Thursday, July 12 at 8 PM

Doors 7:30 PM; $5 admission.

Program (Descriptions below):

S-8 DIARIES 1987-1989 by Gary Adelstein

LYRICS by Marjorie Keller

MOTEL 6 (NOT A THRILLER) by Alfonso Alvarez

FF by Julie Murray

VIA SOUND by Andrej Zdravic

ANOTHER VOID by Paul Clipson

17 REASONS WHY by Nathaniel Dorsky

This event is happening in conjunction with the Canyon Cinema at 50 events happening July 13 and 14 at The UCLA Film & Television Archive.

PROGRAM NOTES:

S-8 DIARIES 1987-1989 by Gary Adelstein
(Super 8/Color/Sound, 1989, 11:00)
LA 3/87, sync. sound memento of West Coast visit (Buddy K., the desert, Filmforum, Hollywood). Cited by Howard Guttenplan as one of the outstanding films of the 1988 Exit Art Int’l Forum of S8mm, New York; WILDWOOD 2/88, a Sunday/winter drive to the Jersey shore and back. Two films on one reel.

LYRICS by Marjorie Keller
(Super 8/Color/Sound, 1983, 9:00)
Three songs between heaven and earth. With Carmen, Susan, Joseph and Marcus Vigil.

MOTEL 6 (NOT A THRILLER) by Alfonso Alvarez
(Super 8/Color/Silent, 1988, 5:00)
June ’87: coming back from a Grateful Dead show at the Ventura County Fairgrounds our 1968 Volkswagen broke down just 30 miles north of Bakersfield at 11 p.m. We were towed to the Motel 6 and checked into a room. Heat. Dust. Boredom. Prisons with invisible bars.

FF by Julie Murray
(Super 8 to 16mm blow-up/Color/Sound, 1986, 10:00)
FF is around three years’ worth of collected footage culled from all sources in a variety of formats, from dumpsters to video. It is put together in such a way as to provide miniature, almost instantaneous fictions, confined and numerous, where meaning can occur between the frames as much as it might in the frame. Overall, the film could be described as a visual assault as well as a reference to the invasive nature of the act of taking photographs and more abstractedly with the problem of image or picture functioning as representation of some or all aspects of an object or thing.

While the movements and the pace of the film are structured as to suggest relentlessness and insistence of control, the assembly of images therein serve to illustrate the nervous breakdown of the characters represented as their actions, forced into exact repetitions, lose their original expression and take on a new, more ominous existence.

The original condition of the found footage (damaged, scratched, etc.) and the method and process of rephotographing it are intended to be as much a vital part of the film as is the content re-represented. (FF is originally known as Fuck Face).

VIA SOUND by Andrej Zdravic
(Super 8/Sound/Color, 1978, 24:00)
VIA SOUND is a string of vignettes from a trip to Italy and Yugoslavia. As the title implies, this film should be seen through listening. The Super 8 medium offered the exciting possibility of editing in-camera both sound and images simultaneously.

ANOTHER VOID by Paul Clipson
(Super to 16mm Blow-Up/Color/Dual-system Sound, 2012, 10:00)
ANOTHER VOID is the result of a continuing practice of working in Super 8mm film, utilizing all of the format’s limitations and benefits to maximum effect. The process of in-camera editing, in this case, the layering of a progression of hundreds of shots over each other, at any moment up to five or six images at a time, yields an array of unexpected, collaged compositions, largely unplanned for specifically, but achieved with a particular design in mind. There are six splices in the film, the rest of the edits and all of the superimpositions being performed in-camera. The film mirrors the sculptural soundtrack by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Similar to the buried rhythms and layered phrases of his composition, which suggests a far-reaching but indistinct space, the film#s visual superimpositions describe a world through gesture and repetition, an act of filming before one sees. The obscure space of urban night provides a saturated palette of colors, of ATM machines, neon signs and garish alcohol advertisements. All of these found objects cluster and converge within a series of overlapping compositions, constructing new environments, and creating alternative views of the city at night. A city where the eye not only records, but inhabits crosshatched streets like a floating sphere within a celestial metropolis.

17 REASONS WHY by Nathaniel Dorsky
(Unslit Regular 8mm film projected as 16mm/Color/Silent, 1987, 19:00)
17 REASONS WHY was photographed with a variety of semi-ancient regular 8 cameras and is projected unslit as 16mm. These pocket-sized relics enabled me to walk around virtually “unseen,” exploring and improvising with the immediacy of a more spontaneous medium. The four image format has built-in contrapuntal resonances, ironies, and beauty, and in each case gives us an unpretentious look at the film frame itself … the simple and primordial delight of luminous Kodachrome and rich black and white chugging thru these timeworn gates.”