Program Archive: The 1997 New York Video Festival
July 18 - 24, 1997

It is time once again for an exciting exploration of a medium we never quite know where to place within the realm of moving images. But that is the allure of video. Artists can do anything with it--make frank documentaries about compelling subjects; manipulate still photos, old movies, television, even surveillance footage--to devise an eclectic, sometimes erotic, and often digitally enhanced world. And, more often than not, they can create tales that take us from the everyday to the realm of the outsider.

The work presented this year runs from the bizarre to the sublime. A stunning array of new digital interactive works uses some of the newest technology, while a wild bunch of giddy tapes looks like Mom let the kids loose with the VCR again. But there is thought and vision behind all of the work. Many of the videos on view seem to paint their stories. Appropriated images from arenas we'd never consider are electronically pasted, altered, or played with to create compelling works of art. While we may sometimes feel that we are being dragged into a homogeneous sense of culture, these artists give us new and challenging ideas by every means possible. Join us in this fantastic voyage of discovery.

Credits and Thanks
The Video Festival is curated by Marian Masone, Graham Leggat, and Gavin Smith.

Thanks to Peggy Ahwesh; Ruby Lerner and the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers; Craig Baldwin; Luc Bourdon; Stephen Vitiello and Lori Zippay of Electronic Arts Intermix; Lissa Gibbs; Leah Gilliam; Kristin Lucas; Jenny Lion; Ralph McKay; Bob Paris; John Rockwell and Lincoln Center Festival 97; Steve Seid; Casper Stracke; Elizabeth Subrin; Kate Horsfield, Mindy Faber, Jennifer Reeder of Video Data Bank; and Bart Weiss.

LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 97
For the second year, the Film Society is proud to present the video festival as a part of the Lincoln Center Festival. For more Lincoln Center Festival 97 information, call (212) 875-5928 or visit www.LincolnCenter.org/festival.

schedule of programs

VIDEO INSTALLATION
july 10 - 27:
By Mary Lucier
Curated by Leanne Mella
In this powerful three-channel video and sound installation on view in New York for the first time, Lucier, a leading artist of the medium, continues her exploration of mortality, the forces of nature and the individual's place in the natural order. Natural sounds, images of the sun, the forest floor and a great blue heron caught in an attempt at flight are subjected to diverse editing strategies: slow motion, reversal, hyper-speed, and audio processing are all employed as a means to heighten and focus the viewer's perception of nature as a living body. This installation will be on view from July 10 to July 27, coinciding with nearly all of Lincoln Center Festival 97.

VIDEO PROGRAM
july 18 - 24:
MARCUSE ON THE BEACH
Herbert's Hippopotamus:
A Story of Revolution in Paradise
(Paul Alexander Juutilainen,
USA 1996, 70m)
Amidst the radical ferment of the late Sixties, Herbert Marcuse, the Marxist philosopher who fled Nazi Germany as a young man, came to teach at the University of California at San Diego, the ultimate beach town and bastion of conservatism and pro-military sentiment. This off-beat documentary explores Marcuse's influence on student activists such as Angela Davis and campus anti-war/anti-establishment movements, and the backlash against him, led by then-California governor Ronald Reagan. Juutilanien lays out this emigrant's ideas about affluence, tolerance, and violence, provoking us to make our own connections between activism then and now.
Preceded by:
Lux Perpetua
(Pierre-Jean Moreau, France, 1996, 7m)
Ten years after his brother's suicide, videomaker Moreau creates a striking homage while coming to terms with personal tragedy.
Friday, July 18: 6:15 pm
Saturday, July 19: 4 pm

HYPER MEDIA: CD-ROM INSIDE / OUT
As this not-so-long-ago new platform for exhibiting media becomes less commercial, it becomes more attractive and available to artists working on the edge. Media maker Eric Saks looks at outstanding work by producers including Elliott Peter Earl, who will present Eye Sling Shot Lions and Throwing Apples at the Sun, and the OM label CD-Plus releases. Not simply demonstration, but performances that show that interactive works can exist in the marketplace and on the fringe.
Friday, July 18: 9:15 pm

EXPERIMENTAL DISPATCHES: WORLDS AT WAR
Newsreels from the avant-garde, fragmentary reports from a world forever at odds with itself.
Diana's Looking-Glass
(Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi,
Italy, 1996, 33m)
In 1927 Mussolini had Lake Nemi (a.k.a. Diana's Looking-Glass) drained to reclaim two of Caligula's sunken imperial ships. Scored to a brooding ambient track, the found footage of this grandiose effort has a dreamlike, hallowed air - until its implicit martial imperative leads to the brutal African campaign and Italy's inglorious defeat in World War II.
Chess
(Liselot van der Heijden, USA, 1997, 5m)
Two of Eastern Europe's most callous strongmen play out an endgame.
These Places We've Learned to Call Home
(Josh Oppenheimer and Jacob Silber, USA, 1996, 30m)
Recorded phone conversations chronicle the directors winning the trust of white supremacists and militia members, while moody and disturbing scenes played out across desolate landscapes and in abandoned buildings evoke historical catastrophes, and the undying hope for a better world.
Saturday, July 19: 2 pm
Monday, July 21: 6:15 pm

METAPHYSICAL ENCOUNTERS
Three cryptic excursions into the realm of the ineffable as manifest in three different environments.
Oriental Elegy
(Alexsandr Sokurov, 1996, Russia, 45m)
A haunting, visually masterful dream-odyssey by Russian cinema's reigning master of poetic mysticism. A disembodied narrator drifts through the mist-shrouded landscape of a remote Japanese island, encountering other souls suspended somewhere life and death.
Introduction to the Holy Spirit
(Bob Paris and Roman Anikushan,
USA /Russia, 1997, 10m)
A young Russian unburdens his soul after a born-again Christian meeting in a Moscow stadium.
Creosote
(Eric Saks, 1997, USA, 43m)
In this oblique, elliptical narrative, a boy disappears on a hiking trip and is found dead ten years later, a grown man. Charting his phantom fringe existence in the intervening years and his enigmatic spiritual destiny, Saks' video employs dense, layered textures and a dissonant sound collage to evoke the very essence of metaphysical transcendence.
Saturday, July 19: 6 pm
Sunday, July 20: 2 pm

THE MACHINE MADE FLESH:
CROSSING OVER AT THE END OF THE MILLENIUM
As the medical, military, and robotic industries accelerate the hybridization of humanity and technology, the artists making and featured in these tapes take part with mixed feelings.
Ocularis: Eye Surrogates
(Tran T. Kim-Trang, USA, 1997, 23m)
Do you like to watch? So do the multimillion-dollar security and surveillance trades, not to mention a large cross-section of the public who, it seems, increasingly prefers its voyeurism technologically mediated.
Impact Zone
(Kadet Kuhne and Sophie Constantinou,
USA, 1996, 10m)
Cronenberg's Crash reconfigured as avant la lettre clubkid-lesbian fantasy/Saturday morning cartoon/arcade video game.
When I Was a Monster
(Anne McGuire, USA, 1996, 6m)
You know, sometimes it just takes a while to get used to a new prosthesis.
Pandaemonium
(Leslie Gladsjo and Richard Curson Smith,
UK, 1995, 49m)
A BBC documentary featuring four artists enamored of dazzling and dangerous technology: masters of disaster Survival Research Laboratories; Chico MacMurtrie and his responsive amorphic robots; Stelarc, Australia's daft pincushion; and David Therrien, whose high-voltage passion plays look like a cross between an alien abduction and the Spanish Inquisition.
Alienator
(Texas Tomboy, USA, 1997, 3m)
Might UFO narratives arise from displaced anxieties about invasive technology? Watch this rave-style montage and discuss.
Saturday, July 19: 8:30 pm
Sunday, July 20: 4 pm

LONG WAY HOME: IDENTITY AND DISPLACEMENT
Five videos exploring the unstable, uneasy relationship between the materiality of place and the intangibility of identity.
Window
(Nelson Henricks, 1997, Canada, 3m)
The transient fragments of a room with a view.
Running Light
(Lis Rhodes, 1996, UK, 14m)
A rigorous, impassioned meditation on displacement, powerlessness and invisibility, inspired by the plight of migrant workers.
Flamingo
( Robert Frank, 1997, USA, 5m)
The master photographer moves house.
Der Platz
(Uli Schippel, 1996, Germany, 52m)
A brooding study of the world's largest construction site, juxtaposed with workers' memories of places that have special meaning to them.
Withdrawal
(George Barber, 1996,UK, 4m)
Figures in a landscape, signs of life.
Sunday, July 20: 6:15 pm
Monday, July 21: 4 pm

THE FAR SIDE OF ABJECTION:
THE DISTURBING WORLD OF DONIGAN CUMMING
You may be appalled - or moved - by Donigan Cummings' cathartic, profoundly shocking videos. They disrupt our basic assumptions about the relation of videomaker to subject. Where do collaboration and play- acting end and manipulation and exploitation begin? Even as he fully implicates himself, Donigan purposely avoids contextualizing his often grotesque subjects, challenging us to see beyond seemingly stupefying abjection to the tenacious dignity of the human condition and to confront the reality of physical and mental disintegration.
A Prayer for Nettie
(1995, Canada, 33m)
Cumming solicits and directs a series of bizarrely inappropriate yet oddly heartfelt impromptu prayers and tributes from a circle of friends.
Cut the Parrot
(1996, Canada, 40m) The death of his friend Albert provides the occasion for Cumming to construct a series of interlinked reminiscences, anecdotes, performances and songs.
Sunday, July 20: 8:15 pm
Tuesday, July 22: 4 pm

I MADE IT MYSELF:
PORTRAITS OF ARTISTIC AUTONOMY
The margins of pop culture harbor large shadow economies made up of hobbyists, kooks, and authentic self-invented artists, immune to the mule bray of celebrity culture.
Standpipe Siamese and the Adventures of Frost
(Alex Rappoport, USA, 1996, 26m)
Finally a hip-hop documentary with a subject, rhythm, and style worthy of the name. A dynamic, engaging look at the work and working methods of NYC street artist Phil Frost.
The Cocktail Crooners
( George Kuchar, USA, 1997, 21m)
Legendary videomaker George Kuchar visits three Bay Area friends: a filmmaking couple and performer Billy Nayer.
Watch Me Jumpstart
(Banks Tarver, USA, 1996, 36m)
An intimate look at Guided by Voices, the indie band from Dayton, Ohio, that got its start not by rehearsing in a garage but by imagining they already were a band: designing record covers, making up titles and credits for non-existent songs, silk-screening their own T-shirts, all before they ever played a note.
Monday, July 21: 8 pm
Wednesday, July 23: 4 pm

IN CONFIDENCE:
TALES OF THE LOVELORN
Unrequited love causes emotional havoc in two videos that blend documentary and fiction.
John
(Genevieve Mersch, Belgium, 1996, 41m)
Juliette is in Brussels; John is in Boston. While awaiting his arrival, Juliette records a series of video letters to him, introducing her friends, her work, her neighborhood, but gradually begins to questions his loyalty and, hey, are you even there?
The Red Rag
(Lodewijk Crijns, Netherlands, 1996, 43m)
A Gallic Grey Gardens. Middle-aged Dutch expat brothers Herman and Egbert live with their domineering mother in an almost deserted French village. Both men harbor amourous intentions towards Julie, their young housekeeper - and when she announces she's moving to the city, the brothers find their lives disintegrating.
Tuesday, July 22: 6:15 pm
Thursday, July 24: 4 pm

DREAMWORLDS TV:
MUSIC VIDEO ROUNDUP
These censored and rarely seen music videos demonstrate the maturation of the once-fledgling form. Film and music critic Armond White (author of The Resistance and the Tupac Shakur bio Rebel for the Hell of It) surveys a selection of outstanding recent work by the most provocative directors. Using special effects and social critique to demonstrate pop music's dazzling emotional range, from audacious hiphop (Hype Williams and Ice Cube), idiosyncratic electronica (H-Gun's Ben Stokes) to the strikingly realistic/fantastic Smashing Pumpkins videos by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Farris. White's tour climaxes with Michel Gondry's dream worlds for Sinead O'Connor, Donald Fagen and Bjork and eccentric satirical work by the two Spikes, Jonze and Lee.
Tuesday, July 22: 8:15 pm

HI-TECH LO FI
Rooted in primitive, casual or playfully defective aesthetics, lo-fi video provides a perfect platform for bizarre, absurd and irreverent sensibilities.
Rescue Parables
(Halflifers: Torsten Z. Burns and Anthony Discenza,
USA, 1994, 6m)
Is the VCR broken? A deranged cycle of scenarios somewhere between slapstick and high adventure.
The Waltons
(Anne McGuire, 1997, USA, 7m)
John Boy's near-death experience closely inspected.
I am Crazy and You're Not Wrong
(Anne McGuire, 1997, USA, 11m)
A Kennedy-era TV singer on the brink.
The Mystery of Altay
(Sever, 1996, Russia, 14m)
Retro-psychedelic mythic --- Paradjanov on acid.
Return to Rescueworld
(Halflifers, 1996, 8m)
Once
(Romeo Doron Alaeff, 1996, USA, 6m)
A painful family memory reconstituted on screen.
I.N.R.I.
(Bob Paris, USA, 1996, 4m)
Christ comes to the Home Shopping Network.
I'm Not a Girl who Misses Much
(Pipilotti Rist, Switzerland, 1995, 4m)
"Happiness is a Warm Gun" in fast-forward and slo-mo.
Caddy
(Emily Breer and Joe Gibbons, 1997, USA, 1m)
Coulda been a contender.
Fear of Rescue
(Halflifers, 1997, 10m)
Wednesday, July 23: 6:15 pm
Thursday, July 24: 8:15 pm

FINDERS KEEPERS
RESURRECTED IMAGES
Found footage and appropriated images - the stuff of dreams and subversive experiments in form.
The Artwork in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility by Walter Benjamin as told to Keith Sanborn
( © Jayne Austin, USA, 1996, 5m)
Don't come crying to us; you've been warned.
Everybody Loves Nothing
(Steve Reineke, Canada, 1996, 12m)
Disturbing medical-study footage filters the narrator's search for meaning.
The Rumour of True Things
(Paul Bush, UK, 1996, 25m)
Discarded footage not meant for posterity - weapons testing films, production line monitoring, security tapes, computer games - sketch a revelatory picture of contemporary society.
Counterfeit Music Video #2 - Found Photograph
(Robert Attanasio, USA, 1996, 4m)
Every picture tells a story with the help of a fab golden oldie.
Release
(Christoph Girardet, Germany, 1996, 10m)
Deconstructing four shots from King Kong to link primal scream and future shock.
The Shanghaied Text
(Ken Kobland, USA, 1996, 20m)
A collage of found and original footage pictures a new landscape for the end of the millennium. Montana plains collide - or mesh - with classic Soviet films, Hollywood westerns, and May 68 demonstrations. Alternately dissonant and harmonious, this veteran video-maker's tape bears witness to the heroic, farcical, and erotic images that have underwritten our century.
Wednesday, July 23: 8 pm
Thursday, July 24: 6:15 pm