Program 5 - Saturday, November 12th, 2016 @ 9pm
Curated by David Dinnell
The Lab (2948 16th Street, SF, CA)
Total running time: 74 minutes
$6 - 10 sliding scale (advance tickets here)
Under the Shadow of Marcus Mountain
Robert Schaller
2011 / 6 minutes / USA / 16mm / silent
Shot entirely with a homemade pinhole camera and edited largely in-camera through the use of a rhythmic score. The structures of our thought filter what we see, and in fact there is no seeing apart from those structures. This film is part of an ongoing project to show where I am in a (here, natural) landscape in a way that reflects those structures of thought. It is "hypnogogic," not so much perceptually (although to some extent that too) as conceptually. Our eyes see constantly, but what do we actually notice? That vision is excessive, wasteful, even; in paring down, it becomes both more spare and more concentrated.
-RS
Kiri
Sakumi Hagiwara
1972 / 8 minutes / Japan / 16mm / sound
A single unbroken shot from a stationary viewpoint records a landscape enveloped in white mist, at first indiscernible and then slowly and intermittently visible in a subtly adumbrated investigation of the form of film surface, at once a scroll and a view, in which a continuously emergent landscape maintains the tension between that which is an illusion and that which is inscription.
The Image World
Adele Horne
2008 / 6 minutes / USA / 16mm / silent
When sunlight falls through the spaces between leaves on a tree, the pin-hole apertures in the foliage create images of the sun on the ground below. This film records replicas of the sun as they appear and disappear in the dappled light under trees.
-AH
Point de Gaze
Jodie Mack
2012 / 5 minutes / USA / 16mm / silent
Named after a type of Belgian lace, this fabric flicker film investigates intricate illusion and optical arrest.
-JM
Zone of Total Eclipse
Mika Taanila
2006 / 6 minutes / Finland / dual channel 16mm / sound
This piece is based on scientific film footage shot by the Finnish Geodetic Institute in Poroluoto, western Finland in 1945. Filmed during a total eclipse of the Sun, this was the first time in history that sound film was used to measure the exact geographical distance between two continents, Europe and North America. The scientists attempted to calculate the passage of time by beaming long-wave radio signals into space and synchronizing these signals with their cinematic observations.
The experiment failed, however, due to loading errors and mechanical running problems with the newly introduced 35 mm cameras.
The work consists of two separate reels – positive (“The Sun”) and negative (“The Moon”) – projected simultaneously, superimposed on a wall. The piece pays homage to the early pioneers of scientific film, a celebration of our subconscious dark side and interplanetary shadows.
-MT
Filter Beds
Guy Sherwin
1998 / 9 minutes / UK / 16mm / silent
A delicate study of a tangle of scrub and trees. A very shallow depth of field causes branches and stalks of wild grasses to emerge and disappear as Sherwin racks focus, settling on the jet planes sweeping across an impossibly distant sky. The soft rich grain of the muted image lends it a dreamlike timelessness.
-Brian Frye
Lunar Almanac
Malena Szlam
2013 / 4 minutes / Chile/Canada / 16mm / silent
Lunar Almanac initiates a journey through magnetic spheres with its staccato layering of single-frame, long exposures of a multiplied moon. Shot in 16mm Ektachrome and hand processed, the film’s artisanal touches are imbued with nocturnal mystery.
-Andréa Picard
Cinematographie
Philipp Fleischmann
2009 / 6 minutes / Austria / dual channel 16mm / silent
Fleischmann built a circular camera obscura construction in a forest, 360 degrees around, in which the light enters through a small hole and shines on light-sensitive material. Inside the camera, he placed two 16mm filmstrips side by side: one was exposed to the world outside the camera obscura, the other to the world inside the construction. In this manner, it was possible to film both sides of the environment simultaneously. There are no frame breaks, so no frames, but only one image of a forest, so that a phenakistoscopic effect is achieved during projection. In Cinematographie, film is no longer a sequence of single frames, but rather a total image that emerges all at once. This continuous, simultaneous projection of reality leads to a cinematic standstill, although the projected image is equal to a tracking shot.
-IDFA
Red Shift
Emily Richardson
2001 / 4 minutes / UK / 16mm / sound
In astronomical terminology redshift is a term used in calculating the distance of stars from the earth, hence determining their age. Redshift attempts to show the huge geometry of the night sky and give an altered perspective of the landscape, using long exposures, fixed camera positions, long shots and time-lapse animation techniques to reveal aspects of the night that are invisible to the naked eye. The film has a gentle intensity to it, and is composed of changes of light across the sea, sky and mountains. It shows movement where there is apparent stillness, whether in the formation of weather patterns, movement of stars, the illumination of a building by passing car headlights or boats darting back and forth across the sea’s horizon.
The sound has been composed for the film by Benedict Drew, taking field recordings of the aurora borealis as a starting point, and using purely computer generated sound to create a soundtrack that reflects the unheard elements present in the earth’s atmosphere.
-ER
Apotheosis
Yoko Ono & John Lennon
1970 / 18 minutes / UK / 16mm / sound
Apotheosis is one of the most ingenious single-shot films ever made. A camera pans up the cloaked bodies of Lennon and Ono, then on up into the sky above a village, higher and higher across snow-covered fields (the camera was mounted in a hot-air balloon, which we never see- though we hear the device that heats the air) and then up into the clouds; the screen remains completely white for several minutes, and finally, once many members of the audience have given up on the film, the camera rises out into the sunny skyscraper above the clouds. The film is a test and reward of viewer patience and serenity.
-Scott McDonald