The Films Of Robert Banks & Bruce Checefsky
Sunday, November 21, 19h
Cleveland Cinematheque
11141 East Boulevard
Cleveland, OH 44106-1700, USA

Tonight we screen a program of short films by two of Cleveland’s foremost filmmakers, Robert Banks and Bruce Checefsky. These two men, whose films have been shown nationally and internationally at such venues as Anthology Film Archives, The Museum of Modern Art, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival (among many others), frequently collaborate with each other. But beyond that, they share a fascination with avant-garde cinema (easily seen in their own abstract film work), as well as a love for the aesthetic and physical properties of celluloid. (Both still shoot on film, and everything we will show tonight is on16mm or 35mm.) But each man is also a distinctive talent. Checefsky, whose day job is Director of the Reinberger Galleries at the Cleveland Institute of Art, works mostly in black-and-white, re-imagining classic Eastern European avant-garde films from the 1920s-40s that were either lost or destroyed, or perhaps only scripted or described but never filmed. His work tends to refined, elegant, classical. Banks’ movies, on the other hand, are riots of shots, sounds, colors, and camera angles, and are often scratched-on or painted-on. Themes include African-American life, the culture of beauty, and the media. Program includes Checefsky’s Pharmacy (2001), A Woman and Circles (2004), Moment Musical (2006), Tuareg (2008), and Béla (2009); and Banks’ MPG: Motion Picture Genocide (1997), Jaded (1998); Outlet (1999); Embryonic (1999); Goldfish and Sunflowers (1999); A.W.O.L. (2004); Faith ‘n’ Chaos (2004); He Namedrops the Spider (2010); and perhaps some new works and other surprises. Banks and Checefsky will answer audience questions after the screening. Total approx. 120