CENTER FOR
CONTEMPORARY

ARTS

MOVING IMAGE LAB

LECTURE SERIES

SHAMANIC CINEMA: THE MOVING IMAGE AS MYSTICAL MEDIUM

A Lecture Series With Anthony Buchanan in the CCA Digital Media Lab

$5 suggested donation

Sunday, December 13 at 6.00pm

The Shamanic and Kabbalistic films of Harry Smith

Harry Smith, American icon, Hermetic scholar, alchemist, filmmaker and madman, was one of the great eccentrics of the Twentieth century. His obsessions with everything from Native American cosmology to American folk music were already legendary when he began making some of the earliest abstract and hand-crafted films that sparked a revolution in underground film. But Smith’s films, ranging from subliminal color and geometric abstractions to highly symbolic alchemical and religious visions, transcend cinema and become spiritual journeys in themselves. For Smith, filmmaking was the modern equivalent of ancient alchemical practice. His films will be discussed in connection to the Kabbalistic and shamanic visions they represent, but also for the treasures of American culture they have become. Smith’s films live on as some of the most influential images and forms our culture has ever produced.

Sunday, December 20th at 6.00pm

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Spiritualism and the Tarot

One of the greatest living shamans of cinema, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s quirky and eccentric films can be seen as moving Tarot images. Jodorowsky has always treaded the line between avant-garde and tradition, but his highly personal work has transgressed both these categories. Submerged in mythology, psychology and spiritual revelation, the often ridiculous and decadent imagery are a record of Jodorowsky’s spiritual quest for enlightenment throughout his life. Jodorowsky’s early pursuit of Buddhist truth and Nothingness culminated in a lifelong fascination with the Tarot and its insistence on creating personal interpretations of ancient spiritual iconography. Jodorowsky’s life and influence will be discussed alongside clips of his masterpiece of cinematic Tarot, The Holy Mountain. His faith in ancient visual depictions of spiritual states make him an indispensable mythmaker of our time.

* Although relevant clips will be shown from each piece, none of these films will be shown in their entirety. For those who wish to not have the stories spoiled, it is recommended to see the films beforehand or afterwards.

UPCOMING at CCA Cinematheque

From the Archives!! 
LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, BIGGER THAN LIFE and Z 
November 27 - December 4

The CCA celebrates the vibrant world of film preservation with newly restored prints of three classic, rarely seen films in 35mm. 

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN

“Staggeringly beautiful … A

strangely heartening reminder

of just how exhilaratingly

bizarre Hollywood

moviemaking could get!”

–The Auteurs

John Stahl’s gorgeously

intense Technicolor

masterpiece stars Gene

Tierney (“the fatalest of the

femmes in this melodrama”

–NY Post) as a woman

who meets and seduces

a best-selling author

on a train, setting off a

spectacular series of deadly

misadventures (including

a scene in the New Mexico

mountains). Unmissable.

(U.S., 1945, 110m, 35mm,

Criterion Pictures)

filmforum.org/fi lms/leave.html

BIGGER THAN LIFE

“Revelatory! A revival not to

be miss ed!” –The New Yorker

Scott Foundas calls it

“Father Knows Best

reconfigured as Greek

tragedy”: Nicholas Ray’s

unforgettable Cinemascope

masterpiece—which has for

years been nearly impossible

to see—stars a terrifying

James Mason as a man

altered by an experimental

drug … an experiment that

ends up twisting the entire

Rockwellian town where he

lives. “One of the best, most

radical, least-known American

films … A canny retelling of

the Jekyll and Hyde story.”

–Village Voice.

(U.S., 1956, 95m, 35mm)

filmforum.org/fi lms/bigger.html

Z

“An extraordinary thriller!

One of the fastest, most

exciting melodramas ever

made” –Pauline Kael

The winner of the Cannes Jury

Prize (awarded unanimously)

and the Best Foreign Film

Oscar, Costa-Gavras’

landmark counter-culture

thriller dives deep into

revolutionary street-level

politics and brutal response

by the powers-that-be. A

touchstone of subversive

cinema, Z remains as vibrant

and relevant as ever, 40 years

after its initial, worldwidesmash,

release. With

Yves Montand, Jean-Louis

Trintignant and Irene Papas.

(Algeria, 1969, 127m, 35mm)

rialtopictures.com/z.html

CENTER for

CONTEMPORARY

ARTS

CCA Cinematheque.1050 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87505

505.982.1338 | www.ccasantafe.org

I'm Keeping an Eye On You

CENTER FOR

CONTEMPORARY

ARTS

1050 OLD PECOS TRAIL, SANTA FE, NM 87505

505.982.1338 WWW.CCASANTAFE.ORG

I’M KEEPING AN EYE ON YOU

December 4, 2009 through January 31, 2010

Opening Friday December 4, 5:00 - 8:00pm

Center for Contemporary Arts | Moving Image Lab

Curated by John Spiak

Contact: Peter Zangrillo,

Visual Arts Director

peter@ccasantafe.org

505-982-1338 x21

Through personal, established relationships, casual encounters, forced institutional interactions or contact

from a safe distance, we often overstep our boundaries. Whether we are conscious or not of our boundary

breaking, at one time or another we are all guilty of intruding into other people’s lives and space. What

may pass as uneventful for one individual may be the cause of great anxiety and fear for another. I’m

Keeping an Eye on You explores the broad and lasting effects of our curiosity and intrusions upon others.

Artists featured in I’m Keeping an Eye on You include: Mounira Al Solh (Amsterdam/Beirut); Rachel

Garfield (London); Charlotte Ginsborg (London); Pia Greschner (Berlin); Myung-Soo Kim (Tempe); Yaron

Lapid (London); Jeff Luckey (New York/Berlin); Johnna MacArthur (Los Angeles); Michael Mohan (Los

Angeles); and Corinna Schnitt (Hamburg).

Organized by John Spiak, ASU Art Museum curator, I’m Keeping an Eye on You premiered as a Video

Project Space at Aqua Art Miami in December 2008. This project is made possible by the generosity of

Aqua Art Miami and Friends of the Arizona State University Art Museum.

IMAGE CREDIT: Mounira Al Solh, The Sea Is a

Stereo, Video number 2, Paris without a Sea,

2007-2008, Digital Video, Courtesy of the artist

Chris Jonas' Garden (chapter 1 "Night") with the 

Del Sol String Quartet 

World Premiere Performances / Installation Opening:

Chris Jonas’ GARDEN (chapter one “Night”) with the Del Sol String Quartet

At the Center for Contemporary Arts of Santa Fe

Presented by Littleglobe and CCA

Installation Dates:

December 11, 2009 - January 31, 2010

FREE admission

Performance Dates:

Friday, December 4: 6 and 7:30pm

Saturday, December 5: 6 and 7:30pm

Sunday, December 6: 2pm matinee

Tickets $15/$10 student/member/senior/low-income

Location:

The Center for Contemporary Arts of Santa Fe and Littleglobe present GARDEN, an intermedia collaboration between Chris Jonas and Del Sol String Quartet.

GARDEN “Night” is a music-driven intermedia performance/installation that uses live music and projected video in performance to explore metaphoric and psychological realms of night. This first Garden Chapter, “Night” has been created in collaboration between Chris Jonas (projected video, composition), the San Francisco-based Del Sol String Quartet (www.delsolquartet.com), stage director Acushla Bastible, movement artist Echo Gustafson, photographer Petr Jerabek, and a team of artists, volunteers and Littleglobe interns.

The video installation environment and linked 45 minute intermedia composition will open the first weekend of December, performed live with the audience members seated on two sides of the string quartet within the layers of video screens, mixing live music with projected video of night time landscapes and human figures.

From the second weekend of December through the end of January, Garden will take the form of an installation, with the quartet and their music projected into the installation space and the 45-minute piece on perpetual loop. GARDEN will tour with the Del Sol String Quartet though the US and abroad from 2010-2011. 

www.littleglobe.org/garden.html

The Del Sol String Quartet, two-time national winner of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP First Place Award for Adventurous Programming, stands out as a group of pure invention, exploring new ways for a string quartet to interact with audiences, composers and other artists. They collaborate closely with living composers from around the world, including the Pacific Rim, by commissioning, performing and recording new works. 

www.delsolquartet.com

“Del Sol is one of today’s most adventurous and open-minded chamber groups, playing with elegance, virtuosity, clarity, a pervasive artistry and a visceral engagement with the works they take on,” Chris Jonas said. “I am very excited about this collaboration.”

About Chris Jonas

Known locally for his many large scale musical projects written for SITE Santa Fe Biennials (Man Who Laughs, IN SITU and Malangan), Circus Luminous, the bands BING (with his partner, Molly Sturges), Rrake and Sun Spits Cherries, the Santa Fe Opera, Lensic, High Mayhem and the arts-in-community non-profit, Littleglobe, Jonas works in the junction of many artistic worlds. Working in the realms of new music and intermedia, Jonas has recorded over 30 CDs, has toured with some of today’s most adventurous ensembles and musicians and has composed, performed and conducted works all over the US, EU and world. Jonas is the recipient of this year’s United States Artist Fellowship Award for music and got the New Vision/New Mexico award in 2006 for his video work in the SF Opera commissioned piece “Memorylines”. 

www.chrisjonas.com www.littleglobe.org

Ecotistical | Santa Fe Reporter

MAPPING A GREEN FUTURE

Ecotistical | Santa Fe Reporter

Posted using ShareThis

Anthony Buchanan Lecture Series

at CCA Santa Fe

Tuesday, December 8, 6 PM 

Sunday, December 13, 6 PM

Sunday, December 20, 6 PM 

Anthony Buchanan is a local experimental filmmaker, media artist, journalist and scholar of underground and world cinema. He has exhibited in Santa Fe as well as other towns in the midwest including Boulder, Colorado, where he was a friend of the late avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Buchanan is currently working on a book on the aesthetics and Romantic influence of Brakhage's work. In addition, Buchanan is at work on the preservation of the archive of video artists Woody and Steina Vasulka. Buchanan frequently writes for the Pasatiempo, covering film and the exhibitions by local and visiting video and media artists. 

Shamanic Cinema: The Moving Image as Mystical Medium

A Lecture Series With Anthony Buchanan in the CCA Digital Media Lab

$5 suggested donation

 

 

Tuesday, Dec 8^th at 6.00pm

Weimar Cinema And The Occult

Weimar culture, seething with revolutions in the arts, theatre and decadent culture, merged their fascination with darkness, psychology and heavy occultism with their evolving cinematic language. The early German films, memorable for their deep shadows, heavy iconography and mysterious imagery, are saturated with mystical and Occultist symbolism. For many visionary filmmakers such as F. W. Murnau, his Occultist producer Albin Grau, and theatre director/filmmaker Paul Wegener, the cinema was the ultimate medium for expressing the hidden images of the psyche and a means of carrying on the tradition of secret initiation. Many classic films will be discussed, such as Nosferatu, The Golem, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari  in connection with the spiritualism that brought them to light.

 

Sunday, December 13 at 6.00pm

The Shamanic and Kabbalistic films of Harry Smith

Harry Smith, American icon, Hermetic scholar, alchemist, filmmaker and madman, was one of the great eccentrics of the Twentieth century. His obsessions with everything from Native American cosmology to American folk music were already legendary when he began making some of the earliest abstract and hand-crafted films that sparked a revolution in underground film. But Smith’s films, ranging from subliminal color and geometric abstractions to highly symbolic alchemical and religious visions, transcend cinema and become spiritual journeys in themselves. For Smith, filmmaking was the modern equivalent of ancient alchemical practice. His films will be discussed in connection to the Kabbalistic and shamanic visions they represent, but also for the treasures of American culture they have become. Smith’s films live on as some of the most influential images and forms our culture has ever produced.

 

Sunday, December 20^th at 6.00pm

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Spiritualism and the Tarot

One of the greatest living shamans of cinema, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s quirky and eccentric films can be seen as moving Tarot images. Jodorowsky has always treaded the line between avant-garde and tradition, but his highly personal work has transgressed both these categories. Submerged in mythology, psychology and spiritual revelation, the often ridiculous and decadent imagery are a record of Jodorowsky’s spiritual quest for enlightenment throughout his life. Jodorowsky’s early pursuit of Buddhist truth and Nothingness culminated in a lifelong fascination with the Tarot and its insistence on creating personal interpretations of ancient spiritual iconography. Jodorowsky’s life and influence will be discussed alongside clips of his masterpiece of cinematic Tarot, The Holy Mountain. His faith in ancient visual depictions of spiritual states make him an indispensable mythmaker of our time.

 

* Although relevant clips will be shown from each piece, none of these films will be shown in their entirety. For those who wish to not have the stories spoiled, it is recommended to see the films beforehand or afterwards.

The CREMASTER cycle comes to CCA Santa Fe, Cinematheque!

Rare screenings on 35mm of Matthew Barney’s legendary five-film series

Monday, November 12 - Sunday, November 15

Cremaster Marathon: $12 for all three screenings

Screenings are regular ticket prices except for marathon.

SCHEDULE 

Thursday, November 12

8p - Cremaster 1 & 2

 

Friday, November 13

8p - Cremaster 3

 

Saturday, November 14

8p  - Cremaster 4&5

 

Sunday, November 15

3p - Cremaster 1 & 2

5:30p - Cremaster 3

8:45p – Cremaster 4 & 5

 

“The first truly great piece of cinema to be made in a fine art context since Dali and Bunuel filmed UN CHIEN ANDALOU in 1929 … one of the most imaginative and brilliant achievements in the history of avant-garde cinema … The Waste Land for a generation that grew up with STAR WARS … salvages what in myth, ritual and art is still accessible to the modern world.” –Guardian

 

Matthew Barney—who the New York Times called “the most important artist of his generation”—embarked upon the now-legendary CREMASTER cycle in 1994. In the 15 years since, its reputation has continued to grow. The films will be seen in rare 35mm screenings at the CCA Cinematheque November 12-15, including a marathon of all five works. A full schedule is below. Tickets are at normal prices except for the marathon, which is $12 for all five films.

 

Each of the five films, running between 40 minutes and three hours, is a gorgeous, unclassifiable work of cinematic art. Film Forum described the works as such: “an epic cycle of birth and sexual differentiation melding genres as diverse as the Busby Berkeley musical, the gothic Western, and operatic spectacle, encompassing Celtic myth, Masonic initiation rites, motorcycle races, obscure historical references, high fashion, lush music, and category-defying imagery, as it spans half the globe, from Boise to Budapest, with Barney himself popping up as a tap-dancing satyr, a naked magician, a giant, and serial killer Gary Gilmore.”

 

Despite its status as a major work in terms of modern art and cinema—it is a startling work in terms of technical achievement and independent moviemaking— few have seen the entire cycle on 35mm film. Thanks to the support of Barney’s production company, the Center for Contemporary Arts is proud to present the entire CREMASTER cycle as Barney intended.

 

CREMASTER 1

“Utterly original stuff.” –John Rockwell, The New York Times

In twin hovering Goodyear blimps, a woman arranges red and green grapes into geometric patterns imitated by Isaac Mizrahi-clad dancing girls on the blue astro-turfed football field below.

(U.S., 1995, 40m, 35mm)

 

CREMASTER 2

“A world as strangely alternate as Lewis Carroll’s … a sprawling, hallucinatory quiltwork of gorgeously shot scenes” –Steven Henry Madoff, Time

Drawing from Hollywood’s mythology of the American West, Barney tells the story of murderer Gary Gilmore (Barney) as he searches for a familial connection with

Harry Houdini (Norman Mailer) as he wanders through a glimmering-gold afterlife complete with dancing cowboys.

(U.S., 1999, 79m, 35mm)

 

CREMASTER 3

“Endlessly fascinating . . . Barney’s most hypnotic work yet.” –New York Magazine.

Barney’s The Entered Apprentice faces off against Chrysler Building architect Hiram Abiff (played by sculptor Richard Serra) in the Art Deco landmark, while battling punk bands, Rockette-like chorines, and a half-cheetah woman (Aimée Mullins) as he scales the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum in an interlude.

(U.S., 2002, 182m, 35mm)

 

CREMASTER 4

“A surreal, slapstick fantasy; sexuality turned into a bizarre vaudeville.” –Stephen Holden, New York Times.

Flame-haired goat-boy The Loughton Candidate (Barney) slowly taps his way through an eroding floor into the sea, as competing color-coded motorcycle teams set off in opposite directions to circle the Isle of Man.

(U.S., 1994, 42m, 35mm)

 

CREMASTER 5

“A ravishing stretch of cinema... rich and quite, quite strange.” –David Frankel, Artforum

Ursula Andress (DR. NO) stars as the Queen of Chain, the sole audience for a lush operatic spectacle performed by the Budapest Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra within a grand 19th century opera house, accompanied by faeries, a magician (Barney on horseback), various attendants of unspecified gender and species, and a bevy of live pigeons.

(U.S., 1997, 54m, 35mm)