“ABC No Rio is a collective of collectives,” stated Steven Englander, its longest-running director, who served from 1994 until his passing in 2024. Throughout this period, ABC No Rio mirrored the model of an autonomous social center, and projects quickly grew to include a zine library, print shop, darkroom, computer center, kitchen facilities for Food Not Bombs, and offices for NYC Book Through Bars. The all-ages Saturday Hardcore Matinees were a core feature of this era, and ABC No Rio became an international center for hardcore punk with a zero-tolerance policy for homophobic, sexist, or racist bands. This program features independent video works, ranging from the 1990s to the 2010s, that highlight the proliferation of projects at ABC No Rio, including the Hardcore Matinees, and the long struggle for autonomy over its building. This program is presented in memory of Steven Englander. The screening will be followed by a Q&A. HARDCORE AND COLLECTIVE OPPOSITION COMPILATION: Comprises footage from the following sources: WHAT BRINGS YOU BY TODAY (2011) RALLY AGAINST EVICTION (Bob Balogh & Mitch Corber, 1997) THE ART OF REVOLUTION: AN ABC NO RIO BENEFIT (Tribal War Records, 1991) Andrea Meller 156 RIVINGTON 2001, 56.5 min, digital Total running time: ca. 125 min.

Adolfas Mekas’s achievements in the realm of academia and his impact on generations of students are every bit as important as his own filmmaking. Adolfas taught at Bard College from 1971 until his retirement in 2004, and founded the school’s Film Program. He was the Film Program’s director from 1971 to 1994, and was also the director of the school’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts from 1983 to 1989. As a teacher, his film course – which he called “Cinemagic” – was legendary among the students and faculty. Each session began with an autobiographical lecture, which was followed by a screening of a film that was meaningful to him. Happily, some of his lectures from the year 2000 were documented on video, and we will present excerpts from those talks here. Preceded by: Anthony Farrar CAMERA THREE 1963, 28 min, video This episode of the important early public television series “Camera Three” features a roundtable discussion between Cinema 16 founder Amos Vogel, director Joseph Losey, film critic Richard Roud and Adolfas Mekas. The episode was originally broadcast in 1963 at the conclusion of the first New York Film Festival. Joel Schlemowitz FOR ADOLFAS 2011, 4 min, 16mm-to-digital Made in memory of Adolfas Mekas, this film comprises 16mm footage shot at a book release party for “The Sayings of St. Tula” in 1999, and at Adolfas’s retirement party as head of The People’s Film Department at Bard College in 2004. Total running time: ca. 100 min.

Granted rare access to Ndeup, a spiritual healing ceremony practiced by Lebou peoples in Senegal, filmmaker and writer Manthia Diawara – with input from a cadre of scientists and academics – wonders what connections, if any, can be made between the possession ritual and Western logic. AI: AFRICAN INTELLIGENCE imagines generative ways of utilizing and thinking about “machine learning”, which Diawara fears might otherwise elide specific cultural practices like Ndeup.

AKA MARTHA’S VINEYARD 2025, 36 min, Super-8mm-to-digital, silent “AKA MARTHA’S VINEYARD (work-in-progress) is chapter one of a multi-format documentary that sees the lovely Wampanoag island and its tribal legends thru pre-colonial eyes. I shot on Super-8 Kodachrome, Plus-X, and Tri-X reversal films. This first chapter is an impossible meditation on life before the white man (me).” –Richard Sandler RADIOACTIVE CITY 2011, 23 min, Super-8mm/16mm-to-digital “The mood in Los Angeles was apocalyptic in the spring of 2011. A meticulous diary report about the city dominated by two important events: the disaster at the nuclear power station in Fukushima and the serious assault on a Giants fan outside the Dodger Stadium.” –ROTTERDAM Total running time: ca. 65 min.

Mathieu Sempala (Liensol), a Black schoolteacher in a small South African village, receives a letter from a childhood friend informing him that his sister is very ill. This letter will be the starting point for a long and terrifying journey to Johannesburg, where his long-lost childhood friend will accompany him through the unfamiliar city. There Sempala will be reunited not only with his sister Josephine, who has turned to sex work to survive, but also with his brother Delius, who leads the dangerous life of an underground trade union leader, and with his son Gasha, whom he finds in prison. In Johannesburg, Sempala is confronted with a world he hasn’t previously known, a city marked by street protests, crime, hatred, and injustice, a world from which there is no return.

1939, somewhere in the American Midwest: to combat former child-prodigy writer Barbara Fowler’s (Hannah Gross) debilitating agoraphobia, she and her pulp-fiction scribe husband, Richard (Peter Vack) move to the countryside where they become entwined in a love triangle with their deeply religious maid (Deragh Campbell) in this trance-like examination of a world destined for extinction. “[Graham Swon] has made a name for himself over the past ten years while working with cinephile-minded directors like Ricky D’Ambrose, Ted Fendt, Dan Sallitt, and Gina Telaroli. If there’s one thing that unites them it’s a strong sense of intellectualism, a sharp attention to place, and a willingness to rethink traditional cinematic forms. As a filmmaker Swon has been rethinking the conventions and possibilities of cinematic storytelling across his two features to date. [The new film] is a 1930s-set melodrama depicting a love-triangle between real-life writer Barbara Newhall Follett, a pulp fiction novelist, Richard, and their maid, Martha. In actuality the film is an impressionistic work focused on time, memory, and identity that’s filled with dueling voice-over tracks from all the main characters and a near constant stream of dissolves. It was also shot on a custom-built camera rig that reflected the images through a large format photography camera, onto a plate of ground glass, and then into a digital cinema camera. The result is an image that is hazy and filled with intense vignetting, looking completely out of time.” –Joshua Bogatin, SENSES OF CINEMA

With original footage and interviews with participants, Firestone’s ATTICA examines the historic prisoner’s rebellion of 1971.

“BIG WEDNESDAY is a surfer movie (far from my world) but I found it surprisingly intelligent. And really capturing the mood of its time (which was my time also) as no other film. The sadness of a world passing – after happy faith in the everlasting future.” –Richard Foreman

“A cinematographic stroll through the New York district of the East Village. Sandler allows homeless people to speak out. A surprising number of them are war veterans. These tramps probably are not all humorous, nor do they all make sense, but the film maker made a good selection. Some know exactly why America goes to war, others advertise condoms with the stars and stripes on them.” –ROTTERDAM SUBWAY TO THE FORMER EAST VILLAGE 2007, 33 min, digital Working against gentrification’s erasures, Sandler catalogues the East Village’s changes in their particularity: the closing of a community center, a woman’s riff on a fancy new restaurant, new waves of political graffiti following the 9/11 attacks, and increasing evidence of class inequity. Total running time: ca. 90 min.

This documentary about the Cuban Revolution portrays the country’s society through the words and experiences of young Cubans. In frank and open discussions, these young compañeras and compañeros explain their third-world consciousness, their theories on guerrilla warfare, their faith, and their commitment toward building Che’s New Man, and illustrate with verve and vitality what the Cuban Revolution is really all about. “[A]bove all and quite uniquely, a modern political work. That is to say, it offers not merely a transcription of aspiration and achievement, but more urgently, the tracing of the formation and development of a revolutionary consciousness.” –Annette Michelson [Please note: the only prints of this film that we’ve been able to locate are badly faded, but we nevertheless felt it was important to include it in the retrospective.]

“What makes this film distinctive is the way Rousseau explicitly returns to the source of his creative inspiration. So here he is at home reciting [Jean Racine’s play] Bérénice to himself, whilst going about his household chores. It verges on the comical: There are repeated shots of him obstinately trying to turn off a dripping tap, or the jubilant close up of bare feet carried away in performing a dance step or two. Combining art with life in such a way, that nothing is compartmentalised, nothing lost – that is the goal.” –Jean-Pierre Rehm, VIENNALE Jean-Claude Rousseau WELCOME 2022, 18 min, digital. No dialogue. Rousseau’s second film made in New York, thirty-five years after KEEP IN TOUCH. In the solitude of an apartment, a piece of cardboard beats against the window, at the whim of the wind, like a beating heart.

MASS FOR THE DAKOTA SIOUX 1963-64, 20 min, 16mm, b&w QUIXOTE 1964-65, 45 min, 16mm “In MASS and QUIXOTE [Baillie] subtly blends glimpses of the heroic personae with despairing reflections on violence and ecological disaster. […] Despite his sophistication, Baillie remains an innocent; the whole of his cinema exhibits an alternation between two irreconcilable themes: the sheer beauty of the phenomenal world (few films are as graceful to the eye as his, few are as sure of their colors) and the utter despair of forgotten men. It is in QUIXOTE alone that these two themes emerge into a dialectical form, an antithesis of grace and disgrace.” –P. Adams Sitney, VISIONARY FILM Total running time: ca. 70 min.

CASTRO STREET 1966, 10 min, 16mm ALL MY LIFE 1966, 3 min, 16mm VALENTIN DE LAS SIERRAS 1968, 10 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. “In [Baillie’s late 1960s films], the eye of the film-maker quiets his mind with images of reconciliation; the dialectics of cinematic thought become calm in the filming of the privileged moment of reconciliation.” –P. Adams Sitney, VISIONARY FILM QUICK BILLY 1971, 56 min, 16mm “The essential experience of transformation, between Life and Death, death and birth, or rebirth. In four reels, the first three adapted from the Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The fourth reel is in the form of a black and white one-reeler Western, summarizing the material of the first three reels, which are color and abstract.” –Bruce Baillie

by Stan Brakhage 1961-64, 74 min, 16mm, silent “DOG STAR MAN elaborates in mythic, almost systematic terms, the worldview of [Brakhage’s] lyrical films. More than any other work of the American avant-garde film, it stations itself within the rhetoric of Romanticism, describing the birth of consciousness, the cycle of the seasons, man’s struggle with nature, and sexual balance in the visual evocation of a fallen titan bearing the cosmic name of the Dog Star Man.” –P. Adams Sitney, VISIONARY FILM “The film breathes and is an organic and surging thing…it is a colossal lyrical adventure-dance of image in every variation of color.” –Michael McClure

JORDAN BELSON ALLURES 1961, 9 min, 16mm RE-ENTRY 1964, 6 min, 16mm PHENOMENA 1965, 6 min, 16mm. Brand new print! SAMADHI 1967, 6 min, 16mm MOMENTUM 1968, 6 min, 16mm. Brand new print! COSMOS 1969, 5 min, 16mm. Brand new print! WORLD 1970, 6 min, 16mm MEDITATION 1971, 7 min, 16mm. Brand new print! CHAKRA 1972, 6 min, 16mm. Brand new print! “Our greatest abstract film poet: he has found how to combine the vision of the outer and the inner eye.” –Gene Youngblood

“Scandal, evil, violence, and Fascism, like Hollywood, are centers of fascination for Anger, and his films are the fields in which the dialectic of that fascination is played and fought.” –P. Adams Sitney, VISIONARY FILM “All of [Anger’s] films have been evocations or invocations, attempting to conjure primal forces which, once visually released, are designed to have the effect of ‘casting a spell’ on the audience. […] Not a surrealist who puts blind faith in his own dream images and trusts his dreams to convey an ‘uncommon unconscious,’ Anger works predominantly in archetypal symbol. As the magus, he is the juggler of these symbols, just as in the Tarot, where the Magician is represented by the Juggler and is given the attribution of Mercury, the messenger.” –Carel Rowe, FILM QUARTERLY FIREWORKS (1947, 15 min, 16mm-to-35mm, b&w. Preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, with funding from the Film Foundation.) RABBIT’S MOON (1950-70, 15 min, 35mm. Preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, with funding from the Film Foundation.) EAUX D’ARTIFICE (1953, 13 min, 16mm) SCORPIO RISING (1963, 30 min, 16mm) KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS (1965, 3 min, 16mm) Total running time: ca. 80 min.

Unless otherwise noted, all films are silent. DESISTFILM 1954, 7 min, 16mm, b&w, sound REFLECTIONS ON BLACK 1955, 12 min, 16mm, b&w, sound. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. THE WONDER RING 1955, 4 min, 16mm FLESH OF MORNING 1956, 25 min, 16mm, b&w LOVING 1956, 4 min, 16mm DAYBREAK AND WHITEYE 1957, 8 min, 16mm WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING 1959, 12 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. Films made during Brakhage’s early, “psychodramatic” period, including two of his early experiments with sound. Total running time: ca. 75 min.

Unless otherwise noted, all films are silent. THE DEAD 1960, 11 min, 16mm PASHT 1965, 5 min, 16mm THREE FILMS: BLUEWHITE, BLOOD’S TONE, VEIN 1965, 10 min, 16mm FIRE OF WATERS 1965, 10 min, 16mm, sound THE HORSEMAN, THE WOMAN AND THE MOTH 1968, 19 min, 16mm Total running time: ca. 60 min.

All films are silent. THE WEIR-FALCON SAGA 1970, 29 min, 16mm THE MACHINE OF EDEN 1970, 11 min, 16mm SEXUAL MEDITATION #1: MOTEL 1970, 7 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. ANGELS’ 1971, 2 min, 16mm DOOR 1971, 4 min, 16mm WESTERN HISTORY 1971, 8 min, 16mm THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM 1971, 8 min, 16mm Total running time: ca. 75 min. Sun, June 8 at 8:00.

SONGS 1-14 1964-65, ca. 53 min, 8mm-to-16mm, silent “SONG 1: Portrait of a lady. SONGS 2 & 3: Fire and a mind’s movement in remembering. SONG 4: Three girls playing with a ball. Hand painted. SONG 5: A childbirth song. SONG 6: The painted veil via moth-death. SONG 7: San Francisco. SONG 8: Sea creatures. SONG 9: Wedding source and substance. SONG 10: Sitting around. SONG 11: Fires, windows, an insect, a lyre of rain scratches. SONG 12: Verticals and shadows caught in glass traps. SONG 13: A travel song of scenes and horizontals. SONG 14: Molds, paints and crystals.” –Stan Brakhage

All films are silent. MY MOUNTAIN: SONG 27 1968, 25 min, 8mm-to-16mm MY MOUNTAIN: SONG 27: PART 2: RIVERS 1969, 33 min, 8mm-to-16mm SONGS 28-29 1966/86, 21 min, 8mm-to-16mm “MY MOUNTAIN: SONG 27: A study of Arapahoe Peak in all the seasons of two years’ photography…the clouds and weathers that shape its place in landscape – much of the photography a-frame-at-a-time. SONG 27: PART 2: RIVERS: A series of eight films intended to echo the themes of MY MOUNTAIN: SONG 27. SONG 28: Scenes as texture. SONG 29: A portrait of the artist’s mother.” –Stan Brakhage Total running time: ca. 85 min.

THE ANIMALS OF EDEN AND AFTER 1970, 35 min, 16mm SEXUAL MEDITATION: ROOM WITH A VIEW 1971, 4 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. THE SHORES OF PHOS: A FABLE 1972, 10 min, 16mm THE WOLD-SHADOW 1972, 3 min, 16mm THE RIDDLE OF LUMEN 1972, 14 min, 16mm SINCERITY: REEL NO. 1 1973, 27 min, 16mm Total running time: ca. 95 min.

Unless otherwise noted, all films are silent. ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT (1958, 40 min, 16mm) CAT’S CRADLE (1959, 6 min, 16mm) SIRIUS REMEMBERED (1959, 12 min, 16mm) THIGH LINE LYRE TRIANGULAR (1961, 9 min, 16mm) MOTHLIGHT (1963, 4 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.) BLUE MOSES (1963, 11 min, 16mm, b&w, sound) With ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT, Brakhage leaves psychodrama and enters the “closed-eye vision” period. This program also contains a unique example of a film made without a camera, MOTHLIGHT, and one of Brakhage’s few sound (and ‘acted’) films, BLUE MOSES. Total running time: ca. 85 min.

by Stan Brakhage 1961-65, 261 min, 16mm, silent “Includes the complete DOG STAR MAN and a full extension of the singularly visible themes of it. Inspired by that period of music in which the word ‘symphonia’ was created and by the thought that the term, as then, was created to name the overlap and enmeshing of suites, this film presents the visual symphony that DOG STAR MAN can be seen as and also all the suites of which it is composed. But as it is a film, and a work of music, the above suggests only one of the possible approaches to it. For instance, as ‘cinematographer,’ at source, means ‘writer of movement,’ certain poetic analogies might serve as well. The form is conditioned by the works of art which have inspired DOG STAR MAN, its growth of form by the physiology and experiences (including experiences of art) of the man who made it. Finally, it must be seen for what it is.” –Stan Brakhage

Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. EYES (1970, 36 min, 16mm, silent) “After wishing for years to be given the opportunity of filming some of the more ‘mystical’ occupations of our Times – some of the more obscure Public Figures which the average imagination turns into ‘bogeymen’... viz.: Policemen, Doctors, Soldiers, Politicians, etc.: – I was at last permitted to ride in a Pittsburgh police car, camera in hand, the final several days of September 1970.” –Stan Brakhage DEUS EX (1971, 34 min, 16mm, silent) “I have been many times very ill in hospitals; and I drew on all that experience while making DEUS EX in West Penn. Hospital of Pittsburgh; but I was especially inspired by the memory of one incident in an emergency room of San Francisco’s Mission District: while waiting for medical help, I had held myself together by reading an April-May 1965 issue of ‘Poetry Magazine’: and the following lines from Charles Olson’s ‘Cole’s Island’ had especially centered the experience, ‘touchstone’ of DEUS EX, for me: Charles begins the poem with the statement ‘I met Death –’ And then: ‘He didn’t bother me, or say anything. Which is / not surprising, a person might not, in the circumstances; / or at most a nod or something. Or they would. But they wouldn’t, / or you wouldn’t think to either, / it was Death. And / He certainly was, the moment I saw him.’” –Stan Brakhage THE ACT OF SEEING WITH ONE’S OWN EYES (1971, 32 min, 16mm, silent) “Brakhage, entering, with his camera, one of the forbidden, terrific locations of our culture, the autopsy room. It is a place wherein, inversely, life is cherished, for it exists to affirm that no one of us may die without our knowing exactly why. All of us, in the person of the coroner, must see that, for ourselves, with our own eyes.” –Hollis Frampton Total running time: ca. 105 min.

by Stan Brakhage 1974, 67 min, 16mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. “All that is, is light.” –Johannes Scotus Erigena “[Brakhage shot] THE TEXT OF LIGHT in (through) a large crystal ashtray. This magnificent film – a slow montage of iridescent splays of light and shifting landscapes of sheer color, which acknowledges debts to Turner and American Romantic landscape painters as well as to James Davis, the pioneer film-maker of light projections – is the culmination of Brakhage’s exploration of anamorphosis.” –P. Adams Sitney, VISIONARY FILM

Originally released in 1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s EL TOPO quickly caught the imagination of movie audiences, becoming a landmark in independent filmmaking. The early screenings at New York’s Elgin Theater sparked the Midnight Movie phenomenon, catalyzed by an endorsement from John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Classic Americana and avant-garde European sensibilities collide with Zen Buddhism and the Bible as master gunfighter and mystic El Topo (played by Jodorowsky himself) tries to defeat four sharp-shooting rivals on a bizarre path to allegorical self-awareness and resurrection. As it seeks an alternative to the Hollywood mainstream, EL TOPO is also the most controversial quasi-Western head trip ever made! “The episodes of El Topo’s progress are parabolic tales performed in concrete poetry. Many of these tales are metaphysical gags in the manner of the Marx Brothers, who often used a Sufi parable to launch their excursions into madness. Their style is often considered frivolous but is one of deliberate anarchy, which Artaud called their ‘disintegration of the real by poetry.’ The same sense of humor, rooted at the cruel basis of laughter, is present in EL TOPO. Its humor attacks reality, creating a comedy that provokes laughter in order to overcome horror – a comedy that becomes a cult of salvation. Its tone portrays the growth of horror among us. Despite the nostalgic trend in style, this is not the 1930s, and the price of exorcism and the price of initiation have gone up. As was declared in Jean-Luc Godard’s WEEKEND, ‘It will take more horror to overcome the horror of the bourgeoisie.’ EL TOPO is dedicated to the metaphysical mechanics of that proposition.” –Glenn O’Brien, VILLAGE VOICE

Andoni’s GHOST HUNTING assembles a group of ex-prisoners to re-enact their experiences in Al-Moskobiya, Israel’s primary interrogation center, where he was jailed at 18.

GOING HOME is a film about childhood memories, life’s hardships, and the durability of families. In 1971, after a 27-year absence, Adolfas and his brother Jonas returned to their birthplace in Lithuania. They had left as young men, destined for a German labor camp. Now they came home, Adolfas with his wife, the singer Pola Chapelle, and in the long northern summer days they sang and walked across golden fields and feasted at crowded tables with family and friends. There are flowers for the dead and for the living in this film; it is full of flowers and songs. Followed by: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST. TULA 2003, 23 min, digital An account of the first appearance to Adolfas Mekas of the mythical St. Tula, Patron Saint of Cinema and Filmmakers. Total running time: ca. 85 min.

Edited by Adolfas, this was the feature-film debut of Philip Kaufman. A fable about an old man with an odd effect on those he encounters, it is a fascinating and vibrant example of early American independent filmmaking, and features a performance from Ben Carruthers, star of Cassavetes’s SHADOWS. Filmed on location throughout Chicago, it includes appearances by notable cultural figures of the city, including author Nelson Algren, Second City founder Del Close, and original cast member Severn Darden. Newly preserved, this is a little-seen gem of 1960s American cinema.

35MM ANTHOLOGY RESTORATION Jonas Mekas GUNS OF THE TREES 1962, 75 min, 35mm. Assisted by Adolfas Mekas & Sheldon Rochlin. With Adolfas Mekas, Frances Stillman, Ben Carruthers, and Argus Spear Juillard. Restored by Anthology Film Archives and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Jonas Mekas’s debut film, GUNS OF THE TREES, a feature-length experimental narrative shot on 35mm, is a foundational work both within his own filmography and within the nascent New American Cinema movement. As such, it qualifies as a crucial crossroads between the possibilities of narrative filmmaking and the pioneering avant-garde cinema that was to come. Influenced equally by European New Wave and American Beat cinema, GUNS OF THE TREES is a time capsule of cultural upheaval and of the burgeoning independent film movement of the early 1960s. Adolfas assisted with almost every dimension of the production, and co-stars alongside Ben Carruthers (SHADOWS), Frances Stillman, and Argus Spear Juillard. Preceded by: George Binkey ANTIFILM #2 ca. 1951, 18 min, 16mm In 1951, during the Korean War, Adolfas was drafted into the United States Army. Serving within the Army’s film division, the Signal Corps, Adolfas allegedly produced this film collage from various 16mm reduction print scraps he collected and spliced during long-stretches of downtime. Distributed for only a short while by the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and credited to his nom de plume, George Binkey, this film is rarely shown, forgotten, and left out of the history of revolutionary found-footage filmmaking. Total running time: ca. 95 min.

“Imagine a combination of HUCKLEBERRY FINN, PULL MY DAISY, the Marx Brothers, and the complete works of Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith, and you’ve got it. What have you got? A film which is both deliriously funny and ravishingly lyrical. The story, or what one can make of it, concerns two men, Jack and Leo, who are in love with Vera. For seven winters they camp near her Vermont house: all in vain, the horrible Gideon finally wins Vera. Most of the film, however, is taken up with the highlights of the two boys in the snow-covered and beautifully photographed woods. The slapstick is as outrageous as the continuity is nonexistent.” –Richard Roud, THE GUARDIAN With: HALLELUJAH THE VILLA 2006, 28 min, digital A spirited interview with Adolfas Mekas, directed and edited by David Avallone. Total running time: ca. 115 min.

These two performance recordings from The Kitchen’s archive of 20th-century holdings reflect the improvisatory spirit of this incipient era in Hip-Hop history. MC Sha-Rock, known as the first female MC, commands the stage with razor-sharp, responsive verses as an original member of The Funky 4 + 1, seen in this 1980 performance excerpt from DUBBED IN GLAMOUR. Organized by downtown critic Edit DeAk, the series illuminated talent from New York’s underground. In BREAKERS LIVE, hip-hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy MCs a night of break-dancing, graffiti, and cyphers. The 1981 show reveals the infinite horizon of freestyle rap culture with performances by the Rock Steady Crew, Swift Kids, and DJ Spy. EXCERPT FROM DUBBED IN GLAMOUR, FUNKY 4 PLUS 1, 1980 JUNE 11 1980, 25 min, video. Courtesy of The Kitchen and The Kitchen Archive, c. 1971-1999, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.M.6). BREAKERS LIVE, 1981 OCTOBER 2 1981, 48 min, video. Courtesy of The Kitchen and The Kitchen Archive, c. 1971-1999, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.M.6). Total running time: ca. 75 min.

Blondell Cummings’s approach to dance was distinctively cinematic: she termed her works “moving pictures” – photographic images charged with kinetic energy, in the vein of stop-motion film. The rhythmic black-and-white tapes featured in this program reveal the choreographer and video artist’s directorial engagement with the screen. In FIRST TAPE, Cummings wields the camera to compose and crystallize her movement vocabularies; the lens is an evocative mediator through which she frames improvisatory gestures inspired by her everyday life and histories of Black female domesticity. Cummings lingers within this realm in THE LADIES AND ME – on stage here, her interpretive process conjures a portrait of longing. Blondell Cummings FIRST TAPE 1975, 24 min, video THE LADIES AND ME 1980, 31 min, video Total running time: ca. 60 min.

Stan Vanderbeek SNAPSHOTS OF THE CITY 1961, 5 min, 16mm Ray Wisniewski DOOMSHOW 1962-63, 10 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. Ken Jacobs & Bob Fleischner BLONDE COBRA 1959-63, 35 min, 16mm-to-35mm blow-up. With Jack Smith. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from The Film Foundation. Jonas Mekas & Adolfas Mekas THE BRIG 1964, 68 min, 35mm. Edited by Adolfas Mekas. Followed by: Storm De Hirsch NEWSREEL: JONAS IN THE BRIG 1964, 5 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Total running time: ca. 125 min.

Jonas Mekas AWARD PRESENTATION TO ANDY WARHOL 1964, 12 min, 16mm Ron Rice THE FLOWER THIEF 1960, 59 min, 16mm. With Taylor Mead. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Michael Snow NEW YORK EYE & EAR CONTROL 1964, 34 min, 16mm Total running time: ca. 110 min.

Harry Smith FILM NO. 16 (OZ: THE TIN WOODMAN’S DREAM) 1967, 15 min, 35mm, silent Aldo Tambellini BLACK TRIP 1965, 5 min, 16mm Ronald Nameth ANDY WARHOL’S EXPLODING PLASTIC INEVITABLE 1966, 22 min, 16mm Jud Yalkut D.M.T. 1966, 3 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Jud Yalkut US DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE 1966, 3 min, 16mm Jud Yalkut KUSAMA’S SELF-OBLITERATION 1967, 24 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Jud Yalkut NAKED RADIO HAPPENING 1967, 6 min, 16mm-to-digital. Digitized by Anthology Film Archives. Total running time: ca. 85 min.

Barbara Rubin CHRISTMAS ON EARTH 1963, 29 min, 16mm double-projection. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. Andrew Noren THE ADVENTURES OF THE EXQUISITE CORPSE, PART I: HUGE PUPILS (formerly KODAK GHOST POEMS, PART I) 1967, 61 min, 16mm Total running time: ca. 95 min.

[This program continues the tradition of Hoberman’s double-projector “Pedagogical Projections”, which became a legendary part of his classes at NYU and Cooper Union over the years.] See the ‘60s end with a bang and a whimper. Cosmic journeys pass in what might be a single violent night. Fantasies fissure as urban guerrillas talk themselves to death while hallucinating acid freaks revolt (at least in their mind). Total running time: ca. 130 min.

Peter Emmanuel Goldman PESTILENT CITY 1965, 16 min, 16mm-to-DCP Shirley Clarke THE COOL WORLD 1964, 104 min, 35mm. Print courtesy of Zipporah Films and preserved by the Library of Congress Packard Campus for National Audio-Visual Conservation from the original camera negatives in the Zipporah Films Collection. Total running time: ca. 125 min.

Carolee Schneemann MEAT JOY 1964 (re-edited 2010), 10.5 min, 16mm-to-DCP. Preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation. Peter Moore STOCKHAUSEN’S ORIGINALE: DOUBLETAKES 1964/94, 30 min, 16mm. New Print by Anthology! Special thanks to Barbara Moore. Newsreel GARBAGE aka GARBAGE DEMONSTRATION (NEWSREEL #5) 1968, 11 min, 16mm-to-DCP Jud Yalkut METAMEDIA: A FILM JOURNAL OF INTERMEDIA AND THE AVANT-GARDE 1966-1970 1972, 50 min, 16mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Total running time: ca. 105 min.

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! Sam Fleischner JETTY 2024, 56 min, Super-16mm-to-DCP. Cinematography by Oliver Lanzenberg; original score by Animal Collective. A new nonfiction film by Sam Fleischner – director of WAH DO DEM (2009) and STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS (2013), and co-founder of the Rockaway Film Festival – JETTY documents two years of the decades-long federal project of installing granite jetties to protect the Rockaways from the effects of diminishing beaches. Interspersing footage of the people and machines at work with observations from local residents about living where the city meets the water, the film is shot on Super-16mm, accentuating the tactility of all the elements at play: rocks, sand, metal, water, and celluloid. With subtle sound design featuring a pensive, sometimes playful score by Animal Collective, JETTY looks with equanimity at human attempts to out-engineer nature as it reflects on the way that a sense of place informs our lives. “JETTY is an immersive revelation. Bolstered by brilliantly intertwined sound design and score, Sam Fleischner’s patient lens documents the planners and the machines behind a massive shore-infrastructure project on the Rockaway peninsula. Its view of construction and demolition equipment as behemoths with one foot in our world and one foot almost in science-fiction recalls the underseen commercial-ship documentary masterpiece DEAD SLOW AHEAD. However, this isn’t a film of other worlds, but rather a sensory-rich record of human efforts to subdue earthly elements, at least temporarily; human engineering and mechanical tools pushing back against the inexorable tide, one breakwater at a time.” –Eric Allen Hatch, NEW/NEXT FILM FEST

Rousseau’s first film, shot in Super-8mm, is an experiential meditation on vision via an encounter with Johannes Vermeer. For this rare screening, we present a new 2K digitization of the film’s sole copy, preserved on a single roll of Kodachrome color-reversal film. The DCP was supervised by Rousseau himself in collaboration with a group of students and teachers at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, led by Manuel Asín and Carlos Saldaña. Jean-Claude Rousseau KEEP IN TOUCH 1987, 25 min, Super-8mm-to-16mm. In English and French with English subtitles. “KEEP IN TOUCH explores waiting periods. The filmmaker sits at a table in a room in New York, blank stationary paper in front of him. He turns on a lamp, leafs through an erotic magazine. Meanwhile, we hear various messages left on an answering machine: whispers punctuated by “love, love, love”; switching French to English, the voice tells of a move back into an old apartment. Another, in English, surprised by the answering machine, half-heartedly solicits a second date. The film explores this pause; the time between the initial encounter and the waiting period. The persistent hum of the city is perceptible, pierced by an ambulance siren.” –Érik Bullot Total running time: ca. 75 min.

This blackly funny satire was championed by 1998 Cannes Film Festival jury president Martin Scorsese as the best of film of the festival. Foreman kept a poster of the film in his living room.

Michael is a rich American working for his father’s urinal cake business in Paris who spends his free time lusting over his hustler housemate, Max, while also trying to find a wife to placate his conservative family. When American high school dropouts Jane and Donna show up one day hoping to make it in the modeling industry, Michael thinks he’s found a way to kill two birds with one stone: he can marry Jane and adopt Max as their son. But as Max and Jane begin to put together a scheme of their own and Donna puts designs on Michael, things get messy fast. Made during the same burst of activity that also produced WOMEN IN REVOLT! (1971) and HEAT (1972), L’AMOUR was in Paris in 1970 but wouldn’t see release until 1973. The first Warhol/Morrissey production to actually succeed in getting an R rating, the film was a deliberate attempt at courting a more mainstream audience. Instead, it quickly left theaters and has been virtually unseen ever since. To honor Paul Morrissey – who passed away in October – we present this special screening, from an archival 35mm print.

In the mid-1980s, Rousseau visited the Fontaine de Vaucluse in Southern France, a grotto along the Sourgue river where, at springtime, a violent torrent of water suddenly gushes forth. Rousseau would continually return to this site over the next ten years, drawn by the primordial pull of this strange phenomenon, the inspiration for many folktales and legends. He brought along a Super-8mm camera given to him by his parents, and the accumulation of this material resulted in his seminal second feature, LA VALLÉE CLOSE. “Every shot (frame, image, light) of LA VALLÉE CLOSE issues a roll of the dice, and casts into nothingness three-quarters of contemporary film – along with its directors of photography.” –Jean-Marie Straub

Rousseau’s first feature-length film, a work of ellipses and absences, is made up of seven parts plus one. “Each of the first seven moments consists of a view, or rather a vision, of a Roman monument or one of its aspects, captured from a hotel window or from the street, in several shots, with vehicles or human beings passing by, or not. The seventh ends with one of the characters closing the shutters of the two bedroom windows, eyelids lowering and hiding the world from us, or what we believe it to be.” –Bertrand Ogilvie Preceded by: Jean-Claude Rousseau VENISE N’EXISTE PAS 1984, 11 min, Super-8mm-to-16mm “VENISE N’EXISTE PAS deciphers the Italian city in a very paradoxical way. We find the same harshness of appearance, the sharp cut of ambient sounds, the end to end of the Super 8 reels, the window and the variations of light, the comings and goings of the filmmaker from the bed to the window…. By concluding with a postcard that remains blurred for a very long time, VENISE N’EXISTE PAS exposes the difficult crystallization of the image. From the bed to the window, from the bedroom to the journey, the filmmaker attempts to approach an image hidden from view, deferred or even dispatched from one place to another.” –Érik Bullot Total running time: ca. 120 min.

“LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES was a huge influence on Richard – how the actors move through the architectural space, the use of objects, and particularly the recreation of the old room within the apartment. He thought the last shot where the screens collapse was sublime.” –Amy Taubin

Cocteau adapted his own stage play for this film, an incestuous melodrama filmed entirely on a single set.

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON! Milisuthando Bongela MILISUTHANDO 2023, 128 min, DCP. In English and Xhosa with English subtitles. Distributed by The Cinema Guild. “MILISUTHANDO is a moving and thought-provoking film that follows the personal journey of Milisuthando Bongela as she comes to terms with her identity in the context of race. Born and raised in the Transkei [a state engineered by the apartheid regime in their effort to further institutionalize racial separation in South Africa], Bongela grew up strangely unaware of the world around her. It was only after the fall of apartheid that she began to comprehend the magnitude of its damage. Through archival footage and a series of intimate interviews and personal reflections, Bongela explores the ways in which race has shaped her life and the lives of those around her and invites her audience to do the same. From the subtle ways in which our ancestors influence our identities to the more overt ways in which racism still exists today, Bongela offers a penetrating look into the anatomy of race in modern society. […] MILISUTHANDO is a deeply personal narrative and a powerful reminder of the importance of understanding our history and the impact it has on our present and future.” –Nancy Pappas, SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “MILISUTHANDO is a portrait of me and South Africa, growing up together in the aftermath of apartheid. The moment one realizes they are black in the world is always traumatic. This film is the scenic route of my coming down from that moment. In it, I am tracing who I was before I entered the white world, who I became when I was inside it, and finally, what kind of human being can I be outside of its bounds? Throughout, I am exploring whether it is possible to live out the meaning of my name, Milisuthando (bearer of love where there is none), in a society where the laws have changed but people’s hearts remain locked in racial conditioning. The film takes place in Three Universes. Over Three Decades. Exploring Three Selves. Driven by my exploratory narrative voice and a compelling cast of my family, friends, foes, and some historical figures, the film braids these universes across time in a non-linear manner, meditating on difficult questions about power, fear, love and unrequited grace.” –Milisuthando Bongela

In 1978, famed gay porn director Jack Deveau and his partner Robert Alvarez shot and edited this fantastic, orgiastic ode to the Adonis Theater, one of Times Square’s most-beloved gay porn palaces from 1975 to 1990. Over the course of one afternoon into evening, a group of men converge at the Adonis, looking for as much sex as they can handle before the day is done. Hung-riest among them are legendary porn stars Jack Wrangler and his co-worker Roger, playing co-workers who both wind up at the theater unbeknownst to each other. A delightfully dirty ode to a bygone gay cruising space made with Deveau’s light-hearted, Hollywood-influenced touch, A NIGHT AT THE ADONIS is one of the greatest films of gay porn’s golden age, featuring an all-star cast with very big…personalities.

Sean DeLear was a Black gay artist raised in ultra-white Simi Valley, whose dreams of countercultural superstardom drew him to the worlds of performance art, nightlife, music, and drag from LA to NYC to Vienna, where he passed away in 2017. Along the way DeLear befriended artists like Vaginal Davis, John Sex, and Kembra Pfahler; starred in Tone Loc’s “Funky Cold Medina” music video; fronted the pioneering grunge band Glue in full drag; ran the door at Johnny Depp’s notorious Viper Room; and inspired love and devotion amongst all who met him, all while living below his means on government assistance. In this “sculptural” attempt to trace DeLear’s incredible life, longtime friend Markus Zizenbacher tells the story of an incredible icon of ecstatic fabulosity whose life and legacy deserve to be remembered for centuries to come. Narrow Rooms is thrilled to co-present the film’s New York Premiere with the Brooklyn-based nightlife and art collective Papi Juice (Oscar Nñ, Adam R., and Mohammed Fayaz), who throw the wildly popular queer gender inclusive New York party of the same name that’s been centering queer POC folks since 2013. Stick around afterwards for a panel discussion featuring Zizenbacher, Michael Bullock (editor of “I Could Not Believe It: The 1979 Teenage Diary of Sean DeLear”), and others.

Alongside our screenings of her first feature film, THE DELLS, we present a program of Nellie Kluz’s earlier work, a group of nonfiction shorts that explore various hidden or neglected corners of American society and culture. YOUNG BIRD SEASON 2011, 19 min, DCP GOLD PARTY 2013, 17 min, DCP MUST SEE 2016, 13 min, DCP SERPENTS AND DOVES 2018, 30 min, DCP Total running time: ca. 85 min.

After completing his studies at the GDR’s Deutsche Hochschule für Filmkunst (German Academy of Film Art, now the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF) in 1967, Iraqi Kais al-Zubaidi worked for the Syrian Broadcasting Corporation, which was in close exchange with the East German DEFA film studios. AWAY FROM HOME (1969) is al-Zubaidi’s first film about the “Palestinian issue”. It marks his transition to work with the PLO’s Department for Culture and Information, for which he served as film delegate for almost 20 years. Palestinian Mahmoud Khalil began his studies at the same school in 1976. His diploma film, HEYDA MOURAD, I AM NOT A DREAMER (1982), is a portrait of a Palestinian woman – heavily injured in an explosion in Beirut – who receives medical treatment and vocational rehabilitation in the GDR. Kais al-Zubaidi AWAY FROM HOME 1969, 11 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In Arabic with English subtitles. Mahmoud Khalil HEIDIA MOURAD – I AM NOT A DREAMER 1982, 40 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. Total running time: ca. 55 min.

In 1976, the Palestine Cinema Institute (PCI) delegated cinematographer Marwan Salamah to the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in the GDR. His …FROM THE OLIVE TREE (1987), officially a GDR/PLO coproduction but in fact a one-man effort, tells the story of Paris-based Palestinian painter Samir Salameh. It will be screened alongside Adnan Madanat’s PALESTINIAN VISIONS (1977) – a production of the PCI (and, aside from the existence of a German language version, not related to Germany), Madanat’s film is a portrait of Palestinian painter Ibrahim Ghannam. The program showcases two artists who utilize very different genres to express their ideas and reflections about how to memorialize Palestine on canvas. Marwan Salamah …FROM THE OLIVE TREE / …VOM OLIVENBAUM 1987, 26 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. Adnan Madanat PALESTINIAN VISIONS 1977, 30 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In Arabic with English subtitles. Total running time: ca. 60 min.

In 1975 the PLO Department of Culture and Information (DCI) began negotiating a cooperation agreement with the East German DEFA Studio for Documentary Films. In it, DEFA granted the PLO access to the State Film Archive of the GDR. From this resource, Lebanese director Rafiq Hajjar made FROM PALESTINE (1975) for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), while Kais al-Zubaidi made PALESTINE – A PEOPLE’S RECORD (1982) for the DCI. While Hajjar avoids the use of colonial footage of Palestine for his Leninist film, al-Zubaidi uses any available material to tell a rather linear story of Palestine, deploying the archive for illustration and evidence. Rafiq Hajjar FROM PALESTINE / MIN FILASTIN / GEBOREN IN PALÄSTINA 1975, 22 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. Kais al-Zubaidi PALESTINE – A PEOPLE’S RECORD / FILISTIN – SIGIL SHA’AB / PALÄSTINA – CHRONIK EINES VOLKES 1984, 110 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In Arabic with English subtitles. Total running time: ca. 135 min.

For the PLO, international networks were vitally important. Its institutions regularly invited delegations from all over the world, among them filmmakers. The PLO’s United Information section was responsible for the shooting permits, chose the camps in which to shoot, and selected the interview partners. The GDR film THE CHILDREN OF PALESTINE (Kurt Tetzlaff, 1980) was produced in the framework of the same cooperation agreement as FROM PALESTINE (Program 3). FREEDOM – WHAT DO I MEAN? (1981) – a collective work by West Germans who came to Lebanon as part of a political exchange on the invitation of the DFLP – focuses on forms of self-organization and discussions around the revolutionary “new Palestinian”. Kurt Tetzlaff THE CHILDREN OF PALESTINE / DIE KINDER PALÄSTINAS 1980, 54 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. Wolfgang Bienek, Robert Krieg, Thomas Reuter, Brigitte Schulz FREEDOM – WHAT DO I MEAN? / FREIHEIT – WIE MEINE ICH DAS? 1981, 42 min, video. In German with English subtitles. Total running time: ca. 100 min.

Most films by the PLO focused on documenting the present lives of Palestinians in exile. The PLO was prohibited in Israel and the Occupied Territories, and access for Palestinian refugees was forbidden. In rare cases, the organization sent in foreign film crews with instructions about whom and what to document. LAND DAY (1976) by Ghaleb Shaath, manager of the film laboratory of the Palestine Martyrs Works Society (SAMED), is one example. In AIDA (1985), another official PLO/GDR coproduction – but in fact a one-man effort by Marwan Salamah – the children in the PLO’s orphanage in Tunis stay connected with their homeland by living both their heritage and the new social relations of the Palestinian Revolution. Ghaleb Shaath LAND DAY 1983, 50 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In Arabic and Japanese with English subtitles. Marwan Salamah AIDA 1985, 25 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. Total running time: ca. 80 min.

Kassem Hawal RETURN TO HAIFA / A’ID ILA HAYFA 1982, 75 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In Arabic with English subtitles. “The first feature-length Palestinian fictional film, RETURN TO HAIFA adapts Ghassan Kanafani’s 1969 novella by the same name. Filmed in Lebanon during its crushing civil war, the film team relied on the communities of Palestinian life-in-exile and the infrastructures of the Palestinian resistance for its production; per Hawal’s screen notes, resistance fighters went door-to-door in Badawi and Nahr al-Bared refugee camps to furnish the actors for the scenes of mass exodus filmed in Tripoli. What results is a national initiative, at once polemical and cautious, of exodus and its attendant psychologies.” –Kaleem Hawa

Kamal Aljafari A FIDAI FILM 2024, 78 min, DCP. In Arabic, English, and Hebrew with English subtitles. In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this time, it raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive. The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images. Taking this as its departure point, A FIDAI FILM aims to create a counter-narrative to this loss, presenting a form of cinematic sabotage that seeks to reclaim and restore the looted memories of Palestinian history. It’s a poignant exploration of identity, memory, and resistance, told through a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques.

The West Germans Manfred Vosz and Monica Maurer produced their films with PLO funds and were both loosely connected to the PCI. Vosz’s RASHIDIYA – SCENES FROM A PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMP (1977) is a short social reportage with a working-class aesthetic and Brechtian alienation effect, aimed at a politically educated German audience. Maurer worked mainly with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, whose work she portrayed. Her films have an educational character, a political urgency, and a historical context. Often (as in the case of Maurer’s 1979 film CHILDREN OF PALESTINE, made with Samir Nimr) they also served as evidence before international bodies. Manfred Vosz (Friedhelm Fett, Almut Hielscher, Franz Lehmkuhl, Eva Schlensag) RASHIDIYA – SCENES FROM A PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMP / RASCHIDIA – SZENEN AUS EINEM PALÄSTINENSISCHEN FLÜCHTLINGSLAGER 1977, 20 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. Monica Maurer & Samir Nimr CHILDREN OF PALESTINE 1979, 34 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In English. Total running time: ca. 60 min.

PROGRAM 1: THE EARLY PLAYS Kirk Winslow (1955-2002) was a theater, music, arts and experimental film aficionado who documented a number of downtown theater artists in the 1970s and 1980s. Winslow’s single-frame Super-8mm films of Foreman’s early plays are genuine wonders that, even without sound (which was such a major element of Foreman’s productions), manage to convey the painterly intensity of these visually striking shows. The program includes documentation of Foreman’s version of THREEPENNY OPERA at Lincoln Center starring Raul Julia as Macheath. All the works in this program have been provided by The Fales Library & Special Collections at NYU, which holds the archives of Richard Foreman, Kate Manheim, and Kirk Winslow. RHODA IN POTATOLAND (HER FALL STARTS) 1975, 18 min, Super-8mm-to-16mm, silent. Preserved by The Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU with support from The National Film Preservation Foundation. THREE PENNY OPERA 1975, 21 min, Super-8mm-to-digital, silent BOULEVARD DE PARIS, 1978 NYC 1978, 18 min, Super-8mm-to-digital, silent LIVRE DES SPLENDEURS, 1976 PARIS FESTIVAL D’AUTOMNE 1976, 26 min, Super-8mm-to-digital, silent Total running time: ca. 90 min.

Richard Foreman A FILM NAMED THIS POSSIBLE WORLD ca. 2017, 26 min, digital. Presented by Bridge Film and the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, and produced by Sophie Haviland. A rather mysterious discovery, this work was found on Foreman’s computer after his death in January. Featuring music by John Zorn, and filmed as part of a Bridge Project workshop in an abandoned school in Kyoto, the video makes full use of all the tools in Foreman’s digital arsenal. The work has never been publicly screened. Richard Foreman NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF unknown, 30 min, digital. Another newly uncovered work, NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF is suffused with Foreman’s deep desire to disturb the image. Intermittent snippets of voice and music guide us through an abstract space inhabited by people caught up in various entanglements and predicaments. Total running time: ca. 60 min.

Henry Hills ASTRONOME: A NIGHT AT THE OPERA 2010, 63 min, digital Foreman’s collaboration with John Zorn was as loud and wild and cerebral as you can imagine. Henry Hills filmed ten different performances with multiple cameras in order to create this frenetic document of the production from every vantage point. It’s a remarkable work that gets at the psychic feeling of the performance as much as it does the physical reality of how it was staged.

Elliot Caplan MY NAME IS RAINER THOMPSON AND I’VE LOST IT COMPLETELY 2014, 82 min, digital This documentary by Elliot Caplan – who has made films about or with Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Nam June Paik, Michael Gordon, Maya Lin, Steve Reich, and others – is an in-depth look at Richard Foreman’s creative process and the making of ONCE EVERY DAY.

Marie Losier THE ONTOLOGICAL COWBOY 2005, 17 min, 16mm-to-digital “[This film] documents Foreman’s invocation of the ‘manifest destiny’ of the avant-garde theater, King Cowboy Rufus strolling down off San Juan Hill with a sigh, waving his handkerchief. Foreman plays himself, and the cast pantomimes his preoccupation.” –Marie Losier Shaun Irons & Lauren Petty DEEP TRANCE BEHAVIOR IN POTATOLAND 2008, 60 min, digital The result of a commission from Richard Foreman, this film documents his mind-bending 2008 performance, Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland: A Richard Foreman Theater Machine.

PROGRAM 2: SOPHIA: THE CLIFFS Ernie Gehr SOPHIA: THE CLIFFS 1972, 123 min, 16mm-on-digital The third play staged by Foreman in 1972, Sophia = (Wisdom): Part 3: The Cliffs was presented at The Film-Makers’ Cinematheque. Filmed by Ernie Gehr (who performed in Foreman’s earlier plays Angelface and Hotel China), this is a complete black-and-white document of the production. The play features performances from Kate Manheim in what would become her recurring character Rhoda, as well as the filmmaker Andrew Noren, esteemed critic J. Hoberman, and early Ontological-Hysteric mainstay Bob Fleischner. Please note that the audibility of the dialogue is challenging and that this screening will include helpful subtitles. Preceded by: Bob Fleischner MAX’S SHIRT 1975, 5 min, 16mm A short film by Foreman actor Bob Fleischner, who often performed as “Max” in the early plays. Total running time: ca. 130 min.

PAIN(T) AND VERTICAL MOBILITY 1973, 99 min, video. Digitized by The Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU. The raw footage presented in this program comes from recently discovered videos that document sections of two Foreman plays that ran back-to-back in repertory in 1974. Likely never screened before, these fascinating deep cuts give a fairly full sense of how the plays unfolded. The footage includes Part One of Pain(t) and Part One of Vertical Mobility. Foreman’s voice is sometimes quietly audible on the audio track giving directions to the cameraperson, as this may have been shot in part to help raise funds for a feature film version that he was hoping to make. Far from straight documentation, these are fascinating records of two key plays that represent Foreman working at the height of his early genius.

Q&A WITH P. ADAMS SITNEY + AMY TAUBIN! This program consists of two shorts and other surprises that have recently come to light, with special guests P. Adams Sitney and Amy Taubin in conversation about Richard Foreman. Ken Jacobs BOOK OF SPLENDORS, PART TWO, BOOK OF LEVERS: ACTION AT A DISTANCE 1977, 3 min, 16mm-to-digital. Digitized by The Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU. Foreman’s longtime friend Ken Jacobs situated himself in the audience of the legendary Ontological-Hysteric theater space at 491 Broadway to shoot this whiplash-inducing single-frame study of a dynamic play filled with frantic action, full frontal nudity, and so much more. Newly digitized from the camera roll discovered in Foreman’s archives. Berenice Reynaud PAVANE FOR A MISSING PLAY 1979, ca. 36 min, 16mm-to-DCP. Digitized by Anthology Film Archives. Restoration premiere! Foreman spent the early months of 1979 rehearsing a play called Madness and Tranquility (My Head Was a Sledgehammer), which he abruptly cancelled very shortly before its scheduled opening. Film critic and longtime CalArts professor Berenice Reynaud documented those rehearsals and used the footage in this rarely screened essay film, which had long been considered lost. Miraculously, Anthology has recently rediscovered the original 16mm elements and has digitally restored the film for this occasion. A truly exciting find that presents the only known footage of an important albeit lost Foreman work. Plus additional special surprises!

Richard Foreman OUT OF THE BODY TRAVEL 1976, 42 min, video. Writer/Director/Narrator: Richard Foreman. Photographer: Babette Mangolte. Performers: Students of the American Dance Festival. Produced for the American Dance Festival. “In this translation of Foreman’s theatrical sensibility to video, the artist’s own voice propels the interaction of elaborate wordplay and stylized tableaux of people and objects. A ‘young woman who finds herself surrounded by the relics of Western culture’ is the starting point for Foreman’s loosely constructed narrative.” –EAI Richard Foreman CITY ARCHIVES 1978, 28 min, video “This tape centers on the perspective of an outsider – the foreigner as Other – towards a city and its artifacts. While questioning the positions from which one views information, Foreman constructs and then deconstructs the central metaphor of an archive as a receptacle of information and knowledge.” –EAI Stuart Sherman SECOND SPECTACLE 1976, 10-min excerpt (originally 45 min), video. Preserved by EAI in collaboration with the Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU and the Barbara L. Goldsmith Preservation Lab, NYU Libraries. Total running time: ca. 85 min.

Richard Foreman TOP OF THE POP 1987, 3 min, video A music video directed by Foreman for actress/singer Jessica Harper. Richard Foreman RADIO RICK IN HEAVEN, RADIO RICHARD IN HELL 1987, 15 min, 16mm. Preserved by The Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU with support from The National Film Preservation Foundation. Shot by Babette Mangolte, this rarely-screened film first appeared as part of Foreman’s 1987 play Film Is Evil: Radio Is Good. Richard Foreman TOTAL RAIN 1989, 28 min, video. With Kate Manheim, Ron Vawter, and Richard Foreman. Digitized by The Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU. In this “video play”, Foreman explores his relationship with actors, and examines the impact of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury on his work. Richard Foreman SYMPHONY OF RATS: SPEECH #2 1988, 7 min, video. Digitized by The Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU. A short video of Foreman performing as a robot’s talking head, this piece was made for the original 1988 production of Symphony of Rats that he wrote and directed for The Wooster Group. Total running time: ca. 60 min.

Richard Foreman ONCE EVERY DAY 2012, 67 min, digital Highly visual, complexly edited, and without a conventional narrative “story,” ONCE EVERY DAY nevertheless circles a secret theme as it zeroes in on a group of 25 people acting out a series of semi-ritualistic behavior patterns. But their eccentric impulses are aborted in unpredictable ways with each new attempt at action or development. As the film cuts between colored tableaus, bleached-out action sequences, expressionistic black-and-white confrontations, and slow immersion in pure light, we repeatedly hear the voices of the invisible director (Foreman) and his technicians, whispering off-camera instructions and comments to the characters – who are of course “actors” as well as disturbed and inhibited human beings.

Leo McCarey, a director deeply admired by Rousseau (and by Ozu and Renoir), directs this rowdy and deeply felt romp wherein Charles Laughton plays a British butler brought unwillingly to the American West. Speaking of another McCarey film, AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, and evoking Robert Bresson in the process, Rousseau once wrote, “The film carries us there [to a happy ending], in a tension produced by what is not said, by what is not shown, in a formal restraint without artifice because it finds its necessity in the very story that is told to us. And this story, since it is that of the unsaid and the unshown, is none other than that of the cinématographe.”

Amidst a pre-code plot that involves civil war, revolutionaries, hidden identities, and women of questionable honor, Von Sternberg constructs a movie where the key is the moving light and shadows of train travel, and how the characters move through them, not why.

SILENT WITNESSES is an imaginative journey through the history of Colombia – and its cinema – during the tumultuous first half of the 20th century, using exclusively the surviving footage of Colombian silent cinema. This melodrama tells the impossible love story between Efraín and Alicia, set against the political upheaval in the early 1900s. The story begins with Efraín falling in love with Alicia, a woman promised to Uribe, a powerful and vengeful strongman. Their romance quickly unfolds into a journey through the heart of the jungle, where Efraín witnesses the dire conditions of peasants in the southern region and the birth of an armed rebellion. This film is the last work of the late Luis Ospina, one of the most influential filmmakers in Latin American cinema, and the debut feature of producer and film critic Jerónimo Atehortúa.

SWAY 2006, 35 min, digital “A light-hearted documentary about underground life in the New York subway. The film lasts as long as the average subway journey; about 34 minutes. Sandler took his time making it: he collected material every day for 12 years to tell his story about life under the surface. Journey through an unknown universe, with its own rules, customs, rhythms, colors and sounds.” –ROTTERDAM EVERYBODY IS HURTING 2006, 53 min, digital A documentary about 9/11/01, and the soul searching and muscular debate that raged in Union Square Park in the weeks following; it ends with a coda of contextual video of the World Trade Center from the previous 10 years. Total running time: ca. 90 min.

NEW YORK CITY PREMIERE! FILMMAKER IN PERSON! Nellie Kluz THE DELLS 2024, 72 min, DCP The first feature-length film by Nellie Kluz, THE DELLS observes the clash between fantasy and reality faced by international student workers newly arrived in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin – the self-described “Waterpark Capital of the World.” Coming from all over the world, these students land in the American Midwest via the State Department’s Summer Work Travel program. Issued temporary J-1 visas, they work low-paying jobs as lifeguards, housekeepers, and servers, living in dormitories tucked behind a glut of tourist attractions. The film follows the rhythms of an ensemble cast of “J-1s” as they work, party, and cruise around town in taxis. Students weather the myriad headaches of making ends meet in the U.S. thanks to their friendships and youthful optimism. We see their hopes for a summer of American luck and prosperity rub up against their actual experiences, which are by turns disappointing, funny, and transcendent. “THE DELLS captures the contradiction of the American Dream, where hopeful fantasies of life in the U.S. are grounded by the daily trials of being underpaid, overworked, and far from home.” –WEXNER CENTER FOR THE ARTS

Adolfas’s second feature film was this adaptation of a Mark Twain short story. Hatfield is a carpetbagger who marries the daughter of a prominent plantation owner in order to humiliate him. He mistreats his wife, but she stoically refuses to complain to her father. Finally, he ties her to a tree and lets bloodhounds tear off her clothes. The girl’s father dies of embarrassment, and, shortly thereafter, she gives birth to a son who grows up and heads west to avenge his mother. Preceded by: SKYSCRAPER 1965, 3 min, 16mm-to-digital “In [1965] Adolfas directed Pola Chapelle in a short parody of Italian art films of the time, written by Peter Stone for the Broadway show ‘Skyscraper’…. Paul Sorvino played opposite Pola in the three-minute film clip.” –David Cairns, SHADOWPLAY Total running time: ca. 95 min.

“Over the course of six years in the early-to-mid-’90s, the street photographer Richard Sandler lingered in the heart of the Great White Way with a video camera, capturing the undiminished cacophony around 42nd Street before its antiseptic redevelopment. But THE GODS OF TIMES SQUARE’s title should clue viewers in that this is not simply a portrait of the glimmering bowels of New York City before they were flushed to make way for Mickey Mouse and Carson Daly; GODS is as much a city time capsule as it is a work of urban theology, capturing the preachings, rantings, and teachings of a panoply of street preachers.” –Jon Dieringer, SCREEN SLATE

This follow-up to THE GODS OF TIMES SQUARE is constructed from some of the most vital outtakes from the earlier film, recuperating footage of more of the unforgettable personalities of Times Square. Preceded by: FOREVER AND SUNSMELL 2010, 12.5 min, 16mm-to-digital A more lyrical, city-symphony-like portrait of NYC, FOREVER AND SUNSMELL is set to the eponymous John Cage composition (which adapts a text by E. E. Cummings). Total running time: ca. 60 min.

Based on the play by American playwright Marc Connelly, THE GREEN PASTURES was made for French television by Jean-Christopher Averty, a longtime radio and television director whose television productions were often highly experimental. A typically stylized and visually daring piece, THE GREEN PASTURES presents a boldly modernized version of the Old Testament, here featuring an all-Black cast – including Les Griots luminaries and frequent filmic collaborators Robert Liensol, Théo Légitimus, Med Hondo, and Georges Hilarion – and set to a vibrant soundtrack of jazz tunes.

“THE OATH tells the story of two brothers-in-law whose experiences take us into the heart of Al Qaeda territory and on to Guantanamo Bay. Abu Jandal, once one of Osama bin Laden’s closest bodyguards, now makes his living driving a taxi in Yemen. Meanwhile, the brother-in-law he recruited to Al Qaeda and who subsequently became Bin Laden’s personal driver, Salim Hamdan, sits in a cell in Guantanamo under seemingly tenuous charges of terrorism. The film is not only a rich psychological study of Abu Jandal, who expounds expansively on his views – religious and political – over the course of two years, but also a sensitive portrait in absentia of Hamdan, whom we never meet but whose letters reveal the emotional toll being in Guantanamo takes. The second feature in filmmaker Laura Poitras’s trilogy about our post-9/11 world, THE OATH, though at times unsettling, is a vital window into a part of the world too few attempt to understand.” –FULL FRAME DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL

“Eugénie (Alpha) and Armand (Liensol), an elderly couple who were part of the wave of post-war immigration from Martinique, have been living in Paris since 1921. Eugénie, a former dancer with Josephine Baker’s Black Revue, has become a professional quimboiseuse (a practitioner of black magic) for a white clientele. Armand, previously a domestic servant, is retired. During one last walk through the city they face up to their past and their stifled dreams.” –RAVEN ROW

“Conceived in a five-act operatic format, this film is based on the founding legend of Rome but reinterprets its outcome of peaceful settlement as a chaotic fall from midcentury idealism. Reframed as a 1960s period piece…and shot on location in Greece and Germany with a cast of hundreds, this epic drama is loosely based on the myth of the abduction of the Sabine women, with visual inspiration from Jacques-Louis David’s 1799 history painting ‘Intervention of the Sabine Women’ and other paintings that deal with the topic. […] Told completely without dialogue, the narrative unfolds through elaborate choreography by Claudie De Serpa Soares, period costumes by Karen Young, and an original score by Jonathan Bepler, who collaborated with Sussman on her 89 SECONDS AT ALCÁZAR (2004) and with Matthew Barney on his CREMASTER cycle, among other projects.” –SFMOMA

This film, by visual artist, independent filmmaker, cinematographer, and still photographer Al Santana, captures the rich legacy of ancient African religions practiced in the U.S. It provides rare insight into the practices and beliefs of the Akan and Yoruba religions and illustrates how mass media has been used to ridicule and denigrate these belief systems. The director provides intimate and respectful studies of an Egungun ancestral communion ceremony and daily life in the Yoruba village of Oyotunji in Sheldon, South Carolina, the only traditional African village of its kind in the U.S. VOICES OF THE GODS includes contemporary and historical examples of the influences of these religions in secular African-American culture, which in turn has influenced mainstream American society, culture, and politics.

This film documents the significant role of Voodoo in Haitian culture from the perspectives of Voodoo priests, government officials, historians and politicians. Attacked by Western clerics and declared a “superstition” by law in 1935, Voodoo has always been a source of empowerment for the average Haitian. And scholars argue that despite the exploitation, romanticization and vilification of voodoo, it remains an authentic and stabilizing cultural base of everyday Haitian society. Preceded by: Sarah Maldoror TOTO BISSAINTHE France/Haïti, 1988, 4 min, 16mm-to-DCP Sarah Maldoror (SAMBIZANGA) began her artistic career at Les Griots, which she co-founded in the late 1950s with Haitian singer Toto Bissainthe, among others. Years later she documented one of Bissainthe’s performances, both on- and off-stage, to make this filmic tribute to her friend and creative partner. Total running time: ca. 60 min.

“WINDFLOWERS is vastly more important than the plethora of sophisticated antiwar films around town. … It is not a portrait of a draft dodger, nor of anyone else, but of a certain American mentality confronted with a situation that challenges its mindsets. … WINDFLOWERS seems to me a tremendously important film because it is the first film, inspired by this war and antiwar activity, to reach into the heart of America.” –Marjorie Heins Preceded by: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AMBASSADOR FROM LAPLAND 1967, 3 min, 16mm “In these three minutes Mekas is Swift, the horrible and admirable Swift of the ‘Modest Proposal.’ One really must admit that Mekas has made the USA a bit less loathsome.” –CAHIERS DU CINÉMA Pola Chapelle A MATTER OF BAOBAB 1970, 3 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. Total running time: ca. 75 min.