One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.
-Jorge Luis Borges

TIE Retrospectives at San Francisco Cinematheque:
The San Francisco Cinematheque hosts two programs featuring highlights from TIE's previous film festivals, with TIE Director / SF Cinematheque guest curator, Christopher May, in person.

"TIE has quickly become an exemplary festival celebrating contemporary and historical avant-garde cinema. Taking as its mission "the preservation of the fundamental qualities of cinema and film exhibition", TIE produces festivals which, to date have screened over 600 films and hosted over 200 artists. TIE is renowned for artistic vision and an exaltation of the direct viewing experience of original-format film works." - San Francisco Cinematheque

Take note: excerpts from Richard Meltzer’s 250 minute Regular 8mm work, Bogus Boxing Trash, precedes each program. Early arrival is recommended.

Program One:
Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007 (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) 7:30 PM
Program Two:
Friday, Feb. 9, 2007 (California College of the Arts) 7:30 PM

Tickets:
415.978.ARTS
Inquiries:
San Francisco Cinematheque: 415.552.1990
TIE: 303.832.2387


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Program One Line-up:
Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007 (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) 7:30 PM

The Sequent of Hanna Ave.
(Sami Van Ingen, Finland, 2006, 35mm-Scope, 5 min., Dolby Digital Sound)
"The Sequent of Hanna Ave. is the result of my reworkings of some experimental film practices and my inquiries in to the phenomena of the movement-illusionism in the film form. By combining found footage, hand processing and hi-end digital technology, I elevate a few mundane gestures to a new perceptible wholeness, and give some fat fingers and a c-cassette tape all the attention, grace and drama they deserve."

Careless Reef Part 2 - Abu Kifan
(Gerard Holthuis, Netherlands, 2005, 35mm-1:85, 7 min., Dolby SR Sound)
"In a static underwater adventure, award-winning Dutch filmmaker Gerard Holthuis presents an unusual revision of a traditional aquatic journey. Oceanic films generally focus on the explosive life force of coral reefs. They are typically defined by the frenzied darting of fish, and the bizarre movements of coral. This film subverts these time-honored tenants through visually presenting the reef in ultra-slow motion. Movements are so slow that the entire order of the aquatic world is changed. The dynamic of the school is also called into question within the film. It opens with a retracted point-of-view where the entity of the reef is visually defined as a collective. This focal point shifts to an individual fish that emerges from the anonymity of the collective. Holthuis presents this paradigmatic shift in a way that is richly ambiguous, rendering it unique fodder for contemplation." -Noah Manos, TIE

Telco Systems composed the score.

Hwa-Shan District Taipei
(Bernhard Schreiner, Austria / Germany, 2001, 16mm at 24fps, 13min, Optical Sound)
"Bernhard Schreiner’s Hwa-Shan District, Taipei is a finely articulated work: A veritable arsenal of devices – shifts in focus, fades, editing techniques (of course) – were used to make a certain place – Schreiner’s place, in Taipei – suitable for a film. Hwa-Shan is here and now,
an industrial wasteland. 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. The visual devices are often more closely related to the texture of the sound-track than what is happening on the screen: Tension is created, meaning is found, then com-pressed further into an experience, both emotion and life. The material nature of things, each one of them, is met with a respect both beautiful and appropriate." - Olaf Möller

Röntgenfilm I – Das Verdauungssystem (X-ray Movie I - The Alimentary System)
(Fleisch Archive, Germany, 1936, 16mm at 24(actually 22)fps, 11 min., Silent)
The first of several of Prof. Robert Janker’s x-ray films. He was a pioneer of x-ray cinematography working closely with the industry to supply him with the equipment he needed for making his films.

Anodyne
(Sheri Wills, USA, 2001, 16mm at 24fps, 4 min., Optical Sound)
"A lyrical abstraction, Anodyne explores red-gold and sepia-cyan color fields created with photograms, then animated through 16mm rephotography and digital manipulation. My fascination with the handmade, the awkward and sentimental is at odds with the contemporary medium with which I work."

Pan of the Landscape
(Christopher Becks, Canada, 2005, 16mm at 24fps, 10 min., Silent)
“Pan of the Landscape begins with a gratifyingly sensuous feeling of closeness in which rapid and organically organized bursts of colored shapes express the essence of human affection. These compelling, even alluring glyphs gratify and even transfix the viewer in a way that wipes away all awareness of the quotidian world, just as happens in the most rewarding of human relationships. Yet then, suddenly and inexplicably, those shapes and colors start moving much more slowly and mechanically, or they utterly freeze in time, or they become partly hidden behind black silhouettes, revealing the earlier intimacy as illusory, as an emergent mechanical prison surrounds the film with a dreadfully complete Silence. This pattern recurs again and again, presenting a cyclical trap from which there seems to be no escape: its elements make themselves wonderfully present, and then again withdraw into unpredictably long periods of absolute uncommunicativeness that, while not pleasing in themselves, gain a terrible power in contrast to the intimate installments.” - Fred Camper

The General Returns from One Place to Another
(Michael Robinson, USA, 2006, 16mm at 24fps, 11 min., Optical Sound)
"Learning to love again, with fear at its side, the film draws balance between the romantic and the horrid, shaping a simultaneously skeptical and indulgent experience of the beautiful. A Frank O'Hara monologue (from a play of the same title) attempts to undercut the sincerity of the landscape, but there are stronger forces at play."

July Fix
(Jason Livingston, USA, 2006, 16mm at 24fps, 3 min., Optical Sound)
JULY FIX is an in-camera film that swoons and falls and settles. It’s July, a month for sending and getting sent, and honeybees buzz for pollen.

'..."the overall effect being that of a pet dog's POV on acid in a field of beautiful flowers.' - JT Rogstad, TIE

***Intermission***

The Velvet Underground and Nico - A Symphony of Sound
(Andy Warhol, USA, 1966, double-panel 16mm projection at 24fps, 33 min., Optical Sound -The projectionist switches from one optical track to the other throughout a performative-like projection.)
The Velvet Underground established an aesthetic so extreme and alien that even after three decades, the world has yet to catch up. The film documents The Velvet Underground and Nico rehersing noisy beats at the Factory and contains uncharacteristic wild camera work and psychedelic zooming (by Paul Morrissey). The piece records a visit from the NYPD, acting on a noise complaint, and reveals Warhol in negotiations with a cop as the band members mill about.

Mother (Revised)
(Luther Price, USA, 2002, Super-8, 20 min., Sound on Cassette)

Home Body
(Frank Biesendorfer, Germany / USA, 1997-2004, Super-8 at 18fps, 17 min., Silent)
This five-film collection delicately presents a taste of Biesendorfer's personal Super-8 work from the past ten years. Each film is untitled and edited entirely in camera.

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Program Two:
Friday, Feb. 9, 2007 (California College of the Arts) 7:30 PM

While Revolved
(Vincent Grenier, Canada, 1976, 16mm at 18fps, 10 min., Silent)
This film is concerned with the projected, not just light or the emulsion or the illusion or the projector or the camera, but all of them. The surface of the film, the grain, is remembered when a similar but illusionistic surface appears (just as magnified), crossing the frame. Other times the grain is left to itself. There are the idiosyncratic focusing qualities of shadows acting as diaphragms inside the image. The elusive background confounds itself with the foreground. The notions of appearances and disappearances transform themselves in notions of time.

And We All Shine On
(Michael Robinson, USA, 2006, 16mm at 24fps, 7 min., Optical Sound)
"In a calm, modestly sized suburban neighborhood in the proverbial Fuckinwherever, U.S.A., a storm appears to be brewing. You can see it stirring up Mrs. Hartzinger’s shrubbery and you can hear it over the radio. Abe had related to Ben the other day about aliens but he’s been known to spend hours up on his roof at 3am just to reseal the aluminum foil he’s got up there, so it was awfully hard for Ben to listen to him with a straight face, much less trust his incomprehensible warnings. And the man’s 75 for chrissake! But still, there’s something funny going on and most people know it. Not that too many of these folks leave their houses after 9pm anyway, except for the odd high school kid who’s looking to smoke pot behind the bowling alley. But you can’t even find too many of them out and about tonight. Nope, everyone’s pretty much hunkered down waiting for the big. Safely sequestered in his second floor bedroom, “17 year old virgin” Tim consoles himself with a trip to 8-bit multicolored paradise, courtesy of his shitty, distant dad’s recent bonus. As if that fucker could hear what he was hearing…a swelling chorus in his head, on the FM. Real feeling, not like what mom and dad fake around the cousins. This was what Tim knew best: hallucinogenic joystick freedom and the power and insight that only comes from a good pop song. And maybe a well-concealed O’Douls taken from the back of the fridge. If he fears the coming onslaught outside well, he’d be the last one to show it. About time something happened around this god awful hellhole."But Tim will really never escape the looming apocalypse, will he? Not that it matters. This town will keep on sleeping, keep on dreaming, and we will keep on watching. Because we care." - JT Rogstad, TIE

Clip from Colorado Springs Home of Champions
(James Prange, USA, 1968, 16mm at 18fps, 6 min., Silent or w/ Outside Sound Resource)
Peggy Fleming. 1968. Broadmoor Ice Arena. Shot on 7241 Ektachrome Commercial low-contrast stock, hi-speed processed at Hollywood Lab. Years later, Jim polished the film with Pledge. Removed scratches. Now Peggy skates on the slippery, shiny ice, better than ever before. This beautiful 5-minute piece revels in an extraordinary filmic delicacy.

Colorfilm
(Standish Lawder, USA, 1970, 16mm at 24fps, 3 min., Optical Sound)

No Wonder
(Frank Biesendorfer, Germany, 1999, 16mm at 24fps, 12 min., Optical Sound)
Biesendorfer narrates a metaphorical voyage of a rabbit, as a collection of images from his surroundings, work place and personal life contemplate the search for their destiny.

Vom Innen; von aussen
(Albert Sackl, Austria, 2006, 16mm at 24fps, 20 min., Silent)
"Von Innen, von Aussen 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. The revolution is then applied to man, himself, where Sackl plays out in a score of variations on the theme. At first, we see an unidentified nude male subject revolving clockwise on his central axis in front of a black background. It is evident that the backdrop is part of the apartment, but it clear that Sackl intends it to be an empirical environment for one portion of his study. Sackl then sets the revolving man in motion back and forth across the face of the backdrop. Sackl continues his formal investigation sending the revolving man back and forth in space.

The next major development is that the image splits and we view the man in stereo. The two men's revolutions are synchronized at first, then each takes on his own timing and direction. At this point the viewer could easily define the film as simply a visual analysis of the male figure in highly ordered motion, but then Sackl presents the environment as variable. Suddenly, the black background is lifted and anonymous natural background is presented. The landscape is initially vacant, but the spinning man soon enters stage right and makes his way back and forth, revolving all the while. The film soon cuts back to the black background where more variations are played out, the most noteworthy being the superimposition of the man's front and back. The visual biomorphism is totally bizarre. Throughout the remainder of the film, the environment continues to shift between the apartment, natural landscapes and the black backdrop. In the end, the empiricism of the blackened space is beautifully tainted by rays of sunlight that are projected onto the scene from a window behind the camera.

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 precision of the filmmaking is overwhelming, in a way that is echoed in the movements of the male model. Something within the tight order applied to the man's body brings to mind the iconic work of Leonardo de Vinci, which imposes perfect geometries atop the human form." -Noah Manos, TIE

Daume
(Ben Russell, USA, 2001, 16mm at 24fps, 7 min., Optical Sound)
"One of the strangest films I have ever seen, its characters come and go as if they are "primitives" posing for the camera, either obeying or fighting an ethnographers controlling eye." -Fred Camper

Progetti (Plans)
(Paul Bartel, Italy, 1962, 16mm at 24fps, 17 min., Optical Sound)
"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."

Malanga
(A. Keewatin Dewdney, USA, 1967, 16mm at 24fps, 3 min., Optical Sound)
Gerard Malanga reads his poetry for 24 frames, dances to Velvet Underground for 24 frames, reads for 23 frames, dances for 23 frames, reads for 22 frames, etc., until he is doing both things alternately one frame at a time. An experiment in Audio-visual synaesthesia called Discontinuous film. No frame is missed however brief its exposure because the synthaesthesia increases efficiency of both eye and ear.

Alexander Keewatin Dewdney is a Canadian mathematician, computer scientist and philosopher who has written a number of books on the future and implications of modern computing. Dewdney lives in London, Ontario, Canada where he holds the position of Professor Emeritus of the University of Western Ontario. In his early life at Andy Warhol's Factory, "Keewatin Dewdney," made a number of influential experimental films. Sadly, many of these films are not available for viewing today. More about Dewdney's early film work can be found in Wheeler Winston Dixon's book "The Exploding Eye," a history of experimental film in the 1960s. Dewdney has been a Muslim for over 35 years. He has developed hypotheses which sharply disagree with the official version of the events surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Dirt
(Amy Greenfield, USA, 1971, 16mm at 24fps, 3 min., Optical Sound)
"A woman is dragged and dragged through dirt with increasing violence. As the violence increases, so does the beat and intensity of the harsh, electronic sound."

The Influence of Ocular Light Perception on Metabolism in Man and in Animal
(Thomas Draschan and Stella Friedrichs, Austria, 2005, 16mm at 24fps, 6 min., Optical Sound)
This found footage film uses an Italian sixties soft porn soundtrack which is repeated two times. Each time a sequence of images is synched to the soundtrack. The film images are illustrating acts of ocular light perception as well as imagery with strong visual impact.

Peng Peng
(Dietmar Brehm, Austria, 2006, 16mm at 24fps, 7min., Optical Sound)
"Shots of eyes gazing at each other are cut with a male and female having sex, a black sky with white lightning, and an oddly canted chair while a phone buzzes and rings in the background. There is an intense, erotic tension between the two males gazing expressionlessly at one another as the mustached one chews and twists a toothpick in his mouth. It is so bizarre yet so intriguing that one can’t help but be affected by the unsettling experience.." - Nick Army, TIE

Meat Packing House
(Eduardo Darino, Uruguay, 1981, 16mm at 24fps, 17 min., Optical Sound)
While turning objectification and commodification on its head, this propagandistic government film by Uruguayan filmmaker, Eduardo Darino, presents an overview of the process on meat packing in Uruguay. (Darino would eventually set up a small film studio, located in the porn district of Manhatten.)

"The film is absolutely hilarious with a real grindhouse feel (no pun intended) coming from both the music and color palette. Meat Packing House shows the incredibly clean, humane, and sexy side of cattle slaughter. And at every turn we are reminded by real life Uruguayans that they really do have "the best beef". Known for "good beef and good football", this place looks like a tourist's dream come true. People and cattle alike sunbathe on the beach and then the beautiful men and women go out to extravagant beef parties where meat platters flash in front of the camera..." -Nick Army, TIE

Still
(Tim Leyendekker, Netherlands, 2006, 16mm at 24fps, 4 min., Optical Sound)
Two male teenagers make their first date through a telephone dating service. The filmmaker went back to the exact same place where he had his first sexual encounter 16 year's ago.

Program curated by Christopher May

The following pdf link represents both screenings listed above. It was designed to be printed, folded and read as a booklet. Please download, fold, read and enjoy: Click here.

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To schedule a TIE Retrospective
for your organization, please
contact us at:
303-832-2387