TIE Retrospective - The Ross/UNL Edition
January 14-15, 2009 / Lincoln, Nebraska

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Intoduction
Since 2000, the world-renowned TIE festival has been a leading champion of artists still working in the medium of film, with a particular focus on both new and historical avant-garde cinema. TIE returns to UNL with two new programs specifically selected for The Ross by TIE founder/director Christopher May (in-person). The exhibition features an eclectic range of experimental films that illuminate the continuing vitality and beauty of celluloid, while subtle and at times obvious philosophical and thematic curatorial gestures conduct the flow of the programs. Both shows include several highlights from TIE's 2008 international festivals, held in Argentina and the Colorado.

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Program 1

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

Surface Tension No. 2
Vincent Grenier
(1995-2005, 16mm, optical, 5min, 24fps, Canada)
The film obtains fairly illusionistic colors from black & white films by filming and projecting them through synchronized, red and green filters.

The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly
Charlotte Pryce
(2008, 16mm, silent, 4min, 24fps, USA)
An intoxicating flower; a metaphorical insect; a longing reach across the centuries. The film is a philosophical search drenched in luminous colors and sparkling light. The film was shot on color reversal, entirely hand-processed and re-printed on the optical printer.

Steifheit 1 & 2
Albert Sackl
(1997/2007, 16mm, silent, 6min, 24fps, Austria)
A Caravaggio-esque lighted coming-of-age experiment. After 10 years, Albert Sackl repeated the same experiment in front of the camera as in 1997: how long could he maintain his erection?

dipping Sause
Luther Price
(2005, 16mm, 10min, 24fps, USA)
"Epileptic static strain into grays of machancal fetish tube socks and kenetic clown S and M cascading objects caress and fondle."

Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 142: ABBREVIATION FOR DEAD WINTER [diminished by 1,794]
David Gatten
(2007, 16mm, optical, 13min, 24fps, USA)
A single piece of paper, a second stab at suture, a story three times over, a frame for every mile. With words by Charles Darwin. A long-distance dedication for a far-away friend half-way up the mountain. He painted the mountain over and over again / from his place in the cave, agape / at the light, its absence, the mantled / skull with blue-tinted hollows, wren- / like bird plucking berries from the fire / her hair alight and so on / lemon grass in cafe in clear glass. / Dearest reader there were trees / formed of wire, broad entryways / beneath balconies beneath spires / youthful head come to rest in meadow / beside bend in gravel road, still / body of milky liquid / her hair alight and so on / successive halls, flowered carpets and doors / or the photograph of nothing but pigeons / and grackles by the shadow of a fountain. – “Dearest Reader” by Michael Palmer, from First Figure

July Fix
Jason Livingston
(2006, 16mm, optical, 3min, 24fps, USA)
"...the overall effect being that of a pet dog's POV on acid in a field of beautiful flowers.' - JT Rogstad, TIE

Nothing Is Over Nothing
Jonathan Schwartz
(2008, 16mm, optical, 16min, 24fps, USA/Israel)
There were other places where the lord fell, and others where he rested; but one of the most curious
landmarks…we found…was a certain stone built into a house…so seemed and scarred that it bore a sort of grotesque resemblance to the human face. One of the pilgrims said, “But there is no evidence that the stones did cry out.” The guide was perfectly serene. He said calmly, “This is one of the stones that would have cried out.” – from Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad.

Sacred Space
David Chaim Cohen
(2007, 35mm/1:33, Dolby SR Stereo, 14min, 24fps, USA)
A hand-painted Lamentation concerning the destruction of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem. These are the materials of a decayed place, with blood stains still smeared across the walls. A prophecy in dirge form. A hand-painted lamentation to the Holy Temple of Jerusalem, with synaptic references to numerous events between then and now, as well as things to occur in the future. The materials used to construct the film constitute the sinews of degradation and dilapidation that symbolize an infected memory.

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Program 2

Pulse
Patrick Halm
(2001, 16mm, optical, 6min, 24fps, USA)
Part 3 of the maker's Creation Myth Series. How to explain television to a dead hare.

Dollar Portrait
Matthew Perino
(2008, 16mm, silent, 5min, 24fps, USA)
Dollar Portrait is an abstract, cinematic portrait of American currency using cameraless photography. It is also re-photographed to include pulsing shades of green. The images play together using different rythms, speeds, and orientations. Both the positive and negative footage have been used together to create strobing patterns.

Whirl
Scott Banning
(2007, 16mm, live or 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.

Wot the Ancient Sod
Diane Kitchen
(2001, 16mm, silent, 17min, 24fps, USA)
"Diane Kitchen's tour-de-force creates a stream of intimate portraits of leaves dancing in the sun's light." - Steve Anker, San Francisco Cinematheque

To Be Regained
Zach Iannazzi
(2008, 16mm, cassette tape sound, 10min, 24fps, USA)
An exploration in wilderness authenticity, the images seen are of an unintended intersection between natural and artificial landscapes where restoration efforts now attempt to return what was once lost. The film approaches the subject of humanity’s attempts to correct its imprint on nature, more specifically, interventions with anadromous fish reproductive and migratory cycles on dammed-up and polluted rivers. Mixing found footage, reprinted and hand processed film over a soundtrack of interviews and observations by folks up and down the Connecticut River, the short is a beautiful and unsettling look at the ways we interact with the natural environment.

Trauma Victim
Robert Todd
(2002, 16mm, optical, 16mm, 17min, 24fps, USA)
"For over a year I've been working on the subject of the Death Penalty and its significance to our culture. This piece has grown out of the footage that I've shot for that film, and some of the concepts I've been juggling as the imagery has been cultivated."

Errata
Alexander Stewart
(2005, 16mm, silent, 7min, 24fps, USA)
Errata is an animation made by photocopying copies of copies. Starting with a blank sheet of paper, each successive copy becomes a frame of animation, meaning that each on-screen image is a copy of the last. All movements, pans and zooms in the film were accomplished using standard zoom and shrink features on copy machines; the animation camera used to shoot the copies onto 16mm film was not used to manipulate or direct the film's motion. Comprising thousands of copies made on a dozen copiers, the resulting imagery is a moving Rorschach test of analog textures, bleeding ink spots and pareidolic cloud formations.

Skinflick
Thorsten Fleisch (2002, 16mm, optical, 8min, 24fps, Germany)
"A filmic exploration of the texture of my hand with and without camera. While maintaining the hand /skin theme, the methods of film production are changed. Hence not only is my hand shown in various ways but also different possibilities of filmic representation are discussed. For the sound, I audio scanned my hand with the cartridge of a phono player. The resulting sounds were rearranged to fit the images."

Metaphysical Education
Thad Povey
(2003, 16mm, optical, 4min, 24fps, USA)
Gravity and the desire to fly battle for a boy’s soul.

Shudder (top and bottom)
Michael Gitlin
(2001, 16mm, optical, 3min, 24fps, USA)
The source for Shudder (top and bottom) is a found piece of 35mm film which was cut down and re-perfed for 16mm projection. Each frame of the original 35mm image covers two 16mm frames, with the top half of the original image on one frame and the bottom half on the next frame. The film is a kind of shuddering optical toy, with a dense, collagist soundtrack that rubs against the complicated visual weave of the images. Shudder (top and bottom) scratches at the fiction of the original footage, leaving behind, in its phosphene-laden after-image, a throbbing world of lonely danger.

 

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Web: experimentalcinema.org
Phone: 303.408.4623