Extension of the Machine:L.A. Filmforum at the Cinefamily

For the last two Saturdays, I have been lucky enough to witness the magic that is the L.A. Filmforum. They have had presentations at the Cinefamily over on Fairfax, complete with guests and Q&As, and what has been accomplished there is like nothing else I have ever seen.

I have always had a difficult time with experimental film to an extent, but I always enjoyed it because it also caused me to push myself and question my ideas of cinematic boundaries and narrative, of art, and certainly of form and function. I have learned (and come to believe) that exposing yourself to more things that make you think in this manner only makes you a more full person in the cinematic realm. You still may not enjoy everything you see, but MAN! Some things will knock your socks off. And for me, the L.A. Filmforum is the kind of place where I will continue to engage in that kind of experience.

The series that L.A. Filmforum is currently running, Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 is not to be missed. It's part of the larger Pacific Standard Time project, as well, which is pretty fabulous. I have now been to two of them, and I am really hoping to go to as many as I can. What they are doing with this is incredible. In fact, what the Filmforum is doing in general, is incredible. If you have a few minutes, I would highly suggest going over and checking out the Alternative Projections website. The oral histories area alone is worth it. That's an area I'm going to continue checking back on. What an incredible archive and site! 

A Native Observes: Los Angeles Observed, January 21, 2012, Cinefamily

On Saturday January 21st, I was lucky enough to witness some of the most amazing films about Los Angeles in documentary and experimental form. Being a Los Angeles native, this was like being a kid in a candy story. When I watched Muscle Beach (1948, 35mm, sound, 9m) by Joseph Strick and Irving Lerner, I was astounded. Santa Monica (and the pier) has changed so very little physically in the last 60+ years (ok, a great deal socially, but that's another story!) and the Academy Film Archive did such a beautiful job of restoring this print! My jaw was agape and yet I was grinning ear-to-ear (if that is a physical possibility).

Experiencing Bunker Hill (1956, 16mm, sound, 18m) by Kent McKenzie was difficult. I'm not going to lie. My mother has told me stories of what downtown used to look like and be like and I'm a big fan of writers like John Fante and such. Out of all the movies that I saw in 2011, made in 2011, Bunker Hill effected me the most. I sat in that little theater on Fairfax and I cried. It's extremely effective, beautiful and contains a horrifying amount of foreknowledge about what the city will grow to be in only a short number of years and yet what it could have been.

(L-R, John Vicario, Thom Anderson, Mark Toscano and Baylis Glascock)

We were lucky enough to get to see Shopper's Market (1963, 16mm, color, sound, 22m) by John Vicario, who was also there for a Q&A, as well as Olivia's Place (1966/74, 16mm, color, sound, 6m) by Thom Anderson (known in many circles for the absolutely incredible film-essay, Los Angeles Plays Itself), also there for the Q&A, as was Baylis Glascock, who had shown his film Film Exercise Number One (1962, 16mm, color, sound, 5m).

The Q&A was wonderful. These men were led in discussion by Mark Toscano, one of the fabulous curators of Alternative Projections (along with the illustrious Adam Hyman), and it was a really wonderful day. Getting to see films like this on a big screen, the way that they were intended to be seen, in their original formats is priceless. And, beyond that, the fact that we were able to have the actual filmmakers there?!?! Unbelievably cool. 

Something About the Optical Printer: Visions, Memory, and a Machine: Optical Manipulations, January, 28, 2012, Cinefamily

The next Saturday, I traipsed over to the Cinefamily and joined one my pals in my cohort, Jon, at the Cinefamily for this event. During our first few weeks at UCLA we had been introduced to the wonders of the optical printer, so we were pretty excited to see what it was all about. Jon did a superb job describing what we saw and experienced, so I'm just going to let him tell you what it was in his words....over to you, Jon!

----On January 28, as part of Los Angeles' massive Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980 program, the LA FilmForum and Cinefamily presented Visions, Memory and a Machine: Optical Manipulations, a showcase of avant-garde films created with the use of an optical printer, at the Silent Movie Theater. Along with the opportunity to see these rare experimental shorts, ranging from 1968 to 1982, two Los Angeles filmmakers whose films were among the highlights of the program, Pat O'Neill and Beth Block, participated in a question and answer session following the screening.

Saugus Series, 1974- Pat O'Neill

The two films in the program by Pat O'Neill, Saugus Series (1974) and Foregrounds (1978), offer sterling examples of the many possibilities for filmmaking with an optical printer. Utilizing the machine's ability to rephotograph images onto a single frame, often resulting in multiple layers of various film elements appearing onscreen all at once, O'Neill incorporates animation, cut-outs, globs of paint, found footage, perpetually-spinning rocks and multicolored silhouettes of running dogs into unique and unpredictable collages of sound and vision. Beth Block's contribution, Film Achers (1976), was less varied in the amount of film materials on display, but her repetition of washed-out semi-decipherable figures eventually revealed itself to be a breathtaking psychotic breakdown of the filmmaking process, whose jaggedly-edited soundtrack turned Peter Pan's “I Won't Grow Up” into a sort of proto-techno. (Hell, you could probably make a good case for calling these films cinematic dubsteb.)

Film Achers, 1976- Beth Block

Although the focus of the program was on the use of the optical printer in avant-garde film, the program also served as a great demonstration as to why the process was so prominent in the Hollywood special effects industry before the days of digital. Beyond his experimental work, O'Neill has worked in the effects department for Piranha, Tank Girl, and, um, Mannequin: On the Move. O'Neill's innovations with the optical printer also found their way into the original Star Wars trilogy, with O'Neill protégé Adam Beckett serving in George Lucas' effects department. Beckett's film in the Optical Manipulations series, Heavy-Light (1973), belongs in the same category as the trippiest segments of 2001: A Space Odyssey (another example of optical printing technology put to great use), a dizzying array of patterns and colors that is almost impossible to believe was made without the aid of computers. Also fitting into a semi-sci-fi theme, the program closed on the nuttiest film of the series, Daina Krumin's Babobilicons (1982), featuring conic crab creatures wreaking havoc on birthday cakes and more phallic mushrooms than you can shake a dick at. Those were just some of the many unforgettable images the program provided, and as a whole, the LA FilmForum and Cinefamily did an excellent job in presenting how one machine allowed an imaginative group of filmmakers in Los Angeles realize their bizarre and delightful visions.  ---Jon Marquis

Babobilicons, 1982, Daina Krumin

As Jon so beautifully stated above, the visuals on this were beyond amazing. It was a pleasure to experience. By the time Mark stood up with Beth Block and Pat O'Neill for the Q&A, I think we were simply in awe that you could do such amazing things with this equipment, but you could!
During the Q&A, they waxed on about artistic dedication and intensity. Sometimes, they said, this incurred physical deterioration! Some artists stayed in animation and projection rooms long enough to bloody their hands and punch walls hard enough to be heard in the next room over! But the product? Well worth it, many times. Even the "happy accidents."
Pat O'Neill noted that his intent was really to "replicate a state of mind I had when I was making something" in his work. In watching his art, I believe he was successful. He also noted that he would've been quite pleased to have his shots as "entities with no relation" and would have been quite interested in showing them as single pieces in a gallery. I, for one, would have definitely gone to that show (and dragged many friends!).
O'Neill was really interested in playing with the image itself and what could be done with it, although he says that it is sadly virtually impossible to do optical printing now, due to the shrinking of the analogue equipment world.

(L-R, Beth Block, Pat O'Neill and Mark Toscano)

Beth Block came out from Kent State to study with Pat, she stated. She used "2 bolexes and a board!"

Her perspective within the optical printing procedure was that the pain of the machine was that it was completely and totally worth it because "you couldn't get the image any other way." She also made a very interesting comment about the state of the analogue/digital art world right now, in that she is not limiting herself to a simply analogue pallet.

Beth said that you can learn to drive yourself crazy digitally just as much as you could on a machine that lacked the ability to have a multi-pass option! Beth notes, "You can learn to get to that who am I/what I am-torture state in digital too, it's just a number state."

Of the optical printer, she said that working with it was like being "an extension of the machine. There was an intense concentration. There's just something about an optical printer!"

And Beth was right. There is something about an optical printer. Both in the creation and being created by. In watching these films, you get a real sense of the manipulation of the materials, a thing that does not occur very often anymore and certain one that happens less physically in this highly digitally-dominated world. To get to experience this live and with the filmmakers in-person was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and we would REALLY like to thank L.A. Filmforum and Cinefamily for making this possible. It was amazing.

See you next screening!