Fall 2004 at a Glance:

ZOE BELOFF:: September 11 + 12

PAUL CHAN :: October 21 + 22

JANIE GEISER :: September 18

YOKO ONO :: November 2 + 3

LEWIS KLAHR :: September 19

LANDSCAPE PORTRAITS :: November 16 + 17

TSUCHIMOTO NORIAKI :: October 4-6

BLACK AUDIO & SANKOFA FILM COLLECTIVES :: December 1 + 2

PSYCHIC PROJECTIONS—3-D Film Performances by Zoe Beloff

New York based film and media artist Zoe Beloff uses both digital and archaic film trickery to create phantasmagorical worlds where mediums conjure up, calling shadowy beings into reality. Drawing from cinema history, psychoanalytical studies, and 19th century accounts of seances and mediums, Beloff's multi-media works create a dialogue between technology and the unconscious.

For her first Portland appearance, Beloff will present two different programs of work. On Saturday, she will show Shadow Land or Light from the Other Side and Lost. Shadow Land is a stereoscopic, 16mm film drawn from the 1897 autobiography of Elizabeth d'Espérance, a materializing medium who could produce full body apparitions. Lost uses archaic home entertainment devices—stereoscopic slides, hand-cranked 16mm projection, and phonographs—to recreate forgotten storefronts in New York¹s Lower East Side.

For Sunday's program, Beloff will show her most recent work, Claire and Don in Slumberland, a combination of stereo 35mm slides and 16mm projection. Set against the empty, quiet background of Pleasure Beach, Connecticut, Claire and Don act as conduits for the voices of the past and the fears and anxieties of the surrounding culture.

–artist in attendance–

SEPTEMBER 11
Shadow Land or Light from the Other Side [2000, 16mm, b&w, sound, 32 min]
Lost [1997, stereo slides/16mm, color, sound, 20 min]

SEPTEMBER 12
Claire and Don in Slumberland [2002, 16mm/stereo slides, color, sound, 37 min]

Guild Theatre, 829 SW Park Avenue; 4:00pm
co-presented with PICA/TBA FESTIVAL

THE EMOTIONAL LIVES OF INANIMATE OBJECTS—Films by Janie Geiser

An internationally recognized theatre director/designer, puppeteer, and filmmaker, Janie Geiser's work is known for its detailed evocation of self contained worlds. Shooting on the intimate scale of antique figurines, dollhouses, and paper cutouts, Geiser's films create mysterious noirish worlds of cryptic narratives, nostalgia, and half-remembered dreams. Although the work is frequently drawn from personal narratives, the loose stories rarely give us the details of what is happening; rather, Geiser uses these miniature worlds to evoke strong emotional currents played out through archetypal characters.

And while these worlds that she creates are often blatantly artificial, her images are exquisitely composed—with perfectly layered superimpositions, subtle lighting, and dense spaces. Geiser will introduce the program and present a selection of her work from the past several years including Spiral Vessel, Lost Motion, The Fourth Watch, Ultima Thule, as well as her brand new film Terrace 49.

–artist in attendance–

SEPTEMBER 18
Spiral Vessel [2000, 16mm, color, sound, 7 min]
The Secret Story [1996, 16mm, color, sound, 9 min]
Immer Zu [1997, 16mm, b & w, sound, 9 min]
Lost Motion [1999, 16mm, color, sound, 11 min]
Terrace 49 [2004, 16mm, color, sound, 6 min]
Ultima Thule [2002, 16mm, color, sound, 10 min]
The Fourth Watch [2000, 16mm, color, sound, 11 min]

Guild Theatre, 829 SW Park Avenue; 4:00pm
co-presented with PICA/TBA FESTIVAL

ENGRAM SEPALS (Melodramas 1994-2000)—A film in Seven Parts by Lewis Klahr

"Well, the word 'melodrama' has rather lost its meaning nowadays: people tend to lose the 'melos' in it, the music."—Douglas Sirk (from Sirk on Sirk)

Dubbed "the reigning proponent of cut and paste animation" by Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman, Lewis Klahr is often placed into the lineage of collage filmmakers such as Harry Smith, Larry Jordan, and Stan Vanderbeek. But Klahr's films are much more closely influenced by his affinity for classical Hollywood, specifically the melodramas of Douglas Sirk and Vincente Minnelli.

For TBA. Klahr will present his feature length series Engram Sepals, which "traces a trajectory of American intoxication—both sexually and substance wise—from World War II into the 70s." Primarily composed of cutouts from old magazines and comics, his films occupy a flat space that is enlivened through Klahr's mysterious and seductive stories. With this extensive vocabulary of appropriated imagery and characters, Klahr's films lead the viewer through a rich and dense cloud of pop culture dreams.

–artist in attendance–

SEPTEMBER 19
Altair [1994, 16mm, color, sound, 8 min]
Engram Sepals [2000, 16mm, b & w, sound, 6 min]
Elsa Kirk [1999, 16mm, color, sound, 5 min]
Pony Glass [1997, 16mm, color, sound, 15 min]
Govinda [1999, 16mm, color, sound, 23 min]
Downs Are Feminine [1994, 16mm, color, sound, 9 min]
A Failed Cardigan Maneuver [1999, 16mm, color, sound, 15 min]

Guild Theatre, 829 SW Park Avenue; 4:00pm
co-presented with PICA/TBA FESTIVAL

TSUCHIMOTO NORIAKI

Tsuchimoto Noriaki, regarded as one of the major figures in Japanese documentary history, began working in film at Iwanami Film Productions in 1956 making educational and public-relations documentaries. Coming from a background of political activism, Tsuchimoto used filmmaking to foster an awareness of the plight of the victims of "Minamata disease," an illness caused by toxic mercury pollution in the coastal waters around Minamata, and made sixteen films on the subject over forty years. "From the beginning, I tried to make films that raised problems and showed the immediate effects of them, but at the same time I emphasized their universality, and I did this more and more with each succeeding film. Perhaps this is why these documentary films on Minamata disease became known. I was able to make films that spoke to the worldŠ" Minamata‹The Victims and Their World, the first film in the Minamata series, follows the lives of 29 households who have suffered mercury poisoning as well as the growing movement to support their cause. Shiranui Sea returns to Minamata where, after winning court cases and receiving compensation, victims face the rest of their lives with the irreversible damage of their disease. The film also explores the growing number of unidentified victims, poisoned in the same way, from across the bay of the Shiranui Sea. Afghan Spring was made during the Soviet troops¹ withdrawal from an Afghanistan on the brink of transformation. "Under a political structure of the Cold War, the West refused to recognize the republic democratic government of Afghanistan, claiming that it was a puppet government of the Soviet Union. This film is a record of the Afghan people around this time." (Tsuchimoto Noriaki)

OCTOBER 4
Minimata‹Victims and Their World [1971, 16mm, b&w, sound, 120 min]

OCTOBER 5
Shiranui Sea [1975, 16mm, color, sound, 153 min]

OCTOBER 6
Afghan Spring [1989-90, 16mm, color, sound, 116 min]

This Program wa funded in part by a grant from
The regional Arts and Culture Council

BAGHDAD IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER—Videos by Paul Chan

Using as its subject the drawings of outsider artist Henry Darger, utopian philosopher Charles Fourier, the Bush administration and Baghdad street life, the recent works of new media artist Paul Chan are darkly satirical, humble and observational, and sharply critical. In January 2003, Chan traveled to Baghdad with the Iraq Peace Team, a project initiated by Voices In the Wilderness, the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated group working against the sanctions and currently the occupation of Iraq. While there he shot Baghdad In No Particular Order, a series of pedestrian video portraits depicting life on the streets of a city under siege, waiting for an inevitable war. Chan's experimental videos are radically different in tone and style. RE:THE_OPERATION uses digital animation, fictional letters and photographs to explore the sexual and philosophical dynamics of war through the members of the Bush administration. Chan will also present Happiness (Finally) After 35,000 Years of Civilization is an animation-installation reinterpreting the drawings of outsider artist Henry Darger and the writings of utopian philosopher Charles Fourier.

–artist in attendance–

OCTOBER 21 + 22
Baghdad in No Particular Order [2003, DV, color, sound, 78 min]
RE:THE_OPERATION [2002, DV, color, sound, 26 min]
Happiness (Finally) After 35,000 Years of Civilization [2003, DV, color, 18 min]

OH YOKO—Four Films by Yoko Ono

One of the most misunderstood and controversial artists working today, Yoko Ono is finally being recognized by the mainstream for her influential minimalist and conceptual body of multidisciplinary work. Already an established artist in the early 1960s gallery scene and the Fluxus movement, Ono turned her attention to film and made sixteen films between 1964 and 1972. These two nights focus on some of her early conceptual film work, including The Museum of Modern Art Show, in which a group of people (including Bob Dylan and Jack Nicholson) arrive at an imaginary Ono exhibition at MoMA only to find that they are the actual art piece as they are filmed by John Lennon. No. 4 (Bottoms) is a film of continuous close-up shots of 365 naked bottoms walking on a treadmill accompanied by a soundtrack of interviews with the bottoms¹ counterparts; Ono stated her aim was to encourage dialogues on peace. Erection is a time-lapsed series of stills documenting the construction of a hotel in London over eighteen months. Rape, a mini-feature collaboration with Lennon, provokes questions of privacy and voyeurism as a London film crew follows a woman against her wishes throughout the city and into her apartment.

November 2
No. 4 Bottoms [1966, 16mm, b&w, sound, 80 min]
The Museum of Modern Art Show [1971, 16mm, color, sound, 7 min]

November 3
Erection with John Lennon [1971, 16mm, color, sound, 20 min]
Rape with John Lennon [1969, 16mm, color, sound, 77 min]

LANDSCAPE PORTRAITS—Gottheim, Murphy & Pierce

As film studies began to enter academia and university curriculum in the late 1960s, several established avant-garde filmmakers became professors of film, such as Larry Gottheim, Stan Brakhage and Robert Huot. Partially coinciding with the "Back to the Land" movement of activists and hippies, they relocated to upstate New York, Colorado and Iowa. Much of their time was spent exploring, observing and recording their immediate surroundings‹farms, valleys, mountains and their own homes. This program focuses on three of these landscape portraits. Larry Gottheim¹s Fog Line consists of a fixed shot of clearing fog in a valley in upstate New York where he lived and worked in the early seventies. To film In Progress, J.J. Murphy and Ed Small set up their camera on a farm in Iowa, using time-lapse to document the changing seasons from September through May. Designating friends at the barn to shoot film in their absence, they took the unedited results and strung them together. Divided into twelve sections, 50 Feet of String was filmed by Leighton Pierce at his home in Iowa, where he took a length of string and only shot subjects within fifty feet from his house.

November 16 + 17
Fog Line by Larry Gottheim [1970, 16mm, color, silent, 11min]
In Progress by J.J. Murphy and Ed Small [1971-72, 16mm, color. sound, 18 min]
50 Feet of String by Leighton Pierce [1995, 16mm, color, sound, 52min]

BLACK AUDIO & SANKOFA FILM COLLECTIVES

For Black and Asian British, 1980s Britain was a site of great social unrest. The rise of neo-fascist groups, police brutality and increased police surveillance in black communities gave way to civil disturbances and riots. Following the 1981 Brixton race riots, the Greater London Council and Channel Four made attempts to respond to racial inequities by creating an institutional means for Black cultural activity, giving birth to several black media non-profits, among them Black Audio Film Collective and Sankofa Film/Video Collective. Influenced by contemporary debate on post-colonialism and social theorists such as Homi Bhabha and Stuart Hall, both groups centered around investigations of black identity/culture within the British experience and reworked the documentary to articulate new voices in British cinema. Black Audio Film Collective¹s Handsworth Songs was shot in Handsworth and London during the race riots of 1985. Focusing on the West Indian community, John Akomfrah uses montages of home-movies, archival footage of migration and labor histories, as well as Thatcher¹s infamous "swamping" speech. Sankofa¹s Territories looks at the Notting Hill Carnival and the 1976 riots. Juxtaposing original footage with archival news reports, Isaac Julien films the carnival as a subversive site for resistance in Afro-Caribbean culture, in direct opposition to mainstream white British society and an increasingly hostile police patrol.

December 1 + 2
Handsworth Songs by John Akomfrah [1986, 16mm, color, sound, 56 min]
Territories by Isaac Julien [1985, 16mm, color, sound, 25 min]

This Program wa funded in part by a grant from
The regional Arts and Culture Council