Shorts - Toronto International Film Festival BIRDCALLS by Malcolm Sutherland (2006, 5min, DV, color, stereo) The written languages of birds come to life. Awarded Debut Prize - Hiroshima International Animation Festival Program length: 61min Marianna Milhorat is a Montréal filmmaker recently relocated to Chicago to pursue her MFA at UIC-Chicago. She received her BFA from the Mel Hoppenheim School of CinŽma at Concordia University in 2007. Milhorat's work has screened internationally at festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the Images Festival. CHICAGO LOVES... is an inaugural series of community-based programming hailing from curators around the globe. - - - - - - November 13th, 2010 THE VOYAGERS- A DOUBLE FEATURE Work by Penny Lane & Brian Frye Co-presented with WHITE LIGHT CINEMA 7:00 pm VIDEO INQUIRY Recent Work by Penny Lane Penny Lane in Person! Penny Lane creates video pieces that exhibit a vibrant contemporary imagination at work. Often playing with the expectations of genre, her works are lively explorations of the world as she experiences it. Playful and emotive, her work moves deftly between the worlds of documentary, narrative, and experimental cinema. Her videos have screened at AFI FEST, Int'l Film Festival Rotterdam, San Francisco Int'l Film Festival, Images Festival, Florida Experimental (FLEX), Seattle Int'l Film Festival, Women in the Director's Chair, and MOMA "Documentary Fortnight." Penny has been awarded production grants from the New York State Council for the Arts, LEF Foundation, NYSCA, Experimental Television Center, IFP, Dutchess County Arts Council, and the Puffin Foundation. Currently she is a visiting professor in art at Williams College and in pre-production on a feature documentary about goat testicles and Mexican radio. And yes, Penny Lane is her real name. Program Details: SOMETIMES I GET LOSSY (2008, 1 min.) This is what happens when you spend all your time in front of a computer.(PL) HOW TO MAKE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (2010, 4 mins.) The first thing you do when writing an autobiography is start off with a lot of facts about your life. Try to find interesting facts.(PL) MEN SEEKING WOMEN (2007, 4 mins.) A random sample of Craigslist personals opens up performative possibilities for an animated corporate tool.(PL) FAMOUS LUNCH 03.28.05 9 PM (2009, 2 mins.) Part of an unfinished series of videos involving imaginative surveillance. It turns out that I am really weirded out by spying on people, so maybe the series is doomed. A collaboration with Thom Stylinski (oh yes, those are his voices).(PL) WE ARE THE LITTLETONS(2004, 10 mins.) We Are The Littletons presents a tangled web of found objects, intercepted correspondences, reenactments and total fabrications centered around Eve Littleton, an artist with "movie star good looks" who was mysteriously banished from her postcard-perfect American family. A true story with forged signatures, We Are The Littletons is about what's outside the margins of the American Dream, the people and memories that get removed from the family photos and erased from the records. It is also about their persistent struggle to come home, welcome or not.(PL) SHE USED TO SEE HIM MOST WEEKENDS (2007, 4 mins.) A short story about growing up, a certain love song, and the apocryphal memories of childhood. Also: a sort of epilogue to The Abortion Diaries.(PL) THE COMMONERS (2009, 12 mins.) By Jessica Bardsley & Penny Lane In 1890, one man had the idea to collect every bird ever mentioned in Shakespeare and release them into Central Park. The only bird to survive in the New World was the European Starling, now one of the most common birds in America. Its introduction is widely considered a major environmental disaster. The Commoners is a moving image essay about starlings, poetry, and the purist rhetoric used to describe "invasive species." It is also about the paths people forge through history, intentionally or not, as they attempt to change the natural world.(PL) THE VOYAGERS (2010, 16 mins.) In the summer of 1977, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 on an epic journey into interstellar space. Together and alone, they will travel until the end of the universe. Each spacecraft carries a golden record album, a massive compilation of images and sounds embodying the best of Planet Earth. According to Carl Sagan, "[t]he spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet." While working on the golden record, Sagan met and fell madly in love with his future wife Annie Druyan. The record became their love letter to humankind and to each other. In the summer of 2010, I began my own hopeful voyage into the unknown. This film is a love letter to my fellow traveler.(PL) ~~~~~ 9:00 pm THE ANATOMY OF CINEMA Films by Brian Frye Brian Frye in Person! Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA For roughly a decade (from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s) Brian Frye was one of the best and most original experimental filmmakers around. Before heading to law school, Frye crafted a body of work that demonstrated a keen awareness of form, a sensitivity to his materials, and a careful understanding of history - both film history and history in the broadest sense. His films ACROSS THE RAPPAHANNOCK (a portrait/landscape work of Civil War re-enactors) and MEETING WITH KHRUSCHEV (which excavates a short fragment of a famous meeting) explore two very different eras of American history in vastly different ways. Frye is also frequently drawn to the idea of performance, again treated in a multiplicity of way. Two early films, 6.95: STRIPTEASE and 9.95: THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT IN MY LIFE (INFINITE SET), have Frye both as maker and as his own "performer" of sorts. He also foregrounds elements of performance in his found footage work: amateur actors in THE ANATOMY OF MELONCHOLY; the man called to serve God in footage from an unfinished documentary in THE LETTER; even Nikita Khruschev and Jack Kennedy in MEETING WITH KRUSCHEV and the "soldiers" of ACROSS THE RAPPAHANNOCK are positioned within a performative framework. In almost all of his films, Frye is interested in that intersection between truth and illusion, between fact and fiction - in that middle ground where one is not certain which is which. Given the breadth and curiosity of his work, it is not surprising that Frye came to filmmaking after receiving an undergraduate degree in philosophy. Nor is it surprising that he, at least temporarily, gave up filmmaking to pursue a law degree. Recently, he's returned to film and video making, between his lawyerly duties. He's currently at work on a feature-length project with his wife, video artist Penny Lane. Program Details: 6.95: STRIPTEASE (1995, 3 mins., 16mm, b&w, silent) "6.95: Striptease might have been titled "Brian Frye Fails to Strip." We see Frye disrobe, but when he gets to his white undershorts, the roll ends in white flare-outs. There's also something strange about his movements, especially when he drops his shirt - because in fact he ran the camera in reverse while putting his clothes on. As a result, the work is much more than a joke about not doing what so many other student performers are quite happy to do. The unnatural-looking movements and the expectation set up by the title in effect comment on conventional narrative cinema, in which the film's end is supposed to resolve the plot's overarching "issue": Will they have sex? Will they get away with the crime? Here, once one realizes that Frye's movements are off, every instant seems peculiarly nonlinear, anticipating the final reference to the material realities of film. Further, 6.95: Striptease often has a splotchy yellow tint that's the result of home processing. Frye minimized the tint in some of his other films but intentionally did not do so here. The image's occasional yellowish field combines with the reverse motion to denaturalize Frye's figure: he seems trapped on the surface, in the emulsion. [...] The splotches and scratches and dust contribute to the sense of film as an object rather than a transparent window onto some reproducible "reality." Frye's point in 6.95: Striptease, as in all his work, is that we cannot directly know the world by seeing it." (Fred Camper) 9.95: THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT IN MY LIFE (INFINITE SET) (1995, 3 mins., 16mm, b&w, silent) MEETING WITH KHRUSCHEV (1997, 35 mins., 16mm, b&w, silent) "About a half hour in length, 'Meeting with Krushchev' is a refilming of a sequence perhaps 15 seconds long showing a meeting between the Soviet premier and president Kennedy. Frye slowed it down in reprinting, resulting in a sequence just over a minute in length, then he rephotographed it more than 20 times with varying degrees of magnification. For the final film he intercut all 21 strips, editing in a way that seems neither random nor precisely calculated. We might see shots of grain patterns, sometimes colored by handprocessing, shots of the action that are a little clearer, and occasional views of the 'master shot.'" (Amy Beste) THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY (1999, 11 mins., 16mm, b&w, sound) "In 1999, I bought the outtakes from a short film called 'A Portrait in Fear' from the cinematographer. The movie was directed by a chiropractor from Kansas City, Missouri, and shot on an Auricon. The poetry came naturally." (BF) THE LETTER (2001, 11 mins, 16mm, b&w, sound) "An essay toward documenting the ineffable. I'm told that all philosophy springs from one question: why is there something, rather than nothing? Perhaps these are fragments of one man's answer to that question. He spoke to someone once; I encountered his ghost and replied with this film. One might consider it a dialogue between a man of Faith and one who has merely tasted of the absurd, yet struggles to ingest it." (BF) KADDISH (2002, 11 mins., 16mm, color and b&w, sound) "Here is my covenant with you, says the Lord: My spirit that is upon you, and the words I have put in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth or the mouths of your children or the mouths of your children?s children - the Lord says - from now through all eternity." (Isaiah 59:21) "A fragment of tinted nitrate. An acetate recording of a wedding ceremony. Echoes of the bitter sweetness of the Spirit on the tongue of Man. As Frampton tipped his hat to Gloria, so might I." (BF) ACROSS THE RAPPAHANNOCK (2002, 11 mins., 16mm, color, silent) "On December 12, 1863, General Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Potomac engaged General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Before Burnside's army could enter the town, Union engineers were forced to lay pontoon bridges across the Rappahannock River under withering fire. Close combat through the streets of Fredericksburg and multiple assaults on the Confederate army entrenched in the heights behind the town resulted in heavy Federal casualties, which forced an eventual withdrawal. In November 2001, I attended a small and relatively informal reenactment of the battle of Fredericksburg. About a hundred men and women did their best to illustrate the actions of the thousands of young men who offered their lives a century earlier. An air of absurd theater suffused the entire event, which provided the ground for its peculiar truth. Everyone played their part exceedingly honestly and well, and left something on the film I was myself surprised to find there." (BF) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Sunday, November 7th, 2010 Screened at CINEMA BOREALIS THE FACE YOU DESERVE Directed by Miguel Gomes Presented in Association with BLOCK CINEMA THE FACE YOU DESERVE (Miguel Gomes, 2004, Portugal, color, 35mm, 108 minutes) In his first feature length film, director Gomes displays the same puckish humor and penchant for stylistic rule-breaking that defined his celebrated short works. On his thirtieth birthday, a self-absorbed drama teacher (José Airosa) finds himself whisked away from a very bad day in the real world to a strange house populated by seven even stranger men. As its title, a reference to a Portuguese idiom about aging gracefully (or not), implies, FACE is a coming-of-age fairy tale for a generation of twentysomethings who seem incapable or unwilling to shed the skin of adolescence. Also playing is his short film 31 IS TROUBLE (2003, Portugal, color, 35 mm, 27 minutes). This screening is part of Block Cinema's Miguel Gomes Series. Full schedule here. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ November 2nd, 2010 CUT & RUN Evolution & Life of the Mind, Body, & Medium Curated by Mallary Abel & Brenda Contreras CUT & RUN kicked off its first screening in April of 2009 at the Artists' Television Access in San Francisco. Following the show, it was decided that the Cut & Run would live on and produce various types of film screenings including a tour of microcinemas and other venues along the US West Coast, a guerilla screening on the SF MUNI rail system, and now a national tour of experimental shorts. We are born, we grow, we experience a world of our own perceptions. We wonder who we're becoming, we are influenced and we experiment. We become responsible for how we develop. We can change and reshape who we are and what we know by the powers we grant ourselves. This current series, Evolution and Life of the Mind, Body, and Medium, focuses on cycles of minds, bodies, and filmstrips, with each work representing a perspective of itself as one, in contrast to the others. The program will include filmmakers from Spain, Cyprus, France, Germany, and the USA, with animated photo-negatives, appropriated 16mm trailers, film/digital hybrids, and other exciting, genre-bending, experimental works of cinematic evolution. Films by: Alberto Cabrera Bernal, Jo Dery, Richard Wiebe, Frederic Cousseau, Ray Rea, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Jodie Mack, and Brenda Contreras. http://cutandruntour.wordpress.com/ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ October 24th, 2010 YOU TUBE ASSEMBLY Featuring Lori Felker & Nicholas O'Brien Presented by HOMEROOM Oh Snap! Another YouTube Assembly featuring Lori Felker and Nicholas O'Brien. Felker and O'Brien will be presenting on the topic of DEFAMATION OF CHARACTER, delving into many different layers of parody, slander, and character hacking. The night will involve many different depictions and reenactments, all piled together to explore how YouTube has effected and influenced the growing unstable nature of self-dom and common character... types. They will weave a dense history that will at once seem familiar but will also unravel as the night goes on. The event aims to leave viewers uncertain where origins and copies begin and end, eventually complicating the otherwise formulaic paradigms of what constitutes authentic portraits of people and their behaviors. Read it again if you need to, this shit is REAL! Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Lori studied English Literature and German as an undergraduate, which then led her to study Film Studies in Berlin on a Fulbright (2000). Increasingly interested in combining her love of writing and film history with creativity & handcraft, she eventually took up filmmaking in 2001 by taking some night classes at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. After sliding into the film/media production world and sustaining that for a few years, she up and went to graduate school for Film Video and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA 2007). She currently lives, makes films/videos, teaches, projects, volunteers for film festivals, and compulsively collaborates in Chicago. Nicholas O'Brien is interested in different layers of digital experience and the false dichtomy that lies between what is "real" and "virtual." He relates the relationship between land and architectural space as belonging to the same virtuality that takes place in the process of memory/remembering. These approaches are all exploring different modes of identity through a multi-disciplinary newMedia practice. While maintaining equal interest in history (or hystories) and "amateur" culture (a non-judgmental claim), Nicholas hopes to address some of the mythic expectations and manifestations that happen in contemporary media representations. His work has been included in multiple national and international venues including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Xth Biennial in Lyon net art project mybiennialisbetterthanyours.com, Lampo, Tank.tv, and the Centro Multimedia in Mexico City. He currently lives and works in Boulder, Colorado and on the Internet. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ October 23rd, 2010 HEAD HUNTERS & HEAD SHRINKERS Presentation Performances by Chris Sullivan and Jim Trainor Realizing they had both ventured into the world of performative projection to alleviate the meticulous nature of animating; these two animators thought it might be interesting to put these works together. SUN SHAMES HEADHUNTING MOON by Jim Trainor Jim will narrate a slide-show version of one of the stories from his long, sprawling, uncompleted and probably-now-abandoned comic-strip project SUN SHAMES HEADHUNTING MOON, an adaptation of the tribal myths of a New Guinea headhunting culture called the Marind-anim, as collected in a terrific and forgotten 1966 anthropology book called DEMA by Jan van Baal. JIM TRAINOR was born in Philadelphia in 1961. He made his first animated film in 1974. His films include THE FETISHIST, THE BATS, THE MOSCHOPS, HARMONY and THE PRESENTATION THEME. In the early 2000's he branched into comic strips, which he posted on http://www.sunshamesheadhuntingmoon.com/. He is proud of his comics, all of which were inspired by a forgotten anthropology book called DEMA by Jan van Baal, but never felt fully comfortable with the form, and now has slinked back to the relative security of filmmaking. Watch for his epic work about the evolution of wasps - THE PINK EGG - to be completed ca. 2015. AGGRESSION THERAPY by Chris Sullivan In this live performance work, Chris will be Channeling the psychic consciousness of missing Psychotherapist Daphne Richards. He will present to the best of his abilities the breakthrough psychotherapeutic methods of this often misunderstood psychiatrist. He will be Assisted by 200 excavated images, a small articulated puppet, and your understanding and compassion. CHRIS SULLIVAN is a filmmaker, and performance artist who has been creating his odd work for 30 years, and living in Chicago for 20. He has shown his work in festivals, theaters and museums all over the Country and in Europe including The Ottawa Animation festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, The Museum of Modern Art NY, and the Los Angeles Animation Celebration. He has also presented performances at The Walker Art Center, Cleveland Performance Festival, Franklin Furnace, Rhino Fest, and Open Eye Figure Theater in Minneapolis. He has been awarded grants and fellowships from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship, The Bush Foundation, and the Illinois arts Council, and was featured in the Whitney Biennial. He teaches Animation and Film at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Most recently he is finishing up a feature length animation called Consuming Spirits, to be finished in winter 2010. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Sunday, October 17th, 2010 OPTICAL BOUNDARIES Films by Ross Nugent, Fern Silva, & Steve Cossman OPTICAL BOUNDARIES is a program featuring the work of Ross Nugent, Fern Silva and Steve Cossman whose respective works explore a variety of environments as well as the formal properties of the film medium. Though working independently, their films culminate in an examination of the film material as a true document of past and present. Each artist calls attention to the process of separation and recombination through the use of discarded View-master cells, appropriated 16mm nature footage, and a kaleidoscopic amalgam of the new and old world. Steve Cossman received his BFA in Sculpture & Painting, then went on to study Cinema/Animation in the Czech Republic at FAMU. After returning to the United States, he worked under the sculptor John Chamberlain from 2006-2009 during which his focus turned primarily to film and video. Currently he lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. There he is founder/director of Mono No Aware, an annual exhibition of expanded cinema showcasing contemporary artists who incorporate live projections as part of their work. Cossman believes that 'time is constantly moving within a framework of units and that this irrepressible motion is the nexus of human experience'. Working to create a resonating interval, he often re-structures a familiar sequence within a patterned visual language causing the viewer to give thought to established perceptional relationships. Ross Nugent hails from wilds of Western Pennsylvania. He earned a BA in Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and studied film and video production at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, where he began working in media exhibition in 2003. Ross served as the Exhibition Coordinator from 2005-2008, and matriculated to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to pursue an MFA in Film. He is also the Program Manager of the UWM Union Theatre, the Faculty Advisor for the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, and an instructor in the Film Dept. His film, video, installation, and sculptural work is rooted in using process-oriented techniques of film production, including contact and optical printing, and examines nostalgia and decay as mediated through cinema. Poetic gestures emerge through hand-manipulation of film material, which serves as the impetus for many of his artistic endeavors. Since 2005, Fern Silva has been an active filmmaker whose personal journeys and impulsery disposition give rise to his visionary process. He has created a body of film, video, and projection work that conveys a congruent existence through the aesthetics of reflections and detriments within controlled microcosms. His work has been screened and performed at various festivals, galleries, and cinematheques including International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, Images Festival, IndieLisboa International Film Festival, Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Biennale Bandits-Mages Festival, Roulette Gallery, Millennium Film Workshop, White Box Gallery, 119 Gallery, and P.S.1. Fern Silva is from central Connecticut, he received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and his MFA from Bard College. Fern will be screening two works as part of this years Views from the Avant-Garde program at Lincoln Center, NYC. http://opticalboundaries.wordpress.com/about/ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ October 15th, 2010 RESTORING APPEARANCES TO ORDER Rare Films by Coleen Fitzgibbon Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Filmmaker Coleen Fitzgibbon, who will present a selection of rare works from the 1970s. Fitzgibbon's work has been making a resurgence over the last couple of years, with screenings around the U.S. and Canada of newly preserved prints of several of her major titles. This show will include one of those, RESTORING APPEARANCES TO ORDER IN 12 MINUTES, but will primarily focus on extremely rare films, mostly Super-8mm and Regular-8mm - many of which have not publicly shown since the 1970s, and some never shown publicly before. Fitzgibbon will be in person to discuss her filmmaking, her time at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her participation in Colab, an important early artists' collective. PROGRAM DETAILS: GYM (1973, 4 mins., 16mm film transferred to digital video) TIME (1975, 8 mins., 16mm) L.E.S. (Lower East Side)(1975, 25 mins., Super-8mm transferred to digital video) Also a never seen before selection of recently preserved Super-8 films from the 1970s, including: TRIP TO CAROLEE'S (1973, 6 mins., Super-8mm transferred to digital video) MARGIE'S HOUSE (1973, 6 mins., Super-8mm transferred to digital video) Plus possible additional unannounced titles. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ October 10, 2010 COMEDIC VIDEO ART Visual Poetics & Songs About Dogs Presented by Hopscotch Cinema Laughter is a delicate thing. In cinematic terms, a laugh can be killed by a misplaced edit, a confusing angle, or simply by the gag being delivered too close or too far from the lens. When an artist is able to make a visually compelling piece of cinema, it's a beautiful thing. When that artist is able to do that AND produce a laugh, it's a small miracle. This program will be showcasing three artists (Chad Knutson, Neil Ira ...Needleman, and William Wegman) who not only make compelling video work, but also know how to use the camera to tell a damn good joke. Chad Knutson was born in the Northwoods of Minnesota. He attended Columbia College to study cinematography. He moved to Los Angeles but missed his mom. Chad now resides in Minneapolis with his girlfriend, two dogs and two cats. Chad's work has been screened in the IddyBiddyFilm Festival and the Bridgetown Comedy Festival. He was also the 25th funniest person in the Twin Cities in 2006. "I was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1957 and learned filmmaking in the alleys of Brooklyn. Somewhere along the way I got lost in a tunnel that led me into a career in advertising. I have now rededicated myself to tinkering with motion images." -Neil Ira Needleman William Wegman is a world famous performance artist, video maker, and photographer. Titles include: Chad Knutson: Haterz; I'm Jovial; Up on dem Innanetz; Private Dancer; Bad Romanze; Oscar Buzz; Medium's Husband; Sex in the City 2 PROFESSIONAL REVIEW; Henry Rollins's Opener; Saul Simon Says....; The Artist's Journey; Fancy Dancing Neil Ira Needleman: Corporate Art Policy; Philadelphia; Identity Theft; Heavy handed. But true; Twilight Timelapse Concert for George Ives; Film Festival Entry William Wegman: Stick and Tooth; Emperor and Dish; Lucky T-Shirt; Rage and Depression; Speed Reading; Born with No Mouth; Dual Function; Massage Chair; Raise Treat; Man Ray, Do You Want To?; Crooked Finger, Crooked Stick; Deodorant; Bubble Up; Joke Paper; Model Child; What Do You Want?; Paper Meaning; Same Old Shirt; 47 Seconds - - - - - - - - - - - - - October 9, 2010 CAS'L' A Recent Claymation by Bruce Bickford Bruce Bickford in Person! Live Score by Lori Goldston and Philip Gelb "Bruce Bickford is a sixty-two-year-old artist who achieved cult status for his collaborations with Frank Zappa in the 1970s. His two-dimensional line animation is remarkable; his clay animation is legendary. That said, it is nearly impossible to furnish the unintiated with satisfying synopses of Bickford's films. They appear to be onscreen streams of consciousness -- streams that have run for months or even years through the mind of an animator ever engaged in the process of creating and photographing frame upon frame. They are organic, fluid montages -- vibrant pseudonarratives that defy logical comprehension. They are, in short, purely cinematic -- meant to be experienced and wondered at... "Ask Bruce Bickford what CAS'L' is about, and you'll get an earful: 'Mercenaries and other obnoxious brutes are trying to muscle in on the castle area. They're looking for trouble and find it. Stray energies in the area morph them into grotesque bulbous heads. The conquistadors and barbarians of the castle are smoking the wrong brand of cigarettes that cause them to commit random violence, even against each other. Some little people and fairy folk defeat many of them.' Watch CAS'L' and you'll get an eyeful. It is an awe-inspiring, hallucinogenic retreat into magical settings where figure and ground may transform at any moment; enchanted settings in which nature is under siege. Bickford brings clay to life in unimaginable and extraordinary ways." (Salem Film Festival) - - - - - - - - - - - - - October 2, 2010 GLI.TC/H Workshops, Screenings, and Performances GLI.TC/H is an international gathering of noise & new media practitioners in Chicago from September 29 thru October 03, 2010! All events on October 2 will happen at The NIGHTINGALE! GLI.TC/H features: realtime audio & video performances with artists who misuse and abuse hardware and software; run-time video screenings of corrupt data, decayed media, and destroyed files; workshops and skill-share-sessions highlighting the wrong way to use and build tools; a gallery show examining glitches as processes, systems, and objects; all in the context of ongoing dialogues that have been fostered by experimentation, research, and play. GLI.TC/H is a physical and virtual assembly which stands testament to the energy surrounding these conversations. Projects take the form of: artware, videos, games, films, tapes, code, interventions, prints, plugins, screen-captures, systems, websites, installations, texts, tools, lectures, essays, code, articles, & hypermedia. (http://gli.tc/h/) - - - - - - - - - - - - - September 26, 2010 THE BLACK FILMS OF ALDO TAMBELLINI Introduced by SAIC Professor, Bruce Jenkins Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Aldo Tambellini (b. 1930) was a vital part of the New York arts scene in the 1950s and 60s. He was a painter, sculptor, poet, photographer, film and video maker, multi-media artist, television pioneer, curator, organizer, and arts activist. During that period he produced the Black Film series, an extraordinary group of seven films (six of which are showing) that were well known at the time but have only recently begun to be 'rediscovered' with screenings in Leeds, UK, in 2007 and in Boston earlier this year. White Light Cinema and The Nightingale are pleased to present these films in new digital transfers (prints in the U.S. are currently unavailable), plus some additional material TBA. "As a key figure of the 1960s Lower East Side arts scene, Aldo Tambellini used a variety of media for social and political communication. In the age of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller, Tambellini manipulated new technology in an exploration of the "psychological re-orientation of man in the space age." He presented immersive, multi-media environments and, having made his first experimental video as early as 1966, participated in early collaborations between artists and broadcast television. His dynamic Black Film Series (1965-69) extends from total abstraction to footage of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and black teenagers in Coney Island. Tambellini worked directly on the film strip with chemicals, paint and ink, scratching, scraping, and intercutting material from industrial films, newsreels and TV. Abrasive, provocative and turbulent, the series is a rapid-fire response to the beginning of the information age and a world in flux. "Black to me is like a beginning ... Black is within totality, the oneness of all. Black is the expansion of consciousness in all directions.'" (Mark Webber, Evolution 2007) PROGRAM DETAILS: BLACK IS (1965, 4 mins., b/w) "To the sound of a heartbeat and made entirely without the use of a camera, this film projects abstract forms and illuminations on a night-black background and suggests as Tambellini says, 'seed black, seed black, sperm black, sperm black.'" (Grove Press Film Catalog) BLACK TRIP (1965, 5 mins, b/w) BLACK PLUS X (1966, 9 mins., b/w) "Tambellini here focuses on contemporary life in a black community. The extra, the "X" of Black Plus X, is a filmic device by which a black person is instantaneously turned white by the mere projection of the negative image. The time is summer, and the place is an oceanside amusement park where black children are playing in the surf and enjoying the rides, quite oblivious to Tambellini's tongue-in-cheek 'solution' to the race problem." (Grove Press Film Catalog) BLACK TRIP 2 (1967, 3 mins., b/w) "An internal probing of the violence and mystery of the American psyche seen through the eye of a black man and the Russian revolution." (AT) BLACKOUT (1965, 9 mins., b/w) BLACK TV (1968, 10 mins., b/w) "Through the uses of kinescope, video, multimedia, and direct painting on film, an impression is gained of the frantic action of protoplasm under a microscope where an imaginative viewer may see the genesis of it all." (Grove Press Film Catalog) - - - - - - - - - - - - - September 19, 2010 Screened at CINEMA BOREALIS LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY Ben Russell in person! Presented in Association with MCA CHICAGO Set in Surinam, Russell's latest investigation of ethnography and representation is simultaneously beautiful, political, and formally complicated. Shot on 16mm Steadicam in thirteen long takes, the film follows two Saramaccan brothers as they trace the path their ancestors took to escape Dutch enslavement 300 years earlier. The film revisits the ecstatic qualities seen in Russell's short TRYPPS films (which focus on varying notions of psychedelia and trance); the constant forward motion of LET EACH ONE is meditative and leisurely (the other, quieter pole of psychedelic experience). The brothers travel on foot, by bus, and by boat--the camera at once an observer of and a participant in the arduous journey. The film is also a telling document of Surinam's shifting landscape, as the brothers pass through a crowded city, lush jungles, a gold mine, and rural villages. It provides a startling and nearly tangible experience of a world seldom seen on avant-garde screens, a long otherworldly walk with plenty of room to consider the notion of "other." Program Details LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY (2009, 135 min, 16mm) This screening was presented as part of MCA CHICAGO's UBS 12X12 New Artists/New Work Exhibition which features Russell in September. The exhibition was augmented by a series of screenings and by a live collaborative expanded cinema performance by Russell and Chicago artist, Joe Grimm. Full Schedule Here. - - - - - - - - - - - - - September 17, 2010 HAPPY BIRTHDAY & OTHER OPPORTUNITIES Films by Jonathan Schwartz Jonathan Schwartz in person! HAPPY BIRTHDAY & OTHER OPPORTUNITIES is A 70 minute program of 16mm films from the 331/3 series (an album of in-camera films) as song or protest or eulogy poem and other sincere actions captured in the small, quick, quiet immediate. Jonathan Schwartz is a filmmaker and sound designer who currently teaches film studies at Keene State College in Keene, NH. His travelogue film Nothing Is Over Nothing has screened at numerous festivals, including Views from the Avant-Garde (NY), TIE, ICE (Iowa City), EXiS (Seoul)... Program Details HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND OTHER OPPORTUNITIES (song, 3min) FOR A WINTER/WASH+SHAVE/SUNBEAM HUNTER/NEW YEAR SUN (12min) NOTHING IS OVER (17min) THE WEDDING PRESENT/90 YEARS/A LOGIC SORE/IN A YEAR WITH 13 DEATHS (12min) HAPPY BIRTHDAY (10min) EXTINCTION METERS/COPPER GREEN/FOR THEM ENDING/WARM SPOTS (12min) - - - - - - - - - - - - - September 14, 2010 UPGRADE CHICAGO! presents JOE HOCKING Monthly New Media Art Series Joe Hocking in person! "THE LEAK IN YOUR HOMETOWN - a work in progress by Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking - is an iPhone app that lets users see the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill whenever they see a BP logo. A user simply launches the app and aims their iPhone's camera at the nearest BP logo. What the user sees is one of the broken BP pipes coming out of the BP logo, and out of the pipe comes the oil, pluming upward. This work mixes computer generated 3d graphics with the iPhone's video camera to create an augmented reality. The user is able to see the computer generated 3d objects at specific locations in the real world. The 3d graphics create the broken BP pipe which comes out of the BP logo. A important component of the project is that it uses BP's corporate logo as a marker, to orient the computer-generated 3-D graphics. Basically turning their own logo against them. This re-purposing of corporate icons will offer future artists and activists a powerful means of expression which will be easily accessible to the masses and at the same time will be safe and nondestructive." -Networked Performance on Turbulence.org http://theleakinyourhometown.wordpress.com/ http://www.newarteest.com/ar/ar.html http://www.newarteest.com Upgrade! Chicago is the local Chicago-based node of the international Upgrade! network, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. Upgrade! Chicago presents new media projects, engages in informal critique, and fosters dialogue and collaboration between individual artists. Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year. http://upgradechicago.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - September 4, 2010 TRUST ME Selected Works by Latham Zearfoss The works in this program take a revisionist approach to history and an inquisitive approach to identity, crudely tracing a subjective placement in the universe. Possibility peaks through the fissures of provocative flirtations between "local science" - subject positions, (art) history and cultural theory - and "global magic" - political paradigm shifts, pop culture and widely held beliefs. These works often center around a nucleus of queer subjectivity in that they take political conflict and failed utopias as their starting coordinates. As they spiral outward, Latham Zearfoss's works ultimately become both referential and forward-looking proposals for more hopeful modes of thinking and living. Program Details MORALITY (3min, 2010, video) RESPONSIBILITY (3min, 2010, video) A CALL AND AN OFFERING (23min, 2006, video) SELF CONTROL (14min, 2008, video/16mm) I GIVE YOU LIFE (12min, 2010, video/16mm) WOLRD PIECE FEATURING JANE FONDA (12min, 2010, stereo sound) MYTH OF MY ANCESTORS (A RE/CREATION FABLE) (4min, 2008, video) Program runs about 72 minutes. - - - - - - - - - - - - - August 24, 2010 STRONGMAN FERDINAND Alexander Kluge's New German Cinema Classic Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Born in 1932, Kluge began making short films in 1960 and completed his first feature, YESTERDAY GIRL, in 1966. He was part of the revitalizing New German Cinema movement that also included Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Volker Schlšndorff, and Werner Schroeter. Kluge was an ideologue, advocate, author, teacher, and one of the spiritual guides for a re-awakened German cinema. During the 1960s and 70s, he made several key, if little known in the US even today, works of the period, including ARTISTS UNDER THE BIG TOP: PERPLEXED (1967), PART-TIME WORK OF A DOMESTIC SLAVE (1973), and THE FEMALE SLAVE (1979), and participated in the omnibus film GERMANY IN AUTUMN (1978). He made his last feature in 1986 and has since been working in television and continuing to write. More than others of his contemporaries, Kluge's films frequently incorporated experimental, Brechtian, and other formalist techniques. He injected his films with disruptions to break the narrative flow. STRONGMAN FERDINAND, though, was his most conventional early feature. It is the story of Ferdinand Rieche, a former policeman, who becomes the new head of security at a private corporation. Rieche is obsessed with his role as a security expert: the narration at the start states, "This is Ferdinand Rieche. Security is his business He knows everything about it and will never understand that other people don't." Rieche thinks and plans. He reads books on Marx and communism to understand his enemy; he drills his guards endlessly; he conducts practice evacuations of the plant. But his obsessiveness about security begins to move from the practical to the abstract and absurd. He begins to lose himself in the idea of perfection. STRONGMAN FERDINAND "is Kluge's most straightforward film to date. It is the story of the head of a company's safety guards, a former policeman, who 'guards' the objects entrusted to him before they are threatened. The film is an ironic parable on an atmosphere of exaggerated fear in the Federal Republic." (Peter W. Jansen, The New German Film, 1980) "Alexander Kluge's STRONGMAN FERDINAND is a bracingly prescient, humorous, astute, and understated satire on the obsessive culture of rote rehearsals, role-playing, and fear-mongering. . ." (Acquarello, Strictly Film School website) Program Details: STRONGMAN FERDINAND (Der starke Ferdinand, 1976, 91 mins., 35mm on video). - - - - - - - - - - - - - August 21, 2010 PRETTY PARTY A Farewell Screening for Jodie Mack Animator Jodie Mack has brightened Chicago's experimental film scene for the last half-decade with her trademark clash of abstraction and familiarity. Often collage based, her work exhibits a rigorous understanding of formalist structures while sidestepping the alienation sometime affiliated with experimental short form. Mack's world is one of vivid color, lively music, and wordplay. Rather than obscuring the connection to cinematic genre, Mack embraces it, creating in the process work that is visually inventive, invested in form and still unabashedly fun. PRETTY PARTY gives us the chance to watch Jodie's movies and celebrate with her before she moves to New Hampshire to work as Professor of Animation at Dartmouth. The program will present works Mack made while living in Chicago, including, YARDWOK IS HARD WORK, her animated collage musical and the premiere of several films shot this summer as part of her packing up process. In shooting Parts 1-3 of the Unsubscribe Series, Mack attempts to use up all the scraps from her in-home animation studio to build formal visual experiments each grouped around a different theme. Mack has also invited several of her Chicago collaborators to contribute musical accompaniment to the evening. Expect songs and snacks as we bid a tearful goodbye to the indomitable Miss Mack. Program Details THE TATSU PERIOD (LOOK TO THE RAINBOW) LILLY HARLEQUIN YARD WORK IS HARD WORK TWILIGHT SPIRIT RAD PLAID POSTHASTE PERENNIAL PATTERN UNSUBSCRIBE #1- SPECIAL OFFER INSIDE UNSUBSCRIBE #2- ALL EYES ON THE SILVER SCREEN UNSUBSCRIBE #3- GLITCH ENVY/MAKE MOARRRRR - - - - - - - - - - - - - August 14, 2010, Screened at CINEMA BOREALIS THE DARK SIDE OF DR. SEUSS Curated and Collected by Archivist, Dennis Nyback Dennis Nyback in Person! Before Dr. Seuss planted his imaginative words and pictures into the hearts of kids everywhere, Lt. Col. Theodore Seuss Geisel served in WWII by writing black and white instructional cartoons. Under the orders of U.S. Army Air Force Chairman of the First Motion Picture Unit, Frank Capra, Giesle brought Private Snafu to life. The character, whose name is a military acronym for "Situation Normal- All Fouled Up," is a hapless, clumsy, and easily misled recruit. Made during the golden age of Warner Bros animation, Snafu cartoons were often directed by WB heavy hitters Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Frank Tashlin. Designed for entertainment as well as instruction, with an audience of mostly young servicemen, Snafu cartoons are extremely racy for their age and expose some of the most frightening wartime sentiments. Program Details COMING SNAFU (1943) FEAR (1944) SPIES (1944) THE GOLDBRICK (1943) OUR JOB IN JAPAN (1945) RUMORS (1944) BOOBY TRAPS (1943) THE HOME FRONT (1943) YOUR JOB IN GERMANY (1945) - - - - - - - - - - - - - August 13, 2010 Screened at CINEMA BOREALIS THE FABULOUS ANIMATION OF LADISLAS STAREVITCH Curated and Collected by Archivist, Dennis Nyback Dennis Nyback in Person! Trained as an entomologist, Starevitch stumbled into animation. As a young man he directed a Museum of Natural History in Kaunas Lithuania and studied Stag Beetles. Around 1908 he bought camera equipment to film them but found they would not perform under the bright lights the camera needed; Starevitch killed them and then manipulated their bodies as though they were alive. His stop motion process was so meticulous and effective that a member of the British press said that a mad Russian scientist had taught insects to act. Using puppet animation and live action, and made with only the help of his wife and daughter, his intricate films breathe grotesque life into simple childrenÕs stories and fables. Program Details THE REVENGE OF A KINEMATOGRAPH CAMERAMAN (1912) THE VOICE OF THE NIGHTNGALE (1923) aka "La Voix Du Rossignol" THE FROGS WHO WANTED A KING (1923) BLACK LOVE AND WHITE (1928) THE MASCOT (1934) aka "Fetiche" - - - - - - - - - - - - - July 25th, 2010 THE LOST POGO DANCE FILMS, 1965-1987 Bill Daniel Presents an Evening of Orphan Music Films Featuring a Performance by The Blue Ribbon Glee Club Film Tramp Bill Daniel is back in the van on tour with a new program of recently unearthed 16mm music films (mostly silent) featuring lost 1965 news footage of The Beatles, 1977 Avengers, and 1980 and Austin New Wave bands, and where possible, a one-night photo exhibit. It's a compilation reel of music footage, projected on 16mm, mostly silent, of some rare celluloid gems from my collection, and has been seen by almost no one. None of the material has seen the light of youtube. Most of this footage is truly "orphaned film"--- abandoned, lost, found, and now presented raw without editing. There is a flavor of goofy nostalgia to much of the footage, but the images are also haunting--- silent rock and roll ghosts, still singing, pogoing, sneaking hits on cigarettes, making direct eye contact, but mute. A few of the scenes have audio, but some of the reels were long ago separated from their sound tracks before they ever had a chance to be edited and printed. Each of the films has it's own story, like if a stray dog at the pound could tell you how he got there. Part of the evening's presentation is a telling of some of these stories, and a discussion on the relationship between underground music and film cultures. Program Includes: 1965, Beatles in San Francisco--- raw news footage I rescued from a closing film lab (eerie silent mop-top photo op, teenagers convulsing with Beatlemania, etc.) 1977, Performance footage of the Avengers and lost takes from a student drama staring Penelope Houston, shot by poet/punk portraitist Pamela Mosher. 1980, Two legendary punk/new wave Austin bands The Huns and Boy Problems filmed live at Rauls Club. Evidence of the fertile crossover between the Film dept at UT and the music scene at Raul's club. A couple of 100-footers of mine--- Butthole Surfers performance I shot while touring with them in '87 (footage confiscated by the club for on-stage nudity, then inexplicably returned to me months later) and an outdoor Sonic Youth concert shot downtown Houston in '86. Plus a haunting early Johnny Cash kinoscope, and probably some other curios. The Blue Ribbon Glee Club will close out the evening. http://billdaniel.net/new/ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Friday, June 18th, 2010 ONION CITY EXPERIMENTAL FILM & VIDEO FESTIVAL Group Programs One & two Group Show One at 7:00 pm Yanqui Walker and the Optical Revolution (2009, 33 mins., 16mm, US) by Kathyrn Ramey. "YANQUI WALKER AND THE OPTICAL REVOLUTION is an experimental documentary about a, now obscure, American expansionist and military dictator, William Walker who, through military force and coercion, became president of Nicaragua in 1856. The film blends found footage, documentary photography, ethnographic inquiry and personal travelogue with experimental film techniques such as hand-processing, optical printing and hand constructed time-lapse to detour and derail the various approaches to history making that have been applied to this story." (KR) Make It New John (2009, 55 mins., video, UK) by Duncan Campbell. "MAKE IT NEW JOHN tells the story of the DeLorean car, its creator John DeLorean and the workers of the Belfast-based car plant who built it. The film deftly contrasts the DeLorean dream with its spectacular downfall during a critical period in Northern Ireland's history, and the canonisation of the car - the DMC12 - as a symbol of the American myth of mobility. The son of an immigrant Romanian foundry worker, John DeLorean's natural talent for engineering took him to the top of Chevrolet, General Motors' most important division. Leaving this behind he persuaded the British Government to back his new venture - building a factory in Dunmurry in Belfast to produce a new sports car. Almost immediately beset by financial difficulties and allegations of embezzlement, DeLorean's attempts to keep the factory open became increasingly desperate and corrupt, eventually leading to his arrest by the FBI. The factory - which employed 2000 workers - closed in 1982, having produced just over 9000 cars. As with the earlier works such as Bernadette (2008) and Falls Burns Malone Fiddles (2003), in Make it New John Campbell fuses a documentary aesthetic with fictive moments, using existing archive news and documentary footage from the 1980s as well as new 16mm footage which imagines conversations between DeLorean factory workers. Campbell questions the documentary genre and reflects here on broader existential themes and narrative drives." (LUX) - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - -- Group Show Two at 9:00 pm Collision of Parts (2010, 15 mins., video, US) by Mark Street. World Premiere "A kaleidoscopic reverie recorded over a period of five years in various urban milieus. An excavation of the concept of montage: small moments public and private brush up against each other, creating a charged tapestry of the immediate. Inside and outside, motion and stasis, home and travel, light and dark: a series of antimonies struggle to be heard and seen." (MS) Ledo and Ix Go To Town (2010, 8 mins., video, US) by Emily Carmichael. "The continued adventures of Ledo and Ix. This time our heroes confront an upcoming blob on the map that might be either a village or brain fungus." (EC) Whose Toes (2009, 33 mins., video, Canada) by Barry Doupe. Barry Doupe's new computer-generated animation, WHOSE TOES, "is a portrait of character that collapses the inner and outer mysteries of personality with an unrecorded interpretation of history. Showcasing the late Princess Diana and JFK as its main characters, we are invited to return to past events that have caused discomfort, and to re-imagine a misstep in time. Real world political events are both evoked and eschewed, gathering together in a localized inner tragedy: the makeup of personality." (BD) Traffic Patterns (2009, 9 mins., video, US) by Gregg Biermann. "Video sequences shot on New Jersey highways from a moving automobile are wrapped around a virtual 3D cylinder and the virtual camera moves around inside it distorting the view and encountering various reflective objects. This material is then subjected to a metrical editing procedure that results in a rhythmic montage." (GB) Pleasant Special Friends Nice (2010, 2 mins., video, US) by Pippa Possible and Crispin Rosenkranz. "Audio-Dyadic Interaction of Sweet Nothings as performed by Crispin Rosenkranz and Pippa Possible." (PP & CR) Navigators (Melting Chronons) (2009, 8 mins., video, US) by Van McElwee. "The grain of time is imagined at close range, revealing not a straight line, but turbulence, one moment melting into another." (VM) Sweet Dreams (2009, 4 mins., video, US) by Jeanne Liotta. Everybody's looking for something. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ June 13th, 2010 Screened at CINEMA BOREALIS S IS FOR SISSY Skip Elsheimer Presents Films from The A/V Geeks Educational Films Archive What could be worse than to have a little boy become a sissy? The A/V Geeks present an evening of classic campy 16mm school films that examine the behavior of potential wimps and what can be done fix it. Films include: Soapy the Germ Fighter (1951) Billy Martin is concerned that being clean is tantamount to being a sissy. Perhaps a giant cake of soap in the pantaloons can convince him otherwise. William's Doll (1985) William is an athletic kid but his fascination with baby dolls has his father concerned and his friends picking on him. Can Grandpa fix things with William's birthday gift? Fears of Children (1951) Paul's being a little stinker by challenging his father and moping about the house. Is his mother babying him too much and his Dad being too strict? Neurotic Behavior - a Psychodynamic View (1973) College-aged Peter has problems talking to girls. Could stern toilet training be making him a sissy? About the A/V Geeks: Skip Elsheimer founded and maintains the A/V Geeks Educational Film Archive, an archive of over 23,000 educational and industrial films. Most of the films were rescued from dumpsters, forgotten closets and Ebay sellers who didn't appreciate what they had. He curates film programs in venues across the country and sells DVD compilations based on films from the archive. http://www.avgeeks.com/ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ May 25th, 2010 THE YouTube ASSEMBLY Featuring Mike Wolf Presented by HOMEROOM CHICAGO YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE LANDSCAPE! (LANDSCAPE IS ALWAYS PEOPLE!) To ask the question "what is my relationship to the landscape?" is to do better already. To know that the landscape is inextricable from people and that nothing is pristine is to do better still. The outlandish dreams of imperial capitalism only obscure the connections between people and land. When we each work for our own outlandish dream and find the wisdom to reconcile it with our neighbors the nightmares of imperialism will finally wither away. There is a lot of good collage material for these dreams on YouTube. Mike Wolf is a Midwestern itinerant cultural worker trapped in modern bohemian fantasies. At the moment he is in the early, agonizing stages of grasping the wisdom of de-colonization. ABOUT THE YouTube ASSEMBLY The YouTube Assembly consists of screening web-based video for a live and participating audience. Each event features a guest host presenting a collection of YouTube clips that elaborate on a project or theme in which they have some expertise or interest. In the spirit of the popular YouTube interface, audience members are encouraged to comment on the videos they watch, except out loud and in real time with no anonymity. After the presentation the host then invites audience members to share their own clips. Like karaoke or an open mic, the YouTube Assembly creates a situation in which people take turns entertaining each other, thus bypassing the arguably isolating aspect of online networks like YouTube and encourage real, face-to-face interaction. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ May 21st, 2010 !KUNG Ethnographic Films by John Marshall Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA Marshall (1932-2005), along with Jean Rouch, Timothy Asch, Robert Gardner, and others, developed and defined, and re-defined, a more sustained use of film in ethnography. He first began filming in Africa, specifically, Namibia, in 1949, at the age of 17 while on a family trip. Soon after, he began a life-long relationship with the !Kung Bushmen (now more accurately known as the Ju/'hoansi) in Namibia's Kalahari Desert, producing an important series of short and feature films on their lives and customs and later working as an advocate for their rights and welfare. Marshall also established himself in the cinema verite movement, working as the cinematographer of Frederick Wiseman's legendary TITICUT FOLLIES (1967) and producing his own work on the Pittsburgh Police. Marshall's !Kung films are remarkable in the access he was given and the extensive commitment he had towards his subjects. Marshall was given a !Kung name and developed a close relationship with the !Kung. He, like Jean Rouch and others, felt that the cold scientific detachment of standard ethnographic work was not the best way to get to know a people. His films have an immediacy and intimacy that helps to show the !Kung as individuals and not "subjects for study." This program features a selection of Marshall's work from the 1960s and 70s, though the footage was shot earlier. It focuses on familial relationships and the human impulse for play. AN ARGUMENT ABOUT A MARRIAGE (1969, 18 mins., 16mm) In 1958, with assistance from the Marshalls, a group of Ju/'hoansi returned home to Nyae Nyae after several years as unpaid, captive laborers on a farm. One woman, whose husband had escaped the farm and left her behind, had a child with another man. Upon the group's return to Nyae Nyae, an angry argument broke out over the matter. An Argument About a Marriage raises questions about the impact of European farms on the economic and the social life of the Ju/'hoansi; about the complexities of marriage rules and bride-service in their traditional kinship system; and about the nature of conflict and its mediation among the Ju/'hoansi. Despite the interpersonal anger, we see how ­oma's skillful intervention prevents this particular conflict from escalating to violence. DEBE'S TANTRUM (1972, 9 mins., 16mm) In this film a five-year-old named Debe refuses to let his mother Di!ai go gathering without him. Di!ai appeals to her daughter N!ai to entertain the child but Debe resists. In the end Di!ai leaves with Debe on her back. This is a companion film to The Wasp Nest which shows Di!ai, Debe, and other women and children on the subsequent gathering expedition. LION GAME (1970, 4 mins., 16mm) /Gunda, a young man (who later marries N!ai), pretends to be a lion. He is "hunted" and "killed" by a group of boys. THE MEAT FIGHT (1974, 14 mins., 16mm) In this film, an argument arises between two bands when an antelope killed by a hunter from one band is found and distributed by a man from another band. The film illustrates conflict mediation in traditional Ju/'hoan society and the Ju/'hoan leaders' ability to settle disputes without violence and without formal political organization. PLAYING WITH SCORPIONS (1972, 4 mins., 16mm) Children tempt fate, playing with scorpions. A RITE OF PASSAGE (1972, 14 mins., 16mm) This film, shot in 1952-53, documents the scarification ceremony called "marking" which was traditionally held for Ju/'hoan boys after they had killed their first large animal. Here, /Ti!kay, a boy of thirteen, shoots his first wildebeest with an arrow. /Ti!kay's father, Kan//a, and Crooked /Qui help the young hunter track, skin, and butcher the animal. After the meat is brought back to the village, a scarification ceremony takes place, symbolizing the importance of hunting and /Ti!kay's passage into social manhood. He is now considered an acceptable son-in-law by the parents of the girl to whom he has long been betrothed. TUG-OF-WAR - BUSHMEN (1974, 6 mins., 16mm) In the Ju/'hoan version of this universally popular game, boys in two teams wrestle over a length of rubber hose. (Film descriptions from Documentary Educational Resources) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ May 11th, 2010 KURT HENTSCHLAGER Presented by Upgrade Chicago Internationally recognized Austrian artist Kurt Hentschlager creates large-scale performances and immersive environments reflecting on the metaphor of the sublime and the human condition. Working with video, computer animation and sound since 1983, Hentschlager was also a founding member of the the duo Granular-Synthesis. Granular-Synthesis created massive events which literally overwhelmed audiences with intensely processed digital video and soundscapes, confronting viewers on both a physical and emotional level from 1992 and 2003. His current solo work further researches the nature of human perception and the accelerated impact of new technologies on both individual and collective consciousness. He has represented Austria at the 2001 Venice Biennial and has shown his work internationally for two decades including presentations, performances and exhibitions at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Staedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Creative Time, New York; The Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; National Museum for Contemporary Art, Seoul; Ars Electronica Festival, Linz; ICC Inter-Communication-Center, Tokyo, Fondation Beyeler, Basel and the Palacio de Bella Artes, Mexico City. http://www.hentschlager.info Upgrade! Chicago is the local Chicago-based node of the international Upgrade! network, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. Upgrade! Chicago presents new media projects, engages in informal critique, and fosters dialogue and collaboration between individual artists. Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year. http://upgradechicago.org _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ May 1st, 2010 Screened at CINEMA BOREALIS THE SEASHELL & THE CLERGYMAN With Live Solo Cello Score by Lori Goldston LORI GOLDSTON will perform her solo cello score to Germaine Dulac's silent surrealist classic THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN (LA COQUILLE ET LE CLERGYMAN, 1928, 40 min, 16mm). The story, devised by Antonin Artaud, depicts the dark erotic fantasizes of a clergyman obsessed with another man's wife. Full of bewitching in-camera tricks, THE SEASHELL is a fever dream of desire that eschews traditional narrative for a rich visual lyricism. So sensual for its age the British censor of the time banned it with the legendary words, 'If this film has a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.' LORI GOLDSTON's restless curiosity and the adaptive sounds of her cello blur the lines of genre, time and geography. Her music reflects broad, layered interests and feelings, from fierce humor to focused chaos to hauntingly tender melancholy. Recent projects include work with doom metal band Earth, her own bands Spectratone International, the Shifting Light and However; a score for Linas Phillips's film BASS AKWARDS, which premiered at Sundance this year, and a live score for Ozu's 1933 silent film PASSING FANCY, which was commisioned by and premierde at WNYC's New Sounds Live in February. Co-founder with partner Kyle Hanson of The Black Cat Orchestra, Lori is a frequent collaborator in dance, film and music from other disciplines. She has played with Nirvana, David Byrne, Cat Power, Earth, Mirah, John Doe, the Wedding Present, Laura Veirs, Larry Barrett, the Dead Science and many others. Also screening and accompanied on cello: DOWN IN THE DEEP (LE PeCHEUR DE PERLES, 1907, 12 min, 16mm) by Ferdinand Zecca GHOSTS BEFORE BREAKFAST (VORMITTAGSSPUK, 1928, 6 min, 16mm) by Hans Richter _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 24th, 2010 2 BLESSED 2 B STRESSED Video Performance by Jacob Ciocci & David Wightman 2 BLESSED 2 B STRESSED is a two-man touring program of new work by Jacob Ciocci (of Paper Rad) and composer, David Wightman. Pittsburgh artist, Ciocci will present a new 20-minute mix of original videos and animations. along with his new 15-minute performance "I Let My Nightmares Go" which uses a video projector and live dance moves to grapple with mental demons, web 2.0, G.O.D., 21st-century breakdown, real lies and fake truths, cartoon violence, and awareness bracelets. Ciocci is a founding member of the east coast art collective Paper Rad. His work is concerned with the relationships between popular culture, technology and notions of transcendence. In his paintings, comics, performances, net art and videos, contemporary and recently forgotten cultural symbols confront one another inside a frenzied cartoon universe that is simultaneously celebratory and critical. David Wightman will perform as Fortress of Amplitude, a guitar wielding minstrel from another time and place. Accompanied by a blast beat playing drum machine, He will execute a musical composition focusing on fantasy, repetition and ecstasy. Wightman lives in San Diego, California where he is a PhD candidate in music composition at UCSD. There he teaches a course on the music, history, and culture of Heavy Metal. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 17th, 2010 THE LIMITS OF WHAT WE KNOW Essay Doc by Amy Bodman In 1993, Amy Bodman took a small crew to Zimbabwe to make a film about land as a living entity. After 15 years in the making, The Limits of What We Know documents the changing landscape of Zimbabwe and its people's relationship to it. Quietly told through the voices of Zimbabweans and arranged through chapters such as "The Great Zimbabwe Monument", "The Composition of Drought", "The Language of Trees", "Rain", "Clay", the film is part travelogue, part environmental study and part meditation on life itself. Exploring a range of topics from the function of weeds and the hearts of giraffes, to the construction of dams and the rise and fall of kingdoms, the film ultimately reveals nature's mysterious tenacity in the face of great change. While THE LIMITS OF WHAT WE KNOW appears at first to be a portrait of Zimbabwe, it culminates as a heart-felt picture of our changing world as it struggles to compensate for the ever-increasing dominance of the human race. Shot during a time of relative peace, Zimbabwe is now in crisis and much of what was filmed no longer exists. THE LIMITS OF WHAT WE KNOW stands as a quiet testament to a country and its people. http://www.thelimitsofwhatweknow.com/?page=about _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 13th, 2010 UPGRADE! CHICAGO Presents Patrick Lichty Patrick Lichty is a conceptually-based artist, writer, curator, and activist. He has been exhibiting internationally since 1990, and is best known for his 3D animations with the activist group, The Yes Men, and as Editor in-Chief of Intelligent Agent Magazine in NYC. He is currently a member of the faculty of the Interactive Art & Media Department of Columbia College, Chicago. Upgrade! Chicago is the local Chicago-based node of the international Upgrade! network, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. Upgrade! Chicago presents new media projects, engages in informal critique, and fosters dialogue and collaboration between individual artists. Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year. Upgrade! Chicago meets every 2nd Tuesday of the month @ The Nightingale. http://www.patricklichty.com http://upgradechicago.org _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 7th, 2010 CARTUNE XPREZ 2010 Future Television Tour Hooliganship/CARTUNE XPREZ is coming back to town with their new program as part of the 2010 Future Television Tour. Part live video theater, part psychedelic insurrection, part cartoon road show, we harness the energies of video artists who remix commercial imagery to the extent of anarchy and animate their way out of Sunday Morning Cartoons. Previous shows have included Paper Rad, Bruce Bickford, Takeshi Murata, and Shana Moulton, who have since been featured in the Whitney Biennial, the MOMA in New York, the Sundance Film Festival, and many others. Our touring programs have become a touchstone of the genre, with this upcoming program offering a rare opportunity to see innovative animated videos from around the world. Adding to the spectacle, Peter Burr and Christopher Doulgeris' Hooliganship will combine videos, music, and installation to create an electroluminescent stage show. This program includes work by Nate Boyce, Martha Colburn, Sebastian Buerkner, Taras Hrabowsky, Rimas Sakalauskas, Christine Gensheimer, Brandon Blommaert, Jim Trainor, and Allison Schulnik, David Daniels and others...... _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 6th, 2010 WHAT MADE IT THROUGH THE FIRE New Work from the UIC MFA Program While the MFA program at the University of Illinois at Chicago is relatively small, it provides an intimate site for the exchange of ideas and methods of working. This screening consists of a selection of moving image work from the 2010 graduating class, featuring films and videos by Olivia Ciummo, Nick Harvey, Rebecca Mir, Michael Morris, Orson Panetti, and Michael Sirianni. These works construct a kind of portrait of this educational microcosm, visiting themes of loss, longing, doubt, transcendence, and light. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ April 4th, 2010 THE BROAD SHOULDERS TOUR The Nightingale turns 2! Hey Look! We are turning 2! After 2 revolutions around the sun and nearly 100 programs, we are still up and running... To celebrate we are going to throw a hometown screening of the program we are touring the midwest with this spring. There will be food and cake and beer. And for those of you who still have not seen it, the program concludes with the 2010 Nightingale Trailer. THE BROAD SHOULDERS TOUR Chicago, IL claims as its own a plethora of hardworking film, video, and new-media artists. Since 2008, a rough and ready microcinema called The NIGHTINGALE has been presenting their work. To celebrate the second anniversary of the space, director, Christy LeMaster and her sister, print-maker Jessica LeMaster, are heading out on the roads of the quiet midwest with THE BROAD SHOULDERS TOUR, a showcase of recent Chicago-made work screened at The Nightingale since its opening. The works in The Broad Shoulders Tour represent a diversity of mediums and aesthetics but share a similar sensibility. This isn't a city of artists looking to quit their day jobs. Chicago makers are teachers, builders, programmers, journalists,- workers. There is an economy, a beauty built out of utility, and an accessibility that Chicago breeds into its makers. Featured artists in the program include Jon Cates, Warren Cockerham, Nick Edelberg, Lori Felker, Jason Halprin, Emily Kuehn, Kent Lambert, Jodie Mack, Jesse McLean, Nicholas O'Brien, Jon Satrom, Kate Raney, Michael Robinson, and Jerzy Rose. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 31st, 2010 CHANNELING an invocation of spectral bodies and queer spirits Presented by Threat Level Curated by Latham Zearfoss and Ethan White DVD Release Party and Screening 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 invisibleÐ ghostly, even-in everyday life. PROGRAM DETAILS: Vanessa Renwick - 9 is a Secret (2002, 6:00, video) Elliot Montague - Well Dressed (2006, 10:00, Super 8mm on video) Shana Moulton - Whispering Pines #7 (2006, 5:00, video) Michael Robinson - Carol Anne is Dead (2008, 7:30, video) EMR (Math Bass & Dylan Mira) - Somethings Gonna Soon (2008, 4:00, video) Aay Preston-Myint - Some Ghosts (2007, 2:00, video) Jillian Pena - Compromise (2005, 10:00, video) John Di Stefano - (tell me why): The Epistemology of Disco (1990, 24:00, video) Total Running Time: 68 min. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 30th, 2010 YOU TUBE ASSEMBLY Hosted by Jesse McLean Presented by Homeroom Chicago Calling all twihards, twerds and twitubers! Thematically based around fan culture, this screening will take a look at both fans and fan-created videos. Through our own cloudy voyeuristic lens, we will explore what it means to admire, to emulate and to obsess. The YouTube Assembly consists of screening web-based video for a live and participating audience. Each event features a guest host presenting a collection of YouTube clips that elaborate on a project or theme in which they have some expertise or interest. In the spirit of the popular YouTube interface, audience members are encouraged to comment on the videos they watch, except out loud and in real time with no anonymity. After the presentation the host then invites audience members to share their own clips. Like karaoke or an open mic, the YouTube Assembly creates a situation in which people take turns entertaining each other, thus bypassing the arguably isolating aspect of online networks like YouTube and encourage real, face-to-face interaction. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 27th, 2010 LIGHT AND SHADOW Films by Nicky Hamlyn Presented by WHITE LIGHT CINEMA White Light Cinema & The Nightingale are honored to welcome U.K. filmmaker, artist, and author Nicky Hamlyn, who will present a selection of his stunning 16mm films from the past two decades. Hamlyn is frequently referred to as a Structuralist filmmaker, and he certainly is a minimalist one in the form and construction of his films. But, unlike most ÒstructuralistsÓ he is equally concerned with light and color and texture. His work seems a melding of the Structuralist strain the avant-garde film with the lyrical one, to great effect. Simple in concept, frequently he films room interiors or buildings, his films are at the same time visually rich and striking in their detail. He has the eye of a painter, but he also has a sophisticated understanding of the power of cinema and his camera work and editing are as delicate and resonant as his images. "Hamlyn's mostly silent films are concentrated, focused on the relationship between camera and place, maker and materials. Subtle shifts in focus, single-frame sequences, or time-lapse photography alter perception of a tree, a wall, a garden trellis, a shadow, or a reflection. Space is alternately flattened and expanded. The gap in a fence, the opening between two sheets hanging on a laundry line re-frame the outdoors, and nature in close-up becomes abstract and intensely colored, surprising us with its patterns, variability, and the sheer beauty of the mundane." (Excerpt from Program Notes, LIFT, Toronto, Canada) PROGRAM DETAILS: MINUTIAE (1990, 1 min, color, sound, 16mm) HOLE (1992, 2 mins, color, silent, 16mm) MATRIX (1999, 7 mins., color, silent, 16mm) LUX ET UMBRA (1999, 2 mins., B&W, silent, 16mm) NOT RESTING (1999, 4 mins., B&W, silent, 16mm) PENUMBRA (2003, 9 mins., B&W, silent, 16mm) TRANSIT OF VENUS (2005, 2 mins., B&W, silent, 16mm) OBJECT STUDIES (2005, 16 mins., color, silent, 16mm) PISTRINO (2003, 9 mins., B&W, silent, 16mm) PANNI (2005, 3 mins., color, silent, 16mm) QUARTET (2007, 8 mins., color and B&W, silent, 16mm) PRO AGRI (2008, 3 mins., color, silent, 16mm) WATER WATER (2004, 11 mins., color and B&W, silent, 16mm) Nicky Hamlyn studied Fine Art at the University of Reading. From 1979 to 1981 he was a workshop organizer at the London Filmmakers' Co-op, where he was also a founder and regular contributor to the Co-op's magazine Undercut. In 2003 he published the book Film Art Phenomena and has contributed to a variety of magazines, anthologies, and exhibition catalogs. He currently teaches at the University for the Creative Arts. Hamlyn is one of the key U.K. experimental filmmakers of the last 30 years. He has screened throughout the world and has over 40 films, videos, and installations to his credit. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ March 16th, 2010 FAIR USE Cinema Re-Mixers From NYC "Fair Use is a New York-based trio founded in 2005 by musicians Zach Layton and Matthew Ostrowski and video artist R. Luke DuBois, based on the use of cinema as raw materials for experimental live performance. A typical Fair Use performance consists of the trio performing one or more culturally significant films live in their entirety in a condensed time frame. Each performance uses the picture and soundtrack of the film as the sole materials for an improvised set, which interrogates our cinematic memories through frenetic audio and visual processing and re-narration of the cinematic object. As their performances unfold, the trio evokes their own memories and impressions of the film as a highly subjective lens, for example by focusing on iconic moments in the films and lingering on them, or massively collapsing long sequences into mere seconds. Fair Use looks at our accelerating culture through the electronic performance and remixing of cinema, presenting classic films through time compression and audio and visual manipulation." -issueprojectroom.org They will remix the following cinema classics: 2001: A Space Odyssey The Wizard of Oz Top Gun _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 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. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 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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