New Prints from the Academy Film Archive
Posted December 7th, 2021 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Films, News / Events
Canyon is pleased to announce that a number of new distribution prints from the Academy Film Archive have recently been received and accessioned, including two early films by Robert Breer that are new to the catalog:
Cats (Robert Breer, 1956, 1 minute, color, sound, 16mm)
Short hand-drawn representation of a cat.
Form Phases I (Robert Breer, 1952, 2 minutes, color, silent, 16mm, 18fps)
The two-dimensionality of the painted and cut-out forms used in the series of Form Phases evokes the flat surface of the painting, while the rapid succession of images offers a decomposed and fragmented version of it.
Roseblood (Sharon Couzin, 1974, 8 minutes, color, sound, 16mm)
The dance of Carolyn Chave Kaplan; Music from Stockhausen’s “Hymnen” and “Mantra,” Enesco’s “Sonata No. 3 in A Minor.”
Images of a woman in dance, in flora, in picture, in eyes, in architecture, in sunshine, in color, in crystal, in space, in confusion, in danger, in disintegration, in her hand, in birth, in the Valley of Sorrow, in the sea, in repetition, in sculpture and in herself.
“Some really extraordinary subliminal combinations are happenings.” – Pat O’Neill
Incantation (Peter Rose, 1971, 8.5 minutes, color, sound, 16mm)
Using rapidly edited, superimposed images of plants, trees, water, the sun, and the moon, INCANTATION weaves a dynamic tapestry of organic forms and textures, combining its images with a fierce rhythmic intensity so as to suggest a kind of natural force. The film was shot entirely in 8mm, in camera, according to a pre-arranged score, and then blown up to 16mm using a homemade optical printer. The accompanying sound track, a chant taken from Islamic liturgy, is breath-based, as is much of the underlying structure of the image, and brings the film into the form of a prayer. “… massive and lovely ….” – Roger Greenspun, The New York Times
Vital Signs (Barbara Hammer, 1991, 9 minutes, color/b&w, silent, 16mm)
This film is dedicated to John Wilbert Hammer, Curt McDowell, and Vito Russo.
The film employs images and text to intertwine Western constructions of death that place death far away from home in a seldom-visited cemetery with Hammer’s personal interactions with a skeleton, clips from Renais’s Hiroshima, Mon Amour, text from Foucault’s Birth of a Clinic, and scenes from a hospital intensive care unit.
Fake Fruit Factory (Chick Strand, 1986, 22 minutes, color, sound, 16mm or digital file)
Intimate documentary about young women who make papier mache fruit and vegetables in a small factory in Mexico. They have a gringo boss, but the factory is owned by his Mexican wife. The focus of the film is on the color, music and movement involved, and the gossip which goes on constantly, revealing what the young women think about men.
Huge thanks to the Academy Film Archive and Mark Toscano for providing these new prints!
