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8 January - THINGS TO COME...
Well, we're a year late for the millennium, but its par for the course,
really. To ring in the new year the RBMC presents William Cameron Menzies
film of H.G. Wells's Things to Come (1936, 100m.), one of the craziest
and most prescient science-fiction films ever. Not only did it predict
WWII (albeit at a slightly long 30 years...?) but the producers tapped
Moholy-Nagy for lighting design (supposedly they scrapped his work, but
what turns up is suspiciously similar...) With a thumbs-up from Professor
Michelson, you know it's worth the price of admission... "Rest enough
for the individual man -- too much, and too soon -- and we call it death.
But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest.
First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws
of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at
last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all
the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning."
15 January - Reflections on
Warren Sonbert
Tonight, Jeff Scher presents a tribute to the late Warren Sonbert. Scher
was a close friend of Sonbert's, and so can put it best in his own words:
"Warren Sonbert made 18 experimental films before his death from AIDS
in 1995. Seeing his films are some of my most cherished film going experiences
... Warren did with a Bolex what I hope the next generation does with
digital cinematography. Life is the ultimate palette of the artist and
the time and moments of life that can be honestly and poetically captured
are the richest raw material one could imagine ... Warren Sonbert's films
are not available on video, which is just as well because it's important
to see them on a screen as they were intended. In conjunction with this
article I've arranged a show of two early films, Amphetamine and Hall
of Mirrors, and two late films, Friendly Witness and the posthumously
completed Whiplash." - JS in Shout, December 2001.
22 January - Mr. McClure's
Neighborhood
"To the curators, Bradley Eros & Brian Frye; Two years ago
at Robert Beck I autocurated a show of recent films by drawing them from
a plastic bag. Since that time I have launched into another curatorial
methodology involving matricies of screening possibilities. Although a
matrix seems like a very careless and insensitive place to choose from
I have learned otherwise. After all, matrix, was derived from a Latin
word meaning the womb or a public register. In any case, a matrix is something
within which, or within which and from which, something originates, takes
form, or develops. From a rectangular arrangement of symbols to the screen
births seen as light lengths, widths and heights, I propose to autocurate
in public and await enjoyments." - Bruce McClure, December 13, 2001.
29 January - One After The
Other: Five Videos with Children
Finally, the RBMC has the special pleasure of presenting five of Sarah
Hanssen's charming studies of childhood and its peculiar logic. Ethnography
in the wilds of greenest Brooklyn, One After The Other... (2001, 59 minutes,
miniDV) consists of: Nature Walk (in which a little girl discovers the
world in a single city block), That's Me (answering machine meets toddler),
I Doing, What Needs Pull, and What Is Me. "Poets without being artists,
children sometimes fix their attention on an object to the point where
their concentration makes it grow larger, grow so much it completely occupies
their visual field, assumes a mysterious aspect, and loses all relation
to its purpose. Or they repeat a word endlessly, so often it divests itself
of meaning and becomes a poignant and pointless sound that makes them
cry." - Louis Aragon, "On Decor." The videos are likely to be followed
by surprises TBA.
All programs on Tuesdays at 9pm
at Collective Unconscious
145 Ludlow St., NYC
$5 Admission
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