News From Navarra -- A showcase of Punto de Vista's anti-documentary documentaries.
Friday, July 16 - 7:30pm
admission- $8/$6 members
Millennium is proud to present a program of new Spanish experimental non-fiction, in conjunction with the festival Punto de Vista, selected by Doctruck and UnionDocs, and co-presented with Pragda.
The Punto de Vista Documentary Film Festival is an annual festival held in Navarra dedicated to forms of cinema generically grouped under the heading of ‘documentary.’ Programmed by Artistic Director Jostexo Cerdán, films come from around the world, with an emphasis on finding rarities in form and subject. The festival seeks to reward risk-taking and non-narrative approaches, and to uncover glints in Spanish and World Cinema.
PROGRAM:
AMANAR TAMASHEQ, Directed by Lluis Escartin, 2010 15 mins, DVD
Best Short Film Prize Winner --PDV 2010
In Tuareg with English Subtitles
Amanar Tamasheq communicates a highly political message by respectful and reflexive means, delivered in an intelligent and poetic combination of sound and image. Escartin lived with Tuareg rebels in the desert of Mali, and turned his camera on them in order to bring back their messages -- to the degree that the mistranslations of language and history allow.
LOS MATERIALES, Directed by Los Hijos, 2009, 67 mins, DVD
Jean Vigo Best Director Prize Winner -- PDV 2010
English Subtitles
Los Materiales explores an empty landscape around the reservoir of Riaño, in the province of León, in which the former town and nine other villages lie submerged as a consequence of a flood in 1987. The three members of Los Hijos, a young experimental filmmaking collective from Madrid, spent a year walking the area. The resulting work is a spare, diffuse document of a village just below the surface of history. Subtitles replace dialogue, leaving the occasional background noise as the sole sound source, and the story reliant on written text.
“Los Materiales defies our expectations on audiovisual language (specially the sound edition and mixing), on certain landscape aesthetic, even on the motivation or the ethic of filmmaking.” –Blogs and Docs
“Interesting and fearless, lively and stimulating, the film’s purpose is the exploration of Riaño, not only to dismember its dramatic structure but its semantic field.... The recovering of village’s history turns out to be impossible, just suggested, almost abstract, while the movie’s plot drives to metacinematographic issues and ends -in a mysterious, strange and disconcerting turn- becoming a terror history.”
–Cahiers du cinema, España.
Discussion to follow with Josetxo Cerdán, María Adell of PRAGDA, and Spanish Film Critic Manu Yáñez.
SPRING 2010
PERSONAL CINEMA SERIES
The Millennium is now in its 44th consecutive year of operation as a world-renowned center for film/video artists and their audiences. The organization presents a variety of programs and services including the personal cinema series, equipment access services, film/video workshops, Millennium Film Journal, and the Millennium Gallery.
STARTING TIME- 8pm (except where indicated) / Admission- $8.
APRIL 23 (Friday) OPEN SCREENING
DVD, Mini-DV, Videotape, 16MM, S8MM. All works are shown on a first-come-first-served basis. Bring films, videos and/or come as a viewer. (Finished works only, limited to a maximum of 20 minutes per person). Refreshments will be available. Doors open at 7pm. Screening begins at 8pm and ends at 10:30pm. Admission by contribution.
APRIL 30 (Fri.) RICHARD SANDLER
THE GODS OF TIMES SQUARE (114 min.-1999) East Village video artist and photographer will be present to show and discuss his striking feature that documents some of the more colorful elements of recent Times Square history.
“THE GODS OF TIMES SQUARE was shot over a six year period that witnessed a radical transformation of Times Square. Gone now are the mom and pop stores, squeezed out by a real estate gold rush. Gone too are the colorful characters who made Times Square a ‘speaker’s corner.’ Only the most strident of religious zealots remain to warn of ‘eternal sin.’ THE GODS OF TIMES SQUARE thus records a time in New York City history when the place most identified with free speech and the soul of New York, changed from a democratic, interracial, common ground to a corporate controlled soulless theme park. The former versions of Times Square offered its congregants a place to air their thoughts and blow off a little steam, to rant about God and race on the one hand or buy sex or porn at the other end of the Times Square spectrum. Now the choices are fewer, the prices are higher, and the ‘sin’ is gone. The fabled ‘white way’ now plays host to the newest of Gods: Mickey, Minnie and Goofy on one corner, Bugs, Daffy and Porky on the other…Gods help Times Square” - R.S.
An exhibition of Richard Sandler’s photographs will be held at the MILLENNIUM GALLERY from April 30 to June 19, 2010. The Opening Reception will be on Thursday, May 6th (6-8pm). Refreshments will be served and there will be a screening of his video, BRAVE NEW YORK (54 min.-2004) in the theater.MAY 7 (Fri.) SPECIAL FEATURES
ADAM & EVE, FRANÇOIS BOUÉ, FRANCISCA CAPORALI, BRADLEY EROS, JULIANA FRANCIS-KELLY, BRIAN FRYE AND PENNY LANE, CAMILLE DE GALBERT, PETER HRISTOFF, ANDREW LAMPERT, MARIE LOSIER, JACKIE RAYNAL, JOEL SCHLEMOWITZ — PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
This program was organized by SEBASTIEN SANZ De SANTAMARIA the Director of RESIDENCY UNLIMITED.
Conceived as a short term residency project, Special Features was realized at the Kumukumu Gallery, 42 Rivington Street (NYC) between January 9 and February 12, 2010. It involved the participation of 14 local artists and filmmakers and the creation of 12 films and videos. Each participant realized a 1 day residency within a narrow, storefront gallery, and was instructed to follow a simple yet precise set of constraints designed to maximize the time. For one month, Residency Unlimited converted the gallery into a low cost film studio, containing all the necessary ingredients for filming a movie: camera, lighting, costumes, props, backgrounds, staging, etc. A select group of artists, filmmakers, musicians, and performers were invited to use the space and equipment to each make a film over the course of one workday (eight hours)–an exercise in resourcefulness.MAY 15 (Sat.) PRESENCE: A CELEBRATION OF
MILLENNIUM FILM JOURNAL No. 52
In marking the recent publication of the Millennium Film Journal No. 52, entitled: PRESENCE, we will be presenting a number of works by artists written about in this issue.
ANGEL BLUE SWEET WINGS (3 min.-1966) & ANSELMO (4 min.-1967), by CHICK STRAND, MYTH LABS (7½ min.-2009) by MARTHA COLBURN, THE FUTURE IS BEHIND YOU (20 min.-2004), by ABGAIL CHILD, LAST DAYS IN A LONELY PLACE (20 min.-2007), by PHIL SOLOMON, THE BATHER (3 min.) by GEORGE GRIFFIN, THE COLOR OF LOVE ((10 min.-1994) by PEGGY AHWESH, and a work by TERRY FLAXTON.
“The acknowledgement of presence emerges from a fundamental respect for authorial intentions, paralleled by a questioning of the extent to which intentions can be realized, and an understanding that intentions are often discovered during the processes of production. Presence rejects meaning as distinct from the art object and its impact.
Presence is the transformation of a spectator’s heartbeat into a pulsating light show; the flash of an artist’s animation through the window of the subway; the daily experience of a video game reorganized into a time-based memorial for a close friend.” - An excerpt from the introduction to issue No. 52, page 5, by Jessica Ruffin and Grahame Weinbren.MAY 22 (Sat.) NIGHTWAYS
JOSHUA CHURCHILL, PAUL CLIPSON, CHE CHEN.
The Millennium presents a live sound/ film performance event featuring two San Francisco-based artists JOSHUA CHURCHILL and PAUL CLIPSON and New Yorker, CHE CHEN. Using electronic and acoustical musical instrumentation and Super 8 film, Churchill and Clipson create chance collisions of densely layered and textured image and sound. Che utilizes acoustic sound sources, reel to reel tape machines and film projectors placed in various locations around the performance area.
Joshua Churchill is a cross-disciplinary artist who works with sound (and light) in the context of immersive site-specific art installations and experimental music and noise projects. Paul Clipson is a filmmaker who often collaborates with sound artists and musicians. His Super 8 films are shot and largely edited in-camera. Che Chen is a sound and visual artist who in addition tape machines and projectors, uses stringed, wind, reed and percussion instruments and other musical and non-musical objects in works that explore his interests in perceptual phenomena and folk and ritual music from around the world.
MAY 28 (Friday) OPEN SCREENING
DVD, Mini-DV, Videotape, 16MM, S8MM. All works are shown on a first-come-first-served basis. Bring films, videos and/or come as a viewer. (Finished works only, limited to a maximum of 20 minutes per person). Refreshments will be available. Doors open at 7pm. Screening begins at 8pm and ends at 10:30pm. Admission by contribution.
ANOTHER TIME AROUNDThe Millennium is pleased to revisit the films of Sandra Davis which were screened in our theatre in 1990 and 2001. We are showing three of her most memorable works from those programs.
MAY 29 (Sat.) SANDRA DAVIS
AN ARCHITECTURE OF DESIRE (15 min.-1988), AU SUD/LA CAMPAGNE/UNE FOIS HABITÉE (17 min.-1999), PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE (46 min.-1999).
“In AN ARCHITECTURE OF DESIRE, the manifestations of desire, and the opportunities for a clarity of observation, presented themselves during the filming in unforeseen ways. Like all rhythmic structures, the film is meant to be understood through the body and senses, as well as through the conceptual mind.” -S.D.
“Davis’s earlier explorations of the body and sensuality come to fruition in this, her latest film. Through rigorous cross-cutting and use of extreme close-ups, man-made and natural manifestations of architecture merge with the physical body into palpable delineations of form and function.” - San Francisco Cinematheque program notes.
On PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE “Three women telling their own stories in a non-narrative, non-documentary form. How do inner conflicts of intimacy, sexual need, and violent impulses emerge in personal relationships? The evidence includes testimonies describing experiences of sexualities, love relationships, births, illegal abortions, adolescence as a Jew in revolutionary Russia and in Protestant US Midwest. Private anecdotes illuminate societal realities of race, culture and gender. My ‘story’ contributed contradictory images: the archaic Florida swamp, the elegant forms of European medieval architecture, Congress and Anita Hill, the mermaids of Weeki Wachee, victim heroines of European opera, abstract color and light explorations. Bits of 1950s educational films testify to scientific belief in cause and effect and stupefying patriarchal convictions of ‘how to’ grow up well, avoid ‘going bad’ and get a date for the prom.” - S.D.
JUNE 5 (Sat.) LILI WHITE
REVERIE (20½ min.-2009), CRACKED (3½ min.-2008), THE FUTURE IS YOU (9 min.-2008), S/tr:w/EET WALK (19 min.-2009), TURQUOISE BEADS (38 min.-2009) This program features several new works made by the artist since her last program at Millennium in 2007.
“My thing was always a layered image. In 2008, concurrent fractured frames of video tape were explored. In 2009, different public places, along with their historic and mythic events blended into a collective dreamscape. The idea was to evince the ‘whole’ of ‘it,’ like how ALL the facets form a diamond and is fueled more on a ‘why’ rather than a ‘how.’ The work is located more on the ‘horizontal’–not necessarily one that is linear–but one that stretches out in different directions, like the tentacles of an octopus.” - L.W.
On THE FUTURE IS YOU: “Like a lithographer’s velvety mezzotint, this monochromic future of molten metal features New York City’s downtown streets after the 9/11 disaster. ‘Seemingly’ among city and forest, the landscape study moves back and forth between Nature’s trees and man’s canyons of steel, showing neither but both. A chromium sound heard–doubled and abstracted–accompanying anxiety and serenity inside us. Exploring the gradient view the focus is on small movement like amoebas in a primordial soup; eventually stretching our attention to the larger matrix where we all reside.” - L.W.June 12 (Sat.) JON BEHRENS
For more than 30 years, Seattle-based artist Jon Behrens has worked completely outside
of the mainstream conception of what filmmaking is. He began to make films as a teenager in the late seventies, starting with his Grandfather’s Wollensak regular 8mm camera and then moving to 16mm shortly thereafter. Since the age of 16 Behrens has made well over 100 films of various lengths, subject matters and approaches, from documents of the early Seattle punk rock scene to poetic film experiments in which the celluloid film stock has been manipulated. Over the years Jon has screened his films nationally and internationally, and has been called one of the Northwest’s most prolific filmmakers.
Program: THE PRODUCTION AND DECAY OF STRANGE PARTICLES (7½ min.-2008), UNDERCURRENTS (10 min.-1994), THE ASTRUM ARGENTIUM (6 min.-2006), ALL SAINTS DAY II (5 min.-2002), STAN’S SALON (3 min-1997), FLUFFY FLUFFY CALM CALM (10 min.-1998), ANOMALIES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS (12 min.-2003), VERNAL OBEISANCE (6 min.-2003), THE FLICKERING OF THE MIND’S EYE (10 min.-2001).JUNE 19 (Sat.) BARTON LEWIS
FILMS ABOUT LIGHT AND THE URBAN LANDSCAPE.
The Millennium is especially pleased to present for the first time a program of films by a long-time user of our filmmaking facilities. Barton Lewis will be present to screen eight short 16mm films that have emerged from his interest in light and the urban landscape. The films were made between 1998 and 2009 and the program totals 84 minutes. Lewis is the man with the movie camera wandering through the streets on New York City filming
new and old structures–the High Line, an elevated railroad in Chelsea and a graffiti-scrawled, dilapidated meat packing plant in the West Village that no longer exists. His filmmaking locations take him to Pacific Street and Bridge Street in Brooklyn, the East River Pavilion, Roosevelt Avenue and his West 14th Street apartment in Manhattan.
JUNE 25 (Friday) OPEN SCREENING
DVD, Mini-DV, Videotape, 16MM, S8MM. All works are shown on a first-come-first-served basis. Bring films, videos and/or come as a viewer. (Finished works only, limited to a maximum of 20 minutes per person). Refreshments will be available. Doors open at 7pm. Screening begins at 8pm and ends at 10:30pm. Admission by contribution.
Links to Previous Shows.
Winter 2010 Personal Cinema Series.
Preponderance of Evidence
by Sandra Davis
S/tr:w/eet Walk
by Lili White
The Astrum Argentium
by Jon Behrens
Lili White
