“In the spirit of Open City’s challenge to conventional histories and ideas of documentary cinema, this program interweaves distinct yet complementary modes of avant-garde non-fiction cinema made by independent artists working outside any stable system. Alternating between diary films, found footage collage, and meditations on the medium itself, these seven films each explore alternate approaches to the documentary less as a way of ‘capturing’ the real than of sharing a world entirely of their own making. In their own ways, each film seeks to give expressions to singular life experiences and understandings of the camera, narrative, and the moving image itself. All of the artists worked equally in other media – painting, poetry, photography, sculpture, theatre – that influenced their unique approaches to filmmaking. All prints are from the Harvard Film Archive, one of the largest and most important university-based motion picture collections in the USA.” (Haden Guest)

Natura Obscura

Paolo Gioli I 2013 I Italy I 8’ I 16mm I silent 

“Using a handmade 16mm pinhole camera, Italian artist and filmmaker Paolo Gioli (1942-2022) chronicled the light of dawn and dusk around his home and farm in rural Emilia Romagna across the four seasons. An alchemist and inventor, Gioli’s painterly cinema was shaped by his constant refashioning of the cinematic apparatus.” (Haden Guest) 

A Wild Night in El Reno

George Kuchar I 1977 I USA I 6’ I 16mm I English spoken

“The first of George Kuchar’s Weather Diaries, a long series of increasingly personal films made during his annual pilgrimages to Oklahoma to experience the meteorological events of the late spring and summer. Lodged in a motel in the eponymous town, Kuchar (1942-2011) filmed and painted prolifically, inspired by the extreme storms that animated the Great Plains. The only 16mm work in the series, A Wild Night in El Reno was preserved by the HFA.” (Haden Guest) 

Mouseholes

Helen Hill I 1999 I USA I 8’ I 16mm I English spoken

“Helen Hill’s moving tribute to her deceased grandfather showcases the innovative mixed-media approach to filmmaking that fueled her work as artist, animator, and 16mm activist whose guide to ‘handcrafted cinema’, Recipes for Disaster remains highly influential to this day. Born and raised in South Carolina, Hill (1970-2007) had a strong interest in the local that continued in her work in Canada and, at the end of her tragically foreshortened life, in New Orleans.” (Haden Guest)

Interview

Caroline Leaf and Veronika Soul I 1979 I Canada I 13’ I 35mm I English spoken

“A spirited double self-portrait by animators and then-roommates Caroline Leaf (b. 1946) and Veronika Soul (b. 1944), Interview renders vivid the everyday routines and everyday doubts of two young artists all the while interweaving live action and animation that reveals their distinct voices and approaches to the moving image.” (Haden Guest)

Mutiny

Abigail Child I 1983 I USA I 11’ I 16mm I English spoken

“In the second part of her multi-part magnum opus, Is This What You Were Born For? poet-filmmaker Abigail Child (b. 1948) refined a mode of propulsive punk collage that sustains a remarkably intense audio-visual rhythm. With its jagged and abrupt montage style, Mutiny cuts against the grain of its found footage to allow the images to move and speak in always unexpected directions.” (Haden Guest)

Take the 5:10 to Dreamland

Bruce Conner I 1977 I USA I 5’ I 16mm I sound 

“A haunting work of oneiric cinema, Bruce Conner (1933-2008) weaves an enigmatic tone poem using vintage found footage drawn mostly from educational and instructional films. The minimalist soundtrack by Patrick Gleeson only deepens the mysteries of Take the 5:10 to Dreamland as it reveals subtle rhymes and resonances across an always emergent narrative.” (Haden Guest)

Shadow Film – The Two-Headed Woman

Shuji Terayama I 1977 I Japan I 16’ I 16mm I sound

“Among the finest works by the influential and iconoclastic filmmaker, poet and theatre pioneer Terayama Shuji (1935-1983) is his melancholy yet playful meditation on cinematic presence and memory. The shadows that haunt the film’s poignant vignettes hover as the traces of desire and regret while also enigmatically recalling the atomic shadows of Hiroshima.” (Haden Guest)

With an introduction by Haden Guest, Director of the Harvard Film Archive.

With thanks to Vampa Productions, the Kuchar Brothers Trust, the National Film Board of Canada.