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Cinema Soiree with Kerry Laitala - Spectacle of Light and SoundPost an Event »
Oddball Films welcomes moving image artist Kerry Laitala to our Cinema Soiree Series, a monthly event featuring visiting authors, filmmakers and curators presenting and sharing cinema insights and films. Kerry Laitala is a media archaeologist who uses analog, digital, and hybrid forms to present traces of forgotten technologies from the distant and recent past.
Laitala's work resides at the crossroads of science, art, history, and her uncanny approach to evolving systems of belief through installation, photography, para-cinema, performance, kinetic sculpture, and single-channel forms. Laitala will be revealing the secrets of her direct film manipulation and experimental imaging techniques and presenting two works from her City Luminous Series, celebrating the lighting pioneers that gathered a century ago at the fabulous Jewel City, a 635-acre monument to impermanence constructed, and soon after, demolished in San Francisco’s Marina district.
These include The City Luminous: Spectacle of Light, which recently received an audience choice award at the 2015 Crossroads Film Festival presented by SF Cinematheque, and The City Luminous: Electric Salome, a brand-new work being world-premiered right here at Oddball Films. Both of these performances will feature live sound from Oakland’s experimental music duo extraordinaire Voicehandler, made up of Jacob Felix Heule and Danishta Rivero. In addition, Laitala will screen the slightly salacious The Kali of Technology, and Side Show Spectacle with live sound by Brian Darr. Lastly, 3D manifestations will propel the audience into the screen and beyond the as their retinas get pushed and pulled through the taffy maker of prismatic chromadepth. These works include: Afterimage: A Flicker of Life, sound collaboration Between K. Laitala and Wobbly, Chromatic Frenzy and Nine Lives Measured in Mercury with original sound by Neal Johnson.
Date: Thursday, July 9th, 2015 at 8:00pm Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117 Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com Featuring: The City Luminous: Spectacle of Light (dual-16mm projector performance, 2015) In 1915 Walter D'Arcy Ryan induced explosions of color over the night sky as part of the Pan-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), a presentation the likes of which had never been seen prior, and which became the model for light displays at future World's Fairs and illumination showcases. One hundred years later, Kerry Laitala pays tribute to this historical moment with a dual-projector performance involving archival images of silhouetted spectators of the 1939 New York World’s Fair sharing screen space with sinuous light shapes swirling, twinkling and bouncing across the frame like unbound forces of energy.
The City Luminous: Spectacle of Light will be accompanied by a live soundtrack by Voicehandler (Jacob Felix Heule and Danishta Rivero), who manipulate sounds from various sources including a mechanical music box from Switzerland. The City Luminous: Electric Salome. (dual-16mm projector performance, 2015 WORLD PREMIERE!) Loie Fuller was a major innovator in fin-de-siècle dance, costuming and theatrical lighting design. Her Serpentine Dances became hugely popular, inspired dozens of imitators, and are best known today through the early films shot by the likes of W.K.L. Dickson, Alice Guy Blache, Segundo de Chomon, Georges Melies and others.