Mexican Jail Footage (1980) by Gordon Ball
Thursday, January 14, 1982, 8:00 pm
Gerson, Ball, Berkhardt Personal Documents
Mexican Jail Footage (1980) 18 min. by Gordon Ball – Images from 1968 events combined with 1980 voice recollection. Paranoid surreptitious camera records daily events and posturings of 25 gringos jailed without charge and fellow Mexican prisoners prior to 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Was there collusion behind this? We were never told. “…reminds me of standing by the tracks and watching a train go by—it is so strong, it lasts so long, and it is over quickly.” Tom Whitside, North Carolina Anvil
Cerveza Bud (1981) 22 min. by Rudy Burckhardt – “Taking its title from the favorite elixir of N.Y. Hispanics and its format from collage, this filmic slice of life coalesces into an ethnographic view of a possible future: the city as a constantly bubbling, delirious playground where yesterday’s monuments are symbols to be triumphed over, and tomorrow never arrives.” —Treavor Winkfield
Luminous Zone (1973) 24 min. by Barry Gerson – “His forms are sure, his techniques are complex, his content is magic, These works are among the most interesting in the current American cinema …He has developed a very special, …his own form of cinema, of which he is the perfect master.” —Jonas Mekas, Village Voice