Moviegoers can witness how each artist took American cinema in bold new directions during the forties, fifties, and sixties. Three of the movies – Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis; Anger Me; Notes on Marie Menken – are Cleveland premieres.
Admission prices to museum films are: $8, CMA members $6, seniors 65 & over $5, students $4, or one Panorama voucher. Panorama Film Series vouchers (in books of 10) cost $55, CMA members $45. The museum’s parking deck is closed for renovation until October 2007; filmgoers may find alternate parking on the street or at other University Circle institutions.
Pioneers of the American Avant-Garde Cinema:
In the Mirror of Maya Deren, Friday, September 7, 7:00 pm, Sunday, September 9, 1:30 pm
Directed by Martina Kudlácek, with Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas. Russian-born dancer, writer, lecturer, and theorist Maya Deren (1917-1961) is the mother of the American underground film. Her surreal, psychosexual Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is one of the most famous and influential short films ever made. Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has called this documentary about Deren’s life and work “the best portrait of an experimental filmmaker that I know” Music by John Zorn.
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, Wednesday, September 12, 7:00 pm, Friday, September 14, 7:00 pm
Directed by Mary Jordan, with Ken Jacobs, George Kuchar, and John Waters. Columbus-born Jack Smith (1932-1989) was a flamboyant filmmaker, photographer, actor, and thrift-shop impresario best known for his scandalous, oft-banned 1963 movie Flaming Creatures. Now regarded by many as the father of performance art, the unfettered Smith – and his splendid, transgressive, campy excesses – are chronicled in this intoxicating new documentary. “Extraordinary. A triumph!” –Variety. Cleveland premiere.
Brakhage, Wednesday, September 19, 7:30 pm
Directed by Jim Shedden, with Stan Brakhage, Philip S. Solomon, and James Tenney. Stan Brakhage (1933-2003), the great American avant-garde filmmaker and theorist who documented his life in hundreds of abstract short films, is profiled in this documentary full of film clips and interviews.
Anger Me, Friday, September 21, 7:00 pm, Sunday, September 23, 1:30 pm
Directed by Elio Gelmini, with Kenneth Anger and Jonas Mekas. Kenneth Anger (b. 1927), the subject of this new film, is a master avant-gardist whose sensuous, ritualistic movies range from the homoerotic to the incantational. He inadvertently invented the music video with his classic 1964 short Scorpio Rising and chronicled the sordid side of Tinseltown in his bestselling book Hollywood Babylon. Cleveland premiere.
Notes on Marie Menken, Wednesday, September 26, 7:00 pm
Directed by Martina Kudlá_ek, with Marie Menken, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, et al. Marie Menken (1909-1970) is a largely forgotten pioneer of American avant-garde cinema. This new film traces Menken’s life from her abstract expressionist beginnings to her experimental filmmaking of the forties and fifties to her 1960s collaborations with Andy Warhol. Music by John Zorn. Cleveland premiere. -- www.clevelandart.org
