The SF Art Book Fair is an annual multi-day festival celebrating artists’ books, art catalogs, monographs, periodicals, zines, printed ephemera and artists' multiples. Presented this year at San Francisco’s Minnesota Street Project July 20–22, the 2018 iteration features an astonishing curated cast of over 100 independent publishers, antiquarian dealers, artists, collectors, and enthusiasts as well as a diverse range of talks, discussions, book launches, on and off-site special projects, exhibitions and signings. The SF Art Book Fair is FREE and open to the public.

For 2018, San Francisco Cinematheque joins forces with Canyon Cinema at SFABF to present an array of collectible publications (for perusal and purchase), including issues of Cinematograph, Cinematheque’s occasional journal, vintage and recent issues of the Canyon Cinema News, rare artist publications, ‘zines, program note compendia, limited edition monographs and more.

In addition, (and at no extra charge!), Cinematheque and Canyon present screenings of 16mm film and media works all weekend-long. Full details on the weekend’s screenings here.

SUNDAY, JULY 22. 11am–5pm

11am: So Is This (1982) by Michael Snow; 16mm, color, silent, 45 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
“With formalist belligerence, So Is This threatens to make its viewers ‘laugh, cry and change society,’ even promising to get ‘confessional.’” (Canyon Cinema)

12pm:Visions of the Void (CROSSROADS capsule 2)
In this second SFABF CROSSROADS echo, the paranoid visions of Philip K. Dick (as voiced in Alexander Stewart’s Void Vision) blur with the dystopic oppressions of the contemporary techno-surveillance state. Technophobia meets technophilia as crowds gather, blood is spilled, flowers bloom and electrons flow.
SCREENING: The Falling Sky (2017) by Peggy Ahwesh; Wasteland No. 1: Ardent, Verdant (2017) by Jodie Mack; The Forcing (No. 2) (2015) by Lydia Moyer; you can’t plan a perfect day sometimes it just happens (2017) by Alison Nguyen; Season of Doubt (2015) by Seth Pimlott; Void Vision (2018) by Alexander Stewart.

1pm: Anne McGuire’s Oh Hi Anne + Curt McDowell’s Weiners and Buns Musical
Anne McGuire in person
SF’s own Anne McGuire appear in person to present Oh Hi Anne (2017), an animated audio portrait (derived from answering machine messages) of the Brothers Kuchar—George and Mike—in all their self-effacing, self-mocking, candid and obliquely confessional quirkiness. Oh Hi Anne is followed by Curt McDowell’s Wieners and Buns Musical (1972), a “domestic musical” featuring Ainslie Pryor as a  Dorothy Lamour-admiring housewife and George Kuchar himself as her hen-pecked husband.

2pm: Canyon Cinemazine Digest
A selection of 16mm film works featured in the first 5 issues of the Cinemazine (including works by Jodie Mack, Paul Glabicki, Anna Geyer and more)

3pm: casting a glance (2007) by James Benning; 16mm, color, sound, 81 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
In 1970 Robert Smithson built his iconic Spiral Jetty, a 1,500-foot long sculpture of mud, salt crystals and rocks jutting into Utah's Great Salt Lake, embodying elemental and philosophical principles essential to the artist's aesthetic. […] Simulating the Jetty’s thirty-seven year history, casting a glance records the shifting ecology of the Great Salt Lake’s north-eastern shore, finding the earthwork “a barometer for a variety of cycles.” Benning has created a work “that [Smithson's film Spiral Jetty, 1970] begs for, which pays attention to the Jetty over time.” (Canyon Cinema)

4:30pm: The Sun Quartet, part 4: November 2/Far from Ayotzinapa (2017) by Colectivo Los ingrávidos; digital video, color, sound, 23 minutes, exhibition file from the makers
The Sun Quartet is a solar composition in four movements, political composition in four natural elements, kinematic composition in four body mutations: a sun stone where youth blooms in protest, a river overflowing the streets, the burning plain rising in the city. And finally the clamor of the people who after the night of September 26, 2014 shook Mexico. The massive disappearance of 43 students of Ayotzinapa opened a breach in the Mexican political body. The Sun Quartet is a cinematographic composition of this event.
November 2/Far from Ayotzinapa: The clamor of the people after the disappearance of 43 students of Ayotzinapa. The Mexican poet David Huerta wrote a poem called Ayotzinapa on November 2, a date is a very important date of in Mexico, because is the celebration of “Day of the Dead.” The poem is about the experience of current Mexican war. (Colectivo Los ingrávidos)

Pictured above: The Falling Sky (2017) by Peggy Ahwesh