Ann Arbor Film Festival 2009

Conner’s inventive technique and conceptual density using assemblage, montage, and tour-de-force editing has made him the originator of many movements. When asked if he was the father of MTV, he replied with, “I demand a DNA test.” or “Don’t blame me!” The second of two programs celebrates Conner’s perfect unity and displacement of sound and picture, ranging from Conner’s recent re-edit of REPORT #3, the birth of punk with DEVO’s “Mongoloid” to the nostalgic reflection on his boyhood in Kansas, accompanied by the sentimental score of Sibelius’ “Valse Triste.” [Contains mature content and strobing images. Viewer discretion advised.] Sponsored by: Nooka Films in screening order: Cosmic Ray A Movie Report #3 Mongoloid America is Waiting Mea Culpa Take the 5:10 to Dreamland Valse Triste Looking for Mushrooms (Long Version) Easter Morning

As one of the premier distributors of avant-garde and experimental motion picture films, Canyon Cinema’s collection contains more than 3,000 film titles for rent and for sale from more than 325 filmmakers around the world. Based in San Francisco, Canyon Cinema was founded in 1962 and incorporated in 1967. This year we celebrate over 40 years of Canyon’s mission to distribute, exhibit and preserve motion picture films as an art form. Sponsored by: Kodak Motion Picture Film Films in screening order: Kaleidoscope and Colour Flight (Len Lye) Composition in Blue (Oskar Fischinger) Ellipses (Frédérique Devaux) The Crossing (Timoleon Wilkins) Bridges Go Round (Shirley Clarke) BOUQUETS 21-30 (Rose Lowder) Kosmos (Thorston Fleisch) The Argonaut (Alexis Bravos) Ruby Skin (Eve Heller) You Be Mother (Sarah Pucill) The Girl Chewing Gum (John Smith)

"COMPOSITION shares the same jolly atmosphere as the commercials, but whereas each of Fischinger's previous films had utilized only one basic animation technique, COMPOSITION IN BLUE bursts forth with half a dozen different new techniques - mostly involving pixilation of three-dimensional forms… "The basic format of the film centers around solid objects moving about in an imaginary blue room. Fischinger delights in setting up conditions so that the audience makes associations with probable or 'real' everyday happenings, and then extending the analogy beyond the limits of possibility, bursting the bubble of the audience's credibility. In the opening scene, Fischinger is careful to show the red cubes entering the 'room' through a door, so we will identify with this as a plausible situation. Then he subtly introduces a mirror as the 'floor' to the room, again gaining our confidence in this special but logical reality. Then, at the climax of the film, a cylinder pounds on the mirror-floor and creates circular ripples as if the floor had suddenly turned to water, something that pushes us, with a rush of delight, out of the realm of reality into a joyous world of sheer, absurd fantasy."" - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture"

The film begins with a brief flash of molten-red grain followed by a long scene of darkest night-blue sea ripples. Hexagonal refractions and spectral rays puncture alluded-to landscapes—rivers, skies, prairies, trees, mountains. Graphic (yet spatially free-floating) imagery slices intently wrought rhythms of light and dark color fields, producing afterimages. The film concludes with bright, almost-discernable window shapes, hinting at an opening to a different realm.

Original music by Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley.

Dr. Chicago is a uniquely personal, unconventional and absurdly provocative film trilogy. Its verve derives from an active collaboration of multiple talents kept in focus by director George Manupelli’s offbeat vision of a strangely sympathetic scumbag in pursuit of his impossible American dream. Co-Presented by: The Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Visitors Series

a Darkness Swallowed opens on a pair of faded photographs showing an old dented car, one with a child standing beside it and the other without. Speaking in voice-over, Bromberg references a past event, one that will forever haunt her although it occurred before her birth. The film then sinks downward, dipping below the surface of the rational world to mine the seemingly infinite layers of the past stored within the fleshy entrails, chalky bones, sinewy spider webs and gnarled ligaments of both the body and the Earth. Noises - of clanging metal, bells, heartbeats and jazz music, to name only a few - combine to create a dense sound environment, a seemingly immense, three-dimensional space for contemplation. As with all of Bromberg's films, there are images that, once seen, will stay with you forever, and then there are the colors - rich, luscious hues to be savored slowly. Dedicated to the filmmaker's mother, the film is also a gift to us, a reminder of cinema's organic basis in chemistry and light, and of its ability to take us deep inside.

Departing from an inimitable film repertoire of tour-de-force editing technique, visual comedy, and apocalyptic themes, avant-garde master Bruce Conner envisioned EASTER MORNING (2008) - metaphysical quest for renewal beyond the natural and ephemeral worlds - to be his last finished masterpiece. Keeping with his ritualistic reworking and re-imagining of his films, the image source originates from the 8mm Kodachrome footage of EASTER MORNING RAGA (1966), expanded in duration, gauge, and frame rate to devise an effect of visual transcendence. EASTER MORNING celebrates Conner's reverence for experiential cinema, aleatoric sound, and discoveries within the realm of the spirit.