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 Out
of the Vault: Year of Confrontation
When:
Friday, May 16, 2008
7:00pm
Where:
Chicago Cultural Center
Claudia Cassidy Theater
78 East Washington
Chicago, Illinois
Admission:
Free (All donations welcome!)
Special Guests: Bill Cottle, producer of the Urban Crisis
series, Ruth Ratney, writer of What Trees Do They Plant?
and artist/filmmaker/reporter Franklin McMahon will be present
for discussion after the films.
Audio
presentation from the Franklin McMahon Collection.
Out
Of The Vault - Year Of Confrontation
Out Of The Vault - Year Of Confrontation revisits the
turbulent week in August 1968 when the Democratic National
Convention
turned Chicago into the frontlines of a larger political and
social conflict. The world had already experienced the assassinations
of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the May uprisings
in Paris, the brutal quelling of the Prague Spring and intensifying
bloodshed in Viet Nam. Occurring under the watchful cameras
of the news media, the protests and riots in Chicago shocked
the nation and further polarized the opposing forces of authority
and protest.
Chicago
Film Archives is honored to present the premiere exhibition
of three newly preserved prints from the Film Groups’
Urban Crisis series. Many thanks to the National Film Preservation
Foundation and Colorlab for supporting the preservation of
these films.
The
Right To Dissent: A Press Conference
The Film Group, 1969, 16mm preservation print, sound, b/w,
9 minutes
This film examines the struggle between citizens’ right
to express their political views and the limits regulated
by the City of Chicago. As the right to dissent collides with
the suppression of political expression to preserve order,
the violence that erupts becomes inescapable.
Social
Confrontation: The Battle Of Michigan Avenue
The Film Group, 1969, 16mm preservation print, sound, b/w,
11 minutes
On Wednesday afternoon the legal gathering of demonstrators
at Grant Park turns into an unruly scene of teargas and swinging
nightsticks when a line of police officers charge the crowd.
Social Confrontation further captures the hostile clashes
in front of the Conrad Hilton and the ensuing war of words
on the Convention floor.
Law
And Order Vs. Dissent
The Film Group, 1969, 16mm preservation print, sound, b/w,
11 minutes
At a press conference on Thursday, August 29th a spokesman
for the Chicago Police Department attempts to influence the
media coverage of the previous night’s violence. Incorporating
interviews with Mayor Daley and various representatives of
the police, this film closely examines methods of propaganda
and political spin.
The DVD
of What Trees Do They Plant is mastered from an original
broadcast tape shown in 1968, and therefore has a lower image
quality from the preserved films from the Urban Crisis series.
What
Trees Do They Plant?
Henry Ushijima Productions for the City of Chicago, 1968,
60 minutes, DVD from original broadcast 2” tape
In response to a perceived imbalance of the media’s coverage,
the City of Chicago hired Henry Usijima, an industrial filmmaker
in Park Ridge, to make this film for television distribution
in a hurried 5 days. Barely two weeks after the end of the
convention the program screened on 140 stations across the
nation. Appealing to the moderate middle of the road viewer
shocked by the images of the convention, it focuses on the
violent intentions of the protestors and ties them to international
communist forces through interviews with police officers harmed
in the disturbances, news footage intended to indict protesters
with their own words, and secret police surveillance films.
For more
information, please call (773) 478-3799
Chicago,
My Town: Selections from the Chicago Film Archives
When:
May 30, 2008
7:30pm
Where:
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue
New York, New York 10003
(212) 505-5181
Ranging
from portraits of the city of Chicago to documents of radical
political and social upheaval, and from amateur productions
to the work of industry professionals, this program from the
Chicago Film Archives showcases films that are both personal
and political, and which portray, in a variety of different
ways, a city and people in conflict.
Total running time 92 minutes.
Chicago:
The City To See In ’63
(Margaret Conneely, 1962, 16mm preservation print, sound,
color, 12min)
Produced and exhibited to encourage members of the Photographic
Society of America to visit Chicago for the society’s
annual conference in 1963, award-winning amateur filmmaker
Margaret Conneely’s portrait of Chicago is one in which
the city is both an omniscient narrator and a living, breathing,
speaking organism.
Nightsong
(Don B. Klugman, 1965, 16mm, sound, color, 22min)
Winner of the Coupe Kodak-Pathe prize at the Cannes Film Festival
and a top-ten finalist in the 1964 Amateur Cinema League and
American International Film & Video Festival, Nightsong
features probably the only extant performance footage of long-forgotten
African-American folk sensation Willie Wright.
Super
Up
(Kenji Kanesaka, 1966, 16mm, sound, color, 14min)
Kenji Kanesaka, one of the founding members of the “Film
Independent” group and the Japan Filmmakers Co-op in
Tokyo, was commissioned by Chicago producer Marv Gold to direct
Super Up in 1965. The film is an exceptional and striking
critique of structures of racial and class segregation, consumerism
and lust, sexual energy and desire, and the domination of
(and link between) advertising, consumption, sexuality, and
the police.
Ratamata
(Jeff Kreines, 1971, 16mm, sound, b/w, 9min)
Ratamata was shot by filmmaker Jeff Kreines on Veterans
Day in 1970 when he was only 16 years old. In 1971, the film
showed at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and was selected as
a “Young Chicago Filmmakers Festival” award winner;
Kreines left high school not long after its completion to
focus on making films full-time.
8
Flags For 99 Cents
(Chuck Olin, 1970, 16mm, sound, color, 35min)
Commissioned by Gordon Sherman to make a film that would be
broadcast on local television to counter the conservative
and prowar bent of the news media, Chuck Olin’s 8 Flags
For 99 Cents was originally conceived as a propaganda
film which would juxtapose horrific news footage of the violence
and destruction in Vietnam with conservative, pro-war interviews
of suburban Chicagoans. To Olin’s surprise, the middle-American
working people he interviewed (dubbed by Spiro Agnew the “silent
majority”) were reflective, conflicted, and resolutely
against the United States’ continued involvement in Vietnam.
8 Flags For 99 Cents serves as a terrifying reminder
that the current disaster in Iraq is just the latest chapter
in a history of self-serving US military invasions under the
guise of liberation and democracy.
Program
and notes by Michelle Puetz
Chicago
Film Archives and Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven Foundation
present
Singing
Streams: Roots of Gospel and Blues
 Where:
Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven Foundation
2120 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60616
When:
Saturday, March 15, 2008
7:00pm–9:00pm
Admission:
$5.00
For more
information call:
Chicago Film Archives at (773) 478-3799 or
Blues
Heaven Foundation at (312) 808 1286
Sonny
Terry: Shoutin’ The Blues
Yasha Aginsky, 1969, 16mm, 5 minutes
Shot at an Oakland Motel on Sonny Terry’s birthday, this
single-shot film highlights the magnetic personality of the
veteran singer and harmonica player. Sonny recounts the story
of how he came to have a part in the hit Broadway Musical
Finian’s Rainbow and plays a song from the production
for which the film is named – Shoutin’ The Blues.
The
Sun’s Gonna Shine
Les Blank, 1969, 16mm, 10 minutes
This imagining of Lightnin’ Hopkins childhood and his
desire to escape working in the cotton fields is a remembrance
of both the comfort of his hometown of Centerville, Texas
as well as his desire to hit the road. Through Hopkins’
narration and performances, as well as dramatized scenes of
him as a young boy, the film reveals the relationship between
his music and the land from which it came.
Black
Delta Religion
Bill Ferris, Josette Ferris, 1973, 8mm/16mm, 14 minutes
Beautifully filmed on grainy Super 8, Black Delta Religion
brings us inside the Baptist Church rituals of the Mississippi
delta. It’s an intense world, filled with fiery preachers
and parishioners inhabited by the Holy Spirit. The soundtrack
of deeply felt, mostly a cappella gospel can only be described
as “close to the source”.
A
Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle
Tom Davenport, 1986, 16mm, 57 minutes
The film that inspired this program recounts the story of
North Carolina’s Landis family and the gospel music that
has held them together. Centered around a family reunion,
the film includes inspiring performances and remembrances
from multiple generations, including family matriarch Bertha
Landis.
Program
and notes by Andy Resek
Chicago Film Archives and the Beverly
Arts Center present
Home Movie Day at the Beverly Arts
Center
Where:
Beverly Arts Center
2153 West 111th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60655
When:
January 6-15
Submit your home movies for inspection by CFA archivists at
the front desk of the Beverly Arts Center
$5 per reel
February 10 2:00-4:00pm
Exhibition of YOUR home movies. All films that are projectable
will be shown. Come join your neighbors to share the many
stories that make up the Beverly community legacy.
For more information call (773) 478-3799
or (773) 445-3838
Flanked by the Hollywood storytelling machine
to the West, and the legacy of art cinema and cinema-verite
documentary to the
East, film production in the Chicago metropolis has historically
been relegated to the realm of the industrial, commercial,
and
educational film. In collaboration with the exhibition ‘The
Big Picture: A New View of Painting in Chicago’ at the
Chicago History
Museum, these programs explore the connections between these
traditions of industrial production and the under-valued amateur
and artistic cinematic output of filmmakers working in Chicago
and the Midwest.
These programs are a co-presentation of
the Chicago Film Archives, the Chicago History Museum, and
the Gene Siskel Film
Center. Programming and notes by Michelle Puetz and Andy Uhrich
of the Chicago Film Archives.
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 North State Street
Chicago, Illinois
Ticket prices: $9 general admission, $7
students, $4 for student, faculty of the School of the Art
Institute, and staff of the Art Institute. $5 Film Center
& Chicago History Museum members, with valid membership
card.
For more information, please call (773)
478-3799
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Saturday, November
3 at 3:00pm, Tuesday, November 6 at 6:00pm
Cityscape As Landscape presents the ever-changing Chicago
skyline as a backdrop for various cinematic interpretations
of urban life. Mid-century films such as Wayne Boyer’s
The Building: Chicago Stock Exchange (1975), Jack Behrend’s
time-lapse footage of the construction of the Equitable building
(1964), James Benning’s Chicago Loop (1976), and Kenji
Kanesaka’s Super Up (1966), provide complex portraits
of Chicago as rapidly changing
industrial city. Approx running time 75 minutes. (Puetz/Uhrich)
Chicago Loop, James Benning, 1976, 9m
13 Tokens, A Challenge, Central Cinematographers, 1967, 15m
The Building: Chicago Stock Exchange, Wayne Boyer, 1975, 12m
Chicago Breakdown, Gary Brown, 1970’s, 14m
Super Up, Kenji Kanesaka, 1966, 14m
Equitable Building – Time Lapse Footage, Jack Behrends,
1964, 4m
Caille Family Home Movies - “Riverview”, Caille
Family from the collection of
Dave Drazin, 1932-43, 7m
Saturday, November
10 at 3:00pm, Tuesday, November 13 at 6:00pm
This program illustrates the manner in which cinematic conventions
are embedded in amateur film production, as well as the various
ways in which non-professional films challenge the candy-coated
portraits of domestic life presented by Hollywood and television.
The home becomes a battleground of sorts in Margaret Conneely’s
wonderful illustration of a group of fed-up housewives’
revenge on their husbands in Mister E (1959), while in Peter
Kuttner’s Mary Had a Little Lamb (1966), a young African
American couple’s budding romance is the front line in
the struggle between the sacred and the secular. Approx running
time 77 minutes. (Puetz/Uhrich)
Mr. E, Margaret Conneely, 1959, 12m
The 45, Margaret Conneely, 1960, 14m
Mary Had a Little Lamb, 1966, 8m
The Dedication of Temple Sholom, Abraham and Edward Weiss,
1928, 10m
Ricky and Rocky, Tom Palazzolo and Jeff Kreines, 1972, 15m
Caille Family Home Movies – “The Brat”, Caille
Family from the collection of Dave Drazin, 1932-43, 6m
Dance Party Home Movie, excerpt, from the collection of Nick
Osborn,
1950’s, 8m
Double Exposed Baby Home Movie, excerpt, from the collection
of
Nick Osborn, 4m
Sunday, November
18 at 5:00pm, Tuesday, November 20 at 8:00pm
Founded in 1937, László Moholy-Nagy’s Institute
of Design has left a lasting legacy on the industrial and
commercial creative output of the city of Chicago. Joining
films directed by Moholy-Nagy with the work of his students
and associates, this program examines the intersection of
art and functionality, inspiration and occupation, and the
visionary and the market driven in works that range from pure
abstraction to the purely utilitarian. Films screening include
László Moholy-Nagy’s Ein Lichtspiel - schwarz
weiss grau (1930), Morton and Millie Goldsholl’s Union
Pier Film Experiments (1942), and Ken Josephson’s 33rd
and LaSalle (1962). Approx running time 72 minutes. (Puetz/Uhrich)
Lichtspiel: Schwarz-Weiss-Grau, László Moholy-Nagy,
1930, 5m
Union Pier 1942 Film Experiments, Morton & Millie Goldsholl,
1942, 14m
Golf High Speed Footage, Jack Behrends, 1960’s, 1.5m
Do Not Disturb, Institute of Design Students under the direction
of László
Moholy Nagy, 1945, 20m excerpt
Design Workshop, László Moholy-Nagy, 1944, 15m
excerpt
33rd and Lasalle, Ken Josephson, 1962, 10m
Drop City, Wayne Boyer, 1968, 6m
Sunday, November
25 at 3:00pm, Tuesday, November 27 at 8:15pm
This final program emphasizes Chicago’s unique contribution
to art cinema and the filmic avant-garde. While most of these
films can be categorized as experimental in form, they were
produced by filmmakers who made a living by making films ranging
from commercials and educational films to soft-core pornography.
Films screening will include an unusual selection of regional
home movies, Red Grooms’ Tappy Toes (1969), a comic-musical
depiction of the late-60’s art group the “Hairy-Who”
starring Ed Paschke, and Don Klugman’s Nightsong (1965),
a portrait of Chicago’s Near-North nightclub scene which
features legendary African-American folk singer Willie Wright.
Approximate running time 77 minutes. (Puetz/Uhrich)
Tappy Toes, Red Grooms, 1969, 19m
Nightsong, Don Klugman, 1965, 22m
The Saga of the First and Last, Margaret Conneely, 1954, 4m
Babbit Blast, Jack Behrends, 1961, 12m
Night Driving, Morton & Millie Goldsholl, 1957, 9m
Lunar and Solar Eclipse Home Movies, from the collection of
Nick Osborn,
1960’s, 6m
Caille Family Home Movies – “Let’s Make a Picture!”,
Caille Family from the
collection of Dave Drazin, 1932-43, 5m
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Labor Beat: Chicago Film Archives and Labor Media
Fairmont Hotel
Chicago, Illinois
A reprise of this spring's Out of the Vault
program (with a few new surprises!) Chicago, My Town: Portraits
From The Margins provides a delightful glimpse into Chicago
Film Archives' holdings of unique and often overlooked films,
each poking around Chicago's corners with a slightly skewed
lens. These extraordinary 16mm films explore lives we lived
in our town from the 60s, 70s and 80s.
LaSalle Bank Cinema
4901 West Irving Park Road
Chicago, Illinois
Parking and entrance to the theater at the
back of the bank.
7:00pm
For more information call 773 478 3799
Supported by Draupnir LLC and the Illinois
Film Office
This project is partially supported by a
City Arts Program
i grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural
Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
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Vignettes
selected spots:
(Harry Mantel, 1970-80’s, 16mm, sound, color, 8min)
Funded in part by Encyclopedia Brittanica, these short spots were
directed by local cameraman, producer, and journalist Harry Mantel
– most likely for television broadcast. These films are a few
of the many bizarre portraits he constructed of the city and its
people – some of the subjects Mantel explored include the various
manifestations of fire, square dancing, circus and zoo animals (featuring
some very talented dancing dogs), and an arts and crafts fair complete
with many a macramé'8e booth.
Chicago: The City To See In ’63
(Margaret Conneely, 1962, 16mm preservation print, sound, color,
12min)
Produced and exhibited to encourage members of the Photographic
Society of America to visit Chicago for the society’s annual
conference in 1963, award winning amateur filmmaker Margaret Conneely’s
portrait of Chicago is one in which the city is both an omniscient
narrator and a living, breathing, speaking, all-seeing organism.
Watch out for the creepy voice-over as Conneely’s seemingly
cheery portrait of the Windy City reveals a darker side of Chicago.
This screening is the premiere of the Chicago Film Archives’
new preservation print of Chicago: The City To See In ’63.
Funding for the preservation of this film was generously granted
by the Womens Film Preservation Fund and Colorlab. Produced, edited,
and directed by Margaret Conneely; narrated by Dr. C.F. Cochran;
filmed by Joe Domin, Donna Johnson, and Margaret Conneely.
Super Up
(Kenji Kanesaka, 1966, 16mm, sound, color, 14min)
Kenji Kanesaka, one of the founding members of the “Film Independent”
group and the Japan Filmmakers Co-op in Tokyo, is an experimental
filmmaker and photographer who organized an experimental film festival
with Takahiko Iimura at the Sogetsu Art Center in Japan (probably
the most important exhibition space for alternative and avant-garde
art in Japan in the 1960’s), and documented Fluxus happenings
– art performances by collectives such as Hi-Red Center –
and the vibrant, often chaotic, underground art scene in Tokyo at
the end of the 1960’s. Kanesaka visited the States frequently
in the 1960’s, and while little is known about his time in
Chicago, he was commissioned by local producer Marv Gold to make
Super Up while he was visiting here in 1965/66. The film
is an exceptional critique of the structures of racial and class
segregation, consumerism and lust, sexual energy and desire, and
the domination of (and link between) advertising, consumption, sexuality,
and the police. Super Up’s exuberant energy, hodge-podge
portrayal of the beauty and decay of the city, and its interjection
of race, sexual desire, and consumerism into the form of experimental
cinema make it a unique and powerful document. Directed by Kenji
Kanesaka; produced by Marv Gold; edited by Ron Clasky; photographed
by Dick McConnell.
Ratamata
(Jeff Kreines, 1971, 16mm, sound, b/w, 9min)
Another first film, Ratamata was shot by filmmaker Jeff Kreines
(who went on to work with Chicago favorite Tom Palazzolo) on Veterans
Day in 1970 when he was only 16 years old. In 1971, the film showed
at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and was selected as a “Young
Chicago Filmmakers Festival” award winner; Kreines left high
school not long after its completion to focus on making films full-time.
Ratamata is a portrait of the diverse opinions of Chicagoans
(ranging from high school students to mayoral candidate Lar Daly)
as they reflect on the general state of affairs in America, the
war in Vietnam, social and racial conflict, freedom and personal
liberty, happiness, and social justice.
Cause Without A Rebel
(Peter Kuttner, 1964, 16mm, sound, b/w, 10min)
Made immediately after Kuttner (a member of the Kartemquin collective)
graduated from Northwestern University, Cause Without A Rebel
was commissioned for a symposium held in 1965 on the Northwestern
campus which examined the “price and place of order.”
Created in the wake of the “Mississippi Burning” incident
and the growing civil rights movement, Kuttner’s first finished
film is a radical call to arms and was intended to stir the largely
apolitical Northwestern campus into action. A wonderfully sincere
film, Cause Without A Rebel marks the beginning of Kuttner’s
development both as a filmmaker committed to social change and as
a political activist, and the end of a period of political apathy
on the University campus. Directed by Peter Kuttner; photographed
by Sheppard Ferguson; funded by the Northwestern University film
society.
8 Flags For 99 Cents
(Chuck Olin, 1970, 16mm, sound, color, 35min)
Commissioned by Gordon Sherman to make a film that would be broadcast
on local television (in half-hour time slots purchased by Sherman
and the “Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace”)
to counter the conservative and pro-war bent of the news media,
Chuck Olin’s 8 Flags For 99 Cents was originally conceived
as a propaganda film which would juxtapose horrific news footage
of the violence and destruction in Vietnam with conservative, pro-war
interviews of suburban Chicagoans. To Olin’s surprise, the
“responsible” and middle-American working people he interviewed
(dubbed by Spiro Agnew the “silent majority”) were reflective,
conflicted, and resolutely against the United States’ continued
involvement in Vietnam. 8 Flags For 99 Cents resonates profoundly
with our contemporary political situation, and serves as a reminder
that the current disaster in Iraq is just the latest chapter in
a history of self-serving US military invasions under the guise
of liberation and democracy. Produced by Chuck Olin and Joel Katz
with Mike Gray Associates; photographed by Mike Gray; audio recording
by John Mason.
Program and notes by Michelle Puetz
The Chicago Film Archives is dedicated to
enriching Chicago’s local and regional film heritage by protecting
and providing access to films that make up the visual and historical
record of life in Chicago and the Midwest. Ranging from student
film productions to Academy Award nominated shorts, from industrial
spots to documents of Chicago neighborhoods from a by-gone era,
the films in this screening showcase the archive’s outstanding
collection of rare celluloid treasures.
Evolving Rituals: Home Movie Day at Five
Eastman Kodak and the George Eastman House
Rochester, New York
The Chicago Cultural Center
78 East Washington
Chicago, Illinois 60602
Bring your amateur and home movies in for
free
inspection by CFA archivists. Then we will screen your films
in the evening. A perfect time to explain yourself, your family,
your friends. Win prizes with Home Movie Day Bingo!
Tom Palazzolo will kick off the night with
Rickey and Rocky at their wedding shower 30 some years ago.
3:00pm - 6:00pm:
Film inspection and submit for screening
6:00pm - 9:00pm:
Home Movie screening.
For more information, call 773 478 3799
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2 extraordinary screenings of 16mm films from
the Chicago Film Archives collection
May 10th, 2007 at 6:00pm & 7:30pm at the Chicago
Cultural Center
78 East Washington, Chicago
Free Admission!
For more information call 773 478 3799
Supported by: Draupnir LLC and Chicago Film Office
This project is partially supported by a City
Arts Program I grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural
Affairs,
and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
Ranging from portraits of the city of Chicago
to documents of radical political and social upheaval, from amateur
productions to
television spots, from student films to the work of industry professionals,
and from experimental films to straight-ahead documentaries, these
two Out of the Vault programs showcase films that are both
personal and political, and which portray, in a variety of different
ways, a city and people in conflict. In unique and non-commercial
forms, they address the political turmoil, class segregation, racial
struggle, and sexual liberation of the 1960’s and early 1970’s.
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Out of the Vault
– Chicago, My Town: Portraits from the Margins
6pm – approximate running time 64 minutes
Vignettes selected spots: “The
Controllers” & “Marina City Waitress”
(Harry Mantel, 1970’s, 16mm, sound, color, 8min)
Funded in part by Encyclopedia Brittanica, these short spots
were directed by local cameraman, producer, and journalist
Harry Mantel – most likely for television broadcast.
These films are only two of many bizarre portraits he constructed
of the city and its people – other subjects Mantel explored
include the various manifestations of fire, square dancing,
circus and zoo animals (featuring some very talented dancing
dogs), and an arts and crafts fair complete with many a macramé'8e
booth. These two Vignettes, both set to swinging soundtracks,
are snazzy and fun-loving examinations of their subjects,
yet Mantel’s voyeuristic camerawork lends them an underlying
sensation of imminent doom.
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Chicago: The City To See In ’63
(Margaret Conneely, 1962, 16mm preservation print, sound, color,
12min)
Produced and exhibited to encourage members of the Photographic
Society of America to visit Chicago for the society’s annual
conference in 1963, award winning amateur filmmaker Margaret Conneely’s
portrait of Chicago is one in which the city is both an omniscient
narrator and a living, breathing, speaking, all-seeing organism.
Watch out for the creepy voice-over as Conneely’s seemingly
cheery portrait of the Windy City reveals a darker side of Chicago.
This screening is the premiere of the Chicago Film Archives’
new preservation print of Chicago: The City To See In ’63.
Funding for the preservation of this film was generously granted
by the Womens Film Preservation Fund and Colorlab. Produced, edited,
and directed by Margaret Conneely; narrated by Dr. C.F. Cochran;
filmed by Joe Domin, Donna Johnson, and Margaret Conneely.
In The Divine Plan
(Holden Franz Aust, 1970/71, 16mm, sound, b/w, 12min)
A University of Chicago student film production and “Young
Chicago Filmmakers Festival” award winner in 1971, Aust’s
In The
Divine Plan pits Nietzsche against Jesus in an ultimate smack-down
ideological battle. Christian moralism meets Nihilism – ummm,
who do you think wins this duel?!?!?! Need we even mention the towel-robed
UofC students gathered on the Midway to view and film Jesus on the
cross (okay, lamppost) with Super-8 cameras?
Cause Without A Rebel
(Peter Kuttner, 1964, 16mm, sound, b/w, 10min)
Made immediately after Kuttner (a member of the Kartemquin collective)
graduated from Northwestern University, Cause Without A Rebel
was commissioned for a symposium held in 1965 on the Northwestern
campus which examined the “price and place of order.”
Created in the wake of the “Mississippi Burning” incident
and the growing civil rights movement, Kuttner’s first finished
film is a radical call to arms and was intended to stir the largely
apolitical Northwestern campus into action. A wonderfully sincere
film, Cause Without A Rebel marks the beginning of Kuttner’s
development both as a filmmaker committed to social change and as
a political activist, and the end of a period of political apathy
on the University campus. Directed by Peter Kuttner; photographed
by Sheppard Ferguson; funded by the Northwestern University film
society.
Nightsong
(Don B. Klugman, 1965, 16mm, sound, color, 22min)
Winner of the Coupe Kodak-Pathe prize at the Cannes Film Festival
and a top-ten finalist in the 1964 Amateur Cinema League
and American International Film & Video Festival, Nightsong
is a truly extraordinary amateur film. Featuring African-American
folk sensation Willie Wright, Nightsong is a portrait of
a Chicago nightclub singer (Wright) and the Near North nightlife
scene of the mid-1960’s. Popular bars and clubs such as the
Fickle Pickle, Kismet, Esquire, Easy Street, “Rube” Rubenstein’s,
and Figaro’s serve as the backdrop for Klugman’s moody
examination of social, racial, sexual, and class tensions. Directed
by Don Klugman; edited by Ron Clasky; written by Marv Gold; photographed
by Victor Hurnitz.
Out of the Vault –
The Place and Price of Order
7:30pm – approximate running time 65 minutes
Very Nice, Very Nice
(Arthur Lipsett, 1961, 16mm, sound, b/w, 7min)
Canadian filmmaker Arthur Lipsett’s first and most celebrated
film, Very Nice, Very Nice, was nominated for an Academy
Award in 1962 and exemplifies Lipsett’s fluid movement between
the worlds of experimental and institutional filmmaking.Very
Nice, Very Nice was originally made as an audio collage experiment
on 1/4” magnetic tape, using sources from the holdings of the
National Film Board in Canada (where Lipsett worked) and left-over
trims – these include sound bites from cultural critics Marshall
McLuhan and Herman Northrop Frye. The film’s dark social commentary
and critical take on consumerism, pop culture, and the mass media
is one in which an overwhelming pessimism about the state of the
world is matched by a ridiculous and almost farcical portrayal of
the human condition. A National Film Board of Canada production.
Ratamata
(Jeff Kreines, 1971, 16mm, sound, b/w, 9min)
Another first film, Ratamata was shot by filmmaker Jeff Kreines
(who went on to work with Chicago favorite Tom Palazzolo) on
Veterans Day in 1970 when he was only 16 years old. In 1971, the
film showed at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and was selected
as a “Young Chicago Filmmakers Festival” award winner;
Kreines left high school not long after its completion to focus
on making films full-time. Ratamata is a portrait of the
diverse opinions of Chicagoans (ranging from high school students
to mayoral candidate Lar Daly) as they reflect on the general state
of affairs in America, the war in Vietnam, social and racial conflict,
freedom and personal liberty, happiness, and social justice.
8 Flags For 99 Cents
(Chuck Olin, 1970, 16mm, sound, color, 35min)
Commissioned by Gordon Sherman to make a film that would be broadcast
on local television (in half-hour time slots purchased by Sherman
and the “Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace”)
to counter the conservative and pro-war bent of the news media,
Chuck Olin’s 8 Flags For 99 Cents was originally conceived
as a propaganda film which would juxtapose horrific news footage
of the violence and destruction in Vietnam with conservative, pro-war
interviews of suburban Chicagoans. To Olin’s surprise, the
“responsible” and middle-American working people he interviewed
(dubbed by Spiro Agnew the “silent majority”) were reflective,
conflicted, and resolutely against the United States’ continued
involvement in Vietnam. 8 Flags For 99 Cents resonates profoundly
with our contemporary political situation, and serves as a reminder
that the current disaster in Iraq is just the latest chapter in
a history of self-serving US military invasions under the guise
of liberation and democracy. Produced by Chuck Olin and Joel Katz
with Mike Gray Associates; photographed by Mike Gray; audio recording
by John Mason.
Super Up
(Kenji Kanesaka, 1966, 16mm, sound, color, 14min)
Kenji Kanesaka, one of the founding members of the “Film Independent”
group and the Japan Filmmakers Co-op in Tokyo, is an experimental
filmmaker and photographer who organized an experimental film festival
with Takahiko Iimura at the Sogetsu Art Center in Japan (probably
the most important exhibition space for alternative and avant-garde
art in Japan in the 1960’s), and documented Fluxus happenings
– art performances by collectives such as Hi-Red Center –
and the vibrant, often chaotic,
underground art scene in Tokyo at the end of the 1960’s. Kanesaka
visited the States frequently in the 1960’s, and while little
is
known about his time in Chicago, he was commissioned by local producer
Marv Gold to make Super Up while he was visiting here in
1965/66. The film is an exceptional critique of the structures of
racial and class segregation, consumerism and lust, sexual energy
and desire, and the domination of (and link between) advertising,
consumption, sexuality, and the police. Super Up’s exuberant
energy, hodge-podge portrayal of the beauty and decay of the city,
and its interjection of race, sexual desire, and consumerism into
the form of experimental cinema make it a unique and powerful document.
Directed by Kenji Kanesaka; produced by Marv Gold; edited by Ron
Clasky; photographed by Dick McConnell.
The Chicago Film Archives (CFA) is a 501c3
non-profit organization that collects, screens and conserves films
that make up the visual historical record of life in Chicago and
the Midwest. Founded in 2003, CFA currently houses over 5,000 films
including documentaries, educational films, home movies, feature
films and more. CFA conducts screenings and other film programs
throughout the year. For more information, visit the CFA website
at.
Juniata College
Huntingdon, Pennsylvania
Juniata College Center for Oral and Public History
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