Alternative Visions

9/4/07 to 10/30/07

The latest installment in our ongoing Tuesday-night avant-garde showcase features such greats as Bruce Conner, Maya Deren, Nathaniel Dorsky, George Kuchar, Len Lye, Marie Menken, Jack Smith, and Michael Snow, among others.

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  • Hold Me While I’m Naked, September 28

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Alternative Requirements 2007: Bay Area Student Experimental Film Festival

    • Tuesday, October 30 7:30 PM

    Artists in Person. Through the expansive genre of experimental film, local college students render the interior visible and imbue the exterior world with psychological meaning.

  • Free Radical: The Films of Len Lye

    • Tuesday, October 23 7:30 PM

    Introduced by Mark Williams. New Zealand–born Len Lye was a pioneer of direct animation, scratching and painting directly on the filmstrip, ingeniously creating vibrant and dazzling handmade films that pulsate with energy and rhythmic vitality.

  • Films by Bruce Conner

    • Tuesday, October 16 7:30 PM

    Beginning with A Movie in 1958, Bruce Conner defined the genre of the found-footage film. We survey his brilliantly edited collage films, from blistering critiques of contemporary American society to dreamlike forays into childhood and mesmerizing meditations on altered states.

  • The Zoom: Wavelength and Serene Velocity

    • Tuesday, October 9 7:30 PM

    Two classic films explore the properties and effects of the zoom: Michael Snow's Wavelength, "the most consequential zoom shot in the history of cinema" (Jonathan Rosenbaum); and Ernie Gehr's Serene Velocity, an utterly simple yet transfixing exploration of cinematic space.

  • Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis

    • Tuesday, October 2 7:30 PM

    A vibrant tribute to the famously flamboyant maker of Flaming Creatures, and to the '60s New York underground. "Mary Jordan's terrific documentary unfolds with the same . . . passion found in one of Smith's fever dreams."-Time Out N.Y.

  • Home Movies: Autobiographical Films by Women

    • Tuesday, September 25 7:30 PM

    Introduced by Marilyn Fabe. Three works by women present varied approaches to the personal: Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren, founding mother of the American avant-garde; Carolee Schneeman's erotic Fuses; and Sink or Swim, Su Friedrich's exploration of her relationship with her father.

  • It's a Funny, Mad, Sad World: The Movies of George Kuchar

    • Tuesday, September 18 7:30 PM

    George Kuchar in Person. Celebrating the wonderfully exaggerated world of this master of no-budget camp, who has been conjuring melodrama from unlikely materials for over 40 years.

  • Notes on Marie Menken

    • Tuesday, September 11 7:30 PM

    Martina Kudlacek's recent documentary explores the work and life of Marie Menken, maker of intimate, gestural films that inspired Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, and others to pursue a poetic and personal approach to cinema. With a selection of shorts by Menken.

  • Devotional Cinema: Films by Dorsky and Ozu

    • Tuesday, September 4 7:30 PM

    Nathaniel Dorsky in Person. Dorsky is an eloquent writer as well as a filmmaker; his book Devotional Cinema discusses the work of Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Michelangelo Antonioni, among others. Tonight he presents two of his recent works, Threnody and Song and Solitude, along with Ozu's Late Spring.