A Moveable Feast: A Tribute to the New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative Part 2: Through the Decades

A Moveable Feast: A Tribute to the New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative
Part 2: Through the Decades
Sunday, September 20, 10 PM
All screenings are at the Millennium Film Workshop,
66 East 4th Street, NY NY 10003.
Programs are subject to change.
Advance tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/81669
Admission: $10

HOWL ! ARTS PROJECT 2009: FILM SERIES presents
A Tribute to the NY Film-Makers’ Cooperative Part 2:
Through the Decades

Introduction by Jon Gartenberg, Curator, Howl Film Festival, and M.M. Serra, Executive Director, New York Film-Makers’ Coop:

This program also celebrates almost a half-century of the Coop’s existence, and the archive of more than 5,000 films that it makes available for distribution. These films and videos date from 1921 to the present, and this program presents a brief (by no means comprehensive) survey by decade of the creative richness of the films in the Coop’s collection. All films and videos courtesy of the New York Film-Makers’ Coop.

GHOSTS BEFORE BREAKFAST (1927-28), directed by Hans Richter.
B/W, Sound, 6 min. (16mm print)
"Pure vintage dada. A humorous, delightful, grotesque in which ordinary objects rebel against their daily routine and, for a brief period of liberation, fallow their own laws. A bow-tie undoes itself, bowler hats float gracefully through the air, coffee cups leap from a tray to smash themselves on the ground, and so forth. At the stroke of noon, they return to their normal functional state. GHOSTS BEFORE BREAKFAST represents one of the earliest collaborations between avant-garde filmmaker and composer: Paul Hindemith's score accompanied the film when it was first shown at an avent-garde music festival in Baden-Baden in 1928." (Standish D. Lawder)

HAITI (1938), directed by Rudy Burckhardt.
B/W, Sound, 15 min. (16mm print)
“A young Swiss with a curious eye looks at this tropical black island world, savoring the difference.” (New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative Catalogue)

RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME (1946), directed by Maya Deren.
B/W, Sound, 15 min. (16mm print)
In Maya Deren's RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME we have gestures that invite us to move into step with them, abandoning the comfort of the known and giving ourselves over to so many strange partners. This silent short begins in a domestic environment, moves to a party scene, and ends with modern dance performed in an outdoor setting. The film's continuity is established by an emphasis on gesture and/or dance throughout.” (New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative Catalogue)

GLIMPSE OF THE GARDEN (1957), directed by Marie Menken.
Color, sound, 5 min. (16mm print)
"A lyric, tender, intensely subjective exploration of a flower garden, with extreme magnification, flashing color harmonies." (Cinema 16)

HOLD ME WHILE I’M NAKED (1966), directed by George Kuchar.
Color, Sound, 15 min. (16mm print)
"A very direct and subtle, very sad and funny look at nothing more or less than sexual frustration and aloneness. In its economy and cogency of imaging, HOLD ME surpasses any of Kuchar's previous work. The odd blend of Hollywood glamour and drama with all-too-real life creates and inspires counterpoint of unattainable desire against unbearable actuality." (Ken Kelman)

THE RIDDLE OF LUMEN (1972), directed by Stan Brakhage.
Color, Silent, 13 min. (16mm print)
The classical riddle was meant to be heard, of course. Its answers are contained within its questions; and on the smallest piece of itself this possibility depends upon sound -- 'utterly,' like they say... the pun is its pivot. Therefore, my RIDDLE OF LUMEN depends upon qualities of light. All films do, of course. But with THE RIDDLE OF LUMEN, 'the hero' of the film is light/itself. It is a film I'd long wanted to make -- inspired by the sense, and specific formal possibilities, of the classical English language riddle... only one appropriate to film and, thus, as distinct from language as I could make it.” (Stan Brakhage)

DHPG MON AMOUR (1989), directed by Carl Michael George.
Color, Sound, 12 min. (super 8mm blowup to 16mm print)
A Super-8 homestyle movie which explores the radical advances made by PWA's (People With AIDS), in developing their own health care. Focusing precisely on the ordinary minutiae of David Conover and Joe Walsh's daily life, DHPG Mon Amour shows the struggle for self-determination and control over one's own body, and resonates on an intimate and more broadly political level.” (New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative Catalogue)

THE FILM OF HER (1996), directed by Bill Morrison.
B/W, Sound, 12 min. (16mm print)
"...Morrison's THE FILM OF HER is based on the story of a Library on Congress clerk who saved a vaultful of paper reels, documenting the earliest days of cinema, from the incinerator. A gorgeous tribute to the art form's origins, this 12-minute short is anchored by the memory of this man, who has fixed in his mind since boyhood the image of a woman he saw in an early porn film. 'The Film of Her' is what drives the clerk to save the films, this collective memory, and it also serves as the focal point for Morrison's thoughts on personal experience and the happenstance of history. Drawing comparisons between the primordial ooze and the elemental flicker of a light projector, or between Lumiere babes, magic a la Melies, and the gears of industry, Morrison reminds us that even the most brilliant and brave creations begin as cherished ideas nurtured in dedicated imaginations and subjected to the whims of chance." ( Hazel-Dawn Dumpert, L.A. Weekly)

MEET ME IN WICHITA (2007), directed by Martha Colburn.
Color, Sound, 8 min. (DVD)
“This work throws Osama Bin Laden into the fairytale Land of Oz. A combination of watercolors, collage and paint on glass animation, this film is a play between fact, fiction, politics , fantasy, terror and morality.” (New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative Catalogue)