Sight Unseen and Secret Psychic Cinema co-present Spatial, Celestial, Cerebral: Short Films by Woman Filmmakers
Sight Unseen and Secret Psychic Cinema present
“Spatial, Celestial, Cerebral: Short Films by Woman Filmmakers”
Monday, March 19th
$10 general admission, $9 students
Parkway Theatre 3
7:30PM
PROGRAM
TRT: 63 minutes
Bouquets 1 – 10, Rose Lowder, 1994-1995, 16mm, silent, 10m
BOUQUETS 1 -10 is a part of a series of one minute films covering a variety of subjects. Composed frame by frame in the camera during filming, these Bouquets were recorded by weaving alternatively frames gathered in one area at different times.
Hand Eye Coordination, Naomi Uman, 2002, 16mm, sound, 10m
The film tells the story of its own making.
The Fourth Watch, Janie Geiser, 2000, 16mm, sound, 9m
Music by Tom Recchion.
The ancient Greeks divided the night into four sections; the last section before morning was called the fourth watch. In these hours before dawn, an endless succession of rooms is inhabited by silent film figures occupying flickering space in a midcentury house made of printed tin. Their presence is at once inevitable and uncanny. A boy turns his head in dread, a woman’s eyes look askance, a sleepwalker reaches into a cabinet which dissolves with her touch, and hands write letters behind disappearing windows. The rooms reveal themselves and fill with impossible, shadowed light. It is not clear who is watching and who is trespassing in this nocturnal drama of lost souls.
My Name is Oona, Gunvor Nelson, 1969, 16mm, sound, 10m
“But the revelation of the program is Gunvor Nelson, true poetess of the visual cinema. MY NAME IS OONA captures in haunting, intensely lyrical images fragments of the coming to consciousness of a child girl. A series of extremely brief flashes of her moving through night-lit space or woods in sensuous negative, separated by rapid fades into blackness, burst upon us like a fairy-tale princess, with a late sun only partially outlining her and the animal in silvery filigree against the encroaching darkness; one of the most perfect recent examples of poetic cinema. Throughout the entire film, the girl, compulsively and as if in awe, repeats her name, until it becomes a magic incantation of self-realization.”
– Amos Vogel, The Village Voice
Bad mama, who cares, Brigid McCaffrey, 2016, 35mm to digital, sound, 12m
Geologist Ren Lallatin has moved into a small housing complex located between a rail yard and the interstate. Desert vistas are replaced with an arsenal of tactile pursuits, while the situation of the house becomes unstable. Free falling from a fixed point, the perimeter is ornamented for security. Desert winds animate aluminum mobiles and seismic vibrations serenade the home.
Skelehellavision, Martha Colburn , 2002, 16mm, sound, 8m
This is a film exploiting inventive techniques of animation in an attempt to realize the world that may await us after death. Using found pornography as part of the film and literally scratching skeletons over the footage frame-by-frame.
Lunar Almanac, Malena Szlam, 2014, 16mm, silent, 4m
“Lunar Almanac initiates a journey through magnetic spheres with its staccato layering of single-frame, long exposures of a multiplied moon. Shot in 16mm Ektachrome and hand processed, the film’s artisanal touches are imbued with nocturnal mystery.”
—Andréa Picard, TIFF Wavelengths, 2014
ABOUT
Sight Unseen is a Baltimore based film series that focuses on emerging and established artists who work with innovative ways of working with materiality, sound & narrative through moving images and performances. Sight Unseen has been running since 2012 and is curated by Margaret Rorison.
Secret Psychic Cinema is a film series created in 2015 by Meredith Moore. The series has brought filmmakers and curators from around the country for inspired programming to a growing audience. Secret Psychic Cinema has prided itself in hosting experimental work, offering a platform for filmmakers to to share their work and continue to explore alternative modes of filmmaking.