BLACK AND WHITE TRYPPS NUMBER ONE (Ben Russell, USA, 2006, 16mm)
Description: “A theory of origins, a film for the stars and planets exploding all
around our heads. Hypnosis is imminent.”
A psychedelic op-art film that references the traditions of
hand-painted Avant-Garde cinema by replacing it with something entirely
different.
TIE Review: "A night sky fills with light shimmers and flecks, surface markings, heavenly bodies. It’s an ocean, a well, a screen, a mirror, a portal. Blackness/void cluttered by growing ephemera. Dark reaches of outer and inner space gradually sifts through shards of granite and diamonds. The mind races as the material becomes greater and more frenetic, reaching a nearly audibly grinding pitch of excitement, flurry, and instantaneous infinity that ebbs at first and then maintains. Flashes of color emerge or are imagined. Chaotic flickering of dancing peasant girls and violently twisting astronaut helmets. Layers of sea slime over undulating life forms. Bonfires and celebration. Explosions, construction. Holocausts. Primordial ooze, modern civilization. Ages and seconds. Floating heads circle kaleidoscopic bursts of shiny beads. Everything everywhere twists, forces through, transforms into, overlaps everything else. Seashells, snow, jewels, static, planets, mitochondria, trash, leaves. Rings, flowers, stars, hair, ghosts, comets, cartoons, demons. Icebubblesinstrumentscatsmarblestwigsfirefliespinwheelsinsectscraters. Buzzing.Reeling…..flfkkkkk######################################################################################################Overkill. Birth/Death. Moment by moment, symmetrical—organized like geometry, like Muslim rugs, like math." - JT Rogstad, TIE
AUGENBLICK N 19 (Telemach Wiesinger, Germany, 2006, 16mm)
THE GENERAL RETURNS FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER (Michael Robinson, USA, 2006, 16mm)
LIFE IN A TINY TOWN (Jason Livingston, USA, 2006, 16mm)
Description: Part One of a series that perhaps mistakenly continues the project of
self-expression. I don't know how to resolve all this individualist
anxiety, except maybe to become a better reader, or to step up and
become more politically active, or to turn away from what my friend
calls the 'psychoanalytic stuff.' Obviously not there yet, but this
film, I hope, gets at some aspect of falling in love that you can
understand.
TRANSAENSION (Dan Baker, USA, 2006, 16mm)
TIE Review: "Heartbeat. Out of a sick morass of reds and yellows, blacks, burns, and direct-to-film scratches, arises the (post) post-industrial terror of our collective oil-stained subconscious. Only three color tones are necessary to conjure up a veritable prehistoric nightmare or The Element of Crime. The primordial fire gives way directly to digital-age carnage and re-enforced titanium imperialist ambition. Dripping. Syrupy glimpses of fighter pilots. Glassy eyes. Spindly towers waver in the nuclear breeze. Preparation for battle against comet field super nova background. Image would be clearer without the toxic pyro-fog. But instead, it’s heat without season, drought without cycle; this moment is the unforeseen arrival, the final annihilation. Chirp your last, all precious consumer-constituent. Representation becomes survival, as the farce of authority crumbles along with every other vestige of a frantic, deluded civilization. The sun has burst open wide and spills out a thick, sweaty mix of techno-warfare and rich, fleshy industry. This is what man-made hell looks like. Echoes. Sci-fi meets hearts of darkness. It’s a vision for rapture obsessives. But ecology replaces old time religion. Only no one’s listening. We are the Hindenburg, the Titanic, the World Trade Center. A figure appears in the lower right corner, arms outstretched, a stand-in for humanity: Welcoming?…Challenging?" - JT Rogstad, TIE
AND WE ALL SHINE ON (Michael Robinson, USA, 2006, 16mm)
TIE Review: "In a calm, modestly sized suburban neighborhood in the proverbial Fuckinwherever, U.S.A., a storm appears to be brewing. You can see it stirring up Mrs. Hartzinger’s shrubbery and you can hear it over the radio. Abe had related to Ben the other day about aliens but he’s been known to spend hours up on his roof at 3am just to reseal the aluminum foil he’s got up there, so it was awfully hard for Ben to listen to him with a straight face, much less trust his incomprehensible warnings. And the man’s 75 for chrissake! But still, there’s something funny going on and most people know it. Not that too many of these folks leave their houses after 9pm anyway, except for the odd high school kid who’s looking to smoke pot behind the bowling alley. But you can’t even find too many of them out and about tonight. Nope, everyone’s pretty much hunkered down waiting for the big…
"Safely sequestered in his second floor bedroom, “17 year old virgin” Tim consoles himself with a trip to 8-bit multicolored paradise, courtesy of his shitty, distant dad’s recent bonus. As if that fucker could hear what he was hearing…a swelling chorus in his head, on the FM. Real feeling, not like what mom and dad fake around the cousins. This was what Tim knew best: hallucinogenic joystick freedom and the power and insight that only comes from a good pop song. And maybe a well-concealed O’Douls taken from the back of the fridge. If he fears the coming onslaught outside well, he’d be the last one to show it. About time something happened around this godawful hellhole.
"But Tim will really never escape the looming apocalypse, will he? Not that it matters. This town will keep on sleeping, keep on dreaming, and we will keep on watching. Because we care." - JT Rogstad, TIE
BLACK AND WHITE TRYPPS NUMBER TWO (Ben Russell, USA, 2006, 16mm)
Biography: Ben Russell is an itinerant photographer, curator, and experimental
film/videomaker whose works have screened in spaces ranging from 14th
Century Belgian monasteries to 17th Century East India Trading Co.
buildings, police station basements to outdoor punk squats, and
Japanese cinematheques to Parisian storefronts, and East German
barbershops to the Museum of Modern Art. Ben began the Magic Lantern
screening series in Providence, Rhode Island, and he has made films
about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the exploration of Easter
Island, and the end of the world.
TIE Review: "A fine fine example of spaces between existing as objects themselves. A patternistic and memorializing offering to natural totems. Two kinds of reversal at play involving black and white as well as reflection and overlap. These simple elements create a hurried maze of twisting antler branches, twigs, and dissected slices of pure “space.” I can hear the crackling fires, echoing elk calls and frosty despair…" - JT Rogstad, TIE