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Strange Sinema 95: Experiments in Art and CinemaPost an Event »
Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema 95, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ vast collection of 16mm film prints. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 95th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema 95: Experiments in Art and Cinema is a heady, techno-cultural look at the multimedia art forms and cinematic uprisings of the tumultuous 60s and 70s featuring a vast array of evolutionary artists, cultural criticism and eye-popping movement art.
Art of the Sixties (1967) features the monumental soft sculptures of pop icon Claes Oldenburg, machine artist and animator Len Lye, Les Levine’s interactive environments, action painter provocateur Jackson Pollock and more. A seldom seen NET documentary USA Artists: Robert Rauschenberg (1966) showcases a young Rauschenberg’s innovative “Revolvers” or “Combines”- multilayered painted sculptures that expand the boundaries of art. Merce Cunningham (1964) the extremely rare French-made poetic montage of movement pioneer Merce Cunningham’s dance performances in collaboration with life partner and composer John Cage with “found object” sets by Robert Rauschenberg. Underground Film (1970) is another rare exploration into the work of seminal experimental filmmaker (and SF Cinematheque foundress) Chick Strand, a pioneer in blending avant-garde techniques with documentary. The Critic (1963) is an animated Oscar-winner from the great Ernie Pintoff. Watch as comedy legend Mel Brooks relentlessly rags on the experimental animation he's shown to hilarious effect. Also screening will be an excerpt from USA Artists: Jim Dine (1966), a live performance from the sixties artist instrumental in creating early “Happenings” - live, non-linear multimedia events. The evening will also include a breathtaking selection of Whitney films, featuring motion graphics pioneer John Whitney Sr., brother James and son Michael's work, all profoundly audacious and inspiring in their fluidity, motion and spiritual subtext. John Whitney's Arabesque (1975) is a legendary masterpiece of shimmering, oscillating waves set to the music of Persian composer Maroocheher Sadeghi. Michael Whitney's Binary Bit Patterns (1969) is a hypnotic psych-folk audiovisual experience that suggests a secret symbiosis between the digital and the organic as various Eastern graphic permutations appear, dissolve and undergo metamorphoses on the screen. Lapis (1965), made by a spiritualized James Whitney (one of only 7 films he created) and one of the most accessible experimental films ever made; Lapis was created with handmade cels evoking a single mandala moving within itself; its particles surge around each other in constant metamorphosis. To foreground our program, and starting promptly at 8PM is the rare documentary Richter on Film (1972) profiling Dadaist and abstract/avant-garde filmmaker Hans Richter as he talks about his ground-breaking experimental films of the 1920s.
Date: Friday, December 11th, 2015 at 8:00PM Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating, RSVP to: 415-558-8117 or RSVP@oddballfilm.com Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com/2015/12/strange-sinema-95-experiments-in-art.html