Blog

CURTIS’ TRAUMAZONE + STONE’s UKRAINE ON FIRE +

In our ongoing collaboration with our fave non-profit Humanity Now, benefiting international war refugees, here’s a program of mostly docs on Ukraine and Russia. Featured is the new and utterly astonishing TraumaZone (Ep.7) by UK comp-doc master Adam Curtis! The last of his 7 hours on the “Fall of Democracy” in Russia contextualizes Putin‘s rise and posits Ukraine as a casualty of the Old Empire‘s political and economic implosion. The first hour of our program is constituted by hefty excerpts from a pair of provocative histories of the past decade of Ukrainian upheaval: Eugeny Afineevsky‘s Winter on Fire and Oliver Stone‘s (!) Ukraine on Fire, the latter offering a little-seen perspective on Ukrainian antisemitism and that nationalism for which the Kremlin reserves the word “Nazism”. Comparing Stone‘s lighting-fast editing style to the decidedly elliptical leaps of Curtis proves a special treat, especially with our added exemplar of Dziga Vertov, whose Enthusiasm pops up. AND the downright jaw dropping Playing Apocalypse, by UCB grad Aleksandra Simonova (in person), which parlays her documentation of Odessa‘s historical role-players in scary Cold War tunnels into a larger allegory on dystopian subcultures in the beleaguered country. *$8-$100 (out-of-towners can donate here).

PRELINGER’s HOME MOVIES + BEST OF FOUND FOOTAGE FEST

Prelinger presente! Yes, walking amongst us is thee planet’s most visionary polymath facilitating Public Memory, and tonight he brings us a pair of revelatory programs of amateur films originally curated for the esteemed Art Gallery of Ontario. One is the broader Panorama, a half-hour “montage” of  clips from personal, small-gauge cameras, surveying everyday life in the last half of the 20th Century.  His other “special collection” is a super-rare cache of 8mm material from an African-American scene-maker in the River Rouge (Detroit) area from the dynamic ’63-’67 period, including dances, street views, and historic anti-racism protests. After Rick‘s home-movie hour, we return for a 40-min. focus on archival production in the Art World, drawing from the fantastic Found Footage boxset recently published by the eponymous Spanish collective…their marvelous catalog boasting exquisite digital versions of essential pieces from the last 60 years. Five of their 16 selections will sparkle again on our big screen—landmark works from Jeff Keen, Cécile Fontaine, Thomas Draschan,  Jean-Gabriel Périot, and Gianikian/Lucci. Free film cans! *$10

READING

MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Ted Rees and Danielle LaFrance read their work alongside shorts by the legendary artist and filmmaker Curt McDowell.

We will be joined by Melinda McDowell, Curt’s sister, actress and collaborator who appeared in his films Thundercrack!, Sparkle’s Tavern, George Kuchar’s The Devil’s Cleavage, and more. 

‍

Films will be shown on 16mm:

Ainslie Trailer (1972 | 1:40 minutes)
Kathleen Trailer (1972 | 1:35 minutes)
Truth for Ruth (1972 | 3:03 minutes)
The Mean Brothers Get Stood Up (1973 | 3:20 minutes)
Wieners and Buns Musical (1972 | 13:39 minutes)

Projectionist: Linda Scobie
Co-sponsored by Canyon Cinema.

‍

     “…Life for [McDowell] was a fast track to fast times that included devilish detours into forbidden erogenous zones. He explored all those zones with a zealous zeal: painter, pornographer, poet of the plebeian and the perverse…”    —George Kuchar

‍

More on McDowell:

Visual AIDS
Et al. exhibition curated by Margaret Tedesco, 2018
Canyon Cinema + UNTITLEDCinema, 2018
 

Register to attend in person
The readings will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube.

NOTES ON ACCESSIBILITY

Artists’ Television Access’ gallery is on the ground floor; the entrance and gender neutral bathrooms are wheelchair-accessible.

Ted Rees

Ted Rees is a poet, essayist, and editor who lives and works in Philadelphia. His most recent book of poetry is Dog Day Economy, published by Roof Books in February 2022. Thanksgiving: a Poem, published by Golias Books in April 2020, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His first book of poetry, In Brazen Fontanelle Aflame, was published by Timeless, Infinite Light in 2018. Chapbooks include Dear Hole, Big Dearth in Whir, the soft abyss, and Outlaws Drift in Every Vehicle of Thought. Recent essays have been published in The Poetry Project Newsletter,  Libertines in the Ante-Room of Love: Poets on Punk, Full Stop Quarterly, and ON Contemporary Practice’s monograph on New Narrative. He is editor-at-large for The Elephants, as well as founder and co-editor of Asterion Projects with Levi Bentley. Since summer of 2020, he has been running Overflowing Poetry Workshops, an extrainstitutional online workshop space.

http://tedreeswords.com

Danielle LaFrance

Following the would-be poetics mapped in JUST LIKE I LIKE IT (Talonbooks, 2019), Danielle LaFrance arrives at thinking and acting from a position where illusions are just that, illusions, and can be destroyed. She authors Friendly + Fire (Talonbooks, 2016) and species branding (Capilano University Editions, 2010). Their fourth poetry project #postdildo thinks and writes through the limitlessness and limitations of sexuality, communication, and desire. Focusing on the dildo as sexual object and social relation, they ask “How shall You fuck without causing harm?” Her poetry and critical writing have appeared in The Capilano Review, LESTE, Tripwire, Organism for Poetic Research, among other journals and magazines. They try to live and hate to rent and work on the stolen lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ pe