Author: Fara

LARRY JORDAN/JOHN DAVIS + COOK + COLBURN
OC’s presiding patch-master John Davis brings his synth-musical mastery to bear on an old and a new animation by Larry Jordan, both in 16mm!! That patriarch of Bay Area cut-out animation is thankfully still single-framing away, and the world premiere of his Night Light is co-featured with his 1980 Folds of the Fortnight (co-directed with Jess!). The debut of Lauren Cook’s sublime Trans/Figure/Ground is similarly matched with her earlier 16mm Altitude Zero (on Amelia Earhart). ALSO in its West Coast debut is Martha Colburn’s Pug Adventures, an animated journey through the human reproductive system! PLUS Karen Ver Trinidad’s (in person) Kinetic Identity, Salise Hughes’ Boating Song, and even more pixilations from Deborah Kelly, Kelly Gallagher, and Mary Ellen Bute (her rare ’37 Parabola). Free toast, jam. and nutella!*$8

Artists’ Television Access (ATA) teams up with San Francisco Public Library to mine the treasures in the Library’s 16mm film archive. Join us for a quarterly screening series of fantastic movies.

The Black Woman (Stan Lathan, 1970), 16mm, 52 minutes

Made for broadcast by PBS predecessor National Educational Television in the last year of its existence, and subsequently distributed in 16mm prints to schools and libraries, this film uses a variety show format to showcase many dimensions of black womanhood in 1970 America. Dance performances, songs by Novella Nelson and Roberta Flack, and a warm interview of Lena Horne by Nikki Giovanni are among the highlights of the program. A Black Journal roving reporter steps out of the studio and into Detroit’s Shrine of the Black Madonna, where Sonia Sanchez delivers a powerful speech from the pulpit.

Stan Lathan pioneered as a black director and would later receive many awards for his work behind the television camera, but here he places the spotlight entirely on the women in front of it. Perhaps the most fascinating component of the film is an informal discussion between six thoughtful, impassioned women from various walks of life. The camera lets us feel as if we’re in a room with lawyer and civil rights activist Jean Fairfax, television personality Joan Harris, writer Vertamae Grosvenor, poet Amina Baraka, actress Marian Etoile Watson, and Martha Davis of the Harlem Drug Fighters. It’s quite a privilege to hear their candid conversations about topics as important today as they were 47 years ago.

Honoring Int’l Women’s Month, guest MC Molly Hankwitz introduces a feast of scrumptious—and nourishing!–pieces that give voice to the planet’s majority. Kelly Gallagher’s animations Do You Want to Go For A Drive? and More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters sparkle in a provocative mix with recent shorts by Soda_Jerk, Natalie Tsui, Deborah Kelly, Sarah Brady, Sahar Al-Sawaf, and Pussy Riot’s Straight Outta Vagina. PLUS the local premieres of Vanessa Renwick’s Strabismus , Irene Lusztig’s Forty Years, and Emily Drummer’s Histories of Simulated Intimacy, a very rare clip of Ana Mendieta in Mexico, and Lynne Sachs/Zoe Beloff/Betsy Weiss’ street-wise views of the Women’s March on Washington. Consummating is Hito Steryl’s legendary lo-fi November, on her teen girl-friend turned Kurdish freedom martyr.*$8