Pacific Film Archive’s “Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area” project is both a cinema series and a new book exploring the history of Bay Area experimental media. This program presents a survey of found footage films from 1978 through 2004 in which filmmakers re-purpose original media – newsreels, cartoons, serials, and surveillance footage – in order to create new meanings. (1978-2004, 81 min.)
“Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area Book, Film, and Video Tour” was curated by Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid, Film and Video Curators at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Steve Anker, Dean of the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts. The tour is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the William H. Donner Foundation. The book Radical Light will be on sale at the screening.
Program:
Valse Triste - Bruce Conner (1978, 6 min, 16mm) Conner evokes his boyhood in Kansas.
Futility - Greta Snider (1989, 9 min, 16mm) Two personal tales of diminished expectations are told by the same narrator.
Conscious - Julie Murray (1993, 10 min, 16mm) Mysterious associations are made by combining footage of animals with instructions on how to resuscitate human life.
Anaconda Targets - Dominic Angerame (2004, 12 min., video) Aerial footage of U.S. bombings in Afghanistan is repurposed to critique military aggression.
Common Mistakes - Jeanne Finley (1986, 14 min., video) Grievous cultural errors in naive educational films make wrongdoing seem like an institutionalized misstep.
Thine Inward-Looking Eyes - Thad Povey (1993, 2.5 min., 16mm) A series of gazes are taken out of context.
Noema - Scott Stark (1998, 11 min, 16mm) Pornographic videos are mined for the unerotic moments in between.
Decodings - Michael Wallin (1988, 16 min, 16mm) An allegorical search for identity through images of the 40′s and 50′s create a sense of longing.
Unless otherwise indicated, admission is $8 suggested donation.
For more information about the screenings or to schedule previews, contact Todd Lillethun at Chicago Filmmakers: email coop@chicagofilmmakers.org, phone 773-293-1447. www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
