Canyon Cinema at 50 | David Dinnell, Janie Geiser, Seth Mitter, Cauleen Smith

well thank you all so much for being here and thank you David for that incredibly energetic and enriched in context program I wonder I'd love to start talking to you a little bit about about when you sort of saw this collection of films coming together into some sort of cohesive narrative that would be decoding and kind of what that what that word how that word came about with regard to this collection of films um that I think you know it's I don't know this is this actually this program is a little harder to talk about um in a way that like you know you you like made a program and had viewed all these films but had um you know just put them together and but then when I watched it for the first time with an audience I was this like I don't know what I was thinking but I think though I think the phrase decoding outside of Michael Wallens film just I thought was generative and evocative of kind of looking or understanding or trying to get out of more of kind of different systems of thought that are sort of underneath that I think is present in many of the films whether that's around sex power sexuality identity so on and then also you know this was I worked on putting together these programs last summer and so I mean it just very I think evident kind of resonances that one sees with you know and love it or leave it it's hard not to see yeah just very current sort of trumpian type people and sort of rhetoric as well as something like Joanne alums my back and enjoy it where it's it's a kind of work I feel like many of these are where it's definitely of its time but also I feel like it's very current with you know just conversations that are really happening around issues of representation and specifically around gender here in film yeah especially and believe I can enjoy it that I wrote down a line from it where he asks her what does all this other culture stuff have to do with it which is kind of kind of relates to almost every single film that we saw tonight like you those those films are all sort of asking these homes are all sort of asking that question in a way yeah well I would love Colleen to talk to you a little bit about about this film about sorry it's so long title chronicles of a lying spirit by Kelly chipra Jim yeah so this is Kelly is an alias if I'm correct right that you that you've used a couple times and several of your works so I would love for you to position for everyone sort of this this work from 1992 in relationship to the rest of your filmography and also what it's like to see it again I don't know when the last time you saw it was but what it's like to experience it especially since so much time has passed well first thanks for you know putting me in this program and it's just it's a delight and honor to be a part of this so thank you and this particular film let's see it was literally the it's really vexing in a way because it's like one of the more successful films I've made it was a second film I'd ever made and I had no idea what I was doing when I made it if every every single part of it was an attempt to learn and an attempt to experiment all the way down to mixing it and then all the way down to deciding to play it twice I mean I was so ignorant I didn't know if there were were not precedent for that kind of thing it just seemed like a really good way to make sure people saw everything I heard everything honestly and so it's a it's a every time it plays or every time it gets programmed I just kind of wish that I understood what I had done so I could keep doing it you know I wanted to say about the program that I thought that there had to be something about in addition to decoding like finding things like everybody was working with something that they found whether it was a person or objects or images and then attempting to understand the that whatever it was they'd found and that was that was really wonderful wait for me to enter in some of these films you know and this process of trying to understand what you're what you have you know and I think it's important that nobody really finds it like that we as the audience I mean that there's not an answer to each film that were we're involved in the investigation to the kind of ambiguity that we have to figure things out and we're decoding yeah and and there's also a lot about yeah about subjectivity and and gaze that's present throughout everything pretty much everything in this program how would you say Colleen that that's I know you said that you're like not quite sure how you made this film but how how would you say it what is your consciousness now of the way that you approach filmmaking I could talk about the things I did learn from this so one was um voice voice and and casting a voice or just how just what what's possible with just that just with the voice the other thing I think that I always look at this film and think about is just a kind of like handmaiden s a kind of texture I just restart on this book called wabi-sabi you know it's from the 90s it's about it's Japanese philosophy that's about it look sort of flawed in the rough-hewn to being kind of supplying object of study and I realized that I really I remember making it and remember not understanding how to use an oxbow a machine or the animation and getting the footage back and it was just completely not what I thought I was filming and then as I played with the material and the more sort of the more I kind of disturbed the material the more I started to recognize maybe what was compelling about her or what happened but what got me collecting some of those images in the first place not the pictures of myself but the other pictures that were mixed with them I'm sorry I don't even remember your question I apologize oh no that's okay I was just asking kind of what well you you sort of said you could say what you what you learned from this and then also um I guess I'm just interested in how you feel like you've evolved since this point yeah which is always hard to talk about them I mean I I really really still think about sound and I think it probably came out of understanding how the this film is that this particular film is really built on what sound can do effectively as well as sort of like narrative Lee and so that's probably the like the clearest lesson out of this I think I'm much less now need to talk I haven't made a film boy really talk about myself and even this film was like mostly lies I just like you the personal narrative I think I kind of got up in my system with this one and started like really looking outward that's probably the biggest change have you used the kaliesha prom in the film prior to this thing no I've used it since but I mainly use it like I used it for a while on social media or certain things I've written or but I've been published in certain places or and I'm just like a couple years ago made another film where I used the name and I started to use the name as a as a it's an avid er it's just a it's a more sort of loudmouth opinionated rude or I mean I'm pretty rude so she can be even ruder um kind of character and say you know say things she or she believes she can say things without consequence you know and so I I asked I asked Betsy last night Betsy Bromberg was here oh and I should mention that um who Mariah was gonna maybe be here but she would was out of town so she couldn't be here but um I am curious how you first came to know about Canyon cinema and when you sort of started to to work with them or decide to deposit your work there yeah this is this is the only film that I made that is with Canyon and it happened really not that long after the film was finished and I was really really grateful that they wanted to take the film on and I was really new to film and not even really sure I sort of fit into it and I think shortly after making this film I I went I even studied at San Francisco State Karen Holmes was around and teaching she didn't deal with undergrads only the grad students so I never had her as a teacher but I moved down here to LA to go to UCLA for film school and kind of took a different trajectory and kind of I know I wouldn't say forgot about that film but I didn't really I didn't see him I didn't see myself having a way to sustain making films like that in that way and ironically now circle sort of back to experimental and I guess art and installation but Canyon was the most as a young filmmaker Canyon cinema was sort of these the distributor that kind of validator gave you a kind of cred credibility as an experimental filmmaker their roster to me is just legend after legend after legend after legend and it was like that bed too so I just was so grateful and if the film is fitting good hands I have the same question for Janie whose film we're seeing in the next program her film will be fourth in the next program but how did you learn about Canyon start to start to talk to them I guess I sorted making films in the early 90s I was doing more performance before that but I guess I showed at PFA and you know the Cinematheque and some places there and then somehow it was Dominic or Steve anchor or somebody approached me and just said well can we keep the film that was kind of like how it was never see that print again I didn't yeah yeah I'm glad you guys have some prints because I don't really have great prints anymore so it's really a wonderful thing that they're there there's some in New York at the co-op too but I had to show some prints recently and I pulled them out and they weren't so great but yeah and and like you you know Canyon it's just legendary and and I kind of came to experimental film through the back door and I never studied it so just you know learning about all those people and what they did is kind of amazing me and San Francisco really that's that was the place you know it's great and and so some the your film was preserved but the Academy Film Archive Colleen right yeah can you talk a little bit I'm actually I would love clarification on this to like if they they're preserving it and they have such a rich preservation program for experimental film and Mark Toscano is such a big part of that but then it's so nice that that print then goes back to Canyon so um so I guess I could ask a little bit about how that process works yeah well the canyons in my 50 project like I mentioned last night was kind of a pilot for a canyon to be more a participant in in film preservation and to win possible make sure that when films are preserved that that distribution prints come come to come to a place like Canyon when rather than just simply being preserved and sitting on the shelves and the film vaults and being protected for posterity but also making sure exhibition on film can continue for works that were intended to be seen on film and something we really hope to continue doing I and can use this fiftieth project as a as a as a model to continue I want I wanted to also you mentioned Steve anchor and canyons a relationship with San Francisco Cinematheque is so essential to our history we really have a common history and and I think that your experience is so typical that when filmmakers came to exhibit or to do shows in San Francisco that the relationships with Canyon always began that way and Cinematheque gets credit for for bringing so many filmmakers to this to the city for some for so many decades I would love to turn it to the audience if there are any questions especially for our two filmmakers up here because this is kind of a rare opportunity but if there aren't any i/o we have one right here okay great if you could wait for the mic hello this question is for Colleen I'm sorry if I miss caught you but I saw you talk and a video online it was like an artist talk and I think you were talking about filmmaking as a kind of act of colonization if I if I remember right and I was wondering what you thought especially in terms of this film of yours which was much more kind of a collage piece or bringing other found footage versus like a site-specific piece where you're on a location filming people that may or may not consent in different ways and kind of what what your feeling is on filmmaking these different styles of filmmaking I mean if I recall I think that this film I made it in in like with Polaroids out of a kind of economy one and also a kind of fatigue the sort of apparatus I'm making is just a lot to deal with with with very few resources especially when you didn't know what you're doing it didn't it couldn't make sense of it and I still feel that way even though I think I I think I know a little bit more about what I'm doing right now to do it but I still feel that the the exertion of resources is disproportionate to what is happening and I feel that was every I've every kind of cinema and that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy watching movies or appreciate them it just seems disproportionate sort of yeah so yeah but so I I think that this film is a kind of a response to that and it's something I actually appreciated about so many of these films even love it or leave it which I thought I felt like I am at a disadvantage because I didn't have the program so I haven't read this but I felt like he was sort of misappropriating footage and and and therefore kind of up cycling which I really appreciated other questions from the audience hi thank you I'm gonna FL maker but I noticed this is another question for Colleen but I bet it could apply to both of you I noticed that you're saying that you wrote the film when you were young and you didn't know what you were doing and there was an element of literal experimentation in it right it's experimental film but do you think that's like something that you would link to youth only I mean it kind of sounds like you can be completely clueless and it's the film that is in heavy rotation for 30 years kind of intuition I feel that watching the film i'm janie this this film that we're gonna see terrace 49 is um 2 from 2004-2005 and so you said you started making films in the early 1990s so this is really sitting like kind of halfway through your many years of filmmaking so I was curious if you could maybe speak to a little bit about kind of how you see this film now and kind of how it sits in your substantial body of film work it's always kind of hard to do that but but but but kind of like what you're describing I like to work with a real economy of means and not have you know 20 people watching somebody's twirl a sign and making somebody having food over there which I just saw on the street today but but it this film is made mostly from watching cartoons with my son was maybe five then five or six and we were watching like 70s versions of superhero cartoons because they were better than the current ones so we would get VHS tapes and um so a lot of my work is just like disturbing the object like he said like finding something comes to me and then I go oh okay there's something in that so I was watching these Fantastic Four cartoons and so there's the three guys and the one woman and I was watching oh my god her power is to disappear you know and why didn't I ever notice that before you know so then and just I got obsessed with the Fantastic Four and her power to disappear and also these images of impending disaster that were in the films and so just finding those moments and making something from it so that's kind of how it worked I just either find objects or photographs or video and something just hits me and I respond to it it's almost weirdly documentary but then creating fictions that way - Colleen would you describe your work then or now as the same like kind of documentaries really personal obviously but yeah actually I I don't ever think that I'm making a documentary I always think I'm making I'm always making it up it doesn't mean that it's not reality based it just isn't fact-based and and then I could even say that doesn't mean that it's not fact based it just means it isn't reality based it's either one of the other usually and it frequently vacillates between the two yeah the same with me it's not like I'm making documentary films but they're at the source there's some weird thing that already existed yeah well I think that's about all the time we have because I want to get to the next great program I know that was very short thank you both so much for being here Colleen and Janie and David thank you for putting this together dude thanks for thank you says did you want to say anything about the next program we're going to see I think we'll just leave it at that okay great all right thanks