Articles tagged avant-garde
“Preserving the Avant-Garde” in San Francisco
This Monday the 4 Star Theater in San Francisco will screen a program of experimental films to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Avant Garde Masters grant program, a fruitful partnership between the NFPF and The Film Foundation.
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| Remembrance (1969), screening in the program "The Film Foundation: Preserving the Avant-Garde." |
Screening as part of the series “Scorsese: More than a Gangster,” the program is titled “The Film Foundation: Preserving the Avant-Garde.” Started in 1990 by Martin Scorsese, The Film Foundation has furthered the cause of film preservation by ensuring the survival of nearly 1,000 works of world cinema. Among these are 214 works (by 83 artists) preserved through Avant Garde Masters grant program, which is supported by the Film Foundation, administered by the NFPF, and receives funding from the Hobson/Lucas Family … Read more
NFPF-Preserved Films at the Century of 16mm Conference
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| Multiple SIDosis (1970), one of eight films screening in the Century of 16mm program “16mm Orphan Films Preserved through the National Film Preservation.” |
In 1923 Eastman Kodak introduced 16mm nonflammable film and radically changed the history of filmmaking, which became affordable and feasible to millions. The new format facilitated the rise of home movies and amateur moviemaking. Filmmaking was no longer the preserve of well-heeled industries—16mm democratized it.
To celebrate this momentous anniversary, the Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive has organized “A Century of 16mm,” which includes an academic conference, commissioned films, exhibitions of 16mm technologies, and screenings.
Among the conference programs, scheduled for Thursday, September 14th, is “16mm Orphan Films Preserved through the National Film … Read more
Seven Films to be Preserved Through Avant-Garde Masters Grants
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| Plumb Line (1971) by Carolee Schneemann. |
A portrait of a drag artist by Heather McAdams, a structural film by Lawrence Gottheim, two evocations of city/ landscapes by Allen Downs, and three works by Carolee Schneemann will be preserved and made available through the 2022 Avant-Garde Masters Grants, awarded by The Film Foundation and the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Chicago-based alternative cartoonist Heather McAdams assembled her films from found footage, viewing pop culture’s scraps through an anarchic feminist lens. While teaching in Lexington, Kentucky, McAdams befriended Bradley Harrison Picklesimer, owner of a drag bar/nightclub on Main Street. Assembled “like a crazy quilt,” to quote McAdams, Meet…Bradley Harrison Picklesimer (1988) scrambles found and direct footage to cover its … Read more
Seven Experimental Classics To Be Preserved Through Avant-Garde Masters Grants
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| Cathy Cook’s The Match That Started My Fire (1992) will be preserved by the Film-Makers’ Cooperative. |
During his short life Ron Rice (1935–64) completed only three films. Senseless (1962), his second and least seen work, arose from an attempt to film the counterculture in Venice, California, and a utopian commune in Mexico. Rice combined home movie–style footage, street photography, landscapes shot from moving vehicles, and images from a bullfight in Acapulco. The result, anti-narrative in structure but formalist in its … Read more
12 Films to be Preserved through Avant-Garde Masters Grants
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| Named to the National Film Registry in 2019, Gunvor Nelson’s My Name is Oona (1969) will be preserved by the Pacific Film Archive. |
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive will preserve ten films that were distributed by the Bay Area–based Serious Business Company (SBC), an independent film distribution company founded by Freude (1942–2009), operating from 1972 to 1984. Among them is Gunvor Nelson’s masterpiece My Name is Oona (1969). Named to the National Film Registry in 2019, this portrait of the artist’s daughter uses a repetitive soundtrack and … Read more