Sunday, Feb. 20 Ð SFAI 7:30PM THE CIRCUMSPECT HEDONIST: FILMS BY KURT KREN In person: Kurt Kren The world of Kurt Kren is one of paradox, reflecting the extremes that have inflected Viennese art during the 20th century. Uniting a formalist precision with the wit and exuberance of a natural-born hedonist, Kren's films give the appearance of spontaneity and chance but actually spring from careful observation and contemplation. They are brief (most run 5 or 6 minutes) but open up a universe of sensations and emotions. Kren collaborated with some of the most sexually adventurous artists of the 1960s (Otto Muehl, Gunter Brus, Hermann Nitsch) and yet is himself a very private person. All of these contradictions come together in an extraordinary body of film art. For Kren's first appearance in the United States since 1984, he will show 17 of the films he has made over the past 35 years. Join us for this rare chance to see the work of one of the true giants of experimental film. Presented through the support of Sixpack Film (Vienna) and the Austrian Ministry of Trade and Culture. Cinematheque members alert! Current members are invited to a gathering in honor of Kurt Kren on Monday, Feb. 21st between 4 and 6 PM at a place TBA. Call the office for details. Thursday, Feb. 24ÑCA 7:30 PM ÒUNPLUG YOUR ORGASM FROM THE MACHINEÓ Films and Talk by Manuel De Landa Mexican-born author, 3-D computer graphics pioneer, radical theoretician, and incendiary filmmaker Manuel DeLanda will present a special program of his rarely seen films followed by a talk on one of his most recent theories. During the early '80s DeLanda produced a number of extraordinary films conflating subjects like Lacanian theory and film noir (Raw Nerves) into wild, freewheeling rides through the throbbing fissures of a frighteningly unique mind. Recently, his work as an author Ña book, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (Zone), and an article ÒNon-Organic LifeÓ in the anthology Incorporations (Zone)Ñhas made the charismatic DeLanda's remarkable ideas on artificial intelligence de rigeur among cyberpunks and technocultists. For tonight's talk he will discuss new possibilities for self-organization in our increasingly technological culture. De Landa's infectious zeal for almost everything promises to make this one of the most entertaining and unpredictable events on our calendar. Don't miss it! Films include Raw Nerves (1980), Ismism (1979), Harmful or Fatal if Swallowed (1982), and Judgement Day (1983). DeLanda will present a different talk, ÒArtificial Intelligence,Ó on Wednesday, February 23rd at California College of Arts and Crafts (Oakland). Sunday, Feb. 27 Ð SFAI 7:30 PM THE MALADY OF DEATH In Person: Jeffrey Skoller Jeffrey Skoller will present the world premiere of The Malady of Death (1994), an adaptation of a Marguerite Duras story. ÒOccasionally, one is so powerfully touched by a work of art that merely to experience it is not enough; one finds that they must actively engage with the work. Marguerite Duras' story The Malady of Death was like that for me. It's a parableÑan indictment, reallyÑabout the male sexuality this culture has constructed. This adaptation doesn't simply dramatize a story. Rather, the film is fugue-like in its interplay between Duras' text and my own cinematic exploration of the male body as the site of sex. For me these images and sounds are a way of speaking with this text, the issues raised, this moment in history.Ó (J.S.) Skoller will also show Topography/Surface Writing (1983), based on Kafka's The Penal Colony. After the show, the public is invited to an informal BYOD* gathering with the filmmaker at LaRocca's Corner Tavern, 957 Columbus Avenue. *Buy Your Own Drinks. Thursday, Mar. 3 Ð CA 7:30 PM FILM AND PHYSICAL REALITY In person: Ariana Gerstein and Erin Sax Erin Sax (SF) and Ariana Gertsein (Chicago) are two young filmmakers who have made films of exceptional poise and maturity. The films of Erin Sax explore the human body as a vessel for transmitting the frustration and fear of communication, memory and mortality. She will present three recent films ÑReceiving Sally (1992), Each Evening (1993), and Seven of Worlds (1993)Ñthat form a trilogy examining the progression of time and the poetics of loss. Arianna Gerstein's sensuous Recovering the Silence of Falling (1994) skillfully collages chemically manipulated, physically altered, and insect-encrusted found footage and original material to create a stunning lyric ballet of sculpted light and rhymed thought. Sunday, Mar. 6 Ð SFAI 7:30 PM SAM FULLER'S WILD, WILD WEST I Shot Jesse James (1949) Run of the Arrow (1956) These two early revisionist Westerns by American bad boy Sam Fuller point to what any lover of the genre has long knownÑthat the genre has always invited iconoclasts (Peckinpah, Leone, Ray, Sirk, etc.) who have been delighted to puncture the prototypes it is now fashionable to debunk. I Shot Jesse James focuses on James' assassin Bob Ford, Òthe dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard (in the back),Ó as its hero. Fuller's first film uses closeups to create an unbearable psychological intensity and tell the pathetic story of misplaced love and emotional inadequacy. Run of the Arrow interlaces typically absurd Fulleresque plot devices into a shocking morality tale. A disillusioned Confederate soldier (Rod Steiger) joins the Sioux following the Civil War so he can continue his personal vendetta against a group of corrupt Yankees. Fuller's response to Sioux life puts to shame Hollywood's recent attempts to balance the ledger. Thursday, Mar. 10 Ð CA 7:30 PM CLASS AND SEXUALITY: FILM & VIDEO BY JACK WALSH In person: Jack Walsh For the past ten years, Jack Walsh's work in film and video has explored issues of class identity and gay sexuality. In Working Class Chronicle (1985) Walsh's records of personal life collides with evocations of historical events to examine ideologies of the fifties and sixties. Present Tense (1987) defines the filmmaker's identity through the interplay of power relationships suggested by historical, personal, and cultural source materials. In his most recent work, Dear Rock (1993), he composes a posthumous fan letter to Rock Hudson. This bittersweet ode, set against a backdrop of kitsch and painful ironies, contemplates the stigma of AIDS within the arena of institutionalized homophobia. Jack Walsh lives in San Francisco where he currently works as producer of ÒThe Living Room FestivalÓ series on KQED. In addition to his own work, Walsh has been producer for numerous independent films and videos and has been a longtime champion of experimental film in New York and the Bay Area. Sunday, Mar. 13 Ð SFAI 7:30 PM LAMBENT LIGHT: FILMS BY BRAKHAGE, DORSKY & BARNETT Tonight's program celebrates the beauty of cinematic seeing with three masterful films: Chartres Series (1993, 7 min., premiere), Stan Brakhage's latest hand-painted film, was inspired by the stain-glass windows of the Chartres Cathedral; Nathaniel Dorsky's Alaya (1976-1987, 28 min.) is a miraculous dance intermingling sand, wind, light and emulsionÑÒ...there is the distinct impression of watching air blowing sand, yet the air is as transparent as the viewer's mind.Ó (Konrad Steiner); and Endless (1987-90, 45 min.) by Daniel Barnett-ÑÒAlthough constructed from thousands of still images of Chicago, Endless maintains a complex relationship to the photographic image. Time and space seem to compress or implode into a contradictory experienceÑone which is fluid yet static, sculptural yet two-dimensional, of the present yet of the past. The images are layered both horizontally and vertically, creating 'endless' variations of time and space which are unable to be contained within the fixed boundaries of the film frame.Ó (Kathy Geritz) Thursday, Mar. 17 Ð CA 7:30 PM THE GREAT DIVIDE In person: Deborah Fort & Ann Skinner-Jones Video artists Deborah Fort and Ann Skinner-Jones will introduce and discuss their recent tape, The Great Divide (1993), a powerful and timely documentary that examines the current debate between the Òreligious rightÓ and Òsecular humanistsÓ over the issue of gay and lesbian rights. The tape features spirited interviews with people from both camps who freely voice their opinions about Oregon's infamous Ballot Measure 9, a measure amending that state's constitution to include language stating that homosexuality is immoral, unnatural and perverse. The Great Divide is a riveting portrait of contemporary moral conflict that is required viewing for anyone concerned with the alarming spread of irrational hate towards the ÒotherÓ that now blankets every part of the globe. Also screening is Fort's tape Dykeotomy (1992), a personal, autobiographical musing on lesbian identity and growing up gay in the USA. After the show, the public is invited to an informal BYOD* gathering with the artists at a location TBA. *Buy Your Own Drinks. Presented in cooperation with Artists Television Access. Sunday, Mar. 20 Ð SFAI 7:30 PM DIS-INTEGRATED CIRCUITS OF THE MIND FILMS BY NINA FONOROFF In person: Nina Fonoroff New York filmmaker Nina Fonoroff is one of the medium's most courageous and imaginative investigators of the fragmentation of body and mind. Fonoroff will show Empathy (1980, Super-8, 10 min.), A Knowledge They Cannot Lose (1989, Super-8, 17 min.), and The Accursed Mazurka (1994, 35 min.), about which she writes: ÒDramatic recitations, clinical reports, and obsessive journal entries make up a dense collage around the occasion of mental breakdown, as reconstructed by a woman who has for a time lost her 'reason,' her body, and her sense of personal identity. At first she attributes her illness to repeated hearings of a certain piece of music on the radio...she must endure the sense that she is 'a conductor of electrical current, a direct feedback loop, a dis-integrated circuit of mind and body.' On the road to recovery, she concludes that the search for a cause is as futile and romantic as the myth of origins, and that 'health' is merely an elaborate yet intangible survival apparatus, necessary but elusive.Ó Also: Audio collage, 5 min., the remnants of the mazurka. Thursday, Mar. 24 Ð CA 7:30 PM ARTIFICIAL PARADISES: Strange Weather (1993), Peggy Ahwesh & Margie Strosser The Connection (1961), Shirley Clarke Separated by thirty years, clashing technologies, and a different dope of choice (smack vs. crack), Shirley Clarke's classic improvisational film The Connection and Ahwesh/Strosser's pixelvision tape Strange Weather would appear to have little in common other than their fascination with the drug demi-monde. They are, however, uncannily overlapping works, each toying with the audience's expectations and constructions of ÒrealityÓ and the ways that cinema and video can ÒderangeÓ the boundaries between vŽritŽ and fiction. In Strange Weather Ahwesh and Strosser accentuate the ritual and theater of drug addiction, poking the camera into the claustrophobic Florida habitat of young crackheads who smoke, slack, score, and search for meaning in the eye of a televised hurricane. In Clarke's inventive film treatment of the Living Theater Production The Connection, an octet of junkies listlessly wait for a fix in an East Village loft as the camera be-bops around them, riffing along to a great jazz score. Friday, Mar. 25 Ð SFAI 7:30 PM FREE! OPEN SCREENING Guest presenter: Rebecca Barten The Cinematheque hosts an open screening where the public is invited to present recently completed films and videos under 15 minutes in length. Acceptable formats are Super 8 and 16mm film, and 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch video. Works must be submitted to the Cinematheque office by 6 PM Wednesday, March 23rd to be included in the program; all films and tapes received by then will be shown. No in-progess work, please! The order of presentation will be posted on the front door of the theater 15 minutes before show time. Guest presenter this evening will be film and videomaker Rebecca Barten, who will kick off the event with a sampling of her recent work. Barten writes, ÒAs a carnivore of reality, a phenomena maniac, in my work I am paradoxically looking for a point without an elsewhere, a free zone where you may wonder if it is you who has ejected penetrating waves of a strong smelling musk secretion into the pleasant atmosphere.Ó Call (415) 558-8129 for more info. Sunday, Mar. 27 Ð SFAI 7:30 PM DELIVERED VACANT By Nora Jacobson In the best tradition of muckraking vŽritŽ, Nora Jacobson's heralded 1992 film Delivered Vacant (Special Jury Award at the 1993 SF International Film Festival) is a richly detailed documentary of urban transition, a Reagan-era gentrification saga with the scope of a 19th century novel. In the early '80s, the ethnic, blue collar community of Hoboken, NJ began to receive an influx of artists and other residents who crossed the river from Manhattan in search of cheap rents. As real estate development heated up, thousands of Hoboken's long-time residents were displaced, many of them becoming homeless. Hoboken resident Jacobson spent eight years documenting the city's battles over gentrification, from boom in the '80s to bust in the '90s. Her dramatically engrossing documentary features a real-life cast of old-time residents, newly arrived Yuppies, tenants' organizers, real estate developers, street people, immigrants from around the world, and local politicians, inlcuding the wackiest mayor in America. Thursday, Mar. 31 Ð CA 7:30 PM ELUSIVE MOMENTS: FILM & VIDEO BY VINCENT GRENIER In person: Vincent Grenier ÒVincent Grenier is one of the most rigorous filmmakers of the experimental cinema and one of the most ingenious...Since his very first films, Grenier has focused his interest on the simple gestures of the everyday [in order to] draw one's attention to the minute details which, when filmed, become very poetic and reveal the individual behind the mechanical and the routine...Ó (Nicole Gingras) A QuŽbecois, Grenier received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and was programmer at the Cinematheque for a year in the mid-'70s before moving to New York City where he continues to make beautifully subtle and elusive films. In recent years Grenier has wedded his passion for the beauty of cinematic forms with a fascination for narrative issues and character portrayals. This evening Grenier will show Mend (1979); You (1990); the award-winning Out in the Garden (1991), an impressionistic portrait of a man battling AIDS; Hand Pressed (1993, video); and an excerpt from Property Values, an in-progress work. Co-sponsored by the Canadian Consulate General.