Program 2 - Amy Halpern: Falling Lessons
curated by David Lebrun and Mark Toscano
▴ David Lebrun in person ▴
Thursday, March 30, 2023 @ 9pm
The Lab (2948 16th Street, SF, CA)
Total running time: 77 minutes
$6 - 10 sliding scale - tickets available at the door
Festival passes available for purchase here
“Amy Halpern (1953–2022) is cherished not only for her memorable and beautiful films, but also for her inexhaustible engagement and enthusiasm as a devoted presence in the Los Angeles film and arts community. She had a profound curiosity about nearly everything and everyone she encountered, and her extensive body of film work reflects this passion for the sights, sounds, textures, and complex connections to be found and explored in the world around.” - Mark Toscano
“Amy Halpern’s 64–minute Falling Lessons is a stunningly sensual, life-affirming experience from a major experimental film artist that is open to myriad meanings. The film is a rhythmic montage of almost 200 faces, human and animals, that Halpern pans vertically, creating a cascade of visages suggesting that while individuals express a range of emotions, they remain ultimately enigmas. The glimpses of life going on around all these faces have an unsettling, even apocalyptic quality, and the film forces you to consider living beings and their value collectively rather than selectively. Halpern’s rich, inspired mix of sounds, words and music complements her images perfectly.” - Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
All films directed by Amy Halpern. All prints are courtesy of the Amy Halpern Collection at the Academy Film Archive. Special thanks to David Lebrun and Mark Toscano.
Films include:
Hula
2022 | 6 minutes | 16mm | color | sound
Emit a Beam, See a Light
2022 | 3.5 minutes | 16mm | color | sound
Jane, Looking
2020 | 2 minutes | 16mm | color | silent
Ma Sewing (2021)
2021 | 1.5 minutes | 16mm | color | silent
Falling Lessons
1992 | 64 minutes | 16mm | color | sound
Ferociously curious, brilliant, and talented, Amy Halpern (1953-2022) grew up in New York studying dance, which provided her with a great appreciation and gift for movement. This would be central to her filmmaking, in terms of the cinematography and the actions captured, as well as in the strong metaphors she summoned about breaking bonds and evoking freedom, beauty, care, and wonder. Halpern formed close relationships with many in New York’s experimental film community, including Ken and Flo Jacobs, with whom she collaborated on the New York Apparition Company, devoted to 3D shadow play. Halpern made nearly 40 films and one
feature, almost all on 16mm.
During the 40 years she spent in Los Angeles, she collaborated with such luminaries as Pat O’Neill, Charles Burnett, and her husband David Lebrun. Halpern grew close with the legendary filmmaker Chick Strand and appears in her film Soft Fiction among other influential and formative west coast experimental films. She and her films inspired countless artists, including those she taught at various institutions around L.A., most notably at the University of Southern California. Halpern brought people together for a common good, cofounding two screening cooperatives: The New York Collective for Living Cinema (1972–82) and the Los Angeles Independent Film Oasis (1975–80).