PROGRAM 1: STEVE PAXTON: PHYSICAL THINGS 2013, 30 min, digital LUCINDA CHILDS: VEHICLE 2012, 35 min, digital DEBORAH HAY: SOLO 2012, 41 min, digital

PROGRAM 2: OYVIND FAHLSTRÖM: KISSES SWEETER THAN WINE 1996, 71 min, digital

ALEX HAY: GRASS FIELD 2013, 40 min, digital JOHN CAGE: VARIATIONS VII 2007, 41 min, digital

ROBERT WHITMAN: TWO HOLES OF WATER – 3 2013, 35 min, digital DAVID TUDOR: BANDONEON! (A COMBINE) 2009, 40 min, digital

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: OPEN SCORE 1997, 33 min, digital YVONNE RAINER: CARRIAGE DISCRETENESS 2013, 40 min, digital

“A MIXTAPE FOR STOM is a personal documentary about my close friend, Stom Sogo. Structured as a response to his final email to me, the film combines personal voiceover, archival material, and interviews with artists, filmmakers, and family members. Stom was more than a filmmaker; he was a catalyst within the New York experimental film community at the turn of the millennium. Working as a projectionist at Anthology Film Archives, he organized screenings and built a network that connected and inspired a generation of underground artists. His work – often characterized by strobing visuals, re-photography, and layered sound – was deeply personal, shaped by his experiences of illness and marginalization. In making this film, I wanted not only to honor Stom’s artistic contribution but also to understand the forces that shaped his life and led to his death from a drug overdose. A MIXTAPE FOR STOM is a tribute, but also a reckoning: an exploration of memory, loss, and the difficulty of reconciling an artist’s creative brilliance with the troubling aspects of their life that surface only after they are gone.” –Adrian Goycoolea

Diego Hernández A SKYLESS ROOF / TECHO SIN CIELO Mexico, 2025, 90 min, DCP. In Spanish with English subtitles. After opening a shoebox, Diego is struck by severe fatigue that leaves him bedridden, while his friend Liz suffers from mysterious insomnia while preparing a stage production. Encouraged by his mother and Liz, Diego seeks help from doctors, motivational coaches, and ultimately a revealing tarot reading. When Liz needs more space for her production, Diego offers his patio, sparking intimate conversations about memory and their shared struggles. As her stage production reaches completion, Diego is the first to witness it. A simple and smart film about grief infused with elegant humor, A SKYLESS ROOF – the fourth feature by Tijuana-born, self-taught filmmaker Diego Hernández, who stars alongside his mother and friends – won the Best Mexican Film Award at FICUNAM.

TVTV ADLAND 1974, 59 min, video Radical video collective TVTV (Top Value Television) turns its critical eye to the world of advertising in ADLAND, subtitled “Where Commercials Come From”. Jason Simon PRODUCTION NOTES: FAST FOOD FOR THOUGHT 1986, 28 min, video This tape undertakes to explode the address of seven TV ads by means of repetition, slow motion, and “production notes”– memos sent from the advertising agency to the production company prior to filming the spots, to describe the intentions, desires, strategies, and ideology of the commercials and their creators.

This program showcases a handful of wild, uncanny, and amazingly inventive animated films that are constructed largely from magazine advertisements. Jean-Thomas Bédard THIS IS A RECORDED MESSAGE 1973, 10 min, 16mm-to-digital Unglee C’EST FOU 1977, 12 min, 16mm-to-DCP Martha Colburn EVIL OF DRACULA 1997, 2 min, Super-8mm-to-16mm Martha Colburn WHAT’S ON? 1997, 2 min, 16mm Jodie Mack YARD WORK IS HARD WORK 2008, 27.5 min, 16mm Lewis Klahr ALTAIR 1994, 6 min, 16mm

This program gathers a selection of found-footage films that make use of advertising – mainly for fashion, beauty, and kitchen and bath items – and that in various ways critique and/or subvert the highly gendered marketing of these products. The program is anchored by a special live liquid-light projection performance by Genevieve HK! Genevieve HK ELIXIR OF LIFE 2025, ca. 20 min, overhead liquid light and video projection, sound, found glass Preceded by: Gunvor Nelson & Dorothy Wiley SCHMEERGUNTZ 1966, 15 min, 16mm Stephanie Wuertz & Sasha Janerus CALGON 2014, 15 min, 16mm-to-digital Bradley Eros & Tim Geraghty EAU DE CINEMA {THE AVANT AD} 2014, 2 min, 16mm-to-digital

The program that opened the first half of “Avant-Garde Ads” last November collected pre-WWII-era advertisements, many of them experimental animations by renowned avant-garde filmmakers and artists such as Walter Ruttmann, Lotte Reiniger, Hans Richter, Oskar Fischinger, László Moholy-Nagy, and Len Lye. The program was a major highlight of the series, and so we’re bringing it back for one more encore screening. Walter Ruttmann DER SIEGER 1921, 2 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Ad for Excelsior tires. Courtesy of the Deutsche Kinemathek. Walter Ruttmann DAS WUNDER 1922, 3 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Ad for Kantorowicz liqueur. Courtesy of the Deutsche Kinemathek. Lotte Reiniger THE SECRET OF THE MARQUISE / DAS GEHEIMNIS DER MARQUISIN 1922, 2.5 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Ad for Nivea skin cream. Julius Pinschewer & Lotte Reiniger THE BARCAROLE / DIE BARCAROLE 1924, 3.5 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Ad for Pralinés Mauxion dessert. Courtesy of the Deutsche Kinemathek. Julius Pinschewer & Guido Seeber FILM (KIPHO) 1925, 5.5 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Ad for the Kino- und Photoausstellung trade show. Courtesy of the Deutsche Kinemathek. Hans Richter TWO PENNY MAGIC / ZWEIGROSCHENZAUBER 1929, 2 min, 16mm. Ad for the magazine Koelnische Illustrierte Zeitung. Lotte Lendesdorff & Walter Ruttmann HEALTH TONIC / DER AUFSTIEG 1926, 2 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Ad for the GESOLEI health and art exhibition in Düsseldorf. Courtesy of the Deutsche Kinemathek. Oskar Fischinger CIRCLES / KREISE 1933-34, 2 min, 16mm. Commissioned by Tolirag publicity agency. Oskar Fischinger MURATTI PRIVAT 1935, 2 min, 16mm. Ad for Muratti Cigarettes. Oskar Fischinger MUNTZ TV 1953, 1.5 min, 16mm. Ad for Muntz TV. Karel Dodal & Irena Dodalová BUBBLES GAME / HRA BUBLINEK 1936, 2 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Ad for Saponia soap. Courtesy of the National Film Archive, Prague. Karel Dodal & Irena Dodalová AN AUTUMN SONG / PÍSEŇ PODZIMU 1937, 2 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Ad for the Prokop Čáp [Prokop and Stork] department store. Courtesy of the National Film Archive, Prague. Karel Dodal & Irena Dodalová THE SOUNDS OF OUTER SPACE / ZNĚJÍCÍ VESMÍR 1936, 2 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Commissioned by Telefunken. Courtesy of the National Film Archive, Prague. Len Lye KALEIDOSCOPE 1935, 4 min, 35mm. Ad for Churchman Cigarettes. Print courtesy of the Austrian Filmmuseum. Gyula Macskássy INCANDESCENT LOVE / IZZÓ SZERELEM 1939, 2 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Ad for Tungsram light bulbs. Courtesy of the National Film Institute Hungary. Gyula Macskássy & György Szénásy LIGHT / FÉNY 1942, 1 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Ad for Tungsram light bulbs. Courtesy of the National Film Institute Hungary. Len Lye THE BIRTH OF A ROBOT 1935, 6.5 min, 35mm. Ad for Shell Lubrication oils. Print courtesy of the Austrian Filmmuseum. Jordan Belson CHRONICLE 1955, 2 min, 16mm-to-DCP. Ad for the San Francisco Chronicle. Courtesy of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Dwinell Grant PEPSI-COLA-COMMERCIAL 1960, 1 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.

William Tyler in person for a special pre-screening performance! FQ&A with filmmaker Elise Tyler to follow screening. 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.

Lebanese director Zakaria Jaber’s debut ANXIOUS IN BEIRUT (2023) is a cinematic tour de force that undermines the clichés about what documentary is. Every frame, every sound, debunks the fictional boundary between what counts as the personal and the political. Documenting three years of the revolutionary events between 2019 and 2022, Jaber moves across time by intercutting a constellation of media: miniDV footage of his childhood, newspaper clippings, family photographs – all of which function as personal records enabling a critique of the neoliberalization that followed the end of the civil war and the broken promises made to the civil peace generation. Introduced by researcher Andrea Avidad, and followed by a Q&A with co-producers Adria Lahuerta & Carlota Coloma. This screening is supported by the Institut Ramon Llull, NYU’s Espacio de Culturas, and the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies.

Shari Frilot BLACK NATIONS/QUEER NATIONS? 1995, 52 min, video “This experimental documentary chronicles the groundbreaking March 1995 conference on lesbian and gay sexualities in the African diaspora. The conference brought together an array of dynamic scholars, activists, and cultural workers including Essex Hemphill, Kobena Mercer, Barbara Smith, Urvashi Vaid, and Jacqui Alexander to interrogate the economic, political, and social situations of diasporic lesbians, gay men, bisexual, and transgender peoples. The video brings together the highlights of the conference and draws connections between popular culture and contemporary black gay media production. The participants discuss various topics: Black and queer identity, the shortcomings of Black nationalism, and homophobia in Black communities. Drawing upon works such as Isaac Julien's ‘The Attendant’ and Jocelyn Taylor's ‘Bodily Functions,’ this documentary illuminates the importance of this historic conference for Black lesbians and gays.” –THIRD WORLD NEWSREEL

Malcolm McLaren AU DELA DU SPECTACLE 2000, 62 min, video Malcolm McLaren BEING MALCOLM (selection from “Les Chroniques de Malcolm”) 2000-01, ca. 10 min, video

The focus of this program is on billboards and other forms of street advertising, as documented by an eclectic collection of filmmakers including William Klein, Tony Ganz & Rhody Streeter, Manuel DeLanda, Thom Anderson, and Anthology’s own Jaye Bartell. William Klein BROADWAY BY LIGHT 1958, 12 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Newly restored! Tony Ganz & Rhody Streeter SIGN PAINTERS 1972, 6 min, 16mm-to-DCP Manuel DeLanda ISM ISM 1979, 8 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Film Preservation Foundation. Jaye Bartell WHEN HOLES TASTE GOOD WE’LL PUT THEM IN OUR BREAD 2025, ca. 5 min, DCP Thom Andersen GET OUT OF THE CAR 2010, 34 min, 16mm

Maureen Blackwood & Isaac Julien THE PASSION OF REMEMBRANCE 1986, 80 min, 16mm-to-DCP. Newly remastered by the BFI National Film Archive! “A landmark work in British avant-garde film and video, the Sankofa collective’s greatly influential first film, THE PASSION OF REMEMBRANCE, ambitiously explores themes of racism, homophobia, sexism, and generational tensions as embodied in the reality known by a Black British family over the years. Interweaving two narrative threads – one in which a man and a woman discourse on their own experiences living in the UK, another in which events from three decades in the lives of the Baptiste family are staged – Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien tease the accumulated fragments into a spellbinding, heterogeneous mosaic that powerfully evokes the multiplicity of Black experience and identity and critiques the British state’s treatment of its marginalized residents.” –NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

Zora Neale Hurston FIELDWORK FOOTAGE ca. 1928, 11 min, 16mm-to-digital “Under the tutelage of anthropologist Franz Boas (her former Columbia professor) and Harlem Renaissance arts patron Charlotte Osgood Mason, Zora Neale Hurston spent nearly two years, from 1927 to 1929, studying the folkloric customs, work songs, spirituals, and vernacular language of African American communities along the River Road and from New Orleans to Florida – observations that culminated in her 1935 collection ‘Mules and Men’.” –MAYSLES DOCUMENTARY CENTER Miatta Kawinzi SWEAT/TEARS/SEA 2017, 6 min, digital “[A] meditation on alternative temporalities of feeling, experience, and linguistic unfolding. Here movement (bodily, textual & spatial) becomes a way of thinking through questions of positionality regarding the self and environment.” –Miatta Kawinzi Sara Gómez I’M GOING TO SANTIAGO / IRÉ A SANTIAGO 1964, 15 min, 35mm-to-digital “Sara Gómez (1943-74) was Cuba’s first woman filmmaker, making 19 documentaries that offer uniquely intimate and inquisitive portraits of those whom history could forget: women, Afro-descendent people, the young and the very old. One of her first films, IRÉ A SANTIAGO portrays the city of Santiago de Cuba in a highly energetic and playful style of direct cinema, connecting the contemporary people, and spaces of this eastern city, to a past of slavery and resistance music, dance, and daily life.” –Susan Lord Darol Olu Kae KEEPING TIME 2023, 32 min, digital “KEEPING TIME is a meditation on what it means to maintain continuity with the past – told through the kaleidoscopic journey of a young drummer who must learn how to guide a multi-generational band into the future after being named their new bandleader. The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (The Ark) has been a legend in Los Angeles’s avant-garde jazz community for over 60 years. But since the death of its founder, pianist and composer Horace Tapscott, the band has spent the last three decades ebbing with the tide of history. KEEPING TIME follows Mekala Session as he struggles to honor his musical forebears while establishing a new path forward.” –Darol Olu Kae John Akomfrah LAST ANGEL OF HISTORY 1995, 45 min, video “Crafted by the influential British outfit Black Audio Film Collective (now Smoking Dogs, and still making great films), The Last Angel of History is a tantalising blend of sci-fi parable and essay film which also happens to be a crucial primer on the aesthetics and dynamics of contemporary Afrofuturism – it’s the first film to include the recently minted term. Compelling interviews with musicians, writers and cultural critics – plus archival video and photography – are interwoven with the fictional story of the “data thief”, who must travel through time and space in search of the code that holds the key to his future. It all adds up to a strange and moving invocation for the international black diaspora to discover its own histories, so long kept hidden from official records.” –Ashley Clarke, THE GUARDIAN

Wynn Chamberlain BRAND X 1970, 87 min, 35mm-to-DCP. With Taylor Mead, Sally Kirkland, Sam Shepard, Abbie Hoffman, Candy Darling, Tally Brown, and Ultra Violet. Restored in 2014 by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. Downtown fixture Elwyn “Wynn” Chamberlain turned to film in 1970 with this crude, merciless consumerist satire. Inspired by a snowed-in weekend stuck watching television, BRAND X gleefully parodies boob-tube banality with copious nudity, a wicked sense of humor, and a who’s-who cast featuring Taylor Mead, Sally Kirkland, Sam Shepard, Abbie Hoffman, and Candy Darling.

This program celebrates the future of cinema through the eyes of the youngest filmmakers ever. Short films made by kids from the past and the present will be intertwined with experimental works by adult filmmakers who are inspired by young children. The intergenerational thread aims to reverse the traditional adult-child relationship by putting the child at the center – because it is from children and their unique way of looking at the world and playing with media that we can learn about the future of cinema. The program is informed by the new book “Children Reinventing Cinema: Snapshots of the Early 21st Century” (meson press, 2025), coauthored by Alexandra Schneider and Wanda Strauven. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers present. Programmed by Ava Witonsky & Wanda Strauven. Nurit Hediger IPAD Netherlands, 2013, 2 sec, digital, silent Kobe Vlemings & Mingus Vets ONCE UPON A TIME… / OOIT EENS OP EEN KEER… Belgium, 2016, 1 min, digital. In Dutch with English subtitles. Yvonne Andersen LET’S MAKE A FILM U.S., 1970, 13 min, 16mm-to-digital Norman McLaren NEIGHBOURS Canada, 1952, 8 min, 16mm-to-digital ZebMingus (Mingus Vets) THE FILM OF TOM AND FLEUR / DE FILM VAN TOM EN FLEUR Belgium, 2025, 5.5 min, digital. In Dutch with English subtitles. Atticus Echeverria & Paul Echeverria (green before “green”) U.S., 2023, 16.5 min, digital Paul Fillinger GROWING, GROWING… U.S., 1971, 10.5 min, 16mm-to-digital SINGIES Netherlands/Italy/Belgium, 2012-21, 3 min, digital. Compiled by Wanda Strauven. Phil Lerner MY OWN YARD TO PLAY IN U.S., 1959, 7 min, 16mm-to-digital, silent DeeDee Halleck CHILDREN MAKE MOVIES U.S., 1961, 9 min, 16mm

COMPLETE WORLDS END PARIS CATWALK SHOWS 1981-1984, 82 min, video Malcolm McLaren DUCK ROCK 1981-83, 48 min, video

John Coney SPACE IS THE PLACE 1974, 85 min, 35mm-to-DCP “If Afrofuturism has a key player, it’s Sun Ra. Born Herman Poole Blount in segregated Alabama in 1914, Ra spent years developing a diverse portfolio as a musician with his legendary Arkestra (jazz, big band, blues, proto-electronica); and an opaque, mythical persona which blended cosmological ideas with ancient Egyptian mysticism. In 1971, Ra served as artist-in-residence at California’s UC Berkeley and offered a course entitled African-American Studies 198 (also known as Sun Ra 171, The Black Man in the Universe or The Black Man in the Cosmos). The teachings of his course inspired his one and only feature film – the cult classic SPACE IS THE PLACE. In it, Ra engages in a cosmic card game with a blindingly white-suited megapimp (the hilariously oleaginous Ray Johnson) to determine the fate of the black race. What follows is a brilliant and bizarre melange of comedy, musical performance and occasionally lurid blaxploitation aesthetics. It also, crucially, has a number of serious points to make about the plight of young urban blacks in a harsh, post-civil rights climate: ‘Space’ is unambiguously posited by Ra as a utopian refuge for African Americans.” –Ashley Clarke, THE GUARDIAN Preceded by: Ephraim Asili POINTS ON A SPACE AGE 2007, 33 min, digital “Described as ‘A Video Film on Space and the Music of the Omniverse,’ POINTS ON A SPACE AGE is an appropriately free-form documentary about musician and poet Sun Ra and his Arkestra. Deriving its title (as well as the text for its intertitles and chapter headings) from Sun Ra’s poetry and writing collection ‘The Immeasurable Equation’, Asili’s film mingles video footage of the contemporary Arkestra (helmed by Marshall Allen since Sun Ra’s death in 1993) with video interviews about Sun Ra, the cosmic potential of jazz and music more generally, and archival sources, most prominently audio of John F. Kennedy detailing the US’s interstellar ambitions.” –Jesse Cumming, CINEMA SCOPE Cauleen Smith THE CHANGING SAME 2001, 9 min, 35mm-to-DCP “Interweaving science fiction, noir, and tragic romance with touches of documentary naturalism, Smith imagines a disorienting vision of Earth on which two extraterrestrials are stationed to assimilate with unseen ‘incubators.’ THE CHANGING SAME is a brief but intricately layered commentary on the boundaries impressed on race, and between the natural and the alien.” –FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER

In making DEPRISA, DEPRISA, director Carlos Saura populated his cast with actual denizens of the Madrid streets to tell the story of youth on the edge of doom. Angela (Berta Socuéllamos) is a young waitress who turns her back on society when she meets and falls in love with Pablo (José Antonio Valdelomar), a reckless criminal delinquent. Along with Pablo’s gang of car thieves, the pair embark on a drug- and disco-fueled robbery spree as they hurtle toward oblivion. Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, this raw, startlingly naturalistic tale of love outside the law reflects the turmoil of a generation navigating the social upheavals of post-Franco Spanish society.

DER FAN deserves a place alongside AUDITION and POSSESSION as an essential art-horror experience. Simone (the magnetic Désirée Nosbusch) is a teenage runaway who is obsessed with the pop singer known as “R”. Soon, that obsession takes over her life. When “R” uses Simone with machine-like coldness, she plots her revenge with an unholy ceremony that’s equally romantic and horrifying. Fueled by a killer minimalist synth soundtrack from Rheingold and a gorgeous design aesthetic, DER FAN is a subversive and electric shocker that goes harder than you’d ever expect it to go.

1964, 110 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. A loose adaptation of writer Christa Wolf’s novel, DIVIDED HEAVEN is one of the most formally experimental DEFA films. The film is visibly influenced by post-war Western European modernist cinema, a clear departure from socialist-realist doctrines prevalent in the GDR at the time. Similar to LISSY and PROFESSOR MAMLOCK, DIVIDED HEAVEN places an individual’s story within the wider social and historical context to explore the interconnection between private life and history. The story centers on a couple: Rita, a rural girl studying to become a teacher who also works in a factory as part of her educational training, and Manfred, a chemist from the city. After losing financial support for one of his engineering projects, Manfred decides to move to West Berlin. Rita, however, refuses to relocate to the West and fails to persuade him to return. Instead of guaranteeing any sense of catharsis, Rita’s decision to stay in East Berlin leaves the narrative open-ended. As in his other films, Wolf’s portrayal of the GDR highlights its contradictions, such as the productivity pressures faced by the workers at Rita’s factory and the social pressures faced by relatives of people who moved to the West. At the same time, his portrayal of West Berlin as a place where everything, according to Rita, “revolves around eating and drinking, getting depressed, and then going to bed,” demonstrates the different worldviews carried by the two societies.

Želimir Žilnik EIGHTY PLUS / RESTITUCIJA, ILI, SAN I JAVA STARE GARDE 2025, 118 min, digital. In Serbian and German with English subtitles. Fri, Jan 9 at 7:30, Sat, Jan 10 at 3:30, and Sun, Jan 11 at 8:15. The screenings will be followed by Q&As between Želimir Žilnik and Boris Nelepo (Doclisboa)!

Nate Lavey THE STRONGEST LIGHTNING STRIKES NOT FROM DARK SKIES 2025, 16 min, DCP. North American premiere! Angela Summereder B FOR BARTLEBY / B WIE BARTLEBY 2025, 72 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In English and German with English subtitles. North American premiere!

Manel Raga Raga FIREWOOD / LLENYA 2025, 17 min, DCP. In Castilian with English subtitles. North American premiere! Carlos Conceição TIGER BAY / BAÍA DOS TIGRES 2025, 71 min, DCP. In Portuguese with English subtitles. North American premiere!

THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S CLAIRVOYANCE – FROM 1896 TO 2025 THE ADVENTURES OF GABRIEL VEYRE AROUND THE WORLD 1896-1935, 33 min, 35mm-to-DCP Hassen Ferhani STUDIO BAUMETTES 2025, 33 min, DCP. In French with English subtitles. North American premiere!

Zeinabu irene Davis COMPENSATION 1999, 92 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Newly restored! A landmark of independent cinema, COMPENSATION is a moving, ambitious portrait of the struggles of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of loving relationships at the bookends of the 20th century. In extraordinary dual performances, Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks play Malindy and Arthur, a couple in 1910 Chicago, as well as Malaika and Nico, a couple living in the same city almost eighty years later. Their stories are deftly interwoven through the creative use of archival photography, an original score featuring ragtime and African percussion, and an editing style both lyrical and tender. Malindy, an industrious, intelligent dressmaker, falls for Arthur, an illiterate migrant from Mississippi, along the shore of Lake Michigan. On the same beach in the present, Malaika, an inspired and resilient graphic artist, softens before a brash yet endearing children’s librarian, Nico. Each pair faces the obstacles of their time as Black Americans, including structural racism and emerging pandemics. COMPENSATION remains a groundbreaking story of inclusion and visibility that bears witness to the social forces and prejudices that stand in the way of love. Preceded by: Cauleen Smith CHRONICLES OF A LYING SPIRIT (BY KELLY GABRON) 1992, 2 min, 16mm “[This film] is less a depiction of ‘reality’ than an exploration of the implications of the mediation of Black history by film, television, magazines and newspapers. Using her alter ego, Kelly Gabron, Smith fabricates a personal history of her emergence as an artist from white-male-dominated American history (and American film history). […] The film’s barrage of image, text and voice is repeated twice, and is followed by a coda. That most viewers see the second presentation of the imagery differently from the original presentation demonstrates one problem with trusting any media representation.” –Scott MacDonald

Cheryl Dunye THE WATERMELON WOMAN 1996, 84 min, 16mm-to-DCP Cheryl Dunye made cinematic history with THE WATERMELON WOMAN, the first American feature to be directed by a Black lesbian as well as an incisive, humorous critique of classic Hollywood’s racist stereotypes. Dunye plays a video store employee and burgeoning filmmaker who sets out to make a documentary on the Watermelon Woman (Lisa Marie Bronson), an actress who specialized in “mammy” roles for Hollywood productions of the 1930s and 40s. As Cheryl uncovers the Watermelon Woman’s identity she not only learns about a secret behind-the-scenes interracial romance but also begins one of her own with Diana (Guinevere Turner), a white woman who arouses the ire of Cheryl’s best friend Tamara (Valerie Walker). A landmark of the New Queer Cinema, THE WATERMELON WOMAN testifies to the power of excavating legacies of oppression and in the process creates a progressive legacy of its own. Preceded by: Cheryl Dunye SHE DON’T FADE 1991, 24 min, video SHE DON’T FADE chronicles the sexual pursuits of Shae Clarke, a single Black lesbian. Clarke, played by Dunye herself, defines and readily demonstrates her ‘new approach to women.’ Dunye cleverly combines humor and storytelling to relay a tale of adventure and conquest within the realm of sexuality.

Cauleen Smith THE VOLCANO MANIFESTO 2025, 50 min, digital “Cauleen Smith’s THE VOLCANO MANIFESTO brings together three recent films – MY CALDERA (2022), MINES TO CAVES (2023), and THE DEEP WEST ASSEMBLY (2024) – in an astonishingly ambitious, densely woven meditation on geological and cinematic time, on the wild abyss of volcanoes and the womb of mines and caves (pregnant with meaning!), and on the prelapsarian and the postdiluvian (Deluzian?).” –MUSEUM OF MODERN ART The Otolith Group MEDIUM EARTH 2013, 41 min, digital The accumulation of moving images and sounds that make up MEDIUM EARTH comprise an audiovisual essay on the millennial time of geology and the infrastructural unconscious of Southern California. Focused on the ways in which tectonic forces express themselves in boulder outcrops and the hairline fractures of cast concrete, MEDIUM EARTH participates in the cultures of prophecy and forecasting that mediate the experience of seismic upheaval. The desire to evoke the hidden substrata of the planet gives way to a morphological interpretation of the face of the earth. As an experiment in channeling the system of fault lines buried below California, MEDIUM EARTH animates the stresses and strains of physical geographies undergoing continental pressures. Miatta Kawinzi TO TRUST THE GROUND MIGHT FREE US (BEGIN AGAIN) 2024, 13 min, digital This experimental film meditates on the reach towards liberation as an ongoing process through the language of landscape and the body, engaging the intersecting historical and contemporary threads linking the West African nation of Liberia and the United States through a visual and textual poetics. Inter-woven imagery of New England forests, Liberian cotton trees and historic sites such as Dozoa (Providence Island), the Atlantic Ocean, gesture, sun beams, color fields, Vai language logograms, and archival findings invite viewers to consider the multiple resonances of landscapes as sites of refuge, sites of violence, sites of reparation, and sites of healing.

Andrew Noren THE ADVENTURES OF THE EXQUISITE CORPSE, PART I: HUGE PUPILS (formerly known as KODAK GHOST POEMS, PART I) 1967, 61 min, 16mm, silent “[A] diary that consists of a series of short (from one to two-and-a-half minute) segments. Some of the segments are miniature pieces of daily realism, others are extended haikus, still others are small romantic poems… We have this luxurious and sensuous world of bodies and details and light before our eyes. Light, light, and again light. Only through the light are these materials revealed to us. So he keeps filming light on these textures, on materials. Light falling on the floor, on the materials. And then, the people. I haven’t seen anybody, for instance, filming (or painting) woman’s hair, long hair, as beautifully and expressively as Noren has done. Detail after detail for a full hour.” –Jonas Mekas, VILLAGE VOICE “Noren’s definitive portrait of the male, heterosexual artist as a young boho with a movie camera is notable for its lush texture, lyrical idealization of life on the Lower East Side, lust for light, and graphic carnality.” –J. Hoberman “Made all other film diaries look a little strange in their modesty.” –P. Adams Sitney

“The few facts that are known about Maclaine are, at best, sketchy. He was a published poet, a sort of down and out San Francisco bohemian who later became one of the psychic casualties of that scene. His last years were spent at Sunnyacres, a state mental hospital in Fairfield, California. These films, along with Ron Rice’s, are clearly the most significant work to come out of the beat period.” –J.J. Murphy All films preserved by Anthology Film Archives. THE MAN WHO INVENTED GOLD (1957, 14 min, 16mm) BEAT (1958, 6 min, 16mm) SCOTCH HOP (1959, 5.5 min, 16mm) THE END (1953, 35 min, 16mm) Total running time: ca. 65 min. [THE MAN WHO INVENTED GOLD, BEAT, and SCOTCH HOP are not part of the Essential Cinema collection, but are included here as a special bonus.]

“The unique contribution of Land’s work lies in the fusion of intellectual reason and, significantly, the humor that distances it from the supposedly ‘boring’ world of avant-garde film. Having explored the basic properties of the celluloid strip itself in early works such as FILM IN WHICH THERE APPEAR…, his attention turned to the spectator in a series of ‘literal’ films that question the illusionary nature of cinema through the use of word play and visual ambiguity. His work often parodies experimental film itself by mimicking his contemporaries and mocking the solemn approach of film theorists and scholars.” –Mark Webber, TWO FILMS BY OWEN LAND FLEMING FALOON (1963, 6 min, 16mm) FILM IN WHICH THERE APPEAR EDGE LETTERING, SPROCKET HOLES, DIRT PARTICLES, ETC. (1965-66, 5 min, 16mm, silent) DIPLOTERATOLOGY (1967/78, 7 min, 16mm, silent) THE FILM THAT RISES TO THE SURFACE OF CLARIFIED BUTTER (1968, 9 min, 16mm) INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY (1969, 5 min, 16mm) REMEDIAL READING COMPREHENSION (1970, 5 min, 16mm) WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? (1972, 13 min, 16mm) THANK YOU JESUS FOR THE ETERNAL PRESENT (1973, 6 min, 16mm) A FILM OF THEIR 1973 SPRING TOUR COMMISSIONED BY CHRISTIAN WORLD LIBERATION FRONT OF BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA (1974, 11.5 min, 16mm) FILM IN WHICH…, INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY, and FILM OF THEIR 1973 SPRING TOUR… have been preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Total running time: ca. 70 min.

All films in this program are b&w and silent. THE CONJUROR / L’ILLUSIONISTE FIN DE SIÈCLE (1899, 1 min, 35mm) TRIP TO THE MOON / VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE (1902, 12 min, 35mm) THE PALACE OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS / LE PALAIS DES MILLE ET UNE NUITS (1905, 21 min, 35mm) DELIRIUM IN A STUDIO / ALI BARBOUYOU ALI BOUF À L’HUILE (1907, 5 min, 35mm) MERRY FROLICS OF SATAN / LES QUATRES CENT FARCES DU DIABLE (1906, 18 min, 35mm) Magician, master of special effects, Méliès broke with the realistic (Lumière) mode of cinema and celebrated unlimited fantasy and artificiality (in its best sense). Total running time: ca. 60 min.

The films in this program are hand-tinted and silent. THE CASCADE OF FIRE / LA CASCADE DE FEU (1904, 3 min, 35mm) A DIABOLICAL TENANT / UN LOCATAIRE DIABOLIQUE (1909, 8 min, 35mm) THE HUNCHBACK FAIRY / LA FÉE CARABOSSE (1906, 13 min, 35mm) VOYAGE ACROSS THE IMPOSSIBLE / LE VOYAGE À TRAVERS L’IMPOSSIBLE (1904, 20 min, 35mm) Total running time: ca. 50 min.

All films in this program are b&w and silent. EXTRAORDINARY ILLUSIONS / ILLUSIONS FUNAMBULESQUES (1903, 3 min, 16mm) THE ENCHANTED WELL / LE PUITS FANTASTIQUE (1903, 3 min, 16mm) THE APPARITION / LE REVENANT (1903, 3 min, 16mm) TUNNEL UNDER THE CHANNEL / LE TUNNEL SOUS LA MANCHE (1907, 25 min, 35mm) SIGHTSEEING THROUGH WHISKY / PAUVRE JEAN OU LES MESAVENTURES D’UN BUVEUR (1909, 5 min, 35mm) THE DOCTOR’S SECRET / HYDROTHÉRAPIE FANTASTIQUE (1909, 11 min, 35mm) Total running time: ca. 55 min.

(UMARETE WA MITA KEREDO…) by Yasujiro Ozu (1932, 100 min, 35mm, b&w, silent. With English intertitles.) In referring to this film Ozu stated, “I started to make a film about grownups. While I had originally planned to make a fairly bright little story, it changed while I was working on it and came out very dark.” The story concerns a very average suburban office worker, with a wife and two very un-average sons, who is unable to stand up to his boss. “Joyful…as true and as moving and as timely today as it was in 1932.” –Jonas Mekas

Peter Kubelka MOSAIC IN CONFIDENCE / MOSAIK IM VERTRAUEN (1955, 16 min, 35mm. Made in collaboration with Ferry Radax.) ADEBAR (1957, 1 min, 35mm) SCHWECHATER (1958, 1 min, 35mm) ARNULF RAINER (1960, 7 min, 35mm) OUR TRIP TO AFRICA / UNSERE AFRIKAREISE (1966, 12 min, 16mm) “Peter Kubelka is the perfectionist of the film medium; and, as I honor that quality above all others at this time finding such a lack of it now elsewhere, I would simply like to say: Peter Kubelka is the world’s greatest filmmaker – which is to say, simply: see his films!…by all means/above all else…etcetera.” –Stan Brakhage Len Lye TUSALAVA (1929, 10 min, 16mm, silent) TRADE TATTOO (1937, 5 min, 16mm) RHYTHM (1957, 1 min, 16mm) FREE RADICALS (1958/79, 4 min, 16mm) A giant of experimental animation, Len Lye was born in New Zealand in 1901. He moved to England in the 1920s and subsequently to New York in 1944, where he spent the last 40 years of his life. A pioneer of “scratch” or “direct” filmmaking, Lye used various tools to mark patterns, shapes, and images directly onto the film’s surface, and often explored the dynamic energy of abstract images propelled into life by lively jazz scores or Pacific-inspired rhythms. Total running time: ca. 60 min.

Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy BALLET MÉCANIQUE (1924, 19 min, 35mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.) “The two fundamental works of the graphic cinema from the 1920s made without animation were Fernand Léger’s BALLET MÉCANIQUE and Marcel Duchamp’s ANEMIC CINEMA. By extending a metaphor from several of his paintings into film, Léger compared a universe of human actions and everyday objects to the functions of a machine.” –P. Adams Sitney, VISIONARY FILM René Clair & Francis Picabia ENTR’ACTE (1924, 22 min, 35mm) One of the indisputable masterpieces of Dada cinema, ENTR’ACTE was created, as its title suggests, to function as a diversion in between the two acts of Francis Picabia and Erik Satie’s avant-garde ballet RELÂCHE. Man Ray LE RETOUR À LA RAISON (1923, 2 min, 16mm, silent) ÉTOILE DE MER (1927, 13 min, 16mm, silent) EMAK BAKIA (1927, 18 min, 35mm, silent) “All the films I have made have been improvisations. I did not write scenarios. It was automatic cinema. I worked alone. My intention was to set in motion the compositions I made in photography. As for the camera, I use it to capture something I do not want to paint. But I am not interested in producing ‘beautiful photography’ for the cinema.” –Man Ray, “All the Films I Have Made” (1965) Marcel Duchamp & Man Ray ANEMIC CINEMA (1926, 7 min, 35mm, silent) “Duchamp alternates head-on views of his illusion-producing roto-reliefs with similarly turned discs of words, elaborate French puns printed spirally, creating a fluctuation of illusory depth within a very narrow spectrum (from the slightly convex or slightly concave illusions) to the flat readings. In this, his only film, Duchamp typically crystallized the significance of the graphic film.” –P. Adams Sitney, VISIONARY FILM Total running time: ca. 85 min.

All films preserved by Anthology Film Archives. GLIMPSE OF THE GARDEN (1957, 5 min, 16mm) ARABESQUE FOR KENNETH ANGER (1961, 4 min, 16mm) EYE MUSIC IN RED MAJOR (1961, 4 min, 16mm, silent) NOTEBOOK (1962-63, 10 min, 16mm, silent) GO! GO! GO! (1962-64, 12 min, 16mm, silent) ANDY WARHOL (1965, 17 min, 16mm) LIGHTS (1964-66, 7 min, 16mm, b&w, silent) “Marie Menken pioneered the radical transformation of the handheld, somatic camera into a formal matrix that would underpin an entire work in the films she made between 1945 and 1965. […] The extraordinary cinematic style that I have been calling Menken’s somatic camera has been her most influential gift to the American avant-garde cinema. It is an embodiment of the Emersonian invention of a pictorial air, the spiritual emancipation automatically brought about by ‘certain mechanical changes, a small alteration in our local position.’ It is also analogous to the equally Emersonian somatic theory of poesis Charles Olson was developing at nearly the same time: his emphasis on breath and proprioception corresponds to Menken’s identification of the camera with her body in motion and her cultivation of the respiratory and nervous agitation of the handheld camera even in its quietest moments.” –P. Adams Sitney, EYES UPSIDE DOWN Total running time: ca. 65 min.

(MAT) by Vsevolod I. Pudovkin (1926, 104 min, 35mm, b&w, silent. Based on the novel by Maxim Gorky. In Russian with no subtitles; English synopsis available.) With the simple theme of a working-class mother growing in political consciousness through participation in revolutionary activity, this film established Pudovkin as one of the major figures of the Soviet cinema. His expert cutting on movement and his associated editing of unrelated scenes to form what he called a “plastic synthesis” are amply demonstrated here. Although in direct opposition to Eisenstein’s shock montage, Pudovkin used a linkage method advanced far beyond Kuleshov’s theories. “In the final episode Pudovkin resorts to the now famous simile of the ice-floe breaking up against the bastions of the great bridge with a movement parallel to that of the procession of men and women marching with the Red Flag held high before them, until they are scattered and broken by the cavalry. The ice-floe intensifies the action by its strong forward movement far more than by its obvious symbolism. The purpose of Pudovkin’s technique is to sublimate the action of every part of his film, so that the commonplace is raised to the level of a kind of epic poem.” –Roger Manvell, THE FILM AND THE PUBLIC

by Dimitri Kirsanoff (1934, 84 min, 35mm. In French with no subtitles; English synopsis available.) “RAPT is, paradoxically, both a film that looks back anachronistically toward the silent era and a work that belongs to the vanguard of sound cinema. Part of that paradox can be resolved by an understanding of the film’s complex utilization of music. RAPT employs very little dialogue, and in this respect it is reminiscent of the part-talkie genre…. It is linked to such abstract and hybrid avant-garde works as VAMPYR and L’ÂGE D’OR. The radical nature of RAPT, however, resides in its vision of a cinematic musical score. In making the film, Kirsanoff worked closely with the composers Honegger and Hoerce.” –Lucy Fisher

by Jonas Mekas (1971-72, 82 min, 16mm-to-35mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from The Film Foundation. Special thanks to Cineric, Inc., and Trackwise.) “The film consists of four parts. The first part contains some footage from my first years in America, 1949-52. The second part was shot in August 1971 in Lithuania. The third part is in Elmshorn, near Hamburg, where I spent eight months in a forced labor camp. The fourth part is in Vienna (1971) with Peter Kubelka, [Hermann] Nitsch, Annette Michelson, Ken Jacobs, etc. The film deals with home, memory, and culture.” –Jonas Mekas

Both films in this program have been preserved by the Academy Film Archive. THE GREAT BLONDINO (1967, 42 min, 16mm) “The original Blondino was a 19th-century tightrope artist who among other feats crossed Niagara Falls trundling a wheelbarrow. In this film, Nelson sees Blondino as a metaphor for those who still try. Too subtle to be allegorical, the picture is in the shape of a quixotic search in which the goal is the journey and the means is the end.” –MUSEUM OF MODERN ART “It is…difficult to get at the rich visual texture that is the film’s most striking attribute. Long stretches are concerned with Blondino’s visions, dreams, and dreams within dreams. The film unfolds in brief recurring patterns of imagery. Even the more straightforward sections are dense with interpolated newsreel and TV commercial footage, visual gags, and homemade special effects. The net effect is funny, seamless, and elusive.” –J. Hoberman, “A Filmmakers Filming Monograph” & BLEU SHUT (1970, 33 min, 16mm) “Boat-name quizzes, dogs, cuts from Dreyer’s JOAN OF ARC in montage with a sultry whore, a car running up a ramp and crashing, pornography, a passionate embrace by a thirties hero and heroine; all somehow implicating Dreyer and Joan in the perverse synthesis of sex and technology. What’s happening here? Basically Nelson is leaving things unsaid.” –Leo Regan Total running time: ca. 80 min.

“Although a reworking of a theme that the comedians used quite frequently, SONS OF THE DESERT, is a thoroughly fresh and delightful comedy, quite certainly the best and the subtlest of all their features. Straightforward slapstick is limited to a relatively few gags, and the humor derives principally from situations and characterizations. Flawlessly timed, with ruthless (and profitable) pruning of the footage allotted to any one gag, the film is a particularly felicitous collaboration between Laurel & Hardy and director William A. Seiter, a specialist in romantic comedy and human drama. Unexpectedly, he turns out to have been the ideal director for them, polishing their own comedy values with his own wit, charm and taste.” –William K. Everson, THE FILMS OF LAUREL AND HARDY

by F.W. Murnau (1927, 95 min, 35mm, b&w. Script by Carl Meyer based on the story “A Trip to Tilsit” by Herman Sudermann. Photographed by Charles Rosher and Karl Strauss. With George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor.) Murnau’s first American film is an allegory set in no particular time or place, about a man who is temporarily overruled by his passions, inflamed by the power of evil as personified by the city woman, and who finally returns to his senses and the orderly family life of the country. It is a virtuoso exercise representing the expressiveness of the silent film as it neared its end. “SUNRISE becomes the lyrical culmination of a strain of German Expressionism that, married to American technology, could almost serve as a definition of the cinema. For the studio apparatus, enabling the creation of a spiritually and spatially unified microcosm, corresponds to the way the mind, in Expressionism, experiences reality – organizing it, imbuing it with personal associations, patterns, significances, until finally the only reality is a mental reality.” –Molly Haskell

by Jonas Mekas (1968-69, 180 min, 16mm) “Since 1950 I have been keeping a film diary. I have been walking around with my Bolex and reacting to the immediate reality: situations, friends, New York, seasons of the year. On some days I shot ten frames, on others ten seconds, still on others ten minutes. Or I shot nothing. When one writes diaries, it’s a retrospective process: you sit down, you look back at your day, and you write it all down. To keep a film (camera) diary, is to react (with your camera) immediately, now, this instant: either you get it now, or you don’t get it at all.” –Jonas Mekas

This program explores the wide and wonderful world of film trailers and previews. Mirroring the “Avant-Garde Ads” series as a whole, it includes bona fide trailers by experimental filmmakers, “fake” trailers for non-existent films, parodies, and collage films that use found trailers as their source materials. John Waters & Douglas Brian Martin [Nuart Theatre no smoking PSA] 1982, 40 sec, 35mm Mark Shepard [EZTV No smoking PSA] ca. 1985, 30 sec, video Jack Goldstein METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER 1975, 2 min, 16mm-to-DCP. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz. Oskar Fischinger COLORATURA / KOLORATUREN 1932, 2 min, 16mm. Commissioned by Froelich as a trailer for a film. Francis Lee FILM-MAKERS’ SHOWCASE TRAILER 1963, 3 min, 16mm Curt McDowell AINSLIE TRAILER 1972, 2 min, 16mm Curt McDowell KATHLEEN TRAILER (for Underground Cinema 12) 1972, 1.5 min, 16mm Suzan Pitt WHITNEY COMMERCIAL 1973, 3 min, 16mm-to-digital Alexis Krasilovsky GUERRILLA COMMERCIAL 1973, 1 min, 16mm-to-digital Tom Rubnitz UNDERCOVER ME! 1988, 2 min, video George Kuchar TERROR BY TWILIGHT 1988, 6 min, video Maurice Lemaître FILM ANNONCE 1993, 3 min, 16mm Heather McAdams FAKE PREVIEWS 1985, 5 min, 16mm Kerry Laitala COMING ATTRACTIONS 2004, 3 min, 16mm, silent Peggy Ahwesh BEIRUT OUTTAKES 2007, 7.5 min, digital Chris Jolly MULTIPLEX ca. 2012, 3 min, 35mm Ben Coonley 2008 NEW YORK UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL TRAILER STARRING DR. ZIZMOR 2008, 1 min, digital Jim Finn NYUFF ’08 TRAILER 2008, 1 min, digital Jean-Luc Godard OFFICIAL SPOT OF THE 22ND JI.HLAVA IDFF 2018, 1 min, digital C. Spencer Yeh [Selected Spectacle Theater Trailers] 2012-18, ca. 6 min, DCP

From the 1950s through the 1970s, Chicago’s Goldsholl Design & Film Associates was responsible for some of the most innovative and inventive advertising and sponsored films of its era. The firm was created and run by Morton and Millie Goldsholl, both of whom were heavily influenced by the Bauhaus artist and designer, László Moholy-Nagy, with whom they studied at the Chicago School of Design. Moholy-Nagy’s influence – and the influence of the many artists he invited to the school, such as Buñuel and Dalí – was unmistakably evident in their advertising work. This program, organized in collaboration with Chicago Film Archives (which has been preserving and promoting the Goldsholl film collection since 2006) comprises a selection of some of their most memorable films, with an emphasis on their most stylistically and formally experimental works. Film selection TBA.

1971, 134 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. Wolf’s 1971 Goya biopic has echoes of Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo” (1939) and addresses questions regarding the role of the artist in moments of social and political crisis. The painter Goya benefits from the support of the king and the Church but simultaneously believes in freedom of thought and the love of his compatriots. This eventually puts him into conflict with the Church and the royal establishment. The film observes the transformation of the artist’s gaze; the harmless portraits of his early days are followed by grotesque paintings that capture the historical horror of the time. Wolf’s engagement with the past is evidence of his desire to connect it with the 20th century. For example, some sequences feature the Inquisition condemning certain artists and thinkers for their heretical views. These film passages indirectly reference the 1949 László Rajk trial in Hungary and the 1952 Slánský trial in Czechoslovakia, two show trials that purged key members of the Hungarian and the Czechoslovak Communist Parties on fabricated charges of espionage. The oblique suggestion that the Catholic Inquisition and the Stalinists had similar dogmatic views demonstrates Wolf’s melancholy about socialism’s shift from a utopian narrative of liberation to a rigid form of bureaucratic governance and oppression.

This program focuses on the British General Post Office (GPO) which, thanks to John Grierson, exerted a major impact on the history of documentary cinema. During his years running the GPO Film Unit, Grierson transformed traditional notions of the practice of nonfiction filmmaking, bringing a new degree of social engagement and political expression, and establishing the GPO as a hotbed of talent and filmic innovation by hiring and encouraging artists such as Alberto Cavalcanti, Humphrey Jennings, Len Lye, Norman McLaren, Lotte Reiniger, and others. This program showcases some of the more stylistically unconventional films produced by the Unit, above all the experimental or even abstract animations created by Lye, McLaren, and Reiniger. Alberto Cavalcanti COAL FACE 1935, 11 min, 35mm-to-DCP Len Lye A COLOUR BOX 1935, 3 min, 35mm-to-DCP Len Lye RAINBOW DANCE 1936, 4 min, 35mm-to-DCP Len Lye TRADE TATTOO 1937, 5 min, 35mm. Print courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum. Len Lye N OR NW 1937, 7.5 min, 35mm-to-DCP Lotte Reiniger THE H.P.O. 1938, 4 min, 35mm-to-DCP Lotte Reiniger THE TOCHER 1938, 5 min, 35mm-to-DCP Norman McLaren LOVE ON THE WING 1938, 4 min, 35mm-to-DCP Norman McLaren MAIL EARLY 1941, 2 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Commissioned by the National Film Board of Canada as an advertisement for Canada Post.

Keisha Rae Witherspoon T 2019, 14 min, digital A film crew follows three grieving participants of Miami’s annual T Ball, where folks assemble to model R.I.P. T-shirts and innovative costumes designed in honor of their dead. Crystal Z Campbell GO-RILLA MEANS WAR 2017, 19 min, digital GO-RILLA MEANS WAR is a filmic relic of gentrification featuring 35mm film salvaged from a now demolished Black Civil Rights Theater in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. After finding the film unfinished and un-canned on the floor of The Slave Theater, Campbell collaborated with the unknown director (presumably amateur filmmaker Judge John Phillips who owned the Slave Theater) to finish the film. A secret Black fraternal organization dominates the visual narrative, accompanied by a parable that binds intersections of development, cultural preservation, and erasure. Edward Owens REMEMBRANCE: A PORTRAIT STUDY 1967, 6 min, 16mm “A filmic portrait of the artist’s mother, Mildered Owens, and her friends Irene Collins and Nettie Thomas, set to a score of 50s and 60s hit songs. Using Baroque lighting techniques, Owens captures the three women drinking and lounging one evening.” –TATE MODERN Edward Owens PRIVATE IMAGININGS AND NARRATIVE FACTS 1968-70, 9 min, 16mm “A montage of still and moving images, mixing and alternating black people and white people, fantasy and reality, a presidential suite and a mother’s kitchen: a sensitive, poetic evocation in the manner of the film-maker’s REMEMBRANCE. Brilliantly colored and nostalgic, it comprises a magical transformation of painterly collage and still photographic sensibility into filmic time and space.” –Charles Boultenhouse Isaac Julien LOOKING FOR LANGSTON 1989, 45 min, 16mm-to-DCP “LOOKING FOR LANGSTON, shot in sumptuous black and white, is a lyrical exploration – and recreation – of the private world of the poet, novelist, playwright, columnist, and social activist Langston Hughes (1902-67) and his fellow Black artists and writers who formed the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. At the time of its making, Julien was part of the Sankofa Film and Video Collective which was set up to promote the development of independent Black filmmaking. He was supported by the film critic and curator Mark Nash, who worked on the original archival and film research. The result is a landmark film in the exploration of artistic expression, the nature of desire and the reciprocity of the gaze which became a key work in what B. Ruby Rich named ‘New Queer Cinema’.” –BERLINALE

1967, 119 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. Wolf mentions in his diaries that he did not hesitate to become a “Vaterlandsverräter” (“fatherland traitor”) in order to fight the Nazi terror. I WAS NINETEEN brilliantly captures the complexity of his experience as a German man joining the Red Army to fight fascism. Modelled on Wolf himself, who was a 19-year-old Red Army soldier when the Soviets broke the German line, the film’s lead character Gregor is a Soviet soldier of German origins who returns to his homeland in the last days of the war. Acting as an interpreter, he and the other Red Army soldiers try to convince the Germans to surrender. The film’s complex themes of belonging, identity, antifascist struggle, and victimhood are underlined by the form, which is itself influenced by Italian neorealism’s ascetic aesthetic, which aimed to capture history by registering its everyday moments. Despite Wolf’s firm commitment to antifascism, the film’s everyday, anti-heroic, and banal encounters in the last days of the war produce a melancholic style, more an aesthetics of mourning than of celebration.

This program represents a kind of sneak preview of an upcoming Anthology retrospective devoted to the singular James Sibley Watson, Jr., the Rochester millionaire and polymath who was the creator (with poet and art historian Melville Webber) of the avant-garde classics FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928) and LOT IN SODOM (1932). Watson also made two extraordinary sponsored films, for Rochester-based Bausch & Lomb and Kodak, both of which display the visual invention and expressionistic sensibility of his independently produced films. We’ll be screening both here, alongside another film commissioned by Kodak 85 years later, by Anthology’s Archivist, John Klacsmann. James Sibley Watson & Melville Webber THE EYES OF SCIENCE 1930, 12 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Commissioned by Bausch & Lomb. Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum; preservation funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation and Chace Productions, Inc. James Sibley Watson HIGHLIGHTS AND SHADOWS 1938, 54 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Commissioned by Kodak. Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum; preservation funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Followed by: John Klacsmann A 100 FOOT ROLL OF KODAK 7222 EASTMAN DOUBLE-X NEGATIVE FILM (CAT 846 9421) COMMISSIONED BY THE TRUSTEES OF INDIANA UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIANA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES MOVING IMAGE ARCHIVE IN CELEBRATION OF THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF 16MM FILM (2023) 2023, 3 min, 16mm Viktoria Schmidt WOW (KODAK) 2018, 2 min, 35mm-to-DCP

This program pairs Jerome Hiler and Nathaniel Dorsky’s recently rediscovered and digitized sponsored film LIBRARY (1970), which was commissioned by New Jersey’s Sussex County Area Reference Library, with Hiler’s later sponsored film, SEASONS OF A MOUNTAIN VINEYARD (2003), a lyrical chronicle of the painstaking, delicate process of winemaking. Jerome Hiler & Nathaniel Dorsky LIBRARY 1970, 18 min, 16mm-to-DCP. New digitization by the Harvard Film Archive. Narrated by Beverly Grant; score by Tony Conrad. Jerome Hiler SEASONS OF A MOUNTAIN VINEYARD 2003, 30 min, 16mm-to-DCP

Gil J Wolman L’ANTICONCEPT 1951, 59 min, 16mm-to-DCP. Projected on a helium-inflated spherical weather balloon. “Premiered on February 11, 1952, and immediately banned, the first experimental, imageless film of Gil J. Wolman is divided into two sections: a non-narrative soundtrack, some kind of interior monologue including physiological noises, and a visual part built on the irregular alternation of black and white circles screened on a weather balloon. In April of the same year, Wolman led a systematic disruption of the Cannes Film Festival and was only saved by a police escort. L’ANTICONCEPT remains one of the most radical films of all time.” –INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

Maurice Lemaître LE FILM EST DÉJÀ COMMENCÉ? 1951, 61 min, 16mm. In French with English subtitles. “After working on Isou’s VENOM AND ETERNITY as an assistant director, Maurice Lemaître set out to make a film that not only attacked the conventions of filmmaking, but of filmgoing too. LE FILM EST DÉJÀ COMMENCÉ? is a film that spills from the screen, as instructed by its script which expands upon the body of the film to include what should occur in the viewing room as it’s projected. Throughout the film, he directly addresses the audience with questions such as ‘Why are you here?’ while they sit in the dark watching the movie also subject to the insults of ‘extras’ taunting their ability to watch the whole thing through. The film is made up of a series of kaleidoscopic images. Unlike Debord and Wolman, Lemaître stresses the visual quality of his cinema. LE FILM EST DÉJÀ COMMENCÉ? is colorful, fun, and wholly unruly, reflecting the spirit of a passionate young filmmaker meddling with the rules of his craft.” –RE:VOIR

1957, 89 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. Based on a novel by German-Czech author Franz Carl Weiskopf, LISSY centers on a working-class socialist in the Weimar economic crisis whose husband Alfred joins the Nazi Party after losing his job. Though their Nazi membership improves their material conditions, it alienates Lissy from her left-wing parents and friends, many of whom she sees attacked by the Nazis with the consent of the police. Through Lissy’s point of view, Wolf highlights how poverty and unemployment attracted many Germans to fascism. The film captures her gradual realization of fascism’s politics of exclusion and fear, forcing her to question the comfort offered by her husband’s party membership. This act of defiance turns into a gesture of antifascist significance and resistance.

1976, 103 min, 35mm. In German with English subtitles. “In a Russian POW camp, four Germans determined to end WWII change into Red Army uniforms. Are they patriots or traitors, heroes or opportunists? Although they go to the frontlines, their new Russian comrades are initially unsure whether to trust them. Three of them then accept a mission behind German lines, but they are unprepared to fire upon their countrymen. Meanwhile, the fourth man has fallen in love with Russian radio operator Svetlana. This film, which centers on the difficult moral questions raised in wartime, draws on Wolf’s experiences as a propaganda officer with the Red Army in Germany at the end of WWII. Wolf saw this film as a consolidation and continuation of his 1967 film I WAS NINETEEN.” –DEFA FILM LIBRARY

Maurice Lemaître LE SOULÈVEMENT DE LA JEUNESSE – MAI 68 1969, 28 min, 16mm. In French with English subtitles. “Maurice Lemaître had the ambition to create a truly innovative film about the May 1968 revolt. To achieve this, he spared no effort in employing his bold filmmaking techniques, successfully integrating the cinematic innovations used in his previous works into this new thematic dimension.” –LIGHT CONE Maurice Lemaître UN SOIR AU CINÉMA SUIVI DE POUR FAIRE UN FILM 1962-63, 40 min, 16mm. In French with English subtitles. “The central idea of the first part of this work is to make the viewer imagine that he or she went out into the street that night, entered the cinema where the film is shown and now meets a stranger sitting next to him or her in the room. As in all Maurice Lemaître’s films, sound is an essential part of this work. It is he who tells the ‘story’, like an inner monologue. The image, for most of the film, is an autonomous illustration, but it can have indirect, allusive relationships with the sound. This image is also chiseled with multiple drawings, superimpositions etc., which make it of a rare richness. TO MAKE A FILM, the second part of the session, is an ‘invitation to make a film’, what the author calls a supertemporal work, because it constantly surpasses time, by continuously integrating it into an open film framework, calling for the creation of the public itself.” –LIGHT CONE

MODERN ROMANCE may be Albert Brooks’s least-known film, but it’s arguably his greatest – the most uncompromising and consistent, and, as restrained as it is on the surface, ultimately the most personal and unforgiving in its self-criticism. Brooks is Robert Cole, a film editor who breaks up with his girlfriend only to spend the rest of the movie desperately trying to erase his mistake, and even more desperately trying to contain his jealousy, neediness, and paranoia. Still the great comic portrait of male neurosis, and of emotional and psychological dysfunction, MODERN ROMANCE lays bare its protagonist’s insecurities with an honesty few dramatic films have achieved. Only Brooks could make a deadpan comedy about a man who’s very nearly psychotic. Painfully funny, with the emphasis on “funny.”

From 1952 to 1956, Mexico was home to a little-known U.S. propaganda initiative in animation produced by Dibujos Animados, S.A. Backed by the United States Information Agency, these films blurred the line between cultural production and ideological messaging, often without the full awareness of the Mexican animators involved. Combining local animation practices with the abstract modernist style popularized by UPA in mid-century America, the cartoons received limited distribution despite contemporary coverage in the Mexican press. This screening marks only their second known U.S. presentation (the first at the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, in 2023), and features newly digitized archival materials and a preceding panel discussion on their historical, aesthetic, and political contexts.

On his 18th birthday, Cliff’s baby sister Cookie gives him a joint and liquor and orders him to go out and lose his virginity. Cliff heads to the seamy side of Toronto, meets a crew of sex workers, and almost instantly falls hard for the hunky hustler Butch. Cliff starts accompanying Butch on visits to kinky clients and bringing him home to hang out with the equally besotted Cookie. But can Cliff and Butch actually make it work? Or will Butch’s demons drive a wedge between them? Based on short stories by Canadian director and provocateur Bruce LaBruce which were first published in his and G.B. Jones’s groundbreaking queercore zine J.D.’s, SUGAR is a grimy coming-of-age tale that’s rarely been seen since its release in 2004. The film features stellar performances by Andre Noble (who tragically passed away following the film’s premiere), Brendan Fehr, Sarah Polley, and Maury Chaykin, and a script co-written by DOC NYC’s Artistic Director Jaie Laplante, who will join us to introduce the film and take questions after the screening!

Ousmane Sembène CEDDO 1977, 116 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In Wolof with English subtitles. In precolonial Senegal, members of the Ceddo (or “outsiders”) kidnap Princess Dior Yacine after her father, the king, pledges loyalty to an ascendant Islamic faction that plans to convert the entire clan to its faith. Attempts to recapture her fail, provoking further division and eventual war between the animistic Ceddo and the fundamentalist Muslims, with Christian missionaries and slave traders from Europe caught in the middle. Yet when the victor prevails, conflict still doesn’t end – and the return of the princess and her still-revered power may very well topple the new order. Banned in Sembène’s native Senegal upon its original release, CEDDO is an ambitious, multilayered epic that explores the combustible interstices among ancient tradition, religious colonization, political opportunism, and individual freedom.

“Peter Weselin, a musician and composer from West Germany plans to spend a quiet vacation with his uncle in the small town of Klingenthal, but the East German town, known for manufacturing instruments, is about to hold its annual music festival. Everyone wants Peter to write a composition for them: the local accordion factory asks for a symphony and the attractive Anna wants a pop hit for her youth dance group.” –DEFA FILM LIBRARY “A fascinating exceptional work in Konrad Wolf's filmography…[and] the stunning Agfa color photography made it one of the most beautiful 1950s German music films.” –DEUTSCHES HISTORISCHES MUSEUM

Kevin Jerome Everson QUALITY CONTROL 2011, 71 min, 16mm-to-DCP “In Kevin Jerome Everson’s captivating and hypnotic feature, several issues are raised but never spoken: what is the role of the human body in contemporary mechanized labor? How can cinema represent the intricacies of daily work outside conventional narrative structures? How can documentary subvert the traditional objectifying gaze, whilst also drawing the spectator into a different sort of everyday intrigue? This is the kind of observational documentary that refuses to give away much of the filmmaker’s stance, allowing the repetitions and rhythms of human bodies to create meaning and stimulate reflection on worlds rarely represented on screen. In a radical act of de-dramatization, Everson’s films focus on the quotidian, the mundane, the unremarkable. Shot on black-and-white 16mm film, and making use of long, static takes, the filmmaker turns a large dry-cleaning site in Alabama into an audio-visual choreography of bodies and machines.” –VIENNALE Preceded by: Kevin Jerome Everson WORKERS LEAVING THE JOB SITE 2013, 7 min, 16mm-to-DCP “The Lumière brothers’ now-iconic first film is reimagined at a job site in Columbus, Mississippi.” –CINÉMA DU RÉEL

Malcolm McLaren PARIS, CAPITAL OF THE XXIST CENTURY 2010, 53 min, digital

1960, 121 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. “This film continues the story of radio operator Ludwig Bartuschek from Kurt Maetzig and Günter Reisch’s 1958 East German classic, THE SAILORS’ SONG. Near the end of the Weimar Republic, Bartuschek is working as a mechanic in the Sperber airplane plant. Director Dehringer offers him the opportunity to train as an airplane builder if he is willing to give up his communist beliefs under oath. Bartuschek will not allow himself to be bought and instead joins the underground resistance movement.” –DEFA FILM LIBRARY

If you think the Pialat and Albert Brooks films depict romantic relationships in a less-than-flattering light, behold Żuławski’s POSSESSION, in which the psychic violence of those films erupts into literal violence of the most outrageous and over-the-top variety. A nihilistic, no-holds-barred portrait of a disintegrating marriage, featuring highly stylized, career-best performances by Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, POSSESSION starts as psychodrama, develops into queasy supernatural horror, and ends up exploding all known genres. A film of rampant and astonishingly sustained hysteria, its craziness equaled only by its fecund imagination and deep conviction, POSSESSION is the definition of a film that’s not for the faint of heart. It may just have the power to annihilate Valentine’s Day once and for all.

1960-61, 100 min, 35mm. In German with English subtitles. PROFESSOR MAMLOCK is an adaptation of the homonymous play (1933) by Friedrich Wolf, the director’s father. Written in exile, the play was one of the first artistic encounters with the question of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. The film adaptation makes a bold argument that non-resistance in the early years of Nazi rule was tantamount to complicity. MAMLOCK tells the story of an accomplished medical surgeon and Professor at a university hospital. He is a family man of Jewish origin, who believes in Enlightenment ideas of individual freedom, scientific humanism, progress, and the rule of law. When the Nazis take power in 1933, he passionately opposes his Communist son’s resistance activities, convinced that fascism would be a small parenthesis in German history. He only understands the regime’s horror when he is dismissed during the wave of purges of Jews and political opponents from civil service and government jobs. Mamlock’s “wrong decision” becomes a metaphor for collective inertia at times of political crisis; the personal and the political, the private and the public sphere, are clearly interconnected in this fascinating film.

J.D. Fernández Molero PUNKU Peru/Spain, 2025, 132 min, DCP. In Spanish, Quechua, Matsigenka with English subtitles. Deep in the Peruvian Amazon lowlands, Meshia, a Matsigenka Indigenous teenager, discovers Ivan, a boy who vanished two years ago and was presumed dead. Determined to save him, she travels upriver to a town, where he urgently needs eye surgery to halt an infection threatening his sight. As Ivan wrestles with the trauma of his mysterious past, Meshia becomes entranced by urban life and enters a local beauty pageant, chasing fragile dreams of transformation. A quiet bond forms between them, but when a stranger with sinister intentions appears, their connection is put at risk. The latest film by J.D. Fernández Molero, PUNKU – “gateway” in Quechua – playfully blurs the line between the seen and unseen, opening a portal into overlapping realities.

Marlon Riggs TONGUES UNTIED 1989, 55 min, video “TONGUES UNTIED was a life-changing event for me. It was the first time I had seen such an honest, raw and powerful film that uncompromisingly tackled the interplay of desire, race and racism, homophobia, sexuality, gender, HIV and class – from a Black Queer perspective. Formally, the film was groundbreaking. It gripped me in its surreal mix of first-person testimonial, poetry, staged performances, dance and activism. The blend was made more exhilarating by Riggs’ interweaving of vignettes with his on-camera declarations, dynamic composition and riveting editing style. In some ways the film is an ethnography of the Black Queer literary and arts movement that was flourishing in the 1980s and early ’90s and affecting the culture through language, fashion, dance, music, scholarship, cinema and politics, just as the specter of HIV and AIDS was rapidly decimating its members.” –Thomas Allen Harris, DOCUMENTARY MAGAZINE Preceded by: Sedat Pakay JAMES BALDWIN: FROM ANOTHER PLACE 1973, 12 min, 35mm-to-DCP Sedat Pakay OUTTAKES FROM SEDAT PAKAY’S “JAMES BALDWIN: FROM ANOTHER PLACE” 1973/2022, 10 min, 35mm-to-DCP “Turkish artist Sedat Pakay designs an intimate, luminous sketch of James Baldwin during a stay in Istanbul. From leisurely moving about his room to the activity of the city and its curious denizens, the author/activist comfortably expounds on his sense of privacy, sexuality and expat tendencies. New facets of this encounter are revealed in the recently compiled and restored OUTTAKES FROM SEDAT PAKAY’S ‘JAMES BALDWIN: FROM ANOTHER PLACE’.” –Brittany Gravely, HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE Tourmaline & Sasha Wortzel HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARSHA! 2017, 14 min, digital A film about iconic transgender artist and activist, Marsha “Pay it No Mind” Johnson, and her life in the hours before she ignited the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.

1955, 105 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. “The authorities expect the case of Friedel Walter, alias ‘Dr. Mueller,’ to be a straightforward one: he was working as a doctor without proper credentials and under a false name. But Mehlin, the man in charge of his case, knows that there is more to the story. When he was injured fleeing from a concentration camp, resistance worker Irene asked her medical student boyfriend Walter to give him medical care. As it turns out, Walter ended up on the front as a medical worker, was captured by the British and mistakenly registered under the name of the fallen Dr. Mueller. He simply never straightened out the confusion. Years later, while dealing with a particularly difficult case, he recognizes the patient’s wife as his former love Irene and is forced to confront the truth about his past.” –DEFA FILM LIBRARY

Some of the strangest of all religious-themed films are collected here, including two films that were commissioned for World’s Fairs – the singular allegory, PARABLE (1964) and Charles Gagnon’s profoundly upsetting collage-film critique of militarism and the emptiness of postwar consumer culture, THE EIGHTH DAY (1967) – as well as A FILM OF THEIR 1973 SPRING TOUR…, a portrait of a countercultural Christian group made by Owen Land following his own religious conversion, and Martha Colburn’s DON’T KILL THE WEATHERMAN!, which was commissioned by Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum. Rolf Forsberg & Tom Rook PARABLE 1964, 20 min, 16mm-to-digital. Produced by the Lutheran Council for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Charles Gagnon THE EIGHTH DAY 1967, 14 min, 16mm. Produced by Charles Gagnon for the Christian Pavilion at Expo 67, Montreal. Owen Land A FILM OF THEIR 1973 SPRING TOUR COMMISSIONED BY CHRISTIAN WORLD LIBERATION FRONT OF BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 1974, 11.5 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Martha Colburn DON’T KILL THE WEATHERMAN! 2007, 4 min, digital

PROGRAM 1: BIRTH: THE UNTUTORED EYE Stan Brakhage WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING 1959, 12 min, 16mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. Carla Simón LETTER TO MY MOTHER FOR MY SON / CARTA A MI MADRE PARA MI HIJO (MIU MIU WOMEN’S TALES #24) 2022, 24 min, DCP. In Spanish and Catalan with English subtitles. Agnes Varda L’OPÉRA-MOUFFE 1958, 16 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In French with English subtitles. Marie Menken HURRY! HURRY! 1957, 3 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. Priya Sen STORIES OF US: FOOTNOTES FROM EMERALD ISLAND 2015, 12 min, DCP Kiro Russo NUEVA VIDA 2015, 15 min, DCP. In Spanish with English subtitles.

PROGRAM 2: EARTH: ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERAL: THE FILMS OF ERIN ESPELIE Erin Espelie THE LANTHANIDE SERIES 2014, 70 min, DCP Erin Espelie 视网膜 (A NET TO CATCH THE LIGHT) 2016, 7 min, 16mm-to-DCP Erin Espelie 内共生 (INSIDE THE SHARED LIFE) 2017, 9 min, 16mm-to-DCP

PROGRAM 3: SCREEN: THE VIDEO ESSAY: A NEW AVANT-GARDE? Maryam Tafakory IRANI BAG 2021, 8 min, DCP Carlos Adriano UNTITLED #4: IN SPITE OF RUIN, SING IN THE RAIN / SEM TITULO #4: APESAR DOS PESARES, NA CHUVA HÁ DE CANTARES 2018, 27 min, DCP. In Portuguese with English subtitles. Jennifer West FILM TITLE POEM 2016, 67 min, 35mm-to-DCP Kevin B. Lee & Lého Galibert-Laîné READING BINGING BENNING 2018, 11 min, DCP

PROGRAM 4: SKY: “THE TIMELESS CANVAS” Takahiko Iimura KIRI (FOG) 1970, 5 min, 16mm, silent Yoko Ono & John Lennon APOTHEOSIS 1970, 18 min, 16mm-to-digital Tadhg O’Sullivan TO THE MOON 2020, 76 min, DCP Lois Patiño FAJR 2017, 12 min, 16mm-to-DCP

Malcolm McLaren SHALLOW 1-21 2008, 85 min, digital

1978-79, 104 min, 35mm. Made in collaboration with Wolfgang Kohlhaase. In German with English subtitles. SOLO SUNNY tells the story of a woman’s struggle for artistic expression and self-realization in a patriarchal world. Sunny is a former factory worker who sings for a pop band called Tornadoes. Her search for meaning is simultaneously a quest for artistic and sexual independence as well as for a more fulfilling social role. As it chronicles Sunny’s quest to gain independence as an artist and a woman, the film depicts East Berlin nightlife and its urban spaces, including run-down apartments and public buildings. With her androgynous characteristics and punk-inspired appearance, Sunny’s depiction takes on a queer dimension. Wolf’s emphasis on her everyday fight against conformist patterns of behavior, her desire for freedom, and her dissatisfaction with patriarchal oppression points to unresolved contradictions in the GDR, whose state ideology allegedly supported gender equality. As we follow Sunny through the city, the run-down apartment buildings and the urban infrastructure communicate the fatigue of a society stuck in the past, unable to move on and provide a fresh narrative to motivate its citizens. The film’s melancholy seems to acknowledge the decline of past utopias – to which Wolf was committed to the very end – and an attachment to a present time that nevertheless cannot offer a new collective vision of the future.

1959, 92 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. A DEFA and Bulgarian co-production, and the winner of the Prix du Jury at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, STARS was one of the first German-speaking films about the Holocaust, a subject still taboo in West Germany at the time. The film takes place in a small town in Bulgaria, where German soldiers have temporarily stationed groups of Greek Jews who are destined for Auschwitz. Among the soldiers is Walter, a Wehrmacht officer and disillusioned intellectual and painter, who seems to hold nihilistic views. A chance encounter, however, prompts a reflection on his role in the Nazi war machine: he falls in love with Ruth, a Jewish woman, and tries to organize her escape with support from local members of the Bulgarian resistance. Because of the taboo on discussing the Holocaust, the West German government tried to prevent the film’s circulation at international festivals.

PERIODICAL EFFECT 2001, 9.5 min, digital SILVER PLAY 2002, 16 min, digital SLOW DEATH 2000, 15.5 min, Super 8mm-to-digital PS WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU ARE GOING TO DIE 2003, 18 min, digital REPEAT 2006, 9.5 min, digital

CARRIE AT STILL 1998, 27 min, Super-8mm-to-digital YA PRIVATE SKY 2001, 3.5 min, digital PAST ca. 2011/12, 16 min, digital JERK 2007, 20 min, digital

Storefront Films, an ongoing partnership between Storefront for Art and Architecture and Anthology Film Archives, embraces and highlights cinema’s significant role in representing the built environment. From early 2026 through the spring, Storefront presents an exhibition by artist Alison Nguyen at their gallery on Kenmare Street. Nguyen’s multi-channel moving image installation untangles the politics of cultural memory, fusing performance and speculative fiction with previously censored material drawn from the real, and expands on themes from her film AISLE 9 (2025). In conjunction with the exhibition at Storefront, this program at Anthology will screen the new cinema cut of AISLE 9, and bring together other short films that share questions around censorship, decoding, and reconstructing memory, from various geopolitical vantage points. A conversation between Nguyen and Storefront curator Jessica Kwok will follow. For more info about the exhibition at Storefront for Art and Architecture visit: https://storefront.nyc/ Alison Nguyen AISLE 9 2025, 25 min, digital Maryam Tafakory NAZABAZI 2021, 20 min, digital Joan Braderman 30 SECOND SPOT RECONSIDERED 1988, 11 min, video Nazli Dincel HER SILENT SEAMING 2014, 10.5 min, 16mm James Richards ROSEBUD 2013, 13 min, digital

Alain Resnais’s THE SONG OF STYRENE – one of the greatest of all sponsored films – which transforms the industrial production of plastics into a hypnotic symphony of eye-popping colors, rhythms, and textures, is here paired with three other visually astounding and mind-altering sponsored films about similarly “futuristic” industrial products. Hans Richter THE BIRTH OF COLOR / DIE GEBURT DER FARBE 1938, ca. 25 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Commissioned by Swiss chemical and dye company Geigy. Alain Resnais THE SONG OF STYRENE / LE CHANT DU STYRÈNE 1958, 13 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Narration by Raymond Queneau. Commissioned by French industrial group Pechiney. Ferdinand Khittl THE MAGIC RIBBON / DAS MAGISCHE BAND 1959, 21 min, 35mm-to-DCP Pierre Moretti MODULO: VARIATIONS ON A DESIGN 1973, 7 min, 35mm-to-DCP

1958, 115 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. SUN SEEKERS focuses on the stories of two women, a young orphan named Lutz and Emmi, who are picked up by the police during a raid in Berlin to work in the Soviet and East-German Wismut uranium plant. The film’s style stands out for its anti-heroic aspects, while the narrative boldly shows the resentment felt by the East German workers towards the Soviets, not just because of the past trauma of the war, but also because of the unrealistic production expectations on the part of the latter. The emphasis on these conflicts through an observational cinematic style that captures a variety of social relationships in the plant contradicts the film’s opening intertitles, which patronizingly explain to the viewer that the Wismut project started out of the USSR’s commitment to world peace. Wolf had to wait until 1972 for an official release of SUN SEEKERS; under pressure from the Soviet authorities, the film was not released in 1958 and was shelved for 14 years.

Malcolm McLaren OXFORD STREET 1969-71, 20 min, 16mm-to-DCP Malcolm McLaren THE GHOSTS OF OXFORD STREET 1991, 53 min, video

Julien Temple THE GREAT ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SWINDLE 1980, 103 min, 35mm

1966, 75 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. “This highly stylized DEFA adaptation, commissioned by East-German television, of ‘The Little Prince’ (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry brings to life the existentialist classic in magical artificial landscapes. Originally intended for the launch of color television in the GDR, THE LITTLE PRINCE was filmed in 1965/66 by the DEFA Studio for Feature Films commissioned by Deutscher Fernsehfunk. However, color television was not introduced in the GDR before October 3, 1969. Finally, the film premiered on May 21, 1972, but disappeared in the archives afterwards, thanks to the broadcaster’s failure to obtain the adaptation rights for the text. Before the story became public domain in Germany in 2015, the film was only shown twice with special permission by the literary rights holders, including a screening organized by Wim Wenders in 1995 as part of the series ‘100 Years of Cinema in Berlin.’” –DEFA FILM LIBRARY

1973, 101 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles. This film explores the relationship between art and power, as well as trauma and memory. It tells the story of Herbert Kemmel, an artist uncomfortable with the official artistic doctrine in the GDR. Kemmel is a sculptor who is pictured as alienated from his social environment, while he seems to be burdened by the fact that people do not understand his work. Kemmel’s alienation is social, but it also has to do with his obsession with the historical traumas of the past. This is expressed in the film’s subtle references to the Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps and memorial sites, as well as to events in Babi Yar, a ravine outside Kiev where the German army and Ukrainian collaborators executed more than 30,000 Jews and other Ukrainian civilians. The character in the film functions as the director’s double – as Wolf never stopped searching for novel ways to represent the historical traumas of the 20th century.

This past fall, Anthology premiered a new digital restoration of William H. Whyte’s THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES (1980), and the response was overwhelming. As a result, we’re bringing it back for an encore run in the New Year! The film emerged from city planner William H. Whyte’s years of research into pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, conducted as part of his Street Life Project. This research resulted both in a film and a book, both of which closely analyzed the functioning 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 wisdom and elegance of its insights, but for its disarmingly unpretentious, no-nonsense, and often flat-out funny tone. The film version fully embodies all the qualities of the book, and adds one special feature: Whyte’s own voice. Sounding very much like Jimmy Stewart’s city planner cousin, Whyte delivers the narration with 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. 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. 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. 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), Anthology has restored the film, and we’re thrilled to bring it back for these encore screenings.

This unnerving journey into madness and murder features an unforgettable star turn by Millie Perkins that will sear itself onto your retinas. Perkins plays a tormented woman whose repressed memories of childhood abuse surface in some highly undesirable ways, compelling her to pick up a razor and go after men she sees on TV. An anomaly in the career of director Matt Cimber (who previously specialized in softcore and blaxploitation fare), this movie could only have been made outside of the studio system. A wonderful bonus: the film’s widescreen cinematography comes courtesy of a young Dean Cundey, who’d go on to shoot HALLOWEEN two years later.

Isidore Isou VENOM AND ETERNITY / TRAITÉ DE BAVE ET D’ÉTERNITÉ 1951, 123 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In French with English subtitles. Isidore Isou arrived in Paris from Romania in 1945 where he founded the Lettrist movement and published many books. Letterism attempted to break down poetry into letters and syllables, and then all arts into their constituent parts, to build up new languages for each art form. VENOM AND ETERNITY was the first Lettrist film manifesto. Isou brought it uninvited to the Cannes Film Festival (1951) where it won the audience prize for the avant-garde. Jean Cocteau’s poster promoted the 1952 release on the Champs-Elysées. The film is Isou’s “revolt against cinema”: the sound and the picture are purposefully unrelated, and the images are destroyed by bleach and scratched. The film is a landmark work that prefigured the Letterist and Situationist cinema to come and influenced many experimental filmmakers.

“Far from viewer-friendly, [this film] tells the story of the endless breakups and makeups of a highly unstable yet apparently indissoluble couple. It’s a sort of love story told in inverted terms, depicting the protracted end of a five-year affair, with its arbitrary disagreements, sudden mood shifts, moments of irrational anger, and displays of stinging contempt, presented with a genuine, unmeasured violence. ‘You’ve never succeeded at anything and you never will’, says Jean, a 40-year-old married filmmaker, to his younger, working-class lover Catherine. ‘And do you know why? Because you are vulgar, irremediably vulgar, and not only are you vulgar, you are ordinary.’ These are the film’s most celebrated lines…a sort of brutalist alternative to the famous line from LOVE STORY: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’” –Dave Kehr, FILM COMMENT

“The Trace of the Land” presents short moving-image works that engage contested land through creative and improvisational methodologies. The program brings together artists working across disparate histories of dispossession and violence, from redlining in Chicago to French colonial rule in Algeria, the settler-colonial destruction of the Gaza Strip, Brazil’s military oppression of Indigenous communities, and more. Engaging diverse counter-cartographic methods, these artists foreground embodiment, quotidian gestures, myth, and collective storytelling in their filmmaking. Their work privileges alternative approaches to perception and cultural memory, creating space for narratives of everyday resistance and communal belonging. This screening is organized by editors Shoghig Halajian and Suzy Halajian, with Brooklyn reading room, writing space, and independent publisher Wendy’s Subway, as part of a series of programs from January 23-25, 2026 celebrating the publication of their co-edited anthology, “A Grammar Built with Rocks” (2024). The book brings together feminist-decolonial texts, visual works, and poetry that examine the ties between bodies and land in contexts of dispossession and ecological crisis. Through movement, transience, and improvisation, it highlights artistic practices that imagine new forms of place-making and being-together. Related events will be held at the Center for Art, Research and Alliances, and Wendy’s Subway. For more information visit: https://wendyssubway.com Julien Creuzet CROSSROADS 2022, 7.5 min, digital Cauleen Smith LESSONS IN SEMAPHORE 2015, 4.5 min, 16mm, silent Christine Rebet IN THE SOLDIER’S HEAD 2015, 4.5 min, 16mm-to-digital Ana Vaz APIYEMIYEKÎ? 2019, 27.5 min, digital Beatriz Santiago Muñoz THE BLACK CAVE / LA CUEVA NEGRA 2013, 20 min, digital Basma al-Sharif DEEP SLEEP 2014, 13 min, Super-8mm-to-digital

Austrian experimental filmmakers have shown a special proclivity for working with and commenting on advertising, starting with Peter Kubelka: in a body of work that famously comprises only nine films, two were commissioned as advertisements, one was commissioned as a travel documentary, and one is a found-footage film constructed from TV commercials. This program gathers together films by Kubelka, as well as other advertising-related works by Austrian experimental luminaries Kurt Kren, Mara Mattuschka, and Peter Tscherkassky. Kurt Kren 46/90 FALTER 2 1990, 1 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Commissioned by the Viennese city newspaper Falter. Peter Kubelka ADEBAR (1957, 1 min, 35mm. Commissioned (but rejected) by Vienna’s Café Adebar.) Peter Kubelka SCHWECHATER (1958, 1 min, 16mm. Commissioned (but rejected) by Schwechater Bier.) Anonymous Commercials for d-c-fix and INKU GF-Kante 1963/65, 4 min, 35mm, b&w. Preserved (2013) by the Austrian Film Museum. Peter Kubelka POETRY AND TRUTH / DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT 1996-2003, 13 min, 16mm Peter Tscherkassky COMING ATTRACTIONS 2010, 25 min, 35mm Mara Mattuschka CEROLAX II 1985, 1.5 min, 16mm-to-DCP Plus: a selection of HUMANIC ads 1970s-80s, ca. 5 min, video

In 2019 Anthology organized an extensive series entitled “Films for the Fair”, which consisted in large part of films produced for presentation at the various World’s Fairs throughout the 20th century, many of which were strikingly experimental in style or concept. In the context of “Avant-Garde Ads”, we present a handful of films from that series that are by important avant-garde filmmakers and/or that are themselves highly experimental in style, especially in their use of multiple screens. Shirley Clarke BRUSSELS LOOPS: MELTING POT / BRIDGES / OCCUPATIONS 1957, 9 min, 16mm-to-digital Edgard Varèse, Le Corbusier, and Iannis Xenakis LE POÈME ÉLECTRONIQUE 1958, 8.5 min, 35mm-to-DCP. Digital reconstruction courtesy of the Eye Filmmuseum. Charles & Ray Eames THINK 1964, 15 min, 15-screen 35mm-to-digital. Reconstructed by the Library of Congress. Francis Thompson & Alexander Hammid TO BE ALIVE! 1964, 18 min, 35mm-to-digital. Film courtesy of SC Johnson. Roman Kroitor, Colin Low & Hugh O’Connor IN THE LABYRINTH 1967, 21 min, 5-screen 35mm-to-digital