My curatorial swansong - this week at Cinematheque

Yes folks, you read it right, my time as curator at the Chauvel Cinematheque has come to an end. On the 5th of February I received an email from the manager of the Chauvel Cinema stating that my services programming cinematheque would no longer be required. I knew the writing was on the wall when the Saturday screenings were canned a few months back and replaced with sessions of Madagascar 2, but it was still a shock.

A Cinematheque will continue at the Chauvel, but the programming will now be done in-house. You'll now have to go to the Chauvel website to find out what's on.

After more than two and a half years and close to 300 shows, I still felt I had more to give, in fact I felt I was just starting to find some real momentum, with some exciting new film suppliers in the wings, a growing active membership and growing input from the members.

The good news is that my tenure as the curator of the Cinematheque will go out with a bang. The last show is on at 6:30 March the 2nd and is the last part in a month long look at the phenomenon of multi-screen movies, or movies that use multiple projectors.

The ultimate night comprises a double feature of multi-screen works by local arts/music experimentalists The Stud and Track Recording Company. The first is a retooling of a 1999 show performed live at the Side On Cafe in Sydney called Idaho Transfer. This show uses a captioned-for-the-deaf print of Peter Fonda's bizarre 1973 science fiction film (above), projected in a twin screen format and given a new, improvised, lo-fi, psychedelic, garage-rock soundtrack by the Stud and Track House Band. The music was recorded at a rehearsal for the show in 1999 and will be remixed live on the night by Brad Maiden.

The second half of the show is a new work, Journey to the Seventh Planet, devised especially for this show. It features a twin screen presentation of the Z-grade Danish science fiction film, a kind of poor man's Solaris, with a new soundtrack that combines elements of the film's original soundtrack, with ambient, electronic and experimental music.

Both shows will showcase the amazing power and fidelity of Lenard Audio's Cinesthesia sound system.

I've always dreamed of filling the main Chauvel cinema and this is my last chance, so if you've enjoyed cinematheque in the past, please come and say hello... and goodbye. Hope to see you there.

I have enjoyed my tenure as the curator of the cinematheque and thank Chauvel and Palace Cinemas for giving me the opportunity in the first place. I will take some time out to renovate the home, concentrate on my University studies, and look after my (soon-to-be) two kids. Hopefully, I can get something else together sometime later in the year. The wheels are already turning. I have a giant backlog of material that was meant for this blog, so I will be updating it regularly. Thanks to all the members past and present.

Expanded Cinema - this week at Cinematheque

Week Three of a month long look at the phenomenon of multi-screen movies continues this week at the Chauvel Cinematheque. This special event is devoted to (mostly) Australian experimental art films that use two and three projectors.

6:30pm Monday 23/2/9 EXPANDED CINEMA

Razor Blades USA/1968/Colour/25mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Paul Sharits.

From the filmmaker: “A mandala opens to the other side of consciousness. Since the film ends as it begins and because its inner fabric is made up of loops, an infinite loop is suggested.” Sharits hopes this twin screen flicker film provides "occasions for meditational-visionary experience."
“A barrage of high powered and often contradictory stimuli… We feel at times hypnotised and re-educated by some potent and mysterious force.” David Beinstock, Whitney Museum.

Rotunda Australia/1980/Colour/11mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: John Dunkley Smith.

An exercise in perception involving spatial and temporal interplay. Although shot patterns have been determined with a mathematical precision, the film is constructed by the viewer's apprehension/ordering/re-ordering of the constituent elements. There is also scope for the intrusion of chance elements not only within the images themselves but also in the slight variations of image juxtaposition which can occur as a result of the differences in running speed between projectors. This film involves a panning camera placed in the centre of a rotunda in a park. Twin screen presentation.

Experiments Australia/1982/Colour/54mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Dirk de Bruyn.

A series of experiments employing a range of techniques including refilmed images, solarisation, time-lapse, animation of found objects, word-puns, letrasetted and recycled soundtracks, pixillation, hand dyed film and rapid editing. The filmmaker describes it as 'a scream from suburbia' and 'a statement about filmmaking itself'. A twin screen film.

The City Australia/1970/Colour/8mins/16mm/NFVLS Producers: Arthur Cantrill, Corinne Cantrill.

A composite view of the city is created by three films screened simultaneously. The centre film has a soundtrack of mechanised noise.

Meteor Crater - Gosse Bluff Australia/1978/Colour/6mins/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: Arthur & Corinne Cantrill.

A composite view of a meteor crater is created by a central picture of superimposed images framed by two circling images of 360 degree pans of the crater.

The Chelsea Girls - this week at cinematheque

This week we say goodbye to the serial and look once again to the 1960s as Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls kicks off a month of multi-screen movies at the Chauvel Cinematheque.

MON. 9/2 at 6:30pm sharp - THE CHELSEA GIRLS PT. 1

USA/1969/Colour & B&W/105mins/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: Andy Warhol.

Chelsea Girls comprises twelve reels of film (the last four in colour) each running 35 minutes in a continuous unedited 'take' shot with a static camera but with sometimes frequent use of zoom. Each reel was supposedly shot in rooms in New York's Chelsea Hotel with Warhol Factory types, sometimes drug-dazed, more or less being themselves or acting out sketchily conceived roles. Warhol's film is both a document of the period and a film which implicitly has as its subject the nature of cinema and cinematic expression, from the role of the camera through the notion of stardom to the conventions of projecting and viewing the finished work. Chelsea Girls makes a transition from the aesthetic minimalism of Warhol's earlier films to the relatively more commercial movie-making of Lonesome Cowboys and Paul Morrisey's subsequent films. The cast includes Nico, Ari, Bob 'Ondine' Olivio, Bridget Polk, Ingrid Superstar, Ed Hood, Mario Montez, Eric Emerson, Mary Might, International Velvet, Marie Menken, and Gerard Malanga.

“The results are often spellbinding.” Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

NOTE: The film will be projected in a twin-screen format with sound from only one of the two reels on the screen and projection staggered to allow for reel changes. Due to the length of this film, the film will be screened in two parts over two weeks. As the film is non-narrative it is not necessary to see both parts, but it is recommended.

MON. 16/2 at 6:30pm sharp - THE CHELSEA GIRLS PT. 2

Chelsea Girls Pt. 2 USA/1969/Colour & B&W/105mins/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: Andy Warhol.

“In stripping the cinematic medium of its pretensions and decorations, Warhol has produced an art statement that is likely to be acceptable only to the very few. Whatever one's opinion of the merits of the films, it must surely be admitted that Warhol has finally forced a realignment of the purpose, place, and function of the artist, who is no longer solely a technician or a decorator, but is now strictly an idea man and director. Much of his subject matter is, in one way or another, the subject matter of the commercial artist; in this manner big business and the immediate past, probably the two most difficult things for the contemporary artist to come to terms with, become for Warhol both the content and the product of his art." Gregory Battcock, Art Journal