A Live Interview with Scott MacDonald interspersed with clips from Haynes’ rarely screened early films: Poison [1991, 85min, 35mm], Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story [1987, 43min, 35mm], and Dottie Got Spanked [1993, 30min, 35mm]
Todd Haynes’ remarkable body of films—POISON, SAFE, FAR FROM HEAVEN and I’M NOT THERE— have earned him unique regard as one of contemporary cinema’s most eloquent voices. Beginning with his earliest shorts he has been a filmmaker who defies the boundaries of form, content and social expectations to craft a singularly personal cinema. Tonight we welcome Haynes and film writer, professor, and curator Scott MacDonald for this live interview, exploring the evolution of Haynes’ work.

Programmed and introduced by Scott Macdonald
The 1960s saw the emergence of a wide range of approaches to cinema that offered alternatives to Hollywood commercial filmmaking, including new approaches to documentary and new forms of experimental and avant-garde filmmaking. Scott MacDonald will be present to introduce and contextualize two programs of Canyon films—one by Canyon men, the other, by Canyon women—that will represent the range and the often revolutionary spirit that characterized the work of the Canyon filmmakers.

Abigail Child: Ornamentals [1979, 16mm, color, 12m]
Bruce Baillie: Tung [1966, 16mm, b&w/color/si, 5m]
Larry Jordan: Big Sur, the Ladies [1966, 16mm, color/so, 3m]
Bruce Baillie: Castro Street [1966, 16mm, b&w/color/so, 10m]
Will Hindle: FFFTCM [1967, 16mm, color/so, 5m]
Bruce Conner: Cosmic Ray [1961, 16mm, b&w/so, 4m]
Robert Nelson: Oh Dem Watermelons [1965, 16mm, color, so, 11m]
Bruce Conner: Breakaway [1966, 16mm, b&w/so, 5m]
Dominic Angerame: Consume [2003, 16mm black and white/color sound 10m]

In 1994, when Rebecca Barten and David Sherman started showing experimental films in a tiny thirty-seat venue, crammed into the basement of their San Francisco apartment, they coined a new word to describe their self-made theater: micro-cinema. Now, that term has come to loosely describe the wide range of new spaces and venues that have emerged across North America in the decade and a half since Barten and Sherman1s venture. Small-scale, self-run and largely self-financed, this latest generation of exhibitors emerged at a time when the volume of artist-made film and video expanded more than ever before, and both production and exhibition blossomed in cities far beyond the traditional New York-San Francisco axis that had long defined avant-garde cinema. In this lecture, critic and curator Ed Halter charts the history of recent film and video exhibition in North America, focusing on the impact of the micro-cinema model, and peculating on where practices may now be heading.

Programmed and introduced by Scott Macdonald
By the early 1960s, Bruce Baillie and Chick Strand had begun informal screenings at an anarchist, mobile venue they were calling “Canyon Cinema”; soon, Canyon was publishing the Cinemanews, which by the end of the decade had become an international nexus for information about alternative media; and in 1966 Canyon became a distribution organization. For the past forty years Canyon Cinema has shown itself to be the most dependable alternative film distribution organization in this country. The filmmakers who were part of the emergence of Canyon Cinema and who made the organization a success also created a remarkable body of films that were widely influential and remain a considerable pleasure to experience and to think about.

Chick Strand: Waterfall [1967, 16mm, color/so, 3m]
Gunvor Nelson: Take Off [1972, 16mm, b&w/so, 10m]
Anne Severson: Riverbody [1970, 16mm, b&w/so, 7m]
Gunvor Nelson: Kirsa Nicholina [1969, 16mm, color/so, 16m]
Gunvor Nelson: My Name Is Oona [1969, 16mm, b&w/so, 10m]
Chick Strand: Kristallnacht [1979, 16mm, b&w/so, 7m]
Abigail Child: Pacific Far East Line [1979, 16mm, color/si, 12m]

Introduction and Q&A with filmmaker Ina Archer
“Reconciling the desire to be included in a medium that seems determined and in fact built on exclusion; in my film and installation work, I use commercial cinema as material and appropriation and montage as strategies to negotiate the difficult relationship of marginalized people to cinema and media representations.” – Ina Archer

1/16th of 100% (1993, Hi8 Video, 22min)
La Tête Sans Corps “The Head Without A Body” (1995, Hi8 Video, 2min)
Richard Harris Music Video (2002, DV, 6min)
Hattie MacDaniel: Or A Credit to the Motion Picture Industry (2004, DV, 6min)
"Bête Noire"(2003, DV, 2.5min)
"RW" (2004, DV, 2.5min)
"Lebensbejahend" (2004, DV, 3min)
Lincoln Film Conspiracy Prologue (2007, DV, 15 min)

A discussion with Ina Archer and Kevin Jerome Everson moderated by Ed Halter

Introduction and Q&A with filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson
“A wildly prolific filmmaker who investigates the African-American past, class identity, and the practice of art-making with a visual aesthetic so withholding that Charles Burnett seems florid by comparison, Everson has recently raided obscure archival sources to mine our cultural past for unexpected revelations.” –Ed Halter

Undefeated [2008, video, b&w, sound, 1.5min]
Lead [2008,video, b&w, sound, 2:30 min]
From Pompei to Xenia [2003, 16mm, color, sound, 5 min]
Emergency Needs [2007, 16mm, color, sound, 7 min]
Ninety-Three [2008, video, b&w, silent, 3 min.]
The Principles [2007, video, color, sound, 3min.]
The Reverend E. Randall T. Osborn, First Cousin [2007, video, b&w, sound, 3 min.]
Ike [2008, video, b&w, sound, 3 min]
According ToS¹ [2007, video, b&w, sound, 9 min]
Playing Dead [2008, video, color, 1:30 min]
Ring [2008, video, b&w, 1:30min]
Honorable Mention [2008, video, color and b&w, 2:30min]
Second and Lee [2008, video, b&w, 3:00min]
Telethon [2008, video, color and b&w, 5:00min]
North [2008, HD, color, 1:30min]
Aquarius [2003, 16mm, color, sound, 1.5 min]

10:30pm - Late Night Party with DJ Eric Isaacson

SATURDAY OCTOBER 18TH - OUT OF THE ARCHIVES: PRESERVING GREAT MOMENTS IN CINEMA HISTORY

12-2pm - Portland Arts Now

As Portland’s growth forces change, what issues would artists and organizations like to see addressed? How are artists, non-profits, and the City operating and planning for the future?
A discussion panel moderated by Matthew Stadler featuring: Sam Gould/Red 76, Jonathon Sielaff/Creative Music Guild, Curtis Knapp/Marriage Records, Eloise Damrosch/RACC, Marc Moscato/Filmmaker, MK Guth/PNCA, Gretchen Hogue/PDX Film Fest. Brown bag lunch. FREE

Artist and WFPF committee member Ina Archer speaks with curator Irina Leimbacher about the significance of public access and screenings in promoting the restoration and preservation of films in which women had a significant role.

Join us for an informal gathering with silent era trick and curiosity films and live music by Wallsmith, Sielaff, Jones, and DuRoche quartet. Bring the whole family. FREE

Programmed and introduced by Jeanne Liotta with special thanks to Anthology Film Archives.
These film assemblages from the late 1930’s demonstrate the associative continuity of Cornell’s art practice across media. Theme, variation, surprise, hilarity, and deep obsession.

Rose Hobart [1936, 16mm, color, sound, 17m]
Cotillion [1940s, 16mm, b&w/color tint/si, 8m]
The Midnight Party [1940s, 16mm, b&w/color tint/si, 3m]
The Children's Party [1940s, 16mm, b&w/color tint/si, 8m]
By Night with Torch and Spear [1940’s. 16mm, color tint/si, 8m]
Bookstalls [1940’s, 16mm, color tint/si, 11m]

“Poetic and formally revolutionary, Cornell’s cinematic masterpiece disabled cause and effect, enshrined actress Rose Hobart, mourned the death of the solar system, enraged Salvador Dali, and launched a thousand found footage films decades later.” – Mark McElhatten

Programmed and contextualized by archivist Andrew Lampert.
Since 1970, New York City’s Anthology Film Archives has devoted itself to preserving, promoting and presenting experimental, avant-garde and independent cinema. Home to two theaters, a massive research library and more than 20,000 films, Anthology preserves around 25 movies each year by both world-renowned and obscure artists, auteurs and amateurs. Like most archives, Anthology holds more films in its collection than it can ever possibly rescue from extinction. What factors determine why a particular film is preserved and how does the act of preserving a movie alter or affect our notion of film history? By conserving and celebrating certain works are we somehow neglecting other films and filmmakers who are equally as worthy of being saved? Tonight we will have Archivist Andrew Lampert on hand to juggle these problems and act as our tour guide through an eclectic, eccentric mix of preserved films from Anthology’s cold vault and unpreserved reels from their world-renowned basement. This show promises to make you question what’s worth keeping and vice versa.

Films to be screened include: PLEASE STAND BY, TRANSIT by Greg Sharits, FUCKED UP FOOD, BILATERAL APPROXIMATION, THIRD EYE BUTTERFLY by Storm De Hirsch, R.F.F., STUDENT FILM TRILOGY, SUBWAYS And many more….

Programmed and introduced by Jeanne Liotta with special thanks to Anthology Film Archives.
Fantasies and facts mingle in these lyrical documents from the 1950’s, attempts to capture fleeting spirits of a particular time and place, made in collaboration with cinematographers Stan Brakhage and Rudy Burckhardt.

GniR RednoW [1955-196?, 16mm, color/silent, 6 m]
Centuries of June [1955-196?, 16mm, color/si, 11m]
Aviary [1955, 16mm, b&w, silent, 11m]
Boys Games [1957, 16mm, color, si, 5m]
Mulberry Street [1957-65, 16mm, b&w, si, 9m]
Nymphlight [1957, 16mm, color, 7m]
Angel [1957, 16mm, color, 3m]

" ...a buoyant feeling aroused by buildings in their quiet uptown setting. An abstract feeling of geography and voyaging I have thought about before …” – Joseph Cornell, from his diaries, cited in Theatre of the Mind, ed Mary Ann Caws

A film presentation and discussion moderated by Irina Leimbacher featuring Jeanne Liotta, Kevin Everson, Andrew Lampert, and Vanessa Renwick.

Programmed by Cinema Project.
Dark, stately, tender moments and intimate portraits explored.
Sarabande by Nick Dorsky [2008, 16mm, 18fps, color, silent, 15 min.]
Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 142. ABBREVIATION FOR DEAD WINTER [diminished by 1,794] by David Gatten [2008, 16mm, b&w, sound, 13 min.]
The Magicians House by Deborah Stratman [2007, 16mm, color, sound, 6 min.]
Victory Over the Sun by Micheal Robinson [2007, 16mm, color, sound, 13 min.]
Last Days in a Lonely Place by Phil Solomon [2007, DV Cam, b&w, sound, 22 min.]

Programmed and introduced by Irina Leimbacher
Six films, shot in the midst of and immediately after the war in Lebanon in 2006, incorporate diverse aesthetic strategies to forcefully articulate personal and collective experiences of war. Ranging from observational slices of life to cinematic iterations of the physical and psychic shock of massive destruction, from diaristic reflections to metaphorical allusions, these works embody the vital, multifaceted cinematic spirit thriving in Lebanon today. Irina Leimbacher will begin the program with a 20-minute talk on the emergence of new national and post-national sites of experimental media making, focusing on work from Lebanon and the Maghreb.

To The Lebanese People by Ali Cherry [2006, dv, 2m]
Tank You by Ziad Antar [2006, dv, 12m]
July Trip by Waël Noureddine [2006, dv, 30m]
Merely A Smell by Maher Abi Samra [2007, dv, 10m]
Nights And Days by Lamia Joreige [2007, dv, 17m]
slippage by Ali Cherry [2007, dv, 12m]

Introduction reading by Thomas Beard from “Live Cinema: A Contemporary Reader”, published by San Francisco Cinematheque, this book brings together a wide range of writings and documents on the subject. Followed by projection performances by Andrew Lampert, Jeanne Liotta, and Bruce McClure.

Blank Pages For The Bio, Vol.I by Andrew Lampert
“I’m for a cinema composed not by the coupling of light and sound but from the combination of breakfast and lunch. Wait, isn’t that brunch? It used to be, but now lets pretend it’s something else. Theaters are diners; the griddle is a projector; cooks are projectionists; waiters, the concession crew; our food a moving image - here and gone. Who cares what it is anyways as long as it's filling? To get out the ketchup you've got to hit the bottom of the bottle. Featuring Dave Abramson, percussion." – A.L.

One Day This May No Longer Exist by Jeanne Liotta
“Lucretius has identified the substratum of everything that is with homogeneous atoms too small to be perceived. These atoms aggregate by chance to produce the visible world, and by chance they will eventually disperse, demolishing the cosmos as we know it. There are no permanent beings beneath, within, or above the heavens. There are no gods, and the universe manifests no final cause.– J.L.

XXX by Bruce McClure
A mechanical beauty, the movie projector can satisfy by the simultaneous graces of eye and ear. Between these organs the brain, held captive in a watery recess, shapes an inverted presentation. Analogous to our senses the projector is disjointed and for technical reasons its optical axis and its sound lens are separated by 26 film frames and this distance is nearly equal to that which separates the eye from the ear. Conventionally the optical sound line and the discreet film frame are shifted according to the projector's anatomy to bring the picture and sound in sync. Film, the canned despot dictates illusions that shackle the projector and the projectionist as accessories. In 'XXX' triple projection performances, the fetters are broken and the transposition of 26 frames is disregarded. The film sputters inchoately to the projector that then lays out a temporal ordering that the projectionist, together with the audience, is witness to. The patches of film emulsion and supportive base become a threshold to a scotopic stage show accompanied by psychotropic soundings. Between the swing of the shutter and the other leap of light onto a cathode, a space emerges trod by slow oxen turning furrowed plains. – B.M.

Live Music by Evolutionary Jass Band, Tara Jane Oneil, and Sad Horse
Beer from Widmer and Butte Creek brewery
Proceeds Benefit Cinema Project
$10 / free with event ticket stubs

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ICE—robert kramer

December 9 + 10 at 7:30pm

Born in New York in 1939, Robert Kramer ranks as one of the most original directors of American underground cinema. A committed leftist who emerged radicalized from his studies in philosophy and Western European history at Swarthmore and Stanford, he worked as a reporter in Latin America and organized a community project in a black neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, before founding the Newsreel movement—an underground media collective which made some sixty documentaries and short films about radical political subjects and the antiwar movement between 1967 and 1971. His films constantly work at wearing away the impermeability of documentary and fiction forms, paying special attention to his characters. A pioneering work that blurred the boundaries between fictional and documentary styles, Ice was hailed by filmmaker and Village Voice critic Jonas Mekas as "the most original and most significant American narrative film" of the late sixties. An underground revolutionary group struggles against internal strife which threatens its security and stages urban guerrilla attacks against a fictionalized fascist regime in the United States. Interspersed throughout the narrative are rhetorical sequences that explain the philosophy of radical action and serve to restrain the melodrama inherent in the "thriller" genre.—Harvard Film Archive

december 9 + 10

Ice by Robert Kramer [1969, 16mm, b &w, sound, 134 min]

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