Anniversary Tour Show:
TIE, The International Experimental Cinema Exposition, marks more than 500 films screened since its inception in Telluride, Colorado. TIE's traveling showcase remains true to its dedication: celluloid works in their true format, from the latest contemporary works to archival films from the rich history of experimental cinema. The tour is a collection of highlights from the past six years of TIE’s expositions and festivals. The varying programs exhibit at a limited number of venues in North America and abroad. TIE Director, Christopher May, appears in-person.


Friday, October 7, 2005
Traverse City, Michigan, Cinema Curiosa
Doors at 7:30PM, Show at 8:00PM

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A Fall Trip Home
Nathaniel Dorsky
"Forgetting its 'psychological plot' this film is a fine exponent of the intrinsic magical power of cinema. Its images, which evolve in a rather unmagical sober suburb, are continually transcended and manipulated into a kind of epic haiku of superimpositions and textural weavings." - Jerry Hiler
[11 min 1964 USA 16mm]

 

The Dante Quartet
Stan Brakhage
This hand-painted work six years in-the-making (37 in the studying of The Divine Comedy) demonstrates the earthly conditions of "Hell," "Purgatory" (or Transition) and "Heaven" (or "existence is song," which is the closest I'd presume upon heaven from my experience) as well as the mainspring of/from "Hell" (HELL SPIT FLEXION) in four parts which are inspired by the closed-eye or hypnagogic vision created by those emotional states. Originally painted on IMAX and Cinemascope 70mm and 35mm, these paint-laden rolls have been carefully rephotographed and translated to 35mm and 16mm compilations by Dan Yanosky of Western Cine.
[8 min 1987 USA 16mm]

 

Arnulf Rainer

Peter Kubelka
”The images can no more be 'turned off' by the closing of eyes than can the soundtrack thereof it (for it is composed entirely of white frame rhythming thru black inter-spaces and of such an intensity as to create its pattern straight thru closed eyelids) so that the whole 'mix' of the audio-visual experience is clearly 'in the head,' so to speak: and if one looks at it openly, one can see one's own eye cells as if projected onto the screen and can watch one's optic physiology activated by the sound track in what is, surely, the most basic Dance of Life of all (for the sounds of the film do resemble and, thus, prompt the inner-ear's hearing of its own pulse output at intake of sound). "These films must, very truly, be seen and very truly seen and heard to be believed!" - Stan Brakhage
[7 min 1958-1960 Austria 16mm]

 

To the Happy Few

Thomas Draschan & Stella Friedrichs
"A punchy, satirical ride that mixed food, sex, and violence in perverse Kuleshevian suggestions, all with great comedic timing. A great example of film giving birth to itself in hybrid, mutated forms." -Genevieve Yue

[4 min 2003 Austria / Germany 16mm]

 

On Your Own
Jim Otis
"Into my hands fell a 20-minute exhortation to find the right job after high school. Struck by its fierce redundancy, undertook a distillation, editing the optical track, aiming for conversational cadence, choosing image only when silent."
[2 min 1981 USA 16mm]

 

Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy

Martin Arnold
"Arnold's campaign of deconstruction of classic Hollywood film codes finally turns to film music. The process links in with the other two films. The family scenes, which in the original last only seconds and are not particularly notable, are surgically sectioned into single frames. Using repetition of these 'single cells' and a new rhythm - a kind of cloning procedure - Arnold then creates an inflated, monstrous doppelgÉnger of the original cuts lasting many minutes. The hidden message of sex and violence is turned inside out to the point where it simply crackles." - Dirk Schaefer
[15 min 1998 USA 16mm]

 

Puce Moment

Kenneth Anger
"A lavishly colored evocation of the Hollywood now gone, as shown through an afternoon in the milieu of a 1920s film star.
[7 min 1949 USA 16m
m]

 

Desistfilm
Stan Brakhage
Internationally acclaimed as the classic of its genre. The camera joins a drunken adolescent party and participates in the expression of desire and frustration. "The best film in the 1950s; breathtaking camera work; entire cinematic conception and execution is brilliant." - Willard Maas
[7 min 1954 USA 16mm]

 

The Man Who Invented Gold
Christopher MacLaine
"A film fable so structured that all alchemical searchings are clearly film wise (gold beingdiscovered cinematically in each sequence of mixed black-and-white and color) so that when the drama-discovery is actually made, it acts as a deliberate anti-climax of aesthetic perfection." --Stan Brakhage
[14 min 1957 USA 16mm]

 

Ablution

Eric Patrick
Ablution is a film ritual that observes dissociation. It is divided into three vignettes, each with its own distinct structure. In The Fleeting, a man who becomes dissociated with temporal reality gets lodged in a world that is moving much too fast for him. His experience of his life becomes the fleeting images of days transpiring in seconds. It is shot as a traditional cinematic narrative space. Incantation is a shamanistic chant--a dance that exists to provide a catalyst for change.

Dissociation becomes deconstruction. If the first section is an objective view of an elusive narrative, the second would be a subjective metaphor of an internal state. The final piece to the film (A Hundred Foot Day) is a continuous sequence of a day transpiring with the man back on his front porch where the film started. Shot as an uncut proscenium arch in the theatre, A Hundred Foot Day is the length of the day shot onto a hundred foot length of film. As a whole, the Ablution, or the cleansing, is a look into the magical, if not somewhat uncertain, places that each of us pass through at select times in our lives. Metaphorically, the entire piece traces the Hero's journey of departure, initiation, and return through a narrative that disintegrates into a totally subjective space. While the Hero's journey is a classic tale, the cinematic structures of the three vignettes leave trap doors and secret passageways throughout the film for individual interpretation. Ablution is a relic--aveiled glimpse at an emotional state.
[13 min 2001 USA 16mm]

 

All My Life

Bruce Baillie
Caspar, California, old fence with red roses.
[3 min 1966 USA 16mm]

 

 

Program curated by TIE Director, Christopher May