As part of MoMA's preservation festival To Save and Project, and its artist cinema series Modern Mondays, Heather McAdams joins us to present new 16mm restorations of her irreverent collage films from the 1980s, recently preserved by the Chicago Film Society
Known for her work as a cartoonist and filmmaker, McAdams has long been a fixture of Chicago’s alternative film and music scenes and was once hailed by B. Ruby Rich in the Chicago Reader as combining “the collage finesse of a Bruce Conner with the crude campiness of the Kuchar brothers.”
The screening also features McAdams’s personal documentaries, including her offbeat portrait of Bradley Harrison Picklesimer, a Kentucky drag queen who ran his own nightclub in downtown Lexington. Assembling found imagery with footage of Bradley tending bar or reflecting on the goings on at the club, gender expression, and the ups and downs of life, Meet…Bradley Harrison Picklesimer is a memorable entry in queer oral history, brought to life with McAdams’s distinctive DIY sensibility.
The screening is followed by a conversation with the filmmaker, moderated by Sophie Cavoulacos, associate curator in the Department of Film.
- The Scratchman. 1980. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 3 min.
- Scratchman # 2. 1982. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 3 min.
- Holiday Magic. 1985. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 7 min.
- All Fucked Up. 1983. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 8 min.
- Fetal Pig Anatomy. 1989. Directed by Heather McAdams. Sound by Billy DesJardins. 16mm. 6 min.
- You. 1983. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 4 min.
- Comes to a Point Like an Ice-Cream Cone. 1997. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams, Chris Ligon. 16mm. 18 min.
- Meet…Bradley Harrison Picklesimer. 1988. USA. Directed by Heather McAdams. 16mm. 32 min.