Jefferson Presents...#78 April 28, 2007

Jefferson Presents...#78
Sat. 04/28/07, 9:00pm
$5, $4 Students
Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Ave.

Mike Dunford

Logical Propositions (1973/74) 16mm, color and b&w, sound, 43 min.

A series of five films, in one program, examining individually one element or simple combination of elements of film practice. Each attempts to elucidate in as elegant way as possible, the effects, and the ramifications, of that elements within cinema, by a process of logical exposure.

Guy Fihman

Ultra Rouge Infra Violet (1974) 16mm, color, , 30-1/2 min.

(Computer translation of the original French Discription) RED EXTREMIST PURPLE INFRA introduces a pure CINE CHROMIE (spaces times movement chromatic) : for all movement this film behaves only chromatic variations operees on a stationary picture resumed picture of Pissaro, THE RED ROOFS. The movements and the speeds of the colors in a total fixite, and instead of the colors seen the visible colors: By the alone variation of the ternary chromatic systems generates has to leave themselves a systeme restricts elements, the chromatic multiplicite (the film behaves more than 20,000 varietes) that one rediscovers partially in the chronogrammes of extremist RED PURPLE INFRA in pigment 'Xerox'. --G.F.

Colen Fitzgibbon

Restoring Appearances To Order In 12 Minutes () 16mm, color, mag stripe, 10 min.

Found Film Flashes (1973) 16mm, b&w, sound, 3-1/4 min.

Karl Kels

Starlings (1991) 16mm, b&w, silent, 9 min.

It is night. The moon is shining.
A static camera captures a huge flock of starlings searching the sky in circular movements. It is not clear how long Kels had been standing there before he turned on his camera; the event as such can only have come as a surprise to him as well.
At first the starlings are hard to identify. Having deliberately edited frames coming from different generations of the original print in a certain metrical order, without changing the actual chronology of their movement, Kels has the constantly changing shapes of the birds dissolve in the rough grain of the celluloid.
Once again a technical weakness of the celluloid forms the starting point of his visual enterprise. Shot on one reel without any interruption, the birds' flight gradually forms configurations of astonishing beauty. An immense sense of depth emerges as the starlings move against the background of the distanced moon, yet cross close by electric wires. Moths cannot resist the light and drop down just in front of the lens, and finally, also the starlings seem to take a last turn reaching down closer to Kels' camera just before his reel ends. -- Millenium Film Journal, No. 30-31.

Albert Sakl

Vom Innen; von aussen ( 2006) 16mm , 20 min

In "Vom Innen; von aussen" Albert Sackl, while standing naked in a black box, animates his own body with a series of single frames exposed in the film camera. While doing so director Sackl choreographs the movements of model Sackl to the minutest detail, turning the body, which stands at ease, not playing an active role, on its own axis and back again. Later, illuminated by stroboscopic flickering, he and his double rotate side by side in opposite directions, the flickering caused by the alternation between the individual frames, first on the left, then the right. As if even this rigid arrangement was eventually too much for the apparatus, the camera occasionally pans outside the neutral box, across the studio and to a mirror on the wall where the lead actor can be seen dashing to and fro. Experimental films which are so precise technically and at the same time demonstrate a sense of humor are rare. Frontal views of the body alternate on the fly with rear views until they blur in a trompe-l’œil effect: A being which defies the laws of perspective is created before our very eyes, and it seems strange and familiar at the same time.
When Vom Innen; von aussen finally leaves the studio to continue the test series outdoors, surrounded by bushes, on snow and ice in bare feet, it becomes clear that Sackl’s desire to experiment is based on more than a purely aesthetic decision. While in the background the wind sets the entire forest scenery in motion, while the sun flickers and the darkness begins to descend, the camera continues to animate Sackl’s body stoically, letting it wander closer and then farther away, as if it existed in another, parallel cosmos which, disconnected from the time of day and season, is subjected to its own mechanical laws. Observing something “from the outside” and at the same time talking about the “inside”: one possible definition of successful cinema. (Maya McKechneay)

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