A ‘View’ to a Thrill
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
For 11 years, the New York Film Festival has paid tribute to experimental and avant-garde cinema with its custom-tailored side series “Views From the Avant-Garde,” a two-day event specially curated by Mark McElhatten and the editor of Film Comment, Gavin Smith. In its earliest years, the series featured four programs of avant-garde works, including collections of short films organized by similarities in theme, structure, and mood.
But as the incoming rush of experimental and groundbreaking films has grown each year, so has the “Views” schedule. Eleven programs will screen this weekend, kicking off Saturday afternoon with a nine-film program titled “From the Canyons to the Stars” and concluding Sunday evening with a three-film program dubbed “Memories.”
Standing out among this year’s pack are two longtime favorites of the series, Peter Hutton and Robert Beavers, both of whom return with uniquely personal projects, as well as a slate of notable newcomers who have impressed Mr. McElhatten with their skills and commitment to their craft. Mr. Hutton has earned renown for his landscapes, his experiments with mixing still and moving images, and his recent explorations into the ways color and black-and-white imagery can interact. This year, he returns to the “Avant-Garde” program with the 60-minute “At Sea,” for which he has turned his attention to the notion of time, and more specifically to his memories as a merchant seaman in Thailand during the 1970s.
“It marks one of Hutton’s strongest achievements,” Mr. McElhatten said. “It follows the physical life of a container ship from birth to death, from its manufacture and christening in South Korea to its dereliction and destruction at the hands of ship-wreckers in Bangladesh.”
A similarly autobiographical streak can be found in this year’s Robert Beavers program, particularly in his film “Pitcher of Colored Light,” which uses the home of Mr. Beavers’s mother to evoke the sensations of tranquility, loneliness, and the passing of time.
“As with all the films in his current series, ‘My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure,’ there is meticulous editing and exquisite images that work together in a lapidary manner — reiterated and elaborated, with relationships and ideas formed through visual similes and rhymes,” Mr. McElhatten said. “This new film is a little bit different in that it is so clearly personal and autobiographical.” In a lengthy explanation of the film, printed in the festival catalog, Mr. Beavers takes this notion of personal reflection one step further: “A voice within the film speaks to memory. The walls are screens through which I pass to the inhabited privacy.”
In many ways, the larger function and purpose of the “Views From the Avant-Garde” program can be seen in the arc of Mr. Beavers’s career. Once nearly impossible to view, his films have only recently become a staple of the independent filmmaking conversation. Enjoying major retrospectives at the Whitney Museum and the Tate in London, as well as screenings at numerous major film festivals, Mr. Beavers’s work has moved from the shadows of the artistic establishment into the spotlight.
“But for many years, one of the few places Robert would show was ‘Views,'” Mr. McElhatten said, noting the ways that the avant garde community has grown and evolved since his first NYFF series in 1996. During the last decade, the number of film festivals dedicated
to showing only avant-garde works, and the growth in the number of avant-garde programs to be found at major international festivals, has exploded.
All of which means that the “Views” sidebar is not the anomaly it once was. But more important, it no longer has to bear the burden of being a filmmaker’s sole point of access to the larger filmmaking community. Instead, the series can focus on unearthing new talent and engaging larger discussions about where avant garde filmmaking stands today, and where it can go in the future. One notable trend in the last decade has been the evolution of digital video, not only in terms of its acceptance by curators and film festivals and its adoption by filmmakers who established themselves on celluloid, but also in terms of the way its low cost has opened up the genre to far more artists. The result has been a fascinating hybrid of styles: established filmmakers embracing new technology, younger artists developing entirely new styles of digital manipulations, and other directors lashing out against the trend and returning to, or remaining with, film-based projects.
The back-and-forth can be seen in some of the films that Mr. McElhatten is most excited about this year. On one end of the spectrum, he sees established artists returning to the basics. Ken Jacobs, who has moved to making digital films, will arrive this year with a live cinema performance, accompanied by musician and sound artist Rick Reed. Phil Solomon, once hailed by the icon Stan Brakhage as the best filmmaker of his generation, returns to the city after a five-year hiatus with a new work that merges his classic, cerebral style with the modern video game “Grand Theft Auto,” which he uses as a springboard for a dizzying dreamscape. Elsewhere, Jeanne Liotta delivers a traditional work called “Observando El Cielo,” which observes stars and constellations of the night sky without the use of optic aids or telescopes.
On the other side of the spectrum is a wave of burgeoning filmmakers looking to make their mark. Chief among them is Michael Robinson, who fuses pop culture references — from music to video games to magazines — into a cryptic effect, and the self-styled “loose-cannon culture-jammer cum gonzo auteur” Damon Packard, whose latest work is a surrealistic sequel combining the worlds of “Logan’s Run” and “1984.”
“He is concerned with paranoia and the Hollywood Film Industry — a former Spielberg idolater turned apostate,” Mr. McElhatten said. “He began making films in earnest at age 11. And his magnum opus, the redoubtable ‘Reflection of Evil,’ has to be seen to be believed. No description could do him or his work justice, and his latest, ‘SpaceDisco-One,’ is no exception. It is sure to divide the house and have repercussions for years to come.”
While Sunday night closes with works from such masters as Mr. Beavers and Eugene Green, Saturday’s final slot, which offers Mr. Packard’s sure-to-shock bombshell, will offer avant-garde filmmaking at its most explosive and lay the groundwork for another year of innovation.