Anniversary Tour Show:
TIE's University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Ross Media Arts Center edition—screening on Thursday, September 21 at 7 p.m.—is a collection of 35mm and 16mm highlights from the past 6-years of TIE exhibitions. Films from the upcoming 2006 Festival will also be included. TIE Director, Christopher May, appears in-person.

TIE's traveling showcases remains true to its dedication: celluloid works exhibited in their true format, from the latest contemporary works to archival films from the rich history of experimental cinema from around the globe. The varying programs exhibit at a limited number of venues across North America and abroad.

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The Retrospective Film Line-up:
(Several films from the October 11-15 International festival are also featured in this exclusive program. They are however not not listed here for secrecy until the time of the event.)

"Arnulf Rainer" by Peter Kubelka
"He has even created a film (called ARNULF RAINER) whose 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
1958-1960, 35mm, b&w/frames/so, 6.5m

"Notes on the Circus" by Jonas Mekas
Ringling Bros., filmed in three sessions (three-ring circus), with no post-editing of opticals, five rolls strung together as they came out of a camera. Jim Kweskin's Jug Band prepared the soundtrack. Film can also be watched with soundtrack turned off (if you're a "purist" which I'm not).
1966, 16mm, color/so, 13m

"Den of Tigers" by Jonathan Schwartz
This gorgeous film was made during the filmmaker's travel to West Bengal, India. While there, Schwartz collected images/sounds- a reflection of the maker’s experience, feelings, and most of all, the participation of walking, looking, and listening. The piece touches outside the traditional arenas of genre and boundaries. It speaks with many voices - the associational values of experimental cinema, the patience of objective documentary, emotional levels of narrative, and intellectual/research oriented foundations of an essay. The culmination of visual construction and sound layering moves beyond hearing and seeing. Jonathan builds the work, with elements of tradition, into his own- a unique and new voice. It sings with observational, textural, lyrical, and metaphorical songs. It is in the construction where innovation enters -the interplay of movement-color-composition-meaning-mood swimming within the layering compositions of sound inspires emotion, association, and intellect.
2002, 16mm, color/so, 18m

"Colorfilm" by Standish Lawder
"COLORFILM is the ultimate consummate self-referential film, in color yet!" - Henry Kissinger
1972, 16mm, color/so, 3m

"passage à l'acte" by Martin Arnold
Given context: a Hollywood text from the early sixties; a family breakfast with husband, wife, son and daughter.
Inscribed: a re-petition of what is diminished, set apart and alien; a symptom.
Four people at the breakfast table, an American family, locked in the beat of the cutting table. The short, pulsating sequence at the family table shows, in its original state, a classic, deceptive harmony. Arnold deconstructs this scenario of normality by destroying its original continuity. It catches on the tinny sounds and bizarre body movements of the subjects, which, in reaction, become snagged on the continuity. The message, which lies deep under the surface of the family idyll, suppressed or lost, is exposed - that message is war.
"The first shock, the first flight, the fear at the beginning of the film: The son jumps up from the table and throws open the door, which sticks in an Arnoldian loop of hard, hammering rhythm. He is compelled to return to the table by a mechanically repeated paternal order, 'Sit down.' And at the end, when the two children spring up, finally released from their bondage, Arnold is again caught at the door; at the infernally hammering door, as if it were completely senseless to try to leave here - this location of childhood and two-faced cinema." - Stefan Grissemann
Exhibition: Oberhausen Film Festival; Semaine de la Critique, Cannes Film Festival; Rotterdam Film Festival; Melbourne Film Festival; Sydney Film Festival.
1993, 16mm, b&w/so, 12m

"A Fall Trip Home" by Nathaniel Dorsky
The second in the trilogy, it is less a psychodrama and more a sad sweet song of youth and death, of boyhood and manhood and our tender earth.
"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
1964, 16mm, color/so, 11m

"Hold Me While I'm Naked" by George Kuchar
"A very direct and subtle, very sad and funny look at nothing more or less than sexual frustration and aloneness. In its economy and cogency of imaging, HOLD ME surpasses any of Kuchar's previous work. The odd blend of Hollywood glamour and drama with all-too-real life creates and inspires counterpoint of unattainable desire against unbearable actuality." - Ken Kelman
"This film could cheer an arthritic gorilla, and audiences, apparently sensitized by its blithely accurate representation of feelings few among them can have escaped, rise from their general stupor to cheer it back." - James Stoller, The Village Voice
1966, 16mm, color/so, 15m

"Frauenmuskel" by Frank Biesendorfer
Frank Biesendorfer films are unique in that they capture life in beautiful yet challenging forms. His masterful craftwork reflects mysterious aspects of patriotism, family, sexuality and their relationship to subversity and celebration in relation to contemporary cinematic culture.
Frauenmuskel is a jarring and sexually explicit film. Yet, the film holds an important dual sense of mystery that haunts long after the film is over. Filmed during the Hermann Nitsch action of 1998, the film covers a stroll through the countryside as well as nightly impressions of the stars and clouds above Hermann Nitsch’s residence. A score accompanies the film’s visual structure with “Night String Quartet”, an original composition from Hermann Nitsch, himself.
1999, 16mm, color/so 6m

"Alpsee" by Matthias Müller
"ALPSEE is a brilliant autobiographical essay on childhood, family and memory. It is an exceedingly complex work revealing new layers every time you watch it. In Alpsee, terror has taken on a harder-edged shape compared to previous films by Matthias Müller; this nightmare has something alluring about it. I could not take my eyes off the mellow colors of this film. In the end, the blue of the skies is falling down and turning into red. This part appears almost Dionysian to me, sensuous and liberating, as if the cyclical structure of ALPSEE had to be blown up in the end by a final intimate moment." - Christian Cargnelli
"This tidy doll's house is filled with the fetid air of the Fifties and Sixties. But Müller does not play the indictor's part: ALPSEE has a mellow, refined humor and keeps an ironical distance to its subject matter." - Alexandra Jacobson
Awards and Exhibition: Distinction, "Recommended" by the German Commission of Valuation; Berlin Film Festival; Main Prize, 41st Oberhausen Short Film Festival; Wellington Film Festival; First Prize, Filmothek of Youth.
1994, 16mm, color/so, 15m

"The Dante Quartet" by 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.
1987, 35mm, color/si, 8m

Program curated by TIE Director, Christopher May.