CCA Santa Fe

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.