cinema project | fall 2008

SPRING 2009

SKETCHED IN TIME: EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATED SHORT FILMS [February 15]

Ah, Liberty! [March 25 + 26]

Continual Repositions: the Art of Celluloid [April 12 + 13]

Echoes of Silence [APRIL 28 + 29]

Bruce Conner: in Memorium [May 5 + 6]

Never Merely Pretty: Films and Videos by Peggy Ahwesh [May 8]

RR [June 6]

Visual Poetry: the Films of Amar Kanwar [June 17 + 18]

Beyond Borders, Cinema Project's eight program international visiting artist and curator series will take place over the next three calendar seasons. In the past we have consistently sought out marginalized moving image work from around the world and have screened a variety of films from countries as close as Canada and as far as Lebanon. The aim of this upcoming series is to push our objective further by inviting more international voices to present their own work, while also diversifying the type, focus, and audience. Non-mainstream international film and video is different not simply because of look or language, but because it is informed by a different culture and set of social rules. We see Beyond Borders as an action toward bringing diversity to Portland, so please join us for this exciting new project.

	SKETCHED IN TIME: EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATED SHORT FILMS Portland International Film Festival Short Cuts IV February 15 [12PM] [NWFC Whitsell Auditorium\|1219 SW Park ave] Co-presented with the Northwest Film Center February 15 Ema/Emaki 2 by Takashi Ishida [Japan, 2006, 16mm, color, sound, 6.5min.] Tusalava by Len Lye [New Zealand, 1929, 16mm, b&w, silent, 9min.] Duim \| Lantaarnpaal \| Schoorsteenhuisje \| Rijwind l Boom by Tomas Schats [Netherlands, 2007, DV, b&w, sound, 3min.] The Presentation Theme by Jim Trainor [US, 2008, 16mm, b&w, sound, 12min.] At The Heart Of A Sparrow by Barry Doupe [Canada, 2006, BETA SP, color, sound, 29min.] Box Office by Jenny Perlin [US, 2007, 16mm, b&w, silent, 2.25 min.] Children of Shadows by Naoyuki Tsuji [Japan, 2006, 16mm, b&w, sound, 18min.]

	AH, LIBERTY! THE FILMS OF BEN RIVERS Beyond Borders Program I March 25 + 26 [7:30PM] We welcome British filmmaker and programmer Ben Rivers for two nights of screenings of his much-acclaimed 16mm films. In 1996, Ben co-founded and since co-managed/programmed Brighton Cinematheque-renowned for screening a unique program of film from its earliest days through to the latest artist's film and video. A young and highly prolific filmmaker, Rivers films are beautifully shot and hand-processed documents showing old, crumbling houses and folks living out of the way in shacks and tall grass. An intimacy and appreciation for his subjects is protected by limited revelations and sparse soundtracks. The films are landscapes, but not old-fashioned, or tending towards the ideal; there is a reality and brutality in the imagery. In Astika, a Danish recluse says "they're only here because I let it go wild, but no one sees that," meaning first the birds and frogs, and then the people forcing him off his overgrown land. These are scenes from a child's paradise, complete with piles of spare tires and spinning cookies in broken-down cars in an empty field. They are current, common histories, odes to the freedom fighters that would have, in the past, come in ballad form. A sense of freedom runs throughout the films, suggesting any rural setting where safety does not trump the joy of smashing around. Artist-in-Attendance March 25 + 26 We The People [2004, 16mm, b&w, sound, 1 min.] Old Dark House [2003, 16mm, b&w, sound, 4 min.] HOUSE [2005/7, 16mm, b&w, silent, 5 min.] The Coming Race [2006, 16mm, b&w, sound, 5 min.] Astika [2006, 16mm, color, sound, 8min.] Dove Coup [2006, 16mm, b&w, sound, 2 min.] Origin of the Species [2008, 16mm, color, sound, 16 min.] This Is My Land [2006, 16mm, b&w, sound, 14 min.] Ah, Liberty! [2008, anamorphic 16mm, b&w, sound, 19 min.] A World Rattled Of Habit [2008, 16mm on video, color/b&w, sound, 10min.] I Know Where I'm Going in-progress [2009, 16mm on video, color, sound, 10 min.] Additional information available at www.benrivers.com and www.vertigomagazine.co.uk

	CONTINUAL REPOSITIONS: THE ART OF CELLULOID Curated by Christopher May April 12 + 13 [7:30PM] Cinema Project welcomes guest curator Christopher May from TIE, The International Experimental Cinema Exposition. Founded in 2000 in Telluride, Colorado, TIE recognizes experimental and avant-garde film from around the world with a particular dedication to exploring the specific art of celluloid. Curator and founder May travels to Portland with a selection of short films that challenge their very medium. Prolific filmmaker Paul Bartel, pokes fun at the act of filmmaking, acting, and the entertainment industry of the 1960s; while Charlotte Pryce's 2008 The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly, shot on color reversal and hand-processed, is as poetic in its subjects and imagery as it is attentive to the actual film stock. From expanded cinema and reworked found footage pieces, to experimentation with color and lenses, this two night presentation surveys work from both past and present. Curator-in-Attendance April 12 Part I: Repositions The Influence of Ocular Light Perception on Metabolism in Man and in Animal by Thomas Draschan and Stella Friedrichs [2005, 16mm, color, sound, 6 min.] Transaension by Dan Baker [2006, 16mm, color, sound, 7 min.] Shudder (top and bottom) by ? [2001, 16mm, color, sound, 3 min.] Metaphysical Education by Thad Povey [2003, 16mm, color, sound, 4 min.] Dipping Sause by Luther Price [2005, 16mm, color, sound, 10 min.] Part II: Early 16mm Paul Bartel Films Progetti (Plans) by Paul Bartel [1962, 16mm, b&w, sound, 17 min.] The Secret Cinema by Paul Bartel [1968, 16mm, b&w, sound, 30 min.] April 13 Part III: Continual Vom Innen; von Aussen by Albert Sackl [2006, 16mm, color, silent, 20 min.] Hwa-Shan District,Taipei by Bernhard Schreiner [2001, 16mm, color, sound, 13min.] The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly by Charlotte Pryce [2008, 16mm, color, silent, 4 min.] Steifheit 1 & 2 by Albert Sackl [1997-2007, 16mm, color, silent, 6 min.] July Fix by Jason Livingston [2006, 16mm, color, sound, 3 min.] Dian, Paito by Bernhard Schreiner [2001, 16mm, color, sound, 7min.] Nothing Is Over Nothing by Jonathan Schwartz [2008, 16mm, color, sound, 16 min.]

	ECHOES OF SILENCE - BY PETER EMMANUEL GOLDMAN April 28 + 29 [7:30PM] A silent meditative piece filmed over a three-year period, Peter Goldman's Echoes of Silence explores life from the depth of 1960s New York, capturing a handful of acquaintances as they wander through Greenwich Village, the Met, or down dark alleys and into basement beds. Only in his mid-twenties when he shot Echoes, Goldman displays the despair of youth as it is magnified by a city ill-at-ease. "Echoes of Silence is a world of lonely nightmares," said Goldman. The film is divided into a haunted string of scenes introduced by hand-lettered title cards, the only dialogue available beyond gesture and glance-a silent film with a soundtrack drawn from Goldman's record collection including music of Charles Mingus, Pete Seeger, Igor Stravinsky, and Sergei Prokofiev. The construction of elegies to NYC and the characters we encounter-a young artist looking for love, the crowds in the streets-describe a certain frustration of existence that populated the city during the social boil of the 1960s. Like other urban-focused film essays, this documentation and reflection on the politics of everyday life are unpacked to reveal a larger political meaning. And in Goldman's work, this surfaces as a graceful yet grainy silent black-and-white image of futility. "Goldman's Saturnine films describe the world's unlivable nature. They represent so many treatises on despair-a despair that is at once documentary, reflective and impulsive in character." --- Nicole Brenez, Rouge "My filmmaking is very documentary in nature because I always experience the personality in relation to the environment. Echoes of Silence could have been shot anywhere in the world, but it would not have been the same as the one shot in New York." --- Peter Goldman, 1968 April 28 + 29 Echoes of Silence by Peter Emmanuel Goldman [1965, 16mm, b&w, sound, 75 min.]

	BRUCE CONNER: IN MEMORIUM May 5 [7:00PM] [NWFC Whitsell Auditorium \| 1219 SW Park ave] May 6 [7:30PM] [Clinton Street Theater\| 2522 SE Clinton St.] Co-presented with the Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival and the Northwest Film Center. A pioneer in the art of sculptural assemblage and found footage collage filmmaking, Bruce Conner is one of the most influential artists of our times. For over 40 years he pushed the boundaries of American avant-garde film, exhibiting his work in museums, festivals, and galleries. This past July Bruce Conner passed away at 74 years of age. Please join Cinema Project in celebrating his life and work with this compiled program of his 16mm film. Our very special thanks to Jean Conner and Michelle Silva for making these personal prints available. "Taking what was at hand he reached into the human subconscious into the heartland into the dreamland into the dark and made a meticulous visionary irreverent metaphysical art. Erotic, mysterious, astute. He is the first filmmaker I would think about and would show when wanting to demonstrate how editing can make, should make, meaning, poetic, consequential meaning." -Mark McElhatten Michelle Silva, representative of the Conner Family Trust, in attendance May 5 - Program I [NWFC] Cosmic Ray [1961, 16mm, b&w/so, 4min.] A Movie [1958, 16mm, b&w/so, 12min.] Breakaway [1966, 16mm, b&w/so, 5min.] Marilyn Times Five [1968-1973, 16mm, b&w/so, 13.5min.] Report [1963-1967, 16mm, b&w/so, 13min.] The White Rose [19667,16mm, b&w/so, 7min.] His Eye Is On The Sparrow [2006, DVD, b&w and color/so. 4min.] May 6 - Program II [PDX Fest] Mongoloid [1978, 16mm, b&w/so, 3.5m] America Is Waiting [1982, 16mm, b&w/so, 3.5m] Crossroads [1976, 16mm, b&w/so, 36m] Take The 5:10 To Dreamland [1977, 16mm, sepia/so, 5.5m] Valse Triste [1979, 16mm, b&w/so, 5m] Looking For Mushrooms (long version) [1996, 16mm, color/so, 14.5m] Easter Morning [2008, DVD, color/so. 10min.] Information about PDX Fest Information about the NWFC screening

	NEVER MERELY PRETTY: FILMS AND VIDEOS BY PEGGY AHWESH May 8 [730PM] [Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St.] Co-presented with the Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival Cinema Project welcomes filmmaker and video artist Peggy Ahwesh for an evening of work as part of the 2009 PDX Fest. Currently a professor at Bard College in film and electronic arts, Ahwesh, who once worked under George Romero and was taught by Tony Conrad, has been making films for 35 years, often collaborating with friends and colleagues. Starting out under the influence of the Pennsylvania punk scene with hand-held Super-8s constantly running, her approach to her subjects is part home movie, part documentary, and part experimental ethnography-a mix of textures that results in something entirely different and something "gloriously messy." As part of a generation of artists whose work grew out of an anti-art sensibility, Ahwesh's work can seem split between a fascination with the people around her and more academic leanings. Within this dialectical approach, she stages at one end rereadings (both literally and figuratively) of psychoanalytic texts and on the other a certain curiosity about performance-the slow or erratic jouissance of the subject that unfolds before the camera. In Martina's Playhouse and The Scary Movie, which both star the daughter of a friend, she addresses issues of female sexuality and desire, but from a vantage point "outside of male fantasy." On She Puppet, which reappropriates a session of the videogame Tomb Raider, Ahwesh says that it's about "female identity...a riff off one videogame with this virtual superstar from the popular imagination." This program seeks to display Ahwesh's special attention to the various visual media she employs-from 16mm and Super 8, to digital video and computer animation-as it acts as another character that alters the material of the visual field. Also known for her sound and music collaborations, pieces like Beirut Outtakes and The Color of Love are as entrancing and textured in their imagery as they are in their audio. Artist-in-Attendance "Ahweh's is messy work...deeply invested in the luxurious plenitude of the visual field. The films look great and yet are never merely pretty; they frustrate aestheticising, formalist tastes. Likewise, although the films often cite theoretical texts, they are never merely theoretical. They inhabit a strange stretch of territory in the world of experimental film and video, never exhibiting the formal shape of, say, a Hollis Frampton or the precise political clarity of a Su Friedrich. Ahwesh's practice is a porous one, grounded on a radical technique of pastiche and aimed at unsettling categories and hierarchies." -John David Rhodes, Senses of Cinema May 8 The Scary Movie [1993, 16mm, b&w, sound, 9 min.] The Color of Love [1994, 16mm, color, sound, 10 min.] Beirut Outtakes [2007, DV, color, sound, 8 min.] Martina's Playhouse [1989, S8mm, color, sound, 20 min.] Pittsburgh Trilogy Pt.2 [1983, S8mm, color, sound, 17 min.] She Puppet [2001, DV, color, sound, 17min.] The Third Body [2007, DV, color, sound, 9min.] Information about PDX Fest and program show times at www.peripheralproduce.com PEGGY AHWESH WORKSHOP - TECHNIQUES OF IMPROVISATION FOR FILMMAKERS MAY 10 [10AM - 1PM] $35 NWFC School of Film, 934 SW Salmon As a filmmaker, learning ways to relax and engage the people who are in front of the camera is essential - whether you are working with actors in a narrative production or non-actor subjects in a documentary. In this workshop, participants will explore the complex relationship that exists between filmmaker and performer and how the dynamics of this relationship ultimately shape the material being recorded. Peggy will screen excerpts from her extensive body of work as well as other examples of improvisational cinema from Andy Warhol, Jack Smith and Mike Leigh, among others. No experience necessary, all welcome.

	RR - BY JAMES BENNING June 6 [OUTDOOR SCREENING, details TBA] "RR is a film about trains, American trains, trains moving across the American landscape." - James Benning "Those are modest words for a film as majestic and breathtaking as RR. Taking its title from an abbreviation for "railroad," the latest (and possibly last) 16mm work by the great American independent filmmaker James Benning - whose prolific output over the past five years has placed him at the apex of his four-decade career - is indeed about trains traversing the expansive American landscape. Yet its deceivingly simple schema of forty-three trains chugging through the frame sets the stage for a film rich in historical allusion, articulated structure, surprise and photographic beauty. The American pastoral tradition contains its own fabled history. Benning peppers his synch-sound recording with excerpts and songs that provide a clever counterpoint to the images, obliquely invoking past events including the Vietnam War. The collaged soundtrack, which includes Karen Carpenter singing for a Coca-Cola commercial, Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," Eisenhower's foreboding farewell speech warning about the military-industrial complex and Gregory Peck reading from Revelations, both digs into and participates in the American psyche. RR can be seen as a meditation on nostalgia, the unadulterated joys of waiting, Western over-consumption, and the cinema itself. Train-spotting has never been so rewarding." - Andrea Picard June 6 RR by James Benning [2007, 16mm, color, sound, 115 min.]

	VISUAL POETRY: THE FILMS OF AMAR KANWAR Beyond Borders Program II June 17 + 18 [7:30PM] Cinema Project is proud to welcome New Delhi based filmmaker Amar Kanwar, to Portland. Recipient of the 1st Edvard Munch Award for Contemporary Art from Norway; Kanwar's films have shown in galleries and festivals all over the world. In the mid eighties Kanwar became interested in filmmaking as a way to explore issues of justice. Emerging from the Indian sub continent, Kanwar's films are complex, contemporary narratives that connect intimate personal spheres of existence to larger social political processes. The films exist at the crossroads of documentary, visual poetry and philosophical meditation; linking legends and ritual objects to new symbols and public events, which trigger emotional and intellectual disturbances in the viewer. Finding a contextual relationship with diverse audiences, Kanwar's work maps a journey of exploration revealing our relationship with the politics of power, violence, ecology, sexuality and justice. June 17 A Season Outside [1997, Betacam, color/so, 30min.] A Night of Prophecy [2002, Betacam, color/so 77 min.] June 18 To Remember [2003, dvcam pal, color, silent, 8min.] The Face [2005, dvcam pal, sound, 4 min 35 sec.] Thet Win Aung [2005, dvcam pal, silent, 4 min 35 sec.] Win Maw Oo [2005, dvcam pal, silent, 4 min 35 sec.] The Bodhi Tree [2005, dvcam pal, sound, 7 min.] Somewhere in May [2005, dvcam pal, sound, 38 min.]