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Making the Lost and Unmade: The Films of Bruce Checefsky examines the lost and unmade works of four important avant-garde experimental Polish filmmakers: STEFAN THEMERSON, (Plock, Poland 1910 – London 1988), FRANCISZKA THEMERSON (Warsaw 1907 – London 1988), JAN BRZEKOWSKI (1903 – 1983), and ANDRZEJ PAWLOWSKI (1925 – 1986). The presentation includes a brief history and critical analysis of their films, and a special screening of recent remakes based on the originals. The screened films include Pharmacy (2001), A Woman and Circles (2003), INNI [OTHERS] (2005), and MOMENT MUSICAL (2006), Stefan and Francizska Themersons significant first sound experimental film.

Magic Lantern Cinema Presents: The Lost and Found Show Wednesday December 7, 9:30 PM

Offering a unique perspective on the now-common practice of found footage media production, The Lost and Found Show refracts this prevalent theme through an understanding that things need to go missing in order to be recovered. This program of experimental short film and video contemplates how the process of discovery and creation sometimes involves destruction, howone person's absence and void is often another person's opportunity, and how the desire to preserve and safeguard is basic to almost all forms of image-making. Featuring a grab bag of works from filmmakers renowned for their use of unoriginal source materials side by side with experimental meditations on impermanence, death, the incomplete, polar expeditions, sex, and graffiti, this program has it all. So as the nights continue to get longer and the days shorter, join us for an evening in which we can all take some time to appreciate the things in our lives that we’ll miss when they are gone.

FEATURING: Rebecca Baron, “The Idea of North” (1995);
Matt McCormick, “The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal” (2001);
Anastacia Congdon, “Table Studies” (2001-04);
Bruce Conner, “Cosmic Ray” (1961);
Henry Hills, “George” (1976/88);
Stan Brakhage, “Sirius Remembered” (1959);
Janie Geiser, “Lost Motion” (1999);
Bruce Checefsky, “Béla” (2009);
Peter Tscherkassky, “Happy-End” (1996)

Movie Link:

Magic Lantern Cinema Presents: The Lost and Found Show

Reactivating the "Lost" Treasures of the European Avante-Garde .pdf
A Conversation with Artist and Filmmaker Bruce Checefsky
Anna Dempsey, Benjamin Matteson, and Pamela Karimi

Intro HAFF lezing 2012-02-18

In 2011 the M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp) presented GRAPHOLOGY, a four part series of thematic exhibitions examining the technique of drawing and its automation, both in the technical as the conceptual sense. In May 2012, The Drawing Room in London will present a new version of the exhibition. Curator Edwin Carels explains some of the ideas behind this project.

Under investigation are the techniques of translation of the living movement and live thinking into a systematised representation, between the trace and the sign, beween writing and drawing. The vantage point for these presentations is the work of contemporary young artists that is put in the historical perspective of automated notation systems.

The tradition of the écriture automatique spans a long tradition, with an obvious strong moment during the heyday of surrealism, as illustrated on the cover of the first issue of ‘La Révolution Surréaliste’ (1924). In the center of the image we find a typewriter. The GRAPHOLOGY series focusses on such techniques of visualisation, that allow for a particular tension between the hand and the medium, between automatism and automation.

Like a ‘cadavre exquis’ each chapter of GRAPHOLOGY brings together seemingly disparate elements (both on a technical, aesthetic and historical level) together in a visual essays. The focus is on the human hand as a living seismograph of inner life, but with extra attention to the ‘mechanical unconscious of the machine’ which imposes itself on the human eye. How do graphic techniques of reproduction start to live their own lives? This exhibition series situates itself on the cross-section of drawing with photography, printing, film and computergraphics.

Stuart Blackton : Humorous Phases of Funny Faces – (1906) 3’20”

Marcel Broodthaers : La Pluie – 2 min

Guy Sherwin Newsprint – 5 min

Paul Bush STILL LIFE WITH SMALL CUP - 3.30 mins

Robert Breer : Man and his dog out for air – 3 min

Juliana Borinski : Sine reco(r)ded – 3 min

Viking Eggeling : Symphonie Diagonale – 9 min : versie met muziek Olga Neuwirth zie : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtBjFv46XLQ

Bruce Checefsky : PHARMACY/2001/35mm/black and white abstract photogram film/silent/4:36

Adele Horne – Quiero Ver – 6’30”

Steven Subotnick TWO – 2’30”

Computer animatie = iets van Bart Vegter ????

Stuart Hilton: Six Weeks in June – 6 min

Len Lye : Particles in Space – 4 min

A WOMAN AND CIRCLES (2003) will be included in "Kilometrages. Jan Brzekowski and his artistic worlds." The show will be presenting Brzekowski's rare publications from the famous Marzona collection, as well as a fine selection of grafic works by his friends: Picasso, Leger, Hans Arp, Sophie Taueber-Arp, Marx Ernst, Matisse, etc.

Polnisches Institut Berlin, Burgstrasse 27, 10178 Berlin, Germany

September 8 - November 30, 2011

For more information or schedule a screening contact: bruce@seesawpictures.com

Photogram Film Fantasia

Making The Lost and Unmade: The Films of Bruce Checefsky at Anthology Film Archives

Some of the first photographs were photograms, camera-less black and white images created using reverse exposure. Moving photograms were an innovation of the Eastern European avant-garde film movement prior to World War II. However, many of these landmark experimental films were lost or never made as the area was militarily overwhelmed. Bruce Checefsky has resurrected seven of these short films, to be screened in series at Anthology Film Archives.

If you can get past the overuse of photogram technology and the grating imitation of scratched, flickering 1930s film stock, Checefsky’s creations and recreations tread interesting cinematic ground. He pauses within each film to explain the original’s history and significance in generous title cards. Checefsky films Béla, written by Gyorgy Gero and A Woman and Circles, by avant-garde poet Jan Brzekowski, visualizing that which never reached production. Moment Musical and Pharmacy are based on films by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson that were lost or destroyed in the chaos of war. With loose precision, Checefsky glorifies and validates an unknowable moment in artistic history.

But Checefsky is not working under the same conditions as his muses. His use of elementary special effects is quaint, not groundbreaking, and his modern actors simply cannot channel the mindset of a Pole basking in brief peace. The films are intrinsically different in subject matter, premise and historical moment, but by utilizing the same production process, Checefsky blurs the films into a messy whole.

Inni (Others) is a standout. Written by experimental filmmaker Andrzej Pawlowski from the diary of an asylum patient during the second world war to commemorate “the 22450 ‘beings unworthy of life’ who were murdered by the Germans between 1939 and 1944 in psychiatric hospitals located in Poland,” Inni (Others) is the longest film of the collection. As it is the only post-war film, Checefsky allows himself use of more varied cinematic techniques, including color, slow motion and striated visuals. He alternates between extreme close ups of anonymous skin and indistinguishable masses on what might be an old television screen. A haunting, unaffected voice-over permeates the piece. Perhaps Inni (Others) is individually retained because of its author’s dedication, heartbreaking subject matter, or mild narrative.

Making the Lost and Unmade explores the fleeting permanence of film. Films are designed to outlast their creators, to stand as a testament to a specific time and place. What happens when the film remains a script or the product is misplaced? Checefsky has endeavored to fill just such an ellipses with this film series. While it’s far from a perfect solution, this night at Anthology does engage in a worthwhile and interesting dialogue with our cultural past.

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bruce@seesawpictures.com