Selected by Willie Varela and Carmen Vigil from the Cinematheque's 6-part program of “the finest personal experimental films ever produced in the 8mm and Super 8 gauges.” In his catalogue, Home Made Movies for Anthology Film Archives, critic, curator and filmmaker J. Hoberman writes: “For twenty years, 8mm and its revamped cousin, Super-8, have been the stuff of an underground underground, the vehicle for a distinctly cheap, experimental and democratic mode of filmmaking.... It is as though the format itself were stamped with Theodor Adorno's prescription that no contemporary idea or work of art ‘has a chance of survival unless it bear within it a repudiation of false riches and high-class production, of color films, and Toscanini.'”
Aleph by Wallace Berman, a densely packed collision of fleeting images, every frame hand-painted with Cabalic symbols (ca. 1965, 7 mins, Silent, 16mm blow-up from 8mm, Print from L.A. Louver Gallery); Untitled 8mm Films by Bob Branaman, all involving multiple superimpositions and flashframe that influenced 8mm for years to follow (1960-63, 25 mins, 8mm, Silent, Print from Filmmakers' Coop.); She/Va by Marjorie Keller, “Dreams of childhood come true--blue--tu tu...” (1973, 3 mins, Silent, 16mm blow-up from 8mm, Color, Print from Filmmakers' Coop.); Bopping the Great Wall of China Blue by Saul Levine, known for his poetic, painterly use in every aspect of the filmmaking process (splice marks, grain, camerawork...) (1979, 8 mins, Super-8, Color, Print from Filmmakers' Coop.); Sketches by Stan Brakhage, “brief songs of light and line” (1976, 9 mins, Super-8, Silent, Color, Print from Canyon Cinema Coop.); Zero Age and The Cube by Willie Varela, Zero Age: the tensions between the beauty and decay of death; The Cube: a game of intuitive stops and starts (1982, 10 mins, Super-8, Silent, Color, Prints from Canyon Cinema Coop.); Mom by George Kuchar (15 mins, Super-8, Silent, Color, Print from Canyon Cinema Coop.); Sodium Vapors by Barbara Lattanzi (6 mins, Super-8, Silent, Color, Print from Filmmaker); Le Mois de Fevrier by Diana Barrie (1979, 6 mins, Super-8, Silent, Color, Print from Filmmaker); and Weltschmerz by Joe Gibbons, in which Gibbons talks to the camera about his “Present Unhappiness” (1979, 14 mins, Super-8, Color, Print from Filmmaker).