JJ Murphy and Andy Warhol

About This Screening

JJ Murphy’s Print Generation (1974) is both a diary film and structuralist experiment. The film is made from reprinting one minute of film footage 50 times, making copies of copies. The deterioration develops into an impressionistic narrative of time and memory in which familiar images—a man on a porch, a cabin hidden at the end of a road—become dark shapes saturated in deep reds and oranges before reemerging as the original representational loop of images. Along with Print Generation will be two short works by Murphy: the found-footage film Science Fiction (1979) and the uplifting Sky Blue Water Light Sign (1972). All films will be screened from 16mm prints and filmmaker JJ Murphy will be in attendance. The second night of this program features two 33-minute, rarely-screened works by Andy Warhol (33 minutes is the full length of a 1,200 foot roll of film). Bufferin is a tense and humorous portrait of poet Gerard Malanga (who at the time was also a Factory studio assistant), edited in-camera and including extensive use of Warhol’s signature strobe cut. In the film, Malanga reads aloud from his journal but the gossip is slyly masked as he substitutes people’s names with the name of the familiar aspirin brand. The Velvet Underground in Boston was shot in 1967 at venue The Boston Tea Party and is thought to be one of only two known films with synchronous sound of the band performing live and the only one in color. The film demonstrates a number of Warhol’s camera techniques including strobe cuts, sweeping panning shots, and in-and-out zooms mimicking the experience of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable and meant to overwhelm. JJ Murphy is author of the recently published book The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol and will be in attendance to discuss Warhol’s film work and techniques.