Betwixt and Between: A Program of Films Selected by Kate McCabe–Canyon Cinema Salon 6/29/15

Milk and Honey by Kate McCabe

Please join Canyon Cinema on the evening of June 29th, 2015 at New Nothing Cinema for the next installment of our 2015 Salon series. This month, we’re pleased to welcome independent filmmaker Kate McCabe who will premiere her new film “You and I Remain”, a lovely apocalyptic lullaby about the Anthropocene, alongside films from the Canyon collection that have greatly moved her: films by her mentor and friend Pat O’Neill and grand-mentor and Canyon co-founder, Chick Strand. On her selections, McCabe says:

“I chose these films because they are similar to my perceptions and work aesthetics as personal observations of our twilight worlds. Worlds where portraits of places and emotions are the kinetic sublime- where we as viewers are transported betwixt and between, hovering – our feet grounded on earth, our heads in the clouds. The everyday scene, a moving lyrical event  functioning as a tribute to beauty and our lucid spirit. These films are like private conversations sharing a secret and a dream.”

The Canyon Cinema Salon Series is a FREE event hosted at New Nothing Cinema (located at 16 Sherman St, off Folsom between 6th and 7th in SOMA).

7:00pm- Reception
7:30pm* – Screening and discussion.
*Note: Street entrance locked at 7:30 – please arrive on time.

Program Notes:

Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966) | Chick Strand | 3 minutes | Color | Sound

An experimental film poem in celebration of life and visions. Techniques include live action, animation, montage and found images.

Kristallnacht (1979) | Chick Strand | 7 minutes | B&W | Sound

Dedicated to the memory of Anne Frank, and the tenacity of the human spirit.

Milk and Honey (2004) | Kate McCabe | 17 minutes | Color | Sound

Music: Brant Bjork, Dan Delboy Sound Design: George Lockwood

Time manipulation and animation layering techniques quietly compose this meditation on solitude in Los Angeles.

“When I work with film I play with light and time, rhythm and shadow. I started to shoot Milk and Honey and I knew I had begun to capture moments that could transport the viewer between worlds of light and shadow to a place of tangible nostalgia.

Essentially the film is a record of how secluded one can become in California or anywhere else. In Los Angeles people come to live their dreams and as a result dreams are more real there. Yet human connectedness is different in parts, the sprawl and the automobile seem to take us further away from each other than before. Moving to Los Angeles seemed to me like traveling to a remote planet and we were astronauts hovering within its borders isolated in a strange sanctuary. Milk and Honey allows you to drift into that twilight world and dream of home.”

Sleeping Dogs (Never Lie) (1978) | Pat O’Neill | 9 minutes | Color | Sound

The day they filled all that gravel in front of Jack and Jerry’s old studio on Venice Blvd.

A yellow bird fascinated by reflection.

Several views from the San Francisco Marine Museum on a gray day in December.

Three views of Mercer Street, New York after the second big snowstorm of January, ’78.

Several fogs, a strange puddle, and a female Husky induced to howl by humans.

(This film is perhaps best seen after one of the others, like a “chaser.”)

You and I Remain (2015) | Kate McCabe | 15 minutes | Color | Sound

In this portrait of a world askew, filmmaker McCabe composes an apocalyptic lullaby, a landscape film meditating on the end of the world and subtly the end of film as a medium. Incorporating timelapse cinematography shot at the Salton Sea, Big Sur and Joshua Tree, the film provides a canvas of empty and beautiful spaces with narration about the benefits of radiation with a plea to the viewer to preserve the message for the future.

The Last of the Persimmons (1972) | Pat O’Neill | 6 minutes | Color | Sound

The Last of the Persimmons was inspired by eating a great many sweet, ripe persimmons in a little room whose walls were covered with flowery wallpaper.

About the Artist:

Originally from Philadelphia, Kate McCabe now makes her home near Joshua Tree, California where she founded the art collective Kidnap Yourself. She is a graduate of the University of the Arts and she obtained her MFA in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts under the innovative Jules Engel. She is an award winning independent filmmaker who has shown films globally since 1995 in both film festivals and galleries. Sabbia, her first feature film, a visual album for Brant Bjork, is distributed internationally. Her current work includes paintings, photography, short fiction, and art books, her most recent being a sketch comic book called “Mojave Weather Diaries.” Kate has taught film as a visiting artist at CalArts and UC San Diego and works as the archivist for filmmaker Pat O’Neill.

Her films frequently function as a portrait of some kind – sometimes layered in metaphor, others purely documentary in style. They explore the themes of celebrating the beauty in the everyday and unveiling the twilight world between daydreams and reality. Technically, Kate likes to blur the line between live action photography and animation, with time manipulation techniques both in-camera and with optical printing.

https://vimeo.com/katemccabekny