Aug 25, 2013

Thursday @ Lincoln Center: Occupy and Beyond & George Stoney Tribute

Guest blogger for this post is Jon Dieringer. In addition to being a film curator in New York, he is also beginning his final year in NYU Cinema Studies' Moving Image Archiving and Preservation master's program.

Although Jon's text originated as an e-mail blast, it brings together several threads of film and video programming directly relevant to the Orphan Film ethos. In fact, looking over the programming below, I see that most of the filmmakers and others highlighted in bold have presented at past Orphan Film Symposiums in both NYC and Columbia, SC. The words are Jon's; the images and links were added.



Jon Dieringer (photo: indiewire.com)  • • • • • • • • • •  George Stoney at Orphans 5









Hey friends,

I wanted to send you notice of two events I've helped plan and co-organized this Thursday, August 29, which happen to be back-to-back and across the street from each other at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Citadel on the island of Manhattan.

First up, at 6:00 pm at the New York Public Library for Performing Arts [Bruno Auditorium, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza] is the New York Film/Video Council's Second Annual George Stoney
Memorial Screening. George Stoney, who passed away just over a year ago at age 96, is a legendary filmmaker, teacher, activist, and a pioneer of both documentary film and public television. He was a virtually lifelong member and former president of the NYFVC, an organization that I have been proud to serve on the board of for just over one year now. For this year's screening, NYPL's Elena Rossi-Snook will introduce a program of New York City portraits set against a backbeat of community, faith and jazz: How to Look at a City (1964, 29 min.) and Shepherd of the Night Flock (1978, 59 min.). Both films screen from 16mm prints held by the NYPL's Reserve Film & Video collection, and admission is free and open to the public.

Then at 8:30 pm at the Film Society of Lincoln Center [Howard Gilman Theater, 144 West 65th Street], Occupy Wall Street and Beyond is a program I have organized in collaboration with Dennis Lim, FSLC's new Director of Programming. The program contains work shot in and around Zuccotti Park and kindred historical documents of protest, direct actions, and polemical performance. Among the work is a video of Occupy Cinema's direct actions at the Charging Bull statue, including a breathtaking projector performance by Bradley Eros and discussion with CUNY's Theories of Anti-Capitalist Movements class.

The program also includes work by Jack Smith w/ Ken Jacobs (Scotch Tape), Newsreel (The Case Against Lincoln Center, Garbage, Mill-In), Red Channels/Glass Bead Collective (From Wall Street to Wall Street to Wall Street), Jem Cohen (Gravity Hill Newsreels), and Zoe Beloff (Days of the Commune, excerpt). Rachael Rakes will moderate a conversation with Beloff, Cohen, Matt Petersen (of Red Channels), myself (of Occupy Cinema), and others TBA. Admission is $13 general, $9 students/seniors.

I think these are two personally meaningful and exciting programs, and it would be a pleasure to see you there. I'm very eager to see the, in some instances, rather underscreened work projected from its original intended formats, and in such a stimulating context. I am also grateful to the Film Society of Lincoln Center for allowing us to show at least three historical pieces sharply critical of the institution and to invite candid discussion about cinema and radical politics.



Plus: I have my usual torrent (pun) of programming at Spectacle, including Klaus Kinski spaghetti western And God Said to Cain (Sat., Aug 31), a series of unearthed spaghetti westerns organized with David Wilentz (all Sept.), a semi-irreverent screening tribute acknowledging the ten year anniversary of the deaths of Johnny Cash and John Ritter (Sept. 11), Anand Patwardhan's Father, Son and Holy War, an exploration of the psychology of violence and male insecurity in Indian culture (Sept. 16 and 25), a Filipino extravaganza starring the great/awful Chris Mitchum, SFX Retaliator (Sept. 28) an evening with Barry Gifford (author, Wild at Heart) presenting the rarely-screened David Lynch/Gifford television show Hotel Room (Oct. 17) (shout outs to Mark D. Freado Jr. & Cristina Cacioppo), and some other rare screenings and personal appearances in October that are just TOO EXCITING to announce yet.



Thanks for your indulgence, and see you soon,

Jon Dieringer

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