Fall 2006

September 14, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM
Aftermath, aftershock, Afterthoughts, After death, after…
All the films in tonight’s opening program explore the post-experiential in different ways. Employing an array of cinematic strategies from documentary to reenactment and even animation, these filmmakers ask the question of how to comprehend the incomprehensible and how to represent catastrophe, war, and death in ways that can be both humorous and powerfully moving.
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October 5, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM (Premiere) ** ADDITIONAL 9:30PM show just added **
Avenge but One of My Two Eyes by Avi Mograbi (in person)
Balagan is thrilled to present the Boston Premiere of Israeli filmmaker Avi Mograbi's powerful documentary AVENGE BUT ONE OF MY TWO EYES. Inspired by the legendary myths of Samson and Massada, Avenge is a wry, provocative and mournful documentary on present-day Israel that ponders the relationship between the Jewish struggle for freedom and the Palestinian resistance - a struggle played out most dramatically in the two intifadas, the second of which is still ongoing.
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October 19 A BALGAN DOUBLE FEATURE NIGHT!

October 19, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM
War by Jake MaHaffy (in person)
“This is the world after the end of a world... acre by acre, fence by fence, the war was lost.” WAR is a simple film portrait of four characters looking for work in the abandoned lands of rural America. Shooting alone for almost five years on a hand-cranked movie camera without a producer, crew, actors or a budget, we assembled an unconventional narrative out of these character studies, attempting in limited means to reveal the drama of a disintegrating society. - Jake Mahaffy

October 19, 2006, Thursday, 9:30PM (Premiere)
Who is Bozo Texino? by Bill Daniel (in person)
Freight rider and van tramp, Bill Daniel is back on tour screening his 16-years-in-the-making, documentary film, "Who is Bozo Texino?" --- the secret history of hobo graffiti. This gritty black and white documentary--shot entirely on film-- tells the mostly-factual account of the epic quest and unlikely discovery of railroading's most mysterious artist.
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October 26, 2006 , Thursday, 7:30PM (Premiere)
The Life and Work of J.X. Williams + Peep Show Curated film scholar Noel Lawrence (in person)
We present a major film discovery, a significant film by an obscure director J.X. Williams. His notorious tirade against the Chicago Syndicate comes to the screen for the first time after nearly 40 years in limbo. Produced in
Copenhagen in 1965, PEEP SHOW chronicles a secret history of the Kennedy administration, revealing a mafia plot to addict Frank Sinatra to heroin. Film scholar, curator, and archivist Noel Lawrence will give a detailed introduction on the making of the film and the colorful life of its director, including excerpts from Mr. Williams
forthcoming memoir "The Big Footnote".
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November 12, 2006, Sunday, 10:30AM (Museum of Fine Arts)
Description of A Struggle by Chris Marker
The State of Israel was but twelve-years-old when the great cinema essayist Chris Marker (La jetée and Sans soleil) completed this hypnotic documentary. It went on to win the Golden Bear at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival. Images of a young country whose future lies ahead and the narrator’s meditative voice-over posit an existential struggle for identity that is relevant today.
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November 16, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM (Premiere)
Stranger Comes to Town and other videos by of Jacqueline Goss (in person)
They say there's only two stories in the world: man goes on a journey, and stranger comes to town.
"Stranger Comes to Town" re-works an animation from the Department of Homeland Security --combining it with stories from the border, adventures from World of Warcraft, and journeys via Google Earth to tell a tale of bodies moving through lands both familiar and strange.
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November 30, 2006 , Thursday, 7:30PM (Premiere)
Magnavoz & American Egypt by Jesse Lerner(in person)
The American Egypt revisits the short life of the first socialist government of the Americas, the Revolution on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, 1915-1924.   Within the study of Mexico's past, the Yucatan merits consideration as a thing apart.   Attempts to secede in the 19th Century suggest Yucatan was, like Texas and California, only imperfectly attached to the Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Jesse Lerner is a documentary film & video maker and curator based in Los Angeles.

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Spring 2006

February 2, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM (in person)
Director's Eye: Deborah Stratman
For the second time, Balagan welcomes Deborah Stratman ("Kings of the Sky", Spring 2005) who will be in person to present three of her films "the BLVD" (1999), "On The Various Nature of Things" (1995), "How Among the Frozen Words" (2005).

February 16, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM
Tribute to Teiji Ito: Composer of Avante-Garde Films
Balagan celebrates Teiji Ito, a visionary composer, whose scores accompanied numerous Avante-Garde Films. Besided Maya Deren's "Meshes in the Afternoon" and "The Very Eye Of Night" Teiji Ito scored Charles Boultenhouse's HANDWRITTEN (1959, 9 minutes, 16mm) and DIONYSUS (1964, 26 minutes, 16mm), Marie Menken's DWIGHTIANA (1959, 4 minutes, 16mm) and BAGATELLE FOR WILLARD MAAS (1967, 5 minutes, 16mm), ARABESQUE FOR KENNETH ANGER (1967, 4 min.,16mm), MOONPLAY (1967, 5 minutes, 16mm), Willard Maas' ORGIA (1967, 12 minutes, 16mm), Ben Hayeem FLORA (1965, 6 minutes, 16mm), Ben Hayeem's Flora and several other films.

March 1, 2006, Wednesday, 7:30PM
Richard Broadman: Mission Hill And The Miracle Of Boston (in collaboration with Coolidge Corner Theatre and Photographic Resource Center )
In celebration of the Photographic Resource Center's recent exhibition, "Document: Contemporary Social Documentary Work from Greater Boston", Balagan co-presents a rarely-seen classic of documentary cinema, and a stunning vision of Boston history as it unfolds. Documentarian Richard Broadman's 1978 film traces the history of the Mission Hill area of Roxbury through interviews with residents old and new. In the 1970s urban renewal and a public housing project (from which Mission Hill earned it's now-standard moniker) were forcing changes on the then largely Irish Catholic neighborhood. This chronicle of racial conflict, when a new poor population butted heads with the old residents of the neighborhood, is a stunning reverse look at today's issues in the same neighborhood - where college students and young professionals are moving in and ever-soaring rents are pushing out the poor.

March 24, 2006, Firday, 8:00PM, at Revolving Museum in Lowell
Balagan on Tour in Lowell: What is Avant-Garde Film?
Location: Revolving Museum, 22 Shattuck Street, Lowell, MA 01852, http://www.revolvingmuseum.org/contact/index.html
Balagan collborates with Revolving Museum in Lowell to present three pilot programs of avante-garde films.

March 28, 2006, Tuesday, 7:30PM
Local Premiere: "Lunch with Fela" by Abraham Ravett

April 13, 2006, Thursday, 8:00PM, at the Museum of Fine Arts
The recent selection from the Black Maria Film Festival (in collaboration with Faith Quilt Project)
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston
Balagan collborates with Faith Quilt Project (http://www.faithquilts.org/) and Museum of Fine Arts to present a touring program of the award-winning shorts from the Black Maria Film & Video Festival. This particular selection of shorts from the Black Maria Film Festival conveys different approaches to exploring subject of faith on film. Diversity of genres, film forms. and content are fascinating. Filmmakers include: Sam Green (San Fransisco), Ivan Golovnev (Moscow, Russia), Sara Jane Lapp (Virginia), and others.

April 23, 2006, SUNDAY, 8:15PM at the Somerville Theatre with the IFFB
"The Paino Tuner of Earthquakes" directed by the Brothers Quay
Balagan is pleased to co-sponsor this new Quay Brothers live-action feature in partnership with the Independent Film Festival of Boston.

May 1, 2006, Monday, 7:30PM
Big Balagan: Recent Works from Boston Filmmakers
Alfred Guzzetti, Dan Sousa, Rebecca Meyers, David Baeumler, Lorelei Pepi, Robert Todd and others.

June 30, 2006, Firday, 8:00PM, at Revolving Museum in Lowell
Balagan on Tour in Lowell: Food For Thought
Location: Revolving Museum, 22 Shattuck Street, Lowell, MA 01852, http://www.revolvingmuseum.org/contact/index.html
Balagan collborates with Revolving Museum in Lowell to present three pilot programs of avante-garde films.

August 4, 2006, Firday, 8:00PM, at Revolving Museum in Lowell
Balagan on Tour in Lowell: Art and Politics through Film
Location: Revolving Museum, 22 Shattuck Street, Lowell, MA 01852, http://www.revolvingmuseum.org/contact/index.html
Balagan collborates with Revolving Museum in Lowell to present three pilot programs of avante-garde films.

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Fall 2005

Septmber 22, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Visual Poetry of Matthias Müller
Balagan opens its 11th season with a mini-retrospective of films by Matthias Müller, a contemporary avante-garde filmmaker from Germany.

Septmber 29, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Environmental Film Festival: "Chain" by Jem Cohen
Balagan collaborates with the Coolidge's Environmental Film Festival and co-presents "Chain" by Jem Cohen, a chilling and yet mesmerizing journey through the vast American wasteland of chain retailers and worlds of consumer culture.

October 6, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Filmmakers from the West Coast: Rebecca Baron (in person)
Balagan welcomes Rebecca Baron, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. Her work has screened widely in international film festivals and media venues including Rotterdam Film Festival, New York Film Festival and the Viennale and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is Associate Dean of the California Institute of the Arts School of Film/Video where she teaches documentary and experimental film.

October 20, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
History of American Avant-Garde Cinema: Larry Gottheim
"Gottheim's Cinema is a quest of origins. The films elaborate a response to the fictions of our world, the construction of images and sounds, the repeating cycles of life and nature. The profoundness of Gottheim's act is to elaborate a body of work outside of fashion and within a search for an authentic language of cinematic discourse." - John Handhardt, on the occasion of the presentation of the full "Elective Affinities" cycle at the Whitney Museum, 1981

October 24, 2005, Monday, 7:30PM
Big Balagan: Robert Todd's premiere "In Loving Memory" (in person)
Balagan is excited to host Robert Todd's premiere "In Loving Memory". The film glimpses into the memories and stories of people on death row.

November 3, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Director's Eye: Soon-Mi Yoo (in person)
Soon-Mi Yoo studied German literature Seoul und photography (Master of Fine Arts) am Massachusetts College of Art. Her films and photography have been shown in numerous festivals and exhibitions, among them the International Film festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, International Center of Photography (New York), Seattle Art Museum und Boston Center for the Arts.

November 10, 2005, Thursday, 9:30PM
Boston Jewish Film Festival Shorts at Balagan
For the second time, Balagan partners with Boston Jewish Film Festival and presents a collection of shorts.Films in this program possess the nature of filmic myths. They do not represent a reality, they catch fleeting moments of it. These films also remind me of personal diaries. They are composed of sketches and notes one would make sitting in a café or going through family albums or silent home movies. By using different techniques and elements, the filmmakers skillfully organize these “notes” into visual evocative essays that collectively capture the melancholic spirit of our times and offer its audiences a space to ponder and reflect. Among the filmmaker featured are: Uri Kranot & Michal Pfeffer, Jonah Bleicher, Irra Verbitsky, Carl Ippolito, Abigail Child (in person), Esaias Baitel, Jay Rosenblatt

November 17, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Four Women Artists Series
These four American women filmmakers are pushing the boundaries of the documentary and experimental genres to create thoughtful, funny, complex and unique works. Artists featured are Arshia Haq, Hope Tucker (in person), Nina Yuen and Julia Haslett.

December 1, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Balagan and Magic Lantern Present “The Comedy Show, Part One (in Eight Parts)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. As always, Magic Lantern has your best interests at heart (ha ha), and so we’re bringing you a collection of madcap (ho ho) comic films from the sharpest kino-eyes in the (Western) world of experimental (hee hee) cinema.

December 15, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Filmic Essays: Daniel Eisenberg

Born in Israel in 1954, Daniel Eisenberg studied film at the State University of New York at Binghamton with Ernie Gehr, Larry Gottheim, Klaus Wyborny, Saul Levine and Ken Jacobs. For three decades, Daniel has been making nonfiction independent and avant-garde work, "interrogating "official" histories and investigating personal stories within the context of major social and political events." He lived and worked in Boston for 14 years but now resides in Chicago where he is the Chair of the Department of Film, Video, and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His films have screened at : Museum of Modern Art, NY; University of Amsterdam; Goldsmiths College, University of London; Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Bangkok Experimental Film Festival; Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley and many other venues.

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Spring 2005

February 17, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Art and Politics: Kings of the Sky by Deborah Stratman - Boston Premiere, Official Selection of the Rotterdam Film Festival
In the spirit of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival and Balagan's "Expanded Genre of Documentary" and "Art and Politics" series, the 10th season starts with KINGS OF THE SKY by a Chicago-based filmmaker Deborah Stratman. This provocative film – a hybrid between experimental cinema and documentary genre, is about resistance, balance and fame. The follows tightrope artist Adil Hoxur as he and his troupe tour China’s Taklamakan desert amongst the Uyghurs, a turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy.

March 1, 2005, Tuesday, 7:30PM
Recent works of Abigail Child (in person)
A celebration of the recent works by the renown local filmmaker Abigail Child. The program includes the Boston premiere of The Future is Behind You, the 2005 Jury Award winner of the Black Maria Film Festival.

March 22, 2005, Tuesday, 7:30PM
Big Balagan: Ricky Leacock (in person)
A rare occasion to meet and celebrate one of the most renown documentary filmmakers Richard Leacock .

March 24, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Filmmakers on tour: Jim Finn (in person) & Arthur Jones (Chicago)
Balagan hosts an evening of new works by two Chicago-based filmmakers Jim Finn and Arthur Jones. Jim Finn makes videos about small animals, love and communism. His work has screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, New York Underground Film Festival, Cinematexas, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. His work has also appeared on the PBS and in Harper’s magazine. Arthur Jones, a graduate of RISD, is an animator and illustrator who animated shorts has shown in the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Worm Film Series (Rotterdam), Chicago International Children's Film Festival, LA Shorts, and Gavin Brown Passerby Gallery in New York.

April 7, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
You'll Pay for This! (Artists in person)
Balagan goes punk with premiere screenings of 2 local films about Boston's improtant contribution to the punk music scene in the 70's and 80's. Come see a slice of Boston's underground history and meet some punk rock legends in the flesh.

April 14, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
History of the American Avante-Garde: Ed Emschwiller
A unique opportunity to look into the legacy of one of the most interesting filmmakers of the American Avante-Garde cinema - Ed Emshwiller, whose experiments as well as collaborations with dancers, musicians, and visual artists truly expanded understanding and perception of film medium and at the same time, laid grounds for the contemporary video art.

April 21, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
The recent selection from the Black Maria Film Festival
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston
Balagan and Museum of Fine Arts are hosting a touring program of the award-winning shorts from the Black Maria Film & Video Festival. Named after Thomas Edison’s Black Maria Film Studio – the world’s first purpose built motion picture studio – the festival’s mission is to support the vision of independent film and video makers, and to present a cross-section of fresh, explorational work which is inventive, diverse, insightful, assertive and adventuresome. This program is an eclectic mix that features works by Marie Losier, Peter Rose, Abigail Child, Jim Trainor, Mara Mattuschka (Austria), Dan Boord and Louis Valdovino, Janie Geiser, Chris Landreth (Canada).

April 23, Saturday, 12PM and April 24 Sunday 6:30PM
Chain directed by Jem Cohen in The Boston Independent Film Festival
Location: Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Sq. Somerville, MA
Balagan is proud to be co-sponsoring a screening with the Boston Independent Film Festival to present the New England premiere of Jem Cohen's new experimental documentary Chain. Cohen won the Turning Leaf Someone to Watch Award at this year's Independent Spirit Awards for the genre-blending Chain, which was also named one of the "10 most promising films of the year" by Variety. Tamiko (Miho Nikaido of Hal Hartley's FLIRT, BOOK OF LIFE, and HENRY FOOL) is a Japanese businesswoman hurtling toward the bright and shiny future of "entertainment real estate." Researching amusement parks and malls, she meets with nameless potential clients and rehearses her English in anonymous business hotels. Amanda (Mira Billotte, singer for the indie bands Quixotic and White Magic, in her film debut) is a runaway who squats in abandoned or unfinished houses, makes an unsteady living cleaning hotel rooms, and spends hours wandering through the mall, gazing at objects she can no longer afford to buy. On opposite ends of the financial spectrum, both women share a dreamy isolation as they drift through the vast American wasteland of chain retailers and philosophize about their relationship to work and consumer culture. Without ever losing its political vision, Cohen's camera captures an uncanny beauty in the familiar, interchangeable landscapes of today's corporate dystopia.-Kristina Aikens

April 30, 2005, Saturday, 11AM and 1:30PM
Choreographing Cinema I and II curated by Alla Kovgan for the Dance and Technology Conference of the Boston Cyberarts Festival
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston
The two programs investigate a diverse spectrum of relationships between dance and film. These films are neither documentaries, nor documentations. All of them are rather creating/choreographing a dance, a movement or a dance-like feeling. This “hybrid film dance” – whether created by a dancer within the space of a film frame, whether choreographed through the movement of the camera and composition of the mis-en-scene, or constructed through the means of editing and such film techniques as painting on film – mesmerizes; reveals the hidden between the frames; inspires audiences to relate to cinema yet in another way, rejuvenates the eye, and offers new ways for humans to see the world. Program I features: Peter Greenaway and Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker (UK/Belgium), Daniel Shmid and Kazuo Ohno (Switzerland/Japan), Irina Evteeva and Slava Polunin (Russia), Lloyd Newson and DV8 (UK), and En-Knap (Slovenia). Program II features: Meredith Monk, D.A. Pennebaker, Stan Brakhage, Guy Maddin (Canada), Konstantin Bronzit (Russia). Artavazd Peleshian (Armenia).

May 5, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Expanded Genre of Documentary: Leighton Pierce
Balagan is proud to present 3 films by Leighton Pierce. Named by Jon Jost as a Master Minituarist, Pierce brings invisible to life, making the audiences to re-discover the world around them in the new ways.

May 7, 2005, Saturday, 11:55PM
You'll Pay for This! (Artists in person)
The second chance to see two local films about Boston's improtant contribution to the punk music scene in the 70's and 80's. Come see a slice of Boston's underground history and meet some punk rock legends in the flesh! (Repeat of April 7th program)

May 19, 2005, Thursday, 6:30PM - as part of the 21st Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival
Experimental Feature in Focus: "The Time We Killed" by Jennifer Reeves
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston
In her first feature, Jennifer Reeves creates a stirring visual poem on life in NYC post 9/11. She effortlessly combines elements of linear and non-linear narrative with documentary film to express the internal emotional life of bisexual Brooklyn writer Robyn Taylor (Lisa Jarnot), who becomes unable to finish her assignment due to feelings of paranoia, disorder, memories of past lovers, and fear of her country's current political agenda. As in her earlier shorts, Reeves challenges filmic conventions by creating a new language for herself that feels collectively old and new. Description adapted from the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. Co-presented by Women in Film & Video/New England.

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Fall 2004

September 9 , 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
New England Beat
Balagan begins the 9th season with the program of recent shorts from the New Enlgand filmmakers: Robert Todd, Alfred Guzzetti, Bob Harris, Saul Levine, Nancy Andrews, Ann Steuernagel, Alice Cox.

September 23 , 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
Echoes from the Flaherty Seminar - in person – Margarita DeLaVega, executive director of the Flaherty Seminar
This year, Flaherty Seminar (http://www.flahertyseminar.org) – a one-week film viewing retreat spiced with impassionate discussions among filmmakers, critics, scholars, curators, librarians and students, celebrated its 50th anniversary. This program is an eclectic selection of shots presented at Flaherty by this year's curator Susan Oxtoby. Among aritists and films featured are: Bocas de Ceniza (Mouths of Ash) (2003-4) by Juan Manuel Echavarria (Colombia), Journeys (2003) by Vinayan Kodoth (India), Standard Gauge (1984) by Morgan Fisher (US).

October 14 , 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
Filmmakers from the West Coast: Matt McCormick in person
Balagan welcomes Matt McCormick, a Portland Oregon filmmaker who has made several award winning short films. He is also the founder of Peripheral Produce, an internationally recognized video distribution label specializing in short experimental work, and the director of the Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival, Portland’s premiere venue for experimental, documentary, and otherwise obscure contemporary cinema. Matt has had three films screen at the Sundance Film Festival, and has received awards including Best Short Film from the 45th San Francisco International Film Fest,Best Short Film from the 2002 Ann Arbor Film Festival and others. He has screened at such venues as the Seattle Art Museum and the Lincoln Center, and his film ‘The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal’ was named as one of the ‘Top 10 Films of the 2002’ by both The Village Voice and Art Forum magazine.

“In the last few years, Matt McCormick has emerged as one of our strongest independent filmmakers, doing work that’s both ingenuous and humorously absurd...” Fred Camper, Chicago Reader

October 20 , 2004, Wednesday, 7:30PM (reception at 7PM)
BIG BALAGAN 1: Peter Kubelka: The Metaphoric Films in person

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October 21 , 2004, Thursday, 6:30PM
BIG BALAGAN 2: Peter Kubelka: The Metric Films in person
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston

Two screening/lectures with Peter Kubelka, one of the most distinguished figures in the history of 20th century avante-garde and independent filmmaking. His films are an innovative demonstration of cinematic possibilities. Moreover, as an artist or theoretician he has also worked in architecture, literature, music, painting and cuisine. He has been also a curator at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna that he founded in 1964. His teaching on the topic of food preparation as an art form at the Frankfurt School of Fine Arts led to an extension of his title as Professor of Film to that of Film and Cuisine. Over the past 40 years he has lectured at museums, universities and institutions throughout the world, and has been awarded the Austrian State Prize for his life's work.

"Peter Kubelka is the perfectionist of the film medium – the world's greatest filmmaker which is to say, simply: See his films! ...by all means/above all else... "– Stan Brakhage

October 28, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
Bushwacked II
In the spirit of the upcoming elections, this program of shorts reminds about the mishappenings of the last four years under the Bush Administration as well as draws parallels to the similar situations faced by different people around the world. Among the artists featured are: Reza Parsa, Bryan Boyce, The Speculative Archive (a.k.a. Julia Meltzer & David Thorne), Jino Choi and others.

November 9, 2004, Tuesday, 7:30PM
BALAGAN at the Boston Jewish Film Festival

November 18, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
Magic Lantern Presents: “The Re-Enactment Show” Curated by Ben Russell
Come on down for a night of re-interpretations as we plumb the depths of what experimental film has to offer in the time-honored tradition of the Re-Enactment. Not only do we have the Civil War, but we’ve got Indian street kids in Bollywood musicals, celluloid visions torn from the funny pages, and remakes of cinema classics and avant-garde masterpieces. - Ben Russell

Featuring: I’m Bobby by Xav Leplae (32:00, 35mm, 2003), Across the Rappanahock by Brian Frye (10:00, 16mm, 2003), Electrocute Your Stars by Marie Losier (8:00, 16mm, 2004), Passage a L’Acte by Martin Arnold (12:00, 16mm, 1993), Mary Worth by Various Directors (15:00, 16mm, 2001)

December 2, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
Art & Politics
In this program we will begin to explore the complex relationship between politics and art in film. Looking at several short works that express their political ideologies through very different approaches from lyrical meditations on the daily crisis in Palestine to an in your face testimony of a suicide bomber, we will undoubtedly raise more questions than answers at the end of the night.

December 16, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
Experimental Feature in Focus I: "Baghdad in no particular order" (2004) by Paul Chan

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Spring 2004

February 5, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
History of the Avant-Garde Film: Stan Vanderbeek
Balagan begins the 8th season with the new series on History of the Avant-Garde Film. Each program in this series will focus on one or two known or less known filmmakers whose creations became invaluable contributions in the development of alternative visions in film. The first program in the series presents works of Stan Vanderbeek who was not only a pioneer in the development of American experimental film and live-action animation techniques but also produced theatrical, multimedia experiments that included projection systems, dance, planetarium events and the exploration of early computer graphics and image-processing systems.

February 19, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
City Symphonies
Since the birth of cinema, filmmakers have been fascinated with photographing and discovering the spirit of the city. This program is a collection of films about human existence in the industrial metropolitans. Poetic urban landscapes, complex socio-cultural relationships, community neighborhoods, city slams... Among the filmmakers featured are Jack and Olga Chambers, Dominic Angerame and Jem Cohen.

March 4, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
Film as a Subversive Art III: Left and Revolutionary Cinema: Third World
Round three of films from the book "Film as a Subversive Art" written in 1974 by Amos Vogel, the founder of the Cinema 16 in New York, New York Film Festival and Lincoln Center Film Department. The program features The Hour of the Blast Furnaces (LA HORA DE LOS HORNOS) by Fernando Solanas, Argentina, 1967. "The masterpiece of the subversive art - a shattering indictment of American imperialism in South America -- is a brilliant tour de force of tumultuous images, sophisticated montage, and sledgehammer titles, fused into a passionate onslaught of radical provocation to olt the spectator to a new level of consciousness". - Amos Vogel

March 18 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
In Transit
Lots of wheels, honks, steam, spilled gasoline along with romantic and not so romantic stories, technological progress, environmental tragedies, traffic gems, accidents, terrorists... Films in this program ponder about means that humans have been using to migrate from place to place and all the social / political / economic / personal context that surround them. Among the filmmakers features are D.A. Pennebaker, Len Lye, Robert Breer, Bruce Baillie, Su Friedrich, Timoleon Wilkins, Danny Plotnic, and Jeff Sher.

April 1, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
Curator's Eye: "Animated Documentary" curated by Jessica Meistrich Gidal
Balagan continues collaborating with local filmmakers and curators to put together thematic programs. This program is curated by the local filmmaker Jessica Meistrich Gidal: "The animated documentary, a collision of two seemingly incompatible genres, takes the viewer on a trip to the artist's mind's eye, a place with equal power as the verite camera lens to distill and present reality. This show of contemporary animated non-fiction shorts from around the world will feature filmmakers who combine their animation with traditional documentary techniques -- like man-on-the street interviews and reenactments – and others who animate the interviewee's own artwork, use stop-motion to interpret landscapes, or meditate on actual events for which there is no visual documentation. Through unabashed subjectivity, these films shine a bright light on the constructed and fabricated nature of the traditional documentary. Featured artists include: Bob Sabiston, Steve Woods, Sheila Sofian, Vivienne Jones, Dennis Tupicoff, Joe King, Ellie Lee, Steven Subotnick and the Southern Ladies Animation Group."

April 29, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
Immigration
Art and Politics meet yet again in this program of films that focus on issues of immigration around the world and particularly in the United States considering the new immigration regulations of George Bush's administration. One of the highlights of the program is Alex Rivera's " Papapapa" that tracks his father's immigration northwards from Peru, paralleled by a similar journey endured by the simple potato.

May 27 , 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM
Film as a Subversive Art IV: Left and Revolutionary Cinema: West
Round four of films from the book "Film as a Subversive Art" written in 1974 by Amos Vogel. The program features Ice by Robert Kramer, USA, 1969. "This film coolly extrapolates twenty years into the American future to discover urban guerillas in the streets and glass-and-marble buildings of New York, at was against fascist regime..."- Amos Vogel

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Fall 2003