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*** TWIAGC is looking to pass the torch to a new facilitator *** Please contact *[email protected] <[email protected]>* for details *This Week [November 23 - December 1, 2024] in Avant Garde Cinema* To receive the weekly listing directly via email rather than through Frameworks, just hit Subscribe <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=091193278b&e=857b71a9cb> . *DEADLINES APPROACHING* **** Enter upcoming calls for entry here <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=e27dc93c39&e=857b71a9cb> **** ___________________________________________________________________________________ *sorted by submission deadline* 11.27.2024 Onion City Experimental Film Festival <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=9dea88ae14&e=857b71a9cb> (Regular Deadline) 11.30.2024 Interbay Cinema Society Lightpress Grant <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=48c2c57241&e=857b71a9cb> 11.30.2024 dresdner schmalfilmtage <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=3b2a4f1857&e=857b71a9cb> 11.30.2024 Laterale Film Festival <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=9ce6356d66&e=857b71a9cb> (Second Deadline) 11.30.2024 Wide Open Experimental Film Festival <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=eb58a5c3e9&e=857b71a9cb> (Final Deadline) 12.01.2024 Single Frame <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=c4699cb5aa&e=857b71a9cb> (Late Deadline) 12.06.2024 Margaret Mead Film Festival <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=41655d5354&e=857b71a9cb> 12.13.2024 Portland Panorama <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=aacd62ff20&e=857b71a9cb> (Late Deadline) 12.15.2024 Strangloscope Experimental International Festival <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=eb4737bbe5&e=857b71a9cb> (Extended Deadline) 12.18.2024 Chicago Underground Film Festival <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=79127043df&e=857b71a9cb> (Early Deadline) 01.10.2025 Coney Island Film Festival <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=7ce20ddd5d&e=857b71a9cb> (Late Deadline) 01.15.2025 Light Field <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=8190370365&e=857b71a9cb> 01.24.2025 Fugue State <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=2ac278058d&e=857b71a9cb> (Early Deadline) 01.26.2025 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=11ce6e333d&e=857b71a9cb> (Regular Deadline) 03.15.2025 ARTErra Residency <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=7f7234422d&e=857b71a9cb> 03.31.2025 FRACTO Experimental Film Encounter <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=07ba658289&e=857b71a9cb> 03.31.2025 Magmart Festival <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=22bc8e020e&e=857b71a9cb> *EVENTS* **** Enter your event announcements here <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=43d55d86bf&e=857b71a9cb> **** ___________________________________________________________________________________ *complicated sorting but a true attempt, enjoy!* This week's programs (summary): - We Are Here: Scenes From The Streets <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=125cc3b401&e=857b71a9cb> [November 1-December 22, New York, NY] - Camera Obscura : Tenth Annual Report <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=b675b7289a&e=857b71a9cb> [November 22-24, Petaluma, CA] - Drawn To Bits: The Zagreb School of Animation <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=59669e64c4&e=857b71a9cb> [November 24, Cambridge, MA] - Le Dépays + Sans soleil <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=7442eb4947&e=857b71a9cb> [November 25, Cambridge, MA] - The Divine Visions of Ishu Patel <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=c8e9b8f675&e=857b71a9cb> [November 25, Los Angeles, CA] - Frameworks Monthly Experimental Screening - Dore O <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=c07028037f&e=857b71a9cb> [November 28, Seoul, South Korea] - Film No. 18 (Mahagonny) <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=36c0c454d9&e=857b71a9cb> [December 1, Cambridge, MA] - Alienating Images: Animation Elsewhere And Otherwise <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=9f81657c35&e=857b71a9cb> [December 1, Cambridge, MA] - The Long Conversation <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=38093102be&e=857b71a9cb> [ongoing, online] - 6x6 Project: Artists' Moving Image Works <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=5dd15391ee&e=857b71a9cb> [ongoing, online] *STARTING BEFORE SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2024* *November 1 - December 22* Venue type: *Live, physical event* Anthology Film Archives <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=9dcb9df31b&e=857b71a9cb> times vary, see below, 32 Second Avenue, New York, NY *WE ARE HERE: SCENES FROM THE STREETS* This fall, the International Center of Photography (ICP) presents a major exhibition entitled “We Are Here: Scenes from the Streets”. Spotlighting contemporary street photography from over 30 international iconic street photographers, the exhibition highlights the diverse perspectives and techniques that define modern street photographers and emphasizes the role of the streets as a canvas for illustrating change. The work of these intergenerational and geographically disparate artists encourages an expansive re-viewing of “street photography.” It opens up important discussions on how “the street” and public space are places of community, joy, self-expression, advocacy, changing landscapes, and social dynamics as seen through the street photographer’s lens. In conjunction with the exhibition, Anthology hosts a wide-ranging film series, throughout November and December, that explores the intersections of street photography and cinema. The series includes documentaries by and about notable street photographers, but also showcases films that qualify, in their own right, as works of moving-image street photography (such as the work of Khalik Allah, Charlie Ahearn, Mira Nair, John Wilson, Heddy Honigmann, Jem Cohen, and others), or that expand the notion of what qualifies as street photography (John Smith’s *THE GIRL CHEWING GUM*, William H. Whyte’s *THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES*, or Tom Jarmusch’s *SOMETIMES CITY*). “We Are Here: Scenes from the Streets” is on view at the ICP (84 Ludlow Street) from September 26, 2024-January 6, 2025. The exhibition is curated by Guest Curator Isolde Brielmaier, with Noa Wynn, Independent Curatorial Assistant. Special thanks to all the filmmakers; to Jacque Donaldson Bailey, Izzy Dow, Sara Ickow, Haley Kane, and Marley Trigg Stewart (ICP); and to Neal Block (Magnolia Pictures); Bob Hunter (Icarus Films); Marian Luntz (Museum of Fine Arts Houston); and Brian Meacham (Yale Film Archive). *SCREENINGS* Charlie Ahearn WILD STYLE <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=15ac98fc16&e=857b71a9cb> November 1 at 7:30PM ET November 23 at 9:00PM ET December 21 at 9:00PM ET Cheryl Dunn EVERYBODY STREET <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=d6ba27beab&e=857b71a9cb> November 2 at 4:30PM ET December 20 at 6:30PM ET KHALIK ALLAH PGM <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=da9163bfdb&e=857b71a9cb> November 2 at 7:00PM ET November 29 at 9:15PM ET Dayong Zhao STREET LIFE / NANJING LU <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=ba25c96507&e=857b71a9cb> November 2 at 9:15PM ET December 20 at 9:00PM ET WRONG SIDE OF THE LENS <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=a8ed8d1fd0&e=857b71a9cb> November 3 at 4:00PM ET AHEARN / ROBAKOWSKI / HELLER PGM <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=3572a1ead2&e=857b71a9cb> November 3 at 6:15PM ET December 1 at 8:30PM ET Charlie Ahearn JAMEL SHABAZZ STREET PHOTOGRAPHER (filmmaker in person!) <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=b4789e9518&e=857b71a9cb> November 3 at 8:30PM ET December 1 at 6:00PM ET Heddy Honigmann METAL AND MELANCHOLY <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=d2dc02ee0b&e=857b71a9cb> November 4 at 8:45PM ET December 21 at 4:15PM ET Raoul Peck ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=7430516f76&e=857b71a9cb> November 19 at 8:00PM ET JEM COHEN PROGRAM (filmmaker in person!) <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=a357a2b76e&e=857b71a9cb> November 22 at 7:00PM ET ONE HOUR + A WALK <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=f035766b0e&e=857b71a9cb> November 22 at 9:15PM ET November 24 at 5:15PM ET December 21 at 6:15PM ET 2 X NICHOLAS DOOB <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=54ea467479&e=857b71a9cb> November 23 at 4:30PM ET November 30 at 6:00PM ET William H. Whyte THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=ad616b1392&e=857b71a9cb> November 23 at 6:45PM ET November 29 at 7:00PM ET Tom Jarmusch SOMETIMES CITY (filmmaker in person!) <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=5efa24d75f&e=857b71a9cb> November 24 at 8:00PM ET Djamil Beloucif LE COIN DES VAURIENS <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=0aab743c85&e=857b71a9cb> December 22 at 5:00PM ET *___________________________________________________________________* *November 22 - 24* Venue type: *Both physical and online* CAMERA OBSCURA <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=73747e5a44&e=857b71a9cb> [multiple events / assorted times, see below], HOTEL PETALUMA | 205 Kentucky Street, Petaluma, CA Event URL: https://www.facebook.com/cameraobscurafilmsociety <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=405fa240e9&e=857b71a9cb> *CAMERA OBSCURA : TENTH ANNUAL REPORT* The reconvened CAMERA OBSCURA FILM SOCIETY, presenting "unusual, antique and experimental films" under the coordinated co-direction of Amanda Salazar (VIDIOTS <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=92fbdc5a34&e=857b71a9cb> Director of Programming) and Jonathan Marlow (Executive Director of PARACME <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=99a6f1183e&e=857b71a9cb>), will return for its Tenth Annual Report over a trio of days from 22 to 24-November (the weekend prior to Thanksgiving) in Petaluma, California, fifty kilometers (or roughly thirty miles) north of the Golden Gate Bridge! Over the course of this exceptional weekend, an assortment of wonderful and remarkable films will screen at a temporary cinema constructed inside the grand ballroom of the historic Hotel Petaluma. Programs of longer-works-paired-with-shorter-works will be presented along with filmmaker Q&As and related activities within walking-distance of the hotel. The original Camera Obscura Film Society was founded in 1957 by Lawrence Jordan and Bruce Conner (along with a handful of other likeminded individuals) in the years following the conclusion of Frank Stauffacher's legendary SFMOMA "Art in Cinema" series. COFS' eclectic programs continued at occasional intervals until the screenings ceased a handful of years later. The reconstituted Camera Obscura has attempted to recreate the spirit of these programs and, for the past decade, it has done exactly that! As in prior Reports, the complete program of screenings and events will only be announced in the days prior to opening night. This particular edition seems destined to be the most extraordinary of them all! *SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2024* Venue type: *Live, physical event* Harvard Film Archive <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=daf8bf4c13&e=857b71a9cb> 3pm EST, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA *Drawn to Bits: The Zagreb School of Animation* *Ersatz, AKA The Substitute (Surogat)*, Directed by Dušan Vukotić. Yugoslavia, 1961, 35mm, color, 10 min. Print source: HFA *The Play (Igra)*, Directed by Dušan Vukotić. Yugoslavia, 1962, 35mm, color, 12 min. Print source: HFA *Everyday Chronicle, AKA A Little Story (Mala kronika)*, Directed by Vatroslav Mimica. Yugoslavia, 1962, 35mm, color, 11 min. Print source: HFA *Tamer of Wild Horses (Krotitelj divljih konja)*, Directed by Nedeljko Dragić. Yugoslavia, 1966, 16mm, color, 8 min. Print source: HFA *The Fly (Muha)*, Directed by Aleksandar Marks and Vladimir Jutriša. Yugoslavia, 1966, 35mm, color, 8 min. Print source: HFA *Of Holes and Corks (O rupama i čepovima)*, Directed by Ante Zaninović. Yugoslavia, 1967, 35mm, color, 9 min. Print source: HFA *Passing Days (Idu dani)*, Directed by Nedeljko Dragić. Yugoslavia, 1969, 35mm, color, 9 min. Print source: HFA *Dialogue (Dijalog)*, Directed by Dragutin Vunak. Yugoslavia, 1969, 16mm, color, 1 min. Print source: HFA *The Masque of the Red Death (Maska crvene smrti)*, Directed by Pavao Štalter and Branko Ranitović. Yugoslavia, 1969, 35mm, color, 9 min. Print source: HFA *Ars Gratia Artis*, Directed by Dušan Vukotić. Yugoslavia, 1970, 16mm, color, 9 min. Print source: HFA The “Zagreb School,” as André Martin and Georges Sadoul labeled it at the 1958 Cannes festival, denotes one of Yugoslav filmmaking’s strongest, drollest and most internationally prominent episodes. Its zenith took place from approximately 1957 (when newspaper cartoonists, illustrators, sound designers, puppeteers and hand-drawn image virtuosos of various sorts united under the aegis of the then-newly-initiated Zagreb Film) all the way to 1980 and the economic calamities inhibiting the country that decade. The group’s enormous success and popularity with transatlantic audiences is evidenced not only by abundant contemporaneous screenings, series and awards—New York’s Museum of Modern Art alone organized two extensive retrospectives by the end of the 70s—but also by the existence of Zagreb film prints in archives across North America, including at this institution. Of the (at least) seventeen gorgeously saturated copies held at the Harvard Film Archive, we have opted to project ten. The influences, art-historical forerunners and philosophic currents from which Zagreb-associated craftspeople drew have been documented thoroughly: Walt Disney, Jiri Trnka, United Productions of America, German expressionist painting, Dziga Vertov, New Objectivity, Dada and George Grosz. Alongside them, to be sure, flourished a potent dose of Suprematism, Surrealism and the abstract hyperlinear geometrics of Mondrian. For all their conspicuous graphic indebtedness to modernist trends and ideas however, the films also tread their own unique course. Paul Morton appraises it precisely: “While the best-known Czech and Soviet animation indulges national-folk stylizations and contemporary domestic issues, the Zagreb School’s major themes are universal—industrialization, militarism, environmentalism, nuclear annihilation, and urban alienation, as well as the conforming pressures of commercialization and mass culture.” Especially invested in narratives of the hapless “small man” (mali covjek), ten-or-so-minute titles prolifically emerging from the modestly-resourced Zagreb Film conveyor line took up motifs of existential, transhistoric magnitude with the use of fiercely au courant and anti-illusionist techniques. The assortment on display here underlines some of the essential preoccupations and expressive variety of artist-auteurs laboring within the studio in the 60s: from Dusan Vukotic’s constructivism and the anti-machinic, paranoid dread of Vatroslav Mimica (an animator and soon-to-be eminent fiction director who himself could not draw) to anxiety-infused capers of men (and indeed exclusively men) agonizing under techno-modern duress and distress. There is even a lusciously baroque Edgar Allan Poe adaptation courtesy of Pavao Stalter and Branko Ranitovic, escorted by equal parts endearing and disquieting meta-gems on animation as imaginative escape; the (im)possibility of interpersonal communication; and humankind’s smallness in the face of flora, fauna and insecthood. Transnational junctures abound, with intertitles often rendered in a buffet of major languages (English, German, French, Italian and Russian, but at times also Greek or Hebrew) and westward-oriented distribution agreements, such as with America’s Janus Films. Eastmancolor, appropriately for the period, is the color process of choice, with some of this screening’s prints looking as superb as if never spooled through a projector. *SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2024* Venue type: *Live, physical event* Harvard Film Archive <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=9db5ea2e37&e=857b71a9cb> 7pm EST, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA *Le Dépays + Sans soleil *(Screening on 35mm) The Harvard Film Archive celebrates a beautiful new edition of Chris Marker's long-unavailable photo-essay *Le Dépays*, a meditation on Tokyo, memory, desire and the photographic image made at the same time as his film *Sans soleil*, with which it is in rich and clear dialogue. Copies of the beautiful new edition of *Le Dépays*, published by the Film Desk, will be available for sale before and after the screening of a rare 35mm print from the Harvard Film Archive collection. Artist and writer Sadie Rebecca Starnes, who spearheaded the project and wrote an insightful preface for the new edition, will be joined in conversation by Max Goldberg, Creative Arts Archivist at Houghton Library. Marker’s ruminative, melancholy masterpiece channels the imagination of a lonely traveling cameraman—evoked in letters from distant Africa and Japan—into a profound meditation on the creative conjuring powers of memory, place and image. Among the most brilliant examples of the essay film, *Sans soleil *uses a lyrical, associative structure to transform modern Japan into a vivid metaphor for the scintillating mosaic of fact, fiction and fantasy that defines the increasingly mediated imageworld in which we live. A crucial bridge between Marker’s adventurous earlier travel films and his growing interest in media and technology, *Sans soleil* is one of Marker’s most dazzling and inexhaustible works. *Sans soleil *Directed by Chris Marker. France, 1983, 35mm, color, 104 min. In English. Print source: HFA *___________________________________________________________________* Venue type: *Live, physical event* Academy Museum <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=da55e234a7&e=857b71a9cb> 7:30pm PT, Academy Museum, Ted Mann Theater, 6067 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036 *The Divine Visions of Ishu Patel* Internationally esteemed for his stunning animated shorts, two-time Oscar nominee Ishu Patel has influenced and inspired generations of fans and fellow animators with his gorgeously crafted and exquisitely realized films. Often working in completely different techniques for each production, his philosophically rich and deeply affecting films redefined the boundaries of artistry and expression in the world of independent animation. Born in Gujarat, India, in 1942, Patel was inspired to explore animation through his early experiences with films by Norman McLaren and other National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animators, eventually relocating to Montreal in the early 1970s. Working with the NFB, he went on to create several extraordinary short, experimental animations, as well as organize animation workshops around the world. This program features six of Patel’s most memorable and visionary works, including his Oscar-nominated films *Paradise* (1984) and *The Bead Game* (1977), as well as *Afterlife* (1978)—his breathtaking rumination on death and transformation, made entirely by animating luminous, backlit plasticine on glass. Programmed and note by Academy Film Archive Senior Film Preservationist Mark Toscano. All films directed by Ishu Patel and courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada. *How Death Came to Earth* 1971. 15 min. Canada. Color. English. Digital. *Perspectrum* 1975. 7 min. Canada. Color. Sound. Digital. *The Bead Game* 1977. 6 min. Canada. Color. Sound. Digital. *Paradise* 1984. 16 min. Canada. Color. Sound. Digital. *Divine Fate* 1993. 10 min. Canada. Color. English. Digital. *Afterlife* 1978. 8 min. Canada. Color. English and French titles. Digital. Total program runtime: 62 min. Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation. Theater accessibility accommodations available upon request. *THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2024* Venue type: *Live, physical event* Seoul Art Cinema <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=b7c2648b34&e=857b71a9cb> 7:30pm UTC+9, 22-7 Jeongdong, Jung-gu, Seoul, South Korea *Frameworks monthly experimental screening - Dore O* An evening of films by Dore O: *Alaska* (1968, 16 min) *Kaldalon* (1971, 42 min) *Kaskara* (1974, 19 min) Dore O. (1946–2022), the only woman cofounder of the Hamburg Film-Coop, started making films alongside Werner Nekes, her husband at the time. A trailblazer, she actively seeked out new forms of personal expression through the medium, creating a unique body of beautiful and inspirational work. Her films were recently restored by the Deutsche Kinemathek. "From her first film, *Jüm-Jüm* (co-directed with Werner Nekes), to her last film of the 1970s, her work followed an almost historical trajectory in which painterly, graphic, and poetic conceptions of the medium were madeover into distinctly cinematic terms, which eventually served as a means of exploring new modes of subjectivity, states of consciousness, and suppressed stories." - Masha Matzke *SUNDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2024* Venue type: *Live, physical event* Harvard Film Archive <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=2510392b36&e=857b71a9cb> 3pm EST, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA *Film No. 18 (Mahagonny)* Directed by Harry Smith. US, 1970-80, DCP, color and b&w, 141 min. DCP source: Harry Smith Archives Edited from eleven hours of footage, Smith’s magnum opus (or “’One’ Big Ceremony”) was ten years in the making and consisted of four 16mm projections in a square. The film premiered at Anthology Film Archives in 1980, and Smith described it in his press release as “a mathematical analysis of Duchamp’s [*The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors**, **Even or The Large Glass*] expressed in terms of Kurt Weill’s score for [*Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny*] with contrapuntal images (not necessarily in order) derived from Brecht’s libretto for the latter work.” However, Jonas Mekas offered that, “as *The Large Glass* is shattered, Harry shattered Brecht’s original. He didn’t interpret Brecht’s opera, he transformed it.” Obsessed with the opera, Smith said he selected it as a basis for the film not only for its musical complexity and “sections that approximate the sounds of other musical cultures…,” but also because of its simple, universal story: “the joyous gathering together of a great number of people, their breaking of the rules of liberty and love, and consequent fall into oblivion.” The four screens feature four sets of imagery—portraits, animation, symbols and nature—which communicate with one another in myriad ways and are interrupted by a variety of “uncategorized” shots and visual pauses. With this experiment, Smith was really testing the limits of cinema. As John Szwed summarizes: “Out-of-sync sequences, overexposure, reversed images, speed changes, repetition of images, reframing and reshaping the screen from rectangle to square, and verbal disruptions of the performances—all would appear to be an effort to expose and demystify the techniques of conventional narrative motion pictures.” Smith also tested the patience of Mekas, who had to manage the director’s increasingly volatile antics during shows. Its limited theatrical run did not appear to overly trouble Smith, who noted that *Mahagonny* “was designed to be shown over a 500-year period, or so, and consequently will scarcely be a box office smash during my life time: but will continually grow in popularity and be there for the increasingly large number of people who have the consciousness to unravel its cryptograms.” The new 4K DCP was created from the 2002 restoration that combined the four 16mm screens onto a single 35mm film. *___________________________________________________________________* Venue type: *Live, physical event* Harvard Film Archive <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=12e9c356fa&e=857b71a9cb> 7pm EST, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA *Alienating Images: Animation Elsewhere and Otherwise* Yugoslav animated cinema did not thrive only in the Croatian capital; initiatives, studios and (most importantly) eager innovators suffused the entire region. Highlighting eight disparate artists and ten remarkable, underwatched films, this screening congregates animation in the expanded field. Triumphs of manual and stop-motion ingenuity are included, but so too are endeavors in cameraless direct-to-film etching, compilation and derivative collage, as well as certain light, movement and color manipulations. Instead of foregrounding animation narrowly, we enlarge the perspective to other optic interventions and lens- or reel-based tinkering of various kinds. The ambition is to demonstrate that original non-live-action imagemaking in the other republics blossomed—often negating, or at least being indifferent to, Zagreb’s modernist (anti-)mimetic idiom. But we also seek to focalize animation in the context of other artistic mediums, fashions and practices. Just as *Fantastic Ballad*, Boštjan Hladnik’s superlative white-on-black shadow play (and the earliest title in the entire retrospective), emerged out of a cooperation with lyricist Lojze Gostiša and painter France Mihelič, Vladimir Petek’s imposing intermedial opus (from which we are showing one classic and one recently digitized rarity) is in never-ending dialogue with cinema as well as with the artist’s own aesthetic evolution. Engaged in garbling the transparent image, or in dethroning animation’s central conceits, these films borrow freely from art and from transnational artistic discourses of their time. Some of the shorts are results of accidents or contingencies: Slovene puppet wizard Črt Škodlar, as curator Igor Prassel reminds us, made *Morning, Lake and Evening at Annecy* after he mistakenly arrived to “the Venice of the Alps” in the year its illustrious animation biennial was *not* taking place, leaving the traveler with time to create. Other films (specifically Duba Sambolec’s *Hands*) are not animated at all, categorized as such only retroactively by the artist: “the film is an animated film with a living object. The starting idea of the film was to present the hands as an autonomous living object and to explore through animation in various movements what they can do in a way as if they were separated from the body.” Still others deploy advanced ocular techniques to hallucinatory ends—rotoscoping in the case of Divna Jovanović’s *Transformation*, and a barrage of pseudo-kaleidoscopic grid-adjacent filters in Slavko Almažan’s *Meduza Sajana*, a declared homage to Georges Méliès (but closer in spirit to the ethereal love poetics of a James Broughton or indeed to the intergalactics of Jordan Belson). Music and electronic sound effects, always assertive but never grating, play roles in the frenetic experiments of Zoran Jovanović and Slobodan Mičić, both resolute blind spots on the regional film-historical map. With Jovanović’s *Marxians*—a class-conflict psychodrama that thematizes alienation both as a (de)subjectifying assault and as quite literally a process of becoming-alien (not a *Martian* but a *Marxian*)—we might be able to conclude that the films under consideration alienate, *estrange* the animated image, turning and twisting it into something other than itself, which is to say into the no-man’s-land between life, figment and cel-based concoction. *Fantastic Ballad (Fantastična balada) *Directed by Boštjan Hladnik. Yugoslavia, 1957, 35mm, color, 11 min. Print source: HFA *Encounter (Sretanje) *Directed by Vladimir Petek. Yugoslavia, 1963, DCP, color and b&w, 7 min. DCP source: Croatian Film Association *Morning, Lake and Evening at Annecy (Jutro, jezero in večer v Annecyju) *Directed by Črt Škodlar. Yugoslavia, 1965, 35mm, color, 8 min. Print source: Slovenian Film Archives *One Hand – 30 Swords (Jedna ruka 30 mačeva) *Directed by Vladimir Petek. Yugoslavia, 1967, DCP, color, 12 min. DCP source: Croatian Film Association *Hands (Roke)* Directed by Duba Sambolec. Yugoslavia, 1969/70, digital video, black & white, silent, 4 min. Copy source: Filmmaker *Transformation (Preobrazaj) *Directed by Divna Jovanović. Yugoslavia, 1973, DCP, color, 3 min. DCP source: Delta Video *Meduza Sajana* Directed by Slavko Almažan. Yugoslavia, 1976, 35mm, color, 15 min. Print source: HFA *Antidogmin *Directed by Zoran Jovanović. Yugoslavia, 1976, 35mm, color, 7 min. Print source: HFA *Contemporary (Savremenik) *Directed by Slobodan Mičić. Yugoslavia, 1982, digital video, color, 6 min. Copy source: Alternative Film Archive *Marxians (Marksijanci)* Directed by Zoran Jovanović. Yugoslavia, 1984, 35mm, color, 9 min. Print source: HFA *ONGOING* Venue type: *Virtual, online event* Riverwest Radio <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=288f11adeb&e=857b71a9cb> streaming 24/7 *THE LONG CONVERSATION* THE LONG CONVERSATION with Xav Leplae and Stephanie Barber is on indefinite hold. But... all episodes from the last year and a half are streaming!!! *___________________________________________________________________* Venue type: *Virtual, online event* 6x6 Project <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=ab91c165d5&e=857b71a9cb> streaming 24/7 *Artists' Moving Image Works* 6x6 project is an online artists' community that serves as a platform for disseminating artists' moving image works, and to create an ever-growing network among peers. There are now more than four hundred artists’ film and moving image works available to view on the website. ------------------------------ *Let us know about your alternative film/video event!* Enter your event announcements by going to the Flicker Weekly Listing Form <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=06cd16c117&e=857b71a9cb> . To receive the weekly listing directly via email rather than through Frameworks, just hit Subscribe <https://list-manage.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4b83d0e66f4638a082b103d27&id=091193278b&e=857b71a9cb> . *** TWIAGC is looking to pass the torch to a new facilitator *** Please contact *[email protected] <[email protected]>* for details *Copyright © 2020 Flicker, All rights reserved.* Longtime recipient of This Week in Avant Garde Cinema This Week in Avant Garde Cinema · everywhere · Cincinnati, OH 45201 · USA
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