Hollywood's Soft Psychedelic Underbelly
http://www.laweekly.com/2010-11-11/film-tv/hollywood-s-soft-psychedelic-underbelly/
Filmforum's "Alternative Projections" symposium draws a line from
avant-garde to Avatar
By Doug Harvey
Nov 11 2010
The very idea of Experimental Cinema in Los Angeles is almost an
oxymoron. In the heart of Hollywood, why would anyone with any
marketable moviemaking chops bother with such celluloid navel-gazing
and who would ever see it? The truth is that although other cities
have more high-profile avant-garde film ghettos, L.A.'s hothouse
moviemaking environment and access to technical resources have
supported a thriving underground almost from the birth of the
industry. As for seeing it? For better or worse, the very structure
and visual language of contemporary mainstream moviemaking special
effectsriddled, CGI-saturated, 3-D gee-whiz-addicted eye-candy store
that it is can arguably be traced to the wide-scale absorption of
L.A.-based abstract animators by the Industry, particularly George
Lucas, in the 1970s. There is a direct line from the visual music of
expatriate German expressionist painter Oskar Fischinger's 1947
Motion Painting No. 1 to the immersive, uncanny virtual reality of
James Cameron's Avatar.
This secret history is one of many to be explored as part of
"Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles
1945-1980," a three-day symposium, film festival and exhibition
presented by Los Angeles Filmforum this weekend at the USC School of
Cinematic Arts. The Industrial Light & Magical gutting of L.A.'s
finest psychedelic optical-printing noodlers is specifically
addressed in "Not Just a Day Job: Experimental Filmmakers and the
Special Effects Industry in the 1970s," a paper presented by media
scholar Julie Turnock on Saturday at 4 p.m. as part of the panel
titled "Blurred Boundaries: Outsider/Insider Filmmaking and Group
Identities." And that's just one of 17 presentations, scheduled over
four Saturday and Sunday panel discussions, disparate in topic
(ranging from "International Identities and Local Influence: The
Development of Visual Communications" to "Taylor Mead, a Faggot in
Venice Beach in 1961") but uniformly shedding light on some of the
more obscure byways of local film history.
For the uninitiated, Friday evening features a grab-bag sampler
screening of key cinematic examples cited in the panels, including
the rarely exhibited 1956 short The Wormwood Star, by Curtis
Harrington, a familiar underground icon for his direction of the
young Dennis Hopper in 1961 surrealist mermaid noir Night Tide (as
well as '70s cult classics Who Slew Auntie Roo?, What's the Matter
With Helen? and Killer Bees), and also part of the occult creative
community centered around USC alum Kenneth Anger. The Wormwood Star
profiles the now-lost artwork of (Marjorie) Cameron, star of Anger's
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), widow of Jet Propulsion Lab
founder Jack Parsons (and collaborator with him and L. Ron Hubbard in
a momentous sex magick ritual known as "The Babalon Working"), author
of the artwork that got Wallace Berman's 1957 Ferus Gallery show
busted by the LAPD vice squad, and subject of independent curator
Alice Hutchison's Saturday afternoon presentation "Scarlet Woman on Film."
Other highlights of Friday's screening include Flesh of Morning, an
early (1956), atypically character-driven mythopoeic meditation by
Stan Brakhage; Shoppers Market, a forgotten 1963 pop-art film
experiment by the equally obscure John Vicario; and Robert Wade
Chatterton's rediscovered 1961 queer-cinema milestone Passion in a
Seaside Slum in which Mead does his turn as "the faggot."
But probably the single most compelling cinematic reason to attend
the free (with registration at USC's website) weekend seminar is the
opportunity to re-experience John Whitney Jr.'s Side Phase Drift
1965, a multiscreen psychedelic warhorse of the '70s experimental
circuit and high point of the 2005 Hirshhorn/MOCA Visual Music
exhibition. An intricately colored and composed abstract geometric
journey, Side Phase Drift 1965 was built up from layer upon layer of
optically printed images of dots, squares, triangles and circles.
Sounds cerebral, but set to a pulsing Indian sound track and
projected in a darkened, immersive environment, it is an
extraordinary sensual, spiritual and emotional delight. The best news
is that the eight-minute trip will repeat endlessly throughout the
symposium in the School of Cinematic Arts Gallery in the lobby of the
Spielberg Building. An exhibit of historic ephemera, filmmaking
artifacts and original artwork curated by Filmforum founder Terry
Cannon also will be on view for the duration.
A pair of more focused screenings is divided between Saturday and
Sunday. Old-school L.A. psychedelic light-show collective Single Wing
Turquoise Bird (1968-1973; frequent collaborators with painter Sam
Francis) holds down the Saturday night slot with a program of mostly
recent solo cinema works, featuring the premiere of Larry Janss'
exquisitely nostalgic acid-wash road movie Slum Goddess Goes to New
Mexico (composited in-camera in 1970 and newly assembled with the
help of Final Cut prodigy Jordan Miller) and Yoga-Sutras (2010),
Peter Mays' video gameinformed 3-D-ification of classic SWTB
sequences of morphing new-age symbols. I kept expecting Xavier,
Renegade Angel to pop up with a shakashuri solo. The sound tracks,
incidentally, are impeccable: Terry Riley and Nico Muhly,
respectively, plus Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd for the brief opening
segment of the original light show in action in 1970. The other end
of the evening is bracketed with a new half-hour condensation from
the reunited Bird's recent improvisations, followed by a panel with
original members of the group.
Sunday afternoon is devoted to the Los Angeles Independent Film
Oasis, an experimental filmmakers' cooperative that operated from
1976 to 1981. Founded and run by a group of early CalArts graduates,
it primarily organized screenings that contextualized the work of
soon-to-be-illustrious members such as Pat and Beverly O'Neill (Water
& Power, 1989), Morgan Fisher (Standard Gauge, 1984) and David and
Diana Wilson (The Museum of Jurassic Technology, ongoing).
A screening of representative works by seven members will be followed
by a discussion that undoubtedly will touch on the difficulties of
holding together such a community for more than a few years.
"Alternative Projections" is, in part, a celebration of Filmforum's
ability to do just that. Now in its 35th year, the organization has
become a cornerstone of L.A.'s cultural identity, introducing new
generations to contemporary and historical avant-garde films through
weekly screenings at Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre.
The symposium is just the tip of the iceberg. As the first public
event in the Getty Foundation's sprawling, comprehensive "Pacific
Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980" initiative, the USC jamboree is
just the first trickle in a flood of region-specific cultural-history
revisionism that is scheduled to hit its stride in the fall of 2011.
Filmforum is in the midst of an extensive oral history videography
project, covering much of the same history as the symposium, while
developing a large-scale series of screenings to coincide with the
Getty's major push. After that they're going to save the Amazon!
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ALTERNATIVE PROJECTIONS: EXPERIMENTAL FILM IN LOS ANGELES 1945-1980 |
Nov. 12-14 | USC School of Cinematic Arts | Free with online
registration; more info at cinema.usc.edu/about/events/event_20100830.htm
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