Songs of the Unsung curated by David Schwartz

LOOSE ENDS, LOOSE CORNER, AND MORE: Films by Chick Strand, Marie Menken, Storm DeHirsch, and Anita Thacher

LOOSE ENDS, LOOSE CORNER, AND MORE:

Films by Chick Strand, Marie Menken, Storm DeHirsch, and Anita Thacher

The shelves of the Film-makers’ Coop are filled with rarely-screened treasures; the dazzling, inventive 16mm films in this selection are all by women artists. The 79-minute program is part of the ongoing series Songs of the Unsung, programmed by David Schwartz, former Chief Curator of Museum of the Moving Image. The program includes three short works by California filmmaker Chick Strand: Loose Ends (1979, 25 mins.), a collage film about how we process the information that bombards us from the media and personal experience; Fake Fruit Factory (1986, 22 mins.), an intimate documentary about Mexican women who make papier mache fruit and vegetables, focusing on the color, music, and movement, but mainly on gossip and comradery; and Kristallnacht (1979, 8 mins.), a fragile vision of unearthly beauty, dedicated to Anne Frank, with the play of starlight off water and the sounds of animals evoking a lost Eden. Eden is vibrantly alive in Marie Menken’s Glimpse of the Garden (1957, 5 mins.), a lush montage with extreme closeups of boldly colored flowers. Storm DeHirsch’s kinetic and trippy Peyote Queen (1965, 9 mins.) is a mindblowing film made with abstract imagery drawn directly on the film. “Among my favorites...beauty and excitement.” (Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice.) And Anita Thacher’s brilliant and playful Loose Corner (1986, 10 mins.) is a Magritte-like marvel, as a man, woman, child, and dog encounter boxes and objects that take on impossible proportions and features. Like all the films in this program, it uses its artistry to shift and startles our perceptions.

 

Charles S. Cohen Screening Room

475 Park Avenue, 6th Floor

Suggested donation: $10

RSVP: filmmakerscoop@gmail.com to reserve your seat