RADICAL LIGHT: ALTERNATIVE FILM AND VIDEO IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA: PUNK, ATTITUDINAL

RADICAL LIGHT: ALTERNATIVE FILM AND VIDEO IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
PUNK, ATTITUDINAL: FILM AND VIDEO, 1977 TO 1987

An avant garde cinema emerged in the Bay Area during the 1940s and 1950s—influenced by surrealism and centered around the San Francisco Art Institute—that has influenced personal and experimental media makers ever since. The era spawned such seminal filmmakers as Bruce Connor, Larry Jordan, James Broughton, Bruce Baille, Harry Smith, Jordan Belson, Gunvor Nelson, George Kuchar, and numerous other artists whose bodies of work form an essential cinema. The Pacific Film Archive’s first book, “Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000,” edited by Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz, and Steve Seid, both chronicles the history and serves as inspiration for a film and video series that showcases key works, themes, and movements over a five-decade history. In addition to the two programs the Film Center is presenting, Cinema Project is screening programs May 16 and 17 focusing on earlier work of the period.

PUNK, ATTITUDINAL: FILM AND VIDEO, 1977 TO 1987
DIRECTORS: VARIOUS
US, 1977-1987

“Punk was more than the music. It was an attitude that swept through culture like an angry roar. It thundered in the Bay Area’s dank clubs, but it could also be detected in brash works made by bratty artists intent on aesthetic insurrection. Everything in this program is about loud.”—Steve Seid. The program includes: YOUR WORLD DIES SCREAMING (1981), by Dale Hoyt; DEAF/PUNK (1979), by Richard Gaikowski; HIGH FIDELITY (1987), Ivar Smedstad; THOUGHT CRIMES IN THE SATIATION POOL (1987), by Barney Haynes; THE UNITS’ TRAINING FILM (1980), by Scott Ryser and Rachel Webber; BRENT ASKE (1987), by Ivar Smedstad; THIRD REICH AND ROLL (1977), by The Residents; LOUDER, FASTER, SHORTER (1979), by Mindaugis Bagdon; DANCING DEATH MONSTERS (1981), by Dale Hoyt; and SELECTIONS FROM TARGET VIDEO (1977-1980), by Target Video. (85 mins.)

Tonight’s program will be introduced by Steve Seid, Video Curator, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive.