Rooftop Cinema Returns
To the MMoCA Sculpture Garden
Madison, WI – Summer in the city took a fanciful, avant-garde turn last June when the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) introduced Rooftop Cinema: Film and Video Under the Stars. With blankets and camp chairs in tow, film fans found their way to the MMoCA sculpture garden, overlooking State Street, to watch theme-based programs of works by independent filmmakers.
The series continues this June with four more evenings of short films and videos. Beginning June 8 and continuing on Friday evenings through the end of the month, Rooftop Cinema will offer a fascinating mix of classic and contemporary works ranging from 3 to 30 minutes in length. Screenings will begin at 9:30 pm each evening. In case of rain, programs will be moved to the museum's lecture hall.
The cost of attending Rooftop Cinema is $5/evening or $15 for the series. Admission is free for museum members.
Rooftop Cinema is curated by Tom Yoshikami, who has chosen a different theme-based grouping of four to six short works for each Friday evening.
June 8
The Strange World of Science Fiction
Science Fiction
dir. J.J. Murphy
USA, 1979, 16mm, color/sound, 5 min.
A recycled film that playfully explores the space-time continuum as it applies to narrative structure. "J.J. Murphy's Science Fiction, a dazzling five-minute experimental fantasy that at first appears to be a 1950s travelogue gone awry, features technical trickery that will impress and bewilder filmgoers and filmmakers." -- Max J. Alvarez, Milwaukee Journal
Visitor
dir. Frank Cantone Jr.
USA, 1985, 16mm, B&W/sound, 2.5 min.
A “sci-fi” comedy, done with clay figures on a miniature set, about a large alien who lands in a town on a moon-like planet. The villages are terrified, but all it wants is a large “Lunar Burger,” to the relief of the villagers.
Dwarf Star
dir. Michael Kuchar
USA, 1974, 16mm, color/sound, 20 min.
Kuchar's imagination flies off the handle as he speculates on the year 6000,000,000 A. D. when a divided human race is brought together to confront a state of affairs that include galactic empires, cybernetics, evolution, nature worship, and the biggest atomic explosion the forces of heaven can let loose. So fasten your seatbelts for a journey into the far exotic future and the stars beyond.
La Jetée (The Jetty)
dir. Chris Marker
France, 1962, 16mm, B&W/sound, 28 min.
Marker’s sole fiction film is constructed (with one crucial exception) from still photographs that are combined with voiceover narration and music. The result is one of cinema’s most compelling works, a love story set in a bleak future and involving time travel and memory. This ecstatic, lyrical film conveys the pain and weight of modern history and the intense power of images. -- Harvard Film Archive
June 15
By Hand: the Art of Animation
Ryan
dir. Chris Landreth
Canada, 2004, DVD, color/sound, 14 min.
A gentleman panhandler. One of the pioneers of Canadian animation. Oscar nominee. Poor beggar. An artist unable to create. God observing the world. Fallen angel. Arrogant. Shy. Broken. Not destroyed. Ryan, is an animated tribute to Canadian animator Ryan Larkin. Thirty years ago, at the National Film Board of Canada, Ryan produced some of the most influential animated films of his time.
The 40 and 1 Nights (or Jess' Didactic Nickelodeon)
dir. Larry Jordan
USA, 1961, 16mm, color/sound, 6 min.
Bay Area filmmaker Larry Jordan has produced some 40 experimental and animation films since 1952. (His recent films Enid’s Idyll and Poet’s Dream screened at the Wisconsin Film Festival.) In The 40 and 1 Nights, painter and collage artist, Jess (Collins) performs 41 (now lost) collages to (his) selected sound bits in the manner of a turn-of-the-century nickelodeon.
Spiral
dir. Emily Breer
USA, 1987, 16mm, color/sound, 12 min.
Filmmaker, painter, and sculptor Emily Breer’s penchant for wonderful, wacky abandon and a hearty sense of humor are evident in Spiral, though the film is far more introspective and personal than her previous efforts. The film layers ambient sound and disparate images and results in “a spiraling in, a microscopic view, a peering inside.” – Robin Dickie
The Film that Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter
dir. Owen Land
USA, 1968, 16mm, B&W/sound, 9 min.
An illustrator drawing figures that resemble Tibetan deities can’t believe his eyes when they appear to come to life and dance on the paper; trapped between 2D and 3D space, the characters’ eerie limbo is amplified by the sinister loop of the soundtrack. – Harvard Film Archive
Trikfilm 3
dir. George Griffin
USA, 1973, 16mm, color/sound, 4 min.
"A self-referential animation, allowing the viewer to see the animator's hand and coffee cup, as well as pads of animated drawings. Amusing and educational for all ages, combining animation and live action in a manner reminiscent of the early Fleischer 'out of the inkwell' cartoons." -- Ron Epple
"A brilliant parody on animation… I loved this film." - Stan Vanderbeek
70
dir. Robert Breer
USA, 1970,16mm, color/silent, 4 min.
Robert Breer – one of the major colorists of the avant-garde – uses spray paint, “which spreads over his white cards as a borderless affirmation of pure color, as well as bounded solid colors. He complemented the shapelessness of the sprayed cards with a play between hard-edged and soft forms throughout the film” (P. Adams Sitney).
June 22
Film as/on a Battlefield
Anaconda Targets
dir. Dominic Angerame
USA, 2004, DVD, B&W/sound, 12 min.
About 2,000 troops from the US-led military coalition were engaged in close in combat on March 4, 2002 with small pockets of suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the rugged terrain of northeastern Afghanistan as part of an operation called Operation Anaconda. The footage in the piece is filmed and audio taped from a US gunship helicopter that was part of this mission. Screened in the 2006 Whitney Biennial.
Neighbours
dir. Norman McLaren
Canada, 1952, DVD, color/sound, 9 min.
When two friendly neighbors discover that a flower has grown in the very middle of their respective properties, each is determined to claim the flower as his own. McLaren adopts techniques commonly used to put drawings or puppets into motion, using them, instead, to animate live actors. Winner of an Academy Award in 1953.
Cosmetic Emergency
dir. Martha Colburn
USA, 2005, DVD, color/sound, 8 min.
A free-form take on the current trend of cosmetic obsession and the immortal quality of painting, the film searches for "what’s on the inside." Topical news stories (such as the US military offering free cosmetic surgery) and musical film sequences are created with paint-on-glass animation, found footage and documentary techniques.
Diploteratology: Bardo Follies
dir. Owen Land
USA, 1967, 16mm, B&W/silent, 7 min.
A shot of a Southern Belle waving to group of tourists on a pleasure boat ride is looped, multiplied and then melted, creating psychedelic abstract images. These globular forms resemble cellular, microscopic or cosmic structures. “A paraphrasing of certain sections of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in motion picture terms.”
Friendly Fire
dir. Thorston Fleisch
USA, 2003, 16mm, color/sound, 7 min.
Burned filmstrips meet the light and invade the screen with structures of residue, ashes, flames and destruction. New landscapes and worlds appear in the state of disintegration by fire. The former carrier of conserved imagery is now in full bloom of organic splendor. The lifeless filmstrips have been resurrected.
June 29
W.O.R.D. G.A.M.E.S.
Word Movie (Fluxfilm 29)
dir. Paul Sharits
USA, 1966, 16mm, color/sound, 4 min.
Approximately 50 words visually "repeated" in varying sequential and positioned relationships/spoken word soundtrack/structured, each frame being a different word or word fragment, so that the individual words optically-conceptually fuse into one three and three-quarter minute-long word.
Associations
dir. John Smith
UK, 1975, 16mm, color/sound, 7 min.
Images from magazines and color supplements accompany a spoken text taken from 'Word Associations and Linguistic Theory' by Herbert H Clark. By using the ambiguities inherent in the English language, 'Associations' sets language against itself. Image and word work together/against each other to destroy/create meaning.
Test
dir. Kerry Laitala
USA, 1998, 16mm color/sound, 3 min.
As 4000 questions flurry past the retinas of the viewer, one becomes aware of the futility of trivial pursuits. An I.Q examination for the manic on speed.....A readymade little gem found in an abandoned Movie Palace in Boston, MA
Bleu Shut
dir. Robert Nelson
USA, 1970, 16mm, color/sound, 30 min.
“Boat-name quizzes, dogs, cuts from Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc in montage with a sultry whore, a car running up a ramp and crashing, pornography, a passionate embrace by a thirties hero and heroine; all somehow implicating Dreyer and Joan in the perverse synthesis of sex and technology." –Leo Regan.