Experience

Returning to Alcatraz at ATA

Among the many empowerment movements that burgeoned in the 1960s was Red Power—an unprecedented wave of activist zeal among Native Americans who’d had their land, languages and cultures systematically taken away by the government. If the 19th-century Indian experience was defined by broken treaties, in the 20th it had suffered from dubiously well intentioned efforts to relocate and assimilate tribal peoples in mainstream society. This had the effect of cutting them off from their roots while dumping them in cities with minimal institutional support.

topics: activism, american indian film, archives, artists' television access, bay area, directors, diy, documentary, world cinema, youth

Experience

To a friend entering obsolescence

Dear analog,

This isn’t a eulogy, because to my mind you’re not really gone. You’ll never be gone, just like I’ll never buy a digital converter for my old TV. I don’t care what the FCC mandates! Also, as you know, I have a new TV.

I know this note won’t bring you back. I guess I just had to get my thoughts out there, into the ether, as much for you as for anyone else who might happen to receive them. I thought you’d appreciate that.

There’s an event in your honor coming up this Saturday night. They’re calling it A Wake for Analog. A handful of short experimental multimedia transmissions and a live, improvisational audio-visual performance by Oakland’s Killer Banshee, with composer and noise artist Thurston Graham. It’s all organized by Other Cinema founder Craig Baldwin—yeah, the maker of Sonic Outlaws, among so many other things, and a guy who knows whereof he programs—so I’m sure it’ll be something you’d have liked.

topics: artists' television access, bay area, diy, exhibition, experimental film, shorts

Experience

Back to nature with Ben Rivers

It’s not so easy to get much attention for experimental filmmaking these days, but during just a decade of work to date England’s Ben Rivers has stirred interest on both sides of the Atlantic. He makes his Bay Area debut this week presenting in person two programs—“The Poetic Horror of Ben Rivers” at Artists’ Television Access Saturday the 28th, then “This Is My Land: Ben Rivers’ Portraits and Landscapes” via SF Cinematheque at the YBCA Screening Room Sunday night—and you can prepare yourself for a slightly dislocative experience at once tranquil and sinister.

topics: artists' television access, avant-garde, bay area, sf cinematheque