TIE Retrospective Denver Darkroom

TIE Retrospective - 2008 Denver Edition:
Saturday, December 20, 2008 (6:00 PM & 8:00 PM) at Denver Darkroom (4037 Tejon St, Denver, CO 80211)
Filmmaker, Standish Lawder and TIE Curator/Founder, Chritopher May in-person.

About the Program:
This Christmas, the Denver Darkroom hosts one program featuring highlights from TIE's previous film festivals. TIE has quickly become an exemplary festival celebrating contemporary and historical avant-garde cinema. Taking as its mission the preservation of the fundamental qualities of cinema and film exhibition, TIE produces festivals which, to date have screened over 600 films and hosted over 200 artists. TIE is renowned for artistic vision and an exaltation of the direct viewing experience of original-format film works.

The Films:

The Influence of Ocular Light Perception on Metabolism in Man and in Animal
Thomas Draschan and Stella Friedrichs
(2005, 16mm, optical, 6min, 24fps, Austria/Germany)
Filmmaker, Draschan and Sociologist, Friedrichs made this brilliant found-footage piece which appropriates popular images from the 1960's and 70's. The result is an active visual test directed at the audience. The film is synchronized to an Italian sort porn soundtrack from the sixties.

Shudder (top and bottom)
Michael Gitlin
(2001, 16mm, optical, 3min, 24fps, USA)
The film is a kind of shuddering optical toy, with a dense, collagist soundtrack that rubs against the complicated visual weave of the images. It scratches at the fiction of the original footage, leaving behind, in its phosphene-laden after-image, a throbbing world of lonely danger.

Vom Innen; von Aussen
Albert Sackl
(2006, 16mm, silent, 20min, 24fps, Austria)
This film is a wonderfully unnerving, scrutinized, study of the human body within the context of its environment. Implications of the revolution within man's own self image and man's historic worldview seem to be the larger conceptual concerns of the work.

Anodyne
Sheri Wills
(2001, 16mm, optical, 4min, 24fps, USA)
"A lyrical abstraction, Anodyne explores red-gold and sepia-cyan color fields created with photograms, then animated through 16mm rephotography and digital manipulation. My fascination with the handmade, the awkward and sentimental is at odds with the contemporary medium with which I work."

Whirl
Scott Banning
(2007, 16mm, digital sound, 8min, 24fps, USA)
A whirl of carnival lights beckon; stirring memories of the first time you let your feet leave the ground. Ephemera, fear and wonder linger.

Colorfilm
Standish Lawder
(1972, 16mm, optical, 3 min, 24fps, USA)
After failing to achieve the desired sensation of color pulsing dramatically on the screen, Lawder switched his perspective, capturing a dance of vibrantly colored film swatches running through the projector, instead. The 16mm footage is brought alive, beautifully animated with movement, rhythm and music, by means of au natural techniques that leaves the viewer jubilant.

Necrology
Standish Lawder
(1969-70, 16mm, optical, 12min, 24fps, USA)
The film is one of the strongest and grimmest comments upon the contemporary society that cinema has produced." - Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice