Magnificat: Films by Pat O'Neill (Experimental)

Chicago Filmmakers (at the Second Unitarian Church of Chicago, 656 W. Barry Ave.) - Friday, 8:30pm
Any screening of Pat O'Neill's work is work checking out, but placing his beautiful, repetitive, and glowing images inside the walls of a church makes the experience extra special. Working with a combination of animation, optical printing, fragments of found footage, and his own precise cinematography, O'Neill delights in the absurd juxtapositions of life. His films have a wit that is often lacking in an artist of such technical mastery, and invite the viewer to be both absorbed into the psychedelic glow of matted outlines on the screen and delight in the skewering of consumerism and the construct of urban/suburban sprawl for which his hometown of Los Angeles is known. Covering much of his filmic output during the 1970s, this collection of shorts marries his imagery to the familiar sounds of movie soundtrack explosions, fragments of seemingly random speech ("they injected a bubble into my brain at that time...") and pop music from a banjo rendition of "Dixie" to the needle drop of T-Rex's IS IT LOVE. This audio-visual combination not only provides fluidity and contrast, it adds to the sardonic nature of his work. Films screening: DOWN WIND (1973), LAST OF THE PERSIMMONS (1972), SAUGUS SERIES (1974), SIDEWINDERS DELTA (1976), and RUNS GOOD (1971). (1971-76, 74 min total, 16mm)  JH

Pat O'Neill's WATER AND POWER (Experimental Revival)

Experimental Film Society (SAIC, 112 S Michigan Ave, Rm. 1307)  - Tuesday, 4:30pm
In early films like 1967's 7362 or 1971's RUNS GOOD Pat O'Neill used an Optical Printer and sophisticated matting effects to play, as if he was crafting short sonnet-films. By 1989 he outgrew the trickster's humor of special effects and gave us his first bit of epic poetry with WATER AND POWER. An ode to the city of Los Angeles, layered images juxtapose facets the multi-ethnic metropolis that sprouted from the desert in Southern California to become a Mecca for the American Dream, and a synonym for traffic jams and capitalist excess. Found footage is mixed with time-lapse shots and staged sequences. We move from city to desert, and back again along the pipelines that bring water to the thirsty machine. He wants to show us the energy of his city and how the parts contribute to the whole, but as the New York Times said when the film was released, "Mr. O'Neill's major concern is the power of film to redefine and control all images, even natural ones." Reductionism would never befit an artistic exploration of any urban area, and O'Neill's complexity as a filmmaker seeks to touch on the range of surprises that make LA unique, as a story and an experiment. (1989, 54 min, 16mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Pat O'Neill's THE DECAY OF FICTION (Experimental)

Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Friday, 7pm
When someone becomes a master in a commercial craft that becomes technologically obsolete, what is there left to do? For one thing, they can make films about places that have also outlived their original purpose, as Pat O'Neill does in this 2002 feature film. An optical printer by practice and occupation, O'Neill casts L.A.'s now demolished Ambassador Hotel as the protagonist and explores the corridors and cavities that were once the playground of Hollywood elites. Black and white ghosts float through the Cocoanut Grove nightclub providing snippets of dialogue of classic Noir films, and attempt to breathe life into the now empty opulence. Chants of "we want Bobby" are heard as we track through the kitchen that was the site of RFK's assassination, and a woman hypnotizes countless men in one of the upstairs suites. In the end, only devils and angels remain as the sun sets on our star, and perhaps on the glory of O'Neill's seamless camera and metaphor, holding on to the golden era of machination. Pat O’Neill in person. (2002, 74 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info