owen plotkin's the electrical retrospectacle

(short films for the nervous system)


NYC

GET BACK Past screenings:
Shows 18 thru 20 not yet listed: OWEN PLOTKIN'S THE ELECTRICAL RETROSPECTACLE #17 PROJECTED 16mm avantgardeexperimentalunderground FILMS 60's &70's Short films for the nervous system FRIDAY, JULY 19th, 9pm, 2002 @ GALAPALOS : 70 N 6th St., BROOKLYN, N.Y. 718.782.5188 http://www.colorbot.com
curated by owen plotkin
Matrix, James Whitney (1968) color, sound, 6 min. "Visionary filmmaker plumbs the depths of percepconscienceness. All circuits are GO ! " - Plotkin
Aparatus sum- Hollis Frampton (1972) color, silent, 2-1/2 min. "Hollis Frampton meditates on what remains."- Plotkin
Thanatopsis , Ed Emshwiller (1962) B+W, sound, 5 min. "The moment one's mortality is revealed to be a brilliant gem, fearsome and enchanting."- Plotkin
Serpent , Scott Bartlett (1971)15 min.(sound)color "This film - 31 years old - is as now as CNN 31 years from tommorow. Bartlett = genius"-- Plotkin
Windowmobile, James Broughton with Joel Singer, 1977, 7-1/2 min., B+W, "Poet James Broughton is always true to his wise, his innocent soul."-Plotkin
Straight and Narrow, 1970, 10 min., Beverly and Tony Conrad w/music by Terry Riley and John Cale. "A flickeringly refreshing eyeopener. Pow! "-Plotkin
Arabesque for Kenneth Anger, Marie Menken ,(196?) color, sound, 4 min. music by Teiji Ito "Marie Menken's delicate hand leads one to one's own beauty. Behold."-Plotkin
Time of the locust-Peter Gessner (1966) b&w, sound, 12 min. "The sky is black with bombers, the grass is crying for man."-Plotkin
AFTER THE FILMS 242.PILOTS live video computer art improv ensemble. Acclaimed throughout Europe . Featuring: Kurt Ralske - (ex ultra vivid scene) (http://www.miau-miau.com/) HC Gilje Lukasz Lysakowski. with MUSIC by Keith Fullerton Whitman and Greg Davis experimental electronic music composer/performers.
RADICAL LOW ! - a modern dance / live video / live electronic music performance, featuring Belgian dancer/choreographer Chantal Yzermans.
T h e E l e c t r i c a l R e t r o s p e c t a c l e #16
free screening NYC, Thursday, May 9th, 2002
Anselmo, Chick Strand (1967) color, sound, 3-3/4 min. With Anselmo Aguascalientes and Balsamo the Magician. Music by La Banda Aguascalientes. An experimental documentary in the sense that it is a symbolic reenactment of a real event.The film is a poetic interpretation of this event in celebration of wishes and tubas. Exhibition: Women in Film, Whitney Museum of American Art; Cannes Int'l Film Festival.
Carrots and Peas, Hollis Frampton (1969) color, sound, 5-1/2 min. In the collection of the Museum of Modern Art "This is as funny as Hollis Frampton gets."- Plotkin
In Bleak Nebraska Midwinter, Wheeler W. Dixon, (1999) b&w, silent, 6 min. "...easily my most primitive film. The title pretty much sums it up, and this would be its first public screening. Not a representative film at all, but interesting as a document of a time and place." --Wheeler W. Dixon
5/3/02 Sunstone, Ed Emshwiller (1979) color, sound, 3 min. "Emshwiller,brilliant cinematographer turned deep-film-video-synth-old school- pioneer."- Plotkin
A film version of computer animation done using a digital paint program at New York Institute of Technology. Originally released as a videotape.
1933 , Joyce Wieland (1967) color, sound, 4 min. "1933. The year? The number? The title? Was it (the film) made then? It's a memory! (i.e., a Film). No, it's many memories. It's so sad and funny: the departed, departing people, cars, street! It hurries, it's gone, it's back! It's the only glimpse we have but we can have it again. The film (of 1933?) was made in 1967. You find out, if you didn't already know, how naming tints pure vision." - Michael Snow
Metanomen, Scott Bartlett (1966) b&w sound, 7 min. A sculptural abstract television color dance with dancer experiment. "girl meets boy, or does she? Groovy sitar music!"-Plotkin
The Water Circle, James Broughton (1975) color, sound, 3 min. Camera, H.E. Jenkins II; Harp, Joel Andrews. An homage to Lao-Tzu, this is a rollicking joyful poem that celebrates the movement of the waterways of the world, set to music by Corelli and read by the poet. The image is a continuous flow of light on water. "Exhilarating! It is Taoism alive." -- Al Chung-liang Huang
Les Tournesols, Rose Lowder (1982) color, silent, 2-3/4 min. The film presents a field of sunflowers. The diverse configurations placed on separate frames of the film strip appear, when projected successively, simultaneously on the screen. Thus, filmed one after another at different focal lengths, the sunflowers combine during projection to form one spatiotemporal image. "Oooh, pretty flower."-Plotkin
Kino Da! , Henry Hills (1981) b&w, sound, 4 min. Shot in sync with wind-up Bolex. Sound recording: Mark McGowan. Portrait of North Beach Communist cafe poet & gentle comrade, Jack Hirschman. "using sync sound and Burroughs-like cutups"--J.Hoberman,Village Voice.
Who Ho Ray No. 1 , Stan Vanderbeek (1966) color, sound, 7-1/2 min. MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, artist-in-residence at NASA in Houston,Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art retrospectives. "Vanderbeek's a freak."- Plotkin
Heavy Metal , Scott Bartlett (1979) color, sound, 13 min. Scott Bartlett's last film. "Bartlett = genius"-Plotkin In the end, the film destroys itself.

curated by owen plotkin
T h e E l e c t r i c a l R e t r o s p e c t a c l e #15
Free screening in New York City Wednesday, Jan 30th 2002
Sean, 1968, 14 min., Ralph Arlyck
"Sean is a 4-year-old boy who sits barefoot on a couch in his home in Haight-Ashbry and discourses on pot (he prefers eating it to smoking it), being busted by the fuzz, how he recognizes a speed freak (they're so skinny), his fear of the dark)-"
SEAN was one of two American films (and the only American short) screened at the 1970 London Film Festival.First Prize Winner at five American festivals.
An Early Clue to the New Direction, 1966, 28 min., Andrew Meyer
"Afterward, one felt that Andrew Meyer had opened a new world for 16mm cinema, one in which many kinds of excuses no longer need to be made. AN EARLY CLUE TO THE NEW DIRECTION -
apt title - his most recent film, is unexpected, glorious, and indescribably moving, and I can't forget it." - James Stoller, The Village Voice
Award: First Prize, Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1967 . Int'l Festival of Short Films, London; Film Theatre, 1968. Collection: British Film Institute
This Is It, 1972, 9-1/4 min., James Broughton
"It's simple, inspired, and ecstatic. To watch Broughton's film you need a certain silence, a certain descending to the more subtle, more fragile levels of your being - otherwise, the film and its content will not reach you, it will break to pieces. I figure
this is the main reason why films of the stature and subtlety and ecstasy of THIS IS IT never reach the New York Film Festival screen." -- Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice
First Prize, Yale Film Festival, 1972; First Prize, Hawaii Int'l Film Festival, 1972; First Prize, Sinking Creek Film & Video Festival, 1972; First Prize, Kenyon Film Festival,1972.
The End , 1953, 34-3/4 min, Christopher Maclaine
Christopher Maclaine, a poet and film maker of the 1940?s and 1950?s lived in San Francisco. The End depicts five different people on the last days of their lives. Visually inventive (it was photographed by avant-garde virtuoso Jordan Belson) and brooding,
the film has always had a "problem" because the narration was poorly recorded in 1953, and requires close listening. Refered to as the "Artaud of North Beach" by Stan Brakhage, by the mid-60s Maclaine suffered brain damage due to his methamphetamine addiction, in 1969, he was commited to a state institution, where he died in 1975.
Dwarf Star, 1974, 20 min., Mike Kuchar
"Kuchar's imagination flies off the handle as he speculates on the year 600,000,000 A.D. when the divided human race is brought together to confront a state of affairs that include galactic empires, cybernetics, evolution, nature worship,
and the biggest atomic explotion the forces of heaven can let loose, all filmed in beautiful color and abundant in visual effects--so, fasten your seat belts for a journey into the far exotic future and the stars beyond."
-Mike Kuchar
Offon, 1968 , 9 min., Scott Bartlett
"OFFON is so striking a work, so obviously a landmark, that it has been acquired by virtually every major film art collection in America, from the Museum of Modern Art to the Smithsonian Institute." --
Sheldon Renan, Curator, Pacific Film Archive
"... a perfect, magical fusion of non-verbal communication and advanced technological filmmaking... Indeterminacy, the union of opposites, the cosmic, the expansion of consciousness, the going beyond rationalism; all these are intimated purely visually, almost subliminally, to those willing to see"
-- Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art New York Film Festival; London Film Festival; BBC-TV, England; WNET-TV, USA. International West German Film Festival; Ann Arbor Film Festival.

The Electrical Retrospectacle #14
T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G ,1968, 12 min., Paul Sharits
("all flickering light is potentially hazardous for photogenic epileptics or photogenic migrain sufferers"- Tony Conrad)
Match Girl, 1966, 26 min., Andrew Meyer
(Featuring Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga,hipsters,a sex symbol,and a girl,music by therollingstones, color film)
Sky Blue Water Light Sign, 1972, 7 3/4 min., J.J. Murphy
(find out more,watch it.)
Color Me Shameless, 1967, 30 min., George Kuchar
(From the director of, The Naked and the Nude,Hold Me While I'm Naked,Eclipse of the Sun Virgin, Ascension of the Demonoids and many,many,many,many more.)
Medina, 1972, 14 1/2 min., Scott Bartlett
(expect something beautiful)
The Electrical Retrospectacle #13 Friday May 18 th 2001
Harmonica, 1970, 10 1/2 min., Larry Gottheim
Transport, 1971, 5 1/2 min., Amy Greenfield
People, 1969, 3 min.,Lenny Lipton
69, 1968, 4 1/2 min., Robert Breer
Aquarian Rushes, 1970, 47 1/4 min., Jud Yalkut
The Electrical Retrospectacle #12 May 11th ,2001
Circles II, 1972, 7 min.,Doris Chase
Angle Blue Sweet Wings, 1966, 3 1/2 min., Chick Strand
Saint Flournoy Lobos-Logos and
the Eastern Europe Fetus Taxing Japan Brides in
West Coast Places Sucking Alabama Air, 1970, 10 min., Will Hindle
Straight and Narrow, 1970, 10 min., Beverly and Tony Conrad
Dirt, 1971, 3 min.,Amy Greenfield
Sound of One, 1976, 11 min., Scott Bartlett
Eclipse of the Sun Virgin, 1967, 15min., George Kuchar
The Electrical Retrospectacle #11
New York City Friday May 4th 2000
Bondi, 1979, 15 min., Paul Winkler
Fist Fight, 1964, 9 min., Robert Breer
Matrix III, 1972, 10 min., John Whitney
Bullfight, 1955, 9 min., Shirley Clarke
Moon 1969, 1969, 15min., Scott Bartlett

shows 6 -10 not yet archived

T h e E l e c t r i c a l R e t r o s p e c t a c l e #5
April 26th 2000

We Proudly Project 16mm Films from Japan selected by Joss Winn
with additional films selected by Owen Plotkin:
Crossroads,1976, 36 min., Bruce Conner
Drifting Vida Muerte, 1990, 9 min., Yamazaki Mikio
Escaping Lights, 1992, 13 min., Harada Ippei
Corrosion Tone, 1998, 30 min., Miyake Nagaru
Ecosystem 9 : A Quicksand Eclipse, 1993, 13 min., Koike Teru

T h e E l e c t r i c a l R e t r o s p e c t a c l e #4 JUNE 30th 1999
"Hurry,Hurry" 1957, 3 minutes, Marie Menken.
"Permanent Wave" 1966, 2.5 minutes, Anita Thacher.
"Billabong" 1969, 9 minutes , Will Hindle.
"Pas De Troi" 1975 ,Silent,7 minutes,Hollis Frampton.

intermission

"Erogeny" 1976 ,4 1/2 minutes,Charles Broughton.
"Piece Mandala/End War" 1966, color B&W, 5 minutes, Paul Sharits.
"Allures" 1961, 7 minutes, Jordan Belson.
"Lovemaking" 1970, 13 minutes, Scott Bartlett.



the electrical retrospectacle #3
October 14th 1998

marie menken-arabesque for kenneth anger.(1961)(sound)color
marie menken-eye music in red major.(1961) 5 min.(silent)color
james whitney-lapis.(1966)10 min.(sound)color
hollis frampton-lemon.(1969)8 min.(silent)color
bruce conner-cosmic ray.(1961-2) 4 min.(sound)b&w
(( an intermission ))
mary ellen bute-polkagraph.(1953)6 min(sound)color
jordan belson-chakra(1972) 6 min.(sound)color
ernie gehr-wait.(1968) 7 min.(silent)color
scott bartlett-serpent.(1971)15 min.(sound)color

the electrical retrospectacle #2
August 5th 1998.

loud visual noises-stan brakhage(1982)
time of the locust-peter gessner(1966)
film study-hans richter(1926)
drips in strips-marie menken(1961)
thanatopsis-ed emshwiller(1962)
intermission
metanomen-scott bartlett(1966)
poem field #7-stan vanderbeek(1967-71?)
colorfilm-ben van meter(1964-65)
non catholicam-will hindle(1958-63)

the electrical retrospectacle #1
June 17th 1998

beat-christopher maclain(1958)
bad burns-paul sharits (1982)
notes on the circus-jonas mekas(1966)
aparatus sum- hollis frampton (1972)
(intermission)
study in chroeography for camera-maya deren (1945)
ghosts before breakfast-hans richter (1928)
mothlight-stan brakhage (1963)
offon-scott bartlett (1968)

thanks for comin'.

Credits