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Intimate Observations is a collection of moving collages and cinema vérité committed to the confines of small gauge celluloid.  These new experimental works capture candid situations, mundane objects and familiar landscapes but reveal something extraordinary about them.  Local filmmakersinclude B Berzins (“Receding Memories”), Christian Bruno & Natalija Vekic (“7:30PM”), Paul Clipson (“TUOLUMNE”), Daniel Gorrell (“Ships, part 1”), Jim Granato (“Urban Renewal”), Douglas Katelus (“Death of Astro”), Bruce Landick, Brendan Lott & Ron Toole (“Operator Error”), John Reily & Charles Kremenak (“In a Flurry of Wings (Boundaries of an Occluded Sky))”, and Douglas Schultz (“Baird’s Beaked Whale: A Landing”).

The impetus for the Exquisite Corpse Films follows from the original surrealist construct presented by Andre Breton in 1920.  Each film was created using a 3 minute cartridge of Kodachrome super 8 film and was assigned a topic chosen by the group, with (6) 30 second opportunities to describe the subject. The filmmakers edited their contributions ‘in camera’ and the films are presented as they were shot. 

The SF Exquisite Corps S8 group are made up of local artists from a variety of arts backgrounds; painting, photography, sculpture, performance art, and film participated in the making of these films, in many cases with limited film experience.  In a direct sense the films are experiments in a visual narrative and provide alternative ideas about the subject.  In an indirect sense these films capture a moment in San Francisco and the lives of those participating in the films.S.F.

Exquisite Corpse live music accompaniment by Bill Cameron (Winechuggers), Patrick Abernathy & Pat Spurgeon (Rogue Wave).

Animation and experimental film cut to the heart of things in a way live action often forgets how to do. With abstraction, beauty and emotion can be expressed more simply and more directly than what we’ve come to expect from the standard narrative. In animation, Instead of a million years of inherited facial response, we have the language of dreams. Experimental film uses similar abstraction, boiling down a concept to a series of events. Both allow for the creation of context that helps communicate ideas outside of the mainstream dialog. Machine tree hopes to give light to these potentials within animation and experimental film. Instead of endeavoring to simulate reality more and more accurately, we intend to remind ourselves of the necessity of unreality, the horror of raw perception, the wonder we all share at stories told in their rawest, purest form. The show will run 1 hour and 15 minutes. There will be an intermission and refreshments will be available.

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In 2005, in an effort to improve its image for the nationwide attention brought to the city by the hosting of the 2006 Super Bowl, the city of Detroit began demolishing long-vacant buildings, hastening the natural slow decay caused by decades of industrial collapse. As the city dismantles itself, clues to its past resurface. Collections of scraps sifted from rubble—an archeology of unanswered questions—combine to tell a surrogate narrative filled with missing pieces and forgotten motives, old letters, photographs, and home movies. Fractured moments occurring on one summer day, maybe two, echo events from thirty years earlier. The day is sunny, but it is humid, and clouds are gathering. It is going to rain. 84 min, Super 8/DV, 2007.