GUEST CURATED BY LEEROY KUN YOUNG KANG This program highlights the work of Christopher Lee (1964-2012), the late trans filmmaker, activist, and founder of Trannyfest (now known as the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival). Lee’s first film, CHRISTOPHER’S CHRONICLES, a record of the artist’s transition from female to male, was among the very first films made by and about a trans man of color and premiered at the 1997 Frameline Festival. The documentary TRAPPINGS OF TRANSHOOD – a tribute to underground punk – focuses on the stories of a multi­racial group of trans men in San Francisco who candidly share their experiences of negotiating issues of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and choices around health and transition. Enjoying its 20th anniversary, TRAPPINGS OF TRANSHOOD resonates deeply today.

The rarely screened experimental trans porn video, SEX FLESH IN BLOOD, was Lee’s last completed work before his untimely death. The title says it all: be prepared for an orgy at the cemetery in this morbid tale filled with vampires, S&M sex, and the hunt for fresh meat. Special thanks to Jae Zapata, Chino Scott Chung, Maya Scott Chung, and Shivan Nester. Christopher Lee CHRISTOPHER’S CHRONICLES (1995, 10 min, video) Christopher Lee & Elise Hurwitz TRAPPINGS OF TRANSHOOD (1997, 27 min, video) Christopher Lee SEX FLESH IN BLOOD (1999, 60 min, video) Total running time: ca. THE GREAT BLONDINO (1967, 42 min, 16mm. Preservation print, with thanks to the Academy Film Archive.) “The original Blondino was a 19th-century tightrope artist who among other feats crossed Niagara Falls trundling a wheelbarrow.

In this film, Nelson sees Blondino as a metaphor for those who still try. Too subtle to be allegorical, the picture is in the shape of a quixotic search in which the goal is the journey and the means is the end.” –MUSEUM OF MODERN ART “It isdifficult to get at the rich visual texture that is the film’s most striking attribute. Long stretches are concerned with Blondino’s visions, dreams, and dreams within dreams. The film unfolds in brief recurring patterns of imagery.

Even the more straightforward sections are dense with interpolated newsreel and TV commercial footage, visual gags, and homemade special effects. The net effect is funny, seamless, and elusive.” –J. Hoberman, “A Filmmakers Filming Monograph” & BLEU SHUT (1970, 33 min, 16mm. Preservation print, with thanks to the Academy Film Archive.) “Boat-name quizzes, dogs, cuts from Dreyer’s JOAN OF ARC in montage with a sultry whore, a car running up a ramp and crashing, pornography, a passionate embrace by a thirties hero and heroine; all somehow implicating Dreyer and Joan in the perverse synthesis of sex and technology. What’s happening here? Basically Nelson is leaving things unsaid.” –Leo Regan Total running time: ca. (DEN’EN NI SHISU) Arguably Terayama’s masterpiece, PASTORAL HIDE AND SEEK also speaks to his refusal to submit to the constraints of any particular medium and his proclivity for revisiting themes and ideas.

Like THROW AWAY YOUR BOOKS, PASTORAL took multiple forms over the years: manifesting first as a television broadcast in 1962, it then gave its title to a poetry collection Terayama published in 1965, only to reappear in 1974 as this extraordinary film. The recurring nature of the title and its attendant concepts is all too appropriate for a film that is one of the cinema’s great meditations on memory and childhood. A profoundly personal work of art, in which chronology, identity, and logic give way to a free association of images and ideas, PASTORAL is autobiography as surrealist phantasmagoria. The screening on Friday, December 8 will be introduced by Ethan Spigland, Professor of Humanities & Media Studies at Pratt Institute. (SARABA HAKOBUNE) “Set in a fictional village, FAREWELL TO THE ARK is an epic story that charts the ups and downs of a family over the course of a century or so.

The first time people heard The Streets' debut 'Original Pirate Material', they couldn't figure out whether the artist was black or white, from London or the Midlands, deadly serious or a total joker. We now know who Mike Skinner is, so for him to have come up with a record that surprises and delights is an even more. Sep 15, 2008. Find a The Streets - Everything Is Borrowed first pressing or reissue. Complete your The Streets collection. Shop Vinyl and CDs.

The film presents several dichotomies, including rulers and ruled, community and outsiders, backwardness and civilization, all of which take place against the backdrop of a world full of illusion and eroticism. At the time, Terayama was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, but in a seeming collision course with oblivion, he turned down requests for hospital treatment and doggedly continued shooting on location in Okinawa. Filming was suspended twice, and at times a simple bed was brought on set and Terayama directed while lying down. Weaving together an intricate tapestry of life and death, space and time, FAREWELL TO THE ARK represents the culmination of Terayama’s work.” –TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. FILMMAKER IN PERSON! FOLKBILDNINGSTERROR (2014, 120 min, digital.

In Swedish with English subtitles.) A raucous, punk-inflected story of the joy, warmth, and music that arise when self-righteous cultural Marxists take up arms. A group of activists vent their anger at the neoliberal currents overtaking Sweden by adopting a particularly powerful and creative form of protest: they perform their own musical. Armed with nine original and radical songs brilliantly choreographed into a real mishmash of rock ‘n’ roll, Swedish schlager pop music, politics, and sex, the activists fight the evils of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Calling to mind the early films of John Waters in which he gathered friends and weirdos from his own community to serve as his cast and crew, FOLKBILDNINGSTERROR is a propagandistic cavalcade of musical attacks on the body of society, as the activists employ a post-humanist rabbit and a satanic priest(ess) for their street show, prevent a deportation, and chase away a ticket controller in a hail of glitter. Sunday, December 3. (PIS’MA MYORTVOGO CHELOVEKA) “Tarkovsky’s assistant on STALKER was Konstantin Lopushansky, a Ukrainian-born film theorist, author, and director.

Lopushansky continued developing the themes explored by his predecessor, but with an uncompromising approach all his own. His most recognized film, DEAD MAN’S LETTERS is a science fiction parable set in a post-apocalyptic world. Boris Strugatsky contributed to the script, and themes of despair, uncertainty, and disappointment in scientific progress are prevalent throughout. While healthy people are admitted into underground bunkers, the remaining population struggles to survive in basements. Deeply troubled by humanity’s demise, the film’s protagonist sustains himself by writing imaginary letters to his son, even though the boy won’t ever receive them. The film’s release in 1986 coincided with the Chernobyl disaster, making its imagery all the more shocking.” –INRUSSIA [ We regret to report that, through no fault of Anthology's, the 35mm print of DEAD MAN'S LETTERS has not arrived.

This is due to an ongoing issue with the distributor. We had hoped to receive the print in time for rescheduled screenings on Sunday, December 3 and Tuesday, December 12. At this point the screening on December 3 will not take place. We are holding out hope of receiving the print in time for the screening on December 12, but can not confirm at this point. If we are able to salvage that screening, we'll add a listing for it on the website, so please check back as the date approaches.

We apologize for the inconvenience!]. FILMMAKER IN PERSON! RIOT ACTS is a ‘trans-fabulous’ rockumentary representing the multi-faceted lives of transgender and gender variant musicians. A first-hand perspective of the intersections between gender performance and stage performance, the film suggests that identities and bodies are undeniably political, and that the journey within a trans experience isn’t always one of tragedy, but often one of creativity and joy. Interweaving interviews with travel and performance footage, and combining 16mm, Super-8, and video footage with still photography, RIOT ACTS presents the many individuals and bands who appear during the course of the film as talented, inspiring, sexy, critical, and fully three-dimensional in a manner that purposefully counters the vision of isolation and destitution frequently portrayed in mainstream media.

“RIOT ACTS beautifully traces the meaning of ‘transition’ in terms of bodies, music, voice, harmony, humor and grace. This is a (literally) moving account of the presence and impact of gender variant musicians upon a variety of music scenes and genres and it exposes audiences both to the gendering of music [and] also to the musicality of gender. A must see film!” –Jack Halberstam.

Rooted in the tropical underground of Los Angeles nightlife, WILDNESS presents a portrait of the Silver Platter, a landmark bar on the east side of Los Angeles that has provided a home for Latin/LGBT immigrant communities since 1963. Through a magical-realist lens, in which the bar itself becomes a character in the film, WILDNESS depicts the creativity and conflict that ensues when a group of young, queer artists of color – including Wu Tsang and DJs NGUZUNGUZU and Total Freedom – organize an experimental performance art party at the bar called “Wildness.” The film explores the concept of a “safespace,” teasing apart what it can mean for varied, marginalized groups of people and what kind of protection it can provide, as well as its limits and failures. Through this exploration, Tsang documents the complicated and beautiful coalitions across groups and generations that took place at the Silver Platter.

Monday, December 4. FILMMAKER IN PERSON! RIOT ACTS is a ‘trans-fabulous’ rockumentary representing the multi-faceted lives of transgender and gender variant musicians.

A first-hand perspective of the intersections between gender performance and stage performance, the film suggests that identities and bodies are undeniably political, and that the journey within a trans experience isn’t always one of tragedy, but often one of creativity and joy. Interweaving interviews with travel and performance footage, and combining 16mm, Super-8, and video footage with still photography, RIOT ACTS presents the many individuals and bands who appear during the course of the film as talented, inspiring, sexy, critical, and fully three-dimensional in a manner that purposefully counters the vision of isolation and destitution frequently portrayed in mainstream media. “RIOT ACTS beautifully traces the meaning of ‘transition’ in terms of bodies, music, voice, harmony, humor and grace.

This is a (literally) moving account of the presence and impact of gender variant musicians upon a variety of music scenes and genres and it exposes audiences both to the gendering of music [and] also to the musicality of gender. A must see film!” –Jack Halberstam. Rooted in the tropical underground of Los Angeles nightlife, WILDNESS presents a portrait of the Silver Platter, a landmark bar on the east side of Los Angeles that has provided a home for Latin/LGBT immigrant communities since 1963. Through a magical-realist lens, in which the bar itself becomes a character in the film, WILDNESS depicts the creativity and conflict that ensues when a group of young, queer artists of color – including Wu Tsang and DJs NGUZUNGUZU and Total Freedom – organize an experimental performance art party at the bar called “Wildness.” The film explores the concept of a “safespace,” teasing apart what it can mean for varied, marginalized groups of people and what kind of protection it can provide, as well as its limits and failures. Through this exploration, Tsang documents the complicated and beautiful coalitions across groups and generations that took place at the Silver Platter. The theme of MFJ No.

66 is the increasing interest in the long format among moving image artists. The issue also includes interviews, artists’ pages, and frame enlargements, along with reviews of three 2017 film festivals, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Oberhausen Short Film Days, and Beirut Film Days. For this screening we have chosen short works from these festivals, with films made in the U.S., the Middle East, the Philippines, and Taiwan.

We looked for as expansive a range of approaches, styles, and subjects as possible, to suggest some of the breadth and divergencies in contemporary experimental film and video. All the works in the program are reviewed in the printed version or the on-line supplement of the current Millennium Film Journal. Except where indicated, texts below are excerpted from Grahame Weinbren’s “Two Old Festivals: Oberhausen and Ann Arbor 2017.” Khavn CAN & SLIPPERS (Philippines, 2005, 2.5 min, digital) RUGBY BOYZ (Philippines, 2006, 7 min, digital) The availability of hi-tech tools has opened windows into parts of the world previously not readily accessible. The subjects of these two films are children making the best of it in the rough world of the Manila slums. Khavn is a 40-ish Filipino artist who has already directed over 100 feature films and dozens of shorter works. Tom Schroeder THE SPARROW’S FLIGHT (U.S., 2016, 14 min, digital) Schroeder’s film is a memorial for his collaborator Dave Herr who died of a brain tumor in 2009.

Tom and Dave began making Super-8 films at an early age. THE SPARROW’S FLIGHT, made largely from files left on Herr’s hard drive, documents the development of the collaborators’ increasingly sophisticated technique. Nina Yuen WHITE BLINDNESS (U.S., 2010, 6 min, digital) SWITCH (U.S., 2016, 3 min, digital) Many of Yuen’s films are built on pre-existing texts taken from a variety of sources.

Her technique is analogous to the re-contextualizing of archival footage to reveal new meanings. In speaking the texts and performing the indecipherable, absurdist, or ritualistic actions the texts inspire in her, Yuen assumes a character with unstable, inconsistent, multiple identities. Kinda Hassan IDLE BY THE SEA (Egypt/Greece/Lebanon, 2017, 20 min, digital) “[A] poetic tour de force exploring how life and death meet in the folded depths of the waters. It moves across eerie landscapes from the silent Mediterranean, where Egyptair MS804 disappeared in 2016 with all its passengers, to the interiors of the filmmaker’s own body and her childbirth.” –Laura Marks, “Experiments at Beirut Film Days” Yuan Goang-Ming THE 561ST HOUR OF OCCUPATION (Taiwan, 2014, 6 min, digital) DWELLING (Taiwan, 2014, 5 min, digital) Yuan’s films are ingenious combinations of engineering, set design, and production/post-production technologies. Yuan engineers elaborate crane mounts and zip-lines to enable his cameras to travel along narrow passageways, over wide-open land- and sea-scapes, and through impossible openings. Blair McClendon AMERICA FOR AMERICANS (U.S., 2017, 30 min, digital) McClendon’s film is partly composed of some of the tragic and shocking images that have become unsettlingly familiar, of young black men being shot or strangled by police, and confrontational demonstrations, intermixed with non-violent and joyful aspects of African-American culture. McClendon’s film infuses new life into these images by the use of techniques borrowed from avant-garde cinema, such as repetition, looping, multiple windows, superimpositions, and the strobe.

Total running time: ca. Thursday, December 7.

An animator with a style and sensibility entirely her own, Amy Lockhart has been drawing pictures of creepy ladies since she was seven years old. Utilizing everything from paper cutouts and puppets to digital tools, Lockhart’s films exude a handcrafted, rough-edged surrealism.

Populated primarily by female figures whose body types are as distinctive and transgressive as those of R. Crumb, as well as by a cavalcade of anthropomorphized animals, objects, and shapes, her universe evokes kids-show animation seen through a distinctly demented lens, while also displaying a genuinely childlike, pre-socialized preoccupation with bodily functions. Profoundly intuitive and endlessly surprising, Lockhart’s mysterious and delirious world behaves according to a logic that’s as astonishing as it is inscrutable. “Amy Lockhart works across a range of mediums including zines, sculptures, paintings, drawings, and animations.

Her work exudes an imperfection and oddness that feels very human, at once unpredictable, heartfelt, funny, and disturbing. Many of her works feature an array of stumbling, distorted cartoon characters whose misshapen bodies limp, bend, and bulge, often while smoking, licking, drooling, or crying.

Also recurring in her work are disembodied facial features, hands, and limbs, as well as various joyfully rendered muscly women, frequently missing their arms. Such characters drive her work, but there is as much pleasure and interest to be taken in the way they are drawn, animated or constructed as in what they do or who they are. The form of her work has its own rich, non-verbal meaning and content.” – Edwin Rostron, EDGE OF FRAME SYLVA LINING (1998, 1 min, 16mm) THE DEVIL LIVES IN HOLLYWOOD (1999, 6 min, 16mm) MISS EDMONTON TEENBURGER 1983 IN, IT’S PARTY TIME! (2001, 17 min, digital) MISS EDMONTON TEENBURGER 1983 IN, YOU’RE ETERNAL (2002, 6 min, digital) WALK FOR WALK (2005, 10 min, 16mm) THE COLLAGIST (2009, 2 min, digital) LANDSCAPE (2012, 8 min, digital) JESSICA (2014, 5 min, digital) Total running time: ca.

Friday, December 8. (DEN’EN NI SHISU) Arguably Terayama’s masterpiece, PASTORAL HIDE AND SEEK also speaks to his refusal to submit to the constraints of any particular medium and his proclivity for revisiting themes and ideas. Like THROW AWAY YOUR BOOKS, PASTORAL took multiple forms over the years: manifesting first as a television broadcast in 1962, it then gave its title to a poetry collection Terayama published in 1965, only to reappear in 1974 as this extraordinary film.

The recurring nature of the title and its attendant concepts is all too appropriate for a film that is one of the cinema’s great meditations on memory and childhood. A profoundly personal work of art, in which chronology, identity, and logic give way to a free association of images and ideas, PASTORAL is autobiography as surrealist phantasmagoria. The screening on Friday, December 8 will be introduced by Ethan Spigland, Professor of Humanities & Media Studies at Pratt Institute. THE POTTED PSALM and THE PETRIFIED DOG have been preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation. FRENHOFFER AND THE MINOTAUR and THE LEAD SHOES have been preserved by Anthology with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

THE POTTED PSALM (1946, 19 min, 16mm) THE PETRIFIED DOG (1948, 19 min, 16mm) MR. FRENHOFFER AND THE MINOTAUR (1949, 21 min, 16mm) THE LEAD SHOES (1949, 17 min, 16mm) “These images are meant to play not on our rational senses, but on the infinite universe of ambiguity within us.” –Sidney Peterson Total running time: ca. (MAT) Based on the novel by Maxim Gorky. With the simple theme of a working-class mother growing in political consciousness through participation in revolutionary activity, this film established Pudovkin as one of the major figures of the Soviet cinema. A student of Kuleshov and an admirer of Griffith’s films, he was writing his first book of film theory at the same time he was making MOTHER. His expert cutting on movement and his associated editing of unrelated scenes to form what he called a “plastic synthesis” are amply demonstrated here. Although in direct opposition to Eisenstein’s shock montage, Pudovkin used a linkage method advanced far beyond Kuleshov’s theories.

(SARABA HAKOBUNE) “Set in a fictional village, FAREWELL TO THE ARK is an epic story that charts the ups and downs of a family over the course of a century or so. The film presents several dichotomies, including rulers and ruled, community and outsiders, backwardness and civilization, all of which take place against the backdrop of a world full of illusion and eroticism. At the time, Terayama was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, but in a seeming collision course with oblivion, he turned down requests for hospital treatment and doggedly continued shooting on location in Okinawa. Filming was suspended twice, and at times a simple bed was brought on set and Terayama directed while lying down. Weaving together an intricate tapestry of life and death, space and time, FAREWELL TO THE ARK represents the culmination of Terayama’s work.” –TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Monday, December 11. Torkwase Dyson and Darius Clark Monroe in person.

Using collage, magical realism, and more conventional narrative strategies to explore the ambiguous spaces of identity, location, and the inevitability of mortality, this program poetically explores the movements of water. In an examination of human longing, history, and trauma the topics depicted include ecological disaster, birth, drowning, swimming, water-based labor, and intercontinental trade.

These works explore geography, time, sensation, and the human body, and together present a dance of life. Terence Nance SWIMMING IN YOUR SKIN AGAIN (2015, 22 min, digital) Kevin Jerome Everson AQUARIUS (2003, 1.5 min, digital) Kevin Jerome Everson HALF ON, HALF OFF (2011, 3.5 min, digital) Kevin Jerome Everson FIFTEEN AN HOUR (2011, 6 min, digital) Nijla Mu’min DELUGE (2014, 13 min, digital) Torkwase Dyson THE COLOR OF CRUDE (ongoing, 3 min, digital) Kahlil Joseph UNTIL THE QUIET COMES (2013, 4 min, digital) Akosua Adoma Owusu DREXCIYA (2010, 12 min, digital) Darius Clark Monroe TWO CITIES (2015, 13 min, DCP) Total running time: 85 min. JOE GIBBONS IN PERSON! Once every calendar we offer a special, AFA Members Only screening, featuring sneak-previews of upcoming features, programs of rare materials from Anthology’s collections, in-person filmmaker presentations, and more! The benefits of an Anthology membership have always been plentiful: free admission to over 100 Essential Cinema programs, reduced admission to all other shows, discounted AFA publications. But with these screenings – free and open only to members – we sweeten the pot even further.

Joe Gibbons & Emily Breer THE GENIUS (1993, 95 min, 16mm. With Joe Gibbons, Karen Finley, Tony Oursler, Tony Conrad, Corinne Mallet, Adolfas Mekas, Henry Hills, and Mark McElhatten.) A fictional feature from the great Joe Gibbons – better known for his one-man-show films and videotapes in which he delivers confessional monologues directly to the camera – THE GENIUS is a bizarre art-world satire, starring a who’s-who of downtown art and film world luminaries, including Gibbons himself, Karen Finley, Tony Oursler, Tony Conrad, Adolfas Mekas, and Henry Hills. Made in collaboration with animator Emily Breer, who shaped the film into its final form following the initial shoot, THE GENIUS has languished virtually unseen since its week-long run at Anthology in 1994. Like all of Gibbons’s films, it’s outrageously funny and fearlessly improvisational yet razor sharp in its critique of both self and society. “THE GENIUS is part science-fiction spoof, part SoHo-style home movie.

Set in the near future, it imagines a time when Manhattan’s downtown galleries have been taken over by the ultra-conservative American Family League. [] The film’s most nefarious character is a greedy dealer (Conrad) who hooks his artists on a creativity-enhancing drug.

Turned into compulsive painting machines, they grind out canvases of corporate logos. Into this milieu stumbles Desmond Denton (Gibbons), a scientist who has discovered a technique for extracting the personality attributes of one individual and transferring them to the brain of another. When Desmond falls in love with Kitty Church (Finley), an artist who was dropped by her gallery for being too controversial, he conceives the notion of transplanting the personality of her boyfriend, Les (Oursler), into his own brain.” –Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES “A mad-scientist spoof gone Boho. [] Gibbons’s alternately languorous and manic performance steals the show.” –VILLAGE VOICE Followed by: Henry Hills HERETIC (1995, 15 min, 16mm) HERETIC, or “The Genius Preview,” is composed from outtakes from the THE GENIUS. A study of editing and its relation to the mechanics of the brain, HERETIC initially poses as a preview to the Gibbons film which it then deconstructs and reforms into a satire on psychotherapy.

Reception at 6:30! Tuesday, December 12. After a stint as movie mogul Joseph E. Levine’s European point man, cinematic jack-of-all-trades Rick Carrier returned to New York to write, direct, and shoot his one and only feature film, STRANGERS IN THE CITY. A fraught tale of urban malaise, the story chronicles the shattering travails of a family of recent Puerto Rican immigrants seeking – and losing – their way in the Big City.

Shot on location in Spanish Harlem with a largely unknown cast, the film poignantly dramatizes the problems of assimilation and stands as a testament to Carrier’s tenacity as an independent filmmaker. Projected from the only print currently known to exist! This screening is dedicated to the memory of Rick Carrier (1925-2016), who passed away last year, just a few weeks before this print of his long-lost labor of love finally surfaced.

(PIS’MA MYORTVOGO CHELOVEKA) “Tarkovsky’s assistant on STALKER was Konstantin Lopushansky, a Ukrainian-born film theorist, author, and director. Lopushansky continued developing the themes explored by his predecessor, but with an uncompromising approach all his own. His most recognized film, DEAD MAN’S LETTERS is a science fiction parable set in a post-apocalyptic world. Boris Strugatsky contributed to the script, and themes of despair, uncertainty, and disappointment in scientific progress are prevalent throughout. While healthy people are admitted into underground bunkers, the remaining population struggles to survive in basements. Deeply troubled by humanity’s demise, the film’s protagonist sustains himself by writing imaginary letters to his son, even though the boy won’t ever receive them.

The film’s release in 1986 coincided with the Chernobyl disaster, making its imagery all the more shocking.” –INRUSSIA [ DEAD MAN'S LETTERS was originally scheduled to screen during the Strugatsky brothers film series in November, but the print was greatly delayed in transit. The 35mm print has indeed arrived, and this re-scheduled screening (Tues, Dec 12 at 8:45) will be going ahead!] Wednesday, December 13. (LAS PLANTAS) NEW YORK PREMIERE! Roberto Doveris’s debut feature film revolves around Florencia, a 17-year-old girl responsible for the care of her comatose older brother during the summer. Trying to survive with limited means and no assistance, she becomes obsessed with a comic book called “Las Plantas,” which depicts an invasion of earth by sentient plants who take possession of human bodies every full moon.

At the same time, Florencia is going through her own sexual awakening, meeting strangers through the internet, and her monotonous daily routine begins to merge with the fantasy world of the comics and her own burgeoning desires. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Film at the Berlinale and associate-produced by Alicia Scherson (THE FUTURE, FAMILY LIFE), PLANTS is “a sexually souped-up teen psycho-thrilleran original coming-of-age tale laced with pop culture” (VARIETY). This program coincides with a comprehensive exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art entitled “Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies” that surveys the career of pioneering visual artist and filmmaker Barbara Hammer. On display from October 7, 2017 to January 28, 2018, the exhibition features work from the past 50 years, including photographs, paintings, posters, films, videos, installations, drawings, writings, and more.

Encompassing matters of lesbian subjectivity and sexuality, politics and representation, and visceral manifestations of pleasure and discomfort, “Evidentiary Bodies” tells a story of the relations, imprints, and textures that continue to shape Hammer’s oeuvre. In concert with the exhibition, multiple screenings and events will be taking place throughout the city. Here at Anthology we will be hosting a program that focuses on films and videos marked by the intimacy of the body and of touch.

The program asks viewers to pay close attention to the use of hands, and the relationship between touch and Hammer’s process of film/video making. Whether conveying the pleasure of touch in SYNC TOUCH or the fear of touch in SNOW JOB, this program examines the sensation of contact. As Hammer says, “This sight and touch union became the basis of my personal lesbian aesthetic.” For more info about the exhibition at the Leslie Lohman Museum (26 Wooster Street), visit www.leslielohman.org. Guest-curated by Staci Bu Shea & Carmel Curtis, who also wrote the introduction above. DEATH OF A MARRIAGE (1969, 4 min, Super-8mm) CLEANSED (1969, 7 min, Super-8mm) These are two of the first films Hammer ever made and two of the last films she made while married to a man. Never before screened, they capture Hammer and her former husband interacting together but separately – walking in the woods, riding horses, taking showers. Throughout both of these pieces Hammer uses her own body to manipulate the way in which we see the images, deploying her hands as mattes and creating layers with the shadows of her body.

SYNC TOUCH (1981, 12 min, 16mm) This film explores the tactile and sensual relationship between the process of filmmaking and the intimacy of relationships. SANCTUS (1990, 19 min, 16mm.

Restored by the Academy Film Archive.) Through re-photographing images of x-rays, SANCTUS examines the fragility and temporality of both the body and the medium of film emulsion. SNOW JOB: THE MEDIA HYSTERIA OF AIDS (1988, 8 min, digital) SNOW JOB explores the ways in which the mainstream media uses AIDS to perpetuate homophobia and provoke a fear of interacting with the LGBT community. HISTORY OF THE WORLD ACCORDING TO A LESBIAN (1988, 22 min, digital) This rarely-screened short presents a history of humanity that you weren’t taught in school. MULTIPLE ORGASM (1976, 6 min, 16mm.

Newly restored print! MULTIPLE ORGASM was preserved 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.) Hammer enjoys the pleasure of her own hands as we view images of masturbation overlayed with images of landscapes from Capitol Reef National Park in Utah, thus connecting her own body to the body of the Earth. PLACE MATTES (1987, 8 min, 16mm) Hammer uses multiple layers to create a textured collage provoking viewers to reflect on the impact of one’s physical presence. Total running time: ca. Friday, December 15.

THE MAGIC CLOCK / L’HORLOGE MAGIQUE (1928, ca. 30 min, 16mm, b&w) THE TALE OF THE FOX / LE ROMAN DE RENARD (19, 65 min, 35mm/DCP, b&w) One of the first animated feature films in cinema history (it premiered a full year before Disney’s SNOW WHITE), and the only film of this scope that Starewitch would make, THE TALE OF THE FOX is a masterpiece of the form. Master Fox, the forest’s utmost trickster, harasses the king upon whose lands he lives. Following a particularly wily hoax, however, the king orders Master Fox to be arrested and brought before the court.

Inspired by a medieval French fable, THE TALE OF THE FOX is a ceaselessly inventive and wondrous film. Total running time: ca. [ Please note: TALE OF THE FOX will be screening on 35mm on Fri, Dec 15, and on DCP (the result of a recent restoration) on Tues, Dec 19.]. SPECIAL SCREENINGS! FILMMAKER IN PERSON! With Em Cominotti.

Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli’s feature film debut, EMPATHY follows Em, a heroin-addicted professional escort as she moves between New York City, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles. Combining frank images of the actual labor of sex work with intimate portraits of Em’s interpersonal life, the film is an alternately humorous and harrowing look at a seldom-depicted side of American life as well as a meditation on the performativity at the core of documentary filmmaking and the sex industry alike. Shot on a mixture of 16mm and HD digital video in luxuriant long takes, its disciplined style foregrounds the sensual texture of the everyday while playing with the conventions of narrative cinema, focusing on the profound interrelation of performance and identity within the socioeconomic fabric of the U.S. Written in close collaboration with its subject/star, Em Cominotti, EMPATHY resonates with the documentary/fiction hybrid form that numerous filmmakers have explored to fascinating ends in recent years.

But it distinguishes itself thanks to its interest in and sensitivity to the many dimensions of its protagonist’s life, and the honesty with which it explores a realm of experience more often depicted with palpably exploitative motives. “Can performance and reality be separated? Does it matter? [] Full of tenderness and, yes, empathy for its subjectthe suggestion of happiness despite all, even for the briefest of moments, feels sublime.” –Kazu Watanabe, SCREEN SLATE “Rovinelli and Cominotti seem to be pursuing bigger, more abstract questions concerning what it means to be a person in the first place. For a film that feels so small and personal, its ambition is immense.” –Dan Sullivan, FILM COMMENT Saturday, December 16.

SPECIAL SCREENINGS! FILMMAKER IN PERSON! With Em Cominotti.

Shonannokaze Suirenka Rar. Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli’s feature film debut, EMPATHY follows Em, a heroin-addicted professional escort as she moves between New York City, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles. Combining frank images of the actual labor of sex work with intimate portraits of Em’s interpersonal life, the film is an alternately humorous and harrowing look at a seldom-depicted side of American life as well as a meditation on the performativity at the core of documentary filmmaking and the sex industry alike. Shot on a mixture of 16mm and HD digital video in luxuriant long takes, its disciplined style foregrounds the sensual texture of the everyday while playing with the conventions of narrative cinema, focusing on the profound interrelation of performance and identity within the socioeconomic fabric of the U.S.

Written in close collaboration with its subject/star, Em Cominotti, EMPATHY resonates with the documentary/fiction hybrid form that numerous filmmakers have explored to fascinating ends in recent years. But it distinguishes itself thanks to its interest in and sensitivity to the many dimensions of its protagonist’s life, and the honesty with which it explores a realm of experience more often depicted with palpably exploitative motives. “Can performance and reality be separated? Does it matter? [] Full of tenderness and, yes, empathy for its subjectthe suggestion of happiness despite all, even for the briefest of moments, feels sublime.” –Kazu Watanabe, SCREEN SLATE “Rovinelli and Cominotti seem to be pursuing bigger, more abstract questions concerning what it means to be a person in the first place. For a film that feels so small and personal, its ambition is immense.” –Dan Sullivan, FILM COMMENT.

In 1963, Leslie Trumbull, recently arrived in New York from the Midwest and working as an editor at Prentice-Hall Publishers, attended a screening of Gregory Markopoulos’s TWICE A MAN. A few days later he presented himself at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and volunteered his services.

Leslie ended up running the Coop from that year until the early 1990s, when the effects of a severe stroke made it difficult for him to put in the time the job required. Through his stewardship of the organization, he became an important and cherished member of the avant-garde film community in New York City and throughout the U.S. Since he believed that the Coop should treat all the films it distributed equally, he never expressed personal preferences towards particular films or filmmakers. Over the years, however, friends discovered the films that gave him special pleasure. This tribute encompasses some of them. It’s a long program, but we’ll take a break in the middle to share a beer (Leslie’s favored Brooklyn Lager). Organized and hosted by film critic Amy Taubin.

Special thanks to Gordon Ball, Robert Beavers, Ken Jacobs, Tony Pipolo, MM Serra, and Micaela Trumbull. Kenneth Anger KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS (1965, 3 min, 16mm) Willard Maas GEOGRAPHY OF THE BODY (1943, 7 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology with support from The National Film Preservation Foundation.) Marie Menken GO! (1962-64, 12 min, 16mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.) Gordon Ball MILLBROOK (1985, 9 min, 16mm) Ken Jacobs GLOBE (1969, 22 min, 16mm, Pulfrich 3D. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the Avant-Garde Masters Program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation) (intermission) Tom Chomont OBLIVION (1969, 4.5 min, 16mm) Robert Beavers EARLY MONTHLY SEGMENTS (19, 33 min, 35mm, silent. Courtesy Temenos Archive.) Gregory Markopoulos TWICE A MAN (1963, 49 min, 16mm.

Courtesy Temenos Archive.) With additional films and excerpts to be announced. Total running time: ca. SPECIAL SCREENINGS! FILMMAKER IN PERSON! With Em Cominotti. Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli’s feature film debut, EMPATHY follows Em, a heroin-addicted professional escort as she moves between New York City, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles. Combining frank images of the actual labor of sex work with intimate portraits of Em’s interpersonal life, the film is an alternately humorous and harrowing look at a seldom-depicted side of American life as well as a meditation on the performativity at the core of documentary filmmaking and the sex industry alike.

Shot on a mixture of 16mm and HD digital video in luxuriant long takes, its disciplined style foregrounds the sensual texture of the everyday while playing with the conventions of narrative cinema, focusing on the profound interrelation of performance and identity within the socioeconomic fabric of the U.S. Written in close collaboration with its subject/star, Em Cominotti, EMPATHY resonates with the documentary/fiction hybrid form that numerous filmmakers have explored to fascinating ends in recent years. But it distinguishes itself thanks to its interest in and sensitivity to the many dimensions of its protagonist’s life, and the honesty with which it explores a realm of experience more often depicted with palpably exploitative motives. “Can performance and reality be separated?

Does it matter? [] Full of tenderness and, yes, empathy for its subjectthe suggestion of happiness despite all, even for the briefest of moments, feels sublime.” –Kazu Watanabe, SCREEN SLATE “Rovinelli and Cominotti seem to be pursuing bigger, more abstract questions concerning what it means to be a person in the first place. For a film that feels so small and personal, its ambition is immense.” –Dan Sullivan, FILM COMMENT. Filmed 1964-68; edited 1968-69. “Since 1950 I have been keeping a film diary. I have been walking around with my Bolex and reacting to the immediate reality: situations, friends, New York, seasons of the year. On some days I shot ten frames, on others ten seconds, still on others ten minutes.

Or I shot nothing. When one writes diaries, it’s a retrospective process: you sit down, you look back at your day, and you write it all down. To keep a film (camera) diary, is to react (with your camera) immediately, now, this instant: either you get it now, or you don’t get it at all.” –J.M. “I make home movies – therefore I live. I live – therefore I make home movies.” –from the soundtrack PLEASE NOTE: In honor of Jonas’s 95 th birthday, we will also be screening some of his more rarely screened works between December 19-22.

Click for more details. Tuesday, December 19.

Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from The Film Foundation. Special thanks to Cineric, Inc., and Trackwise. “The film consists of four parts. The first part contains some footage from my first years in America, 1949-52. The second part was shot in August 1971 in Lithuania. The third part is in Elmshorn, near Hamburg, where I spent eight months in a forced labor camp.

The fourth part is in Vienna (1971) with Peter Kubelka, Nitsch, Annette Michelson, Ken Jacobs, etc. The film deals with home, memory, and culture.” –J.M.

PLEASE NOTE: In honor of Jonas’s 95 th birthday, we will also be screening some of his more rarely screened works between December 19-22. Click for more details. THE MAGIC CLOCK / L’HORLOGE MAGIQUE (1928, ca. 30 min, 16mm, b&w) THE TALE OF THE FOX / LE ROMAN DE RENARD (19, 65 min, 35mm/DCP, b&w) One of the first animated feature films in cinema history (it premiered a full year before Disney’s SNOW WHITE), and the only film of this scope that Starewitch would make, THE TALE OF THE FOX is a masterpiece of the form. Master Fox, the forest’s utmost trickster, harasses the king upon whose lands he lives. Following a particularly wily hoax, however, the king orders Master Fox to be arrested and brought before the court. Inspired by a medieval French fable, THE TALE OF THE FOX is a ceaselessly inventive and wondrous film.

Total running time: ca. [ Please note: TALE OF THE FOX will be screening on 35mm on Fri, Dec 15, and on DCP (the result of a recent restoration) on Tues, Dec 19.]. “Filmed in 1964-68. Edited in 1978. The material for this film is footage that didn’t find a place in the WALDEN reels. Some of it begins in between LOST, LOST, LOST and WALDEN. It’s mostly New York, and some travel footage.

The City friends: Richard Foreman, Amy Taubin, Mel Lyman, Peter Beard, David Wise, Andrew Meyer, Salvador Dali, Jerome Hill, David Stone and Barbara Stone, my brother Adolfas filming DOUBLE BARRELLED DETECTIVE STORY, Diane di Prima, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Ed Sanders, Gordon Ball, Henry Romney, Jack Smith, Shirley Clarke, Louis Brigante, Jane Holzer, etc. Etc.” –Jonas Mekas Wednesday, December 20. “The film isconstructed as a letter to [Jonas’s daughter] Oona, ‘to serve her, some day, as a distant reminder of how the world around her looked during the third year of her life.’ [] The title, PARADISE NOT YET LOST, suggests that through Oona and the growth of his family, Mekas finds some hope of redemption. To that end, Mekas passes on some of the lessons he’s learned to his daughter: ‘I’m talking to you, Oona. Be idealistic, don’t be practical. Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life.’ [] As we live after the Fall (and for Mekas, the devastating Fall occurred when he was forced to leave Lithuania), we can only catch glimpses of Paradise, in fragments.

Mekas’s great accomplishment, then, is to persist in filming Paradise wherever he can, despite the darkness and struggle that surrounds him.” –Genevieve Yue, SENSES OF CINEMA Thursday, December 21. A WALK (1990, 58 min, video) “On a rainy day, I have a walk through the early SoHo. I begin my walk on 80 Wooster Street [the one-time home of Anthology] and continue towards the Williamsburg bridge, where, 58 minutes later, still raining, my walk ends. As I walk, occasionally I talk about what I see or I tell some totally unrelated little stories that come to my mind as I walk. This video was my early exercise in the one-shot video form. There are no cuts in this video.” –Jonas Mekas & MYSTERIES (1966/2002, 34 min, 16mm) A document of a Living Theater performance in Cassis, France, this piece was filmed in 1966 but only edited and released in 2002, with a newly commissioned score by Philip Glass. “One hundred and sixty portraits or rather appearances, sketches, and glimpses of avant-garde, independent filmmakers and film activists between 1955 and 1996.

Why BIRTH OF A NATION? Because the avant-garde/independents of cinema IS a nation in itself. We are surrounded by a commercial cinema Nation in the same way as the indigenous people of the United States or any other country are surrounded by the Ruling Powers. We are the invisible, but essential nation of cinema. We are Cinema.” –Jonas Mekas Friday, December 22. “Both a simply happy and a profoundly ecstatic film. There is an undercurrent of domestic tranquility, of people who are at home with each other.

[] The film begins with the title “He stands in a desert counting the seconds of his life”; it ends with the title repeated in the past tense: “He stood in the desert” This is in effect a double past tense, achievable only at the film’s end: the filmmaker remembering himself remembering the past. For a film of memories, [it] is amazingly devoid of easy sentimentality, perhaps because Mekas has chosen to remember his past not in the long years recalled by an aching, ill-defined nostalgia but in the intense seconds of ecstasy.” –Fred Camper, SENSES OF CINEMA.