PRESERVATION INSANITY

Goodbye, Bob.

2012-01-10T18:05:00.000-08:00

Robert Nelson (1930-2012)

Can't really express at all how very sad I am to report that Robert Nelson has died. He was 81. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer about a year ago, and had decided to not receive treatment, to go out in his own way, as he could only do, as Chick Strand had decided to do before him.

All things considered, Bob was doing pretty well all year, actually. He had moments, sometimes days, of fatigue and feeling kind of lousy, but had plenty of good days too. I last spoke to him about a week ago and we talked about meeting up soon. He sounded great, and was as sharp as ever. So when I got the call from Wiley today, the news was a bit of a shock to me, as Bob had still seemed so vital and alive a week before.

He hadn’t been taking any medication or treatment beyond the herbal kind, and had continued to live on his own in the mountains in the small house he built in gorgeous Mendocino County. An inimitably homespun and offhand philosopher, he would say things to me like, “what the hell, I’ve had a good run.” I made him some CDs to check out a few months ago, and after he’d listened to and enjoyed them a few times he unexpectedly sent them back, saying “they were really good, I just don’t want to accumulate any more shit.”

Bob has easily been one of the most important people in my life, a massive source of influence, inspiration, support, friendship, and good company for the past ten years. His films are still huge for me. and will be til I die.

I sought him out in 2001 when I worked at Canyon Cinema. I had seen Bleu Shut and Hot Leatherette, and they had both knocked me out, especially Bleu Shut. At the time, my friend Martha was a preservationist at the Academy Film Archive in L.A., and she and I concocted a proposal for Bob and the Academy to start getting his filmography preserved, film by film. After he answered my initial letter, Bob and I had exchanged a few more letters (he was a great letter-writer) without yet meeting. One day without warning, he just strolled into the Canyon office on Third. Dominic hadn’t seen him in a few years at least, and said, almost in shock, “…Well hi, Bob!” Bob and I met, had lunch and talked about the archiving thing, and a deal was hatched. He was still very skeptical about the value of his work and his own desire for people to even see the films, but a project at the Academy was worked out, and Martha preserved The Off-Handed Jape and Deep Westurn right away, with Bob still not really wanting the films to see the light of day. I took over when I was hired to replace her in ’03, when she left to work in Tanzania, and have worked on a bunch of ‘em since then.

Over the years, a certain visceral block about his films, a desire to destroy many of them or at least keep them withdrawn from view, loosened and relented, in some cases title by title. I worked on him to do screenings, and though he wouldn’t initially appear in person, he approved the occasional showing of individual films starting in late 2003. In 2004, with Craig Baldwin’s help, we were able to do a 3-day retrospective at Other Cinema, with Bob in person, which marked a big change in his attitude about the work. The voluminous positive feedback from audiences I was able to pass on encouraged him more and more to lighten up about it all. He started making appearances, including some brilliant ones at Oberhausen, Vienna, and elsewhere. He even started working on several new films (left uncompleted) in 2007 or so, one of which was a collaboration we discussed at length, and which I hope I can actually complete now.

I was always thrilled to pass word along to him about how much one or more of his films had influenced someone I’d met, because by the 1990s, he had gotten really apathetic about a lot of them. But the interest in his films over the past ten years was something he really enjoyed, and he came around to re-embracing many of his own films. (Some of them remained to him nausea-inducing failures, though. Mention What Do You Talk About? or The Beard, and he would groan.) He was thrilled his work still resonated with people, or just made them laugh. Sometimes younger filmmakers would track him down and send him their work, and he always looked at it with a fresh, critical gaze, responding with his genuine and thoughtful reactions, which sometimes led to extended correspondences.

I always found him incredibly open, curious, wise, attentive, interested. He was just so fucking great to hang out with. How many people over 30 (let alone 80) still approach life, conversation, questions, EVERYTHING, with a completely open, curious mind, capable of considering and reconsidering, changing, reorienting…? Even in screening Q&As, when asked a question about Bleu Shut or Blondino that he’d probably been asked dozens of times before, he would seriously consider the question and try to give a unique, thoughtful answer. He was so full of consideration and wisdom, always gave me (and others) great advice.

So many filmmakers are filmmakers in some way or other because of Bob (among them Peter Hutton, Fred Worden, Chris Langdon, Curt McDowell, Mike Henderson, numerous others). Peter once told me that when he saw Bob’s films for the first time, his reaction was “wait, you can make movies like that?”, and started making films himself. David Wilson (of Museum of Jurassic Technology fame) was deeply inspired by The Awful Backlash, and wasn’t the only one to have that reaction. Bob named the classic film Near the Big Chakra, with his gift for evocative titles. Bob could also be burtally honest about someone’s work, because he felt a friend was due that honesty and respect, even if it cost him a few friendships. Bob was the person I was most nervous and yet most eager to show my own films, and his positive, thoughtful reactions meant something immeasurable to me, as did the criticism of one film of mine he thought was a stinker.

When an artist dies, the inevitable retrospectives follow. But that’s OK. Bob was happy to have his work rediscovered, and thrilled that anybody still found it entertaining, funny, enlightening, whatever. I already miss him deeply, but am excited that his films (and his spirit, a very palpable, inextricable part of them) are, and will continue to be, very much with us.

If anyone would like to send any thoughts, reminiscences, testimonials, etc. about Bob or his work to me, I’d be happy to share them with his family and friends.

Bob Nelson, ca. mid-1960s

Bob Nelson in Oberhausen, 2006 (photo by Mark Toscano)

Original poster for the premiere of The Great Blondino (1967)

Bob in The Off-Handed Jape (1967)

Shooting The Great Blondino (1967) in San Francisco. (Bob is on the left, Wiley on the right.)

Production still from Oh Dem Watermelons (1965)

Bob in Bleu Shut (1970)

Still from Hauling Toto Big (1997)

Bob in Blondino costume in The Great Blondino Preview (1967)

Will Hindle's Visual Cue Rolls

2011-11-24T09:47:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving! Decided to write a quick(?) post before starting to peel potatoes.

When I started working at the film archive in 2003, one of the first filmmakers whose work I wanted to do something to preserve/restore was Will Hindle. Will died in 1987. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was easily one of the more influential and acclaimed experimental filmmakers working. Even his earliest films, like Pastorale d'ete (1958) and Non Catholicam (1957-63/64) had a huge influence on people like Bruce Baillie (who helped Will shoot Non Catholicam). Stan Brakhage was a great friend and admirer. By all accounts, Will was a deeply intelligent, sensitive, and intense person and artist, who affected many he encountered over a few decades of existence on the independent film scene. Several of his 1970s/80s students I've spoken to have a profound connection to him, and count him as a chief influence in their lives. A much more extensive post should be written on Will, but I'll try to address that in the future.

One important thing to mention is that Will's films wouldn't have survived if it weren't for the incredible Shellie Fleming, who has not only been an exceptionally influential professor for many SAIC students over the years, but was also the person who really single-handedly saved and cared for what survived of Will's films for many years until she and I got in touch in 2003 to talk about preserving them. She has been an important inspiration to me as well.

A lot of pictures for today's post, all of a single object. One of Will's most complex films in terms of its visual choreography and editing, is Watersmith (1969). Will clearly had an incredibly deep and perhaps even innate understanding of the possibilities of film printing. His editing and composition reflects this, and his most accomplished films, like Billabong (1968), Chinese Firedrill (1968), and Watersmith reflect a truly uncanning understanding of the remote capabilities of a film printer and the seemingly inconceivably rich ways in which that process could be manipulated and exploited.

In working with Will's surviving film materials, one method I've realized that he employed to visualize this process is that of the visual cue roll. Although I can imagine that other filmmakers must have used similar methods (perhaps Scott Bartlett or Tom DeWitt?), Will's visual cue rolls are the only ones I've personally encountered. At the archive, visual cue rolls for Billabong, Chinese Firedrill, and Watersmith have all survived, and they're fascinating to wind through. Essentially, they function as a map to the printing of the film.

Watersmith was constructed in 16mm reversal A/B/C rolls, meaning there were three full-length printing rolls which, when printed in succession onto the same receiving print stock, employing all the various effects/dissolves/etc Will charted, would create a complete print with all its desired effects, color timing, and so forth. Accompanying these actual printing rolls would be the visual cue roll. See the pictures below to get an idea of what I'm talking about. The visual cue roll is a roll of lightstruck leader, the kind of stuff you'd normally splice onto the head or tail of a film, for example. Will created a roll of leader that matched the printing rolls in length, with matching head and tail cue marks as well. Then, throughout the visual cue roll, he would make notations and labels in magic marker indicating the various effects, color timing requests, and other descriptions of how the A/B/C rolls should be printed by the lab (in this case, Deluxe Hollywood).

To me, this is a remarkable primary document, which not only illuminates Will's process itself, but expresses some of the complexity of his conception for his films as (if I could borrow the expression) sculptures in time. The interaction of layers, the procession of sequences in tandem and succession, are incredibly rich, often moving, highly intuitive yet inexplicable - in other words, Will's films often have the effect of hitting the viewer on both a gut and intellectual level without you knowing precisely why. I think his control of visual language, in both pure image/sound relationships and in the use of powerful narrative fragments and suggestions, is incredibly unique, and hopefully his work will experience some kind of rediscovery in the near future. I'm currently working on preserving a few of his films, and a few more are short on the heels of these. Unfortunately, the one film that perhaps suffers the most, archivally speaking, is Watersmith itself. For while the visual cue roll survives in all of its suggestiveness, the original A/B/C rolls are lost.

I'm a bad blogger, but I'll try to be better.

2011-09-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I update with reasonable regularity, then I'll go months with no sign of life. Sorry about that.

There has been so much going on for the past year in my film world/life that it's often hard to keep up. Between the ever-increasing volume of preservation and restoration work (not to mention all the filmmaker and lab interactions, inspections, inventory, and collection management that goes with it, and even further not to mention the horrendous amount of email I feel like I'm always drowning in), plus the huge amount of stuff I have going on with Los Angeles Filmforum's very exciting Alternative Projections project, it's been hard for me to make time to post thing here.

But I do definitely want to continue to be able to share the bizarre or interesting projects, findings, discoveries, etc. that I feel are a big part of my work, so I'll try update things a bit more regularly here. I just have to cultivate it as a habitual activity.

Above is a still from the incredible The Death of the Gorilla (1966), by the inimitable Peter Mays. This is what you might call a local classic, in that it's known to the L.A. avant-garde community, and is a crucial part of L.A. avant-garde history, but it's been shamefully left out of a lot of larger histories of experimental film. This film is a masterwork and should be a classic, (whatever that means). It's also now newly restored, and is showing in the 2011 edition of Views From the Avant-Garde at New York Film Festival, as well as other locales, and I hope you get a chance to check it out.

Peter made this film by shooting 100ft. camera rolls of 16mm 7255 Ektachrome Commercial off of his television. He would run the film entirely through the camera with a certain color gel in front of the lens, and shoot fragmented bursts of primarily low-budget horror, sci-fi, and exotica stuff, with some King Kong and other recognizable features thrown into the mix. Upon reaching the end of the roll, he would rewind the entire roll, then do another full pass in-camera, shooting again off the television, this time with a different color gel. He sometimes did 6-8 full passes with 6-8 different colors in this manner. He got roll after roll of amazing, kaleidoscopic material this way. Immediately after getting his very best roll yet, he produced a total dud, which is how he knew the shooting was done. He then VERY extensively edited the material into a rough psychedelic narrative, and also created a similarly kaleidoscopic collage soundtrack to go with the image. The end result is 16 minutes of mind-blowing psychedelic genius, with all superimpositions produced in-camera, no exception.

Actually, you may have already seen some images from this film without realizing it. Strips from the film make up the entire cover of Taschen's Art Cinema coffee table book.

The preservation didn't actually take a ton of time. But it was an interesting experience, and unique in a couple of ways.

Peter had actually undertaken his own project to preserve and make available his work a few years prior, culminating in an incredibly elaborate and resourcefully executed DVD set of his work, from his earliest shorts to his most recent Flash animations. With a lot of films in his filmography, and some of them confusing due to variant versions, incompleteness, and other issues, he and I agreed that the best way to start working on anything of his was to go title-by-title, with The Death of the Gorilla seeming an obvious place to start, it being his most well-known film.

Peter had attempted to get the original 16mm mag track for the film transferred a few years back, to no success. The audio house had told him it couldn't be done effectively, and instead he made a new optical track positive from his track negative, and used that as the audio source for his digital transfer and DVD.

Acetate mag stock does have a tendency to deteriorate more readily and alarmingly than picture, something to do with the metal oxide "aggravating" the acetate base it's on. Most mag stocks switched to much more stable polyester in the 1970s/'80s.

When I got the mag track from Peter, it was pretty stinky with vinegar syndrome, and fairly warped and starting to curl. But it wasn't as bad as some really nasty mags I'd encountered, and I was pretty confident it could be transferred. Nick Bergh at Endpoint Audio really knows how to handle deteriorating mag well, and I gave it to him, which eventually yielded a very nice transfer. At Audio Mechanics, we checked the mag against an existing transfer of the optical track, and it was superior, though not by a huge margin, as the source for the track's audio was recorded ambiently off of television with a mic, and was pretty lo-fi to begin with. But the mag still sounded a bit better.

In the meantime, the original picture had its own issues. 7255 Ektachrome Commercial stock doesn't have nearly the color stability problems of its successor, the dreaded 7252 ECO (covered elsewhere in this blog), and Peter's original still has great looking color and contrast. It was also undamaged - no tears, perf damage, anything like that.

Normally, an element like this would be printed on a wetgate printer, the liquid in the gate helping to fill in scratches and blemishes on the source element, so the newly made element is as scratch-free and clean as possible. But we couldn't print Peter's original this way for two reasons. First, the head and tail titles were hand-painted (and beautifully, I might add - see end of this post). More problematic were the splices - Peter had originally edited the film with tape splices, which have held firm, but separated slightly over time, leaving a sliver of a gap in between pretty much all of them (and there are many many hundreds of splices in the original). If printed as-is, these slivers of splice gaps would be visible throughout the movie as punctuating white horizontal bars, occurring annoyingly and constantly throughout the film, especially since the framelines shift a bit over the course of the movie. To compensate for this, Peter, in his incredible focus and diligence, actually blackened out the splice gaps with a black marker, OVER the tape splices. So any attempt to clean or wet-print this original would wash away not only the hand-painted titles, but ALL of the "corrections" to the splice gaps. Yikes.

Also, because the adhesive from the tape splices had oozed somewhat over the years, every opposite lap of film from any given tape splice had dirt and adhesive residue stuck to it, on both sides of the film, constantly, throughout its entire length. Yikes again.

What to do? Well, the solution was painfully clear. I had to hand clean the entire thing, a foot at a time, all the way through, on both base and emulsion sides of the roll. Which I did. I hand-cleaned every single instance of that adhesive gunk and the dirt sticking to the adhesive gunk, through 600+ feet of the original for this film, on both sides. It took a while, but not as long as I thought it would.

In the meantime, another unique aspect of the project presented itself, which was very helpful. Extremely presciently, Peter had cut together a short, 50ft. roll of original outtakes from the film which represented a lot of the film's various looks. He did this specifically to be used as a test roll, so the lab could print the short test roll and experiment with exposures and timing, rather than print the full original a bunch of times. VERY helpful.

So while cleaning the original, I sent this test roll to the lab - Colorlab in this case. The wonderful and brilliant timer there, Chris Hughes, and the great Julia Nicoll got the test roll printed to internegative, then timed to print. Peter and I had decided pretty early on that the film should absolutely be printed as a "one light". In other words, there would be no timing light changes for the entirety of the film - one "best" light setting would be used for the whole thing. The reasoning for this was twofold - Peter had originally printed it this way in the 1960s, and the nature of the film's concept and making suggested this approach made the most sense. In other words, all of the superimpositions and color effects should be treated equally on a neutral grounding, not diversely modified from sequence to sequence or anything like that.

Additionally, Peter and I agreed the lab should try to make the new print look as much like the original as possible. Normally one might be matching a screening print of a film rather than the original, because perhaps there's a certain amount of color correction or other exposure modification that would have taken place in the film's printing. But in this case, we agreed that matching the original again fit the film's concept and execution, and also allowed for a very fine, subtle, high quality mirroring of the original as an object, rather than trying to artificially match a Kodachrome print, which would be a lot less subtle, a lot more contrasty, and miss the film's fine detail somewhat.

The test came back from Colorlab looking great, and needed only a tiny correction (1 point lighter, 1 point less blue). It looked beautiful. In the meantime, I had finished hand-cleaning the original, and shipped it to Colorlab for them to do another dry cleaning pass and then print it according to the results gotten from the test. Also in the meantime, the sound work had been finished and a new digital sound master, new mag track, and new optical track negative were created. Colorlab produced a new internegative and a first answer print with sound that hit the film exactly on the money. It looked fantastic. Peter saw it and was absolutely thrilled. I compared it to the 1960s Kodachrome print, which, though also beautiful, was not as good as the new one, which had a lot more range of color and subtlety of detail, closer to the original.

The new print premiered at Rotterdam 2011 in a pair of restored L.A. experimental film programs I put together, and I hope Rob Todd doesn't mind me quoting him as calling the film "a maximalist monsterpiece".

To conclude this really long post, I thought I'd share a few more stills from the film:

Adding three images to this post that show the hand-painted titles in the film's original. I had originally planned to put these images in from the beginning, but my laptop (on which they were held hostage) crapped out, and I only got it fixed in late December 2011... Enjoy!

Canyon Cinema

2011-03-31T10:50:00.000-07:00

I'm formulating a couple of (long overdue) new posts, but in the meantime, please read this (below) if you haven't already elsewhere. This letter from Canyon Cinema was formulated by Executive Director Dominic Angerame and the Canyon board in an attempt to safeguard the future of this essential organization.

I'm currently on Canyon Cinema's board and worked there as assistant director from 2000-2003. Canyon has had a large and extremely positive impact on my life, going back to age 18 and continuing, at full bore, to the present moment. Although the organization was, in a way, conceived by its founders as ephemeral, a lot has changed over the past 45 years and I think the survival of Canyon is crucial. I know there are solutions out there, and we're just trying to find them at this point.

Thanks for reading,

Mark T

*

To the Film Community:

This is a very serious letter. It was emailed to our filmmaker members and we would like to share this with the larger community. It concerns the survival of Canyon Cinema. As most of you probably know, film rentals over the past few years have been steadily declining. This is a result of the proliferation of digital media. Many of Canyon’s major filmmakers who have brought substantial income to the organization have now made their work available in digital formats. Many of our renters, especially in universities, no longer have access to adequate film projection. Often after the purchase of a DVD, instructors of cinema studies continue to use the digital media and forsake the renting of the original 16mm prints. This is partly due to their own dwindling rental budgets and the lack of well functioning projectors.

In addition, a part of our annual income has traditionally come from bank interest rates. In previous years Canyon has earned more than $4,000 per year this way. In the past three years we have earned almost nothing in this area. We are also very dependent on the money collected from our annual distribution fee from our filmmakers. Many filmmakers do not to pay their yearly fee. Canyon Cinema should be collecting more than $32,000 from its 320 members. Last fiscal year we collected approximately $21,000 in this manner.

During the past decades Canyon Cinema has been able to survive entirely from earned income generated from rentals, sales, distribution fees, bank interest and occasional donations. Each year, since our inception, Canyon Cinema has been successful economically, albeit with a very small margin of excess. We are now in a state where we can no longer continue to operate as we have in the past. This is a very real thing.

World wide interest in our celluloid film collection continues to be strong. There are even indications of a resurgence of interest by a new generation of film enthusiasts, filmmakers and scholars. Last year our gross rental and sales totaled more than (purposely left blank). This is not insignificant. However, this is not enough to continue to run our business in its present form.

It is apparent that Canyon Cinema can no longer continue as it was originally conceived and changes need to be made that are appropriate to our present day and age. The Board of Directors and the staff have been working on solutions. However, after many discussions, meetings with advisors, and inquires made directly to people who might help us we find that we are at a loss to solve the problem. Currently Canyon Cinema is losing $2,000 a month, approximately the amount of our rent. At this rate of loss, Canyon Cinema could be out of business within two years.

In short, we need any tangible help or advice that our community, or other contacts that might be able to offer. We mean this very seriously. The members of the Board of Directors and the staff of Canyon Cinema are experimental filmmakers like yourselves. We need all the help that our fellow members might be able to offer in terms of contacts or ideas. This is very important.

The five other major distributors of experimental film which are located in New York, Paris, Toronto, Vienna and London now receive substantial funding from government agencies on both a national and local level. These distributors, despite the fact they are “small businesses” are recognized as irreplaceable cultural entities which like any other municipal arts organization such as a symphony orchestra need additional support in order to survive. This is far more difficult in the United States.

Here are some specific examples of experimental film distribution companies modeled after Canyon Cinema currently receiving substantial funding. The Film-Makers’ Cooperative in New York City is currently funded by the Experimental Television Center as well as New York State Council for the Arts. They have also received a life saving donation of free rental space. Light Cone in Paris is funded by several governmental agencies including Le Centre National de la Cinematographie, Le Ministere de la Culture, La Region Ile-de-France and La Ville de Paris. LUX in London is funded by the Arts Council England and the Leverhulme Foundation for Educational Activities. In Canada the Canadian Filmmaker's Distribution Centre in Toronto is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, The Ontario Trillum Foundation and the Toronto Arts Council. In Vienna, Sixpack Film is most generously supported by the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture and Education (Department for Film), City of Vienna - Department of Cultural Affairs, the Provincial Governments of Lower Austria, Upper Austria and Salzburgh, and the Trade Association for Music and Film industry.

In contrast Canyon Cinema has not been able to obtain funding from federal, state or local governments. It is not that we have not tried. All recent efforts to procure funding have been rebuffed due to the nature of the way Canyon Cinema is structured as a for profit shareholder corporation. This is how the organization was set up since the late 1960’s. Canyon Cinema has attempted to become an IRS approved non profit corporation at least twice in the past years without success.

Fortunately we have enjoyed many contributions from our members and members of the greater film community over time. We are extremely appreciative of that. Lucasfilm Foundation has been very helpful in recent years. However they have indicated that they will no longer continue their support. Stanford University Media Library acquired the Canyon Cinema paper archives for a generous amount of $100,000 in 2009. It is those funds upon which we are currently operating.

Now what do we do?

These are some of the ideas the Board and staff have been discussing. Nothing has been decided upon. We feel that our filmmakers must be informed of some of the possible solutions being discussed. We need your help in determining the direction we should take. The solutions are not easy and some may appear radical but are necessary. The question is: what is most important to preserve in Canyon Cinema as a motion picture film distribution company. Is it to have faith in the eventual value of celluloid projection and find a way to survive through patronage? Is it to expand into a digital world, a transition for which we do not have funds or staff? Is it to face the reality of the present day and age of film presentation and radically alter the nature of Canyon Cinema as a celluloid distributor?

Here are some possible solutions that have been discussed and investigated:

1) Dissolve the share holder corporation completely and convert it into a small business, modeled as a non shareholder for profit company distributing filmmaker’s work that generates income. This would enable Canyon to streamline its operation and be responsible for a much smaller inventory.

2) Dissolve the corporation and start another organization that is a 501 3(c) non profit and still operates as a distributor. The cost of converting the present company into a non profit is prohibitive and not recommended by all of the legal advice we have received along with our past history of this request to the IRS. We have also been advised by many significant non-profits in the Bay Area that becoming a non profit is by no means a solution for fundraising.

3) Dissolve the company and create a 501 3(c) company that can expand distribution to include all media, and forms of moving imagery. This would include the difficult and expensive project of digitizing the current films in the collection.

4) Find a patron who can donate to Canyon Cinema approx 850 square feet of office/film storage space, saving us almost $25,000 per year. Or find a long term patron that can provide a contribution of $25,000 cash per year for operational expenses.

5) We have explored the possibility of merging with a large more stable organization within the film community such as the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, Pacific Film Archives, Stanford University Media Library. So far these organizations do not have the interest or resources to engage Canyon. There may be other film/art organization that might want to form a relationship with Canyon (possibly outside the Bay Area). The idea is that Canyon’s unique film collection and distribution skills would be preserved under their protection.

Please take a moment to consider these options and what you feel would be in the best interest of Canyon Cinema. What can you personally do to help us at this urgent moment? What resources, connection or contacts can you share with us? We are interested and considering any kind of solution, including relocating from the Bay Area to a less expensive location.

Please email your offers of help, feedback and responses to:

dominic@canyoncinema.com

We have received private donations in the past and can continue to receive such if directed through our fiscal agent the National Alliance of Media Arts Center. Checks can be made payable to this center and mailed directly to:

Canyon Cinema, 145 Ninth Street #260, San Francisco, CA 94103.

Canyon Cinema’s paypal account is info@canyoncinema.

If you have any helpful suggestions please contact dominic@canyoncinema.com

Sincerely,

Dominic Angerame

Executive Director, Canyon Cinema

RIP

2010-12-30T00:21:00.000-08:00

What is there to be said? News articles abound, generally containing accurate info about this very, very special film stock. Kodak announced its discontinuation on June 22, 2009, and the last day you can get your Kodachrome processed (by the indefatigable Dwayne's Photo) is today, Thursday, December 30, 2010.

The photo above shows the one and only roll of 16mm Kodachrome I ever managed to shoot in my life. I bought it a few years ago before I even owned a 16mm camera, and shot it only a month ago or so, and just sent it to Dwayne's two days ago. Very curious about how it'll come out. I also sent six super 8 rolls, from which I expect varying levels of successful/unsuccessful processing - one of them was shot in 1986 by me as a kid, one was shot in 2007 on stock from 1984, and the rest are of more recent vintage, but stored inconsistently over the last couple of years. Hopefully there will be some positive surprises.

In my restoration work, Kodachrome can present some unique issues in duplication via internegative, particularly because it's a direct projection stock, i.e. meant to be viewed/projected as an original. Its higher contrast and unique image qualities mean special steps have to be taken for its successful duplication. Some labs flash the internegative slightly and then pull two stops, to lower contrast. Or one stop. Or 1.5 stops. Or ...? I'm sure there are other tricks of the trade employed at various facilities sensitive to the special needs of Kodachrome, some of them perhaps proprietary secrets, who knows?

I've had the pleasure of working on preserving/restoring various films shot on Kodachrome over the past seven years, and here's a list of some of them off the top of my head (alphabetical by filmmaker name):

Mirror (Gary Beydler, 1974)
Hand Held Day (Gary Beydler, 1975)
The Wonder Ring (Stan Brakhage, 1955)
Gnir Rednow (Stan Brakhage & Joseph Cornell, 1955/late '60s)
The Act of Seeing with one's own eyes (Stan Brakhage, 1971) (some sequences)
Odds & Ends (Jane Conger Belson Shimane, 1958)
Sam Fuller's WWII home movies (Samuel Fuller, 1945) (some rolls)
The Assignation (Curtis Harrington, 1953)
Mother Goose Stories & Fairy Tales (Ray Harryhausen, 1946-1953)
Angel Blue Sweet Wings (Chick Strand, 1966)
Five Film Exercises (John and James Whitney, ca.1944-1946)
Yantra (James Whitney, 1957)
Lapis (James Whitney, 1966) (both Yantra and Lapis projects involved a test approach to digital restoration of the films, which yielded very intriguing results) (collaboration w/ John Whitney Jr.)
Mozart Rondo (John Whitney, 1952)

...not to mention the various avant-garde films that were saved and ONLY preservable/restorable thanks to the existence of a Kodachrome (7387) print. Common through the early '70s, Kodachrome prints were color reversal prints on a variation (?) of Kodachrome, usually meant for printing from lower contrast originals, like ECO (Ektachrome Commercial). Like the camera stock, these prints are gorgeous, and have incredible color stability.

With the introduction of a higher contrast Ektachrome print stock in the early '70s, use of the Kodachrome print stock diminished until it was discontinued altogether in August 1981. But because these 1970s ECO originals are often faded, or originals may be lost, it's the ultra-fine, ultra-stable Kodachrome prints that can alternatively provide the basis for a restoration, to impressively high quality results.

Some films I've worked on that were preserved from (or with the help of) a surviving Kodachrome print include:

Dear Janice (Adam Beckett, 1972) (originals lost) (collaboration w/ iotaCenter)
Evolution of the Red Star (Adam Beckett, 1973) (originals lost) (collaboration w/ iotaCenter)
Heavy-Light (Adam Beckett, 1973) (originals faded) (collaboration w/ iotaCenter)
Los Ojos (Gary Beydler, 1975) (originals lost)
Nothing Happened This Morning (David Bienstock, 1965) (color section only) (originals lost) (still in progress)
Brummer's (David Bienstock, 1967) (originals lost)
The Riddle of Lumen (Stan Brakhage, 1972) (some faded shots in the original)
The Room (Carmen D'Avino, 1958) (originals lost)
A Trip (Carmen D'Avino, 1960) (originals lost)
The Maltese Cross Movement (A.K. Dewdney, 1967) (originals lost)
Bertha's Children (Roberta Friedman & Grahame Weinbren, 1976) (originals faded)
Murray and Max Talk About Money (Roberta Friedman & Grahame Weinbren, 1979) (originals lost)
Now That the Buffalo's Gone (Burton C. Gershfield, 1967) (originals lost) (still in progress)
The Wormwood Star (Curtis Harrington, 1956) (originals lost)
unc. (Bruce Lane, 1966) (originals lost)
Go Oh Wow (Chris Langdon, 1972) (originals lost)
various color trailers (Chris Langdon, ca.1973-74) (originals lost)
The Alphabet (David Lynch, 1967) (originals partially damaged) (still in progress)
Sears Sox (Pat O'Neill, Chick Strand, and Martin Muller, ca.1968) (originals lost)
Mirror People (Kathy Rose, 1974) (originals lost)
Throbs (Fred Worden, 1972) (originals lost)

*

And for those of you who have found yourselves with some Kodachrome you didn't get around to shooting in time for the processing deadline: Remember that Kodachrome can be processed as black and white, so it's not entirely useless now, and I've heard you can get interestingly high contrast results. (In fact, Kodachrome is technically a black and white stock, with the color dye only being created in the processing - this is a large part of why it's so complicated to process.) Or, consider donating an unused box to a local film archive or film museum to be saved as an artifact.

Hope everybody who had wanted to shoot it got to shoot it. Crazy to think of an analog in other arts/media - is there one? I suppose one could lament never having had the chance to shoot on 1/2-inch open reel video, but the decks and cameras still exist and you could always use old stock, which is plentiful, though it might involve taping over something. Obscure forms of printmaking are still doable, as are numerous uncommon photographic processes. You can still paint with centuries-old oil paint recipes if you really want to and people are making absinthe traditionally again. What other art form besides photographic film (and definitely video too) is so technologically dependent as to render entire avenues of creative and/or technological exploration utterly obsolete, unattainable, killed? Then again, Polaroid was saved from this fate by passionate supporters, so maybe there are possibilities for Kodachrome, though I'm very doubtful.

In the meantime, I'm glad I like the 7285 Ektachrome so much (available in 16mm and super 8). It's really quite beautiful, give it a shot if you haven't tried it yet.

Deteriorated 28mm diacetate.

2010-12-07T00:43:00.000-08:00

Not much to say here, other than that these are some particularly nice photos I managed of a badly deteriorated 28mm diacetate print of Les Misérables (maybe the 1917 version?). Broadly speaking, as a format 28mm was more or less killed by the introduction of 16mm in 1923. Enjoy! (?)

This one frame...

2010-11-21T14:58:00.000-08:00

...is the reason why we had to print Ben VanMeter's S.F. Trips Festival - An Opening (1967) without cleaning it, or via a liquid gate printer. But that's OK! Ben is a filmmaker who was particularly attuned to the physical qualities of cinema, and I don't mean just its usual textures and surfaces.

This film was shot on January 21-23, 1966, at the massively significant Trips Festival, which occurred at Longshoreman's Hall in San Francisco. I can't imagine what it must have actually been like to attend, but from all accounts, the Trips Festival was a pretty startlingly rapturous event. All the arts were on display, often intermixed, whether it be light show performance, electronic and tape music, film projections, performances, the Grateful Dead, interactive displays, any number of other possibilities. It was an incredibly extensive interactive multimedia event that allowed attendees and participants to utterly free associate their way through the nearly limitless artistic and aesthetic endeavors then brewing and boiling over from the Bay Area underground.

Ben VanMeter, who had arrived in the Bay Area from Oklahoma in the very early '60s, was already a known filmmaker, having made several significant 16mm shorts that were playing regularly around town and elsewhere on the underground cinema circuit. Ben's approach was in many ways marked by a deep and intuitive lyricism, letting internal and external energies often direct his improvisatory responsive, but disciplined camera, resulting in a free-flowing "river of images" (to quote Robert Nelson) that is beautifully free-associative and ephemeral.

Ben seems to have first (successfully) tried this approach with the remarkable Olds-Mo-Bile (1964) (recently renamed Bolex Peyote Bardo by Ben), a 12-minute b/w film for which Ben intuitively filmed a full roll, rewound it, then filmed over it again, then again, to create unexpected in-camera superimpositions. But it's not a film of total chance - it's a quite successful combination of certain preplanned layer interactions and a basic trust of his own muse, a highly integrated mix of the intentional and the fortuitous.

Although this approach in some ways reached its zenith in Ben's feature Acid Mantra (1968), perhaps the most striking and near-perfect articulation of the technique is to be found in S.F. Trips Festival.

Ben had three camera rolls of 7255 Ektachrome Commercial, which he fully ran through his camera each day of the 3-day Trips Festival. The end result was three 100ft. rolls of film that each had been triple exposed in-camera, each layer of exposure representing a day of the festival. Aside from just two or three necessary structural edits, Ben just spliced the three rolls together essentially unedited. This was then set to a soundtrack that was achieved in roughly the same manner, via triple layering of sound he recorded throughout the festival.

Ben calls the film "a documentary of the Trips Festival from the point of view of a goldfish in the punch bowl." Indeed, it seems that a participatory, impressionistic, kaleidoscopic piece such as this would be the only way to document such an event, in which simultaneity and multimedia (both intentional and accidental) ruled. Ben's dual approach of open and considered pre-structuring, plus an intuitive embrace of the happenstance and unexpected, results in a hypnotic audiovisual cornucopia which nevertheless also does well to document the event in a strange sort of impressionistic semi-clarity. The whole film hovers between kinetic psychedelic light show and home movie informality.

As for preservation of the film (since this blog is about Preservation Insanity)....

Well, the preservation wasn't that insane. Having viewed a 1967 Kodachrome print a number of times, I was surprised to discover the single hand-painted frame shown above once inspecting the film's camera original - I had never noticed it during my viewings of the film. Winding to the same spot on the Kodachrome print, there it was, but really washed out and not very visible. In fact, overall, the Kodachrome print was missing a lot of the original's subtle shadow and highlight detail, which is not surprising, given that the Kodachrome print stock (7387) was gorgeous, but would inevitably gain contrast and lose shadow and highlight detail particularly in a dark, richly colorful film like S.F. Trips Festival.

Color-wise, the Kodachrome print basically looked identical to the original. After talking to Ben, it became clear that we could match the original in terms of exposure, and since his intention in printing the film was essentially to duplicate the original as-is, we didn't seek to color-correct or boost contrast or any other particular thing. Since the one frame of hand-painting meant the original couldn't be cleaned conventionally, I basically just wound through it a few times with a dry velvet, and also checked it carefully throughout for any schmutz or gunk, of which I found none - the original was thankfully quite clean.

FotoKem Labs carefully printed a new polyester internegative, dry gate, without further cleaning, and timed the new print to match the original as closely as possible. We were, in a sense, treating the original as a sort of neutral canvas on which all the recorded events happened in the colors and light/dark relationships as they did. Similar to Gary Beydler's Venice Pier (1976), the original was treated as much as a one-light as possible - the film stock being sort of a scientific control, upon which all the individual events recorded could express themselves as they did, with no additional photochemical or artistic intervention.

Does that make sense? J.J. Murphy's Print Generation (1974), about which I've been promising an entry here for a year or two, is similar - the filmic space is on its essential level a neutral one in which the activity/process unfolds, unblemished and unmodified by additional tinkering. The process by which the film is made is tied to the material in a way that would make any extra superficial changes dishonest and destructive. As freeform as it plays, Ben's film is precisely this as well, so we basically timed the restoration to match the look of the original, hand-painted frame and all.

Incidentally, the hand-painted frame is over what would otherwise be a flash frame. Though there are other flash frames here and there throughout the film, I guess Ben took a liking to this one and decided to decorate it!

Thanks for reading. I'll try to post a bit more regularly than I have been... Let me know if you enjoy this sort of thing! I should do an entry on Ben's Acid Mantra, come to think of it... maybe that'll be up next...

One other note - if you attended the opening night of PFA's Radical Light series on 10/15/2010, you may have seen S.F. Trips Festival, which quietly premiered there in its restored version. But I'll be doing my best to get it around so folks can see it, it's a film I like very much and think many others will too.

Slightly tarnished?

2010-04-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

I've been working with Pacific Film Archive on restoring 8 films by the wonderful Chick Strand. One of them, an early favorite called Waterfall (1967), is comprised almost entirely of hand-processed, solarized, black and white negative. I was surprised to discover, upon winding through the original, that some odd tarnishing/discoloration had occurred in a few spots. This probably gradually developed over the years. An internegative made ten years ago displays these artifacts too, so they've been there for some time. Vintage prints from ca.1972-73 don't have them. At any rate, they're in only a few places, Chick accepted them in the previous internegative, and they're not very out of aesthetic character with the rest of the film, so it was decided to leave them alone. I've attached a photo of the original here so you can check it out.

Another thing to note in this photo - the perforation damage. The last time the original was printed, it was damaged somewhat extensively, but thankfully only resulting in torn perforations - albeit 30ft. of torn perforations. But no image damage. Some of it was edge-taped at the time, some not. At first I was concerned that, even with better tape repairs, the original was too fragile to risk printing again. But realizing the original is entirely double-perf stock (as seen in the photo here), I came up with an alternate solution which would simply involve printing it from heads-to-tails using the other side of the perforations. Normally, this original, which is A-wind, would need to print from tails-to-heads, because of its emulsion position (16mm can have the emulsion on either side in relation to perforation/soundtrack placement). But as it's double-perf, we can do it the other way around too. So the perf damage will still be fixed better, but we won't have to be as freaked out printing it, since we'll be using the undamaged perf side to drive the film through the printer.

One final thing I discovered in working on this film also concerns emulsion position (B-wind vs. A-wind). Upon inspecting some early Kodachrome (7387) prints, I discovered that the original lab that had printed the film (Deluxe Hollywood), had treated the film, not surprisingly, as B-wind. Most 16mm originals are B-wind, and in fact there's a mix of both A-wind and B-wind material in the film, though it's almost entirely A-wind. So when Deluxe originally printed this original, they printed it with the emulsion flopped for almost the whole film, so all the early Kodachrome prints were soft, except for the three or four short shots that were B-wind in the original. (All the other shots printed as slightly soft, because the film was printing through the base rather than emulsion.) When the original was printed again by Chick in the late '90s (at FotoKem this time), they got it right, printing it correctly as A-wind. I didn't want to just assume anything though, so I did a close inspection of several prints and the original, and talked to some folks very close to Chick (she had passed away before I could ask her about this). We all concluded that printing it as A-wind was the better way to go.

My cup runneth over.

2010-03-02T18:48:00.001-08:00

Since Criterion announced the release date of volume two of by Brakhage (May 25), I thought it would be nice to post a number of photos here that relate to it somehow. These 9 images show the ORIGINAL 8mm edited picture roll for reel 4 of 23rd Psalm Branch (1967), a film that is included on the volume two DVD. The original is really quite incredible, having been assembled in a veritably sculptural way, with much rapid cutting and surface modification. It's a wonder that it's still in one piece - in fact, the originals are so far in excellent condition, with no real damage (as of this writing, I've been through 4 of the 10 reels). You'll see hand-painting/-tinting, found footage, heavy cutting, and adhesive pattern applications. The first photo here, of the film on its original reel, hopefully gives you an idea of the amount of attention and energy Stan put into this material.

To Gary Beydler

2010-02-23T17:50:00.001-08:00

The wonderfully poetic and imaginative artist/filmmaker Gary Beydler passed away on January 16, 2010. I had the great fortune to work with him on restoring his films beginning in 2007, but the great misfortune to have never gotten the opportunity to meet him in person. These four images above are from his final film, Venice Pier, which was completed in 1976. Running 16 minutes in length, it's his longest film by far, and also his only sound film. I wanted to share these few images and a telling of the story of its restoration as a tribute to Gary and his work. (This entry will run longer than the usual.)

I first contacted Gary in 2007 to inquire about his films. I had seen Pasadena Freeway Stills and Hand Held Day thanks to David James, and thought they were wonderful works. As I had begun to eagerly search out L.A. filmmakers and their films, I called Gary and asked him where they were kept, if he wanted to deposit them at the archive where I work, and so forth. I found him a very interesting conversationalist, with a great and unexpected sense of sometimes dry, sometimes absurd humor. He did indeed have his films, and he would dig them up and send them to me.

All told, Gary made six films that could be considered finished pieces: Mirror (1974), Pasadena Freeway Stills (1974), Hand Held Day (1975), Los Ojos (1974), Glass Face (1975), and Venice Pier (1976). All are 16mm except Mirror, which was made in super 8. There is something miraculous about each one - in fact, the more I think about them, the more I feel that word really fits. I think anyone who's seen the films will at least partly agree with me on that.

I had only known about four of the films (the first four mentioned above), from an article David James had written in the mid-'70s (David's first published piece ever, he tells me). Glass Face, it turns out, was never really shown, and, like Los Ojos, it's one of Gary's more sweetly silly films, perhaps not as profound as the others, but just as jewel-like and heartfelt in their way.

At first, Gary had only turned up some of his material. Aside from some material for the films I already knew, he told me he had found "this other film I made about the Venice Pier - you probably haven't seen it." He proceeded to describe it to me- he had filmed it over the course of an entire year, shooting at different points on the Venice pier at different times of day, every couple of days. The finished film unfolds as a spatially "correct" procession down the entirety of the Venice pier, but with the shooting chronology all mixed up. Each cut could be a jump forward or backward in time, go from night to day, from September to June to January, rain to sunshine, populated to empty, but always moving forward to the end of the pier, one cement block at a time.

The film sounded amazing to me. Knowing his other films, I automatically trusted Gary's talent and creativity. There was no way this film could be a stinker. I was extremely eager to see it. He sent it to me in the first batch of stuff he found, but it wasn't a print of the film - it was the original picture and sound rolls. He couldn't find the print.

The originals also had the beginnings of vinegar syndrome, a deadly, uncurable disease among acetate film stock. It can potentially be slowed down with good climate-controlled storage, but not stopped. So I was faced with a situation in which I needed to decide if I should spend a good chunk of my allotted preservation money on a film I'd never seen, a film which, though it had shown in a premiere few-week run at an opening Gary had at the Gagosian Gallery, had otherwise never been seen, and certainly never written about at any length. It was more or less a forgotten, invisible film.

Gary had also told me it was his favorite of his films, and he was really bummed that people in 1976 hadn't seemed interested in it. It was his last film - he gave up artmaking and filmmaking soon after that showing. How could I need any more impetus to preserve this film? A master filmmaker, whose favorite and most ambitious of his own films was neglected in its time... there was no question of preserving Venice Pier.

It was incredibly tantalizing - but not very revealing - to hear the full soundtrack, after I had it transferred and reviewed it for dropouts and other problems (using DJ Audio and Audio Mechanics, two great audio houses). The original picture roll, all shot in the same kind of Ektachrome, offered me a look at the imagery from beginning to end - but only on the rewind bench. Knowing the film's concept, the roll of film on the bench made sense to me, but at risk of sounding overly dramatic, I sincerely felt its magic and beauty was still totally unreachable.

The original was in great physical shape, with no damage, other than the vinegar syndrome. I sent it to Colorlab in Maryland, who had done some great work with me on other projects. Meanwhile, a new optical track negative had been created from the sound restoration work, and it was sent to Colorlab as well. After talking to Gary about the color, I told Colorlab to just match the new print to the original - Gary had never manipulated the timing, and wanted to print to look just like he had shot it.

The first print finally arrived, I believe, on August 1, 2008, and it honestly was the most eagerly anticipated screening of my archival career. I grabbed my colleague Joe Lindner, who had been interested in the film as well, and we immediately threaded it up in our small screening room, and watched Venice Pier for the first time.

At this point, it would be ludicrous to try to describe the experience, but the film totally exceeded all of my expectations. It is breathtaking. Almost a year had passed between Gary's first description of the film to me, and my first opportunity to see it, with a fair amount of lab work and waiting in between.

I work on a lot of "well-known" avant-garde filmmakers' work, but I also work on a lot of obscure stuff. It's so hard to figure out sometimes how to get people to take a chance on showing or teaching a film they don't know. When films get preserved that don't have some built-in scholarship behind them, they sometimes need an incredible push to bring them into visibility. New scholarship is urgently needed on previously unwritten histories of forgotten and unknown works. Outside of the academic realm, these works simply need to be shown and seen.

Although Gary is a known filmmaker, Venice Pier is not a known film. But it is an absolute masterpiece. I'm not one to mindlessly promote, and I certainly don't make anything off of doing so, but before Gary died, he eagerly agreed to let prints of his films go to Canyon Cinema as they got preserved, and we were able to get Venice Pier (and Pasadena Freeway Stills) in there, much to his pleasure (and more to come). I hereby enthusiastically challenge those of you that teach and curate film to give this amazing film a chance - show it to students, show it in museums, microcinemas, cinematheques, on rooftops, wherever. It really is as wonderful as it sounds.

It can be rented (on 16mm) from Canyon Cinema. Thanks for reading this extra-long entry.

an ephemeral sculpture

2009-05-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Inga (the artist formerly known as Chris Langdon) and I were going through some of her film, and this one roll of faded 7381-color-print-shot-in-camera-as-negative unspooled in this way that we both thought was pretty magnificent.

Incidentally, Chris Langdon and Fred Worden, when they were at Cal Arts ca.1972-73, completed two films that were shot using print stock rather than camera stock (Now, You Can Do Anything and Venusville), as well as shooting (but never finishing) a third film, called The Boat Show.

I'll be showing a restored print of Venusville on 5/29/09 at the Hammer Museum for those who might be interested to see it. And Now, You Can Do Anything is in the works to be restored by this Fall.

Not about film preservation, but...

2009-02-26T08:56:00.000-08:00

...I was just thinking this might be a fun thing to put up regardless. I find it kind of touching too, so I hope no one thinks it's too frivolous or anecdotal. I feel like this kind of stuff is also really crucial in its way, even if superficially it may seem trivial or indulgent for me to post it here.

In November of 2007 I visited Boulder and Denver to do a whole mess of stuff, although the primary reason for the trip was to spend some time with the Stan Brakhage papers, housed at CU. Aside from finding a lot of documents (particularly lab invoices) that would be extremely helpful to the restoration work on Stan's films, a lot of interesting ephemera related to Stan's life and career. In some cases, I took snapshots of some of this material, even if not relevant to actual preservation work, usually because I found it interesting or helpful to filling in holes in what I knew about Stan's biography during the early-to-mid-'50s in particular, a period of his life I'm very curious about.

A lot of folks who've studied experimental film know that Stan and filmmaker Larry Jordan went to high school together. Here's an article from the school's newspaper following a play they appeared in together. The school is South High, the paper was called (is still called?) The Confederate, and the date of this little article is February 21, 1951. That's Larry on the left, and Stan in the middle.
I just hope you find this sort of curious and sweet, and of historical interest, and I promise I'll get back to focusing on the usual stuff after this.

Hell Spit Flexion.

2009-02-16T21:35:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, I went through pretty much all of Stan Brakhage's 35mm painted originals to figure out what was up with them regarding their condition, production process, and what they might need in terms of preservation.

Now, maybe this is something some people have already noticed, but personally I was surprised to discover that Stan created Hell Spit Flexion (1983) by painting over a 35mm print of The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981). The photo here is of the painted original, and you can see this magenta, faded print of Garden... underneath the paint, particularly in the lower center (as it's oriented in this photo) of the middle frame.

The color in the underlying print of Garden... is faded because, as many of you probably know, Eastman Kodak's color print stock (in particular) had major dye stability problems up to 1982-83, when it was reformulated to "low-fade" LPP stock following a major outcry and ultimatum from dozens of filmmaking luminaries (one of whom was Stan Brakhage).

So there is already a 35mm internegative of the film, made in 1983 from this painted original, which could sensibly be considered an "original negative" of sorts. However, if we decided to go back to this painted original to make a new preservation negative, the faded color of the underlying Garden... print would make it very difficult (or perhaps impossible) to match the original appearance of the film at the time of its making.

Here's another picture from the original, this time of the titlecard. Notice how it's actually made up of the original blank copyright notice frames from Garden... (time to get out your Criterion DVD), except with "Hell Spit Flexion" scratched in, and the copyright year changed (also via scratching) from "1981" to "1983". (For that matter, Hell Spit Flexion is on the Criterion DVD too, as part of The Dante Quartet (1987), although it might be hard to compare, as it's the tiniest part of the Quartet.)

That's all for now... as I said in the previous post, let me know if you think the watermarking thing is OK, or annoying, or ineffectual, or whatever. Thanks!

Enter Brakhage.

2009-02-16T21:18:00.000-08:00

This is a test of sorts.

So far, everything I've posted on this blog in terms of photos/information has been done with the permission of the filmmakers (in some cases, like with Robert Nelson, the permission is implicit).

Marilyn Brakhage and I talked several months ago about starting to put Stan Brakhage related material on this blog as well.

For some time, we've periodically talked about the idea of a major website with lots of info about Stan and all of his work, ever expanding, but that's still a little ways off. (By the way, if you'd be interested in volunteering your help on that hypothetical project, contact me through this blog. Can't promise anything right now, but it'd be nice to gauge interest.)

In the meantime, Marilyn was OK with the idea of posting some stuff here, and I have tons of pictures and info I could share here, not that I want it to become an exclusively Brakhage blog or anything, but it's still quite a lot of fascinating stuff. One particular thing we agreed on would be to watermark the photos somehow, just to keep them from being circulated without some kind of notice of copyright and provenance attached. Fair enough?

So I'll give it a shot here today. I've put a lame, homemade watermark on the photo which will appear in the following post. Hopefully it's not too annoying or intrusive. Please let me know if you have a better suggestion, I'm all ears. What do you think?

Also, when I step back a bit, and take a gander at this blog, I realize that it isn't terribly specifically about film preservation, is it? It's more about unique, weird, amazing, or anomalous findings in the course of my working on the preservation of (primarily) experimental films, frequently having to do with unique production practices.

So should I include more preservation information? Is anybody curious about that kind of stuff and would like more of it? I'm extremely open to suggestions.

Thanks for reading!

Suggestions? Comments? Questions?

2009-02-15T16:36:00.000-08:00

I have no idea how many people look at this blog, especially considering it's so sporadically updated. But sometimes people will mention to me that they check it periodically, so I guess somebody's looking at it.

Anyway, I thought I'd specifically solicit suggestions, request, comments, etc. at this point. Do you have questions about something general or something in particular that I might be able to answer through this blog? Requests for coverage of specific films/filmmakers/questions about film preservation? Random thoughts? General feedback? Students of film archiving are particularly welcome and encouraged.

I'd love to hear from people, both to get a sense of who's actually reading this thing, and with the idea that if people have specific questions or feedback, it'll probably prompt me to update more regularly.

Anyhow, thanks for reading!

-Mark T

P.S. For those of you in the Bay Area, hope you can make it to the SF Cinematheque screening I'll be doing on April 1 at Yerba Buena. It'll be a nice, hefty show of restored experimental works from L.A. in the '60s-'70s. Lots of beautiful and crazy stuff, including films by Thom Andersen, Morgan Fisher, Gary Beydler, Roberta Friedman & Grahame Weinbren, David Wilson, Diana Wilson, Fred Worden, Chris Langdon, and Pat O'Neill.
http://www.sfcinematheque.org/calendar.php

p.p.s. The "cut here" image is from a preservation project I've been working on for Picasso (1973) by Chris Langdon.

Time Squared

2009-02-13T14:29:00.000-08:00

In the meantime, here's the original titlecard for Ed Emshwiller's Thanatopsis (1962), before it was called Thanatopsis:

2009-02-13T14:21:00.000-08:00

OK, I promise a post on Print Generation is still coming, but I'm waiting to get a print from J.J. to fully figure everything out. Ultimately, I'm intending it to be a sort of technical breakdown of the film's production. J.J. said that would be cool - I was worried he would think it would demystify the movie somehow, but he wasn't worried about that.

Also, in an ideal world, I'd make a scan of the same frame from every single generation, which I think would be a pretty amazing demonstration from a technical point of view. If anyone wants to volunteer to do this, drop me a line. Ideally, you're in LA and have time on your hands.

2008-12-18T00:15:00.000-08:00

Coming soon... a post on J.J. Murphy's Print Generation (1973-74)...

Scratch n Sniff?

2008-12-09T23:31:00.000-08:00

Lewis Klahr originally assembled his 1987 film Her Fragrant Emulsion in Super 8 by taking lots of chopped up strips of film and collaging them together with splicing tape. This roll (about 30 or 40 feet in length) was then copied to Super 8 Ektachrome. Lew then constructed his edit for the film from this Ektachrome material.

Lew made quite a few Super 8 films, and had some of them blown up to 16mm, but felt they didn't translate well to the larger medium. He told me that Her Fragrant Emulsion is pretty much the only one that he thought benefited from the blowup, and this is the primary form in which the film has been shown.

Here are some photos I took today of the collaged Super 8 original:

More Insomnia.

2008-11-23T01:15:00.000-08:00

Two more pictures of the original for Fred Worden's 16mm film Insomnia (1981) ...

Insomnia.

2008-11-23T01:10:00.000-08:00

Thought this photo came out pretty well, so I figured I'd share it here. This is a shot of a section of the 16mm original for Fred Worden's film Insomnia (1981). Fred made this film entirely by punching holes into black leader. I can only assume that the title perhaps refers to the sleepless nights during which I imagine Fred made this sucker. Talk about an economical film - after punching the holes (2 different sizes, I think), he struck a 7361 reversal print, and there it was: a movie.

Rental fees.

2008-10-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

I had to share this. For a few years, I had the honor of being the only distribution source for the films of Robert Nelson. As nice as this was, I had wanted him to put the films back into Canyon Cinema (which he co-founded), not just to take some burden off of me, but really to make them a lot more accessible. This was finally done, I think in early 2008. Anyway, sometime in early 2007, Nelson sent me this letter which detailed a plan for rental fees for his films and the various discounts for which interested parties might be eligible. I laughed my ass off when I got this.

About a month later, Bob sent another letter saying the films should instead all be rented for free.

(As it stands now, several of the films are available (not for free) from Canyon Cinema, with additional ones still available through Bob and me via the Academy Film Archive.)

Creative Soundtracking #2

2008-10-19T21:51:00.001-07:00

Another unusual feat of homemade technical wizardry from filmmaker Standish Lawder, whose coffee-can contact printer can be viewed elsewhere on this blog.

When Standish made the film Specific Gravity (ca.1969-70), he only struck one print, and decided to give it a minimal soundtrack by scratching some sound onto the track area of the print (one instance of which is pictured above). This is the only print ever made, and technically the only place the soundtrack exists. When the time comes to preserve this film, I'm happy to say that Standish already gave his permission for me to replicate the scratching on the new prints. I know I could digitally capture the track off of this print and actually make a new soundtrack negative, but that just doesn't seem right.

By the way, as already evidenced here and by his coffee can printer, Standish was one of the more technically self-sufficient experimental filmmakers out there, and sometime around 1970 or 1971, he even obtained a (real) contact printer on which he made his own release prints for his films. All the original release prints for films like Colorfilm, Intolerance (Abridged), and Regeneration were made personally by Standish on his own printer.

Creative Soundtracking #1

2008-10-19T21:42:00.000-07:00

It was pretty much impossible to get a picture that would really show you the extent of this incredible thing. This is a photo of the original edited 1948 35mm positive optical track for the film Muscle Beach, by Joseph Strick and Irving Lerner.

Those of you that know filmmaking and archiving at least a little bit will probably know what a bloop is. Basically, a bloop helps mask the sound of a splice in an optical soundtrack. Usually you cut a "V" shaped notch in the optical track where the splice is, so rather than a "thunk" on the track, you hear (or don't hear) a sort of quick, hopefully graceful absence of sound that would last maybe 1/12th of a second, or even less, depending on what size notch, what film gauge, etc.

This thing, in the photo above, has got to be the longest "bloop" I've ever seen in my life. To be fair, it's not quite a bloop, but a hand-applied tape masking used to create a fade-out/fade-in effect on the soundtrack. What you're seeing above is a small fraction of the actual tape-bloop. It's actually something like 20 feet long from end to end!

Know your enemy.

2008-05-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

I hate hate hate this film.

Ektachrome Commercial, aka ECO. I know a lot of people used it and loved it, and it was especially handy for folks doing optical printing and animation work. It was low contrast, versatile.... But the shit fades like you wouldn't believe. As a preservationist working on experimental film, including MANY filmmakers who used this stuff extensively, the sight of this box makes me a little irritable. You can chalk up the faded color in the film originals for work by Pat O'Neill, Stan Brakhage, Chick Strand, Morgan Fisher, Kathy Rose, Adam Beckett, David Wilson, Peter Rose, Daina Krumins, and many others to the instability of the dyes in this film.

Its precursor - 7255 (pre-1971, I believe) is actually a lot more stable, for which I'm very grateful - the originals for Robert Nelson's 'Oh Dem Watermelons', Morgan Fisher's 'Production Stills', Thom Andersen's 'Melting', and plenty of other films are on 7255, and look pretty close to how they did originally.

But the color fading that occurs with 7252 has compromised the originals of numerous films made from roughly 1971 to the early '80s. This includes films such as Chick Strand's 'Elasticity', 'Guacamole', (and others), Brakhage's 'Unconscious London Strata', most of Pat O'Neill's '70s work including 'Easyout', 'Down Wind', 'Saugus Series', and others, Gary Beydler's 'Pasadena Freeway Stills', David Wilson's 'Stasis', Daina Krumins' 'The Divine Miracle', Will Hindle's 'Pasteur3', and Morgan Fisher's 'Standard Gauge', among many others. Urg.

Art as a subversive film.

2008-01-25T15:35:00.000-08:00

Over the years I've worked with Robert Nelson on the unearthing, preserving, and screening of his films, there has always been an interesting back-and-forth related to his perspective on his own work. He has said that he views his films as "works in progress" in the sense that, at any given time, if he feels he wants to further modify or change or even destroy any of his films, he absolutely reserves the right to do so. In fact, not being hung up on his art (whether film, painting, sculpture, etc.) as being sacred or immutable in some way is part of his pleasure in being an artist.

I totally love and respect this viewpoint, but of course it puts the preservationist side of me at some odds with his efforts. At any rate, just wanted to give some background on this photo.

In the mid-to-late '90s, Nelson started to re-evaluate his entire filmographic output. Many films that he felt were problematic, he attempted to "fix" by re-editing them. A few of these attempts were successful for him, most weren't. Some he didn't even bother with and immediately earmarked them for destruction.

Eventually, everything that he planned to destroy (including also workprints, cut mags, and faded prints, in addition to originals for the aforementioned dismissed works) went into a huge pile. Some of it got shredded in a paper shredder. The rest of it got lacquered and turned into sculptures, several of which are visible in this photo.

May I draw your attention to one stack of film in particular, in the lower left, which has been turned into a stool seat...? When it occurs to him, I'm sure Nelson gets a certain kick out of planting his ass onto what may be the originals for Super Spread (1967) or The Beard (1968) or any number of other destroyed films.

Pasteur3 notes with added value.

2008-01-25T15:17:00.000-08:00

In a can of outtakes from Will Hindle's film Pasteur3 (1976), I found these handwritten notes of his, which basically identify the footage it came with. I was just going to file these away as I usually do with accompanying paper material, when I realized what they were. These notes were written on fragments of the computer cards that fall abundantly from the sky and which Will attempts to organize and sort in his film Chinese Firedrill (1968).

One solution to sound problems.

2007-11-29T02:01:00.002-08:00

(click on image to get a better view)

For some time, Robert Nelson has expressed varying degrees of dissatisfaction about the original soundtrack for his 1967 film The Awful Backlash. Personally, I think it's perfect, and I don't know anyone who really disagrees besides Robert. For now, he's kind of letting it go. Anyway, at one point, he took a rather extreme approach to solving the "sound problem", which was to actually scrape the offending parts of the soundtrack away with a razorblade. In many spots, the picture gets pretty wrecked too. Scott MacDonald once asked Robert for a print to show, and was sent a similarly modified one. Scott, are you reading this? Did you actually end up screening the print?

Casting Shadows

2007-11-29T01:45:00.001-08:00

I think this is a beautiful one. This is the original picture roll for David Wilson's film Casting Shadows. Some of you may know David's work via his Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City (L.A. area). Anyway, he and his wife Diana both made films throughout the '70s (and which I'm working on restoring). This is one of the more obscure ones, which incorporates precisely labeled pieces of white leader as its structuring motif. One result of this approach is a very nice-looking camera original.

A contact printer.

2007-11-28T17:11:00.000-08:00

Homemade contact printer built by Standish Lawder, and used in the making of his films Runaway and Corridor, and possibly part of Roadfilm.

The coffee can contains a regular incandescent light bulb hooked to a dimmer control. The camera is an old 16mm that belonged to Lawder's dad. He made the tension adjustable on its inner workings in order to put several pieces of film multipacked through the film path and the gate.

In the dark, he would bi- or tri-pack raw stock (b/w reversal usually) with existing footage (the running dogs cartoon in the case of Runaway, the corridor footage he shot himself in Corridor). He would then contact print the footage in various ways using different brightness settings on the lightbulb in the coffee can, which would shine its beam through the old flashlight tube into the gate of the camera.

In the case of Corridor, the resulting footage was sometimes further processed, or printed to negative, or hi-con, or whatever. The A/B rolls were then edited from this pile of footage.

Standish also says the coffee can was originally a Chock Full O' Nuts can, but had to be replaced, I think because it got damaged at some point.