In the mid 1960s, Edward Owens (1949-2009) was an African-American teenager attending the Art Institute of Chicago when Gregory Markopoulos arrived to found the school’s film program. Owens, who was then studying painting and sculpture, had already been making 8mm movies for a few years; impressed by the maturity of his work, Markopoulos encouraged him to move to New York. Over the next four years, Owens created a cluster of films that display an increasing mastery of form, inspired by Markopoulos’s style but transformed into something purely his own.
An encounter between a film artist with two 16mm projectors, and two improvising musicians ; a violinist and a guitarist. The will to propose a frictional dialogue between sounds and images, without a hierarchy between both medium : sounds can go with the images, as well causing them, incite them, confront them… images can initiate the mouvements, as well as melt into them. The will to experiment the fragility of a communication between loops on celluloid, expressing itself in a mechanical time, and the organic expression of wooden vibrant instruments.
Hypnotic and visceral, Sonic Cinema is a wild hypersensory experience. The films in this program explore the outer limits of perception, embodiment and cognition using experimental animation techniques, chemical interventions, powerful soundtracks, magnetic pulsations and beyond. Raw intensity and pure energy into the ontology of the moving image.
Leighton Pierce born John Leighton Pierce (27 October 1954, Rochester, NY) is an American experimental filmmaker who works with film, video, sound, and installation. He is also the Dean of the School of Film/Video at CalArts since the summer of 2014. He is best known for his impressionistic technique in video imagery that creates a hypnotic effect as well as his use of sound design. The motif of water is dominant in his work and gave the name to the video series “Memories of Water”.
Now in its fourth year, the Performing Media Festival [PMF~ 2020] will be held February 20-21st in South Bend, Indiana on the campus of IU South Bend. We are seeking performative audio-visual works to present at this year's festival. If you are interested in submitting a work for consideration, please fill out the form below. Questions can be sent to [email protected].
Deadline for submission is November 15th, 2019 (11:59 PM EST). Acceptances will be sent via email by December 1st, 2019 (11:59 PM EST).
Anthology welcomes German filmmaker Ute Aurand for a special screening of her brand-new 16mm film RUSHING GREEN WITH HORSES, as well as OH! THE FOUR SEASONS, a 1988 film made in collaboration with Ulrike Pfeiffer (and, via an introductory text, Anthology’s founder Jonas Mekas).
