Halloween Spooktacular Part Two

This Tuesday night it's part two of the SMN Halloween Spooktacular. I'm still working out the program. But here are a few artists on the short list:

Brett Ingram
Bruce Bickford
Brothers Quay
Jan Svankmajer
Paul Berry

Last week featured around 30 different shorts. Obviously quite short. This week I'd like to mix it up with either a couple shorts and a feature or a selection of longer short works. Still undecided on this. But either way, It will be a most exciting program.

Experimental Animation and the world of art

"Kinetic Art is the first new category of art since prehistory. It took until this century to discover the art that moves. Had we taken the aesthetic qualities of sound as much for granted as we have taken those of motion, we would not now have music. But now, in kinetic art and animation, we have begun to compose motion. We've all been conditioned to viewing film as an adjunct to drama and literature, as a medium for story-telling. These virtues are absolutely secondary to the kinetic fine-art end of motion composition." -- Len Lye, animator, kinetic sculptor, Figures of Motion, 1964

I'm particularly excited this week about the return of guest curator Cecile Starr. She'll be screening a series of movies featuring various animator. The focus will be on the relationship between animation and the greater art world (graphic arts, sculpture, music, illustration, painting, dance). Through the films we'll see how these artists have found their way into the practice of experimental animation from their respective crafts.

Featured artists will include Lotte Reiniger (know for her amazingly detailed silhouette cutouts); Hans Richter (painter and Dada pioneer); Alexandre Alexeieff; Mary Ellen Bute; Len Lye; Kathy Rose.

Secret Movie Night episode 14

This is your first hint. unless, of course, something goes horribly wrong or I simply change my mind at the last minute. Or perhaps I'll find something even stranger. It's quite possible. So far, no Craig Baldwin films have been screened.

PIXEL NITRATE

Recently discovered the work of Joaquin Baldwin, an animator and designer from Paraguay. really fantastic stuff.
His work displays quite an array of themes and techniques, from traditional cel animation to 3D animation.
View a few films and learn more about him here:Pixel Nitrate

The world of experimental cinema

I can't even begin to express how thrilled I am about last night's program. I feel sorry for anyone that missed out. We celebrated the 50th wedding anniversary of Cecile Star and Aram Boyajian in style with an evening of film history.
All presented in vivid 16mm, with the whirring of the projector as constant soundtrack, we were rewarded with an amazing collection of women filmmakers (including Alice Guy-Blache, the very first female filmmaker), with films spanning from 1912 to 1980. Black & white, color, animation, optical printing effects, comedy, drama. the themes and images were as diverse as the filmmakers who created them.

So what now? well, I'll tell you what I did. I just spent the past four hours viewing almost every piece of super8 film I've ever shot. Holy cow! The difference between projected film and video is like night and day. Even with my small-gauge super8 films projected onto a drably painted wall of my house.
I have to admit. It was kind of weird to see films i made ten or fifteen years ago. and fun. So why aren't I still making them? Good question. I've got no shortage of cameras, film stock or ideas. So that's that.

besides shooting new film, I plan to screen my super8 films at upcoming Secret Movie Nights. And i plan to have them all transferred to video for the sake of preservation. More on that in a future post.

For now, i'm off to watch more film. Enjoy!

Women Behind the Camera

As this Photoplay magazine cover from October 1916 points out, the new "style" in cameramen is women. Or so it seemed. These were the days before Hollywood became the all-profit zero-originality billion dollar mens club that it is today. But what do i know? I'm just a blogging film fan stuck in a small town. Nevertheless, it's my personal mission to seek out the unusual, the obscure, those unfamiliar works from the crevices of cinematic history and present them to my small local audience. All because I love the craft of film and it's a hell of alot of fun to do it.
Not sure how to best format this entry, so i'll just start with a filmmaker and go from there.
Alice Guy-Blaché(1873-1968). that's where we'll begin.
Believed to be the first to direct a narrative film, she began as a secretary for Léon Gaumont, borrowed a camera to make a short film and within a year became head of film production for Gaumont. She had, amazingly, produced over 400 short films by the time she emigrated the the US in 1907. a statistic that makes me feel absurdly lazy and unproductive when it comes to film production.
In America, she formed her own film studio, Solax, where she oversaw production of over 300 films. In other words, she was there from the inception of narrative film, produced a ton of work and no one has heard of her. That's why i'm so excited to have Cecile Starr as a special guest film curator on Tuesday. among other short works (all produced by women), we'll feature Guy-Blaché's A HOUSE DIVIDED(1913), a domestic comedy that deals with the mutual suspicions of unfaithfulness.

Other films will span the history of women making short films, the latest of which will be Deanna Morse's CHARLESTOWN HOME MOVIE (1980).

all presented in beautiful 16mm. Don't miss it.

Summer is Here, come get some

Recently discovered the "mud" animation work of San Francisco Chinese American animator Joseph Sunn. all the way from 1926. It's super fun. So i'll be featuring a bit of his work over the next couple of months. There isn't so much of a story. but for fans of claymation and stop-motion, it's a must-see. Anyone that knows me reasonably well, knows that i like to watch certain things: stop-motion animation, zombies, robots. I'm just waiting for someone to combine all three. Or perhaps that will be my next film. Hmmmm......

Beyond that, I've pulled out some classic educational films and contemporary video shorts.

So what else? Oh yea, I just hung a brand new (to us) larger screen. so no more small screen on the floor. now we can watch a larger projection and hopefully fit more viewers into the gallery.