Magic Lantern Lives!
End-of-summertime greetings to you! We’re getting ready for another season of thematically-curated experimental film/video screenings here at Magic Lantern, and I’m happy to announce that what was once the product of my own skull is rapidly transforming into a broader endeavour in collective curation. The Fall line-up will feature 6 programs in total programmed by 5 different souls, including myself, Providence filmmakers Jo Dery and Mike Stoltz, PhD student Erika Balsom, and visiting filmmaker/curator Noel Lawrence (at Magic Lantern on 10/25 – you can read about him here: www.jxarchive.org/enigma2.html). You can expect such diverse programs as “The Transcendant Show,” “The Animation Show, Part 2,” “The Peep Show,” “The Hollywood Show,” and more, as well as a brand new crop of silkscreen posters made by local Providence artists (the back catalogue of posters is visible at www.magiclanterncinema.com/posters.htm, and there are still a fair number of them available for purchase).To get things started right, Mike Stoltz will be presenting “The Danger Show” on September 13th, and I’m certain that the mix of safety films, slow-motion documents of horses-on-fire, flicker films, and the like will usher in a New Film Renaissance in Providence, RI. Failing that, it’ll at least be a lovely show.- Ben Russell* * * *
Magic Lantern Presents “The Danger Show” Wednesday the 13th of September at 9:30pm at the Cable Car Cinema (204 South Main Street, Providence, RI) Summer is gone and the trees shall be emptying their branches soon enough, but before you start growing your beard long(er) and digging a(nother) root cellar in anticipation of Cold Days To Come, pause and take a look around you. Do you feel that electric charge in the air? Is your arm hair standing on end? That’s the spark of Danger, my friend, and it takes but a tiny falling leaf (on fire) to Set Things Ablaze. We’d say “Take Warning,” but we at Magic Lantern reckon it’s better to throw you directly to the wolves. We’re sure you’ll come out unscathed, and when you emerge from this 7-part celluloid-gauntlet of cut-out eyes, cut-off tongues, industrial safety films, the threat of Communism, horses on fire, skyscraper tilt-walkers, a pinhole apocalypse, and people not having sex, you’ll never have a thing to worry about again. And if you don’t make it? Well, I’m afraid that the same statement applies…
Featuring: I Know What I’m Doing and Other Shop Myths by UIC (5:00, 16mm, 1970), Paranoia Trillogy Part One: The Chemical Bath by Xander Marro (6:00, 16mm, 2001), Dream of the Wild Horses by Denys Colomb de Daunant (9:00, 16mm, 1960), NOEMA by Scott Stark (11:00, 16mm, 1998), Spills and Chills by the Vitaphone Corporation (10:00, 16mm, 1949), Seventy-Nine Spring Times of Ho Chi Minh by Santiago Alvarez (25:00, 16mm, 1969), T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G by Paul Sharits (12:00, 16mm, 1968), Last Days by Ben Russell (5:00, 16mm, 2004),
TRT 83:00
$5
SUMMARY
I Know What I’m Doing and Other Shop Myths by UIC (5:00, 16mm, 1970)Rejecting the condescending tone and heavy-handed presentation of traditional didactic works, this fast-paced, witty satire on carelessness in the shop presents a unique departure in safety films. Drawing upon the tradition of black humor, the film presents a barrage of typical shop accidents.
Paranoia Trilogy Part One: The Chemical Bath by Xander Marro (6:00, 16mm, 2001)
Ghost eyes roll back from a negative green version of the Afterworld, echoing out the high hymns of magtape angels over a reel-to-reel mash-up of the Shirelles and the Suicidal Tendencies. Made as part of the 24-Hour Moviemaking Experiment at the Dirt Palace in Providence, RI.
Dream of the Wild Horses by Denys Colomb de Daunant (9:00, 16mm, 1960) Cinematic poem using slow-motion and soft-focus camera to evoke the feelings of the wild horses of the Camargue roaming on the beach and in the water, a mixture of hallucination and reality as the animals try to escape a fire surrounding them.
