From Pasolini to Bazin (football) via Daney or Godard (tennis), sport has fascinated many filmmakers and film theorists, as a social fact but also for its undeniable aesthetic qualities of bodies that box, swim, run, of body represented in the effort, nudes or not. This phenomenon is part of a historical continuity of the image. Indeed, we see at the end of the nineteenth century, after centuries dominated by particular religious iconography, a resurgence of this representation, notably Manet, Cezanne and Degas.

Cinema Project’s second program of Japanese experimental films—the first presented in May 2013—continues to explore the short works of filmmakers Takashi Ito and Toshio Matsumoto. Once a student and teacher duo, both experimented with techniques of still photography in a number of their films produced during the 1970s and 80s.  Techniques included using time-lapse photography, single-frame shooting, or employing the still photo as both object and extra-dimensional window.

Lary Seven, Joel Schlemowitz and Bradley Eros, experimental film artists and collectors of obsolete media artifacts, (joined by members of Optipus, the expanded cinema group), present a night of uncanny images: mysterious travels, occult iconography, bizarre creatures, industrial detritus, and the strange and wondrous landscapes of fairy tales, fables and myths of the artificial sublime, displayed through the translucent exotica of hand-tinted photographs, decayed surfaces, and odd symbols and illustrations of the mundane made marvelous.