The 20th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival
A Production of Chicago Filmmakers

June 19-22, 2008

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SCHEDULE OVERVIEW:

Tuesday, June 17:  Focus Pull Exhibition Opens at Gallery 400

Wednesday, June 18:  Focus Pull Opening Reception at Gallery 400 (5:00-8:00pm)
Wednesday, June 18:  Onion City Kick-Off Party at Sonotheque (9:00pm-2:00am)

Thursday, June 19: Opening Night Program at the Gene Siskel Film Center (8:00pm)

Friday, June 20: Ben Russell Screening at The Nightingale (7:00pm)
Friday, June 20: Shana Moulton Screening at The Nightingale (9:00pm)

Saturday, June 21: Group Show 1 at Chicago Filmmakers (4:00pm)
Saturday, June 21: Group Show 2 at Chicago Filmmakers (7:00pm)
Saturday, June 21: Group Show 3 at Chicago Filmmakers (9:00pm)

Sunday, June 22: Group Show 4 at Chicago Filmmakers (3:30pm)
Sunday, June 22: Group Show 5 at Chicago Filmmakers (6:00pm)
Sunday, June 22: Group Show 6 at Chicago Filmmakers (8:00pm)

Wednesday, June 25: Sight-Lines Screening at Gallery 400 (7:00pm)

Saturday, July 5: Focus Pull Exhibition closes

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FOCUS PULL: Onion City Off-Screen
Exhibition at Gallery 400
Presented by Onion City and Gallery 400
Tuesday, June 17 - Saturday, July 5

Opening Reception: Wednesday, June 18, 5:00-8:00pm

FOCUS PULL: ONION CITY OFF-SCREEN is a complimentary exhibit to the 20th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival. Designed to bring attention to other creative outlets by artists in the experimental film and video community, it also demonstrates that the long tradition of cross-medium practice of avant-garde filmmakers is still strong and growing. All of the works in the show benefit from focused attention and their seeming simplicity opens up to deeper meanings and subtle details.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord [NEBRASKA]
Single channel video projection
Jon Jost, US
“At Play In the Fields of the Lord [NEBRASKA] is a meditation piece, an homage to the American plains and the Omaha tribe of Nebraska.  It was made while living in Lincoln Nebraska, and working on a project in the Nebraska Sandhills, around Valentine.” (Jon Jost)

Hanky Panky January 1902
Single channel video
Ken Jacobs, US
"This film marks the invention of human sexuality and as such figures as an important turning point in the course of human affairs." (Ken Jacobs)

Jacobs “animates” a turn-of-the-century stereoscopic photograph to bring life to a frozen moment of Victorian-era titillation.

Basket
Single channel video
Nicky Hamlyn, UK
“Characteristic of Nicky Hamlyn's work, Basket is a transformative representation of an everyday object. A yellow clothes peg basket hanging on a washing line moves steadily in the wind, the permutations of it twists and turns being optically intensified by the low resolution camera it was recorded on.” (William Rose)

PIN WHOLE SERIES Application 1: Bulb
16mm projector installation
Jorge Lorenzo, Mexico
“When this handmade film is screened, the lens of the projector is off. It is a 16mm magnetic sound film-loop, pinholed frame by frame. Every pinhole is made in a different place within each frame in order to made a reading of the light coming from the bulb of the projector from a slightly different angle every time. Thus, the reflection of the bulb comes through the holes producing the effect of animation, a live one, that is.” (Jorge Lorenzo)

Collage Works from Films
Paper collage
Lewis Klahr, US
Eight collage works from films by the acclaimed animator Lewis Klahr. Klahr’s work is haunted by the ghosts of mid-century America, where Playboy-chic meets film noir paranoia.

Gallery 400 is located at 400 S. Peoria St. on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 10:00am - 6:00pm; Saturday, 12:00-6:00pm.

Sight-Lines
Companion Screening at Gallery 400
Wednesday, June 25, 7:00pm

Featuring Jerry Takes a Back Seat, Then Passes Out of the Picture (1987, 11 mins.) by Ken Jacobs; Pistrino (2003, 9 mins.) by Nicky Hamlyn; Muktikara (1999, 11 mins.) by Jeanne Liotta; Soft Ticket (2004, 7 mins.) and Engram Sepals (2000, 6 mins.) by Lewis Klahr; and Spectre Mystagogic (1957, 8 mins.) by Larry Jordan (showing in a brand new restored print).

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Wednesday, June 18, 9:00pm-2:00am

ONION CITY KICK-OFF PARTY!
At Sonotheque (1444 W. Chicago Ave.)

Join us at one of Chicago’s hottest spots for an evening of music, visuals, and fun as we kick off the 20th edition of Onion City in style.  Sneaks of some of the work in the festival and other visual delights will be running through out the night and the music will be jumping. From 11pm-2am Chicago musician (from the great local band Roomate) and videomaker Kent Lambert will be our DJ.

At 10:30, Milwaukee-based film and video maker Brent Coughenour will perform The Indomitable Human Spirit, a live audio-visual performance for thumb piano, video game controller and computer. Incorporating a broad array of audio and video analysis and synthesis strategies, the piece creates a hinted and tenuous relationship between sounds and images, between abstract and concrete, between performance gesture and software response.

$4.00 Svedka cocktail drink special courtesy of Sonotheque.
Admission is free (but a $5.00 suggested donation is appreciated). Cash bar. You must be 21 to attend.

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Thursday, June 19, 8:00pm at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N. State St.)
OPENING NIGHT PROGRAM

The Rabbit Hunters (2007, 23 mins., video, Portugal): In this coda to his magnificent feature Colossal Youth, Pedro Costa continues his incisive look at the lives of the downtrodden Cape Verdians living on the outskirts of Lisbon.

Last Days in a Lonely Place (2007, 20 mins., video, US): Using material taken entirely from the Grand Theft Auto video game, Phil Solomon creates a haunting and moody world teetering at the edge of apocalypse.

Observando El Cielo (2007, 19 mins., 16mm, US): Jeanne Liotta limns heaven and earth though seven years of time-lapse recordings of the night sky in this visually lush and magical film.

Easter Morning (2008, 10 mins., video, US): A lyrical delight by the great Bruce Conner, featuring music by Terry Riley.

The Dike of Transience (2005, 13 mins., 35mm, Hungary): The inhabitants of a small village live under the threat of the destruction of a nearby dam, in this charming and beautifully photographed film by Gyula Nemes.

Our Lady of the Sphere (1969, 10 mins., 35mm, US): A wonderful and strange animated classic by Larry Jordan, showing in a new 35mm blow-up.

The Hyrcynium Wood (2007, 3 mins., video, UK) and We the People (2007, 1 min., video, UK): These two atmospheric shorts by Ben Rivers explore tropes from classic horror films.

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Friday, June 20, 7:00pm at The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Co-presented by The Nightingale

ETHNOGRAPHIC ASIDES: FILMS BY BEN RUSSELL
Ben Russell in Person!

For nearly a decade, film and video maker Ben Russell has been pushing the boundaries and definitions of ethnographic film, peeking in the corners and skirting along the margins to explore subjects and cross-genre approaches to illuminate and raise questions about this field and the idea of representation more generally. Working primarily in an experimental mode, his films have a rigor in their approach, a formal beauty uncommon to ethnography, and frequently display a sly humor at odds with an area of investigation traditionally rooted in the sciences.

Black and White Trypps Number Four (2008, 11 mins., 16mm, US): "Using a 35mm strip of motion picture slug featuring the recently deceased American comedian Richard Pryor, this extended Rorschach assault on the eyes moves out of a flickering chaos created by incompatible film gauges into a punchline involving historically incompatible racial stereotypes." (BR)

Trypps #5 (Dubai) (2008, 3 mins., 16mm, US): A small detail of consumer society raises big questions.

Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai) (2008, 8 mins.. 16mm, US): "103 years later, a(nother) remake of the Lumière Brothers pseudo-actuality film La Sortie des usines Lumière.  This time around our factory is a job site, a construction site peopled by thousands of Southeast Asian laborers, a neo-Fordist architectural production site that manufactures skyscrapers like so many cars." (BR)

The Wet Season [Tjúba Tén] (Co-directed by Ben Russell and Brigid McCaffrey, 2007, 47 mins., 16mm, US/Suriname): "An experimental ethnography recorded in the jungle village of Bendekondre, Suriname at the start of 2007. Composed of community-generated performances, re-enactments and extemporaneous recordings, this film functions doubly as an examination of a rapidly changing material culture in the present and as a historical document for the future. Whether the resultant record is directed towards its subjects, its temporary residents (filmmakers), or its Western viewers is a question proposed via the combination of long takes, materialist approaches, selective subtitling, and a focus on various forms of cultural labor." (BR)

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Friday, June 20, 9:00pm at The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Co-presented by Chicago Cinema Forum and The Nightingale

CYNTHIA'S MOMENT - Screening and Live Performance
With Shana Moulton in Person!

The work of Brooklyn-based videomaker and artist Shana Moulton might be considered post-post-modern: while she uses odd detritus of pop culture - Angela Lansbury work out videos, Crystal Light drink mix, dimestore tchotchkes, Donald Duck educational cartoons, and more - her videos and performances are infused with an unexpected sincerity rather than the usual distancing irony. Her alter-ego Cynthia is searching for some kind of meaning in her life and, despite her eccentricities and attraction to self-help and new age remedies, Moulton treats her with respect and a sympathetic understanding of her desires. Moulton seemingly lives through her character in some ways and invites the audience to question their own wants and desires by welcoming them to share in Cynthia's Moment.

Electric Blanket Temple Altar (2005, 6 mins., video)
A self-help book guides the reader through a series of self-esteem exercises that culminate in a theosophical theory of electricity. Scenes from the reader's life illustrate the effect these exercises have on reality.

Whispering Pines #8 (2006, 8 mins., video)
Fueled by the sugar-free drink Crystal Light, Cynthia methodically fills a vase with alchemical home decorating items. Once her project is completed, Cynthia is again left to dwell in her thoughts. Suddenly a ladder grows out of the vase. Cynthia climbs the ladder and, through a trap door, enters an ecstatic rave complete with a techno remix of the Crystal Light commercial music.

Whispering Pines #4 (2007, 12 mins., video)
This installment of Whispering Pines follows the artist's character, Cynthia, on a quest for relief from her carpal-tunnel. She visits an Avon lady/medicine woman in the forest and receives a series of treatments, including sound medicine from seashell and pinecone
headphones, a reflexology hand massage and a makeover. Having gained a new sense of physical liberation from the Avon lady's remedies, Cynthia removes her clothes and runs into the forest where her nude but fractal covered body performs an ecstatic dance.  After collapsing, she becomes transported to the abstracted world from Disney's 1959 cartoon, Donald in Mathmagic Land. The disembodied Cynthia takes Donald's place in this version and discovers that understanding math is the key to understanding nature, the physical world and her body.

Body ÷ Mind + 7 = Spirit (15 mins., live performance with video)
Moulton brings Cynthia and her strange world to life through live performance and projected video, creating a unique experience that is equal parts personal growth workshop, dance recital, instructional video and fairytale. Cynthia, an anxiety-ridden hypochondriac, wears clothing embedded with medical devices and surrounds herself with inspirational new age knickknacks in order to cope with her life. Through her banal home decorations, Cynthia searches for fulfillment, purpose and salvation. Her struggles with the mundane, the eclectic and the disposable offer a unique perspective on the relationship between spirituality and consumerism in contemporary society.

Feeling Free with 3D Magic Eye Remix (9 mins., live performance with video)
Appropriating a dated exercise video hosted by actress Angela Lansbury, Feeling Free presents a woman, played by Moulton, who attempts to follow the televised workout in her living room even as elements of her home decor begin to appear onscreen. Deriving its title from an inspirational segment of Lansbury's program, Feeling Free subjects the appropriated footage to eccentric visual and audio displacements, culminating in a psychedelic dance sequence set to a remix of the program's insipid theme song.

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Saturday, June 21, 4:00pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP SHOW 1

Bachelor Machines Part 1                         
Rosalind Nashashibi (2007, 30 mins., 16mm, UK): A cargo ship traveling from Italy to Sweden is the focus of Nashashibi’s stunning experimental documentary.. The film combines an observation of a closed community - the crew - with the attribution of anthropomorphic characteristics to the ship itself.
Bachelor Machines Part 2                         
Rosalind Nashashibi (2007, 5 mins., 16mm x 2, UK): A double-projection, in which the artist Thomas Bayrle discusses the invention of the machine (in particular, the diesel engine) as a materialization of the desires once conveyed abstractly through the repetition of the rosary.
Revisiting Solaris                                              
Deimantas Narkevicius (2007, 18 mins., video, Lithuania): “More than forty years after Andrej Tarkovskij's Solaris, actor Donatas Banionis revisits his role as Chris Kelvin in a film based on the last chapter of Lem's original book, which was left out of Tarkovskij's version. In this chapter, Kelvin reflects on his brief visit to the "soil" of the planet Solaris shortly before his return from the space mission.” (Ann Arbor Film Festival)
Strange Attractors
Michael Wechsler (2008, 7 mins., video, US): The insertion of the digital into the natural world raises questions about borders and boundaries.
Missing
Riccardo Iacono (2007, 4 mins., video, UK, North American Premiere): Airing one’s dirty laundry in public takes on a whole new meaning in this performance video.
Take into the air my quiet breath            
The Speculative Archive [Julia Meltzer and David Thorne] (2006, 17 mins., video, US): An architect in Damascus recounts the 30-year on-again, off-again fate of a building site, weaving in personal history and changes in Syrian society along the way.
(81 mins.)

Saturday, June 21, 7:00pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP SHOW 2

This program is dedicated to Zack Stiglicz (1952-2007), filmmaker, video artist, painter, teacher, husband, and friend. Zack’s insatiable curiosity, boundless energy, passion for art and teaching, and provocative and questioning spirit will be missed by all who knew him.

Armoire                                                        
Vincent Grenier (2007, 3 mins., video, US): A playful and disarmingly simple video about a bird in a box.
Antigenic Drift
Lewis Klahr (2007, 17 mins., video, US): Lewis Klahr transfers his trademark collage animation to the cool, shiny world of digital video in this work on the unsettling dread of air travel and contagion.
Phantom                                                       
Luke Sieczek (2007, 6 mins., video, US): “Rearticulating scenes from Jacques Tourneur's Cat People, actress Simone Simon's face is a luminous surface in a permanent state of unrest.” (LS)
Praxis 1 – 3 Scenes                                               
Dietmar Brehm (2007, 23 mins., video, Austria): Brehm reconfigures several of his own films for the video age, without losing the moody darkness of the originals.
Primitive I
Jake Barningham (2008, 2 mins. video, US, World Premiere): Cubist video?
All That Rises                                                  
Daïchi Saïto (2007, 7 mins., 16mm, Canada): “A juxtaposition of seeing and sounding, sky and stone and all that’s in between.” (DS)
Infection Transmission Event/Cloudy November
Paul Abbott (2008, 7 mins., video, UK, World Premiere): The mind works at the futile task of making sense of a series of isolated words and fragmented phrases, largely unrecognizable images, and blackness in this video that proves to be about the difficulty of knowing and the instability of understanding.
reSHOOTING        
Jake Barningham (2008, 5 mins. video, US, World Premiere): An iconic image from early American cinema is subjected to structural film tactics.
God the Pugilist                                             
Zack Stiglicz (1996, 10 mins., 16mm, US): The Chichen Itza ruins in the Yucatan are the site of visual play and Gnostic rambling in Stiglicz’s visceral exploration of spirit and nature.
(80 mins.)

Saturday, June 21, 9:00pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP SHOW 3

About a World                                                
Corinna Schnitt (2007, 9 mins., video, Germany): Nudes in the wilderness referencing imagined classical studies are set upon by a randy man and Jürgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action.
Victory over the Sun                                             
Michael Robinson (2007, 13 mins., 16mm, US): “Dormant sites of past World's Fairs breed an eruptive struggle between spirit and matter, ego and industry, futurism and failure. For thine is the kingdom and the power and glory; nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain.” (MR)
Androa Autoportrait                                     
Matthias De Groof and Kristin Rogghe (2006, 16 mins., video, Belgium/DR Congo): In this playful tweaking of the idea of self-portraiture - conceived by De Groof and Rogghe - the Congolese artist Androa Mindre Kolo films himself while running through an arts academy in Kinshasa.
Ah, Liberty!                          
Ben Rivers (2008, 20 mins., 16mm widescreen, UK): “A celebratory portrait of a family’s place in the wilderness – living, working, playing on a farm throughout the seasons; free-range animals and children, junk and nature, all within the most sublime landscape.” (BR)
Footnotes to a House of Love                           
Laida Lertxundi (2007, 13 mins., 16mm, US/Spain): A house in the California desert becomes the site of hinted at narratives, relationships, and meanings.
(71 mins.)

Sunday, June 22, 3:30pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP SHOW 4

For the Unseen
Chi Jang Yin (2007, 11 mins., video, US): Fact, fiction, and memory merge and blur in a familial conversation on a train.
Opening
Madison Brookshire (2007, 25 mins., 16mm, US): “Using everyday images of  overlooked spaces, Opening reveals the city in the landscape and the landscape in the city.” (MB)
Two/2                                                             
Peter Bo Rappmund (2008, 7 mins., 16mm, US, World Premiere): A dynamic, abstract exploration of image/sound relationships, extrapolated from Léonin’s Magnus Liber Organi.
Discoveries on the Forest Floor 1-3
Charlotte Pryce (2007, 4 mins., 16mm, US): “Three miniature, illuminated, heliographic studies of plants, observed and imagined.” (CP)
Ring                                                               
Robert Todd (2007, 15 mins., 16mm, US): “A reflection of the eternal internal, rippling through and along with waves of light.” (RT)
Untitled Seaway Studies
Paul Lloyd Sargent (2008, 8 mins., video, US, World Premiere): A camera let loose on the St. Lawrence River.
Green Cameraless
Robbie Land (2007, 5 mins., 16mm, US): Handmade cinema of street lamps, rocket ships, and water towers.
(75 mins.)

Sunday, June 22, 6:00pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP SHOW 5

The After Life
Fred Worden (2007, 7 mins., video, US): The rise and fall of capitalism and a spectral dance of consumer purgatory.
Along with the Phoenix                          
Masha Godovannaya (2008, 10 mins., 16mm, Russia, North American Premiere): A beautiful film which references the destruction of fire and the birth of the Phoenix.
Broken Horses
Peter Miller (2008, 3 mins., 16mm, Austria, US Premiere): “A black horse and a white horse are interwoven…subtle gestures and curves give way to graceful forms and elegant lines.” (PM)
Canons                                                          
Keith Tassick (2007, 10 mins., video, US): Miniature visual vignettes – like Marie Menken’s Notebook for the digital age.
Garden/ing                                                   
Eriko Sonoda (2007, 6 mins., video, Japan, US Premiere): A dizzying and confounding exploration of real and reproduced space.
It Will Die Out in the Mind
Deborah Stratman (2006, 4 mins, video, US): “A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age.” (DS)
Marietta
Adele Friedman (2006, 4 mins., 16mm, US): Friedman’s wandering camera settles on unlikely framings and telling details in this portrait film of three friends in Vienna.
Public Domain
Jim Jennings (2007, 8 mins. 16mm, US): “The film’s title was a response to the debate in New York over the City’s plan to require licensing and insurance from filmmakers to film on the street, in the public realm.  Fortunately, the City backed down.  In its whirling color, this film expresses my never-ending fascination with the street.” (JJ)
Spirit House                                                 
Robert Todd (2008, 11 mins., 16mm, US, US Premiere): “A tale of two passages within the Spirit house. This is the first in a series that looks at the places we find our spiritual presence augmented, inflamed, or simply acknowledged.” (RT)
Study #40      
lia (2007, 10 mins., video, Austria): A minimalist abstraction that explores visual and aural patterns.            
(73 mins.)

Sunday, June 22, 8:00 at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
GROUP SHOW 6

Palimpsest 98
Jennifer Fieber (2008, 3 mins., 16mm, US, World Premiere): "Which one's real? You decide." (JF)
Quartet                                                                     
Nicky Hamlyn (2007, 8 mins., 16mm, UK, US Premiere): A chamber study of sorts as Hamlyn explores the details of a domestic space through repetition.
Tziporah                                                       
Abraham Ravett (2007, 7 mins., 16mm, US): A delicate reflection on loss and grief.
Tulipa                                                           
Karo Goldt (2008, 3 mins., video, Austria/Germany): “This film is part of a series of abstract works about flowers in which three different themes are united: my passion for classic oil painting, my passion for flowers, and my passion for music.” (KG)
Sunbeam Hunter, A Logic Sore, & For Them Ending                                               
Jonathan Schwartz (2007, 9 mins. total, 16mm, US): These three in-camera animations hint at nostalgia, but ultimately take a more critical stance.
All Through the Night
Michael Robinson (2007, 4 mins., video, US): “A charred visitation with an icy language of control. There is no room for love.” (MR)
Carol Anne Is Dead
Michael Robinson (2008, 7 mins., video, US): Robinson recycles his family’s home movie version of Poltergeist, made when he was ten, into a raw look at the performative.
Hold Me Now
Michael Robinson (2008, 5 mins., video, US): Sing-along with the Thompson Twins.
Inside the Velvet K
Luther Price (2006, 8 mins., 16mm, US)                 
Dusty Ricket
Luther Price (2007, 6 mins., 16mm, US)
At Twilight (Inkblot #9)
Luther Price (2008, 6 mins., 16mm, US, World Premiere): These three very different films by Luther Price continue his fascination with found footage, decay (literal and figurative), the accretion of meaning through juxtaposition of images and, in the last film, through paint, visual tactility, and the transformation of the physical into a quest for understanding.
(66 mins.)

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ADMISSION:

EXHIBITION:
Focus Pull exhibition:            Free
Wednesday, June 25 Gallery 400 Sight-Lines screening: Free

PARTY:
Wednesday (June 18) Onion City Kick-Off Party at Sonotheque: Free (but a $5.00 suggested donation is appreciated); Cash Bar.

SCREENINGS:
Thursday (June 19) Opening Night Program at the Gene Siskel Film Center: $9.00 general; $7.00 students; $5.00 Film Center and Chicago Filmmakers’ members.

Friday (June 20) screenings at The Nightingale, per screening: $8.00 general; $7.00 students; $4.00 Chicago Filmmakers’ members (members’ free admission are not good for these programs).

Saturday and Sunday (June 21 and 22) screenings at Chicago Filmmakers, per screening: $8.00 general; $7.00 students; $4.00 Chicago Filmmakers’ members.