After waiting 6 years to afford it, I was finally able to visit Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley and Canyon Cinema in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco. I went early in October to screen as many 16mm prints of abstract and artistic movies as I could, works I've been waiting to see for several years, and it was a joyful inspirational and exciting experience to finally watch them! 1st day : Oct 2, PFA "Moon 1969" Scott Bartlett Stunning, mesmerizing, and kinetic! A hypnotic, cinematically exciting tour de force. I had been waiting 9 years to see this ever since reading about Francis Coppola and George Lucas' enthusiasm for it. Coppola caught it at at saturday midnight show at the Palace movie theater in North Beach, a sort of pre-Rocky Horror Picture Show where fun partying people dressed in wild costumes. They would screen different compilations of movies, including things like newsreels, serials, classic features, documentaries, and the occasional abstract or avant-garde 16mm movie. That night they happened to screen Moon 1969 and the normally rambunctious, talkative audience was completely silenced, hypnotized by the beautiful intense abstract visuals and sounds. Coppola was very impressed and began trying to develop a feature at american zoetrope with Scott at the helm and i really wish it had come to fruition. I was immediately hooked by the opening: over black, we hear NASA radio communications for a few minutes. There's a real tense, errie feel about it. Then a beautiful shot flying down slowly at night, wide view of a stretch of runway lights, surrounded by a sea of twinkling citylights. The camera slowly comes down and closer towards the runway - the two lines of individual points of light stretching away into the background of blackness and then they start to be mutliplied, as in double exposures I think; four lines of lights now, the 2 new ones going up and down and back and forth through the first 2. A really cool effect. The movie goes on to one great visual effect after another. Very strange colors and solarized-type effects. Great sounds with repeated reverb and echo effects that match the images of figures being multiplied far away into the background, perfectly combined together. Beautiful shots flying through the blue sunny sky, past white puffy clouds. Gorgeous shots of the ocean waves rolling and crashing. I got a feeling of how the moon affects our planet and our consciousness without ever seeing the moon itself. Great dramatic tension mounts as quick flash frames of white repeatedly strobe between the images. It hits a visual/sound climax and then a lovely wide shot zooms out from the horizon over a path of sunshine glistening off the ocean and reveals the ocean waters gently rolling into the beach. All superbly shot and edited, technically perfect. Scott was clearly gifted and very skillful with the tools and technology of movie making. Of course, like all of us abstract movie makers, he must have been working with limited resources and assistance and it's very impressive what he accomplished. He really had a fantastic sense of composition, color, movement, and sound. "1970" Scott Bartlett I had never heard of this work of his until reading about it in the catalogs of the PFA and Filmmakers's Co-op and decided to request it out of a curiosity about his life. What a treat it turned out to be! It's one of those great movies I can't believe has been sitting unknown and unheralded on a couple of archives' shelves for 40 years now. It is definitely ripe for re-discovery and renewed appreciation. It is a personal documentary of his life and cultural environment in that year but it is also a beautifully formal aesthetic experience. No videographics or post-processing visual effects, just superb technically excellent camerawork and editing combined with mostly pop songs in a very effective fashion. The star is his beautful wife Freude, a slender woman of delicate feminine features. Pretty face, long arms and legs, a small afro of curly hair - what looked to me to be black but was actually red! Scott follows her and a girlfriend as they make their way down a sidewalk in an old, dilapitated neighborhood of San Francisco. His handheld camera very sensitively employed as he moves with them. He then joins them at their table in a restaurant right next to the front window looking out on the street. He cuts back and forth to close angles moving their forks in their hands as they eat salad, swishing between their mouths and their plates, creating an oddly intimate effect, as if we're present hanging out with them as close friends. Really fun kinetic shots driving down the street fast, past other cars set to a good rock song. An absolutely lovely shot of Freude as she sits at the low base of a very large white tree in the middle of its huge trunks that branch out from there. Scott's camera positioned high above somewhere on the tree, looking down on her as she writes or sketches in her notebook. Cool crisp afternoon light - bright yet soft and subdued, almost a pinkish light. Perfect still composition of her lovely features, lost in herself, her thoughts, her creativity. Several dreamy images, floating - something off his tv set, a shot of the moon drifting up through the screen etc. Then a great moment, low fixed angle of Scott standing still in the darkness, warm golden light illuminating his face. Over the soundtrack a recording of his voice, he tells us that his other movies had all surprised him by being personal, they had become self-discovery. Now, that he is making a purposely personal work, he is losing that. A really exciting time-lapse sequence, the camera mounted to the hood of his car and set to the fantastic song "Going Up The Country" by Canned Heat. We speed through the big city streets, then down the freeway, then the highway, then the mountain roads past rows of tall trees, until we get to the snowy mountain slopes where Scott and Freude get out and enjoy climbing, away from the city environment of their home. The most dramatic and unforgettable scene is a pregnant Freud giving birth in their living room, while Scott and several of their friends stand around her to deliver their first son, Adam. A wide fixed camera angle, starts out with no live sound, just a single musical note, i'm not sure what instrument. Low tense, it slowly rises in volume and pitch until BAM it cuts off and the live synch sound from the room explodes - their son crying as his head emerges. Very poignant and resonant. To be continued . . . Douglas Graves
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