Critical Mass: The Legacy of Hollis Frampton

Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – Saturday and Sunday, beginning 10am each day (9:30am Continental Breakfast)
The citywide, multi-venue celebration of Hollis Frampton wraps up this weekend with three days of inquiry and exploration. Legendary filmmaker and Frampton collaborator Michael Snow kicks it off Friday night with a sold-out reading of Frampton’s performative A LECTURE. There's still a slim chance you can get in if someone doesn't show up, and it's worth taking the risk. Often Frampton's films attempt to utilize the cinematic form to analyze its own psychosomatic processes, and while successful, they can be rather cloistered. By contrast, with A LECTURE he crafted a performance between narrator and projectionist that, although germane to an academic discussion of how one interacts with the silver screen, is more-so a tale of the people and tools that mesh and fight before we get to sit back and enjoy Bogie and Bacall. Self-consciously deconstructing the social act of going to the movies sounds boring, but Frampton's intelligence and humor make it fun. As the performance begins a voice asks: “Please turn out the lights. If we're going to talk about movies, we might as well do it in the dark.” It's interesting that he's says “we,” because for the next sixty minutes or so “we” will sit passively while “he” uses the essence of cinema to engulf us. We are one with the world on the screen. The voice emanating from the speakers of the auditorium was always intended to vary, and the choice of Snow for Friday should be an inspired one. On Saturday and Sunday all are welcome when some of the top scholars, historians, and makers of experimental cinema hold court (along with a healthy dose of upcoming ones) with a series of panels looking at Frampton's work and legacy. Participants include historian and author Scott MacDonald, filmmaker and preservationist Bill Brand, filmmaker and musician Tony Conrad, historian and author P. Adams Sitney, film and video maker Keith Sanborn, Canadian filmmaker and author Bruce Elder, SAIC’s Bruce Jenkins, and the U of C’s Tom Gunning, who organized the conference. JH - Cine-File.info

HC Potter's HELLZAPOPPIN' (American Revival)

Bank of America Cinema - Saturday, 8pm
This is what happens when a Broadway show that was basically vaudeville gets made into a film. Disconnected and thin on plot, this is nevertheless a cinematic plum. Our hosts for the evening are Olson and Johnson, a comedy duo made up of two straight men who can't help but talk to the audience and yell at the projectionist. There's some funny gags, a song or two from "the Big Mouth," Martha Raye, and a great Lindy Hop dance scene featuring Frankie Manning, but the shining moments are when the characters get to play with the fourth wall. In what can only be the inspiration for MST3K, the opening sequence takes place on a soundstage where Olson and Johnson argue with a director and screenwriter about how to turn their show into a movie. They sit down to watch some footage covering the tacked-on love story, and make up their own dialog for the on screen action before seamlessly becoming part of it. Despite failing to capture the mythic energy of the stage show with which it shares a name, HELLZAPOPPIN' still pleases almost 70 years later. (1941, 84 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Lisandro Alonso's LIVERPOOL (New Argentinean)

Facets Cinémathèque - Saturday 1pm and Sunday, 1pm and 3pm
Distance. Space. Solitude. With a minimum of dialog and obvious flair, Alonso explores these themes as both form and content. When we drop in on our protagonist, Farrel (Juan Fernández), he is aboard a shipping vessel. Although he interacts with his shipmates and is not obtuse, conversations consist of few words and no sharing. One gets the impression that he prefers spending his down time alone, smoking cigarettes on the deck and starring at the endless ocean. When he says that he is going on shore leave there is little emotion in his voice, as if time and location are irrelevant to him. But time and location are of utmost importance to Alonso and his film. As Farrel journeys from an unnamed port city to his parent's home in a run-down logging camp the camera keeps its distance, allowing the viewer to take in the snow-covered mountains of Argentina's landscape. Though the landscape is gorgeous, our character is not. The long takes show Farrel as he packs his meager belongings, watches TV while he waits for a ride, and walks the final distance to his home. Our attention is spent on perfunctory actions, not moments of triumph or change. He does not show emotion, and one feels pity for him, but not sorrow. We know he lacks connections to this place--or to any other--and has long since stopped caring. And ultimately so do we stop caring about him, as the film shifts to follow Farrel's discarded daughter for the final fifteen minutes. Every shot of LIVERPOOL is mundane yet precise, restrained and enunciated. An economy of detail and drama are Alonso's tools here, and their power is mighty. (2008, 84 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

David Lynch's BLUE VELVET (American Revival/Cult)

Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 7 and 9:30pm
This is where the legend really began. It's curious to think how Lynch's career would have developed if DUNE (1984) had not been a box office failure, but cinema history can thank him for not playing it safe with this rebound project. Though Lynch had already made three features, VELVET was the first full articulation of his core theme of the evil that lurks in small towns everywhere. Not the outright surrealist endeavor that was ERASERHEAD, it is also not the most accessible of narratives. Dark, violent, sexual, and reeking of 1963 suburbia, the film is at times a noir mystery and at others a violent thriller. Many of the visual symbols that would populate TWIN PEAKS are introduced here, such as red curtains appearing when danger is present, and Lynch's continued growth as a complete cinematic artist is evident. Despite having a cast that didn't feature a legitimate star (Dennis Hopper may be the exception, but his career was in the dumps when he was cast...as the third choice), the film earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, as well as praise from critics throughout the world. It's also notable that Kyle MacLachlan (essentially playing Dale Cooper) might never have worked again if not for his excellent performance. Still dangerous twenty years later, the film is as gorgeous as it is classic. (1986, 120 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Gerard Damiano's LET MY PUPPETS COME (Cult/Adult Film Revival)

Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 9:45pm
Gerard Damiano may be the most important director of pornographic film ever. His 1972 film DEEP THROAT created a sensation that almost single-handedly launched the adult entertainment industry. He had another hit with his 1973 follow up, THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES, and went on to direct more than 60 films through the mid '90s. His meteoric rise is the stuff of legend, making this entry into Doc Films' sexploitation series as intriguing as it is odd. The semi-autobiographical tale of a company in financial distress that decides to make a porno to stay afloat is a common premise, but having most of the roles played by puppets is pure genius. Musical numbers abound, and intercourse is an afterthought as foam rubber perverts crack jokes that feel like they came from a foul-mouthed seventh grader and copulate in the most unerotic ways. Complete with a parody of '70s commercials ("Climax watches: they take a lickin'..."), this film really is a product of its era. Lighthearted and at times hilarious, PUPPETS has to be seen to be believed. (1977, 75 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Films by Maya Deren (Experimental Revival)

Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Tuesday, 7pm
Leaving aside the filmmaking for a moment, it is fair to say that only a few individuals rival Maya Deren's importance in the development of the American Experimental cinema, and none of the early figures can rival the tales of her rich life and forceful personality. There's an often-repeated rumor that she once used her Voodoo powers, acquired while researching for an anthropology book in Haiti (The Divine Horseman), to pick up a refrigerator and toss it at a houseguest who had overstayed his welcome. An astute theorist and tireless promoter of the art, Deren's early films took the psychodrama of European filmmakers such as Jean Cocteau and morphed them to create a foundation for the personal-lyrical filmmaking of early Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger, and her later films foreshadowed the Structuralist work of Michael Snow and Ernie Gehr. Though she only completed a handful of films in her short life, they are each almost unanimous classics of the genre. Talk to any film professor worth their salt and you'll hear about the groundbreaking editing in MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON, the elegant spatial manipulation of A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR THE CAMERA, and the formal shamanism in MEDITATION ON VIOLENCE. Although her work is now quite accessible on DVD, all true believers of the Church of Cinema need to march down to Hyde Park to see these films as they were intended. Also showing: AT LAND, RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME, THE WITCH'S CRADLE, and THE VERY EYE OF NIGHT. (1945-55, 86 min total, 16mm) JH - Cine-File.info