Everyone Gets Hurt But There’s No One To Blame
December 7th and 8th, 19:30h
Cinema Project
2522 SE Clinton Street, 97202, Portland, Oregon

Guest curated by Pablo de Ocampo

Melodrama—the combination of the Greek word for music (melos) and the French word for drama (drame)—forms the core of this program, guest curated by Cinema Project co-founder Pablo de Ocampo. In each of these works, the artists pursue the melodramatic and use it as the basis for exploring cinematic narrative. In Bruce Baillie’s drama without actors, All My Life, an Ella Fitzgerald song is juxtaposed with a slow, sincere gaze upon the blue skies of California. Keren Cytter’s Four Seasons is a series of deadpan, forlorn exchanges between a man and a woman in an apartment.  In Ming Wong’s Angst Essen / Eat Fear, a reconstruction of Fassbinder’s 1973 film Ali, Fear Eats the Soul, Ming casts himself in all the roles, reflecting this narrative about identity and difference back on himself.  Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof closes the screening as a brief epilogue from the long-standing master of kitsch and cult, George Kuchar. A short musical prelude and interlude will accompany the work in this program, check the website for more details later this fall.

- All My Life by Bruce Baillie [1966, 16mm, 3 min. ]
- Footnotes to a House of Love by Laida Lertxundi [USA/Spain, 2007, 16mm, 13 min. ]
- Four Seasons by Keren Cytter [Israel, 2009, video, 12 min. ]
- Angst Essen / Eat Fear by Ming Wong [Singapore, 2008, video, 27 min. ]
- Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof by George Kuchar [1961, 16mm, 4 min. ]

Nippon Year Zero: Japanese Experimental Film from the 1960s-1970s
Tuesday 23 November 2010, 20h
London Bethnal Green Working Men's Club
44-46 Pollard Row, London, E2 6NB

Close-Up and Zipangu have collaborated for the 1st annual Zipangu Fest  to put together a programme of Japanese independent and experimental cinema from the 1960s. This special event includes films never before screened in the UK and offers an engaging insight into a decade that was defined by political ferment and avant-garde activity in all sectors of its art world.

The programme invites its audience to an introduction to Japanese experimental filmmaking through the eyes of three landmark figures in the independent art scene. The chosen filmmakers, Donald Richie, Motoharu Jonouchi and Masanori Oe, all capture the zeigeist they were intrinsically a part of, yet articulate themselves in ways that range from the poetic to the abrasive, often mixing the two expressions.