Close-up: Histories of the Avant-Garde Part III
January 26th 2009, 20h
The Working Men’s Club, 44-46 Pollard Row, E2 6NB, London. Ticket: £5/£3 Close-Up members
Doors open at 7.45 pm
Presented by Close-Up and The Dog Movement

PASSAGE THROUGH: A RITUAL by Stan Brakhage + MUSICAL STAIRS by Guy Sherwin

A chance to see one of Brakhage’s most important sound films for the first time in London alongside Guy Sherwin’s Optical Sound film Musical Stairs.

Parts 1 and 2 of Histories of the Avant-Garde looked at the resolutely, intensely silent Brakhage film Riddle of Lumen and Guy Sherwin’s Short Film Series. Part 3 enters the world of sound with these two filmmkakers and also looks forward to Part 4 in February, which will be examining music’s manifold relationship to Film with five American masters.

Brakhage’s relationship to sound was complex. It took an almost indirect collaboration with the composer Phillip Corner to fulfill Brakhage’s desire for a way of giving equal importance to music and image whilst keeping them parallel, distinct experiences. Long passages of black with Corner’s music are cut with silent flashes of colour photography culled from Brakhage’s ‘rejected’ footage. Meditative and demanding but ultimately one of Brakhage’s most rewarding films.
Sherwin’s Musical Stairs has a method of production and structure that could be seen in opposition to Passage. Image is physically printed on to the optical sound track to create an seemingly absolute synthesis of sound and image.

Acclaimed film curators from both sides of the country will meet at the University of Colorado at Boulder to help celebrate the Fifth Annual Stan Brakhage Symposium on March 14-15.

Steve Seid, video curator at the Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, and Mark McElhatten, New York City curator and archivist for Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese, will present programs intended to "shed light on the contemporary world of avant-garde filmmaking and artistry, focusing on the exploration of moving visual art, past, present and future."

The two-day event is sponsored by the CU-Boulder Film Studies Program and will be held in the ATLAS building on the Boulder campus. Each day will feature short films, presentations and panels that will examine the contemporary avant-garde world. All events are free and open to the public.

The symposium began in 2005 to recognize, honor and carry on the legacy of the late Stan Brakhage, who is credited by many visual artists as a man who once all but defined the American avant-garde film movement. Brakhage taught at CU-Boulder from 1981 until his death in 2003 and held the title of distinguished professor of film studies.

Brakhage began his filmmaking career in 1952 and completed more than 350 films, ranging from the psychodramatic works of the early 1950s to autobiographical lyrics, mythological epics, "documents" and metaphorical film "poems."

Each year the symposium brings members of the experimental film and video community together to celebrate art, to share ideas and to promote the evolution of the moving image.

The symposium was made possible by grants from The William H. Donner Foundation and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

For a complete schedule of events visit the Films Studies Program's Web site at www.colorado.edu/FilmStudies/brakhage/symposium_5.htm.

Contact

Don Yannacito, 303-492-1532
don.yannacito@colorado.edu
Dirk Martin, 303-492-3140