Thursday April 24th, 2008 | 8-10pm @ University Cafe, Stony Brook University (NY)
We've all waited for long, but now finally it was made possible... CIC is proud to present the first Annual Short Film Screening, "Experimental Short Films: Early Avant-Garde To Contemporary" at the University Cafe, Stony Brook University. This includes masterpieces by James S. Watson, Melville Webber, Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Bruce Connor, Lars von Trier, and Edward P. Davee. You may expect an exclusive presentation with background information (directors, various periods, etc.); moderated and hosted by CIC's Vice President Marco Springmann. [PICTURES NOW ONLINE - see below]
Learn also more about CIC's upcoming film productions, how you may learn about fundamental techniques in filmmaking, which are used by all Hollywood productions and others. The entire executive committee will be at this event for discussions and provide the opportunity to sign up for workshops, trips to film festivals etc... Right after the screening, an entertaining reception with drinks and good music can be expected! Fun Time!
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EVENT OUTLINE
| 8:00 - 8:15PM :: | Welcome To The World of CIC... Introducing SBU's First PRO Film Student Organization. (CIC's President) |
| 8:15 - 8:35PM :: | Introduction to "The Fall Of The House Of Usher" (1928) by James S. Watson & Melville Webber and screening (13min) |
 This short film is a much more abstracted adaptation of Poe's story than La Chute De La Maison Usher. Watson and Webber translate Caligari's expressionist universe directly into cinematography, sculpting the same distorted, dream-like spaces out of light and darkness. When discrete objects intervene, they are generally blurred and superimposed over the action, as if they simultaneously embodied all the perspectives from which they could be viewed, producing an elegant, subsidiary balance between cubism and realism; or, rather, an explication of cubism as a more sophisticated realism. Although this allows for spectacular treatment of the recurrent staircase, whose constant differentiations produce a diaphanous ripple across the screen, it culminates with the depiction of the Ushers themselves (the narrator being largely occluded, as occurs with Epstein's version). For most of the film, there is an absolute porosity between them and their shadows, making them feel more like bundles of darkness and light, or mere emanations of the mirage-like mansion, than living, breathing human beings. This produces an unprecedented phenomenology of the undead, most evident in the sequences detailing Madeline Usher's death, in which a combination of superimposition and elegant shadow-play force her into a coffin whose parameters are never completely distinguished from those of the house itself. - A Film Canon |
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| 8:35 - 8:50PM :: | Introduction to "Fireworks" (1947) by Kenneth Anger and screening (14min) with following discussion. |
 A landmark of both experimental and gay cinema, Kenneth Anger's film is a bizarre, disturbing dreamscape of violation, rape, and homoerotic sado-masochism. The film opens with Anger, who made this film when he was only 17, awaking from a troubled dream and leaving his house to go on a stroll. He is confronted by a band of buff sailors who proceed to beat, manhandle, and molest him. Ends with the amazing image of a sailor unzipping his fly and pulling out a lit roman candle. Recalling other surrealist masterpieces such as Un Chien Andalou and Meshes in the Afternoon, this film uses elliptical narrative structure and dream-like visual metaphors and puns. - Subterranean Cinema"A dissatisfied dreamer awakes, goes out in the night seeking a 'light' and is drawn through the needle's eye. A dream of a dream, he returns to a bed less empty than before." - Kenneth Anger |
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| 8:50 - 9:00PM :: | Introduction to "Mothlight" (1963) by Stan Brakhage and screening (4min) with following discussion. |
 Essence of lepidoptera re-created between two strips of clear mylar tape: an anima animation. What a moth might see from birth to death if black were white and white were black. - Canyon Cinema"Brakhage made MOTHLIGHT without a camera. He just pasted mothwings and flowers on a clear strip of film and ran it through the printing machine." - Jonas Mekas "MOTHLIGHT is a paradoxical preservation of pieces of dead moths in the eternal medium of light (which is life and draws the moth to death); so it flutters through its very disintegration. This abstract of flight captures matter's struggle to assume its proper form; the death of the moth does not cancel its nature, which on the filmstrip asserts itself. MOTHLIGHT is on one level a parable of death and resurrection, but most really concerns the persistence of the essential form, image, and motion of being." - Ken Kelman |
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| 9:00 - 9:10PM :: | Introduction to "Mea Culpa" (1981) by Bruce Connor and screening (5min) with following discussion. |
 Music video for the song “Mea Culpa” by Brain Eno & David Byrne.In the course of recording this album Brian and I crossed paths with artist and filmmaker Bruce Connor, who lives in San Francisco. Bruce's' legendary "experimental" films are well known for their pioneering use of found footage, so it was natural that we approach him regarding the possibility of working together- which was more like suggesting he use some of the Bush of Ghosts tracks in a film or two, due to the similarities of our working methods. Connor mainly uses old educational films, science films, government footage and film footage that people throw out and then recuts them to new music, creating dark and sometimes hilarious moods and visual commentaries. His work was sampling before that word existed, as was this record. The films gain an additional level of depth due to the fact that you can often guess what the footage was originally used for, and so you see it as an artifact and as something entirely new, both at the same time. - David Byrne |
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| 9:10 - 9:25PM :: | Introduction to "Nocturne" (1980) by Lars von Trier and screening (8min) with following discussion. |
 Director Lars von Trier’s tense, experimental look at a woman who is disrupted by shattered glass and afraid of sunlight recalls the work of avant-garde pioneers Maya Deren and Luis Buñuel. A mysterious phone call and circling flock of birds accentuate the visual poetry and establish the compelling emotional upset and narrative tension of which von Trier would later become master. Made while at the National Film School of Denmark, NOCTURNE won von Trier the Best Film Award at the 1981 Munich Film Festival. - American Cinematheque |
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| 9:25 - 9:50PM :: | Introduction to "Crowfilm" (2002) by Edward P. Davee and screening (20min). |
 Crowfilm was born from the idea of not just wanting to document a species in it’s natural environment, but to recreate that environment from scratch, utilizing the powerful, yet limited, tools of filmmaking. To me, the crow’s world is a black and white world, a scratchy, scrappy world where nature and industry collide. I wanted to put myself, as well as the viewer, in that world. I want everything that is seen and heard on screen to somehow mimic this dark and mysterious corvid existence… For the finishing touch, to thoroughly steep and simmer this cinematic stew, the crows themselves were brought in to mix the final ingredients, their own physical markings on the actual strips of film, dancing across the screen as a murder flaps darkly by. - Edward P. DaveeCrowfilm was shot on outdated 16mm film, digital video, hand-processed super 8 film, and Pixelvision. It has an original musical score featuring songs by Tom Waits and Einstuerzende Neubauten. |
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| 9:50 - 10:00PM :: | Announcement of upcoming CIC film productions, events and trips to film festivals you can sign up for. |
| 10:00PM ++ | After-show Party, Meet & Greet with film executives, experimental music and more.... |
You may download the official event flyer here.
