SPECIAL SCREENING + LIVE PERFORMANCE! AN EVENING WITH WILLIAM TYLER: TIME INDEFINITE Join us for an intimate evening of music and film with guitarist and composer William Tyler, featuring a special screening of TIME INDEFINITE, a visual album co-directed by Elise Tyler and Aaron Anderson. Set to William Tyler’s new album “Time Indefinite”, the film weaves together found footage from his family archives into a poetic meditation on memory, decay, and the passage of time. The night opens with a live solo performance by William Tyler, followed by the NYC premiere of the film, and will conclude with a post-screening conversation with William and director Elise Tyler.

A portrait of both June Leaf and the hardscrabble seaside farmhouse and studio she shared for 50 years with her husband, Robert Frank, in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, ANOTHER LIGHT ON THE ROAD stands as a testament not only to the artist couple’s powerfully intimate and creative relationship but also to their enduring ties to the Mabou community of Cape Breton. Robert and June were profoundly shaped by the landscape of Mabou, with its bitterly windswept winters, its rhythms of sea and light, and its pioneering routine of wood gathering, clothes hanging, window gazing, and art making. After Robert’s death, June continued working tirelessly on new sculptures and paintings. Not long before her own death, on July 1, 2024, June was able to watch a cut of the film and share her satisfaction with Whalen and Parlante, confiding, “You must be very happy to have made this film. I am happy to have this.” Preceded by: Brigid Kennison A VISIT TO JUNE LEAF’S STUDIO – MY FIRST FILM 2018, 12 min, digital

NYC THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON! Ben Rivers BOGANCLOCH 2024, 89 min, 16mm-to-DCP. Distributed by The Cinema Guild. “One conception of cinematic duration involves holding a shot for a long time, even – or especially – when dramatic action is scarcely present. A second form, less frequently deployed but equally a rebuff to a culture obsessed with speed and novelty, is created when a director commits to filming the same subject again and again, over a period of many years. Both come together in BOGANCLOCH, Ben Rivers’s return to the boreal existence of Jake Williams, the unassuming star of THIS IS MY LAND (2006) and TWO YEARS AT SEA (2011). Shot on color and hand-processed black-and-white film using anamorphic lenses, BOGANCLOCH is a textured portrait of a man who once travelled the oceans but now chooses to live alone in rural Aberdeenshire, in a home that gives the film its title. It is also, less obviously, a record of the friendship between he and Rivers, a filmmaker who knows that many other worlds can be discovered within this one, far from the madding crowd. Quietly, beguilingly, he shows that solitude is not synonymous with loneliness, and that to the curious gaze the stuff of daily life is alive with memory, magic and dreams.” –Erika Balsom, VIENNALE “Fiercely self-sufficient, Williams has spent decades creating his own private world, one characterized by ritualized labor, the rhythm of the seasons, and his own priorities regarding how to spend his time. In some respects, Williams is an avatar for Rivers’s own filmmaking. Shooting in 16mm, hand-processing his footage, and editing it himself, Rivers is one in a long line of experimental filmmakers who abjure the industrial model in favor of artisanal image and sound creation. Both Rivers and Williams are committed to existence on their own terms, sharing the results with all and sundry.” –Michael Sicinski, IN REVIEW ONLINE “[By] celebrating a way of being stripped down to the bare necessities, Rivers is also celebrating a more elemental approach to cinema, fiercely impervious to the demands of traditional storytelling and wholly open to the kind of wonders that would normally go unseen. With its capacity to wring bliss and beauty out of the most mundane routines, the film approximates something close to what Herzog once called ‘ecstatic truth’ – that mysterious, elusive type of truth that can only be reached through imagination. By the time BOGANCLOCH wraps…this tiny corner of the Highlands has become an immense expanse, this shaggy-haired loner a king of infinite space.” –Leonardo Goi, THE FILM STAGE

The latest film by acclaimed Brazilian director Juliana Rojas (GOOD MANNERS) – winner of the Best Director Award at Berlinale’s Encounters competition – weaves two stories of migration, memory, and haunting loss. After a catastrophic flood devastates her rural land, Joana flees to São Paulo with her sister and grandson, struggling to rebuild her life amid the city’s chaos, haunted by what she left behind. Meanwhile, Flavia, grappling with her estranged father’s death, moves with her wife Mara to his remote farm, confronting lingering family ghosts and unresolved grief. Through these parallel journeys, CIDADE; CAMPO offers a powerful meditation on the search for belonging and the fragile, often invisible bonds that connect us to the places we call home.

Eva Norvind was born Eva Johanne Chegodaieva Sakonskaja in 1944, the daughter of a Russian prince and a Finnish sculptor in Trondheim, Norway. DIDN’T DO IT FOR LOVE traces the many stages of her unbelievable life story: from her early success as a showgirl in Paris to her transformation into Mexico’s Marilyn Monroe in the 1960s, her subsequent career as a journalist in the 1970s, and culminating in her establishing herself as New York’s most famous and business-savvy dominatrix in the 1980s. DIDN’T DO IT FOR LOVE is an odyssey through the wilderness of sexuality, capturing Eva’s search for the wellspring of her obsessive drive to dominate.

by Monika Treut 1997, 80 min, 16mm-to-DCP A documentary portrait of Eva Norvind, aka Mistress Ava Taurel, born Eva Johanne Chegodaieva Sakonskaya in Trondheim, Norway. The film follows Eva’s many careers, from her time as a showgirl in Paris to her transformation into Mexico’s Marilyn Monroe in the 1960s, and culminating with her establishing herself as New York’s most famous dominatrix in the 1980s. Using clips from Norvind’s Mexican films, stills from various periods, and interviews with friends, partners, and family, Treut’s documentary traces Eva’s search for the wellspring of her obsessive and dark sexuality. “Treut has always aimed her camera at the front lines of the sexual avant-garde. But with her latest documentary she’s managed to leap across the socio-sexual battlefield as never before. […] Armed with more present lives than Shirley MacLaine has past ones, Norvind is as eloquent as she is paradoxical.” –David Ehrenstein, NEW TIMES

In her haunting debut feature, Mexican filmmaker and visual artist Sofía Peypoch returns to the site of her kidnapping, undertaking a visceral excavation of memory beneath the earth’s surface. Through intimate, tactile gestures – her hands probing the soil alongside others replicating this chimerical act – the film weaves personal trauma with ancestral history, positioning the earth as an unyielding witness that refuses to forget. Combining film, photography, ceramic sculpture, and found objects, Peypoch crafts a sensory meditation on memory as a living, mutable space where past and present converge. EARTH ALTARS intricately explores how archaeology lends historical depth to intimate trauma, creating a profound dialogue between personal and collective histories.

(BRONENOSETS POTEMKIN) by Sergei Eisenstein (1925, 74 min, 35mm, silent. With English intertitles.) “POTEMKIN used [Eisenstein’s] new set of rules to create what has been called the most perfect and concise example of film structure. Like STRIKE, [POTEMKIN] has no hero, only the masses, and no plot, only an incident plucked from the pre-history of the Revolution.” –Standish Lawder, EISENSTEIN AND CONSTRUCTIVISM “POTEMKIN was the first work to embody, in their most tangible form, various principles of construction peculiar to the medium: montage (or editing) and parallel action (the expansion of time through spatial manipulation); or, in sum, the purely formal deployment of objective action to create psychological dimensions. Eisenstein was not the first ‘film artist,’ but he was the first to be so pure, the first to use photography like painting in movement, photography like verbal imagery. As set down in his writings, his own theories inform us of this. Yet POTEMKIN must be seen to be believed.” –Parker Tyler

(VREDENS DAG) by Carl Th. Dreyer (1943, 100 min, 35mm. In Danish with English subtitles.) “Carl Dreyer’s art begins to unfold at the point where most other directors give up. Witchcraft and martyrdom are his themes – but his witches don’t ride broomsticks, they ride the erotic fears of their persecutors. It is a world that suggests a dreadful fusion of Hawthorne and Kafka.” –Pauline Kael

by Carl Th. Dreyer (1964, 119 min, 16mm. In Danish with English subtitles.) “GERTRUD is as towering a master work in the narrative sound cinema as Brakhage’s THE ART OF VISION is in the nonnarrative cinema. Every detail, every motion, every word in GERTRUD has its right place, its own voice, and contributes to the whole and is beautiful. […] Every generation states its own position on love. GERTRUD is Dreyer’s statement on love, and it is pure, radiant, and perfect, like a ring.” –Jonas Mekas, MOVIE JOURNAL

(IVAN GROZNY) by Sergei Eisenstein (1942-46, 194 min, 35mm. In Russian with no subtitles; English synopsis available.) “The first time in history a man has committed suicide by cinema,” quipped Dovzhenko. A state-sanctioned production, Ivan’s opulent furs and jewels color the black-and-white machinations by a demonic Czar bent on making his subjects’ lives a living hell – a statement pointed with outrage directly at Stalin.

by Carl Th. Dreyer (1924, 89 min, 16mm, silent. With German intertitles; English synopsis available.) Shot by the great German cinematographers Karl Freund and Rudolph Maté, MICHAEL concerns the unconsummated love between a painter and his manipulative, larcenous model. The Danish director Benjamin Christensen stars as artist Claude Zoret, modeled in part after Rodin, whose irrepressible love finds its most complete expression in his last painting.

(OKTYABR ) by Sergei Eisenstein (1928, 143 min, 35mm, silent. With Russian intertitles; English synopsis available.) “An imaginary document projected on actual locations, OCTOBER is the Soviet equivalent of the Sistine Chapel – an artist commissioned by the state has represented the sacred origins of the universe. Woodrow Wilson had famously hailed D.W. Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) as ‘history written with lightning,’ but Eisenstein’s cosmic newsreel cum theoretical film poem goes beyond THE BIRTH OF A NATION, as well as his own BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, in drafting the past to serve the requirements of the present. No less than the revolutionaries who made October, Eisenstein understood himself as history’s tool. Thus consecrated to the Bolshevik faith, his OCTOBER is a perfect tautology – it clarifies and improves on history in the service of objective historical necessity.” –J. Hoberman, THE RED ATLANTIS: COMMUNIST CULTURE IN THE ABSENCE OF COMMUNISM

(STAROYE I NOVOYE) by Sergei Eisenstein (1929, 120 min, 35mm, silent. With Russian intertitles; English synopsis available.) With OLD AND NEW, also known as THE GENERAL LINE, Eisenstein developed and perfected his theories of “mise-en-cadre,” using the montage of characters in the foreground and background to conjure meanings, and “overtonal montage,” bringing silent film to its zenith.

by Carl Th. Dreyer (1955, 132 min, 35mm. In Danish with no subtitles; English synopsis available.) A farmer’s family is torn apart by faith, sanctity, and love – one child believes he’s Jesus Christ, a second proclaims himself agnostic, and the third falls in love with a fundamentalist’s daughter. Layering multiple stories of faith and rebellion, Dreyer’s adaptation of Kaj Munk’s play is a meditation on faith and fanaticism.

(STACHKA) by Sergei Eisenstein (1925, 106 min, 35mm, silent. With Russian intertitles; English synopsis available.) Eisenstein’s interest in the Freudian father complex drives this psychological scenario in which non-actors step forward to acknowledge the viewer, illustrating Eisenstein’s desire to penetrate to the heart of cinema, sidestepping realism by ‘being real.’ Governmental restrictions made STRIKE the only completed film of a series intended to portray the road to revolution.

(PRÄSTÄNKAN) by Carl Th. Dreyer (1921, 78 min, 35mm, silent. With Danish intertitles; English synopsis available.) In this lyrical, early Dreyer comedy, a young parson wins a plum parish in 17th-century Norway, but is obliged to marry the widow of his deceased predecessor and pretend his attractive young fiancée is his sister. Dreyer’s touch is evident in the close-ups of the pastor’s would-be rivals and parishioners, and in a slow pan presaging the 360-degree views of VAMPYR.

(LA PASSION DE JEANNE D’ARC) by Carl Th. Dreyer (1927-28, 98 min, 35mm, silent. With Danish intertitles; English synopsis available.) Spiritual rapture and institutional hypocrisy are brought to stark, vivid life in one of the most transcendent achievements of the silent era. Chronicling the trial of Joan of Arc in the final hours leading up to her execution, Dreyer depicts her torment with startling immediacy, employing an array of techniques – including expressionistic lighting, interconnected sets, and painfully intimate close-ups – to immerse viewers in her subjective experience. Anchoring Dreyer’s audacious formal experimentation is a legendary performance by Renée Falconetti, whose haunted face channels both the agony and the ecstasy of martyrdom. “With THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, there occurs a most striking change in both the film-maker’s style and his intensity of thematic concentration. A few potent shots in previous movies hardly promise the unique and brilliant imagery which here bursts forth frame after frame. […] The vision of JOAN is inspired or demoniac. Her passion is observed with clinical detail in the sharp-etched, stark compositions, many relentless close-ups. But this is also loving detail, for Joan is the first of Dreyer’s possessed, a lineage which may be traced through the victims of VAMPYR to Anne in DAY OF WRATH and Johannes in ORDET; characters who work out their passions throughout the process of their films with peculiar intensity and directness, so that identification with the director himself is implicit.” –Ken Kelman, FILM CULTURE

by Carl Th. Dreyer (1931-32, 70 min, 35mm. In Danish with no subtitles; English synopsis available.) “Imagine that we are sitting in a very ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind the door. Instantly, the room we are sitting in has taken on another look. The light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed and the objects are as we conceive them. This is the effect I wanted to produce in VAMPYR.” –Carl Th. Dreyer

Treut presents four short documentaries about individuals who live and act outside of society’s expectations of womanhood. In DR. PAGLIA (1992), Sexual Personae writer and academic Camille Paglia holds court with author Bruce Henderson. In ANNIE (1989), “post-porn modernist” Annie Sprinkle gives a PCA (Public Cervix Announcement). BONDAGE (1983) is a look at lesbian sadomasochism with Carol from New York’s Lesbian Sex Mafia. Finally, in the groundbreaking MAX (1992), trans poet Max Wolf Valerio discusses his life and transition. What emerges from these four very different portraits is a compelling snapshot of those at the forefront of blurring and expanding the definition of sex and gender at the close of the 20th century.

This newly completed work – made after Johnston’s death – constructs a highly revealing portrait of the artist via interviews with his sister, Marjory (who in his later years collaborated with Daniel on his artwork and continues to advocate for and promote his work), a special focus on his drawings, as well as documentation of his last home, a house in Waller, Texas, which he filled with a truly mind-boggling volume of books, records, VHS tapes, and other collections, all of which serve as a kind of self-portrait of a unique mind and sensibility. Plus, additional clips and excerpts!

Twenty years after making GENDERNAUTS, Monika Treut returns to San Francisco to catch up with her subjects and find out where time and life have led them. What she finds is a city transformed: what had once been a utopia for trans communities has now grown largely inaccessible due to rising costs and gentrification. Sandy Stone, Stafford, Susan Stryker, Max Wolf Valerio, and Annie Sprinkle all return in this lovely – if bittersweet – document of trans elderhood and enduring activism in the face of an affordability crisis and a repressive government.

Made at the height of the tech boom of the late 1990s, Monika Treut’s Teddy Award-winning GENDERNAUTS is a portrait of a group of trans artists, activists, and academics living in San Francisco – including historian Susan Stryker, web designer Stafford, video artists Jordy Jones and Texas Tomboy, intersex activist Hida Viloria, and “Goddess of Cyberspace” Sandy Stone. Treut also catches up with Annie Sprinkle and Max Wolf Valerio, who she first profiled in 1992’s FEMALE MISBEHAVIOR. Viewed now, over 25 years since its initial release, GENDERNAUTS remains a fascinatingly multifaceted look at the way that technology and the internet reshaped trans culture at the close of the 20th century.

AFA RESTORATION PREMIERE! Robert Downey Sr. GREASER’S PALACE 1972, 91 min, 35mm (Fri-Mon) + DCP (Tues-Thurs). With Allan Arbus, Albert Henderson, Michael Sullivan, Elsie Downey, Robert Downey Jr., Hervé Villechaize, Pablo Ferro, and Toni Basil. Cinematography by Peter Powell. Music by Jack Nitzsche. Restored by Anthology Film Archives and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Special thanks to Brian Block, Cyma Rubin, and Rosemary Rogers. Following the commercial failure of POUND, Downey embarked on what would become his biggest, boldest, and most ambitious film: GREASER’S PALACE. Thanks to the backing of independent producer Cyma Rubin, Downey was able for the first time both to work with a substantial production budget and to shoot outside NYC (the film was made on location in New Mexico). A delightfully demented, surreal, and subversive religious allegory set in the days of covered wagons and American pioneers, GREASER’S is, at its core, an avant-garde parody of the classic American Western. Originally pitched as “Christ coming back in a Western,” the film follows Jesse (Allan Arbus), a zoot-suited Christ figure, from his sudden arrival at a small desert outpost to his prophesied death soon thereafter. Along the way, and much to the delight and bafflement of the outpost’s eccentric population, Jesse performs a variety of miracles, among them a show-stopping boogie-woogie performance in the wooden “palace” of the brutal, de facto leader Seaweedhead Greaser. While GREASER’S only had a short theatrical run, and has rarely been shown on film since, it found an audience years later on home video, as well as prominent champions such as directors Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coen brothers. Fortunately, the original 35mm negative, long thought to be lost, was rediscovered in 2017. This rediscovery enabled Anthology to initiate the years-long process of fully restoring this independent classic, Downey’s most singular work. “Giant themes, fabulous crazy story-line, brilliant performances, camerawork, editing, music and design, hilarious comedy, unspeakably heartbreaking (but sometimes funny) violence, and transcendent emotional and spiritual richness – GREASER’S PALACE has got it all and it comes together and cooks in a way that makes it impossible to describe GREASER’S as anything less than one of the very boldest and greatest motion pictures ever made.” –Jonathan Demme “Come share this vision as much as you can afford to. This is the best movie I have ever seen.” –Paul Krassner, THE REALIST “A beautiful film, photographed in exquisite color, distinguished by Downey’s genius for the off-beat look at life, his remarkable sense of social satire, and his talent for utterly zany gags.” –Judith Crist, NEW YORK MAGAZINE

AFA RESTORATION PREMIERE! Robert Downey Sr. GREASER’S PALACE 1972, 91 min, 35mm (Fri-Mon) + DCP (Tues-Thurs). With Allan Arbus, Albert Henderson, Michael Sullivan, Elsie Downey, Robert Downey Jr., Hervé Villechaize, Pablo Ferro, and Toni Basil. Cinematography by Peter Powell. Music by Jack Nitzsche. Restored by Anthology Film Archives and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Special thanks to Brian Block, Cyma Rubin, and Rosemary Rogers. Following the commercial failure of POUND, Downey embarked on what would become his biggest, boldest, and most ambitious film: GREASER’S PALACE. Thanks to the backing of independent producer Cyma Rubin, Downey was able for the first time both to work with a substantial production budget and to shoot outside NYC (the film was made on location in New Mexico). A delightfully demented, surreal, and subversive religious allegory set in the days of covered wagons and American pioneers, GREASER’S is, at its core, an avant-garde parody of the classic American Western. Originally pitched as “Christ coming back in a Western,” the film follows Jesse (Allan Arbus), a zoot-suited Christ figure, from his sudden arrival at a small desert outpost to his prophesied death soon thereafter. Along the way, and much to the delight and bafflement of the outpost’s eccentric population, Jesse performs a variety of miracles, among them a show-stopping boogie-woogie performance in the wooden “palace” of the brutal, de facto leader Seaweedhead Greaser. While GREASER’S only had a short theatrical run, and has rarely been shown on film since, it found an audience years later on home video, as well as prominent champions such as directors Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coen brothers. Fortunately, the original 35mm negative, long thought to be lost, was rediscovered in 2017. This rediscovery enabled Anthology to initiate the years-long process of fully restoring this independent classic, Downey’s most singular work. “Giant themes, fabulous crazy story-line, brilliant performances, camerawork, editing, music and design, hilarious comedy, unspeakably heartbreaking (but sometimes funny) violence, and transcendent emotional and spiritual richness – GREASER’S PALACE has got it all and it comes together and cooks in a way that makes it impossible to describe GREASER’S as anything less than one of the very boldest and greatest motion pictures ever made.” –Jonathan Demme “Come share this vision as much as you can afford to. This is the best movie I have ever seen.” –Paul Krassner, THE REALIST “A beautiful film, photographed in exquisite color, distinguished by Downey’s genius for the off-beat look at life, his remarkable sense of social satire, and his talent for utterly zany gags.” –Judith Crist, NEW YORK MAGAZINE

“Displaying a cinematic originality comparable to that of Pasolini, the Lombardian, Ermanno Olmi, concentrated in his first feature films on the ways in which the new conditions of industrial labor in the flowering of the economic miracle took hold of the lives of workers. His emphasis on the centrality of work experience in the sentimental education of his young male protagonists was new in the Italian cinema. […] A great part of Olmi’s peculiar and impressive achievement in IL POSTO and I FIDANZATI was the originality with which he contextualized otherwise conventional stories of amorous longing and maturing love within the dynamics of the industrial workplace. The clarity and precision with which he records the particulars of corporate labor contribute to the impression he convincingly renders that new rhythms and altered expectations have changed the character of daily life in Italy.” –P. Adams Sitney, VITAL CRISES IN ITALIAN CINEMA

June Leaf married the great photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank in 1975, and they were together until his death in 2019. Even more than most artists, Frank and Leaf’s lives were inextricably intertwined with their creative work, and Frank’s later films in particular comprise highly distinctive diary films in which he documents and muses on his life and environment. This program gathers some of the films of Frank’s in which Leaf makes brief but especially memorable appearances. TRUE STORY 2004/08, 26 min, video Speaking in voiceover, Frank narrates scenes shot in his homes in New York and Nova Scotia. His rambling commentary returns to familiar themes of memory, and the loss of friends and family members. Brief excerpts from earlier films are shown, along with Frank’s photographs, the art of his wife, June Leaf, and extraordinarily detailed letters written by his son, Pablo (1951-94). I REMEMBER 1998, 7 min, video Frank narrates a charming re-enactment of his visit to the home of Alfred Stieglitz. The cast comprises June Leaf as Georgia O’Keeffe, artist Jerome Sother as Robert Frank, and Frank himself in the role of Stieglitz. HOME IMPROVEMENTS 1985, 29 min, video Robert Frank’s first video project, HOME IMPROVEMENTS is about the relationship between Frank’s life as an artist and his personal life, and how the two are inevitably intertwined. Made with a half-inch video Portapak it includes numerous sequences with June Leaf.

The cultural impact of Malcolm X has proven immense: his assassination marked the birth of the 1960s-70s Black Arts Movement, he became the central icon of 1980s-90s hip-hop, and he has continued to inspire and influence artmaking across every medium. Magicians in an experimental laboratory, artists and filmmakers John Akomfrah and Jenn Nkiru reveal how the intertwinement of aesthetics and politics can function as a way to re-author a self-determined Black history in the multi-voiced testimony of SEVEN SONGS FOR MALCOLM X (1993) and the mesmerizing temporal remix, REBIRTH IS NECESSARY (2017). This program also features the rhetoric of Malcolm X transposed as rap in Dick Fontaine’s MALCOLM X: NO SELL OUT (1984). Dick Fontaine MALCOLM X: NO SELL OUT 1984, 6 min, video Jenn Nkiru REBIRTH IS NECESSARY 2017, 10 min, digital John Akomfrah SEVEN SONGS FOR MALCOLM X 1993, 52 min, video

***NOTE*** This program will be free of charge / suggested donation. Advance online tickets are available for a suggested donation cost of $8, or will be available at the box office during the evening of each screening for free, or for whatever donation amount audience members wish. A triptych portrait, the NET-produced public television special THE NEGRO AND THE AMERICAN PROMISE (1963) presents Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Baldwin as the three faces of the Civil Rights movement. Documentary footage accompanies their interviews with host Kenneth Clark, who sets the discursive scene around “the racial confrontation in America.” This hefty historical record sees the trio discuss organizing strategies, religious ideologies, and childhood as witnesses and engineers of an at-once unchanging and transforming national landscape. Fred Barzyk THE NEGRO AND THE AMERICAN PROMISE 1963, 59 min, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Both places where Malcolm X made his mark, Mississippi and Chicago are the coordinates of a historical and geographic trajectory of Black life in the U.S. – the Great Migration, the SNCC, the Black Panther Party, violence, kinships, survival, and struggle. Offering a way to remember Malcolm X within a network of organizers, revolutionaries, and everyday people, WE’LL NEVER TURN BACK (1963) features Fannie Lou Hamer and documents sharecroppers and voter registration drives, while THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON (1971) centers a fellow martyr at the crossroads of an electrifying chronicle of Hampton’s leadership, the BPP’s extensive organizing for self-governance and investigative indictment of FBI counterinsurgency. Harvey Richards WE’LL NEVER TURN BACK 1963, 29 min, 16mm-to-DCP Howard Alk THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON 1971, 88 min, 35mm. Photochemically preserved in 2017 by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. 35mm print courtesy of Chicago Film Archives.

***NOTE*** This program will be free of charge / suggested donation. Advance online tickets are available for a suggested donation cost of $8, or will be available at the box office during the evening of each screening for free, or for whatever donation amount audience members wish. Three segments demonstrate how public television and broadcast media were claimed as a vehicle for exercising Black autonomy over communication, representation, and mass education. Madeline Anderson’s A TRIBUTE TO MALCOLM X (1967) and the TV episode WHO KILLED MALCOLM? (1972) were made through “Black Journal”, the first nationally televised public affairs show to focus on African-Americans under the direction of Black media workers. Their pioneering documentary approach covered political, cultural, economic, and social issues with international breadth. In the ’90s, the video collective Black Planet Productions addressed the legacy of Malcolm with the same principles but an avant-garde form in X 1/2: THE LEGACY OF MALCOLM X (1994). Madeline Anderson A TRIBUTE TO MALCOLM X 1967, 16 min, 16mm Black Planet Productions X 1/2: THE LEGACY OF MALCOLM X 1994, 45 min, video Black Journal [Episode 51] WHO KILLED MALCOLM? 1972, 45 min, video

A selection of experimental films, unedited materials, and surveillance footage critically address the commodification and misuse of Malcolm X as a caricatured image and symbolic currency. Ken Jacobs’s sparse PERFECT FILM (1985), Edouard de Laurot’s combative essay BLACK LIBERATION/SILENT REVOLUTION (1967), the MTV pantomime of X-PRZ’s NO SELL OUT… (1995), and the analytical collage of Robert Banks’s X – THE BABY CINEMA (1992), as well as footage of Malcolm X speaking during a press conference, instead reroute audiovisual media as a means of authenticating and upholding an oppositional record aligned with his political ends. Ken Jacobs PERFECT FILM 1985, 24 min, 16mm X-PRZ [Tony Cokes, Doug Anderson, Kenseth Armstead, and Mark Pierson] NO SELL OUT… OR I WNT 2 B TH ULTIMATE COMMODITY/ MACHINE (MALCOLM X PT. 2) 1995, 5 min, digital Edouard de Laurot BLACK LIBERATION/SILENT REVOLUTION 1967, 37 min, 16mm-to-DCP MALCOLM X PRESS CONFERENCE ON DEADLY POLICE RAID IN LOS ANGELES 1962, 10 min, 16mm-to-digital Robert Banks X – THE BABY CINEMA 1992, 4 min, 16mm

For Malcolm X – as for many Black revolutionaries – prison was a university, where he unlearned the world taught by U.S. white supremacy and converted to Islam. Fiercely opposed to the racialized violence of policing and coercive state power, his legacy is linked to the struggle of the 1971 Attica prisoner rebellion documented in TEACH OUR CHILDREN (1974). The radical bookstore owner turned jailhouse lawyer at the center of FRAME-UP! THE IMPRISONMENT OF MARTIN SOSTRE (1974), a key architect of anti-carceral abolitionism, emerges as a parallel to Malcolm X in their shared dedication to Black liberation, political education, and internationalist anti-imperialism. Steven Fischler, Joel Sucher, and Howard Blatt FRAME-UP! THE IMPRISONMENT OF MARTIN SOSTRE 1974, 30 min, 16mm-to-digital Christine Choy & Susan Robeson TEACH OUR CHILDREN 1974, 35 min, 16mm-to-digital

A student and a teacher, Malcolm X constantly embodied and encouraged learning. He objected to miseducation by the American system and called for a political awakening and cultural revolution based on the self-knowledge of Black peoples. SISTER AISHA: QUEEN MOTHER OF HARLEM (2024) traces the Malcolm X-inspired and spiritually guided trajectory of Aisha al-Adawiya, a formidable community leader and organizer devoted to liberatory movement building. TWO GODS (2020) chronicles the quiet mentorship of two adolescent boys by a Black Muslim casket maker and body washer in New Jersey, also evoking the grief which suffuses the remembrance of Malcolm X. Zeshawn Ali TWO GODS 2020, 82 min, DCP Hisham Aïdi & Sophie Schrago SISTER AISHA: QUEEN MOTHER OF HARLEM 2024, 47 min, DCP

Just before his life was cut short, Malcolm X had internationalized his vision of liberation amidst the Cold War and Civil Rights movement, calling on the interdependence of all colonized and oppressed people against global white supremacy and imperial hegemony. Together, MALCOLM X: STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM (1967) – made by the Jamaican poet, educator, and documentary filmmaker Lebert Bethune – MALCOLM X SPEAKS (1971), and MALCOLM X AND THE SUDANESE (2020) present a cinematic historical memory of the Malcolm X who stood in solidarity with Palestinian Liberation, the Mau Mau rebellion, the Cuban Revolution, and the anti-colonial efforts of the Vietnamese and Algerian peoples following his travels through Mecca, Africa, and Europe. Sophie Schrago MALCOLM X AND THE SUDANESE 2020, 26 min, DCP Charles Hobson MALCOLM X SPEAKS 1971, 44 min, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Lebert Bethune MALCOLM X: STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM 1967, 22 min, 16mm. Preserved by the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Through the flames of a cleansing fire, the Black migrant worker and protagonist of SOLEIL Ô (1970) sees a portrait of Malcolm X, conjured next to those of Lumumba, Che Guevara, and Ben Barka. The Mauritanian filmmaker Med Hondo – who loathed Spike Lee’s biopic and loved Amiri Baraka’s critique of it – ended his jaggedly stylized and absurdly funny experimental film by placing Malcolm X amongst a cadre of Third World revolutionary leaders. Hondo condensed his breathtaking cinematic polemic into a visual political compass, cementing a call to arms for an international rebellion against all forms of exploitation under colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. Med Hondo SOLEIL Ô 1970, 102 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In French and Arabic with English subtitles.

It would be difficult to overstate the impact, popularity and readership of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, which was published the same year as his assassination, and became the primary source material for numerous filmic adaptations. Arnold Perl’s 1972 MALCOLM X: HIS OWN STORY AS IT REALLY HAPPENED, which benefited from the advisory role of Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, is guided by James Earl Jones reading from the text. A rich compilation of newsreel footage, speeches, interviews, and contextual archival material, the documentary maps out the transformational arc from Malcolm Little to el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, opening with Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”, which sets a tone of mourning as the precursor to a life of militancy. Arnold Perl MALCOLM X: HIS OWN STORY AS IT REALLY HAPPENED 1972, 91 min, 35mm-to-DCP

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. are often presented as two opposing sides of Black Liberation: self-defense and separatism vs. non-violence and integration. Both assassinated at age 39 following a political turning point, they also share the fate of having their individual and related legacies oversimplified and defanged. Adapted from a 1987 one-act play by Jeff Stetson, Bill Duke’s THE MEETING (1989) stages a more complex picture through a speculative, covert exchange that takes place in a Harlem hotel room. The cramped space becomes an expanded theatrical container for the riveting and peculiar historical “what-if” of an unmediated conversation between the two leaders. Bill Duke AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE: THE MEETING 1989, 74 min, video. Courtesy of the Peabody Awards Collection, University of Georgia Libraries.

ISSUE PROJECT ROOM PRESENTS: ROBERT ASHLEY’S MUSIC WITH ROOTS IN THE AETHER: DAVID BEHRMAN This fall, Anthology joins forces with ISSUE Project Room to present a special screening of Robert Ashley’s MUSIC WITH ROOTS IN THE AETHER: THE MUSIC OF DAVID BEHRMAN (1975). Ashley’s seminal video opera (which in its totality lasts 14 hours) explores the lives and works of key figures within the American experimental tradition, and documents the post-serial, post-Cage stylistic shift that transformed American concert music beginning in the 1960s. Shot in long, unedited takes, the visual style presents performance without interference, where the frame itself becomes the stage. This rigorous approach not only preserves the integrity of the music but also transforms each interview into a quiet, embodied theater of ideas. The whole series episodically centers seven different composers including Philip Glass, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and Ashley himself. But ISSUE and Anthology will focus on the episode that centers the pioneering music of 2025 ISSUE Gala honoree, David Behrman, in recognition of his innovative contributions to electronic and experimental music, his collaborative spirit, and his influence on the integration of technology and live performance. David Behrman will be here to introduce the screening in person! For more info about ISSUE Project Room and the 2025 ISSUE Gala, visit: https://issueprojectroom.org/ Robert Ashley MUSIC WITH ROOTS IN THE AETHER: DAVID BEHRMAN 1975, 115 min, digital

Vicky (Shelley Kästner) is a German expat working as a waitress in the East Village while also dreaming of making it as an actor. She’ll have to give the performance of a lifetime when her stodgy father (Alfred Edel) hastily makes plans to visit her. As Vicky rushes to hide the aspects of her lifestyle that she doesn’t think he’ll approve of – namely, her gay roommate Ben (David Bronstein) and lesbian lover Lisa (Mary Lou Grailau) – only to become involved with a handsome stranger with a mysterious past (Michael Massee) in the process, Pops winds up tangled up with “post-porn modernist” Annie Sprinkle. A supremely kinky (yet surprisingly wholesome) sex comedy, MY FATHER IS COMING is also a loving tribute to the East Village and is notable for being one of the first feature films to prominently feature a trans man character.

The night before Benjamin is set to leave his small town to start his gay porn career in L.A., his best friend Dom ropes him into smuggling contraband across the Canadian border for extra cash. But it’s not any ordinary drug run. The two men are forced to swallow strange insect grubs encased in condoms. It’s said if these bugs bite you, some experience pleasure while others experience pain. But the danger of carrying these lethal larvae in their intestines pales in comparison to the threat posed by the vicious man at the center of the whole smuggling operation. When we showed Carter Smith’s groundbreaking 2006 gay horror short BUGCRUSH in March, the audience was so freaked out that we decided to screen Smith’s nightmarish semi-sequel, SWALLOWED, set in the same universe but with completely different characters played by Emmy nominee Cooper Koch (MONSTERS: THE LYLE AND ERIK MENENDEZ STORY), Jose Colon, Jenna Malone (DONNIE DARKO), and legendary gay actor Mark Patton, best known for his starring role in the gay NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequel FREDDY’S REVENGE. We’ll be joined by one of SWALLOWED’s biggest fans – film and theater critic Kyle Turner – to introduce this evening’s spooky season screening.

Gregory Markopoulos was among the filmmakers whose work P. Adams Sitney most respected and treasured. He wrote about Markopoulos’s work on many occasions, in “Visionary Film” and elsewhere, and traveled to experience the quadrennial presentations of the artist’s monumental final work, ENIAIOS (1947-91) at the Temenos site near Lyssarea, Greece. As part of our memorial tribute to Sitney, and with the generous cooperation of filmmaker Robert Beavers (the Director of the Temenos Archive), we will present two reels drawn from ENIAIOS IV, which have never been presented in this configuration.

Jonas Mekas WALDEN: REEL 2 1969, 40 min, 16mm “Kreeping Kreplachs meet (Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Tuli, Warhol, Barbara Rubin, etc) / Hare Krishna walk; autumn scenes; Sitney’s wedding; New Year’s Evening in Times Square; Goofing on 42nd Street; Uptown Party; Velvet Underground; Deep of Winter; Naomi visits Ken & Flo Jacobs; Amy stops for Coffee; Coop Directors meet; Dreams of Cocteau; In Central Park; What Leslie saw thru the Coop window; Olmsted Hike.” –Jonas Mekas Marjorie Keller THE FALLEN WORLD 1983, 9.5 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. “An elegy for a Newfoundland dog named Melville and a portrait of his owner.” –Marjorie Keller Marjorie Keller PRIVATE PARTS 1988, 13 min, 16mm, silent “PRIVATE PARTS is the third in a series of in-camera edited films. A portrait of Blake Sitney on some summer days.” –Marjorie Keller Stan Brakhage FILMS BY STAN BRAKHAGE: AN AVANT-GARDE HOME MOVIE 1961, 4 min, 16mm, silent “I had a camera with which I could make multiple superimpositions spontaneously. It had been lent to me for a week. I was also given a couple of rolls of color film which had been through an intensive fire. The chance that the film would not record any image at all left me free to experiment and try to create the sense of the daily world in which we live, and what it meant to me. I wanted to record our home, and yet deal with it as being that area from which the films by Stan Brakhage arise, and try to make one arise at the same time.” –Stan Brakhage Plus, additional special surprises!

POUND, an adaptation of Downey’s own off-off Broadway play THE COMEUPPANCE, is a truly outlandish parable about dogs (played by many of his regular actors) facing “death or adoption” within an animal shelter. Based solely on the box-office success of PUTNEY SWOPE, POUND was produced and distributed by United Artists, who had allegedly assumed it was going to be an animated film. Rated X and too strange for mainstream tastes, the film was a resounding commercial failure for the studio, an experience that ensured Downey would remain a Hollywood outsider for years to come.

The unexpected underground success of Downey’s no-budget feature CHAFED ELBOWS (1966), composed mostly of stills, caught the attention of an advertising production company who hired him “to try experimental stuff,” as he later put it. Inspired by his experiences working within the industry, Downey wrote PUTNEY SWOPE (1969), an uproarious and deeply subversive swipe at the advertising world – and at capitalism in general. PUTNEY was a surprise hit on the art-house circuit leading to extended runs and praise from critics and viewers alike and remains Downey’s best-known film today. In the film, an advertising agency’s only Black executive is unexpectedly voted chairman, at which point he institutes a series of radical reforms while rebranding the agency “Truth and Soul, Inc.” Downey seamlessly edited standalone commercial parodies throughout the film, which would inspire future sketch comedies like “Mr. Show” and “Kids in the Hall”.

PRESERVATION PREMIERE! Bruce Baillie QUICK BILLY 1970, 56 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. Anthology recently became the repository and rights-holder for the moving-image work of Bruce Baillie, whose body of work represents one of the towering achievements of postwar American experimental cinema. Over the course of the last few years, we’ve been gradually preserving and striking new prints of his films, including classics (and crucial parts of Anthology’s Essential Cinema cycle) such as CASTRO STREET (1966) and ALL MY LIFE (1966). Now we’ve created new prints of Baillie’s magnum opus, the four-reel masterpiece QUICK BILLY (1970), in which Baillie synthesized his previous work to conjure up a breathtakingly ambitious, visually exquisite meditation on the cycle of life. Purporting, for its first three reels, to represent an adaptation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, QUICK BILLY embodies Baillie’s unsurpassed camera eye, his mastery of editing and superimposition, his profoundly philosophical sensibility, as well as his mischievous sense of humor and bold sense of play. The latter qualities manifest most dramatically in the fourth and final reel, which – in a dramatic stylistic about-face – morphs into a kind of Beat parody of a melodramatic silent-era Western. While Anthology has shown QUICK BILLY annually as part of the Essential Cinema since time immemorial, our existing prints had become worn and faded. Restored now to its full glory, QUICK BILLY has never looked better! To celebrate, we’ll be presenting the film over the course of a long weekend accompanied by the six uncut “Rolls” – also newly restored – that Baillie distributed alongside the feature. “The essential experience of transformation between Life and Death, death and birth, or rebirth in four reels…” –Bruce Baillie “One of the masterpieces of the American avant-garde…a rare ‘synoptic’ film that tries to construct an entire cosmos. [It] immerses viewers in a timeless flow of indistinct forms that nearly obliterates self and place – the clarity of an erotic encounter ends when the woman leans forward into darkness. The finale is a parody western in which Baillie satirizes the aggression the rest of his film abjures.” –Fred Camper, CHICAGO READER “Baillie identifies all forms of the Self with the cinema. QUICK BILLY’s first two reels present a first-person cinema (offering a document of a delirious consciousness becoming adapted to the actual world), Reel Three offers a second-person cinema (with Baillie looking at a family album and observing pictures of himself as though they were of another with whom he has an intimate relation), and Reel Four offers a third-person narrative. Through this taxonomic organization, Baillie suggests that cinema evolved out of consciousness and over time assumed forms increasingly distant from the deep Self. In presenting these cinematic modes in reverse chronology, Baillie suggests that the cinema’s original and true nature is as a document of consciousness.” –Bruce Elder, LA FURIA UMANA Followed by: Bruce Baillie QUICK BILLY: SIX ROLLS (Numbers 14, 41, 43, 46, 47, and 52) 1968-69, 16 min, 16mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives “The ‘rolls’ took the form of a correspondence, or theater, between their author and Stan Brakhage, in the winter of 1968-69. They’re kind of the magic cousins of the film.” –Bruce Baillie

Wanda (Mechthild Großmann) is a dominatrix who runs an S/M performance space in Hamburg where she stages elaborate sexual rituals for a discerning audience. Cruelty is her profession, but constructing traps for her lovers – including the lovelorn Gregor (Udo Kier), the naive and innocent Justine (Sheila McLaughlin), and the jaded Caren (Carola Regnier) – is her specialty. All know the rules of the game, but not all are willing to play their roles – but the show must go on…

This program showcases the hallucinatory video work of Mexican artist Sergio Hernández Francés (1964-95), whose experimentation across theater, cinema, music, and new media influenced a generation of artists in Mexico. Making ample use of chromakey, collage, and a psychedelic sensibility, works like SUEÑO DE SERPIENTE and LOKOPHONIA helped establish Mexico City’s experimental video scene and are among the most striking early artistic responses to the AIDS crisis in Mexico. Despite his influence, Hernández Francés’s work has rarely been seen since his death from AIDS-related complications in 1995. The work in this program was rescued by video art pioneer Ximena Cuevas as part of her acclaimed compilation Los Archivos X and is being reintroduced today through the efforts of artist Jorge Bordello. This screening is presented in collaboration with Visual AIDS, in tandem with the Third Annual Visual AIDS Research Symposium at the Museum of Modern Art on October 24. With an introduction by Jorge Bordello. SERPENT’S DREAM / SUEÑO DE SERPIENTE 1991, 8 min, analogue-video-to-digital DEADLY SINS / PECADOS CAPITALES 1993, 9 min, analogue-video-to-digital AH CABALA VIDA 1993, 6 min, analogue-video-to-digital LOKOPHONIA 1991, 11 min, analogue-video-to-digital

RESTORATION PREMIERE! STICKS AND BONES 1973, 105 min, 2”-videotape-to-DCP. Restored by Anthology Film Archives. Special thanks to Gus Powell and Maurice Schechter. Joseph Papp, who hailed GREASER’S PALACE as “a masterpiece” and “a classic to be seen again and again,” offered Downey a slot in his newly contracted CBS series for which he was to produce thirteen feature-length teleplays. Using largely the same crew from GREASER’S, Downey adapted and directed David Rabe’s award-winning anti-Vietnam War play STICKS AND BONES. Instead of shooting it on film and then transferring it to video for broadcast, as was standard practice, Downey insisted on shooting the whole thing on new video technology: 2” Quad videotape. Believing the teleplay was too controversial, at the last minute CBS indefinitely postponed airing it. When they eventually broadcast it five months later, half of the affiliate stations refused to carry it (an unprecedented move for the time). Outraged, Papp canceled his entire series contract over CBS’s actions, which he called “a cowardly cop-out and a rotten affront to freedom of speech.” STICKS AND BONES was thought to survive only on badly dubbed U-Matic videotapes with burned-in timecode, but a 2” master videotape belonging to cinematographer Peter Powell was recently discovered and subsequently preserved by Anthology, and we’re delighted to premiere the restoration as part of this series.

This concert film captures one of Daniel Johnston’s greatest live performances, a July 2007 appearance at London’s Union Chapel. Joined by an impressive array of friends and admirers, including longtime collaborator Brett Hartenbach, Scottish folksinger James Yorkston, and English composer Adem, Daniel delivers definitive renditions of favorites from across his body of work.

This acclaimed film – made with the cooperation of Daniel Johnston – is the definitive documentary portrait of the singer-songwriter. Delving deeply and sensitively into Johnston’s extraordinary music, his equally singular and accomplished artwork, and his struggles with mental illness, it’s a profoundly revealing exploration not only of a particular artist and his work, but of the relationship that so often exists between artistic creation and psychological disturbance.

REVIVAL RUN – NEW RESTORATION! William H. Whyte THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES 1980, 58 min, 16mm-to-DCP. Digitally restored by Anthology Film Archives in collaboration with The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Project for Public Spaces. In 1980, the urbanist, sociologist, city planner, and writer William H. Whyte published a book based on the fruits of many years of research and observation into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project (which operated under the umbrella of the New York City Planning Commission). The result, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, closely analyzed the functioning (or malfunctioning) of public spaces in various cities, above all in NYC. The book quickly became a classic text within the realm of city planning, and remains beloved not only for the perceptiveness, elegance, and wisdom of its insights into the ways city dwellers interact with the urban environment, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. Though the book is familiar to generations of teachers and students of urbanism and city planning, the project is not widely known outside those circles. Perhaps even less well known – but hopefully not for long – is that, as a supplement to the published text, Whyte simultaneously produced an hour-long film of the same name. The film version of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES fully embodies all the qualities of the book: its intelligence, its empathetic, common-sense insight into what makes a city truly work for its residents (in contrast to the grandiose, often authoritarian instincts of architects, politicians, and developers), and its gentle yet often pointed wit. The film also boasts its own, unique qualities. Unlike the book, the film is graced by Whyte’s own voice: sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with a lack of polish and an often-self-deprecatory folksiness that’s charmingly at odds with the stentorian tone of most educational films. The film is also effectively a work of street photography. Though it was produced as a kind of filmic report and a pedagogical tool, Whyte and his team’s dedication to observing – and recording – the actual behavior of city dwellers, and their sharp eye for the behaviors and gestures that are most revealing of city life, result in a film that is – almost incidentally – a classic city symphony. Taking place primarily in New York (with brief detours to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and other urban centers), THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES is one of the great films about that strangest of creatures – the city dweller – in its natural habitat. One of the few “civilians” who have appreciated and celebrated the film in recent years is filmmaker John Wilson, who programmed it during a carte-blanche at Anthology in 2023. We were so enamored with the film – which at that time was only available in a very poor-quality video transfer – that we embarked on a quest to locate better elements. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (an organization that grew out of Whyte’s Street Life Project) and the Municipal Art Society of New York (which acted as the film’s initial distributor and where Whyte was a board member), we have managed to restore the film. Now, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the shared history of PPS and MAS, we are overjoyed to present the new, beautiful restoration with a week-long revival run. “William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson Co-presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York and Project for Public Spaces (https://www.pps.org/), who will organize a special panel discussion following the opening night screening on Fri, Sept 26. Special thanks to Fred Kent, Josh Kent, Nate Storring, Juliet Kahne, and Anne Tan-Detchkov (Project for Public Spaces); Keri Butler & Genevieve Wagner (Municipal Art Society of New York); Stephen Davies (Place Solutions Group); and John Wilson.

Ben Rivers THIS IS MY LAND 2006, 14 min, 16mm This hand-processed film was the first of Rivers’s portraits of Jake Williams. “It struck me straight away that there were parallels between our ways of working – I have tried to be as self-reliant as possible and be apart from the idea of industry – Jake's life and garden are much the same – he can sustain himself from what he grows and so needs little from others. To Jake this isn’t about nostalgia for some treasured pre-electric past, but more, a very real future.” –Ben Rivers Ben Rivers I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING 2009, 30 min, 16mm Three years after first filming Jake Williams, Rivers included him in his episodic piece, I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING. “Powell & Pressburger’s heroine in their magical I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING (1945) knows exactly where she’s going, and she tries to get there with stoic pig-headedness, but of course she never does. I decided to follow her lead and make my destination the same as hers, but with every intention of getting lost, following false leads, and trusting in the laws of serendipity, while winding my way through an almost abandoned, devastated Britain, to the Isle of Mull.” –Ben Rivers

Highly personal and at the same time completely illogical, this cacophonous comedy (also known as MOMENT TO MOMENT, and even as JIVE) has virtually no semblance of a storyline or plot. The great Elsie Downey, the director’s then-wife and the mother of his children (who are featured prominently throughout), drives the film with her boisterous performance in what may very well be more than ten roles. Shot and edited piecemeal over a few years, TWO TONS… is a collage of everything from staged scenes to home movies, and features a soundtrack by the legendary Jack Nitzsche and David Sanborn.

Ben Rivers TWO YEARS AT SEA 2011, 88 min, 35mm Ben Rivers renewed his relationship with Jake Williams for this feature-length exploration of solitude and the present’s slow crawl into the future. Situated squarely within what seems to be the perfect environment for his sensibility and temperament, Jake goes about his daily routine across the four seasons in the near-complete absence of any human ties, with Rivers’s camera functioning as the lone connection between him and the world beyond his self-imposed isolation. The patient, uncritical perspective presented in TWO YEARS AT SEA enables Jake to come into focus as an individual who leads his life exactly as he chooses, and as a weathered object moving resolutely against the temporal current. Ben Rivers MORE THAN JUST A DRAM 2014, 5 min, 16mm-to-DCP A visit to Jake to hear an ode to Whiskey.

Dorothee Müller (Ina Blum) is a German journalist researching an article about the nature of romantic love – something she desperately needs, given her dysfunctional relationships with former lover Heinz (Gad Klein) and brother Bruno (Marcelo Uriona). In the Oz of San Francisco, Dorothee finds exactly what she was looking for – and then some – thanks to the help of lesbian strip show barker Susie Sexpert (Susie Bright), drag king Ramona (Shelly Mars), and her mysteriously kinky neighbors (Cleo Dubois and Fakir Musafar). When Dorothy surfaces like a dazzled tourist on the wilder shores of the city’s thriving lesbian community, she has discovered her true sexuality…and left some illusions behind. Part German Expressionist satire, part sapphic travelogue, VIRGIN MACHINE is a seminal – and fiercely controversial – work of lesbian cinema.

BOOK RELEASE! VISIONS OF UNEARTHLY SPLENDOR This program showcases a selection of transcendent, bewitching, and psychedelic California film and video work. In the early 1970s, Conceptual artist Stephen Kaltenbach traded the downtown New York art world for a rural Northern California barn, where he spent most of the decade painting an enormous photorealistic portrait of his dying father. This event celebrates a new oral history about the making of “Portrait of My Father”, published by J&L Books and available at the event. The eclectic program illuminates various subjects at play in the book, including magnificent visions, spiritual awakening, and the ineffable nature of human consciousness. The program will be introduced by writer and curator Jordan Stein. This program showcases a selection of otherworldly, enchanting, and psychedelic California film and video works. In the early 1970s, Conceptual artist Stephen Kaltenbach traded the downtown New York art world for a rural Northern California barn, where he spent most of the decade painting an enormous – and enormously cosmic – portrait of his dying father. This event celebrates a new oral history about the making of “Portrait of My Father “(1972-79) by Jordan Stein and published by J&L Books. The eclectic program illuminates various subjects in the book, including resplendent visions, spiritual awakening, and the ineffable nature of human consciousness. Stein will introduce each film with a short reading. For more info about “Portrait of My Father”, visit: https://www.artbook.com/9780999365588.html Bruce Conner THE WHITE ROSE 1967, 7 min, 35mm Owen Land THANK YOU JESUS FOR THE ETERNAL PRESENT 1973, 6 min, 16mm Dorothy Wiley LETTERS 1972, 11 min, 16mm Adam Beckett SAUSAGE CITY 1974, 5.5 min, 16mm Jordan Belson SAMADHI 1967, 6 min, 16mm Toney W. Merritt LONESOME COWBOY 1979, 30 sec, 16mm Amy Halpern INVOCATION 1982, 2 min, 16mm, silent Total running time: ca. 45 min (plus readings).

LIVE PERFORMANCE! WILLIAM HOOKER + ALAN BRAUFMAN / WHO’S CRAZY? Tone Glow – a newsletter dedicated to showcasing the best in experimental music – is excited to present a special screening of Thomas White’s WHO’S CRAZY? (1965), a freewheeling portrait of inmates who escape from a mental institution. Shot in rural Belgium, the film’s actors were from New York’s Living Theatre troupe, and their steadfast belief in the power of experimentation is bolstered by Ornette Coleman’s original soundtrack. The screening will be preceded by a rare duo performance by drummer William Hooker and saxophonist Alan Braufman, two musicians associated with New York’s venerated loft scene during the 1970s. The two will play music from their recently unearthed 1977 album “A Time Within”. Thomas White WHO’S CRAZY? 1966, 73 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Digitally restored and distributed by Grand Motel Films (with assistance from Anthology’s Archivist John Klacsmann); special thanks to Vanessa McDonnell, Aaron Schimberg, and Spectacle Theater. For more info about Tone Glow visit: https://toneglow.substack.com/