The Wild Triumphs of Martha Colburn (Experimental Animation)

Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center - Thursday, 6pm
For well over a decade, Martha Colburn has been making short anti-establishment works that are political without being statements. Full of chaos and a punk-rock aesthetic, her films critique modern life with cut-out puppets and found-footage but avoid intellectual elitism. If her imagery didn't come at you so fast, her films might be described as fun. Instead, they're cathartic capsules of directed anger. This program packs 15 films into 75 minutes, offering a good overview of the development of Colburn's practice. In the early LIFT OFF (1993) and EVIL OF DRACULA (1997) female sexuality is at the forefront, as images from magazines are manipulated into sexy astronauts and bloodsuckers. The animation is raw, and the low-fi soundtracks are reminiscent of a monster truck show announcer. Colburn also paints over the images, sometimes adding body parts, and often giving us rotating spirals. More sophisticated jointed puppets populate SPIDERS IN LOVE (2000) and CATS AMORE (2002) as arachnids with human heads and erotic dancers with cat heads seduce their targets: boy spiders and dogs. Lust and objectification are projected onto Colburn's humanoid puppets and their animated audience, celebrating red-hot sexual attraction. Her newer work is more overtly topical, covering plastic surgery (COSMETIC EMERGENCY), the "cowboy" military in Iraq (DESTINY MANIFESTO), and methamphetamine addiction (MYTH LABS). This later work is less busy, displacing rapid-fire guitars with piano, strings, and classical vocals on the soundtrack. There is an elegance in form at times, despite the still crude manner of the puppets' movements. Also screening: WHAT'S ON? (1997), MEET ME IN WICHITA (2006), DON'T KILL THE WEATHERMAN (2007), ONE AND ONE IS LIFE (2009), ELECTRIC LITERATURE (2009), JOIN THE FREEDOM FORCE (2009), TRIUMPH OF THE WILD (2009), and DOLLS VS. DICTATORS (2011). Colburn in person. (1993-2011, approx. 75 min, various formats) JH - Cine-File.info

Klaus vom Bruch's DAS SCHLEYERBAND (Experimental Revival)

White Light Cinema at The Nightingale - Sunday, 7pm
Often, the use of found footage to comment on events of the recent past involves heavy manipulation of mass produced media. There is an overt effort to deconstruct scraps of industrial communication, and to decode hidden truths about the modern world through the use of jarring visual effects. The resistance to this impulse is what makes vom Bruch's lengthy video both refreshing and hermetic. Utilizing a mixture of television news footage, commercials, and propaganda tapes from the Red Army Faction (the Anglicized name of the Baader-Meinhof group), vom Bruch's work poses more questions about West German society thirty years after the end of WWII than it answers. Images related to the kidnapping of a former SS officer who became one of the country's leading industrialists, Hanns Martin Schleyer, as well as those of a Lufthansa plane that was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists, are presented in an almost episodic fashion. Often lasting for a few minutes without cutting, vom Bruch forces the audience to rewatch newscasts of the violent "German Autumn," without the emotional distance of analysis. This approach to the subject matter serves to critique the violent nature of events without positing a reason why. The addition of images of product consumption alongside the self-produced materials of left-wing domestic terrorists seems to imply that the common thread of the West German national identity has frayed, and the lack of distinction between the two poles is an eloquent reflection of the artist's inability to make sense of what has happened. In many ways, the violent fall of 1977 was the most important national event for Germans between 1945 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, but not one that vom Bruch wants to glorify. Introduced by DePaul and Columbia College film instructor Therese Grisham. (1977-78, 112 min, video) JH - Cine-File.info

CFA Road Trip: A North American Travelogue (Special Event)

Gene Siskel Film Center - Sunday, 5:15pm
Watching this collection of amateur and industrial films, one can't help but get nostalgic for a time when "road trip" referred to wholesome family fun, and the cost of gas wasn't an issue. Although most of the pieces included in this archival screening, curated by former Chicagoan KJ Mohr, are technically home movies, they were chosen because they show a love for the landscapes they capture. Of particular note is the excerpt of GLACIER PARK #1, shot in 1954. The mountains, vistas, and fall colors are gorgeous, but the more interesting part is the portraits that visitors to the park take with headdress wearing Indians. As much a piece of history, and with the most charming hand-drawn intertitles this reviewer has ever seen, is GYPSYMANIA. This rambling road movie, shot in both the US and Mexico, catalogs one families' vacation in the early 1940s and, while watching it, you can almost picture the church basement where this adventure was shared with the whole town. The industrials from Ford Motor Company and Castle Films have a sense of purpose that is admirable. They work as the travel shows of their day, selling destinations like Bryce Canyon (along with a shiny new automobile...travel wherever you want..."with reliability, safety, and economy!") and Banff/Lake Louise (apparently a country club in the Canadian Rockies). Watching these commercial productions is a healthy reminder that not all corporate endeavors are bad. The cherry on top of this show is the final amateur film, SUNNY CUBA. In lush color, it depicts the island nation in 1946. In a beautiful night sequence that lasts almost a minute, the neon signs of Havana dissolve from one to the next, almost as if the corporate logos were etched on a black background. Rural life is also shown, with oxen plowing fields and farmers working the land with hand-powered tools. Although most of the films included were originally silent, the screening will be accompanied by a live electronic score by local musician and videomaker Kent Lambert, and selections from the audio archive of LA based filmmaker Timoleon Wilkins. The screening will be hosted by WBEZ's Allison Cuddy and introduced by curator Mohr. (1937-1954, 89 min total, various formats) JH - Cine-File.info

Olivia Wyatt's STARING INTO THE SUN (Experimental Documentary)

The Nightingale - Friday, 8pm
Having been continuously inhabited since before the record of history began, the diversity of the human experience in Eastern Africa is difficult to comprehend in anything other than abstract terms. Ethiopia is a country made up of 85 million people and over 80 distinct cultures with just as many indigenous languages. So what better way to learn about the country and its people than through a travel documentary, right? Wyatt's film portrays 13 different tribes but, as travel documentaries go, it gives a distinct lack of contextual information. We get subtitles telling us the location and name of the people featured in each section, and we become acutely aware that these are just labels and not definitions. We observe the visual and aural uniqueness of each segment, but there is no narration to lead us along the way. Differences in clothing and hair styles are lingered upon by the camera, and almost ever scene features singing, whether it is part of a wedding celebration, a chant during a ritual feeding of hyenas, or a multiphonic song to ease the stress of manual labor. Because we don't get a translation of what is going on, this makes the viewing experience more like being a foreigner in a strange country for the first time, and less like a reader of Lonely Planet. Structurally, this is both refreshing and disorienting. Sights and sounds from one village blend into those from another, and our learning about Ethiopia occurs in real time. The details of each tribal member become of lesser import than the greater societies from which they are born, and the diversity of the country is realized in our inability to define it in broad strokes. You won't leave the screening with a handful of facts about the country, but your mental image of Ethiopia will be sharper and closer to the real thing. Also screening is Wyatt's SEEKING THE SPIRIT (2010, 10 min, video), a powerful but gentle portrait of the congregation of the Celestial Church of Christ and their annual month-long worship ritual on Rockaway Beach in New York City. The practitioners, most of whom are immigrants from Benin, practice their unique form of Pentecostalism between the hours of Midnight and 6am. Their leader and prophet explains their beliefs to us in voice-over, and the black and white images of white-clad men and women gesticulating almost as if possessed remind us of the power of belief. (2010, 60 min, video) JH - Cine-File.info

The Voyagers - A Double Feature: Works by Penny Lane and Brian Frye (Experimental)

The Voyagers: Part One - Video Inquiry: Work by Penny Lane
The Nightingale - Saturday, 7pm
There are some auteurs that use a distinctive camera style or work with the same themes over and over. And then there are those like Penny Lane who jump around visually and thematically, but whose work is united through a distinctive voice. In pieces such as WE ARE THE LITTLETONS (2004) this voice is literal, as Lane narrates. It is in an investigation into the whereabouts of an adopted child cast out of the family, but it may as well be about any black sheep. As the camera wanders throughout the now empty home, drawers are opened revealing memories both happy and sad, but as correspondence between the filmmaker and the matron unfold on the soundtrack Lane suggests that black sheep, like the rest of us, are shaped by their environment. The way digital environments shape their users is explored in both MEN SEEKING WOMEN (2007) and SOMETIMES I GET LOSSY (2008), as Lane checks in on both the personals section of Craigslist and her own screen induced boredom/psychedelic daydream. Time is the place that defines THE VOYAGERS (2010). Using the Golden Record that was placed aboard the Voyager spacecraft as a jumping off point, Lane frames this particular NASA project as a love-letter to the chance happening that is the existence of the human race. A launching into the unknown, a wonderment at the beauty of existence, and a touching piece involving both Carl Sagan and Coney Island, it is her wedding present to her husband, Brian Frye. ALSO SCREENING: HOW TO MAKE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (2010), FAMOUS LUNCH 03.25.05 (2009), SHE USED TO SEE HIM MOST WEEKENDS (2007), and THE COMMONERS (2009). Penny Lane in person. (2004-10, approx. 53 min total, video)
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The Voyagers: Part Two - The Anatomy of Cinema: Films by Brian Frye
White Light Cinema at The Nightingale- Saturday, 9pm 
It is hard to describe the work of Brian Frye as anything other than distant. Distant serendipity (THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, 1999). Distant sublime (THE LETTER, 2001). Distant absurdity (ACROSS THE RAPPANHANNOCK, 2002). Time and again Frye's camera (or that of the original shooter) finds the poetry in a situation by keeping away from the human subjects. This contextualization lends an air of analysis to what are quite lyrical films of memory, history, sorrow, and Civil War reenactment. All the while, as these ghosts haunt the screen, one gets the impression that it is not the misery of the human experience that excites the filmmaker, but rather the hope and joy of those who lives are imperfect. When they are projected through that mystic machine, stiff actors become icons, archetypes for all that is important. The reels contain not stories, but messages from the creator, ciphered by the artist into almost understandable visions that seem to come from the early part of the industrial age. Frye gives these important ideas the space to resonate with the viewer, but also doesn't smother our minds with structure and order. There is not chaos, but a gentle observation of the profound, taken from a safe spot across the river from the real battle. Also Screening: 6.95 STRIPTEASE (1995), 9.95: THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT IN MY LIFE (INFINITE SET) (1995), MEETING WITH KHRUSCHEV (1997), and KADDISH (2002). (1995-2002, approx. 85 min, 16mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Restoring Appearances To Order: Rare Films by Coleen Fitzgibbon (Experimental)

White Light Cinema at The Nightingale - Friday, 7:30pm
When structuralist filmmaking works, its like watching performance art. You are often intrigued and confused, unsure of whether or not you liked it, only able to intelligently speculate on the artists' intentions at a later date. The work of Coleen Fitzgibbon does that too, but in a warmer way. Where Vito Acconci's video work makes you anxious, Fitzgibbon's RESTORING APPEARANCES TO ORDER IN 12 MINUTES (1975, 12 min, 16mm) delivers calm like a cup of chamomile. The camera holds a static close up as Fitzgibbon scrubs a well-used utility sink throughout, clearing up every drop of paint from the labor of art making. More ambitious and more uneven is L.E.S. (1976, 30 min, S8mm on video), a neighborhood portrait cum mockumentary about the residents of Manhattan's Lower East Side. The narrator vacillates between speaking as a news reporter and an anthropologist, and when the film works, spins tales about the native dwellers of the apocalyptic landscape. An indictment of capitalism and its headquarters just to the south, the film also serves as an excellent document of urban decay before gentrification was part of our vernacular. It is political in its very existence, and is a welcome counterbalance to Fitzgibbon's more formal work. ALSO SCREENING: GYM (1973, 4 min, S8mm on video), TIME (1975, 8 min, 16mm), TRIP TO CAROLEE'S (1973, 6 min, S8mm on video), MARGIES HOUSE (1973, 6 min, S8mm on video). JH - Cine-File.info

Comedic Video Art: Visual Poetics and Songs about Dogs (Experimental)

Hopscotch Cinema at the Nightingale - Sunday, 7pm
This trifecta of video makers could work as a primer on the lighter side of video art, from the 70s to now. The most famous artist in the show, William Wegman, is known for using his pet Weimaraner (named Man Ray) as a lead actor. Man Ray is often a patient prop, and occasionally annoyed as Wegman dresses him up in a series of ridiculous costumes and narrates a stream of jokes, some better than others. If it's possible for a dog to "ham it up," Man Ray is the all time champion of canine kitsch. A full-time ad man, Neil Ira Needleman was once described as "Woody Allen's funny gay brother." He makes sweet, witty video pieces, often full of self-mockery about his creative process. Suffice it to say his cat makes appearances, and often is a harsh critique of Neil's work. Chad Knutson, the youngest of the bunch is less a product of the video age, and more a phenomenon of the YouTube generation. He points the camera at himself, and half rants, half sings to us. Almost like stand-up comedy without any buildup, his videos are short, variable, and occasionally brilliant. (1978-2010, 70 min total, video) JH - Cine-File.info

Internal Systems: Films by Coleen Fitzgibbon (Experimental Revival)

Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center - Thursday, 6pm
When structuralist filmmaking works, its like watching performance art. You are often intrigued and confused, unsure of whether or not you liked it, only able to intelligently speculate on the artists' intentions at a later date. The work of Coleen Fitzgibbon does that too, but in a warmer way. Where Vito Acconci's video work makes you anxious, Fitzgibbon's RESTORING APPEARANCES TO ORDER IN TWELVE MINUTES (1975, 12 min) delivers calm like a cup of chamomile. The camera holds a static close-up as she scrubs a well-used utility sink throughout, clearing up every drop of paint from the labor of art making. She also tries her hand at found image manipulation in FOUND FILM FLASHES (1974, 3 min), stuttering and blinking her way through what appears to be an interview. The subject never gets to blurt out his story, as the sound skips back and forth and the images slow down in the projector gate. The result is alternating squelch and mind's-eye view, and works to subvert any concrete meaning outside the film itself. The bulk of the program is taken up with INTERNAL SYSTEM (1974, 45 min), an ambitious work of abstract film. The entire frame is taken up with monochromatic color, subtly shifting in hue and saturation and brightness, breaking down the projected image into the barest components of light. Shape, line, texture, and depth are eliminated, leaving only shifts from red to green to blue, broken by clouds of black, and distinguishable only by the change in speed. ALSO SCREENING: FM/TRCS (1974, 11 min) Fitzgibbon in person. (1974-75, 71 min total, 16mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Super-8 Rides Again (Special Event)

Chicago Filmmakers - Friday, 8pm
In the vernacular of cinema nothing says nostalgia and family quite like Super-8mm. With its simple light-tight cartridge and auto-exposure cameras it really was the format that gave the everyman a chance to capture memories when it was introduced in 1965. By reducing the technical skill required for filmmaking down to simply pointing and shooting it exponentially increased the number of home-movie makers and foreshadowed the era of video and the widespread documentation of weddings, school plays, and the oh-so-common Christmas mornings. While the amateur aesthetic this would suggest is not to be ignored during the unique show at Chicago Filmmakers tonight, nostalgia takes a back seat to a celebration of community. Twenty local filmmakers have each been given a single roll of film to shoot and no one, not even the filmmakers, gets a chance to see the results before they screen.* The format inspires introspection and familiarity, and it is sure to be central to a number of the films. For my contribution I walked around the Damen blue line stop early on a weekday morning and took ten-second portraits of people in my neighborhood. Both an experiment and a chance to talk to strangers on the street (I probably asked 75 people before I had enough willing participants), to me the film was a fitting reflection of the show. Being a part of an artistic community like that in Chicago is much like the city we call home: friendly, under the radar, formally challenging, and happy to take a risk. Many of the filmmakers will be in person. (2010, approx. 70 min, Super-8mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Ilisa Barbash & Lucien Castaing-Taylor's SWEETGRASS (New Documentary)

Music Box - Check Venue website for showtimes
Rarely in cinema do we have the chance to witness both an elegy and a eulogy. A simultaneous lament for and celebration of a life that has recently passed on. Such is the power of the silver screen: to take footage of people doing their job, and in the process, encapsulate the death of an era, an occupation, and a national myth of identity. Or at least that's how the team behind SWEETGRASS chooses to use movie magic. Aside from being an excellent collection of Bierdstadtian landscape shots of the Montana Wilderness, the film tells the story of a band of sheep, horses, cowboys (sheep herders, actually), and their dogs during a summer spent grazing on the public lands in high mountain valleys. The film opens in late spring, with snow still on the ground. Quiet and stillness dominate our world, as wide shots of mountain peaks seem to get ever closer to an unseen destination, when finally we cut to a low angle shot of the commercial sheep herd. Hundreds of white sheep stand still, filling the screen and stretching into the distance. The texture of their wool resembles the melting snow we've seen in the preceding shots, and the lack of noise will stand in stark contrast to the rest of the film. Finally we move in to a close-up of a single sheep standing, chewing on grass. Slowly, he turns his head towards the camera, chewing constantly. At the very moment when he finally turns to look straight at the camera, he suddenly stops chewing. He stares straight ahead, blankly, silently, with a small hint of fear, and completely still. And after the title card, our audio endurance test begins. A "baah!" here, and a "baah!" there. Eventually the incessant and overbearing sound of the herd emerges, and a constant drone sustains throughout the entire film. "BAAH! BAAH! BAAH!" Constantly. The sound is deafening, but eventually you begin to pick out the differences in the noises, and almost hear them as voices, and understand the mood of the vocalist. When the Drive begins, we head out as one gigantic group of 1000 sheep, horses, dogs, and people. As we move through forests and over creeks, the skill of the sheep dogs becomes evident. The cowboys constantly call to them, and the dogs usher the herd towards safety. The cowboys split up on the way, and each take a few hundred sheep, a horse, and two or three dogs into a valley, where they stay for the summer. There's quite a bit more humor and drama than you might expect from these men of few words. They live a primitive life, harkening back to an earlier era. They sleep in canvas tents and cook with wood-burning stoves. But they also carry sophisticated cameras (for documenting a sheep killed by a bear) and cell phones. They exist in two worlds, and one of those worlds is coming to a close. However, this really is the story of the sheep, and when everyone comes back from the mountains for the very last time, the sheep are sent off to slaughter. The cowboys, knowing that an occupation that they personally had held for a lifetime was gone forever, drive home, saying nothing to one another. The sheep were gone, and in the typical Western economy of language, so were all the words. (2009, 101 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info