Continual Repositions: the Art of Celluloid
April 12-13, 2009
Cinema Project
Portland, OR

Portland, Oregon's Cinema Project welcomes guest curator
Christopher May from TIE, The International Experimental
Cinema Exposition. TIE, founded in 2000 in Telluride, Colorado,
recognizes experimental and avant-garde film from around the world.
Through an international focus, TIE programs are also dedicated to
exploring the specific art of celluloid.

The selection of films challenge their very medium. From
reworked found-footage pieces to humorous, spellbinding, and provocative
works, this two night presentation surveys work from both past
and present. Each film in these two programs will be presented
on 16mm.

Curator-in -Attendance

April 11
Part 1: Repositions

The Influence of Ocular Light Perception on Metabolism in Man and in Animal
Thomas Draschan and Stella Friedrichs
(2005, 16mm, sound, 6min, 24fps, Austria/Germany)
A found footage piece that uses film from the 1960's and 70's to
create an active visual test directed at the audience. Some of the
most interesting moments of the film are from the short clips of two
or more men, which when taken out of context create a sense of
homoeroticism which was obviously not the original purpose of the
original footage. The film is synchronized to an Italian sort porn
soundtrack from the sixties, which only adds to the eroticizing of the
"squeaky clean" imagery. Draschan's film is reminiscent of the Russian
montage film, combining unlike images to create a new meaning from
them.

Transaension
Dan Baker
(2006, 16mm, optical, 7 min, 24fps, USA)
"Heartbeat. Out of a sick morass of reds and yellows, blacks, burns,
and direct-to-film scratches, arises the (post) post-industrial terror
of our collective oil-stained subconscious. Only three color tones are
necessary to conjure up a veritable prehistoric nightmare or The
Element of Crime. The primordial fire gives way directly to
digital-age carnage and re-enforced titanium imperialist ambition.
Dripping. Syrupy glimpses of fighter pilots. Glassy eyes. Spindly
towers waver in the nuclear breeze. Preparation for battle against
comet field super nova background. Image would be clearer without the
toxic pyro-fog. But instead, it's heat without season, drought without
cycle; this moment is the unforeseen arrival, the final annihilation.
Chirp your last, all precious consumer-constituent. Representation
becomes survival, as the farce of authority crumbles along with every
other vestige of a frantic, deluded civilization. The sun has burst
open wide and spills out a thick, sweaty mix of techno-warfare and
rich, fleshy industry. This is what man-made hell looks like. Echoes.
Sci-fi meets hearts of darkness. It's a vision for rapture obsessives.
But ecology replaces old time religion. Only no one's listening. We
are the Hindenburg, the Titanic, the World Trade Center. A figure
appears in the lower right corner, arms outstretched, a stand-in for
humanity: Welcoming?…Challenging?"
- JT Rogstad, TIE

Shudder (top and bottom)
Michael Gitlin
(2001, 16mm, optical, 3min, 24fps, USA)
The source for this work is a found piece of 35mm film which was cut
down and re-perfed for 16mm projection. Each frame of the original
35mm image covers two 16mm frames, with the top half of the original
image on one frame and the bottom half on the next frame. The film is
a kind of shuddering optical toy, with a dense, collagist soundtrack
that rubs against the complicated visual weave of the images. It
scratches at the fiction of the original footage, leaving behind, in
its phosphene-laden after-image, a throbbing world of lonely danger.

Metaphysical Education
Thad Povey
(2003, 16mm, optical, 4min, 24fps, USA)
Gravity and the desire to fly battle for a boy’s soul.
"A nostalgic evocation of boyhood and summer camp, induces creepy psychosexual feelings."
-Fred Camper

dippingSause
Luther Price
(2005, 16mm, optical, 10min, 24fps, USA)
"Epileptic static strain into grays of machancal fetish tube socks and
kenetic clown S and M cascading objects caress and fondle."

Part II: Early 16mm Paul Bartel Films

Progetti (Plans)
Paul Bartel
(1962, 16mm, optical, 17 min, 24fps, Italy)
"This film was made in Rome in the Spring of 1962 during my Antonioni
period. I was on a Fulbright at the time, studying directing at the
famous Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, and I wanted to sum up
in a film some of my observations as a cinema student in Rome. So I
made a film about two aspiring actors studying at the Centro who
wanted to come to the Actor's Studio in New York and become movie
stars overnight, and who actually believe that this is going to happen
to them. The point of the film is that these actors are really
incapable of acting in either sense of the word. but they certainly
know how to go through the motions and are beautiful to look at and to
listen to, if you don't mind Italian(s). When Oscar Werner saw
Progetti in Paris in the fall of '62 he became very excited and
showing for Truffaut and Clouzot, who were also reportedly
enthusiastic about the film."

The Secret Cinema
Paul Bartel
(1968, 16mm, optical , 30min, 24fps, USA)
The Secret Cinema is a black-comic tale of a woman whose fears that
her life is being filmed for the entertainment of her friends turn out
to be true. The film presaged the sardonic tone of most of the maker's
later work (Eating Raoul), though he would mostly abandon The Secret
Cinema's experimental aspects in favor of linear narratives with
perverse touches.

April 12
Part III: Continual

Hwa-Shan District,Taipei
Bernhard Schreiner
(2001, 16mm, optical, 13min., 24fps, Taiwan/Austria)
Brush is slowly choking a brewery which was apparently closed
long ago, like a subway tunnel at the end of which one can see the
sections still in use. This is surrounded by everyday life focusing
on a short-order restaurant.

Vom Innen; Von Aussen
Albert Sackl
(2006, 16mm, silent, 20min, 24fps, Austria)
This film is a wonderfully unnerving, scrutinized, study of the human
body within the context of its environment. The film opens with an
empty apartment set in motion, revolving around a fixed point. This
introduces the kinetic fixation that Sackl explores thoroughly within
the film, the revolution. Implications of the revolution within man's
own self image and man's historic worldview seem to be the larger
conceptual concerns of the work. Ultimately, the film has a truly
meditative quality, a meditation that encompasses our notions about
our bodies and the rules that govern it, both environmental and
self-imposed.

The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly
Charlotte Pryce
(2008, 16mm, silent, 4min, 24fps, USA)
An intoxicating flower; a metaphorical insect; a longing reach across
the centuries. The film is a philosophical search drenched in luminous
colors and sparkling light. The film was shot on color reversal,
entirely hand-processed.

Steifheit 1 & 2
Albert Sackl
(1997-2007, 16mm, silent, 6min, 24fps, Austria)
The man in this film beats off, in private, while at the same time
pointing the camera at himself and addressing an off-screen outsider.
The environment: a non-environment, a black room which isolates his
body from its natural environment. This artificial non-space creates
distance, both for and from the viewer, and for him, from his
mise-en-scene, his presentation of himself. The two unedited scenes,
made ten years apart, were shot in single frames. Time lapse condenses
the four hours of footage into three minutes of projection time.
Steifheit 1. Cut. Ten years later. Steifheit 2. The same setup,
postures, movements. Sackl repeats his actions, though at the same
time he seems to be someone else. Steifheit 1 shows Sackl as he
presents himself and intends to present himself. Steifheit 2 shows us
Sackl demonstrating the act of self-presentation to himself.

July Fix
Jason Livingston
(2006, 16mm, optical, 3min, 24fps, USA)
"...the overall effect being that of a pet dog's POV on acid in a
field of beautiful flowers.'
- JT Rogstad, TIE

Dian,Paito
Bernhard Schreiner
(2001, 16mm, optical, 24fps, 7min, Austria)
Paito seems to lie on the edge of Taipei. At least, we see mostly hilly
countryside and meadows, with a wind which permits life to take form,
and Schreiner in the foreground, surrounded by the wind, as he reacts,
and then later as he remembers, seeing things in a new light through
his material: layers of experience, the beauty between experience
and memory, taking on meaning in this fracture.

Nothing Is Over Nothing
Jonathan Schwartz
(2008, 16mm, optical, 16min, 24fps, USA/Israel)
There were other places where the lord fell, and others where he
rested; but one of the most curious
landmarks…we found…was a certain stone built into a house…so seemed
and scarred that it bore a sort of grotesque resemblance to the human
face. One of the pilgrims said, "But there is no evidence that the
stones did cry out." The guide was perfectly serene. He said calmly,
"This is one of the stones that would have cried out." – from Mark
Twain, The Innocents Abroad.

__________________________________

TIE:
303-408-4623
www.experimentalcinema.org