<\/p>\n
WEST COAST BEAT
\n<\/b>Friday 13 June 2003, at 7pm
\nLondon Barbican Screen<\/p>\n
VISIONS OF A CITY
\n<\/strong>Larry Jordan, 1957\/78, sepia, sound, 7 min
\n<\/strong>\u201cThe protagonist, poet Michael McClure, emerges from the all-reflection imagery of glass shop and car windows, bottles, mirrors, etc. in scenes which are also accurate portraits of both McClure and the city of San Francisco in 1957. At the same time it is a lyric and mystical film, building to a crescendo of rhythmically intercut shots of McClure\u2019s face, seemingly trapped on the glazed surface of the city. Music by William Moraldo. I don\u2019t think of this as an \u2018early film\u2019 anymore, since it never came together until 1978. Now it\u2019s tight.\u201d \u2014Larry Jordan<\/p>\nSAUSALITO
\nFrank Stauffacher, 1948, b\/w, sound, 10 min
\n<\/strong>\u201cThis film is part \u2018city symphony\u2019 and part \u2018outtakes from an experimental film\u2019. Sausalito is the picturesque waterfront town across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco and has functioned, during times of low rent, as an artists\u2019 colony. It is the kind of place that produces postcard-perfect images from practically any visual perspective: point the camera and the result will be ocean bay, fog, sailboats, waves, seashells, rocky beach, inclined streets, wooden piers, antique shops, dancer\u2019s legs and California shore birds. Stauffacher has combined these elements through a technique of abrupt visual and audio crosscutting and juxtaposition that helps transcend the clich\u00e9d material. Along the way he experiments with slow motion, split-screens and superimposition, all of which are lightened by a constant thread of whimsicality and wit.\u201d \u2014Museum of Modern Art, New York <\/strong><\/p>\nUNTITLED (ALEPH)
\n<\/strong>Wallace Berman, 1958\/76, colour, silent, 10 min
\n<\/strong>\u201cFigure moving through darkness suddenly illuminated in a random harsh light \u2026 Young, hawk-face intensity, straight ahead stare, super cool, zoot suit type attire topped by brush cut hair straight up, with young woman in tight black dress disappearing suddenly in room behind stage \u2026 \u2018Who was that?\u2019 \u2018That\u2019s Wallace Berman\u2019 came the anonymous reply with an authority that implied all had been said.\u201d \u2014Walter Hopps<\/p>\nTHE WHITE ROSE
\n<\/strong>Bruce Conner, 1967, b\/w, sound, 7 min
\n<\/strong>\u201cBegun in 1958, The Rose<\/em> was DeFeo\u2019s almost exclusive obsession for seven years. Composed of one ton of mostly white and grey paint that reaches depths of up to eight inches, The Rose<\/em> is certainly one of the most dense and massive paintings ever made. Nevertheless, the work\u2019s sublimity lies precisely in the fact that, despite this sheer accumulation of matter, it exudes a profound sense of spaciousness and light. Even before it was finished, The Rose<\/em> had acquired legendary status: Dorothy Miller, curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, desperately wanted the work for her landmark exhibition Sixteen Americans (an exhibition which helped to launch the careers of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Louise Nevelson, and Frank Stella), and Bruce Conner made a film, The White Rose<\/em>, about the painting\u2019s removal \u2013 by forklift \u2013 from the artist\u2019s studio in 1965.\u201d \u2014Berkeley Art Museum <\/strong><\/p>\nODDS AND ENDS
\n<\/strong>Jane Belson, 1958, colour, sound, 5 min
\n<\/strong>\u201cLive action and animation are combined into a total abstract structure. The accompanying narration [by Henry Jacobs] is a tongue-in-cheek dissertation on poetry and jazz, in which an anonymous, eminent and indefatigable rationalist talks himself into a corner. \u2018I don\u2019t know just what to say other than that I have been extremely impressed with the works of other filmmakers and I just got high and put it together\u2019.\u201d \u2014Amos Vogel, Cinema 16, quoting Jane Belson Conger<\/p>\nTHE END
\n<\/strong>Christopher MacLaine, 1963, b\/w & colour, sound, 35 min
\n<\/strong>\u201cWhat MacLaine did for money, God only knows \u2013 begged on the streets, mooched, finally robbed and stole. I use both \u2018robbed\u2019 and \u2018stole\u2019 because he had both these qualities of a thief. He was always desperate. He sang and read poetry in the bars. He read poetry with jazz when that became popular toward the end of the Beat movement in the late 1950s. He always thought of himself as a poet. His poems, however, were out-spewings of rage and wrathfulness. His conversation was always more poetic than his poems. But the man had an innate and powerful sense of rhythm, and that was the main strength of his poetry. I don\u2019t think he really wrote poetry; but he tried to be a poet in a way very similar to Artaud, and he failed for similar reasons. I do not know if MacLaine ever thought of himself as the \u2018Artaud of San Francisco\u2019, but he certainly did have an affinity with him: he courted madness and he finally got it.\u201d \u2014Stan Brakhage, Film at Wit\u2019s End
\nNB: <\/em>New prints of all four films by Christopher MacLaine\u2019s will be presented in a Lux touring programme in the autumn<\/em><\/p>\nKINO DA!
\n<\/b>Henry Hills, 1981, b\/w, sound, 4 min<\/strong><\/p>\nKINO DA! (ah, ke, ke) KINO DA!
\nThe Dead die die dada low king quanto zong
\nMOVE! (ur, ur)
\nGrey todays it-a clear to the quick ear, quicker z\u2019heels
\nThe Poe (pay, po, pee, pick-pick), nuf of \u201cD\u201d yet
\nCall Vertov
\n(beep, beep)
\nEisenstein even
\n& viterulably cheeness of a ram innerwear
\n(airs; hen)
\nTime, Time, Money
\nd-d-d-
\njunk rock did travel & falls
\n(spring)
\nFall
\nSpring is the simplest inflationary dime.
\nBe in everything Joy, in experimental & (thus)
\nproletarian & wwea air of airs
\nat this school of po\u2019try-painting
\nCUT!<\/p>\n
To know
\ntoe
\nno! no! MONTAGE (nadazha), in any instant
\n(instant) of the writing of Stein & the facts of that
\n(tle) kind.
\nFEEL IT! (the steak)
\nyes, ache, in trends & whatevers.
\nMmmm-pah-ah Cops, man in case (nnn), man
\nnnn.
\n(KO) be-a mayu po pony;
\n.(KO) be-a (what?) o-long kind.<\/p>\n
GO! (be what) OM, prose, Pentacost; be what this there the (pause) & (serious pause) the neb with a gram of ire illia-it\u2019s still justs Jah.<\/p>\n
Viparko r-rrr re ad adici, yes!
\nYES!<\/p>\n
ssssssssssane!
\nmmmm keybo z\u2019Kruchchev.<\/p>\n
Back to top<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WEST COAST BEAT Friday 13 June 2003, at 7pm London Barbican Screen The cellular, celluloid merger of the literary and artistic underground, featuring Michael McClure, Jack Hirschman, Henry Jacobs, Jay DeFeo, Wallace Berman, Christopher MacLaine. Beat Poets + Beat Artists = Beat Cinema. Larry Jordan, Visions of a City, 1957\/78, sepia, sound, 7 min Frank […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california-sound-california-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}