“This film was shot in winter
and early spring ’05. Most was edited out. What remains
is a condensation of an emotion related to being
on the outside looking in.”—J.J.
“Louis-Aimé-Augustin
Le Prince was the first person to create, in 1885,
a single recording apparatus that photographed images
in quick succession on George Eastman’s new
paper roll film. Le Prince applied for patents but
the fix was in, leaving Edison and the Lumière
Brothers to profit from his invention. He vanished
under mysterious circumstances in 1890. Well, that’s
business, but I’m sure personal malice was not
involved. In 1888 he made a number of short recordings.
Here we see Leeds Bridge on a day like any other,
its foot and carriage traffic as portentous or as
casual as the crisscrossings of the stars. Looped,
we Tom Tom some of its infinity of captured gesture.—Ken
Jacobs
“The
mystery of the crystals under closer examination.
What is it that makes them possess magic powers as
claimed by mystics thorough the ages? By growing crystals
directly on film, their mystical qualities shine straight
to the screen. Unfiltered, only aided by light which
gracefully breaks its rays into rich visual textures.”—Thorsten
Fleisch
“Here is a place,
an optical location brought into being through conjuring
to accommodate a clandestine rendezvous between Sir
Laurence Olivier and Georges Méliès.
Méliès appears to get the upper hand,
confirming that magic will always trump mere performance.
Early cinema audiences, we are told, were mesmerized
by the cinematic apparitions and impossible cavortings
realized by the sly Méliès. Those first
paying customers had, apparently, no need for plots,
movie stars, or sharp ideas. Direct conjuring was
more than enough. Could that work HERE?—Fred
Worden
One
of the most significant films from the early period
of experimental work by the maker of Tropical
Malady, Blissfully Yours and Mysterious
Object at Noon.
“The documentary leisurely examines the shifting
focus of image and sound. It was a hot day in a small
town where a mystic radio filled the air. Lives were
trapped in the time of the radio play, of the photograph,
and of the film. The narrative form is broken, sometimes
improvised, and sometimes structured. The radio wave
is transmitted from one place to many others, delivering
a melodramatic play, The Sea Goddess. The
film juxtaposes the time and the memory worlds. The
transportation (the car, the ship, the passing plane)
in this film is the vehicle that runs through both
worlds.”—Apichatpong Weerasethakul
“The radio sound and the discussions between
the people who listen to the radio is a mixture of
fiction and reality and sometimes it is not possible
to say if the spoken words belong to the real or the
fictional world. It seems that the subtitles can be
linked to both text levels. And repeatedly, the machine,
the source of the sound, is shown. The film is not
about the contrast between every day life and illusion,
but rather Apichatpong’s idea is to delete the
difference between the hierarchies that exist between
the (re)production of a film and the film itself.
Like The Relentless Fury of the Pounding Waves
ends with takes in a film studio, where a film shoot
is prepared in front of wallpaper showing exotic landscapes.
In this way the production of the film images is disclosed
as a cut between illusion, or fiction, and fact. At
the same time it is an act of creating production
levels. This method is an integral part of and preeminent
in all the films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His
film productions are always discourses about the possibilities
of filmmaking, through the use of different narrative
perspectives and image production strategies...”—Ulrike
Kremeire, “Leveled Narratives”
The Relentless Fury of
the Pounding Waves creates a rich confusion and
a moving boundary between documentary and construct.
Radio waves pervade the scene like unseen rain, while
the contents of the mythological soap opera are possibly
audible within the world of these images, sometimes
providing a glancing description of what appears before
our eyes. The transmitted broadcast momentarily substitutes
as dialogue between filmed characters or as kind of
allegorical daydream amidst languor and dramatic tensions,
the tides of everyday life.—Mark McElhatten.
“september
song...a cut and paste s.o.s./...fragments of celluloid
....a ribbon faded ..muted...muting...color and sound...transparant
renderings and tape travel intermittent through time
and space...projecting light and image....rest on
the physical.... temporary anxious fragile vignette.”—Luther
Price
"A portrait of North
Kolkata (Calcutta), this film searches the streets
for the ebb and flow of humanity and reflects the
changing landscape of a city at once medieval and
modern." M.L.
Total running time: 116m
Program 1: STRAUB-HUILLET’S
A TRIP TO THE LOUVRE
Program
2: THE DAILY PLANET (Unearthed)
Program
3: DAVID GATTEN’S SECRET HISTORY OF THE DIVIDING
LINE: A TRUE ACCOUNT IN NINE PARTS
Program
4: THE TERRESTRIAL OBSERVATORY
Program
5: BLUE MOVIE with special guest VIVA
Program
6: ALLEN ROSS’S GRANDFATHER TRILOGY
Program 7: LARRY GOTTHEIM
Program 8: MANUAL OVERRIDE (“Slip
Inside this House”)
Program
9: SHADOWHUNGER
Program
10: HEINZ EMIGHOLZ
|
Sat
Oct 1: 5:30 PM |
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