Artists' Television Access

Author: Fara

  • OC: CLIMATE CHANGE BENEFIT

     SNIDER + RENWICK + COLBURN + GREER +

    Our penultimate Spring event is an amazing effort to mobilize the community against ever-threatening Climate Collapse, in a rich feast of film art and craft that’s as current as the recent LA wildfires! Spotlit is SF Arts Comm. grantee Greta Snider, with her hand-made masterpiece In the Maritime Frequencies, framed by her spoken-word essay. Locals Anjali Sundaram (Fifth Day). Ellie Vanderlip (Elephant’s Foot), Michelle Segura (Whisper of the Tides), and Carlos Ortega (Temperature.me) also share shorts. Portland‘s Rankin Renwick kicks in their Mighty Tacoma, rhapsodizing on Pac Coast landscape and infrastructure, as do Vanderlip and Segura in regards to the waters of our own SF Bay. Lydia Greer offers a healthy chunk from her magnum opus Endless End, and Pasadena-based Martha Colburn demonstrates her present-tense creative intelligence with the West Coast debut of Eaton Fire, on the SoCal firestorm. PLUS: Frank Stauffacher‘s classic kino-poem Notes on the Port of St. Francis (1951), Robert Louis Stevenson‘s legendary lyric here intoned by Vincent Price. Now, Greenpeace has just lost a $660 million suit filed by Big Oil Energy Transfer, for its alleged “defamation” of the corporation during the Standing Rock protests(!!), so we’re sending the door monies to that noble non-profit. $12-120.

  • DON BARRY: A QUIXOTIC EXPLORATION

     

    DON BARRY is a 94 minute cinematic exploration (in English and Spanish, with subtitles) that seeks to place the first great modern narrative, Don Quixote, into the lives of real people in a real place.

          The film introduces the experimental filmmaker Barry Gerson, now in his eighties, as Don Barry, who mixes his own thoughts into the character’s speech, much as Miguel de Cervantes’ hero mingled chivalric quotes with his own ideas. Genda Monter, a young animator, is the Don’s assistant Sanchia. The setting is the Mexican city of Guanajuato during its high season. 

         Don Barry’s themes are the same as those in Cervantes’ great novel: mortality, dreams versus accomplishment, and the means by which one retains sanity in a mad world. In addition, dives into the beauty of Gerson’s experimental cinema and his work at taking what he’s learned about light as an inspiration for healing. As well as the beauty of allowing one’s life work to become transformative, and to allow the landscapes we inhabit to provide catharsis for inner growth.

    ​      Music is by Karen y Los Remedios and Jiony, two contemporary existential Cumbia artists; the GTO Imp Symph and its talented composers Michael Severens and Alex Applegate; and the late folk-jazz genius John Martyn.

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  • OC: OPTRON2- RECOMBINANT MEDIA

    JOHN DAVIS/LINDA SCOBIE + KENT LONG/VANESSA O’NEILL + BALDWIN +

    In the second of the season’s legendary LIVE A/V spectaculars, we’re spotlighting three NorCal intermedia acts, plus the latest from the reigning queen of video collage! Headlining is Linda Scobie and John Davis (launching his Landlines LP tonight, by the way) with their 25-min collaboration–Scobie‘s Crystal Palace (double projection), When Nothing Moved (painted 35mm), and CCRF (16mm), atop Davis’ exquisite electronic tracks. Co-billed is the duo Beige, the East Bay brainchild of Kent Long and Vanessa O’Neill, with the world premiere of Allelopatic Impact of Aqueous Leachate. Closing this multi-media feast is Craig Baldwin‘s 15-min. Double Larnyx, a “hypnotic stereoscopic” that echoes and amplifies his recent throat concerns. ALSO: The UK‘s Vicki Bennett (PLU) shares her Library of Babel with her West Coast fans, an animated educational teaches us about musique concrete (!), Christian Marclay spins pie-cut discs at Steve Parr‘s in 1980, and good ol’ Gilbert gladdens the gathering with his Shapeshifters suds!