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ONGOING SERIES AVAILABLE SPACE
Pitchfork and the Devil (1979)
----- ----------- (1967)
Available Space is a recurring monthly series showcasing experimental and independent film and media, including artist retrospectives, historical and contemporary films, expanded cinema performance, special guest events, and restorations from international archives, as well as our own Academy Film Archive.
Pitchfork and the Devil 1979. 15 min. USA. B&W, Color. English. 16mm. Money 1970. 2 min. USA. B&W. English. 16mm.
Programmed by Hyesung ii and Academy Film Archive Senior Film Preservationist Mark Toscano. Notes by Mark Toscano. All films directed by Thom Andersen unless otherwise noted. Melting 1965. 6 min. USA. Color. 16mm. Restored print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. Olivia’s Place 1966/74. 6 min. USA. Color. English. 16mm. Restored print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. ----- ----------- DIRECTED BY: Thom Andersen, Malcolm Brodwick. 1967. 12 min. USA. Color. English. 16mm. Restored print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. Get Out Of The Car 2010. 35 min. USA. Color. English, Spanish. 16mm. New print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer 1974. 59 min. USA. Color. English. 35mm. Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
The Academy Film Archive has been conserving and restoring Mike Henderson’s films since 2008. This program represents the first time these remarkable and illuminating works are being seen in Los Angeles. Programmed and notes by Academy Film Archive Senior Film Preservationist Mark Toscano. All films directed by Mike Henderson unless otherwise noted. All prints have been restored and provided courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. Total program runtime: 74 min. The Last Supper 1970/73. 8 min. USA. Color. English. 16mm. Dufus 1970/73. 6 min. USA. B&W. English. 16mm. When & Where 1984. 4 min. USA. B&W. 16mm. King David DIRECTED BY: Mike Henderson, Robert Nelson. 1970/2003. 8 min. USA. Color. English. 16mm. Too Late To Stop Down Now 1982. 4 min. USA. B&W. English. 16mm. Down Hear 1972. 12 min. USA. B&W. English. 16mm. Ducksarenodinner 1983. 4 min. USA. B&W. English. 16mm. The Shape of Things 1981. 8 min. USA. B&W, Color. English. 16mm. Just Another Notion 1983. 3 min. USA. Color. English. 16mm.
Mike Henderson: The Blues and the Abstract Truth Thu, Jan 19 | 7:30pm | TMT In person: Mike Henderson. Blues musician, painter, and filmmaker, the truly original artist Mike Henderson’s creative path found its luminous trajectory upon his relocation from Missouri to San Francisco in the mid-1960s, where he had come to study at the San Francisco Art Institute, one of the only desegregated schools available to him at the time. Quickly befriending remarkable artists and musicians such as Bruce Nauman, Robert Nelson, Jay DeFeo, William T. Wiley, and even Jerry Garcia, Henderson established himself as a multi-disciplinary artist and educator with a one-of-a-kind vision drawing on his complex notions of identity, society, and the elusive mystery of art itself. His 16mm short films, spanning the late 1960s to the mid 1980s, represent an incredibly fresh and engaging sensibility that is equal parts painting, blues, and film. Self-taught as a filmmaker, Henderson’s films approach the unique qualities of the medium in an unexpected way. These films—whether they be his talking blues shorts, his films querying Black history and identity, or his bewitching, semi-abstract works of the 1980s— are full of visual, intellectual, and emotional pleasures as they navigate the confusions and curiosities of consciousness. Engaging, exciting, hilarious, and humane, his films often grapple with the very essence of artistic creation itself, as if to ask (quoting his dear friend Wiley), “What’s it all mean?”
Thom Andersen: Work on Film Mon, Feb 6 | 7:30pm | TMT In person: Thom Andersen.
Thom Andersen is no stranger to Los Angeles cinephiles, and his extensive work as a filmmaker, programmer, critic, teacher, writer, historian, and movie lover has had an enormous and meaningful impact on generations of audiences and students alike. With Red Hollywood (1996) and Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), Andersen established an international reputation as one of contemporary cinema’s most keen-eyed and thoughtful essayists, with a singular and deeply committed perspective on the complexities and particularities of film history, which he has continued to develop. Years prior to these watershed films, Andersen’s first flurry of filmmaking activity in his 20s reflects a similar diversity, engagement, and interest in the layered and reverberating implications of cultural and historical moments and the images that seek to represent them. His interest in exploring and responding to experiences and spaces of resonant ephemerality prefigure his later opuses in which the incidental subtexts in cinema history are revealed to be much more meaningful than we could have imagined. This program will survey Andersen’s three influential short films from the 1960s, all in restored prints from the Academy Film Archive, along with his personal and elegiac return to 16mm, the acclaimed Get Out of the Car (2010). Thom Andersen will then join us for a discussion about his work, followed by a presentation of his ambitious and illuminating documentary, Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1974).
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