Films of and by Jack Smith

FILMS OF AND BY JACK SMITH
London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Saturday 31 March 2007

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (Mary Jordan, 2006)

Saturday 31 March 2007, at 4pm, NFT 3
JACK SMITH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS

Jack Smith - self-made creature of fantasy, documenter of real magic - is best-known for his baroque orgiastic celebration Flaming Creatures, a film banned in 22 states and four countries. Adopted as a cause celebré, Smith was so disgusted with the commercial art machine, that he never again made another 'finished product'. An anarchist, Smith declared art his only authority as he constructed fantastical utopias populated with bejewelled animals, a coterie of costumed 'creatures', and magical debris gathered from downtown New York. Although increasingly bitter as others cannibalised his work, he never stopped his manic quest for glamorous liberation. An assemblage of archival photographs, rare film and audio clips, Jordan's film offers a sumptuous portrait of this mystic and madman who irrevocably altered the fields of experimental theatre, photography, performance and avant-garde film. (Kyle Stephan)

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
Mary Jordan, USA, 2006, 96 mins

Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith, 1963)

Saturday 31 March 2007, at 6.10pm, NFT 3
FLAMING CREATURES & BLONDE COBRA

A double bill of two gloriously primitive flicks that define and transcend the idea of 'underground' film. Flaming Creatures, Jack Smith's impoverished, epic fantasy of Babylonian proportions, is a decadent celebration of the joy and torment of existence. This bleached-out orgiastic rite, all limp penises and shaking breasts, is populated by a blonde vampire, exotic Spanish dancers and androgynous bohemian poseurs. Blonde Cobra, as close to an authentic portrait of Smith that we have, is propelled by a delirious monologue (witness the scurrilous tale of Madame Nescience and Mother Superior) and was shot amongst the rubble of his apartment. The two films were premiered together in April 1963, and remain fresh, provocative and startlingly original over 40 years later. (Mark Webber)

Blonde Cobra
Ken Jacobs & Bob Fleischner, USA, 1959-63, 33 mins
Flaming Creatures
Jack Smith, USA, 1963, 45 mins


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BFI Southbank
Belvedere Road, South Bank, London, SE1 8XT
Nearest Tube: Waterloo / Embankment
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £8.50 / £6.25 concessions
Box Office: 020 7928 3232

www.llgff.org.uk

...

AND THERE'S MORE ... FREE screening of Ken Jacobs' Two Wrenching Departures (1957/2006, featuring Jack Smith) at the Roxy Bar and Screen on Tuesday 3 April 2007.

Light Reading: Brown Sierra / Music for Unknown Material Continuity

BROWN SIERRA & MUSIC FOR UNKNOWN MATERIAL CONTINUITY AND PLAYBACK DEVICES ALONE (FOR 4 PERFORMERS)
London Kingsgate Gallery
Wednesday 28 March 2007, at 7pm

Light Reading Series 6

1. MUSIC FOR UNKNOWN MATERIAL CONTINUITY AND PLAYBACK DEVICES ALONE (FOR 4 PERFORMERS)

Music for unknown material continuity and playback devices alone is a conceptually multi-layered series of pieces that provide an equality amongst the roles of author and applier whilst extending to the role of receivership to all - employing a set of procedures that enable the fragmentation of material from the stage of gathering to the stage of presentation without the overall guidance of any single individual. This piece in particular features 4 movements of 10 minutes each, a single for each material continuity (The individual keywords of which will remain un-announced) These 4 pieces have been realized for the use of the CD player alone.

Performed by Adam Asnan, Edward Kelly, J. Milo Taylor and James Holcombe

Mount Sierra (Brown Sierra, 2006)

2. BROWN SIERRA

Brown Sierra are Pia Gambardella and Paddy Collins. They are a performance and installation group based in London. Brown Sierra will show 3 films and perform live soundtracks. www.brownsierra.org.uk

APHASIA (10 mins)
A lack of the faculty to transmit ideas using language (reading writing speaking and understanding speech). A continuous Letraset line, which begins thick, gradually gets thinner and then becomes dots which are big and then become small.

AVEIMORE / LAKE WINDEMERE 1977 (6 mins)
Old home movies of holidays in Aveimore, grom our collection of other peoples 8mm / super-8 film.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF PSYCHOLOGY (7 mins)
The images in this film are abstract black and white worked onto the surface of the film using Letraset repetition of images, moving patterned and textured black dots.

Light Reading is an on-going series of critical dialogues that engage artists, writers and curators in conversation around a selected artist’s body of work. To be included on the mailing list please contact courses@nowhere-lab.org

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Kingsgate Education Space
114-116 Kingsgate Road, West Hampstead, London NW6
Nearest Tube / Train: West Hampstead
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £4 door / £3 advance
Telephone: 020 7372 3925
Email: courses@nowhere-lab.org
Booking is essential for this event, as places are limited.

www.nowhere-lab.org

v.o. & All Male Mash Up

V.O. & ALL MALE MASH UP
London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Saturday 24 March 2007

v.o. (William E. Jones, 2006)

Saturday 24 March 2007, at 8:30pm, NFT 3
V.O. & ALL MALE MASH UP

William E. Jones’s new body of work was inspired by his parallel career in the gay adult video industry. In the course of viewing hundreds of hours of porn, he has developed a fascination with its marginalia: establishing shots revealing urban landscapes of the recent past, charmingly inept dialogue scenes, and close-ups of performers, many now dead. This material, while of no particular commercial use, can be seen as an invaluable document of a lost world of eroticism and sociability. (LA Film Forum)

v.o.
William E. Jones, USA, 2006, 59 mins
Using his encyclopaedic knowledge of 60s and 70s gay porn and arthouse cinema, William E Jones has skilfully edited a compilation of non-sexual scenes which offer a unique perspective on gay life. Come-hither stares, knowing looks, the prowling walk of a man on heat, there is a teasing, gentle build-up to these extracts which is almost hypnotic. The title refers to the French practice of releasing a film in "Version Originale", but this film is in fact dubbed with an extraordinary range of mostly European arthouse classic soundtracks. This makes for a surprising juxtaposition of images, voices and English subtitles which is often spookily resonant in its effect.

All Male Mash Up
William E. Jones, USA, 2006, 29 mins
More sex-free ancient porn but this time it has its own soundtrack. That pizza delivery truck is carrying more than just pizza. A wild hippy party gets out of control with reefers, sequins and moustaches. A retro-erotic delight.

www.williamejones.com


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BFI Southbank
Belvedere Road, South Bank, London, SE1 8XT
Nearest Tube: Waterloo / Embankment
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £8.50 / £6.25 concessions
Box Office: 020 7928 3232

www.llgff.org.uk

Power Tripping

POWER TRIPPING
London LUX Salon
Wednesday 21 March 2007, at 7pm for 7:30pm start

Two underground cult films meditating on control and paranoia from the LUX Collection, selected by Benjamin Cook. Scott and Beth B’s Letters to Dad (1979, 13 min, 16mm) superimposes the power relations between Jim Jones and his followers onto the parapunk art world of 70s New York and Paul Bartel’s Secret Cinema (1966, 30 min, 16mm), a dark / funny satire on cinematic manipulation from the director of Death Race 2000 and Eating Raoul.

Secret Cinema (Paul Bartel, 1966)

LETTERS TO DAD
Beth & Scott B., USA, 1979, colour, sound, 13 mins (16mm)
A meditation on authority that superimposes the spectre of Jonestown over the relatively fresh faces of the parapunk art world. The B's asked two dozen artists and musicians to pick from the letters written to Jim Jones by his flock the phrase that he/she could most identify with.

SECRET CINEMA
Paul Bartel, USA, 1966, b/w, sound, 30 mins (16mm)
"A paranoid fantasy" which hovers in the zone where the cinema merges with the subconscious of its audience, telling the harrowing, hilarious tale of a woman who believes that her life is secretly being filmed and screened to scornful audiences at local movie theaters.

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LUX Salon
3rd Floor, Shacklewell Studios, 18 Shacklewell Lane, London, E8 2EZ
Nearest Train: Dalston Kingsland
MAP OF AREA

ADMISSION FREE
Places are extremely limited so booking is essential
To book a place send your name to salon@lux.org.uk
Please be on time - no late entry
Telephone: 020 7503 3980

www.lux.org.uk

Arclite 2: Maya Deren

ARCLITE 2: MAYA DEREN
London The Exhibit
15 & 18 March 2007

Following the huge success of Arclite 1 in December, Louis Benassi and Ben Northover return to showcase the experimental cinema of MAYA DEREN and films by STORM DE HIRSCH.
www.spoolpool.com

Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

Thursday 15 March 2007, at 7:30pm
THE EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA OF MAYA DEREN 1917-1961

"The cinema of Maya Deren delivers us from the studios: it presents our eyes with physical facts which contain profound psychological meaning; it beats out within our hearts or upon our hearts a time which alternates, continues, revolves, pounds or flies away. One escapes from the stupidity of make-believe. One is in the reality of cinematic fact, captured by Maya Deren at that point where the lens cooperates as a prodigious discoverer." (Le Corbusier, 1945)

A video presentation by Jonas Mekas has been produced especially for this screening, and a limited amount of "The Legend Of Maya Deren" (Volume 1, Parts 1 & 2), and other books published by Anthology Film Archives / Film Culture will be on sale.

MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON
Maya Deren, USA, 1943, 16mm, b/w, sound, 15 mins
This film is concerned with the inner realties of an individual and with the way in which the sub-conscious will develop, interpit and elaborate an apparently simple and casual occurrence into a critical and emotional experience. It is culminated by a double ending in which it would seem that the imagined achieved, for the protagonist, such force that it became reality. Using cinematic techniques to achieve dislocations of inanimate objects, unexpected simultaneities, etc, this film establishes a reality, which, although somewhat based on dramatic logic, can only exist only on film.

RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME
Maya Deren, USA, 1945-46, 16mm, b/w, sound, 16 mins
Ritual In Transfigured Time silently follows Rita Christiani's perspective as she enters an apartment to find Maya Deren immersed in the ritual of unwinding wool from a loom. Deren includes another expression of the external invading the internal with a strange wind that surrounds and entrances her as she becomes transported by the ritual. Ritual in Transfigured Time links the looming ritual with the ritual of the social greeting. Christiani enters a party, meets and greets, moving throughout the crowd like a dancer. Her movements become increasingly expressive and fluid, the ritual becomes a performance. Key themes in this film are the dread of rejection and the contrasting freedom of expression in the abandonment to the ritual

MEDITATIONS ON VIOLENCE
Maya Deren, USA, 1948, 16mm, b/w, sound, 10 mins
In Meditation on Violence, Deren's camera is motivated by the movement of the performer, Chao Li Chi. This film is marked by a lack of dynamism and mobility that we have come to expect from Deren's camera. It also obscures the distinction between violence and beauty. The shadows on the white wall behind Chi amplify the movement of the Wu Tang ritual. In Meditation on Violence Deren experiments with film time, reversing the film part way through producing a loop. Exhibited forwards and then backwards, the difference in the Wu Tang movements is almost imperceptible.

A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR THE CAMERA
Maya Deren, USA, 1945, 16mm, b/2, silent, 3 mins
With A Study in Choreography for the Camera, Deren's 16mm Bolex becomes a performer equal in significance to the star of this film, Talley Beattey. In the opening sequence Deren's camera rotates more than 360 degrees, scanning past the figure in movement. In this film Deren articulates the potential for transcendence through dance and ritual. The movement of the dancer does not always motivate the camera, so Deren's visual expression remains free floating. The spaces linked in this film range from the interior of a museum to the forest and courtyard. Deren writes, "The movement of the dancer creates a geography that never was. With a turn of the foot, he makes neighbours of distant places." As Beattey spins, he appears to develop more than one face, forming an illusion of a totem pole.

AT LAND
Maya Deren, USA, 1944, 16mm, b/w, silent, 16 mins
Deren's second experimental film, At Land, reinforces her interest in the juxtaposition of anachronistic spaces and introduces a critique of social rituals. This film begins by reversing the natural rhythm with images of waves breaking and descending back into the sea. Starring again, Deren is seen climbing up a dead tree trunk on the beach, magically emerging onto a table where a formal dinner party is in progress. This 'civilized' world ignores Deren as she crawls along their dinner table. By depicting herself as invisible to the diners, Deren highlights the myopia of the guests. The dinner sequence in At Land ends with an enchanted chess game. A pawn falls from the table and descends back into the dead wood on the beach; it falls over rocks, into the water and is washed away over the waterfalls. Chasing the pawn, Deren is restored to her original landscape.

+ Films by Storm De Hirsch
+ New Arc-Lites (new and rarely seen short works by internationally established and up and coming contemporary artist filmmakers.)

Divine Horsemen (Maya Deren, 1947-54)

Sunday 18 March 2007, at 4.30pm
DIVINE HORSEMEN - THE LIVING GODS OF HAITI

DIVINE HORSEMEN - THE LIVING GODS OF HAITI
Maya Deren, USA, 1947-54, 16mm, b/w, sound, 50 mins
"'When the anthropologist arrives, the gods depart' So declares, a Haitian proverb. Maya Deren, on the other hand, was an artist: therein the secret of her ability to recognise 'facts of the mind' when presented through the 'fictions' of a mythology. Her avant-garde films, composed before her first trip to Haiti, had already testified to her understanding of the pictorial script of dream, vision, and hallucination. She went first to Haiti as an artist, thinking to make a film in which Haitian dance should be a leading theme. But the manifestations of rapture that there first fascinated and then seized her transported her beyond the bounds of any art she had ever known. She was open, willingly and respectfully, to the message of the speechless deep, which is, indeed, the wellspring of the mysteries. And so it was that when I first met her, just following her plunge into what she has named 'the White Darkness' she was in a state of high exaltation" (Joseph Campbell)


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The Exhibit
12 Balham Station Road, Balham, London, SW12 9SG
Nearest Tube: Balham (Northern Line)
Nearest Train: Balham BR (from Victoria or Waterloo)
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £6 (Thursday 15 March) / £4 (Sunday 18 March)
Box Office: 020 8772 6556
Email: sarah@exhibitbars.com
www.theexhibit.uk.com

www.spoolpool.com

Learned By Heart

MARJUT RIMMINEN: LEARNED BY HEART
London Curzon Soho
Tuesday 13 March 2007, at 6pm

British artists’ moving-image project animate! and The Finnish Institute are proud to present the international premiere of a remarkable new autobiographical animation by multi-award-winning Finnish filmmaker Marjut Rimminen.

Learned By Heart (Marjut Rimminen, 2007)

MARJUT RIMMINEN: LEARNED BY HEART

LEARNED BY HEART (UK/Finland, 2007, 30 mins), commissioned as part of Finland’s 90th anniversary of independence celebrations, is a charged and deeply personal creative collaboration with composer and co-director Paivi Takala. The film’s five episodes explore the little-charted legacies of Finland’s post-war period, digging deep into the unspoken stories, misunderstandings and mysteries that a child in that period experienced.

Composed around hymns sung in school assembly, choral motifs dominate the soundtrack and recall memories of a time when they were an intimate element in everyday life. The visual narrative is created from archive materials and still photographs from old family albums. These images capture forgotten, even buried, emotional memories and through manipulation they release a raw and unencumbered energy.

Sister to the allusive, lyrical works of fellow Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila, LEARNED BY HEART steps unflinchingly into the charged territory of generational relations, historical amnesia and the secret agendas of the human heart, where a shared silence yields to final forgiveness.

Rimminen was an early pioneer of desktop digital animation, using equipment that in other hands (and hearts) might have been little more than ‘toys for the boys’.

Also showing will be her strikingly unsettling 1996 multi-Grand-Prix-winning work MANY HAPPY RETURNS (UK, 1996, 8 mins), plus her startling account of a brutalised life, SOME PROTECTION (UK, 1987, 9 mins). She will be in conversation with Gareth Evans (editor of Vertigo magazine) after the screening, when details of this year’s animate! television commissioning process will also be announced.

The animate! project is funded by Arts Council England and Channel 4, refreshing, extending and redefining animation.

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Curzon Soho
99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1D 5DY
Nearest Tube: Leicester Square / Piccadilly Circus
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £5.50 / £4.50 concessions
Box Office: 0870 756 4620
www.curzoncinemas.com

www.animateonline.org

Pervasive Animation

PERVASIVE ANIMATION
London Tate Modern
2-4 March 2007

Animation has an unlimited potential to visually represent events, scenarios and forms that have little or no relation to our experience of the 'real' world. Implemented in many ways in many disciplines, it is increasingly influencing our perception and experience of the world we live in. This timely and groundbreaking international conference unites speakers from a wide range of research agendas and creative practices. It facilitates much-needed dialogue centred on the ubiquitous and interdisciplinary nature of animation, its potentially radical future development, and its ethical responsibilities for spatial politics in moving image culture.

Contributors include Norman Klein, Michael Snow, Vivian Sobchack, Tom Gunning, Anthony McCall, George Griffin, Suzanne Buchan, Beatriz Colomina, Edwin Carels, Siegfried Zielinski, Lisa Cartwright, Johnny Hardstaff and Esther Leslie.

Doubling Back (Anthony McCall, 2003)

Especially since the digital shift, the uses of animation are no longer exclusive to cinema, and animation's origins in pre-cinematic optical experiments through avantgarde experimental film continue to evolve in fascinating ways. Artists increasingly incorporate animation in installations and exhibitions, architects use computer animation software to create narratives of space in time, and scientists use it to interpret abstract concepts for a breadth of industries ranging from biomedicine to nanoworlds. Pervasive Animation will provide a dynamic international forum to explore animation's myriad forms and applications across a wide band of creative and professional practice.

The opening panel discussion on Friday 2 March is followed by a special presentation of Anthony McCall's celebrated 1973 "solid light" film event Line Describing a Cone.

PERVASIVE ANIMATION is a collaboration with the Animation Research Centre, University College for the Creative Arts. Funded by Arts Council England, University College for the Creative Arts and Brunel University West London.

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Starr Auditorium
Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
Nearest Tube: Southwark / London Bridge / Blackfriars
MAP OF AREA

Conference Tickets: £25 / £15 Concessions, booking recommended
Box Office: 020 7887 8888
BOOK ONLINE

www.tate.org.uk

...

PERVASIVE ANIMATION SCREENINGS
The symposium is supplemented by two film programmes curated by Suzanne Buchan and Stuart Comer.

Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky, 1999)

Saturday 3 March 2007, at 7pm
PERVASIVE ANIMATION: PROGRAMME ONE

Viking Eggeling, Diagonal Symphonie, 1921–24, 7 min
Franciszka & Stefan Themerson, The Eye and the Ear, 1945, 12 min
Paul Sharits, Word Movie, 1966, 4 min
Stan Brakhage, The Dante Quartet, 1987, 8 min
Mary Ellen Bute, Mood Contrasts, 1973, 7 min
Lewis Klahr, Altair, 1994, 8 min
Oblong, Structure Space Form, 2002, 3 min
Jeremy Blake, Reading Ossie Clarke, 2003, 9 min
Tim MacMillan, Ferment, 1999, 5 min
Peter Tscherkassky, Outer Space, 1999, 10 min

Googolplex (Lillian Schwarz, 1972)

Sunday 4 March 2006, at 6pm
PERVASIVE ANIMATION: PROGRAMME TWO

Hans Richter, Rhythmus 21, 1921-24, 3 min
Robert Breer, Recreation, 1957, 2 min
Takashi Ito, Spacy, 1981, 9 min
George Griffin, Step Print, 1976, 7 min
Jeff Scher, Reasons to Be Glad, 1980, 4 min
Jerzy Kucia, Przez Pole (Across the Field), 1992, 18 min
Kota Ezawa, Lennon Sontag Beuys, 2004, 2 min
James Whitney, Lapis, 1963–66, 10 min
Cathy Joritz, Negative Man, 1985, 2 min
Lillian Schwartz, Googolplex, 1972, 5 min
Johnny Hardstaff, Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors / Like Spinning Plates, UK, 2002, 8 min

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Starr Auditorium
Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
Nearest Tube: Southwark / London Bridge / Blackfriars
MAP OF AREA

Screening Tickets: £5 each, booking recommended
Box Office: 020 7887 8888

www.tate.org.uk