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| 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
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.
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.
