New Acquisition: Four Exhibition Files from Greta Snider
Posted May 7th, 2021 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, News / Events
Now available from Canyon Cinema: Four new exhibition files from the SF cinema great Greta Snider! This acquisition includes the addition of a new film to the catalog, 2019’s A Small Place, as well as stunning new digitizations of Snider-staples Hard Core Home Movie (1989), No-Zone (1993), and Flight (1996).
A Small Place (Greta Snider, 2019, 6 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
A Small Place is an homage to those surviving solitary confinement and was inspired by the survivor testimonies collected by Jean Casella, James Ridgeway, and Sarah Shourd in the volume, Hell Is A Very Small Place (2016). Particularly moving is the way individuals struggle with communication and connection, within the institutionally violent structure of the US carceral system in general, and solitary confinement in particular. The urge to connect does not diminish, but the person’s relationship to time, touch, sound, memory, and story is strained beyond capacity.
Hard Core Home Movie (Greta Snider, 1989, 5 minutes, b&w, sound, digital file or 16mm)
Hard Core is a frank and irreverent documentary that asks the question, “what is hard-core?” Seedy, grainy, and fast-paced, this is a nostalgic look at an ephemeral moment in the history of a subculture: punk rock in San Francisco in the late eighties. Everyone from fucked-up teenagers to elderly Mexican tourists attempts to explain the allure and mystique of the scene. Filmed at SF’s historical petting-zoo/theater/punk rock emporium The Farm.
No-Zone (Greta Snider, 1993, 19 minutes, color, sound, digital file or 16mm)
“Greta S. incorporates a sprinkling of traditional bay-area style – cutting and pasting images from an obscure range of memorabilia footage and pop culture – as she guides us through the tribulations and ecstasies of life in the 90s. NO-ZONE generates the feeling of reading a book, as a gamut of emotions are brought to life in a series of short fables. The disturbing issues of AIDS, nuclear waste in one’s front yard, and the ever present mid-life crisis, are translated through gun visuals, manipulated text and in-your-face close-ups. Paranoia and discontent with the state of the world are coolly relayed in soap opera time, via two of the film’s episodes – Sickness and Toxin. Relief from this environment comes in the form of doing 30kms on a skateboard, downtown and foraging for edible berries in the wilderness… Alas no happy ending here, as a mini-doc focusing on The End of History, stakes its claim as the crowing glory.” (Sally Bonython, Melbourne International Film Festival)
Flight (Greta Snider, 1996, 5 minutes, b&w, silent, digital file or 16mm)
Flight is my father’s photographic legacy, compiled and transformed into light. I wanted to materialize what spirit ephemera I have remaining from him. His family photographs, his hobbyist pictures of trains and roses, his airplanes and his obsession with birds circling… this material is shot through his eyes. The images are imprinted onto the film, like a fingerprint or trace. It’s his movie, really…
