New Energy shape artist Lawrence Rengert has curated a fantastic program of not-often-seen films that he'll be screening this Thursday down at the USC grad studios. It's part of SITE UNSEEN: 2007 Summer Film Program. It all happens Thursday, June 14, 2007 from 2:00 PM to 4:30 PM (hence everyone there will either be a student or unemployed) at the Graduate Fine Arts Building 3001 S. Flower Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007. The event is free and all are welcome. Plus Pizza Party with Beverages!
Stan Brakhage (above), Interim, Music by James Tenney. 1952, b&w/so, 25.5 minutes
Brakhage's first film, inspired by Italian Neo-Realism, suggests a tentative
sexual encounter between a teenage boy and girl who meet under the city
viaducts.
Peter Hutton, Florence, 1975, 16mm, b&w/si, 7 minutes
"Like Hutton's previous films, FLORENCE is a contemplative study of light
and shadows, textures and planes, that makes beautiful use of the tonal
qualities of black and white film. Throughout the film there is a motion of
obscuring and revealing in clouds, reflections and mists, and in the
behavior of light as it passes through various openings or substances.
Frequently, the images are ambiguous details. One feels that Hutton is very
at home in the world he sees, and that he looks at things a little more
closely than most people ...." - Ken DeRoux, SF MOMA
George Kuchar, Hold Me While I'm Naked, 1966, color/so, 15 minutes
"A very direct and subtle, very sad and funny look at nothing more or less
than sexual frustration and aloneness. In its economy and cogency of
imaging, HOLD ME surpasses any of Kuchar's previous work. The odd blend of
Hollywood glamour and drama with all-too-real life creates and inspires
counterpoint of unattainable desire against unbearable actuality." - Ken
Kelman
House of the White People, 1968, 16mm, color/so, 16.5 minutes
Cast: Donna Kerness, artist George Segal and his wife Helen, Walter Gutman.
Having nothing to do with racial tensions, HOUSE OF THE WHITE PEOPLE is
actually a chunk of film removed from a bigger chunk called UNSTRAP ME. It
is a documentation of George Segal creating the basic elements for one of
his statues preceded by rare glimpses into his own private museum. Donna
Kerness serves as his live model. Walter Gutman sits on a chair and walks
around a bit, being that he produced the film. Helen Segal, personifying the
ageless saying, "behind every man there stands a woman," stands behind her
man and also stands in front of him occasionally. The film is a unique
invitation to view the hidden rituals of a famous artist and his infamous
model, half naked, snowbound together on a lonely farm, with a silent wife
and a notorious guest.
Gunvor Nelson, Schmeerguntz, By Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley, 1966,
b&w/so, 15 minutes
"SCHMEERGUNTZ is one long raucous belch in the face of the American Home. A
society which hides its animal functions beneath a shiny public surface
deserves to have such films as SCHMEERGUNTZ shown everywhere - in every PTA,
every Rotary Club, every club in the land. For it is brash enough, brazen
enough and funny enough to purge the soul of every harried American married
woman." - Ernest Callenbach, Film Quarterly
Take Off, Starring Ellion Ness, 1972, b&w/so, 10 minutes
A dance, a documentary, a metaphysical strip tease.
"Ellion Ness, a thoroughly professional stripper, goes through her paces,
bares her body, and then, astonishingly and literally, transcends it. While
the film makes a forceful political statement on the image of woman and the
true meaning of stripping, the intergalactic transcendence of its ending
locates it firmly within the mainstream of joyous humanism and stubborn
optimism." - B. Ruby Rich, Chicago Art Institute
Pat O'Neill, Sidewinder's Delta, 1976, color/so, 20 minutes
"When a giant trowel is plunged into the floor of Monument Valley, it's as
though John Ford had hired Claes Oldenburg to dress his set. The film,
O'Neill's most ambitious to date, with a dreamy, narrative subtext
underlying its sensuous surface, is framed by abstract animations which
denote scratches or scraped-off emulsion in much the same way that Roy
Lichtenstein offered a benday-dot brushstroke as a painterly gesture." - J.
Hoberman,
Chick Strand, Kristallnacht, 1979, b&w/so, 7 minutes
Dedicated to the memory of Anne Frank, and the tenacity of the human spirit.
Dorothy Wiley,Cabbage, 1972, color/so, 9 minutes
I like to film ordinary things I do and see everyday because film makes it
so easy to see the immense cosmic fearsomeness and beauty of everything.
While watching film, I can abandon myself to the event. I don't find that so
easy to do in the kitchen in the morning. I still don't understand that
part.
Just caught ex-Heldon guitarist Richard Pinhas' show at Highways in Los Angeles last night. He looked and sounded pretty good, tackling an imposing twenty minute piece with the help of Jerome Schmidt on computer. Other than the fact that half the sound's coming out of a laptop, there's not a ton of difference between this new stuff and the first couple Heldon records; it's all just a little more clogged up with audio info—something it seems we can't get away from these days. Other than that, the set was just what you's expect from "one of the premier conceptualizers and earliest proponents on the French electronic scene" —disaffected and intense.
Just a note to tell you that my little brother Tim is going to be the musical guest on Jonesy's Jukebox this Thursday the 14th at noon till two (California time). Listen in at 103.1 fm or 
