The 1981 performance “Circle and Square” by Takahiko Iimura, New York-based Japanese film and video pioneer, evolved from the artist’s interest in exposing the apparatus of projection and the materiality of image and light begun in the mid-60s. The work commences with the projection of a long loop of black 16mm film leader suspended from the ceiling. The artist punches a hole on the film’s surface and as it loops through the projector’s gate, a single white circle of light pierces the darkness. With each subsequent punch the film builds before the viewer’s eyes into a cascade of white circles before reaching its abrupt and revelatory conclusion.

Artist and queer cinema pioneer Barbara Hammer premieres her new performance and multi-disciplinary work “Evidentiary Bodies”.

Armed with portable, fixed and live projectors and cameras, the artist moves about the space projecting video onto inflated balloons, photographic prints, x-ray scans of her own body, as well as onto the bodies of the audience members. One person extends to many and many people extend to one, challenging the concept of the proscenium screen and the stable audience. The performance also includes live sound by Norman Scott Johnson on cello.

Cinema Project is excited to host guest curator David Dinnell, who has crafted two unique evenings of experimental film and video for us. Over the course of two evenings, we will see 19 contemporary works of animation, fiction, abstraction, observation, and motion studies, including three rarely presented works for multiple 16mm projection.

Please join Canyon Cinema on the evening of Monday November 14, 2016 at New Nothing Cinema for the next installment in our Salon series. We’re pleased to welcome filmmaker Toney W. Merritt. Toney’s selection of his personal films span from his time at the San Francisco Art Institute to an excerpt of a current film-in-progress. Toney and other local filmmakers were involved with the co-founding of No Nothing Cinema in 1982 at 30 Berry Street, San Francisco.