Rooftop Cinema – Summer, 2009

About Rooftop Cinema Bring a friend, bring a blanket or camp chairs, and prepare yourself for an evening of avant-garde films and videos under the stars. Rooftop Cinema returns for its fourth season in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art's rooftop sculpture garden. Four evenings of films by independent filmmakers start after sundown on Friday June 5, 12, 19 and 26.

This popular series is curated by Tom Yoshikami, doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Arts, University of -Madison, and organized by MMoCAʼs education department.

Rooftop Cinema screenings begin at roughly 9:30 p.m. (when it's dark enough). Popcorn and beverages may be purchased on the rooftop from Fresco. Rooftop Cinema is free for MMoCA members/$5 per screening for the general public; tickets are available from the lobby reception desk beginning at 8:30 pm. Rooftop Cinema will relocate to MMoCAʼs lecture hall if rain is predicted.

MMoCA webpage: http://www.mmoca.org/events/filmseries/index.php For more information, contact Tom Yoshikami ([email protected])

1 BRIEF SCHEDULE

June 5 – The Short Films of Emily Hubley Emily Hubley makes short, hand-drawn animated films that explore personal memory and the turbulence of emotional life. Octave (US, 2006, BetaSP, 7 min.) Set Set Spike (2002, BetaSP, 6 min.) Pigeon Within (2000, BetaSP, 4.5 min.) One Self: Fish/Girl (1997, BetaSP, 10 min.) Her Grandmother's Gift (1995, BetaSP, 4.5 min.) Enough (1993, BetaSP, 5 min.) Delivery Man (1982, BetaSP, 7.5 min.)

June 12 – Above and Beyond Lunar eclipses, strange weather patterns, fighter planes, and workers atop the Louisiana Superdome are a few of the subjects in this collection of films that give a starring role to the great big sky above. The Eclipse (Jeanne Liotta, US, 2005, 3.5 min., 16mm) Observando El Cielo (Jeanne Liotta, US, 2007, 19 min., 16mm) Frontier Step (Gretchen Skogerson, US, 2007, 8 min., DVCam) National Archive V.1 (Travis Wilkerson, US, 2001, 15 min., BetaSP) redshift (Emily Richardson, UK, 2001, 4 min., 16mm)

June 19 – Ribbit, Ribbit An offbeat and entertaining documentary, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History is "an assault of sex-mad giant toads munching their way across Australia" (Roger Ebert). Preceded by more frog fun in Robert Breerʼs A Frog on the Swing. Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (Mark Lewis, Australia, 1988, 47 min., 16mm) A Frog on the Swing (Robert Breer, US, 1989, 5 min., 16mm)

June 26 – The Sight of Music What do a Thai royal anthem, three Elliott Smith pop songs, a Stravinsky suite, and Devoʼs “Mongoloid” have in common? They provide the soundtrack four of the films in this collection of works highlighting the intersection of music and film. Lucky Three (Jem Cohen, US, 1997, 11.5 min., BetaSP) Nightswimming (Jem Cohen, US, 1995, 8.5 min., BetaSP) The Anthem (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2006, 5 min., DVD) Bridges Go Round (Shirley Clarke, US, 1958, 11 min., 16mm) Breakaway (Bruce Conner, US, 1966, 5 min., 16mm) Mongoloid (Bruce Conner, US, 1978, 3 min., 16mm) Altair (Lewis Klahr, US, 1994, 8 min., 16mm)

2 EXTENDED SCHEDULE

June 5 – The Films of Emily Hubley For the past thirty years, Emily Hubley has been making short, hand-drawn animated films that explore personal memory and the turbulence of emotional life. The daughter of legendary Faith and John Hubley, and sister of (co-founder of the band Yo La Tengo, who often provide the music to her films), Emily is well known for her animation sequences in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Blue Vinyl, and recently completed her first feature, The Toe Tactic (2008). Her films have screened at The Museum of Modern Art, the Tribeca Film Festival, Ocularis/Galapagos Art Space, and the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Octave (US, 2006, BetaSP, 7 min.) A skull at the beach, a busted watch, a green brassiere! (and so on) ... Animated film miniatures play with musical tones and shifting symbolic images to create eight moments when things come together in mysterious cohesion. Each segment, consisting of a picture puzzle, a one-word clue and a new tone played on an embellished musical scale, provides a distinct mental location for the audience to dig around in their own unconscious stuff.

Set Set Spike (US, 2002, BetaSP, 6 min.) A single mother's personal ritual combines her history, poetry and a volleyball- inspired aerobic workout. The piece uses animated and live-action footage to create a kind of temporal collage - where past and present emotional truths coexist and play.

Pigeon Within (US, 2000, BetaSP, 4.5 min.) Pigeon Within depicts a woman's journey home through tunnels of doubt and what may be an encounter with her guardian angel to the joy of slapping Park Avenue canopies. The film combines Xeroxed photographs with drawn animation, juxtaposing ideas of present reality with remembered, envisioned or emotional truths.

One Self: Fish/Girl (US, 1997, BetaSP, 10 min.) One Self: Fish/Girl is a personal animated narrative in which girlʼs diary comes to life, depicting, in the following segments, her layered, poetic efforts to deal with a chaotic world and overcome self-doubt. “Secret Religion” works to reconcile good, evil and boys; “Girlfriends” remembers early friendships; “Solitary Stomp” suffers through abandonment vs. independence; “The Center” self-interrogates and “Time Passes…” Somehow, she arrives.

Her Grandmother's Gift (US, 1995, BetaSP, 4.5 min.) A grandmother discusses past and present attitudes toward menstruation.

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Enough (US, 1993, BetaSP, 5 min.) A person finds a magical fish, wishes for "it all" and learns a lesson about when enough is enough.

Delivery Man (US, 1982, BetaSP, 7.5 min.) A woman discusses dreams/experiences about the doctor who delivered her, her mother who survived surgery, and her father who did not.

June 12 – Above and Beyond Above and Beyond features five short films that give a starring role to the great big sky above. Lunar eclipses, weather patterns, fighter planes in Vietnam, workers atop the Superdome, and celestial bodies will .

Observando El Cielo (Jeanne Liotta, US, 2007, 19 min., 16mm) “Seven years of celestial field recordings gathered from the chaos of the cosmos and inscribed onto 16mm film from various locations upon this turning tripod Earth. This work is neither a metaphor nor a symbol, but is feeling towards a fact in the midst of perception, which time flows through. Natural VLF radio recordings of the magnetosphere in action allow the universe to speak for itself. The Sublime is Now. Amor Fati!” –Jeanne Liotta. Named on of 2007ʼs top 10 films by Chrissie Iles (Artforum) and Ed Halter (Village Voice). Screened at the New York Film Festival, the British Film Institute, Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the San Francisco International Film Festival.

The Eclipse (Jeanne Liotta, US, 2005, 3.5 min., 16mm) “A lunar eclipse event of November 2003 observed, documented, and translated via the light-sensitive medium of Kodachrome film. In the 4th century BCE Aristotle founded The Lyceum, a school for the study of all natural phenomena pursued without the aid of mathematics, which was considered too perfect for application on this imperfect terrestrial sphere. This film then, in the spirit of...” – Jeanne Liotta.

National Archive V.1 (Travis Wilkerson, US, US, 15 min., BetaSP) National Archive is Wilkersonʼs ongoing series based on materials residing within the public domain. V. 1 uses declassified 16mm film footage of Vietnam taken from the cockpits of fighter planes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and seeks to discover the nexus between pure form and pure politics, and is aimed directly at the viscera. Screened at the Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, the Black Maria Film and Video Festival, and the New York Underground Film Festival.

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Frontier Step (Gretchen Skogerson, US, 2007, 8 min., DVCam) Frontier Step reveals a glimpse of the workers atop the Superdome from July 2006. Their uncluttered domain provides a sharp contrast to the city below. The film “adopts a firm, nearly unchanging compositional approach (the curved roof of the New Orleans Superdome cutting against the sky) and allows time and observation to shift the contents of that composition. We're watching workers on the roof as they repair damage from Katrina and clear away detritus, and their slow, careful motions make them into minor astronauts, dressed for the heat but walking in the heavens” (Michael Sicinski). Screened at the New York Film Festival. redshift (Emily Richardson, UK, 2001, 4 min., 16mm) In astronomical terminology redshift is a term used in calculating the distance of stars from the earth, hence determining their age. redshift attempts to show the huge geometry of the night sky and give an altered perspective of the landscape, using long exposures, fixed camera positions, long shots and time-lapse animation techniques to reveal aspects of the night that are invisible to the naked eye. The film has a gentle intensity to it, and is composed of changes of light across the sea, sky and mountains. It shows movement where there is apparent stillness, whether in the formation of weather patterns, movement of stars, the illumination of a building by passing car headlights or boats darting back and forth across the seaʼs horizon. The sound has been composed for the film by Benedict Drew, taking field recordings of the aurora borealis as a starting point, and using purely computer generated sound to create a soundtrack that reflects the unheard elements present in the earthʼs atmosphere. Screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

June 19 – Ribbit, Ribbet Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (Mark Lewis, Australia, 1988, 47 min., 16mm) The cane toad was imported from Hawaii in 1935 to save Queenslandʼs sugar crop from the grey-back beetle. It failed because the beetle could fly and the cane toad couldnʼt. But the cane toad stayed to become a pest of plague proportions and part of local culture and popular mythology. This off-beat and entertaining documentary presents not just the biological information, but the surprising range of peopleʼs attitudes to these grotesque creatures, including keeping them as pets. An absolutely hilarious, somewhat true look at "an assault of sex-mad giant toads munching their way across Australia!" (New York Post). A comedy classic!

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A Frog on the Swing (Robert Breer, US, 1989, 5 min., 16mm) This animated fable is centered around a backyard pond shown intermittently in live-action scenes. A small child appears and disappears in a ballet of crows, rabbits, monkey wrenches, and goldfish. When the police arrive there are pot- shots at backyard varmints, but the frog on the swing seems to survive it all. As usual in Breer films, the soundtrack is often conspicuously out of sync with the picture. Or is it vice versa when a crow goes "moo?"

June 26 – The Sight of Music What do a Thai royal anthem, three Elliott Smith tunes, a Stravinsky suite, and Devoʼs “Mongoloid” have in common? They provide the soundtrack four of the films in this collection of works highlighting the intersection of music and film. (Note: this program features nudity.)

Lucky Three (Jem Cohen, US, 1997, 11.5 min., BetaSP) An independent film portrait of singer/songwriter Elliott Smith in Portland, Oregon in 1996, wherein he plays three songs. The songs were done live acoustic--in his old studio, a living room, and a bathroom (it was quiet in there). It's also a small portrait of Portland, Oregon. The songs are "Between the Bars", "Angeles", and a cover of "Thirteen" by Big Star. “This is Elliott as I remember him, at his simple finest as musician” –Jem Cohen.

Nightswimming (Jem Cohen, US, 1995, 8.5 min., BetaSP) “After seeing my film, Drink Deep, which revolved around rural swimming holes, R.E.M. asked me to make the video for "Nightswimming." We wanted to make something erotic that broke away from the crass formulas of MTV--to offer different kinds of bodies, male and female, and to extend the liberating possibilities of "skinnydipping" to people altogether outside of the predictable demographic. Later, when the band was collecting pieces for a home video release, I asked if I could expand the project into more of an independent film, and to include a section that would retain the spirit of the piece, but without music. (It was always my intention to pull "music videos" as far away from being commercial promos as possible)” – Jem Cohen.

The Anthem (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, US, 2006, 5 min., DVD) One of the ingrained rituals in Thai society is the blessing automatically given before certain ceremonies and events such as the playing of the Royal Anthem in movie theaters before feature presentations. This short presents a "Cinema Anthem" which comically praises and blesses the feature to come (Harvard Film Archive).

6 Bridges Go Round (Shirley Clarke, US, 1958, 7 min., 16mm) In this experimental documentary director Shirley Clarke presents a spectacular dance performed by none less that New York City's famous bridges. Using editing techniques and camera movement, the bridges are rooted up from their foundations and move about in the urban jungle. Before she started to make films, Clarke had been educated in modern dance. In 'Bridges-go-Round!' she uses her flair for dance and choreography combined with editing and camera movement. Clarke was one of the members of the so called independent film movement, along with Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas. 'Bridges- go-round' is estimated to be one of the most important and picturesque films of its time. (Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival) Music by Teo Macero

Breakaway (Bruce Conner, US, 1966, 5 min., 16mm) Frequently pointed to as an important precursor to the modern music video, Breakaway uses incredible rapid-fire montage to deliver a beautifully frenzied response to Maya Deren's motion studies. Shot at multiple speeds (and forwards and backwards), Conner's dance film features music by Ed Cobb, and dance and vocals by Toni Basil (Antonia Christina Basilotta). Countless screenings include at the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Walker Arts Center.

Mongoloid (Bruce Conner, US, 1978, 3 min., 16mm) A documentary film exploring the manner in which a determined young man overcame a basic mental defect and became a useful member of society. Insightful editing techniques reveal the dreams, ideals and problems that face a large segment of the American male population. Educational. Background music written and performed by the DEVO orchestra.

Altair (Lewis Klahr, US, 1994, 8 min., 16mm) “Altair offers a cutout animation version of color noir. The images were culled from six late '40s issues of Cosmopolitan magazine and set to an almost four- minute section of Stravinsky's "Firebird" (looped twice) to create a sinister, perfumed world. As in my 1988 visit to this genre, In the Month of Crickets, the narrative is highly smudged leaving legible only the larger signposts of the female protagonist's story. The viewer is encouraged to speculate on the nature and details of the woman's battle with large, malevolent societal forces and her descent into an alcoholic swoon. However, I feel it is important to add that what interested me in making this film was very little of what is described above but instead a fascination with the color blue and some intangible association it has for me with the late 1940s” (Lewis Klahr).

7 ONLINE RESOURCES

June 5 – The Short Films of Emily Hubley - http://www.emilyhubley.com/

June 12 – Above and Beyond The Eclipse (Jeanne Liotta, US, 2005, 3.5 min., 16mm) - http://www.jeanneliotta.net/filmpages/eclipse.html Observando El Cielo (Jeanne Liotta, US, 2007, 19 min., 16mm) - http://www.jeanneliotta.net/filmpages/observando.html Frontier Step (Gretchen Skogerson, US, 2007, 8 min.) - http://www.gretchenskogerson.com/ National Archive V.1 (Travis Wilkerson, US, 2001, 15 min., BetaSP) - http://mediaartists.org/content.php?sec=artist&sub=detail&artist_id=689 redshift (Emily Richardson, UK, 2001, 4 min., 16mm) - http://www.emilyrichardson.org.uk/

June 19 – Ribbit, Ribbit Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (Mark Lewis, Australia, 1988, 47 min., 16mm) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=4022822 - http://www.mlrp.net/html/Film_Cane_Toads.html A Frog on the Swing (Robert Breer, US, 1989, 5 min., 16mm) - http://www.canyoncinema.com/B/BreerR.html

June 26 – The Sight of Music Lucky Three (Jem Cohen, US, 1997, 11.5 min., BetaSP) - http://jemcohenfilms.com/ - http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$artistdetail?COHENJ - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ADiSSNWU90 Nightswimming (Jem Cohen, US, 1995, 8 min., BetaSP) - http://www.imeem.com/people/LRWUen/video/gaXOPPUe/jem-cohen- rem-nightswimming-full-version/ The Anthem (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2006, 5 min., DVD) - http://www.kickthemachine.com/home/index.html - http://quietbubble.typepad.com/quiet_bubble/2007/09/tiff-capsule-2-.html - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apichatpong_Weerasethakul Bridges Go Round (Shirley Clarke, US, 1958, 11 min., 16mm) - http://snoreandguzzle.com/?p=98 Breakaway (Bruce Conner, US, 1966, 5 min., 16mm) Mongoloid (Bruce Conner, US, 1978, 3 min., 16mm) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/arts/design/09conner.html?_r=1&scp =1&sq=bruce+conner&st=nyt&oref=slogin - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Conner

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Altair (Lewis Klahr, US, 1994, 8 min., 16mm) - http://calarts.edu/faculty_bios/theater/faculty/lewisklahr/lewisklahr - http://www.canyoncinema.com/K/Klahr.html

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