Los Angeles Filmforum brings the 16mm show of the Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour to Los Angeles, a great program of short films including recent experimental, narrative, documentary and animated films from across the US all in 16mm. Featuring two films from LA as well, and multiple premieres in Los Angeles!The highlights are constant. Several makers intensely deal with materials, sometimes film, sometimes other sources (yarn or garbage or old film clips) to find their beauty. Explorations of natural and intensely human-built spaces; abstractions; fun and games; books and classic tales; pinhole lenses and the electric currents on which our society runs – all come into play. Sunday February 3, 7:30 pm
At the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90028
PROGRAM:Passage Upon The PlumeFern Silva (2011, Brooklyn, NY, 7 min., silent)LA premiere!“Those who go thither, they return not again.”Plumes dust the arid land, east to west, shapeshifting as they lift in ascension. Something lowers. An ark ran aground where revolution took root: ropes raise stones in baskets. Hearts heavier and lighter than the feather, permitted passage. Tethered or freed, resting from life or dawning anew. –Charity ColemanTokyo-EbisuTomonari Nishikawa (2010, Binghamton, NY, 5 min) JR (Japan Railway Company) Yamanote Line is one of the Japan’s busiest lines, consisting of 29 stations and running as a loop. The film shows the views from the platforms of 10 stations in Yamanote Line, from Tokyo Station to Ebisu Station clockwise. The in-camera visual effects and the layered soundtrack may exaggerate the sense of the actual happenings at the locations. The film also exhibits the shooting and recording methods. –TNPoint de GazeJodie Mack (2012, Lebanon, NH, 5 min., silent)Named after a type of Belgian lace, this spectral study investigates intricate illusion and optical arrest. –JMA Preface to RedJonathan Schwartz (2011, Brattleboro, VT, 6 min)LA premiere!A single recording, recorded in a tunnel that one passes through after exiting a boat taking you from one continent to another, where people are selling bright colored toys and bright white sneakers. for the brief variations in the movement on the periphery. –JSUnder the Shadow of Marcus MountainRobert Schaller (2011, Ward, CO, 6 min., silent)LA premiere! Made with a rudimentary pinhole technique, traces of a mountain landscape are captured in black and white. “The structures of our thought filter what we see, and in fact there is no seeing apart from those structures. This film is part of an ongoing project to show where I am in a natural landscape in a way that reflects those structures of thought.” –RSCurious LightCharlotte Pryce (2011, Los Angeles, CA, 4 min., silent) LA premiere!A manuscript illuminated: illustrations retreat into the fiber of the page; a fleeting light dissolves into the emulsion of the film: an elusive story is revisited. –CPThe Electrical EmbraceNorbert Sheih (2011, Los Angeles, CA, 2 min., silent)This silent, hand-processed and optically printed film shifts like an electric current between positive and negative spaces to examine the electric pylons by the Los Angeles River. The geometric and graphic nature of these structures is further explored through double exposures, step printing, and pixelation. –NSCraig’s Cutting Room FloorLinda Scobie (2011, San Francisco, CA, 2 min., silent)LA premiere! Craig is a collage artist with an eclectic archive of 16mm prints. His floor is full of spliced off and discarded film frames left to pile, corrode and live out their inevitable chemical life spans. After many months of collecting these deteriorating treasures, I decided to make a film. The result is an ongoing subliminal flurry of singular moments seemingly superimposed onto each other. A fragmented journey through cinema’s history taken right off the cutting room floor. –LSUndergrowthRobert Todd (2011, Boston, MA, 12 min.)LA premiere!A blind predator dreams through its prey’s eyes. –RTLandfill 16 Jennifer Reeves (2011, New York, NY, 9 min.)LA premiere!Exhumed 16mm film from my own landfill in Indiana, constitute the canvas of Landfill 16. After finishing my double-projection When It Was Blue I was horrified by the bulk of outtakes that would normally go to a landfill. So I temporarily buried the footage to let enzymes in the soil begin to decompose the image, and then hand-painted that film to give it new life. Within this pulsating, abstract moving painting I attempt to express my dread of man-made waste. This “recycling” is a meditation on nature’s losing battle to decompose relics of our abandoned technologies (16mm) and productions. –JR
More details: www.lafilmforum.org
Tickets: $10 general, $6 students/seniors; free for Filmforum members. Available by credit card in advance from Brown Paper Tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/319073 or by cash or check at the door.