 SERENE VELOCITY Directed by Ernie Gehr |
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Film Series AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL FILM ZEN AND THE ART OF STRUCTURALIST FILMS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2000, 7 PM $6 ($3 WALKER MEMBERS) AUDITORIUM MEMBERS PAY HALF PRICE! 
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Filmmakers who experimented with structure made works that often were seen as turbulent exercises when viewed on the screen. Yet some structural films, like those featured in this program, approach the condition of meditation and evoke peaceful states of consciousness.
CASTRO STREET
Directed by Bruce Baillie
A beautifully abstract look at trains gliding smoothly across the screen, Castro Street is Baillie's masterpiece. The camera also glides smoothly across the industrial landscape in which they move. The film functions as continuous superimposition, a true merging of shots, magically fluid and complex. Baillie uses a slow, evenly paced rhythm with a polyphonic structure that connects a tracking shot on one level of the frame with a panning action on another. 1966, U.S., 10 minutes.
ALL MY LIFE
Directed by Bruce Baillie
Baillie is famous for the way he moves the camera. This three-minute film is made entirely of one shot; a long, lingering pan running along a fence of rose bushes. 1966, U.S., 3 minutes. Print courtesy Sally Dixon.
PHENOMENA
Directed by Jordan Belson
This film is an example of Belson's later work in which he uses light manipulation and continuous photography to create films that are "not to be seen , but to be experienced . . . not as creations, but as recognitions." His ever-evolving film charts the geography of cosmic gases. 1965, U.S., 6 minutes.
SAMAHDI
Directed by Jordan Belson
Samahdi picks up where Phenomena leaves off, continuing a journey through space with a trance-inducing array of colors and shapes. 1968, U.S., 6 minutes.
MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
Directed by Jordan Belson
Although made after the first wave of avant-garde cinema, Belson's Music of the Spheres returns to his galactic imagery in this kaleidoscopic journey through space and time with the technological help of an optical printer. 1977, U.S., 10 minutes.
SERENE VELOCITY
Directed by Ernie Gehr
Using spatial illusion, Gehr filmed the empty corridor of a university building throughout the night and into the following dawn. The receding corridor registers on the screen as a shining green field. In the center is a darkened square--the doors at the end of the hall. Overhead fluorescent lights mark space as Gehr alternates his zoom lens every four frames, provoking a transcendental consciousness. 1970, U.S., 23 minutes.
REMEDIAL READING COMPREHENSION
Directed by George Landow
Landow combines a speed-reading exercise with a series of images--from a sleeping schoolgirl to a television commercial for brown rice. He deconstructs cinematic expectations by making didactic, self-referential statements such as "This film is about you, not about the filmmaker." 1970, U.S., 5 minutes.
WIDE ANGLE SAXON
Directed by George Landow
In Wide Angle Saxon, one of Landow's longer works, the director parodies experimental narratives by creating his own constructed narrative that features Christian allegory in the story of a converted TV repairman. 1975, U.S., 22 minutes.