Artists' Television Access

Radical Light: Small Gauge Diaries and Portraits

Thursday, March 3, 2011, 7:30 pm

presented by SF Cinematheque  in association with Pacific Film Archive
 
In the middle decades of the twentieth century, 8mm and Super-8mm film formats were introduced to the consumer markets as amateur mediums, “simpler” alternatives to the more expensive 16mm gauge. These small-scale tools also attracted artists for the spontaneity they afforded to filming, the fragility of their images and the low-key intimacy of their exhibition, contributing to a body of cinematic reveries and expressive “diary films” directly in dialog with the home-movie aesthetic. Technical qualities of these “lesser” gauges (such as synchronous sound-on-film recording) presented artists with unique formal challenges and expressive options, as did the corresponding mid-century market for home-distributed “short-subject” reels, whose concerns ranged from feature-film digest to newsreel to porn. This program features Bay Area artists using these traditions to make diaries and personal responses to political themes, including work by Scott Stark, Jacalyn White, silt, Julie Murray, and Janis Crystal Lipzin. (Steve Anker)