"Poetry is a craft for mortals and therefore mortally dangerous...contraband...and consequently the more precious, for it is true...that if the world becomes a dream, the dream in turn becomes a world."-Jean–Luc Godard, on Orphée vis–à–vis Alphaville
"In this piece, I want to be the dream of the audience."-Theresa Cha, on Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard (Ailleurs)
Memory, dream, language, the voice of woman and the voice of the image are all at play in this selection of classic films. They are films that influenced and inspired the artist Theresa Cha, the subject of a major retrospective this fall at the BAM/PFA, The Dream of the Audience: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982). Born in Korea, Cha moved with her family to San Francisco in 1964 and studied at UC Berkeley, where between 1969 and 1978 she obtained bachelor's and master's degrees in both comparative literature and art practice. She created an extraordinary body of work before her tragic death in 1982. The exhibition features Cha's film and video works, books, and performance documentation. In a companion film program, PFA recreates the spirit of film viewing at Berkeley in the early 1970s. Basic to any understanding of modern cinema, we hope these films will inspire a new generation of Berkeley cinephiles.
Professor Emeritus Bertrand Augst was Cha's professor of comparative literature and mentor in film studies at Berkeley. He writes the following memoir of Cha and the time:
"Theresa Cha was among the first students to complete a program of what might be described as the Stone Age of film studies at UC Berkeley. The main resource for film students was the screenings scheduled by PFA (where Cha was also an usher), frequented by international directors and American avant-garde filmmakers. Videotapes did not exist-and how can one study The Man with a Movie Camera or Last Year at Marienbad on videotape? All we had for study was an old Kalart projector (developed for the U.S. Army) which made it possible to reverse or stop the film here and there without burning a hole in it. Later, motion analysis projectors became available and it was finally possible to look at specific shots and frames. It was Noël Burch in his Theory of Film Practice who urged film students to be more precise and study the "structure" of film sequences, the composition of individual shots and the notion of offscreen space, the complex system of matches, and the interaction of images and sound.
"Theresa Cha became interested in film in an experimental comparative literature class along with the work of Artaud, Beckett, and Mallarmé. She liked film theory and analysis, and it became part of her creative process, employing montage and sound ideas in a most unorthodox way. It is precisely this way of using ideas first seen in Alphaville, Sansho the Bailiff, or Vampyr which makes her work new and compelling.
"The film series is presented with support from the Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley.
For listings of related Public Programs presented by the BAM Education Department, see back page.
Film notes by Judy Bloch, Editor except as noted.
