Out of the past: Film restoration today

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The United States of America (Bette Gordon & James Benning, 1975)Out of the past: Film restoration today
Print Generation
Monday November 26, 2012, 19:30h
James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA campus
Recent Work From Anthology Film Archives
Monday December 3, 2012, 19:30h
Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, Westwood Village

Film restoration and preservation are at the core of UCLA Film & Television Archive activities and essential to conserving our motion picture heritage. Restorations also play an increasingly vital role in making old films accessible to modern audiences, whether through public screenings, home video distribution or online delivery. But what constitutes restoration? What do moving image preservationists do? The present series proposes to answer these questions, while discussing ethical issues, such as the status of the original and how digitality might change our perception of historic material. Each evening will be a behind-the-scenes look into contemporary restoration techniques and concerns, featuring newly restored prints and introductions by leading film preservationists.



Print Generation
Monday November 26, 2012, 19:30h
James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA campus
With the presence of Mark Toscano, Academy Film Archive

"Print Generation is a masterfully accomplished film. With it, Murphy sums up concerns that have marked independent filmmaking since the late Sixties: intrinsic film structure and personal diary." - Mike Reynolds, Berkeley Barb

- Print Generation (J.J. Murphy, 1974, 16mm, color 50 min.)
J.J. Murphy’s feature length experimental film is a meditation on light, chemistry, and the properties of photographic emulsion and can therefore be identified as a structuralist film. Beginning with points of red light, the film takes a single minute of film and reprints in over and over, moving through several levels of abstraction, then returning to them. Winner of several experimental film festival awards.

Recent Work From Anthology Film Archives
Monday December 3, 2012, 19:30h
Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, Westwood Village

Curator of Collections Andrew Lampert will present a program of recent preservations undertaken by Anthology Film Archives including Money, a radically-composed, rapid-fire time capsule of Lower Manhattan and United States, a conceptual bicentennial film dealing with spatial and temporal relationships between two travelers, their car, and the geographic, political, and social changes from New York to Los Angeles. In addition to the other works listed, Lampert will show a sampling of newly digitized videos and a few reels from the “Unessential Cinema” collection of works gathered from deceased laboratories, bereaved widows and trash dumpsters.

- Money (Henry Hills, 1985, 35mm, b/w, 15 min.)
A radically-composed time capsule, a rapid-fire portrait of the innovative ‘downtown’ Lower Manhattan community of poets, musicians, dancers, and personalities active in the early-to-mid-1980s. As much a sound work as it is a film, Money features John Zorn, Christian Marclay, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, Abigail Child, Charles Bernstein, and an extraordinary cast of luminaries.

- Chewing (Madeleine Gekiere, 1980, 16mm, color, 6 min.)
A delightful structuralist study of the act of eating an apple.

- Letter to D.H. in Paris (David Brooks, 1967, 16mm, color, 4 min.)
An influential figure within the NYC experimental film community of the mid-1960s, David Brooks died tragically young leaving behind only a handful of works. This piece is described by the maker as “Stoned people, music, movement, fields.”

- Six Windows (Marjorie Keller, 1979, 16mm, color, silent, 7 min.)
“A pan and a dissolve make a window of a wall on film. A portrait of the filmmaker in a luminous space, synthetically rendered via positive and negative overlays. ... I lived in some rooms by the sea and watched the inside and the view as well as the window panes that divided and joined them. I was often lost in thought. The birds would come and make a racket, reminding me I shared that space and sky with them. The film is a moody record of that place and my peace of mind.”

- The United States of America (Bette Gordon & James Benning, 1975, 16mm, color, 27 min.)
A true masterpiece of 70s cinema, more remarkable today than ever before. A conceptual bicentennial film dealing with spatial and temporal relationships between two travelers, their car, and the geographic, political, and social changes from New York to Los Angeles. The space within each frame is at the same time continuous and elliptical.

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