A New Generation Keeps It Reel on 16mm

Local Cineastes Discover Pratt's 16mm Film Archives



This Friday at 9 p.m., the Windup Space in Station North is hosting an evening of experimental film classics culled from the Sights and Sounds Department of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. The hour-long screening, entitled "Sights & Sounds from the Vaults," features short films by Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage, Denys Columb Daunant, Amy Kravitz, Claude Lelouch, Pat O'Neill, D.A. Pennebaker, Lillian Schwartz & Chick Strand. The programmers are Meg Rorison, Lorenzo Gattorna, and Kate Ewald, who are also the principles behind the upcoming "Sight Unseen" experimental cinema series; supported in part by by a MICA Launch Artists in Baltimore (LAB) grant award, this film series will officially launch July 7th at the Windup Space with a screening of "The Films of Mary Helena Clarke." (More on that later.)

"Sights & Sounds from the Vault" is the latest film screening or film series to feature films from the Enoch Pratt Central Library's outstanding collection of over 2,100 16mm films. Though the collection reflects the general scope of most subject areas and genres, it is highlighted by a concentration in independently produced narrative and documentary films (including many Baltimore Film Festival entries), and experimental shorts.

A number of local cineastes have previously scoured the Pratt's 16mm film collection to find obscure or rarely seen films to screen at their performance event venues. One of the main attractions to these curators? All of the Pratt's 16mm film titles come with built-in public performance rights. In other words, they're free to screen without worrying about copyright infringement/intellectual property rights issues!

Early fans of Pratt's collection include former Maryland Film Festival program director Skizz Cyzyk (who frequently borrowed 16mm films from the Pratt for his Mansion Theatre film series) and Laure Drogoul, who continues to borrow 16mm films for 14Karat Cabaret multi-media events.

Then, in 2009, Miguel Sabogol started the Hexagon Free 16mm Film Series/Magic Eye Cinema Events in conjunction with Mary Helena Clarke at the Hexagon gallery/performance space in Station North (one of the reasons City Paper named the Hexagon Baltimore's "Best Multipurpose Space" in 2009). Around the same time period, Martin Johnson started screening obscure non-theatrical 16mm films from Pratt's collection as part of his NINETEEN23 (named for the year the 16mm film gauge came into existence) film series at the 14Karat Cabaret. (See also the NINETEEN23 Facebook page.) As Johnson told Urbanite writer David Dudley, when talking about Pratt's 2,100-film resources, "I've calculated that I've got ten years of material. Easily."

The material's certainly there for the taking - and free of charge, to boot.

For the record, this is the lineup for tonight's Windup Space "Sights & Sounds from the vault" screening:

PIXILLATION
By Lillian Schwartz
1971, 3 minutes
“With computer-produced images and Moog-synthesized sound, Pixillation is in a sense an introduction to the electronics lab. Its forms are handsome, its colors bright and appealing, its rhythms complex and inventive." - Roger Greenspun, N. Y. Times. Moog sound by Gershon Kingsley. Pixillation won the Red Ribbon Award for Special Effects from The National Academy of Television, Arts & Sciences in 1971.

MOTHLIGHT
By Stan Brakhage
1963, 3 minutes
A "found foliage" film composed of insects, leaves, and other detritus sandwiched between two strips of perforated tape. This handmade and optically printed masterpiece still holds mesmerizing pull years after its initial release.

DAYBREAK EXPRESS
By D.A. Pennebaker
1953, 5 minutes
Silhouettes at dawn set to a score by Duke Ellington capture the beautiful freneticism of 1950s New York City in this early example of cinéma-verité. Pennebaker writes, “I wanted to make a film about this filthy, noisy train and its packed-in passengers that would look beautiful.”

RIVER LETHE
By Amy Kravitz
1985, 7 minutes
In this film named after the river of forgetfulness leading to the underworld, drawings are created from non-traditional animation media including rubbed and erased graphite, pigment, and aluminum powders to make a surface of unusual richness.

7362
By Pat O’Neill
1967, 9 minutes
Incorporating footage of oil derricks in Venice, California and nude models filmed in the artist’s studio, this colorful, optically printed animation features kaleidoscopic shapes reminiscent of a Rorschach test. Synthesizer score by Joseph Byrd.

RENDEZVOUS
By Claude Lelouch
1976, 9 minutes
A single travelling shot through France in the early morning. This cinéma-verité classic is hypnotic, finding beauty in the monotonous forward momentum of the road.

DREAM OF THE WILD HORSES
By Denys Columb Daunant
1960, 9 minutes
Wild horses fight, gallop through water, and run through raging fire in slow motion set to a dreamy synth score.

GUACAMOLE
By Chick Strand
1976, 10 minutes
An experimental ethnographic film featuring Venezuela distinctive for its complex layering of sound and image and the juxtaposition of found footage and sound with original images.

ALLURES
By Jordan Belson
1961, 8 minutes
Belson, a visual musician, creates an abstract film richly woven with cosmological imagery, exploring consciousness, transcendence, and the nature of light itself. “I think of Allures as a combination of molecular structures and astronomical events mixed with subconscious and subjective phenomena – all happening simultaneously. The beginning is almost purely sensual, the end perhaps totally nonmaterial. It seems to move from matter to spirit in some way.” - Belson

OK, now back to the details about how this exciting new experimental film series came about...As Cara Ober wrote in her May 22, 2012 profile for Urbanite magazine, the award was designed by MICA trustee Steve Boesel to encourage MICA graduates to stay in town after graduation and create meaningful projects that enrich Baltimore's communities. "MICA realizes now, more than ever, talent alone will not necessarily lead to career success," says Boesel. "But talent combined with an entrepreneurial, business-oriented focus multiplies those chances."

The LAB program budgets $100,000 for five annual awards of $10,000 each to five MICA graduate students. One of those recipients was 2001 graduate Meg Rorison (Photographic & Electronic Media), who won a grant for her "Sight Unseen" project. As Rorison told Urbanite, "This grant gives me more motivation and opportunity to push for ideas and collaborations that I wouldn’t be able to pursue otherwise. With regards to the future, I am not sure how long I will stay here, but I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon. I love this city and feel very connected to the community here."

Baltimore's better for her commitment; let's hope she, and this series, stay around for a long time.

Related Links:
"Sights & Sounds from the Vaults" (Facebook page)
"Launch Lab" (Cara Ober, Urbanite)
"The Great Ecstacy of the 16mm Film Series" (Hexagon film series)
"Baltimore Hostel's Free Fall Film Series" (HI-Baltimore Hostel series)
NINETEEN23 (14Karat Cabaret film series)
"In Search of Buried 16mm Treasures" (Hexagon film series review)
NINETEEN23's "Future Shock" screening (Urbanite review)

The Shepherds of Berneray

The Shepherds of Berneray
a film by Allen Moore & Jack Shea
(Canada, 1981, 54 minutes)

Credits:
filmed and edited by Allen Moore
conceived and produced by Jack Shea
narrated by Finlay J. MacDonald
executive produced by Robert Gardner
principal characters: Kate Dix, John Ferguson, Angus Beag MacLeod, Angus and Chirsty Ann Munro, John and Christine Munro


The original Ram's Head, Live - from Berneray!

Last night I was among a handful of cineastes that were treated to a special screening of Allen Moore and Jack Shea's 1981 documentary The Shepherds of Berneray at the Hexagon on N. Charles Street. The event was the latest offering in Miguel Sabagol's continuing "Free Wednesday 16mm Film Series" at the Hexagon, which the Baltimore City Paper named "Best Multi-Purpose Space" in its 2009 Best of Baltimore issue.


Allen Moore

I only heard about the screening because, in addition to being an award-winning cinematographer for Ken Burns and a well-respected film instructor at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Allen Moore is also a regular patron of the Enoch Pratt Central Library, where he often pops in to check out titles from our 16mm film collection. So when he mentioned last week that he was screening one of his films at the Hexagon, I had to give props to a filmmaker and lenser that I greatly admire. I wasn't disappointed. At the risk of sounding like a hyperbolic fanboy, I think film historians will rightly rank Moore's cinematography alongside that of the all-time great lensmen. And, beyond knowing how to frame and present "pretty pictures," Moore is also an accomplished director and editor, at least from I've seen of his own films.

Small wonder then that the film - made with funds from The Film Study Center, Harvard University, The Highlands and Islands Development Board of Scotland, and The Scottish Arts Council - won a CINE Golden Eagle, a Red Ribbon at the American Film Festival, and a Special Mention of the Jury at Cinema du Reel. Soon after completing The Shepherds of Berneray, which was shot over 12 months from May 1978 to 1979 and took another 18 months to edit, Moore received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Filmmaking from December 1982 to November 1983.

So what and where is Berneray? Quickly searching the Internet for a Wikipedia article, I learned that Berneray (Scottish Gaelic: Beàrnaraidh, from Old Norse for "Bjorn's island") is a small island to the north of North Uist in the Sound of Harris, Scotland.



It is one of fifteen inhabited islands in the Outer Hebrides, measuring 2.5 acres with a population (as of May 2009) under 124 permanent residents. It is famed for its rich and colourful history which has attracted much tourism - including Charles, the Prince of Wales, who in 1987 visited the island to live a normal Berneray life as a "crofter" (small-scale farmer). (Prince Charles lived and worked with a crofter for one week and his visit spawned the 1991 television documentary, A Prince Among Islands; he returned to the island in 1999 to formally open the causeway connecting Berneray and Otternich on North Uist). Its main industries are fishing and sheep, but because seafood is a valued export to the mainland, the island's lifeblood is its sheep. Hence the focus of Moore's remarkable film, which documents one year in the life of the sheep and their Gaelic-speaking (and singing) keepers, split into seasonal chapters.


Berneray: Shaped like the headstock on a Fender guitar

The documentary begins and ends with an elderly woman (Kate Dix) speaking in her native Gaelic (thank God for subtitles!) outside her croft, a perfect bookending of the year's journal. Moore's print looked absolutely pristine and flawless, with nary a scratch on the screen. Shooting with a non-synch sound Bolex 16mm camera, he was able to follow the shepherds and their flock through every nook and cranny of the island, capturing both its natural beauty (the gorgeous blue skyline and shoreline in summer, the blooming flora in the spring) and the raw unpredictability of its stormy, wind-swept winters.

I liked his editing touches, little things like the footage at the island's church where the minister reads "The lord is my shepherd" to the shepherds, and the sheep point-of-view shots when they are being dipped into an anti-tic bath.

My fellow Pratt librarian (and fellow film geek) Marc Sober was also in attendance, and I knew the avowed vegetarian was in for a rough viewing experience during the no-holds-barred footage depicting the inevitable killing and eating of sheep (the islanders eat a lot of mutton - they save the tasty lobster for export to the mainland and the $$ it promises in return). As was the Maryland Film Festival's Eric Hatch, another vegetarian I spotted, sitting in front of Marc Sober (I'm pretty sure I saw Eric looking away during the more grisly segments!).

Moore leaves nothing out as far as documenting the sometimes harsh lifestyle entailing by living off sheep on a remote island. There's the birth and death of sheep, branding the flock by cutting off part of the ear, the inevitable wooly-bully sheep shearing, even an "old school" cirmcumcision of a ram by an old-timer who bites off the skins and spits it out! (I'm glad I ate before the screening and not after!).

Remarkable as the natural beauty of Berneray and Moore's cinematography are, the film is more than just a visual record of a remote land and people. Key to its translation of Berneray's culture is the poetic language of its people, which Moore captures not only in the Gaelic monologues of grande dame Kate Dix (who, Moore said afterwards, unfortunately passed away before the film's completion), but in the native folk songs of Mary MacAskill, Duncan MacKinnon and Christine Munro, and the poetry of the Bard of Berneray, Duncan MacLeod of Besdaire (1906-1980).

"Moore has become renowned in filmmaking circles for the way he portrays the intimate relationship of a culture to its environment, a vision he calls primarily poetic," wrote Baltimore Sun critic Linell Smith. He was referring to Moore's award-winning 1990 film Black Water (co-directed with Charlotte Cerf), which documented an artisanal fishing village in northeastern Brazil struggling to survive the impact of industrial water pollution, but he could just as easily have been talking about The Shepherds of Berneray. For Moore is an ethnographer as well as a photographer and documentarian, one just as interested in understanding the best way to present a foreign culture as a lensman is interested in the best way to present images to the human eye. Like his camera, Moore's eye is unflinching, direct, and true. And the impressions he leaves on our eyes are indelible.

Video:
Click here to watch segments from The Shepherds of Berneray (Vimeo).

Related Links:
Isle of Berneray website
The Shepherds of Berneray @ Internet Movie Database
Scottish Screen Archives
Allen Moore's MICA bio
Allen Moore @ Florentine Films
Allen Moore Films on Vimeo
Black Water @ Icarus Films

The Great Ecstasy of the 16mm Film Series

The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner
Gravity Is My Enemy
Wednesday, May 20, 7 p.m.
The Hexagon, 1825 N. Charles St., hexiconspace.com

Once again I applaud the film enthusiasts at The Hexagon for unearthing gems from the Enoch Pratt Central Library's 16mm film collection. This week's "FREE Wednesday 16mm Film Series" program looks at two unusual artists - one an athletic sculptor who as a skier defied gravity, the other a quadriplegic painter bound by it. Both push the limits of human spirit and expression.

The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner
(Werner Herzog, 1975, 45 minutes, in German with English subtitles.)


"Great Ecstacy" opening clip

This is German director (and ski enthusiast) Werner Herzog's documentary about Walter Steiner, a Swiss woodcarver who is considered the world's greatest ski jumper (here called "ski flyers"), who effortlessly broke all the sport's records. It was the first film Herzog tackled after the rigors of directing Klaus Kinksi in Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Following the skier's preparation for an event in Yugoslavia, Herzog uses ultra-slow-motion photography to capture the "ski flyer's ecstasy" as he is compelled to take his creative impulse to the absolute limit. The poetic images of beauty and danger are complimented by a dreamy guitar score by Krautrock band Popol Vuh.

Gravity Is My Enemy
(John C. Joseph, 1977, 26 minutes)
1978 Academy Award winner - Best Documentary Short Subject


"Gravity Is My Enemy" clip

This Academy Award-winning short profiles the life of Mark Hicks, who was paralyzed from the neck down at the age of 12 yet painted and drew by holding a brush, pencil, or ink pen between his teeth. It paints a palette similar to that of local artist Dan Keplinger, a Parkville High and Towson University grad with cerebal palsy who was the subject of Susan Hannah Hadary and William Whiteford's 1999 Oscar-winning documentary King Gimp.

I haven't gone to any Hexagon screenings yet but I sure plan to. I've only met one of their programmers, a young lady by the name of Lisa; the other programmer is local filmmaker Miguel Sabogal, who recently screened his Cube shorts trilogy (Dream's Structure, Escape, and Behind the Red Door) at the 2009 Maryland Film Festival.

They've brought renewed interest to 16mm film and I thank them for it.

In Search of Buried 16mm Treasures

In Search of Ancient Astronauts
directed by Harald Reinl (1973, 52 minutes)



Examines the theory that the Earth once had visitors from outer space as it explores the clues which can be found in ancient monuments, artifacts, and documents.

Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. Or the buried treasures in your 16mm collection. Hats off to the folks at The Hexagon gallery/performance space (1825 N. Charles Street) for unearthing this 1973 "documentary" - narrated by Rod Serling! - in the Enoch Pratt Free Library's 16mm film collection.


Rod Serling in Twilight (of Career) Zone

In Search of Ancient Astronauts is an edited version of the 1970 German documentary Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (Chariots of the Gods), which jump-started the whole "In Search of" craze that's so beloved by the Lunatic Fringe/Fortean Times/High Weirdness/Conspiracy Theory crowd. It's based on the book Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken and while skeptics (aka, intelligent human beings) will definitely view it more as "crockumentary" than documentary, it should be a lot of fun. Great programming Hexagoners!

The film is being screened May 27, 2009 as part of the Hexagon Free Wednesday Night 16mm Film Series which screens films starting at 7 p.m and encourages viewers to bring their own food and refreshments.



I like that the Hexagon is screening a lot of experimental films from the Pratt's collection. In fact, In Search of Ancient Astronauts is being paired with one of the most experimental, Peter Rose's The Man Who Could Not See Far Enough (1981, 33 minutes). And their May 13 shorts program reminds me of similar experimental film short programs we've screened in the past at the Central Library - though I suspect they'll get a much bigger crowd in their hipster-friendly digs. Check out this stellar line-up of pure psychotropic eye-candy that's not to be missed (especially the Whitney and VanDerBeek films):

Anemic Cinema, Marcel Duchamp, 1925, 5 min
Entr'acte, Rene Clair, 1924, 13 min
Allures, Jordan Belson, 1961, 8 min
Yantra, James Whitney, 1963, 8 min
Lapis, James Whitney, 1967, 10 min
Experiment in motion graphics, John Whitney, 1968, 11 min
Permutations, John Whitney, 1968, 6 min
Two Space, Larry Cuba, 1979, 8 min
Euclidean Illusions, Stan VanDerBeek, 1979, 9 min

Of course, the Enoch Pratt Central Library also has the sequel to In Search of Ancient Astronauts, In Search of Ancient Mysteries (1975, 52 minutes). Based on the book of the same title by Alan Landsburg, it is once again narrated by Rod Sterling and pre-dates the "In Search Of" TV series. Here's a sample clip from YouTube:



Ancient ruins and archaeological discoveries filmed on location throughout the world are used as evidence to explore the theory that there is a possibility that man on earth had his genesis somewhere in outer space.

Pratt Library 16mm "In Search of" titles:
In Search of Ancient Astronauts
In Search of Ancient Mysteries

See more "Ancient Astronauts" on YouTube:
In Search of Ancient Astronauts 1 of 6
In Search of Ancient Astronauts 2 of 6
In Search of Ancient Astronauts 3 of 6
In Search of Ancient Astronauts 4 of 6
In Search of Ancient Astronauts 5 of 6
In Search of Ancient Astronauts 6 of 6

Hexagon links:
hexagonspace.com (official site)
Hexagon on MySpace
Hexagon on Facebook
Hexagon FREE Wednesday Night 16mm Film Series