Alternative Visions

September 1, 2010 - October 27, 2010

Un Chant d’amour, September 22

Alternative Visions is presented in conjunction with the fall semester avant-garde course taught at UC Berkeley.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010
7:30 p.m. Optical Poetry: Oskar Fischinger Classics
Seminal animation works by German-born filmmaker Oskar Fischinger, “one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century” (William Moritz) , whose work was an influence on Walt Disney, John Cage, and others. “Exquisite visual music, geometric patterns and shapes choreographed tightly to classical music and jazz.”—New York Times

Wednesday, September 8, 2010
7:30 p.m. Unseen Cinema: Revolutions in Technique and Form
An eye-opening glimpse into the prewar avant-garde, with works by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Strand, Lois Weber, and more. “There’s no more false idea in film than the notion that everything has been seen and discovered; (this program) deliciously, deliriously puts a stop to that falsehood.”—Robert Koehler (70 mins)

Wednesday, September 15, 2010
7:30 p.m. Unseen Cinema: The Amateur as Auteur Introduced by Bruce Posner
The second half of the revelatory program on the prewar avant-garde, spotlighting the films of surrealist Joseph Cornell and others. (c. 102 mins)

Wednesday, September 22, 2010
7:30 p.m. L’Age d’or
Luis Buñuel (France, 1930). Buñuel's Surrealist classic, cowritten by Salvador Dali, represents a golden age of revolutionary cinema, a cinema of humor, eros, and outrage. With Jean Genet’s short Un Chant d’amour. (83 mins)

Wednesday, October 27, 2010
7:30 p.m. Photographic Memory: Bay Area Student Experimental Film Festival 2010
Artists in person. Mortality, memory, and formal experimentations provide the framework for this program of new experimental works by Bay Area film students. (55 mins)