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  • TENDER MUSCLES: five films by Charles Fairbanks (in person)

    Fresh, innovative, and thoughtful films about…wrestling? As his website states, “Charles Fairbanks is a wrestler and filmmaker. His recent work focuses on pro wrestling in Mexico, where the artist fights as the One-Eyed Cat with a camera built into his mask.” What else do we need to say? With only a few small films under his belt Fairbanks has managed to make a big impact at festivals around the world. Tonight we welcome the filmmaker for an evening of entertaining and heartfelt short films that are extremely easy to enjoy and very hard to forget.

     THE MEN (2010, 3 minutes, video)

    A document of the fighter’s perspective in submission wrestling: an immersive experience between intimacy and violence.

     WRESTLING WITH MY FATHER (2010, 4.5 minutes, video)

    My father was a wrestler before me. You never stop being a wrestler.

     PIONEERS (2009, 33 minutes, video)

    A portrait of industrial agriculture and new-age spirituality, focusing on the artist’s parents, PIONEERS is also an unwitting self-portrait of a director returning to the place of his upbringing (Lexington, Nebraska), where he feels both the comforts of home and the alienating weight of the past.

     IRMA (2010, 12 minutes, video)

    An intimate musical portrait of Irma Gonzalez, the former world champion of women’s professional wrestling. Featuring original music written and performed by Ms. Gonzalez, Irma’s story surges with love and deceit, masculine strength, feminine charms, and an extraordinary sense of humor.

    FLEXING MUSCLES (2010, 21 minutes, video)

    A wrestling movie about postmodern consumption: physical work and embodied culture for the digital age. Flexing Muscles is also an immersive, participatory, experimental ethnography on Mexico’s spectacular masked wrestling – Lucha Libre – for which the filmmaker resumed his career fighting as the One-Eyed Cat (el Gato Tuerto), this time with a camera built into his mask.

    Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

    About the cinéaste: Charles Fairbanks is a wrestler and filmmaker. His recent work focuses on Lucha Libre in Mexico, where the artist fights as the One-Eyed Cat (El Gato Tuerto) with a camera built into his mask. Chuck grew up in rural Nebraska and wrestled at Stanford, where he studied Art and the History of Science. While in graduate school at the University of Michigan, he worked as the wrestling coach / choreographer for the University Productions staging of Claire Luckham’s Trafford Tanzi – a feminist play written for the pub, directed by Malcolm Tulip. In 2010 Fairbanks was chosen by Werner Herzog for the first Rogue Film School, and in 2011 Anthology Film Archives hosted the retrospective screening Tender Muscles: Five Films by Charles Fairbanks. He has worked as translator (Festival Filmer à Tout Prix), as programmer and producer (Courtisane Festival), and as visiting professor of VideoArte (at Tuxtla’s UNICACH). Presently a Guggenheim Fellow and Assistant Professor of Media Arts at Antioch College, his new work is emerging through collaboration with an indigenous Zoque community in rural Chiapas.

  • Meet our Volunteers

    Each month, we are featuring interviews with the volunteer staff that make ATA possible, recognizing their work at ATA and their contribution to our vibrant artistic community.

    Here is an interview with Linda Scobie who has been a volunteer since 2007.

    LINDA SCOBIE

    What can you tell us about your first volunteering experience/s at ATA?

    I first started volunteering at ATA shortly after moving to San Francisco. I was still pretty unsure of my place in the city and in life. Didn’t know what I was looking for, but when I went to my first screening there — I had found it. A diverse community of artists who were dedicating their time to further others peoples creative endeavors while still finding the time to make their own work and still exist in the mundane grind to financially support themselves.  I started ‘shadowing’ more experienced volunteers, got to know the ropes and within 6 months of volunteering I got a key, felt trusted, and never left.

    You are an experimental filmmaker. Has being involved with ATA inspired you in any way? and if so, how?

    I’ve been exposed to many amazing filmmakers through ATA — Paul Clipson, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Kerry Laitala, Craig Baldwin, to name a few. I’m not only inspired by their work, but I’ve developed meaningful relationships with these folks who I might not have gotten to know so well if it weren’t through spending so much time at ATA. I’m constantly in awe by them..and with LOTS of things I see at ATA.

    What do you do as for your day job?

    I work for Canyon Cinema — we’re a film cooperative/distribution organization that started in 1961 by Bruce Baillie and Chick Strand. My duties include doing business talk on the phone, listening to Bob Dylan while inspecting and wrangling 8/16/35mm prints and occasionally petting dogs in the building.

    Why is ATA important to you? and to the community?

    Aside from the reasons listed above, ATA is so, so important to the Mission District, to San Francisco and to me. It’s no secret the neighborhood is undergoing some infectious urban gentrification. Without our wonderful non-profit, artist run venue–Valencia would be just another homogeneous city street. It’s like a second home to me and all the folks involved feel like a second family. I even met my best friend ShaloP there. I’ve laughed, cried, danced, sang, drank too much, and watched movies that completely changed my life. What other compliments could I give it? They got comfy seats.

    What is something you have done at/for ATA that you feel very proud of?

    I’ve been with ATA for the last 5+ years and I feel proud with every show that I volunteer at. I also helped program the 2011 ATA film & video festival watching movie after movie until my eyeballs fell out and then I popped them back in and watched some more. I’ve become the designated piñata bringer to our volunteer appreciation picnics and..what else..I’ve also been known to sweep and wash dishes from time to time.

    What makes ATA a great place to volunteer?

    Um.. too many reasons to count on two hands and all your toes. It’s run by artists & supports artists. Everyone works there for the pure un-paid love of it. You get to drink beer and eat pizza (or burritos) while watching awesome movies and nobody judges you. We sing karaoke sometimes and embarrass ourselves in front of each other (still no judging). You get to be a part of something really unique and genuine. The neighborhood may change, but ATA’s support for creativity and originality fails to falter.

    What is the craziest or coolest thing you have seen at ATA so far?

    Most things there are crazy AND cool. Filmmaker Sam Green passing out shots before his ‘live doc time capsule’ presentation at Other Cinema was pretty fucking great.. working a Periwinkle Cinema show and seeing this insane film called Dandy Dust that I couldn’t stop talking about for a week.. dancing my ass of to Shannon & the Clams in an tacky sequined dress for our “Winter Beach Formal” fundraiser event. I love/adore/cherish ATA so hard and it only gets better, and better, and better.

    Volunteer with ATA!

    ATA is looking for volunteers to help with our Gallery and our Screenings. Volunteers run screenings, organize events, curate shows, and get stuff done. Volunteers can come to any ATA show for free. We need people who are creative and reliable.

    Email volunteer@atasite.org and become a part of something good.

  • Alain LeTourneau & Pam Minty: Empty Quarter

    Alain LeTourneau and Pam Minty In Person

     For over a decade, the duo of Alain LeTourneau and Pam Minty—working together under the name 40 Frames—have been tireless advocates for the vitality of 16mm exhibition and production, maintaining a comprehensive directory of filmmaker resources, managing a film archive and curating regular screenings of independent and underground film in their native Portland, Oregon. Their first feature-length film, Empty Quarter, is a subtle and complex portrait of the lives, landscapes and industry of southeastern Oregon, a seemingly remote region that, while comprising one third of the state’s landmass, holds only 2% of its population (a surprisingly diverse population, including East Indian and Japanese families, ancestors of Basque sheepherders, Paiute tribes people and Latinos who have come to help work the land). Placing local voices describing the region’s history and daily life in counterpoint to stunning black-and-white cinematography and an ambient rural soundscape, Empty Quarter emerges as a complex and subtle study—in the tradition of Benning’s California Trilogy and Barbash & Castaing-Taylor’s Sweetgrass—of a seemingly mundane yet highly politicized landscape. (Steve Polta)

    Presented by SF Cinematheque.