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  • ATA @ SFPL (screening at Noe Valley Library)

    This evening’s films are all film festival prize-winners that parlayed awards acclaim into successful dispersal to schools and libraries in the era of 16mm documentary distribution. The films are loosely organized around the theme of “home”, and each subtly invites us to question the thin line between non-fiction and fiction.
     Sewing Woman (Arthur Dong, 1982)
    On the surface this is a straightforward account of the life story of one of the many women working in Chinatown garment factories 35 years ago. A narration delivered over images of her workspacce as well as an array of archival photographs tells us the alternately harrowing and heartwarming details of her life growing up in pre-Communist China, her arranged marriage into a “Gold Mountain family” and subsequent emigration to San Francisco. But the final moments of this Oscar-nominated short made by a San Francisco State University student (who’d later go on to create many documentaries & the book Forbidden City, USA) raise more questions than answers about this woman’s life.
     Before the Foliage Falls (Władysław Ślesicki, 1964)
    Since its 1949 founding, the Warsaw Documentary Film Studio has been key in making Poland one of Europe’s non-fiction filmmaking hotbeds & helping launch careers of directors like Krzysztof Kieślowski. This beautifully black-and-white slice of cinéma vérité follows one of Poland’s last traditional Roma caravans, compressing months of shooting into what feels like a short hitch onto their wagons. Though the film’s minimal dialogue is left unsubtitled, reminding viewers of our outsider status, we feel nonetheless welcomed by the inviting intergenerational campfire, the joyful music and dances, and the wide smiles of people living living a lifestyle that seems ripped out of a storybook.
    Spaceborne (Philip Dauber, 1977)
    This wordless film made by a UC Berkeley physicist compiles some of the most breathtaking NASA footage of its era (including Saturn V, Apollo & Skylab technologies) and marries it to a wonderful electronic music score by San Francisco’s Doug McKechnie and John Lewis. An opening title card promises that no special effects were used in its creation, but there are hints contradicting these claims, including a “thank you” credit to local legend Jordan Belson, who’d conjured countless illusions for his own cosmic films and would soon do the same for Hollywood’s The Right Stuff. The film was nominated for an Oscar in the live-action short rather than documentary category.
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    Artists’ Television Access
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  • ME and Mr. MAURI

    Presented by: Queer Cultural Center, Dr. Osa de la Riva, Eagle Bear Productions & ATA

    During the ‘80s and early ‘90s, Osa collected 75+ hours of raw video footage, some at the bedside of my friends dying from AIDS.  She did most of the original filming without a budget, using borrowed cameras and donated tape. ”My subjects’ lives, stories, insights, experiences and opinions might have been erased from the historical record had she not video-interviewed them before they died. These interviews include some of the earliest recorded first-hand statements about the early years of Two-Spirit and LGBT Latino Liberation in California.”

    From this archival footage our production crew assembled some of the most compelling moments and intertwined the stories of Native American/Latino activists who died of “the gay cancer” (AIDS/SIDA) during the 1980s. The recorded testimonies reflect the socio-political origins of several movements of the past 30 years: the Latino, Native American and LGBTQ civil rights movements and access to affordable health care.

    Following the screening, there will be a reception and a Q&A.

  • Empathetic Waves

    An evening of spontaneous collisions showcasing experimental film, animation, and improvisational audio/visual performances by Jeffrey Alexander, Faith Arazi, arc, Paul Clipson, Gabriel Dunne, J.Lee, and Stephanie Sherriff.

     

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     16mm film by Paul Clipson, live audio performance by Gabriel Dunne

    Paul Clipson Paul Clipson is a San Francisco-based filmmaker who often collaborates with sound artists and musicians on films, live performances, and installations. His Super 8 and 16mm films aim to bring to light visual preoccupations that reveal themselves while working in a stream of consciousness manner, combining densely layered, in-camera edited studies of figurative and abstract environments, in a process that encourages unplanned-for results, responding to and conversing with the temporal qualities of musical composition and live performance. His work has screened around the world in festivals and at sound and film events such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The New York Film Festival, and the Cinémathèque Française.

    Gabriel Dunne is an audiovisual artist and SF native who creates material and temporal structures, spaces and experiences as sculpture, installation, and/or performance. His process explores the visual, audible, and physical, drawing influence from natural systems, sensory patterns, structures and rhythms of the perceivable and unperceivable universe. His utilization and experimentation with a range of mediums leverages his fluency and integration of digital and analog media with custom made software and tools. He has performed and shown his work nationally and in internationally at venues including Barcelona Festival Sonar, Interferenze Italia, India Art Faire, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Denver Biennale, and the permanent collection of NYMoMA.

     Live audio by Jeffrey Alexander, live audio and video performance by Stephanie Sherriff

    Jeffrey Alexander (born June 17, 1968) grew up in a Baltimore Maryland church, the son of a preacher and organist/choir director. He is interested in using sounds and images to recreate the world behind his eyes, usually achieved through repetition and ecstatic improvisation. Music is the healing force of the universe. Jeffrey has performed in 20 countries over the last 25 years, exploring variations and experiments in folk, jazz, rock and minimalism. He plays guitar in The Dire Wolves Absolutely Perfect Brothers Band, synth and wooden sax in Jackie-O Motherfucker, and occasionally records celestial navigation music under his own name. He was formerly the Program Director of AS220 in Providence Rhode Island, where he curated four international music festivals and booked hundreds of events. He has also been a carpenter, FM disc jockey, espresso bar cafe owner, driven an Amish farm truck, worked in record stores in three states and lived in a van on tour with the Dead for five years. Jeffrey currently runs the A/V department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He also loves you, as evidenced by his website www.jeffreyalexanderlovesyou.com.

    Stephanie Sherriff is an interdisciplinary sculptor and performer currently residing in the Bay Area. Her artwork is experiential in nature and consists of time-based installations and audio/visual performances that are often living, changing, and sometimes dying. In her process she observes, collects, deconstructs, and recomposes plants, light, sound, video, and scents in order to create abstracted, ephemeral forms and sensory experiences. She received her BA in Studio Art from San Francisco State University in 2014 and has been actively performing and exhibiting work in the Bay Area since 2008. Stephanie was recently accepted into Stanford’s MFA program for Fall 2017, where she plans to continue her research with light, water, and electrical phenomenon.

    Film and animation by Faith Arazi, live audio performance by J.Lee

    Faith Arazi is an artist based in San Francisco, developing a body of handmade films by use of optical printers, arts and crafts, and a penchant for playfulness. Her inspirations draw from the abstractions and primal stimuli in early children’s programming to be accessible and include viewers in familiar peak experiences of pure emotions, youthful idealism, transition, and worship for the small and mundane. She is currently exploring techniques in repetition, layered visual complexity, and movement.

    J.Lee (captjrab) is a San Francisco musician, songwriter and composer of experimental lo-fi soundscapes. Over the past four years he has been immersed in Eurorack modular synthesizers. He plays guitar and sings for rock band the Rabbles and has been hosting A/V shows bringing together electronic musicians and film/video artists into a creative co-operative community called Synthestesia. www.therabbles.com

     16mm film

    arc refers to a procethan an author. a curve within a void which makes something momentarily visible. material elements used to investigate immaterial states. framing the space of encounter as a site of unfixed ritual and sensory research. arc work has been presented at The Lab, San Francisco Cinematheque, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Massart Film Society (Boston), NDSM Treehouse (Amsterdam), and L’ Abominable (Paris/La Courneuve), among others.