Take Two

Arghya Basu evokes the mystical and everyday in "A Listener's Tale"

If the Castro Theatre is the church of San Francisco cinephilia, then the Yerba Buena screening room is surely its laboratory—it’s only too fitting that leading curator Joel Shepard is spotlighting the idiosyncratic programming voices of five San Francisco independents for the museum’s upcoming Bay Area Now exhibition. Besides rounding up important international features (e.g. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone) and oddball retrospectives (e.g. Phil Chambliss: Arkansas Auteur), Shepard also has a penchant for screening otherwise unhyped films which do not hew to typical genre norms. A case in point is A Listener’s Tale, a lovely if unclassifiable mixture of ethnography and poetic reverie which screened at last winter’s Rotterdam Film Festival.

In spite of the earnest attempts of academic critics to problematize both the conception and consumption of filmed representations of indigenous "others," filmmakers have been drawn to exotic cultures and landscapes since the Lumière Brothers first introduced lightweight cameras.

topics: bay area, documentary, world cinema, yerba buena center for the arts

Phil Chambliss, Arkansas auteur

The terms “folk” and “outsider” art have been applied to work in a lot of media, from painting to handicrafts to music. But they’re seldom heard when the focus turns to film. When you think about it, most film and video falls into a few well-defined categories. There’s commercial work, which encompasses everything from big-screen movies to TV entertainment, music videos, documentaries, anything aimed (even if it fails to reach them) at a general audience. There’s the experimental and avant-garde.

(Student filmmaking usually falls into either of these first two categories, at least by aping them; even the artiest arthouse directors fall somewhere between.) There’s industrial and educational cinema, intended to be specifically functional rather than entertaining or artistic. Then there are home movies, seldom of much interest to anyone save the folks who make them and their extended circle. Just where would cinematic folk art exist?

Even the smallest, crudest exploitation movie or video has some kind of commercial intent, usually imitating the conventions of more mainstream product. (This includes porn, unless it’s the home-movie kind-which increasingly you can find in the local rental joint’s Adult section shelves, too.)

Merely inept, amateur stabs at popular idioms don’t really qualify as “outsider art” — there needs to a unique, unschooled personal vision that’s simply immune (and/or oblivious) to standard notions about audience expectation, “professionalism,” and so forth. True cinematic folk art must be around somewhere, but…where?

Meet Phil Chambliss, “the Arkansas auteur,” a 54-year-old, recently retired gravel pit nightwatchman native to Camden (pop. 13,000 or so). Since 1975, when he bought an 8mm camera to record a deer hunting expedition, he’s been making movies — well, these days they’re videos — whose peculiarity has gradually, almost accidentally attracted a cult following well beyond the local friends he makes them with and for. They’ve even attracted an institutional following: In 2004 a showcase at the Nashville Film Festival (programmed by Brian Gordon, late of the SF International) provided Chambliss with his first official “public” screening.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts hosted its initial Chambliss program a couple years ago. Now it’s hosting a two-night, single-program run of three different works as a fitting climax to its “Red-State Cinema: Rural Auteurs” series. What’s more, Mr. Chambliss will be on hand himself — a particularly rare occasion because, we are told, he “doesn’t travel.”

This personal appearance is really a score-bonus-plus, because one among the many questions you might have after seeing your first Phil Chambliss film is: What in hell kinda personality would make this? Where do these ideas come from? Am I supposed to be laughing?

Yes you are. The glib temptation at first glance (one that unfortunately some audiences have given into) is to play “laugh at the hick,” tittering unkindly at the movies’ stiff and/or broad, thickly accented amateur performances, bizarre pacing rhythms and even more bizarre “plots.” But for anyone with an at least half-open mind, it becomes clear quickly that Chambliss and all his compadres are very much in on the joke. And even though the joke is often so insular and off-kilter you’re not sure just what it is, it’s still funny — intentionally so. How to describe the oeuvre of Mr. Phil Chambliss? Well, they’re sort of absurdist trailer-park melodramas, twisted morality plays, gags chasing a punchline he alone might suss out. They’re backwoods Beckett-except with more flavorful dialogue, and no sense that the author struck various postures of abject despair while writing them.

On the current YBCA program, 2002’s “Mr. Visit Show” takes place at a “day-care center for birds.” Its crusty proprietor, interviewed by a nagging TV reporter, and stands accused of drugging his charges with sleeping pills. He opines that all poultry is “like these wimmen…they’s always another one out there in the field a-gobblin’.” He also professes past friendship with Bill Clinton, inscrutably noting “If you cut off his head there’d hardly be no meat left.” (Chambliss himself reportedly once was in a jug band with Bill. Does everyone in Arkansas know each other, or is it just that Bill Clinton knew everybody there?) Finally pushed beyond tolerance, the birdman engages his interrogator in the lamest “martial arts” battle possible, crowing “I got my Black Belt at Walmart!” These 15 minutes alone are enough to make a grown man cry — with confusion, hilarity or both, take yer pick. Made a full two decades earlier, “Shadows of the Hatchet-Man” demonstrates a remarkable consistency of vision (save that it’s in 8mm B&W to “Mr. Visit’s” color video). This slightly longer effort is ostensibly a serial-killer thriller, complete with shrilly-melodramatic library music used a la George Kuchar. But it’s again full of non-sequiturs, folksy eccentrics and quotably idiosyncratic dialogue. An axe-bearing murderer has just claimed his fourth female victim in Calhoun County; local yokel Rusty, embroiled in a cheating love triangle, sees this as the golden opportunity to off his wife by playing copycat-killer. The strangely unconcerned Sheriff sits at his desk, shirtless, pipe in mouth, playing with his shotgun; his deputy makes obscene phone calls and runs around stealing panties off clotheslines. There’s a hatchet-murderer-versus-hatchet-murderer climax followed by a final shot of a running dog that I can’t possibly explain, but which had me howling with laughter.

Most of Chambliss’ films are on the short side — at 58 minutes, the memorable

topics: experimental film, filmmakers, yerba buena center for the arts

SOFA, so good? "Straight outta Film Arts" (SOFA) shines a light on youth filmmaking

Whether out of boredom on a long weekend, or for a school assignment, or out of a burning sense of ambition seeded by repeated viewings of "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" or "Harold and Maude," chances are that at some point in your young adult past, you picked up a camera. Someone became a filmmaker, if only for the span of an afternoon. My own efforts included a shriek-filled "remake" of "Child’s Play" — but with a little girl doll called "Dolly Dearest," which entailed liberal amounts of ketchup and a screenplay for an extremely low-tech knockoff of "The Birds" called "The Boxes." My first and last attempts as a filmmaker, however, are nothing like the final products of the talented young directors in TILT’s Summer Film Camp showcase (screening as part of of Straight Outta Film Arts program at YBCA).That may be because these filmmakers receive training: TILT, which stands for Teaching Intermedia Literacy Tools and is overseen by the local media arts nonprofit Film Arts Foundation, aims to help young people develop their abilities to critically evaluate the media around them and to teach them the skills necessary to create their own media.

Some of the shorts to come out of the intensive three week summer camp sessions are goofy (Will Farrell should be taking notes on David Johnson’s "Parkour Masters"), and others are quite serious (Ariana Husain’s exploration of the assumptions we make about others, "The Art of Misconception"), but they all succeed at using a variety of film techniques to help articulate their individual voices.

"I am still impressed with the learning curve of our TILT students," wrote Skye Christensen in an email. Christensen is Film Arts Foundation’s Youth Coordinator and is the main organizer of TILT’s Summer Camp. "Many of the students had used a consumer video camera borrowed from a family member. A handful had worked with a non-linear editing system, such as Final Cut Pro. Only one or two had taken a video course before. Yet all 14 students [

topics: yerba buena center for the arts

Review: "Lover Other"

"Under the mask is another mask, I will never finish lifting all these faces," wrote French Surrealist artist, lesbian, author and political agitator Claude Cahun. Masks appear frequently in the startling portraits she and her half-sister and lover Marcel Moore took of themselves and each other dressed in a variety of personas, costumes and genders.

Veteran lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer ("Nitrate Kisses") knows better than to try and look behind the mask to find some "real" Cahun. (Editor’s note: The film plays Wed/27 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, courtesy SF Jewish Film Festival and SF Cinematheque.)

As the academic among the polyphony of narrating voices in Hammer’s Cahun documentary "Lover Other" states, as if reading a cue card, "Cahun’s work suggests that identity can only be performed; it cannot be revealed." So Hammer gives us a play of images and quotations (the script incorporates Cahun’s writings, while Broadway actress Kathleen Chalfant and performance artist Marty Pottenger appear as the two women), that patch together Cahun and Moore’s life during wartime on their adoptive Isle of Jersey — focusing, in particular, on their acts of creative resistance to the occupying German forces that almost cost them their lives.

Hammer’s occasional editing missteps make the film, at times, feel less like a collage and more like a PowerPoint presentation. Indeed, Cahun’s work trembles with an anxiety and instability that’s almost too punk for the film’s laconic pace. There are some unexpectedly affecting moments — mostly in the vague yet admiring recollections of former village neighbors, who recall their childhood encounters with the "off beat" French sisters they hardly knew, but were no doubt captivated by and saw as almost otherwordly heroines. Undoubtedly, Hammer sees them much in the same way. The footage she splices between the end credits of one of Cahun’s self-portraits being bid upon at an auction house, however, suggests somewhat woefully that Cahun’s importance as an aesthetic, sexual, and political radical will be eclipsed by the monetary value ascribed to her by an ever-rapacious art market.

topics: filmmakers, gay lesbian cinema, jewish cinema, reviews, yerba buena center for the arts

The art of Muppetry

Almost everyone had a favorite Muppet at some point in their lives, be it the iconic Kermit or the more recent Snuffelupagus; anyone who didn’t probably had a childhood miserably lacking in television. I, personally, was a Grover fan, but I have found in my old age that my blind devotion to a certain charismatic blue inhabitant of “Sesame Street” had, in fact, blinded me from appreciating the man behind the fabric. Lucky enough for those like me (and even for those who aren’t), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts over the next two weeks hosts the series Muppets, Music, and Magic, a Jim Henson career retrospective designed by The Jim Henson Legacy and Brooklyn Academy of Music to please not only Muppet-lovers but also people whose tastes stretch beyond. This undertaking traces Henson’s work as it evolves from simple shorts and advertisements to full-length films and, of course, a couple of highly successful television shows.

“It’s BIG…14 screenings. I never really do anything that big, but I figured we might as well just show it all,” said Shepard. The extravaganza begins with two nights of the essential Muppets 101, a compilation of skits, clips, interviews, and advertisements that underlines Henson’s stunningly long and diverse career. “Muppet Show” alum Gonzo & his puppeteer plan on attending as special guests during the first two evening’s shows Thursday and Friday. Muppets, Music, and Magic spends much of its time avoiding the better known Henson forays, however. The program gives access to many rare screenings, such as the über-sweet “Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas” (paired with some hard-to-get holiday television skits) and the acid-colored “Song of the Cloud Forest,” an environmentally conscious foray into computer animation that appears with the perky, symbiotic world of “Fraggle Rock” in the A Better World showing.

Some of the most exciting moments come from The Art of Puppetry and Storytelling, a program that reveals the hard work and artistry that Henson put into every inch of his work. “Every single person I asked, you could just watch their eyes light up,” said Shepard, “[and I realized] Jim Henson was a total genius…somebody who could take this piece of cloth and stick some things on it and give it this incredibly complex motion, like a real being…. You don’t get much of a better definition of ‘art’ than that.”

This particular show goes behind the complex preparation involved in every elaborate scene of “The Muppet Show,” giving attention not only to Henson but also to his entire support system, giving credit to the various puppeteers, writers, and musicians behind the series. It also screens Henson’s dark, innovative, and rarely seen television series, “The Storyteller,” starring John Hurt. Henson’s artistry extended beyond his Muppetry, as the program Commercials and Experiments proves; in addition to more of Henson’s award-winning advertisements from the late-‘60s and early-‘70s, the screening includes his Eisenstein-esque musical short “Time Piece,” nominated for a 1965 Academy Award.

There’s still plenty of material to satisfy those of you jonesin’ for hours of Muppets. Muppets Music Moments gives a look at famous musical numbers from “The Muppet Show,” many featuring celebrity guests. Muppet Fairytales shows both early and later fairytale spoofs (puppet Elvises, anyone?). The program also features “The Muppet Movie” and “The Great Muppet Caper,” both chock full of all the celebrity cameos you can stand.

A far cry from his friendly “Muppet Show,” “The Dark Crystal” is Henson at his darkest and perhaps most ambitious; a frightening and violent world Henson has painstakingly detailed. While the film often falls into the realm of “fantasy-weird,” lulls in the narrative expose minute creatures and strange landscapes that showcase Henson’s skills at constructing alternate puppet-universes. The true highlight comes in the film’s belligerent and overindulgent villains, the decadent Skekses. A film for the less esoteric is the fantasy-musical “Labyrinth” (playing next month at Landmark Theatres, as well), which features a teenage Jennifer Connelly as a bratty adolescent fighting to save her baby brother and learning a few things about friendship, responsibility, and pedophilic villains along the way. David Bowie is at his finest playing the crystal ball waving Gareth, bedecked in his most voluminous blond wig and finest package-highlighting leggings. What with Bowie’s camp value, a psychotropic peach, and some very fun musical numbers, “Labyrinth” is quite the cult-classic.

Afternoon screenings in the “Muppets, Music, and Magic’ program are designed to appeal to a more innocent audience, while evening showings cater to those of the more mature persuasion. While these might breed some aversion in adult viewers, Henson’s artistry and subtle sense of humor still surpass most of the computer-animated summer blockbusters. But don’t blow this event off as “kid stuff” says Shepard: “That’s the thing about all of Jim Henson’s work, it’s always working on two levels. It was kind of like child-like wonder, but it was totally working on a sophisticated adult level, too… he was always dealing with very deep, sort of universal themes, like love and friendship and nature, which is always really elemental kind of stuff.” If that doesn’t do it for you, many of the series’ rare works are impossible to find elsewhere. “I don’t think there’s ever been a comprehensive Jim Henson retrospective, so it’s certainly long overdue,” laments Shepard, and in the sad era when not even the local Blockbuster carries “The Muppet Movie,” this may be your only chance to see some of these classic and incredibly sophisticated films.

More at YBCA.

topics: exhibitions, yerba buena center for the arts