Alternative Visions

9/1/09 to 10/27/09

Up-to-the-minute experiments complement classics by Shirley Clarke, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and others in PFA's avant-garde showcase. Many artists will join us in person, including Ken Jacobs with one of his fabled Nervous Magic Lantern performances.

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  • Chromatic Cocktail, September 8

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  • Past
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  • Past
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Past Films

  • Essential Visual Music: Rare Classics

    Tuesday, September 1 7:30 pm
    Mary Ellen Bute, Charles Dockum, Jules Engel, Oskar Fischinger, David Lebrun, John Stehura, Jud Yalkut (1926–78). From 1920s German film experiments to light-show psychedelia, this program from the Center for Visual Music highlights the evolving technology and artistic sophistication of visual music and experimental animation. (75 mins)
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  • Speechless: Recent Experimental Animation

    Tuesday, September 8 7:30 pm
    Martha Colburn, Lori Hiris, Ken Jacobs, Lewis Klahr, Kerry Laitala, Scott Stark, Jim Trainor, Fae Yamaguchi (U.S., 2006–2009). Kerry Laitala in person. Eight vibrant and haunting artist-made films represent a range of avant-garde animation, from cutout collage and puppet animation to 3-D images and chalk drawings. (72 mins)
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  • Portrait of Jason

    Tuesday, September 15 7:30 pm
    Shirley Clarke (U.S., 1967). Clarke's portrait of an African American gay prostitute and aspiring nightclub performer is “a pioneering study of the cinema verité movement-a record of Jason conversing, performing, confessing, dissolving. It's an intense, commanding film.”-Chicago Reader (105 mins)
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  • Look Through the Window: The Films of Chris Kennedy

    Tuesday, September 22 7:30 pm
    Chris Kennedy (U.S., 2003–2009). Chris Kennedy in person. The Toronto-based filmmaker presents his materialist cinema, which explores place, framing, and the intersection of found footage and text. (64 mins)
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  • Brief Eternity: Bay Area Student Film Festival 2009

    Tuesday, September 29 7:30 pm
    (U.S., 2008–2009). Artists in person. These kaleidoscopic visions reflect the way a new generation of college students views the world. (60 mins)
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  • Exilée

    Tuesday, October 6 7:30 pm
    Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (U.S., 1980). Introduction and reading by Constance Lewallen. Special location: Museum Theater. We celebrate the publication of a new book of the Conceptual artist's writings with a rare screening of this installation work. (50 mins plus reading)
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  • Nervous Magic Lantern Performance: Towards the Depths of the Even Greater Depression

    Wednesday, October 7 7:30 pm
    Ken Jacobs (U.S., 2009). Ken Jacobs in person. A rare opportunity to see a live performance of one of Jacobs's marvelous inventions, the Nervous Magic Lantern, which uses pre-cinema technology to create startling, mesmerizing images. With shorts Opening the 19th Century: 1896 and Capitalism: Child Labor. (85 mins)
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  • Sun Xun: The Dark Magician of New Chinese Animation

    Tuesday, October 27 7:30 pm
    Sun Xun (China, 2004–2008). Sun Xun in person. In this rare U.S. presentation of his animation œuvre, this Chinese artist and filmmaker will present a variety of short films that range from a witty experiment in body art to an evocation of China's checkered voyage toward technological and political modernity. (60 mins)
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