San Francisco Cinematheque in association with ODC Theater present
In December 1895, French industrialists Auguste and Louis Lumière presented, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris, an event which was (arguably) the world’s first public film screening: a series of ten films—each less than a minute in duration—depicting, variously, industrial processes, the activity of workers and laborers, street scenes and “actualities,” and the pleasures of bourgeois Parisian leisure. Anticipating much of the following century’s cultural obsessions with spectacle, narrative and the politics of representation, the short work of the Lumières is also lauded by historians and artists for the profoundly patient aesthetic of observation expressed. Anticipating Bring on the Lumière!, the feature-length choreographic work by Catherine Galasso and Elaine Buckholtz presented at ODC Theater Nov. 11–13 (see below), tonight’s screening presents a number of works inspired by or addressing the works of the luminous Lumières as well as a selection of these early actualités, including Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, Arrivée d’un train, Feeding the Baby, Teasing the Gardener (L’Arroseur est arrosé), Negroes Bathing and more. Also screening: Coffee Break by Gail Camhi; Opening the Nineteenth Century: 1896 by Ken Jacobs; 38/79: Sentimental Punk by Kurt Kren; After Lumière—L’Arroseur Arrosé by Malcolm LeGrice; L’Arrivée by Peter Tscherkassky; and the smash-hit viral video, Workers Leaving the Googleplex by Andrew Norman Wilson, which documents the apartheid policies of our friendly neighbor to the south. (Steve Polta)
