Associations is titled after John Smith’s 1975 film, a joyfully dense rebus-like image-word construction. Smith’s film is preceded by Sara Kathryn Arledge’s rarely seen 1958 work What is A Man, a film years ahead of its time, and Mark Toscano’s 2012 piece Releasing Human Energies, which utilizes film laboratory test footage of a “China Girl” set to a found text read by Morgan Fisher. The program also features Abigail Child’s classic 1989 film Mercy, from her celebrated “Is This What You Were Born For?” series; canonical works by Phil Solomon, Barbara Hammer, Robert Breer, and Robert Nelson; and two recent restorations: the humorously poignant Confessions by Curt McDowell and Akbar, Richard Myers’ extraordinary 1970 portrait of young black filmmaker and student, Akbar Ahmed.
A film about control. A refinement of energy for purposes of conserving resources, materials, impetus, potential, so they might all be narrowly channeled toward an unquestioned goal of maximum profit with minimum waste.
“Imagery and dialogue stimulated by Finnegan’s Wake. It is a satire with undertones of the cosmic spirit.” – Sara Kathryn Arledge
Images from magazines and colour supplements accompany a spoken text taken from “Word Associations and Linguistic Theory” by Herbert H Clark.
“A kinetic film sketch designed to involve the viewers muscles. The rocky seaside cliffs near Stinson Beach, California, hold the wrecked carcass of a #52 pickup that is a rusting monument to Hot Leatherette.” (RAN)
A popular lesbian “commercial,” 110 images of sensual touching montages in A, B, C, D rolls of “kinaesthetic” editing.
It’s a love story, with the usual dashing figures and old habits of spelling, repetition and listing.
A meditation on memory, burial and decay – a belated kaddish for my father.
“… a typically bravura and delightful display of simple objective forms flashing, rotating, and dissolving into abstraction ….” – J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
“Just as outrageous is Curt McDowell’s Confessions. McDowell, a graduate student at San Francisco Art Institute, opens his film with a confession to his mother and father, listing in exhausting detail his sins of the flesh.”
To paraphrase something Lao Tzu didn’t say: This film’s an empty cup — You fill it up.
Mercy, the last in the series, is encyclopedic ephemera, exploring public visions of technological and romantic invention, dissecting the game mass media plays with our private perceptions.
A friendly, lively, exciting portrait of a very extraordinary person from Akron, Ohio.
