Kees Kino
Tuesday, July 14, 2026 at 7pm
Light Industry, 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn
Organized by Jenni Olson
The Adventures of Jimmy, James Broughton, 1950, 16mm, 11 mins
Hand-Mouth Coordination, Gregory Bateson and Weldon Kees, 1952, 16mm, 11 mins
Approaches and Leavetakings, Weldon Kees and Jurgen Ruesch, 1952, 16mm, 14 mins
Hotel Apex, Weldon Kees, 1952, digital projection, 11 mins
The Bridge, Willian Heick, 1955, digital projection, 10 mins
The ultimate Renaissance man of the San Francisco Renaissance, poet, painter, novelist, and musician Harry Weldon Kees packed many careers into his short 41 years before disappearing near the Golden Gate Bridge in the summer of 1955, a probable suicide. Cinema was yet another important aspect of Kees’s multifaceted life, in which he played numerous roles: writing scripts for wartime newsreels, working as a film critic for Time (where he bonded with James Agee), collaborating on movies with figures as divergent as poet James Broughton, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, and psychiatrist Jurgen Ruesch. He even hosted a KPFA radio show called Behind the Movie Camera, often featuring his young pal Pauline Kael as guest. At the time of his death, Kees was shooting a documentary about the Point Reyes Lighthouse and writing a spy-thriller screenplay, called Gadabout, set in San Francisco.
Kees first became an obsession of archivist and director Jenni Olson when she was working on her film The Joy of Life, which in part ruminates on how the Golden Gate Bridge served as the final destination for so many. Working with Kees biographer James Reidel, Olson was able to piece together a fascinating and appropriately eclectic program, allowing a rare opportunity to revisit Kees’s cinematic undertakings and his place in Bay Area film history.
Works shown include Kees’s haunting portrait of East Bay urban detritus, Hotel Apex, the only finished film he directed alone (fellow painter-critic Manny Farber praised the “crawl” of its cinematography, moving “at the pace of a half-dead bug”); photographer William Heick’s Golden Gate reimagining of Hart Crane’s The Bridge, made in collaboration with and featuring a cameo appearance by Kees; and James Broughton’s The Adventures of Jimmy (with music by Kees). Also on offer are two extremely rare examples of Kees’s educational film work—an eccentric study of mundane rituals on the streets of San Francisco, made with Ruesch, Approaches and Leavetakings, and Hand-Mouth Coordination, an almost real-time verite portrait of a one-year-old boy’s daily routine, made with Bateson. Expect all this, as well as a few surprises.
Followed by a conversation with Olson.
Special thanks to James Reidel, Bill Heick, and Lincoln City Libraries’s Heritage Room of Nebraska Authors.
Tickets - Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door.
Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served, except for members subscribed at $8/month or more, who may reserve a seat by emailing information@lightindustry.org at least two hours prior to showtime. Box office opens at 6:30pm. No entry 10 minutes after start of show.