*Please note: A Line Describing a Cone by Anthony McCall is presented from 7:30 to 8:00 in the museum conference room, across the lobby from the PFA theater.

The questions that cinema as an art form asks are many; tonight's films focus in on some of the most persistent. Anthony McCall describes his beautiful A Line Describing a Cone (1973, Silent, B&W, 30 mins) as "dealing with the projected light-beam itself, rather than treating the light-beam as a mere carrier of coded information, which is decoded when it strikes a flat surface (the screen)....For this film every viewing position presents a different aspect. The viewer therefore has a participatory role in apprehending the event: he or she can-indeed needs to-move around, relative to the emerging light-form." T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (with poet David Franks, 1968, 12 mins, Color) continues Paul Sharits's exploration of auditory and perceptual paradoxes, using single-frame images to suggest the illusion of movement and color, and a repetitive sound track to destroy the viewer's capacity to retain meaning. Standard Gauge (1984, 35 mins, Color) is both a history of its maker, Morgan Fisher, and a history of its medium, film, in which 16mm, the amateur and independent film gauge, and 35mm, the Hollywood gauge, interrogate one another. Fisher creates "a frame of frames," drawing on his collection of film scraps-film as the public experiences it, from La Chinoise to The Student Nurses, but also "invisible" film, usually seen only by those who work behind the scenes (lab technicians, editors and projectionists).