Heavy Rotations

This Thursday evening SFMoMA continues to make good on their 75th birthday celebration agenda with an essential assortment of astonishing Bay Area films from the late 40's and early 50's.

Posse includes Harry Smith, James Broughton, Frank Stauffacher, Sidney Peterson, and Jordan Belson.

Optical Benches/Optical Minds. When abstract was handmade and impossible-looking and deeply, deeply in orbit.

And the Belson stuff on film? That living light? That straight up dialogue with - gulp - essence? Actually non-negotiable.

Be There.

Harry Smith, Heaven and Earth Magic Feature, 1957-1962

Jordan Belson, World, 1970

Admittedly, it's totally tragic to be missing maniac guitar savant Bill Orcutt performing the same evening at the Hemlock. What is this? San Francisco supplying TWO blockbuster events simultaneously? Unthinkable!

Get a load of his electro-blues-howl-paroxysm. Have you ever heard anything as good as this before?

Cinematic McFlurry

Dear me!
Bruce McClure multi-projector performance tonight via Cinematheque.

Kind of like the avant/industrial Ghost of Christmas 2040 takes Lincoln Center with a stage production of In Cold Blood. You and all your cousins are there, completely freaking out. Kind of Reznoresque -- fine -- but just round up! Pleasantly overworked 3D sensory pummlation.

His introduction was bizarro comic gold, made even warmer by his super comfy-looking red polar fleece jacket. Now can I finally get one? What am I even talking about?

Amazingly, Chris and I BOTH saw this bearded dude from within the depths of the big screen dissonance. See him? That dude right there with the beard?

Way to make it happen on your camera phone, good buddy!