Rick Bahto and Robbie Land in person
In celebration of small gestures and displaced meanders, San Francisco Cinematheque presents this rare summer screening, a convergence of two artists who create mysterious and lush explorations of the visual world each with extremely patient, almost reverent senses of place, of memory, and of time. From Los Angeles, but familiar to the Bay Area, Rick Bahto creates Super-8mm films which play like formalist, haiku-like postcards to distant friends, fragmented lyrical correspondence speaking of a melancholy detachment and distance. Similarly, the films of Floridian Robbie Land (in his first-ever San Francisco appearance) represent a strong interest in introspective observance of place—particularly locations in the southeastern U.S.—and its translation, through masterful hand-processing, optical printing and “camera-less” techniques into a cinema of rich texture and color, deep darknesses and, again, tantalizing distance. Films to screen include (by Bahto) For Pablo Valencia, For Karen Johannesen, Study #2: Chicago (a two screen film) and (by Land) Betty Creek, Elaine Drive, Precipice, Bioluminescenceand others. (Steve Polta)