Guest blogger - Joel Schlemowitz - Red Hook Cine Soiree!

Yesterday was quite the cine soiree, and while I recover from the 12 hour party, the curator of this event, Joel  Schlemowitz, is your author for today! - JM

Red Hook Cine Soiree, Sunday, July 27, 2008

film still -- Seattle Solstice by Caryn Cline

You're asked to curate a film show on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer.  You ask yourself who it the world is going to be around the city on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of the summer?  And this becomes a liberating thing, curatorially speaking, you can just program work that will be enjoyed and shared by the filmmakers and if an audience does or does not show up it will still be okay.

Thankfully the audience did show up!  In the cavernous BWAC exhibition out at the far end of Red Hook, Brooklyn, a little screening room has been prepared.  An old-time melody from the Victrola was there to lure people in.  And sangria!  The films, intentionally eclectic. 

Who does not love Jennifer Matotek's "Cats and Pants"?  A one minute fur ball of compulsive cataloging of still images of the titular C's and P's. 

Jennifer MacMillan's (our lovely Invisible Cinema blogger) "Faces in the Flowers" leaves you lost in a beautiful daydream -- don't believe me? Then see it for yourself here.  See it for yourself if you do believe me too.  Mel's high five!

                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

film still -- Spidery by Bradley Eros

Bradley Eros performed a live film-video combo of his "spidery" manipulating lenses and glass in front of the projector lens.  A film that is unique every time it is shown.  This was an especially blue-and-purple performance, an achingly beautiful set of hues for the languorous summer season.

Would the audience love or hate "Robot Movie"?  Love!  The flyer for the screening did promise dancing robots. 

"Beard St." gave us the Red Hook transformations, documented in layers of images, but now there is the Ikea, how a film only a year old can be so suddenly nostalgic! 

And zaza's "Subway Haikus" unfurled on the screen, word by word.

Mike Olshan announced his upcoming screening of politically incorrect vintage "race cartoons" and "musical insults to women" and you could see the audience wince.  He asked afterwards if it was okay that everyone was so offended by the prospect.  His objective is to take our sanitized movie history and peek under the corner of the rug to see what lurks beneath.  "It's okay. You got to get people out of their comfort zone, Mike!" was the rejoinder.  That he did. 

But our little cine soiree was a total comfort zone, and we ended with the hypnotic spell of the spinning camera of Florens Fanciulli's "Giro Giro Tondo" and cranked up the Victrola again for more foxtrots.

-- Joel Schlemowitz

 

Not exactly the foxtrot, but we love them anyway! :)

Comments

[Joel Schlemowitz]

And you can read more about the show on the "Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn" blog:

http://dithob.blogspot.com/2008/07/update-bwac-red-hook-art-show.html

[jmac]

It's nice to see other bloggers writing about this show! Thanks for the link, Joel!

[David Baker]

Let it be told, later in the evening inspiration and inebriation met.
In focus or out of focus Bradley and Joel
proved themselves to be the mad prophets of a new cinematic order. They upended the furniture and projected film on that.
An insect crawling up the wall carried on its back the lit projection of a jellyfish.
Eyeglasses were pulled from spectators
faces in order to better refract lambent
botanies from the 1940's.
Sublime 78 rpm recordings mingled by
candlelight, birdcalls, then suddenly,impossibly
a projection directly on cigarette smoke
as it left the mouth of the smoker.
Simultaneously Bradley repeated the
exhortation "it's not about the screen!"
"it's not about the screen!"
As if to prove his assertion, in a moment of torrid excess, standing in the projector's light, he tore the shirt off his back and caught the lightning of Joel's projector with it. An effect altogether evocative first of a turn of the century Parisian magician, then that of a bare chested toreador taunting with
the evanescent light on his shirt buttons.
(Later the Shroud Of Turin came to mind.)
Broken wineglasses and cookie crumbs
followed, culminating in the sensory
deprivation chamber under Joel's entry
stairway. A day, then a night of wonder and imagination that will not be forgotten.

[jmac]

Preternatural poetry, David, I love it! :) And that was just the after-party, right?! Did I miss the sensory deprivation chamber . . . ?

Anytime you wish to do a guest blog, please let me know!