Tuesday, May 28, 8pm

Lary 7

Millennium is happy to present a night of films and performance by Lary 7 using 35mm projectors and a magic lantern!

WEDENSDAY May 29, 8pm

A QUITE ENVIRONMENT

new and recent works by Elle Burchill

approximately 60 minutes

Elle Burchill presents a “A Quite Environment”, an approximately 60-minute program of new, recent or seldom seen short video works, with an emphasis on works in which sound, or the lack thereof is important. Additionally, works involving digital accidents and those made from old model cell phone footage including two new such pieces are also featured.

Elle Burchill is Brooklyn-based artist. She is inspired by the unexpected and accidental and her works often explore the fragility of our bodies and circumstances. Her videos have screened at cinemas, galleries and festivals in the US and internationally including: White Box Gallery, Bronx Museum, Anthology Film Archives, Light Industry, Director’s Lounge, Berlin, Harvard Film Archives; Academia di Bella Arti di Brera, Milan Italy, Lucca Film Festival, Italy, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archives, Echo Park Film Center, LA, and the Chicago Underground Film among many others. Elle Burchill is a graduate of the University of Virginia and was born in Pittsburgh, PA

Part 1. SELECTED SHORTS

This selection of short films, animations and music videos by Chiara Ambrosio weave together a journey through interior landscapes of the imagination. They are short visual poems (or prayers) that attempt to translate the intricate and erratic language and logic of dreams into moving images and narratives that rely on music and sound to engage with the emotional, irrational and subliminal side of the mind, deeply rooted in the surreal, absurdist world of Czech and Eastern European animation and literature.

This body of work is informed by a personal interest in anthropology and more specifically in the symbolic quality and ritualistic relevance of objects and images; film becomes a tool through which to explore the ability to unlock the crepuscular chambers of memory and to conjure back into existence all that is ephemeral and transitory about our everyday life.

Part 2. A WALK THROUGH WOODA

A Walk Through Wooda is a four part film-and-song-cycle that uses myth-making as a language to explore the dramatic setting of Wooda Farm, nestled in a wooded valley a short walk away from the wild coast of North Cornwall.

The films were conceived during a series of ritualistic daily walks as a process-based inquiry into the relationship between people, place and memory, engaging with time as physical matter through a careful and protracted period of observation through an animator’s eye, keen on allowing for minute transformations to occur and unlock all kind of quiet epiphanies. The films attempt to uncover at once the layers of historical sediment that have accumulated in space through time, and to reap new myths through a personal interpretation and direct encounter with place and narrative.

The films are accompanied by a luminous, live soundtrack by Bird Radio.

A Walk In The Park is, in the words of its protagonist Brian Fass, “a science fiction film, a psychedelic journey back to the womb…” This documentary-like journey, cinematically speaking, progresses from non-fiction to fiction, and dizzyingly, dazzlingly back again. It is an ironic biopsy of truth, depression, addiction, family relations, ambition, retribution, violence and poetry. The picture evokes the closed-system mysteries of the mind, its wormhole logic, language and behavior, as a kind of Rorschachian jigsaw puzzle, a vertiginous descent into the abyss of self. The picture means to re-define the documentary genre, to make it real.

96mins.

Bill Creston Mini-Retrospective: 1/2″ Open Reel Video & Super 8 Short Films Selections from 1967-2003

Millennium Film Workshop presents an evening of pioneering work in video and super 8 by one of the world’s most irreverent and absurdist media minds ever to hit the screen as both a performer, writer, director, cinematographer and editor. Bill Creston, now 81 years old, founded the video departments of both Cooper Union and The School of Visual Art, with his own equipment, and made the world’s first Video Diary. For his unusual visions of New York City, he was also the ONLY filmmaker to have truly been banned by the Collective for Living Cinema. The Museum of Modern Art honored him with a solo Cineprobe in 1989, but his work is rarely seen, so come to this wonderful event!

The program will include:

FIVE THIRTY AM TAXI REAR-VIEW MIRROR, 2003, color, sound, S/8. Captured on film in his rear view mirror while Creston is parked in his cab at dawn, a scene plays out between one man seeking the attention of another. Original voice-over dialogue. 1min 30sec.

LUNCH HOUR, 1996, b&w, sound, S/8. In this narrative, a young blue-collar worker and an old derelict (played by Creston), joined briefly by a young pan-handler, meet for a few moments in the sunshine along a wall in an industrial neighborhood one weekday at lunchtime. Also starring Dave Mumma and Clayton Brooks. 4min48sec

DUETS, 1996, color, sound, S/8. 5 mins. Funny dialogue by usually one but sometimes two or three people. Creston’s jokes are flawlessly timed and poignantly felt through his dead-pan humor. Starring Barbara Rosenthal, Dick Miller, Bill Creston, Cat Fisher, Ola Creston, Sena Clara Creston, Maddy Falk, David Falk, and others. 4mins50sec

CRIPPLE. 1970. Black and white, 1/2″ open reel to digital. Uncomfortable travel on uneven crutches in an unlikely environment. Improvisation by Carl Methfessel. 6mins 40sec.

S.E.G. 1974. Black and white, 1/2″ open reel to digital. A humorous experiment with a first-generation video Special Effects Generator, and the news story of an altercation between elderly roommates. 7 mins.

RUNNER, 1980, color, sound, S/8. Rapid segments shot in and around NYC with original music and sound usually cut in equal length to each image. The principle subject of the film is NY street Culture: birds, dogs, transportation, derelicts, pedestrians and seamy life intercut with a few fragments of nature, indoor and simple subjects. Each sound has been written as dialog or collected from the radio or produced by Creston on synthesyzer to accompany each image and establish attitude: amusement, amazement, contrast, bewilderment, humor, absurdity.” featured in Creston’s solo Cineprobe at MoMA, 1989.7min3sec

COUPONS 1989. color, sound, S/8. A day in the life of a couple in late middle-age. Starring Dick Miller and Lorraine Schanzer. 7mins 37sec

WYATT EARP, 1990. color, sound, S/8.. Segments of quick images from city and country, with original improvised dialog. Starring Dick Miller, Bill Creston, Barbara Rosenthal. 9min25sec

I SAW WHERE YOU WAS LAST NIGHT, 1985, color, sound, s/8. Segments of quick images from city and country, with original improvised diaglog. Starring Barbara Rosenthal, Bill Creston and Carl Methfessel. 14mins10sec

TAXI, TAXI, 1992, color/b&w, sound, S/8. Snippets of New York City caught during Creston’s 15 years as a NYC cab driver, with scenes scripted and edited, and some actual dialogue recorded. Starring Barbara Rosenthal, Bill Creston, Richard Osterweil. Original soundtrack and song ‚”Taxi-Taxi” by Bill Creston. This film was screened at the MoMA in “Big As Life: An American History of 8mm Film”. 1997-99. 15 mins.