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Manos and Lacustre are two films that look at labor as a seed to think about ecological phenomenon, gender, labor, and liquidity.

Manos is a social surrealist film is about working class women in Uruguay and Argentina. In a dream-like language, woven by hands, ants, and liquidity, it traces manual labor and horizontal mutual aid among working class women. From the sequences of fisherwomen, manicurists, protestors, glove inspectors, clinicians, and mothers, rises a chorus of care, labor, resistance, struggle, trauma, and collective action. Manos presents time zones of labor as a seed to think about ecological phenomenon, gender, and liquidity(48 mins)

Lacustre is a documentary film that takes place at a lake known as Laguna de Zapotlán, in Jalisco, Mexico. It paints an observational portrait of landscape that is untethered from discernible chronologies and ornative arcs; instead bearing witness to the temporalities of land and labor while it directs our gaze and points towards an everyday life that faces the complexities of climate, ecological and industrial change within this lacustrine region, (2019, 48min.)  

MIKE PLANTE’s WYATT EARP: AND WITH HIM CAME THE WEST +
For our second Psycho-Geography, we turn our eyes and ears to the US Southwest, as understood by Mike Plante’s masterful feature. Wyatt Earp, one of the most famous lawmen and gamblers of the Old West, is the inspiration behind decades of Hollywood Westerns. Scripted by Plante, along with Sam Green and Tim Kirk, this detailed doc highlights the influence of Earp’s legacy on cinema and our perception of the wild, wild West. Up from LA, Plante is himself infamous as the feisty editor of the delicious and delirious Cinemad zine, that morphed into online and then podcast versions, even as Plante surfaced to serve as curator of Sundance’s experimental sidebar. The hoe-down opens with a posse of 16mm Country/Western musicians, including Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, Jim Reeves, Johnny Bond, Joe Maphis, and more.

Presented by Canyon Cinema, SF Cinematheque and ATA.

Experimental Filmmaking and the Motion Picture Camerais an introductory experimental filmmaking guide focusing on the camera and its possibilities, published by Focal Press. Author Joel Schlemowitz will be on hand to sign copies for a book party and screening, with the book available for sale at a 20% discount off the list price. The screening will include work by filmmakers written about in the book from the Canyon Cinema collection. Films by Marie Menken, Guy Sherwin, Christopher Harris, Robert Todd, Lynne Sachs, Jon Behrens, Peter Hutton, Paul Clipson will screen. 

Joel Schlemowitz is a Brooklyn-based experimental filmmaker and filmmaking instructor at The New School. His work has shown at numerous festivals and venues, including a screening of his feature film “78rpm” at Other Cinema in 2017.

More about the book and the author can be found at: https://www.experimentalfilmmaking.com

SCREENING:

GO GO GO (Marie Menken, 1957, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Musical Stairs (Guy Sherwin, 1977, 10 minutes, 16mm)

28.IV.81 (Bedouin Spark) (Christopher Harris, 2009, 3 minutes, 16mm)

Evergreen (Robert Todd, 2006, 15.5 minutes, 16mm) 

Drawn and Quartered (Lynne Sachs, 1987, 4 minutes, 16mm)

Light Coins (Jon Behrens, Caryn Cline and Luke Sieczek, 2018, 4 minutes, 16mm projected digitally)

New York Portrait, Chapter I (Peter Hutton, 1979, 16 minutes, 16mm)

Light Year (Paul Clipson, Music by Tashi Wada , 2013, 10 minutes, 16mm)