April Thursdays of Experimental Film

A month-long program in April 2007 at the University at Buffalo of short experimental films by female directors, including Barbara Hammer in person, a censorship v. freedom of expression debate about Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses, and compilation programs from The Film-Maker’s Cooperative in NYC and Canyon Cinema in San Francisco.

April 5: Barbara Hammer In Person: Endangered (1988, 18 min), Menses (1974, 4 min), Sanctus (1990, 19 min), Double Strength (1978, 14.5 min)

April 12: Face-Off: Porn, Erotica, Art film? Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses (1964-67, 22 min)

April 19: Gunvor Nelson and Su Friedrich (From Canyon Cinema): Schmeerguntz (GN & Dorothy Wiley, 1966, 15 min), Take Off (GN, 1972 10 min), Cool Hands and Warm Heart (SF, 17 min), Scar Tissue (SF, 1979, 7 min at 18 fps), Gently Down the Stream (SF, 1981, 14 min at 18fps)

April 26: Film-Makers' Cooperative program: Ritual in Transfigured Time (Maya Deren, 1946, 15 min), Go Go Go (Marie Menken, 1966, 12 min), Switch Center (Ericka Beckman, 2002, 10 min), Who Do You Think You Are (Mary Filippo, 1987, 10 min), Parcelle (Rose Lowder, 1979, 3 min.), Les Tournesols (Rose Lowder, 1982, 3 min), Black Coffee (Heather McAdams, 1985, 4 min), Fear of Blushing (Jennifer Reeves, 2001, 6 min), Angel Blue Sweet Wings (Chick Strand, 1966, 4 min), Superhero (Emily Breer, 1995, 6 min), Midweekend (Caroline Avery, 1985, 8 min), Egypt (Kathrin Resetarits, 1997, 10 min)

Ruth Goldman and Carolyn Tennant co-produced Barbara Hammer’s visit.

Poster: Kyle Schlesinger

Forum on Torture

Weekly public forum, September 13 – November 15, 2006, at the University at Buffalo of lectures, screenings and discussions placing the Abu Ghraib human rights abuses within the larger social, cultural and political framework. Specific histories and events, from child abuse through WWII psychological warfare and CIA involvement in Central American “dirty wars” to computer games, were analyzed from such perspectives as International Law, the US Constitution, human rights advocacy campaigns, and visual theory. Films, artworks, and independent media expanding human rights discourse were presented by makers, curators, and journalists, with a special appearance on October 11th by Amy Goodman, the executive producer of Democracy Now!: The War and Peace Report.

Speakers

Poster: Kyle Schlesinger

The Inventing Space of Cinema

Films by Lana Lin, Barbara Hammer & Barbara Klutinis, Janie Geiser, Leslie Thornton, Joyce Wieland, Storm De Hirsch, Babette Mangolte, Marie Menken, Marjorie Keller, Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid.

Film screening and discussion on March 1, 2006, at the University at Buffalo. Maya Deren’s first film experiment Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) ignited the American avant-garde film movement at mid-century, and for decades now has been screened continuously in cinema studies classrooms. At one point the film’s protagonist (played by Deren) strides in a space that only cinema makes possible: close-ups show the woman’s alternating feet against sand, grass, pavement, and rug, creating the effect that she actually exists simultaneously in these ordinarily disjointed environs.

Of this sequence, Deren has written, “It was like a crack letting the light of another world gleam through. I kept saying to myself, ‘The walls of this room are solid except right there…There’s a door...I’ve got to get it open because through there I can go to someplace instead of leaving here by the same way that I came in.’”

In a like-spirited displacement, The Inventing Space of Cinema re-posits Meshes of the Afternoon within a frame of works—including live action, animation, and re-purposed footage—that use experimental means and investigatory techniques to pose questions about objective and subjective space, gendered spatiality, and filmic architectonics. The frame is intended to open a necessary entrance to Meshes, one enabling the pre-canon film’s flux and indeterminacy to sneak past into the present.

Respondents: Thom Donovan, Meg Knowles, Vincenzo Mistretta, & Carolyn Tennant

Full Program

Poster: Kyle Schlesinger

Writers Making Film

Screening series questioning how different forms of writing—screen and page—act on one another and in relation (both proximate and distant) to one another. The films in the series are by makers either known primarily as writers or whose theoretical and poetic writings are integral to their filmmaking.

Programs

Films by Hollis Frampton, Feb 27, 2002
Zorns Lemma, Lemon, Less

Films & Poetry by Abigail Child, Oct 2, 2003
Mayhem, Dark Dark

Keith Sanborn Presents Situationist films by Guy Debord, Feb 11, 2004
Society of the Spectacle and Refutation…
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Jean Genet, Germaine Dulac & Antonin Artaud, Mar 24, 2004
The Seashell and the Clergyman by Germaine Dulac and Antonin Artaud and Un Chant D'Amour by Jean Genet

Poster: Arzu Ozkal and Orkan Telhan

Examinants