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Also this issue: Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign The Punk Moms' Club Behind the Screens |
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August 1- 7, 2002
screen picks
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Trailer Trash/Son of Trailer Trash (Fri., Aug. 2 at 8 and 10 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 3 at 10 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) As anyone who sat through Record City knows, sometimes you're better off just sticking with the trailer. (The movie, whose promo clip was enthusiastically received by a Secret Cinema audience, later screened in its entirety to numerous walk-outs.) So think of this reprise of SC's popular all-trailers program as a month's viewing compressed into a few hours, some of movies you'll want to pretend you've seen, others you'll try to forget as quickly as you saw them. Friday's program features the original TT as well as the newly compiled Son of ..., which returns all by its lonesome Saturday night.
Views from the Avant-Garde (Sat., Aug. 3, 7 p.m., free, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) To a lot of film fans, even serious ones, watching avant-garde cinema is like sandpapering your fingertips. A big part of loving movies is the idea, however unrealistic, that the thing you're watching might slip the bonds of pre-definition and assault a mass audience. At its worst, avant-garde film can seem self-congratulatory, intended only for a fractional in-group. Hell, if you wanted that stuff, you could just go look at paintings or something.
'Course, it's not all gloom and doom. Jack Smith's 45-minute Flaming Creatures (1963), which makes up about a third of International House's program (the third drawn from the collection of Leonard Guercio), has become enshrined as a masterpiece of experimental cinema, but Smith resisted its being seen as anything other than "a comedy," by some reports so put off by the film's weighty reception that he never allowed another of his films to stand alone, incorporating them into his own performances so he could better control the audience's reaction. Smith, name-checked in The Cockettes, was an obvious influence on such crossover artists as John Waters (compare Creatures' nasal narration with the voiceover from Pink Flamingos), achieved instant notoriety for the film's male nudity, stylized rape scenes and raw humor. (As entwined, near-naked performers of semi-determinate gender smear makeup on their faces, the commercial-parody voiceover asks, "Is there a lipstick that won't come off when you suck cocks?") Entranced with images from the overwrought spectaculars of his youth, Smith fashioned tableaux which invoke The Arabian Nights as easily as they prefigure the decadent embrace of the Velvet Underground. Shot on half-ruined film stock, the film feels like an artifact dug up from some weird alien culture, one which might have spawned ours without leaving any other traces behind.
Among the program's other highlights are Kenneth Anger's Fireworks (1947), Maya Deren and Alexander Hamilton's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), and works by Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye, Puter Kubelka, Kurt Kren and Paul Sharits, as well as Stan Brakhage's legendary Mothlight (1963), which the avant auteur created by taping fragments of moth wings to leader stock. The resultant images shed light of varying hues and intensity, reveling in the inherent properties of film while also inducing something like a brief trance. In an era where, especially on the low-budget end, film risks subsumption to the (as-yet) inferior medium of video, Brakhage's tactile homage resonates even more deeply.
McCabe and Mrs. Miller/Days of Heaven (Sun., Aug. 4, 4:30 and 7:30 p.m.; Wed., Aug. 7, 7 and 9:15 p.m., Prince Music Theater) The first of the Prince's "Dream Double Features" arrives, chosen by high school art teacher Cheryl Fedyna. Call it the '70s diffusion double-bill, or just revel in the gauzy, gorgeous cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond (McCabe) and Néstor Almendros (Days). For my part, I prefer Robert Altman's wordly wise cynicism to Terrence Malick's sticky poetry, but in some circles, them's fighting words. Besides, why draw distinctions when you've two such incredible movies on the big screen? Miss these and you'll regret it.
