San Francisco Cinematheque Program Notes (1999)

Program Notes 1999 narrative codes, designed to mimic rational causality in representational events and linear time and space. Rose Hobart (1936) by Joseph Cornell; 16mm, color, sound, 19 minutes Cornell contrasted the aesthetic weakness of the then new sound film by referring to the power of silent film to "evoke an ideal world of beauty." Using parts of East of Borneo (1932), some footage from scientific films, a recording of Brazilian music, a colored glass filter and rigorously methodical editing, he creates a fluid filmic space for his continuously seeking, and repetitively recoiling heroine, Rose Hobart. The fluidity of the imaginal world is propelled forward by constant ruptures of narrative time and space as he destroys carefully constructed Hollywood continuity. His Rose is enticed, entrapped and seduced by what? By whom? Go Go Go (1962) by Marie Menken; 16mm, color, silent, 11.5 minutes Menken posits a new "eye," intimate yet non-ego oriented, in her observation of public and private life in NYC. The eye of the camera is the self-mirrored, not the heroic vision of the lone artist genius of modernism (is that him making a cameo appearance as her husband, Willard Maas, tearing out his hair in a creative frenzy?). The grandmother of single-framing explores the rhythmic patterns of daily activities in this tour-de-force finger-on-the-Bolex-trigger dance with the world. That's her waving. My Name Is Oona (1969) by Gunvor Nelson; 16mm, b&w, sound, 10 minutes Nelson incantates (in collaboration with her daughter) the birth of a strong and sensual female self, who repeatedly and assertively gazes back at the camera, at the filmmaker and the spectator. In contrast to the character played by Rose Hobart, who is contained and trapped as much by the stasis of the filmic space as by the Prince, this girl dynamically names and possesses herself in the space of the film. Miss Jesus Fries On Grill (1973) by Dorothy Wiley; 16mm, color, sound, 12 minutes Wiley's shocking juxtaposition of a news article describing a gruesome death with images of the bathing of a newborn recalls with a twist Breton's "beauty will be convulsive..." But here there is not the male Surrealists' aggressive dialectics, but rather a tenderness of observance and spectatorship. Midway through the film, she gently forces a reversal of the traditional privileged filmic positions of observed/observer as the baby opens its eye. Elasticity (1976) by Chick Strand; 16mm, color, sound, 25 minutes Strand explores female spirituality and consciousness through a lyrical collage of original and found footage, sound and word. She has said "the history of film is my personal history." The Bunuel-Dali film Andalusian Dog is referenced in the sound track, and images of the filmmaker searching for the film's structure with her projector, center the work. Tr'cheot'my P'y (1988) by Julie Murray; Super-8mm, color, sound, 3.5 minutes Murray exposes the interrelationship between media images and sexual violence in her explosive clusters of narrative, commercial, pornographic evocations of body and embodiment. Mirroring a culturally "named" female identity, she counterattacks. Peace O' Mind (1987) by Mary Filippo; 16mm, b&w, sound, 8 minutes Filippo creates a fabric in which both found and original footage challenge the notion of the cultural "heroic" and establish an audio lament for the lack of a "heroine." She forces a shifting 29