traveling thru with eyes closed tight Curated by Alix Blevins Program online November 19, 2020–January 10, 2021
Since at least the 1940s, the San Francisco Bay Area has been one of the world’s epicenters of personally expressive filmmaking and community-focused non-mainstream film culture. At the close of a tumultuous and even traumatic year, Cinematheque culminates its 2020 exhibitions with Commingled Containers: Echoes from the Bay, two guest-curated programs highlighting recent works by Bay Area filmmakers and celebrating the continuously-renewing, ever-evolving traditions of the region’s vibrant artist communities. Representing the very tip of an iceberg, these programs provide contemporary (sliver-like and subjective; by no means comprehensive) snapshot perspectives as we close the 21st Century’s second decade. (Steve Polta)
Real and imagined landscapes traverse a through line of past, present and future tenses. A catalogue of memory’s texture, decay and afterimages. Location and geography expressed through a repository of shared images. Images without sound, sound without images. This program is accompanied by text, images and other materials provided by the filmmakers. These materials relate to the process of creating the piece included in the show or otherwise relate to their filmmaking practice. (Alix Blevins)
Related Workshop at BAMPFA: Let’s Take a Walk Together!
Saturday, December 5 at 10am
Curated by Alix Blevins. Workshop led by Lauren Iverson.
Embark on a journey into the unknown… in your own neighborhood! In this Zoom workshop, filmmaker and gardener Lauren Iverson will discuss ways to approach your routine stroll with fresh eyes. Come prepared with your walking shoes and the tools of your choice—a sketchbook, a camera, a flower press or perhaps a pocket for storing leaves—that will help you record your experience. With the wind at our backs, we’ll virtually convene to create memory “maps” of our time spent outdoors and swap stories about all of the sights, sounds and smells that stuck with us.
Full details and FREE registration here.
SCREENING: traveling thru with eyes closed tight (2006) by Christina Battle; 35mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 4 minutes. The Dark Room (2006) by Minyong Jang; 16mm screened as digital video, color, silent, 5 minutes. The Waves (2004) by Kent Long; 16mm screened as digital video, b&w, sound, 8 minutes. Void (4.INABILITY) (2016) by Nazli Dinçel; 16mm screened as digital video, color, silent, 4 minutes. the distance between here and there (2005) by Christina Battle; 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 8 minutes. palms (2011) by arc; Super-8mm screened as digital video, color, 2 minutes. Decked Out (2014) by Linda Scobie; 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 1 minute. Pink Opaque (2003) by Karen Johannesen; Super-8mm screened as digital video, color, silent, 3 minutes. Old Hat (2016) by Zach Iannazzi; 16mm screened as digital video, color, silent, 8 minutes.
traveling thru with eyes closed tight (2006) by Christina Battle
a yellow field meets clear blue skies.
a mist of water over bright green grass.
a well worn sidewalk in grey and white.
a lone black crow on a sandy beach.
a lowering sun fades into the sea.
— Christina Battle
The Dark Room (2001) by Minyong Jang
The Dark Room is homage to a 16th century apparatus, camera obscura. I tried to create a uniquely cinematic sensory experience. The views of Pacific Ocean could provide the powerful sense of moving water as mass and volume. (Minyong Jang)
The Waves (2004) by Kent Long
Always welcoming a visit to the coast, images and sounds were gathered at Red Rock, Ocean and Pacifica beaches and then sent through the generations. Artifacts are introduced and amplified in the process. Spending time with Woolf as the waves crash on the shore, appreciating her sense of scale. (Kent Long)
Void (4.INABILITY) (2016) by Nazli Dinçel
This is a re-destroyed film that I was unable to finish in 2013. Filmed both in ruins: at the Sutro Baths in San Francisco and in final domestic spaces occupied with a former partner. Film was destroyed in ocean water. (Nazli Dinçel)
the distance between here and there (2005) by Christina Battle
traveling through an invented landscape… the space between here and there. (Christina Battle)
palms (2011) by arc
a california portrait. pixelation study of a myth image/image myth.
palm trees are non-native to california, and their roots span equal parts as far underground as the trees tower above the earth. within this, an overlapping symbology. (arc)
Decked Out (2014) by Linda Scobie
Seconds at sea.
Pink Opaque (2003) by Karen Johannesen
Pink Opaque is part of a series of Super-8mm photograms (2000-03). These films were an exploration of the intersection between painting and filmmaking, which was of particularly interest to me as a former painter. Pink Opaque is a completely cameraless handmade film. It was made by placing semi-transparent objects directly onto the film strip and then by exposing the filmstrip using a flashlight in a light-tight room. There is an element of chance that is created using this process and I worked to foster a similar situation while hand processing the film. You can see elements of solarization, color shifts, chemical reactions and image transfers. (Karen Johannesen)
Old Hat (2016) by Zach Iannazzi
Whatever the difficulty of finding a way forward, film does nothing but. (Max Goldberg)
Bios
Christina Battle (Edmonton, Canada) has a BSc. with specialization in Environmental Biology from the University of Alberta, a certificate in Film Studies from Ryerson University, an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a PhD in Art & Visual Culture from the University of Western Ontario. She collaborates with Serena Lee as SHATTERED MOON ALLIANCE and has exhibited internationally in festivals and galleries as both artist and curator, most recently at The Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba (Brandon), The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Colorado), Latitude 53 (Edmonton), The John & Maggie Mitchell Gallery (Edmonton), Harbourfront Centre (Toronto), Capture Photography Festival (Vancouver); Forum Expanded at the Berlinale (Berlin), Blackwood Gallery (Mississagua), Trinity Square Video (Toronto), and Untitled Art Society (Calgary).
Minyong Jang b. Seoul, Korea, 1968. Professor: Dept. of Film & Digital Media, Seokyeong University, Seoul, Korea
Ph.D: Film Studies, Hanyang University, Seoul, 2008
MFA: Filmmaking, San Francisco Art Institute, 2002
Kent Long is a film and sound artist based in Richmond CA. He is interested in the sensorial experience of natural phenomena. His practice employs audiovisual tools and technologies as conceptual starting points in the realization of evocative spaces and experiences. He frequently collaborates with filmmaker Vanessa O’Neill on the creation of 16mm projection and sound performances, under the moniker Beige. He teaches Filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute and serves as Technical Director for film festivals, arts organizations and live music events.
Nazli Dinçel has won awards and exhibited worldwide in institutions, festivals and microcinemas including The Museum of Modern Art, International Film Festival Rotterdam, REDCAT and the Hong Kong International Film Festival among others. She is the recipient of a 2018 Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship in the emerging artist category and a recipient of a 2019 Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship at Harvard University. An immigrant from Turkey to the US at age 17, Dinçel now resides in Milwaukee WI and is building an artist-run, nonprofit film lab on the city’s south side.
arc refers to a process rather than an author. a curve within a void which makes something momentarily visible. material elements used to investigate immaterial states. framing the space of encounter as a site of unfixed ritual and sensory research. arc work has been presented at The Lab, San Francisco Cinematheque, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Mass Art Film Society (Boston), NDSM Treehouse (Amsterdam) and L’Abominable (Paris/La Courneuve), among other venues.
Linda Scobie is a Filmmaker, Programmer and Projectionist based in Los Angeles. She formerly served as the Assistant Director of Canyon Cinema, one of the world’s oldest distributors of experimental and avant garde film and was the lead projectionist at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the Pacific Film Archive, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Antimatter and XCÈNTRIC and she was a 2018 Artist in Residence at White Leaves Residency in New Mexico. Her work explores long distance love, discarded media, domestic labor and the landscape of memory. She is currently on the Board of Directors of Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco.
Karen Johannesen is an experimental filmmaker and was the Programmer and Director of The Chicago 8 Small Gauge Film Festival from 2011-2015. Karen has traveled and presented Super-8 film programs at CalArts, San Francisco Cinematheque, Otis College of Art & Design, the Echo Park Film Center, Mass Art Film Society and at The University of Minnesota. Karen has a BFA in Painting from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MFA in Filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Zach Iannazzi is an artist based in Oakland CA.
Alix Blevins is a filmmaker, curator and projectionist from the Bay Area. She is a member of Black Hole Collective Film Lab and has taught workshops on handmade and DIY filmmaking practices. Alix also co-organizes an artist-made film screening series in Oakland called the latent image which was awarded a 2019 Southern Exposure grant. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts.