Rightfully praised as the godfather of hand-processing workshops, Phil Hoffman has always stood as a lightning-rod of hope and creative agency through the 30 years of his summer retreats in Ontario, Canada. He finally blesses the Bay Area with three visits this week, with this OC program offering the best opportunity to revel at the most extraordinary 16mm exemplars from his three decades of enlightened instruction on photochemical experimentation.

Taiwanese experimental film collective ReaRflex presents work from members Johan Chang, Erica Sheu, and Tzuan Wu. This selection of films is tender diaries, and alternative world-building inspired by transitions, reflections from everyday life, and familial anecdotes. These films involve hand-made experiments with super 8, 16mm film, from hand processing, to direct filmmaking (sticking, drawing, and scratching directly on film.) and in-camera editing techniques.

While Robert Beavers’s body of work ranks among the most revered in the canon of avant-garde cinema, his films are more often spoken or written about than seen. Opportunities to view them here in the U.S. – especially all together – have come around no more than once in a blue moon, with the only large-scale retrospectives on these shores taking place at the Whitney Museum in 2005 and at various venues in the Bay Area in 2009.

Othon Cinema is excited about its first screening, "The Dream of the Avant-Garde". With the participation of avant-garde filmmakers Peter Tscherkassky and Eve Heller, the event will take place in Istanbul at the Pera Museum on September 20, 21, and 22!