In collaboration with Atelier Nord, we are proud to present two programmes curated by Mark Toscano, a filmmaker, curator, and film preservationist based in Los Angeles. Since 2003 he has worked at the Academy Film Archive, where he specializes in the curation, conservation, and preservation of artists’ films. He is a programmer with Los Angeles Filmforum, and has lectured at various universities on experimental film and archiving, as well as teaching in the Experimental Animation department at CalArts. Mark will be present to introduce the screenings.
At 18.00
Everyday Ecstasy:
A Restoration Tribute to Barbara Hammer
For the past few years at the Academy Film Archive I have been organizing, archiving, and restoring the films of Barbara Hammer. Throughout this time, Barbara was in the process of dying. Despite worsening health and diminishing energy, she remained an unbelievable positive spirit representing pure optimism, creativity, righteousness, and love. This program of recently restored masterworks will showcase the diverse talents and radical modes of filmic expression employed by an absolute legend of queer feminist cinema. She died on March 16, 2019
Place Mattes 1987/2018, 16mm, color, sound, 8m
An effervescent, optically printed meditation on the liberating experience of travel and place.
Pools (made with Barbara Klutinis) 1981, 16mm, color, sound, 5.5m
Employing underwater photography and unique animation methods, Barbara Hammer and Barbara Klutinis created this vivid portrait of Hearst Castle, designed by pioneering female architect Julia Morgan.
Double Strength 1978, 16mm, color, sound, 15m
A deeply sensual classic in which Barbara’s relationship with trapeze artist Terry Sendgraff is followed from the giddy reverie of its beginnings through to its eventual dissolution.
Women I Love 1976, 16mm, color, sound, 25m
This hypnotic film unfolds like an album of friends, lovers, and memories, as each woman is illustrated using different film techniques and approaches.
Bent Time 1984, DCP (orig 16mm), color, sound, 22m
A searching, roving, subjective consciousness explores locations of concentrated energy in a state of cinematic rapture. Music by Pauline Oliveros.
Program and texts by Mark Toscano. Double Strength and Women I Love were restored by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. Place Mattes, Pools, and Bent Time were restored by the Academy Film Archive.
20.30
Golden State Freeway: Restored California Psychedelia from the Academy Film Archive
Maybe it was something in the water, but California produced some of the most ambitious, influential, and visually distinctive cinematic psychedelia of the 1960s and ‘70s. Artists utilized ingenious, homemade techniques for transforming their images into wildly unreal phantasmagoria, and also employed highly sensitive and expressive filmmaking ideas to investigate alternative states of mind, culture, and consciousness. This program is but a drop in the (Pacific) Ocean compared to the total array of far-reaching experimental cinema of the era, but perhaps it will give a glimpse – all in restored 16mm prints! – of some of the otherworldly personal filmmaking happening in California at the time.
Invocation Amy Halpern, 1982, 16mm, color, silent, 1.5m
Anselmo Chick Strand, 1967, 16mm, color, sound, 4m
War Zone Neon Park (aka Martin Muller), 1971, 16mm, color, sound, 3m
Mirror People Kathy Rose, 1974, 16mm, color, sound, 5m
Psychosynthesis Barbara Hammer, 1975, 16mm, color, sound, 6m
Evolution of the Red Star Adam Beckett, 1973, 16mm, color, sound, 7m
Twelve Beth Block, 1977, 16mm, color, sound, 9m
Aether Daina Krumins, 1972, 16mm, color, sound, 4m
Later That Same Night Will Hindle, 1971, 16mm, color, sound, 10m
7362 Pat O’Neill, 1967, 16mm, bw & color, sound, 10m
The Star Curtain Tantra Peter Mays, 1969, 16mm, bw & color, sound, 18m
Program and text by Mark Toscano. Psychosynthesis was restored by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. Evolution of the Red Star was restored by The iotaCenter and the Academy Film Archive with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. All other films restored by the Academy Film Archive.
Greg Pope. 