Shortly after arriving in Olympia, I was drafted to program the Cine-X series for the Olympia Film Festival. Largely on the basis of Bridget's recommendation, I think. Anyway, I quickly got eight programs together. With substantial assistance from Bridget, and others. We selected a few films from those formally submitted to the festival. And then I called in a bunch more: mostly old favorites and recent projects by old friends. As well as new films by local filmmakers, many of whom were nre to me. And I salted it with a few historical curiosities, like John Schofill's Filmpiece for Sunshine, one of my favorite guilty pleasures. I do believe that P. Adams Sitney achieved the apotheosis of the blurb in his pithy dismissal: "A kind of sub-Scorpio Rising for the college masturbation set." Ultimately, it was an epitaph of sorts. Quite popular at one point, it's almost unknown today. And I aim to change that!
In any case, the entire schedule follows. Although there may well be last minute alterations... Peruse at your leisure. Or check out the entire film festival schedule here.
Cine X Showcase
Capitol Theater
Sunday Nov. 6 @ 8:15 PM
Eclipse by Jeanne Liotta
2005, 16mm, color, sound, 3.5 mins.
US Premiere.
"A lunar eclipse observation (11/09/03) made from the roof of my building in NYC, documented and translated through Kodachrome. In the 4th Century BCE Aristotle founded The Lyceum, a school for the study of all natural phenomena pursued without the aid of mathematics, which was considered too perfect for application on the imperfect terrestrial sphere. This film then, in the spirit of..." (JL)
Reckless Eyeballing by Christopher Harris 2004, 16mm, b&w, sound, 13 min.
“Taking its name from the Jim Crow-era of black criminals staring at white women, this hand-processed, optically-printed amalgam reframes desire by way of everything from D.W. Griffith to Foxy Brown and Angela Davis: ‘Your lover belongs to this band of murderous outlaws.’” (Cinematexas International Short Film Festival)
Landslag by Kyla Kristjansson-Nelson 2004, video, color, sound, 4 min.
“Four years after living and studying in Reykjavik, Iceland, I returned and traveled through the land from which my great-grandparents came. Landslag (Landscape) explores the gesture of natural forces, memory, and nostalgia that physically and metaphysically shape the Skagafjordur region of Iceland.” (KKN).
The Hummingbird by Eric Ostrovski
2005, 16mm, color, sound, 2 min.
Boxed-In by Kevin Jacobs
2005, video, color, sound, 6 min.
Eat Your Makeup! by Marie Losier
2005, 16mm, color, sound, 6 min.
With George Kuchar.
George, Marie and friends have a rooftop picnic in Long Island City, New York. They’re looking forward to a dessert of creampies, but a swarm of flies leads to mayhem.
I’m Bobby by Xavier Leplae
(2003), 35mm, color, sound, 32 min.
"I'm Bobby serves up an unbidden but utterly delightful détournement of the classic Bollywood blockbuster Bobby (Raj Kapoor, 1973), considered scandalous in its day (by puritan national cinema standards) for an eroticised treatment of its cross-caste teenage love story. Filmed on location in India, I'm Bobby shoehorns the original film's narrative into a half-hour long contraption of exaggerated zooms and bumpy edits, and recasts the adolescent roles with adorably awkward pre-teens. Costumed in oversized shades and uproarious wigs, the kids lackadaisically mouth along with the original film's dialogue and lyrics, in a droll send-up of lip-synching conventions in the Indian musical. Throughout, the child actors alternate with crudely drawn paper-cutout figures representing the same characters, a device that generates surprising dramatic tension in a climactic chase." (Senses of Cinema)
Loretta by Jeanne Liotta
2003, 16mm, color, sound, 4 min.
"A handmade photogram opera of laborious incarnations and corporeal dissolutions, this film started out as a series of abstract miniatures that were rendered into life by a million flashlit moments. Loretta insists upon herself, and the evidence is an absolute aria, dissolving into the infinite. Living in time as high drama. Yellow conceived of as light materialized; a pure value emitting a particular frequency of energy, applied by hand. A dialectical manifestation of phenomena in flux, like any other movie." (JL)
Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine by Peter Tscherkassky
2005, 35mm, b&w, sound, 17 min.
Using his signature hands-on contact printing technique, Tscherkassky fragments Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly into a kaleidoscope of shapes and images.
2005, film performance, c. 10 min.
“Multiple projectors with some 'performance' aspects manipulating the projectors and the light beams. The visual and audio are both via handmade, cameraless techniques, directly animating onto mostly clear leader. Imagery is textures and text forms rubbed from beach glass fragments onto variegated green grid engineering plotting paper (this variety called Time-Current Characteristic). This is then lifted onto clear adhesive tape and cut into strips to stick on the film, with 'multi-plane' layers created by color photocopying.” (DD)
(Black &) Blue Movie Madness
The Mark
Monday Nov. 7 at 6:00 PM
I Like Men by Anne McGuire
2000, video, color, sound, 1 min.
“Does she ever! A tiny gem that utilises paper animation and a snippet of sound to humorous, kitschy effect.” (LUX)
Old School by Kat B. & Moira Morel
2005, video, color, sound, 10 min.
Local personalities liven up Olympia’s favorite pizza joint with a some girly action.
Untitled (Dyketactics Revisited) by Liz Rosenfeld
2005, video, color, sound, 10 min.
An homage to Barbara Hammer’s seminal film Dyketactics, featuring a cast of local performers.
Consenting Adults by Neil Ira Needleman 2004, video, color, silent, 3.5 min.
“Breathing new life into ghost images from my uncle's ancient 8mm home movies.” (NN)
Deliquescence by Bradley Eros
2003, video, color, sound, 7 min.
“An ephemeral film of subterranean science, Deliquescence creates an aquatic environment that emphasizes the liquidity of projected light. The work employs external glass lenses, plus violet and rose-tinted gels, and strategic hand-masking to interlace the figures in a sexual melange, thus magnifying the sensuality of the erotic coupling co-mingled with the amorphous undulations of the marine flowers.” (BE)
Torchlight Tango by Kerry Laitala
2005, 16mm, color, sound, 21 min.
“A celebration of late night celluloid trysts; a seductive and romantic dance between the filmmaker and her medium. Soundtrack by Robert Fox.” (SFIFF).
Double Your Pleasure by M.M. Serra
2002, 16mm, b&w, sound, 4 min.
Sexy hijnks at the donut shop. “Part of the Ad It Up series of shorts that are parodies of commercials.” (MMS)
“Two words contain the big idea behind Double Your Pleasure: donuts and lesbians. We watch two women play tonsil-hockey atop a pile of donuts. A sweet treat for the peeps, indeed. That the ladies smooch before a mirror lends the 3-minute movie a twins-going-at-it appeal. And what does American director MM Serra’s high-carb Sapphic romp mean? I have no idea.” (Ian Hodder)
Filmpiece for Sunshine by John Luther Schofill
1966/68, 16mm, color, sound, 24 min.
“Filmpiece for Sunshine is about the isolation of the adolescent in an anti-life society, the pointlessness of his existence. He can't get sexual satisfaction, and he can't get any other kind either. He is always in prison and always will be. The woman he longs for is not just a woman of flesh but a higher spiritual freedom and beauty. He longs for beauty in an ugly world.” (JLS)
“A kind of sub-Scorpio Rising for the college masturbation set.” (P. Adams Sitney)
TV Assassinations
The Mark
Monday Nov. 7 at 8:00 PM
Computer Smarts by Animal Charm
2002, video, color, sound, 1.5 min.
"I would never have known how to do anything on my computer if it wasn't for Computer Smarts." (Mark Roth)
Pilgrim’s Progress by James Dingle
2005, video, color, sound, 4 min.
The story of early America, as recounted via an home-made, old-school computer adventure game.
Black and White Trypps Number One by Ben Russell
2005, 16mm, b&w, silent, 7 min.
“Hypnosis is imminent.” (BR)
Afterlifers: Walking and Talking by Halflifers
2004, video, color, sound, 16 min.
“Torsten Burns, Anthony Discenza, and their phones go from halflife to afterlife for a shambling, flesh-eating exhumation of post-life identities. Academic rigor meets bodily mortis in spectacular physical performances that get under the skin of subgenre to prove that when there's no more room in Hell, theory will walk the earth, and zombies will get helicopter rides.” (Spencer Parsons)
I am today's lesson plan by Torsten Z. Burns & Darrin Martin
2004, video, color, sound, 11 min.
“A multi-disciplinary, transplanar curriculum grid onto which Burns and Martin project exploding emissions and wireframe-enhanced psychic surgeries to demonstrate an altogether new educational paradigm for philosophical and physiological inquiry based on total graphic agitation and super-sized Gymboree. Class meets anytime anyplace anywhere any way.” (Spencer Parsons)
Volcanica by Torsten Z. Burns & Darrin Martin
2004, video, color, sound, 9 min.
"A feel-good glimpse into a full-bodied lava canal; horror and hippies transmigrate through a portal that began through a hole in the head that activates a redefined eruption." (TZB & DM)
Ashley by Animal Charm
1997, video, color, sound, 9 min.
Rich and Jim recast motherhood as a cheerfully familiar form of psychosis. Every day, in every way, she’s making you better and better.
Whack by Kent Lambert
1999, video, color, sound, 6 min.
“’Hello, my name is Philip Michael Thomas-I'm an actor.’ Taken from the Miami Vice-era video release of the 1978 masterpiece Death Drug. Much respect to Steve Reich.” (KL).
Hope There’s Someone by Glen Fogel (2005); video, color, sound, 5 min.
A dreamy music-video commissioned by Antony and the Johnsons.
State of the Union by Bryan Boyce
2001, video, color, sound, 2 min.
W meets the Teletubbies in Boyce’s wry, political farce. Bambi Meets Godzilla for the Wired generation.
Cult of Personalities
The Mark
Tuesday Nov. 8 at 6:00 PM
Presented by Marie Losier
The Producer by Tony Conrad
2005, video, color, sound, 15 min.
With Joe Gibbons & Louise Bourque
“A mini-master class in motion picture production with film legend Tony Conrad as The Producer. In this episode the maestro instructs the novice cineaste in how to organize a shoot, set up a shot, direct actors and create drama and atmosphere with ”a few simple tools.“
Grading Tips for Teachers by Tony Conrad 2003, video, color, sound, 13 min.
Tony Conrad provides an insider`s view of the tactics that teachers have available to keep from becoming "burnout cases" while evaluating the stacks and stacks of student assignments that they confront on a daily basis.
A Time to Die by Joe Gibbons
2005, video, color, sound, 5 min.
”A diatribe directed at certain species of flowers that have forgotten their place in the big picture. Part One of Dialogues with Flowers.“ (JG)
Self Portrait Post Mortem by Louise Bourque
2003, video, color, sound, 4.5 min.
An unearthed time capsule consisting of footage of the maker's youthful self – an ”exquisite corpse“ with nature as collaborator. Bourque buried random out-takes from her first three films (all staged productions dealing with her family) in the backyard of her ancestral home (adjoining the grounds of a former cemetery) with the ambivalent intentions of both safe-keeping and unloading them (she was relocating). Upon examining the footage five years later she found that the material contained images of herself captured during the making of her first film. That discovery seemed handed over like a gift and prompted the making of this film, a metaphysical pas-de-deux in which decay undermines the image and in the process engenders a transmutation.
The Black and White Series by Shannon Plumb
2005, video, color, sound, 19 min.
Four hilarious and beautiful film performances by New York filmmaker Shannon Plumb
The Prayers of Cupid La Rue by Mike Kuchar
2005, video, color, sound, 16min.
The Red and Blue God by Ben Russell
2005, 16mm, color, sound, 8 min.
An ethnographic field report in which the Anthropologist describes the mythic creation of an unnamed ‘sun-scraping structure’ through the ritualized actions of the Red and Blue Gods. Originally performed with live narration and sound effects over a electro-steel guitar soundscape.
George Kuchar!
The Mark
Tuesday Nov. 8 at 8:00 PM
Presented by Christopher Chase
The Weather Diaries by George Kuchar
2005, video, color, sound, 30 min.
Wild Night in El Reno by George Kuchar
1977, 16mm, color, sound, 6 min.
”This film documents a thunderstorm as it rages in full fury above a motel in May on the southern plains. There's sun, wind, clouds, rain and electrical pyrotechnics ... with perhaps a glimpse of a fleeting human figure. But only a glimpse.“ (GK).
Electrocute Your Stars by Marie Losier
2004, 16mm, color, sound, 8 min.
With George Kuchar
”This is a dream-portrait of George Kuchar, traveling through snow confetti, strobe flashes and artificial wind as he describes his weather diaries. And then George joins Janet Leigh in the shower. Wearing a red raincoat and a shower cap, reading comic books and blowing bubbles, he laughingly describes his bathing rituals and the making of his film, Hold Me While I’m Naked. A companion film to Bird, Bath and Beyond, a portrait of George’s twin brother Mike Kuchar.“ (ML)
Bird, Bath, and Beyond by Marie Losier 2003, 16mm, color, sound, 13 min.
With Mike Kuchar.
”Of particular local interest is Marie Losier's Bird, Bath, and Beyond, a black-and-white live action-animation exploration that features fellow filmmaker (and part-time San Franciscan) Mike Kuchar's musings on being born, cannibalism, sharks, the cosmos, shopping malls, pet parakeets, and other topics.“ (SF Bay Guardian)
The Re-Enactment Charades
The Mark
Wednesday Nov. 9 at 6:00 PM
All Smiles and Sadness by Anne McGuire
1999, video, b&w, sound, 7 min.
”ALL SMILES AND SADNESS is like a very short TV show. Nothing is resolved and it leaves the viewer wishing it would go on forever.“ (AM)
Shadow of Liberty by Geoff Adams
2004, color, sound, video, 14 min.
”A reenactment of the Boston Tea Party is crashed by a bonafide Colonial ‘reenactivist.’“ (GA)
catalog by Stephanie Barber
2005, 16mm, color, sound, 10 mins.
"catalog is a composition of stillness - inversion of the spectacle - actors are posed recreating various photographs in surroundings unfrozen. the soundtrack is a labile and dense tale of spaces, royalty and a photograph more mutable than an image should be." (SB)
Mary Worth by Stephanie Barber, Pete Barrickman, Sara Boland, Tate Bunker, Theresa Columbus, Anna DiAntoni, Brent Goodsell, Yasuhiro Ikeguchi, Annie Killelea, Didier Leplae, Xavier Leplae, Doug Schall & Naomi Wyoming
1998, 16mm, b&w/sound, 19 min.
”Over the course of a week, the story goes, they worked to adapt the Mary Worth comic strip that appeared in that day's paper (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), trying to remain faithful, in live action, to the individual panels' composition. It's an authentically strange film, its marriage to the static resulting in compellingly odd - and very entertaining - constructions of space, vocal performances, and hair.“ (Carl Bogner)
The Ontological Cowboy by Marie Losier (2005); 16mm, color, sound, 12 min.
”The theater is about sex. At least according to Richard Foreman, the father of the Ontological Hysterical Theater. The Ontological Cowboy documents Foreman’s invocation of the “manifest destiny” of the avant-garde theater, King Cowboy Rufus strolling down off San Juan Hill with a sigh, waving his handkerchief. Foreman plays himself, and the cast pantomimes his preoccupations. If the cast and crew suffer alike, it’s all for a good cause: the violent rebirth of the American theater, with Foreman as its midwife.“ (ML)
After Wegman by Anne McGuire
2002, video, color, sound, 3 min.
”An homage to the early video work of William Wegman, starring Man and Fay Ray’s stand-ins.“ (Chicago Underground Film Festival)
”Anne McGuire shows that men are dogs.“ (Ed Halter)
Cowboys In Heaven
The Mark
Wednesday Nov. 9 at 8:00 PM
Harmony by Jim Trainor
2005, 16mm, b&w, sound, 12 min.
Animated animals confess (guiltily?) to acting on instinct. Some provide more elaborate rationalizations than others.
The 21 Lives of Billy the Kid by Ben Russell
2005, 16mm, color, sound, 55 min.
”In Which the figure of Billy the Kid, a Notorious and Legendary Outlaw, is reproduced entirely through re-enactments of the Violent and Sudden Deaths of the Twenty-One Men He (May Have) Killed.“ (BR)
Russell’s new featurette is a wry, existential take on the quasi-mythical life of William Bonney. And it features the best tracking shot in the last decade. It’s like Godard handed the screenplay of Week-End to Sam Peckinpah, and asked for a western version.
Robert Breer, Retrospectively
The Mark
Wednesday Nov. 9 at 9:30 PM
Sponsored by: Jason Gutz
Jamestown Baloos by Robert Breer
1957, 16mm, color, sound, 6 min.
A Man and His Dog Out for Air by Robert Breer
1957, 16mm, b&w, sound, 3 min.
Fist Fight by Robert Breer
1964, 16mm, color, sound, 11 min.
Homage to Jean Tinguely's Homage to New York by Robert Breer
1968, 16mm, b&w, sound, 9.5 min.
69 by Robert Breer
1968, 16mm, color, sound, 5 min.
Gulls & Buoys by Robert Breer
1972, 16mm, color, sound, 7.5 min.
Fuji by Robert Breer
1974, 16mm, color, sound, 8.5 min.
Rubber Cement by Robert Breer
1976, 16mm, color, sound, 10 min.
Super 8 Showcase
The Mark
Thursday Nov. 10 at 6:00 PM
Sponsored by: Jason Gutz
Local filmmaker and curator Jason Gutz invites you to a screening of Super-8 gems. Many of the films screened will be accompanied with live music. Among others, the program will include new works from past festival guest Doug Lane and the film version of Gutz's Last Day of Dreaming, which was a video installation in the 2004 Olympia Film Festival.
Interstate 5, 107 Miles South
The Mark
Thursday Nov. 10 at 8:00 PM
Presented by Matt McCormick & Peripheral Produce
Portland’s man for all seasons, Matt McCormick founded both Peripheral Produce, a micro-distribution company for artist’s films, and PDX, the Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival. Tonight he presents a selection of his favorite new videos from the booming Portland video art underground.
The Pitch by Steev Hise, 3 min.
Where’s My Boyfriend by Gretchen Hogue, 4 min.
Magic Hostess by Rob Tyler, 4 min.
Eulogy for Memory by Karl Lind, 3 min.
Where’s Eddie by Jalal Jemison, 11 min.
Because They Fall by Melissa Tvetan, 5 min.
Home Sweet Lean To by Shawna Ferreira. ? min.
Continuum by Ryan Jeffery, 7 min.
Grow Your Own by Marc Moscato, 12 min.
Grounded by Matt Mccormick, 5 min
We Are Here to Help by Harrell Fletcher + Friends
10 Mincherry by E*rock, 4 min.
Goat Chase Raccoon by Orland Nutt, 2 min.
Hello, Thanks by Andrew Blughbaugh, 7 min.
(please note, certain photos may pertain only "metaphorically" to the films they purport to represent...)
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