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Program 1
Maedchen In Uniform

PROGRAM#1
Maedchen In Uniform

PROGRAM#2
An Uneasy Feeling About It

PROGRAM#3
Rebels With A Cause

PROGRAM#4
Is This Desire?

PROGRAM#5
In Search of Home

PROGRAM#6
Political Warfare

PROGRAM#7
A Structured Moment

PROGRAM#8
How Do I Look?

Maedchen In Uniform 70th year anniversary screening!
Leontine Sagan
1931, 86 min, b/w, 16mm, Germany
This groundbreaking film chronicles one girl’s journey through love, heartbreak and Prussian codes of conformity. Manuela (Hertha Thiel) is sent to a boarding school for daughters’ of German officers by her recently widowed father. The cold authoritarian environment of the school and the ironhanded headmistress (Emilia Unda) alienates and frightens the fragile Manuela. Enter Fraulein von Bernburg (Dorothea Wieck), the students’ most cherished teacher. She becomes a beacon of hope for the young girl in this stark environment. Manuela is immediately drawn to her, seeking attention and warmth. But Manuela’s dependence on her mentor grows into an obsessive love, with extreme consequences. The headmistress disapproves of Manuela’s individualism and her close ties to the Fraulein, and rules with the proto-Nazi dictum: "Through discipline and hunger, hunger and discipline, we shall rise again." Maedchen In Uniform is a legendary classic from the German post-Expressionist period, complete with lesbian subtext and a somewhat fascistic bent, this film was extremely daring for its time.

Program 2
An Uneasy Feeling About It
An evening of films that will make your skin crawl. A collection of narratives, animated films and experimental shorts that take the horror genre to a new level!

PROGRAM#1
Maedchen In Uniform

PROGRAM#2
An Uneasy Feeling About It

PROGRAM#3
Rebels With A Cause

PROGRAM#4
Is This Desire?

PROGRAM#5
In Search of Home

PROGRAM#6
Political Warfare

PROGRAM#7
A Structured Moment

PROGRAM#8
How Do I Look?

Program 3
Rebels With A Cause
Using experimental documentary as their vehicle, Sachs and Snider explore two very different kinds of activism.

PROGRAM#1
Maedchen In Uniform

PROGRAM#2
An Uneasy Feeling About It

PROGRAM#3
Rebels With A Cause

PROGRAM#4
Is This Desire?

PROGRAM#5
In Search of Home

PROGRAM#6
Political Warfare

PROGRAM#7
A Structured Moment

PROGRAM#8
How Do I Look?

Investigation of a Flame
Lynne Sachs
2001, 45 min, Color, 16mm, USA West CoastPremiere
May 17, 1968: nine Vietnam War protesters, including a nurse, an artist and three priests, walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds of files and burned them with homemade napalm. Investigation of a Flame is an intimate, documentary portrait of this disparate band of resisters who chose to break the law in a poetic act of civil disobedience. A series of informal, yet charged conversations with members of the group encourage viewers to ask their own questions about the relevance of such events today. How did the photos, trial, publicity and news of the harsh two year prison sentences help to galvanize a disillusioned American public? Investigation of a Flame explores this politically and religiously motivated performance of the 1960’s in the context of extremely different times. By allowing their contradictions, regrets and ambivalence to be revealed, this film also becomes a stage on which to explore the revelations and disappointments of aging. (Sachs’ film Which Way Is East screened at MadCat in 1997, A Biography Of Lilith screened at MadCat in 1998

Mood Contrasts
Mary Ellen Bute
1953, 7 min, Color, 16mm, USA2001
A wonderful experimental animation by veteran filmmaker Mary Ellen Bute!

The Magic of Radio
Greta Snider
2001, 23 min, Color, 16mm, USA
San Francisco based filmmaker Greta Snider creates a funny and lyrical documentary about the mystery and wonder of the radio transmission of sound. Despite the availability of cheaper, easier and more legal means of disseminating information, Snider’s characters are drawn to these mysterious airborne waveforms. Meet Erin Yanke, a bicycle pirate from Portland, Oregon -- formerly an intern at NPR’s This America Life; Grinder Bitch and Feral from Free Radio Austin, whose show broadcasts on the Trailer Muff Hour; and Robert Magnani who bounces signals off the moon. Learn how and why they do what they do! (Snider’s films Hardcore Home Movie and Our Gay Brothers screened at MadCat in 1998).

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Program 4
Is This Desire?
See what happens behind closed doors. A series of shorts exploring love, lust and desire of some of the most unlikely objects and people.

PROGRAM#1
Maedchen In Uniform

PROGRAM#2
An Uneasy Feeling About It

PROGRAM#3
Rebels With A Cause

PROGRAM#4
Is This Desire?

PROGRAM#5
In Search of Home

PROGRAM#6
Political Warfare

PROGRAM#7
A Structured Moment

PROGRAM#8
How Do I Look?

Walentynki
Jane Devoy
2000, 11 min, Color, 35mm, Poland US Premiere
A waitress abandons her plans on Valentine’s Day, when she is called into work. Fueled by old-style Polish love songs, belly dancing and roses, she succumbs to a night of synthetic romance, flirts with fate and finds an alternative to going home alone.

Private Apology
Sarah Jane Lapp
2001, 5 min, b/w, 16mm, USA
This film began as a comparative visual study of sublime flossing techniques Lapp encountered while in Chicago, Illinois and evolved into a private apology.

Stanley
Suzie TempletonSarah Jane Lapp
1999, 7 min, Color, 16mm, UK
This creepy and heart warming animated film records the lives of an unhappy couple. While a frustrated wife wreaks violence and death in the kitchen, Stanley finds life and love in an improbable hobby.

Getting Together
Susan Jacoby,
1970, 1:40 min, b/w, 16mm, USA
This is a rarely seen, hand-drawn gem about finding love against all odds.

Gateau
Jessica Buben
1999, 12 min, b/w, 16mm, USA
Gateau uses archival footage, text and wonderfully aged staged scenes to explore notions of sexuality. From Jayne Mansfield’s over-sexualized life and premature death to cake baking moms, Buben creates a unique, intriguing and funny commentary on female sexuality.

Dolly
Annie Howell
2000, 7 min, Color, 16mm, USA
West Coast Premiere
Dolly records the passionate lives of doll collectors and a company who repairs them.

Permanent Wave
Anita Thacher
1966, 3 min, Color, 16mm, USA
Permanent Wave employs disjuncted body parts stitched together from pornographic materials to create an unusual three-dimensional erotic dance.

Sharony
Jennet Thomas
2000, 10 min, Color, Beta SP, UK
West Coast Premiere
Sharony takes viewers on a journey to the world of English school girls gone awry. It is the tale of two controlling nymphets who dig up a microscopic woman from the back garden. They lock her in a doll’s house that is wallpapered with pornography to make her grow up faster. When she is life sized and ready to play, they take her to the disco to see what happens. (Winner of Thaw 2000 Best of Festival Award).

Sorry, Brenda
Samara Halperin
2000, 3 min, b/w, 16mm, USA
East Bay Premiere
Using scenes from the TV show Beverly Hills 90210, shot on Super 8 off a monitor and optically printed to 16mm, local filmmaker Samara Halperin creates a love affair between two unlikely characters.

Hedwig Page, Seaside Librarian
Nancy Andrews
2000, 36 min, Color & b/w, 16mm, USA
This film tells the story of renowned librarian, collector and inventor, Hedwig Page. Andrews uses puppet animation and live action footage to relate Page’s story. She was born with an uncanny knowledge of cataloguing. She could recite Dewey Decimal categories before she could read. She obviously pities, but does not excuse, the lay persons ignorance of the Holdings of the Library. Page is the personification of applied skill, a Delphi of learning. And, she has some problems. (Hedwig has screened at the MOMA NY, Ann Arbor Film Festival and Black Maria Film Festival among others).

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Program 5
In Search of Home
Filmmakers skillfully construct haunting and hopeful narratives and experimental films that meditate on the idea of home.

PROGRAM#1
Maedchen In Uniform

PROGRAM#2
An Uneasy Feeling About It

PROGRAM#3
Rebels With A Cause

PROGRAM#4
Is This Desire?

PROGRAM#5
In Search of Home

PROGRAM#6
Political Warfare

PROGRAM#7
A Structured Moment

PROGRAM#8
How Do I Look?

Pigeon Within
Emily Hubley
1999, 4.5 min, Color, 35mm, USA
Pigeon Within is a cut-out and hand-drawn animation about a young girl in search of her home. Featuring music by Yo La Tengo.

Roost
Amy Kravitz
1998, 4.5 min, b/w, 35 mm, USA
Roost is a charcoal-like hand-drawn animation that takes viewers on a visceral journey through one animal’s abode.

strangers
Katherin Resetarits
1999, 29 min, Color, 16mm, Austria West Coast Premiere
While no huge drama or great untold secret will unfold, Resetarits’ strangers conveys a simple and stunning portrait of a family through masterfully constructed moments in their lives. She has found the subtle knack of cinema verite-like observation in narrative film that is so often lost. (Resetarits also directed Egypt which screened at MadCat in 1999).

Why You Were Born
Kelly Spivey
2001, 6 min, Color, Super 8, USA West Coast Premiere
This kodachrome Super 8 animation utilizes found images delicately cut from magazines from the 40's-70's. A hand-held camera creates agitation and a frenetic frame speed penetrates women's roles shown in advertising -- shattering them and offering sadistic feminist and otherwise, sapphic solutions.

Little Legs
Carolina Esparragoza
1999, 2 min, Color, SVHS, Mexico US Premiere
Little Legs chronicles the life of a boy who can do no right.

Against Filial Piety
Wenhwa Ts’ao
2001, 5 min, Color, 16mm, Silent, USA West Coast Premiere
Against Filial Piety ponders one of the oldest Chinese beliefs: the gravest offense of filial piety is not to have offspring to carry on the family name.

Nigel
Damienne Caron
1999, 2 min, Color, 16mm, USA Northern California Premiere
A brief portrait of a child named Nigel.

Just Words
Louise Bourque
1991, 10 min, Color, 16mm, Canada
Just Words has been called a “10 minute tour de force…” by Toronto’s Globe and Mail. Using as its text Samuel Beckett’s Not I, this shocking gift incorporates optically printed home movie footage and an eerily slick close-up of actress Patricia MacGeachy as she rants at lightening speed Beckett’s words about home, family and the confines and alienation associated with being a woman.

Sand Castle II
Mary Beth Reed
1998, 7 min, Color, 16mm, USA
This gorgeous experimental gem gives audiences an unusual feeling that the home pictured is on fire.

Uivic, The Time of Going Round
Meg McKinney
2001, 14 min, Color, 16mm, USA World Premiere
Uivic, The Time of Going Round follows the day to day life of Sally Russell, a single mom who has found her home in rural Alaska. This is a portrait of a remote access Alaskan town and a poem of daily life during winter.

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Program 6
Political Warfare
These films follow two wars: one in the U.S. and one in Yugoslavia.

PROGRAM#1
Maedchen In Uniform

PROGRAM#2
An Uneasy Feeling About It

PROGRAM#3
Rebels With A Cause

PROGRAM#4
Is This Desire?

PROGRAM#5
In Search of Home

PROGRAM#6
Political Warfare

PROGRAM#7
A Structured Moment

PROGRAM#8
How Do I Look?

36-365
Joan Nidzyn
2001, 10 min, Color and b/w, 16mm, USA West Coast Premiere
This film was shot in Miami, Florida two days before the 2000 stalemated election for presidency of the United States. Nidzyn’s camera concentrate on the iconic images of Florida and the quiet that existed there. She juxtaposes these images with the chaotic scenes from a television screen. This montage forms a new pattern of manipulation, consumption and covert meaning that reflects the incessant, ambiguous counting transmitted from the global short wave radio stations.

Discharge.NWO
Deni Blaise
2000, 60 min, Color & b/w, Beta SP, Yugoslavia
West Coast Premiere
Yugoslavia, 1999. Air war. Discharge.NOW follows Tania, Matt and Vuk, all people with different backgrounds, who are caught in the middle of a military conflict out of their control. Amidst the backdrop of a NATO air campaign they are faced with the inevitable question: "Which side am I on?" Such pondering proves pointless -- they must work within the confines of a warring nation that is their home.

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Program 7
A Structured Moment
Filmmakers exploit the medium and manipulate celluloid by hand-painting, optically printing and hand-processing their films to reveal a rich set of inventive stories and worlds.

PROGRAM#1
Maedchen In Uniform

PROGRAM#2
An Uneasy Feeling About It

PROGRAM#3
Rebels With A Cause

PROGRAM#4
Is This Desire?

PROGRAM#5
In Search of Home

PROGRAM#6
Political Warfare

PROGRAM#7
A Structured Moment

PROGRAM#8
How Do I Look?

Train
Masako Miyazaki
1999, 8 min, b/w, 16mm, USA
An experimental animation exploring the rhythmic and organic qualities of a machine called a Train.

Images Of Flying and Falling
Ariana Gerstein
2001, 25 min, b/w, 16mm anamorphic, USA
Gerstein tries to mourn the loss of her grandmother, Martha, with the only images she has -- those taken close to the end of her grandmother’s life. But Martha is so much more than those images – so the filmmaker must manufacture what has been lost and cannot be told. She uses a computer and scanner, old pictures and found footage. The film is an attempt to connect and hold onto the elusive. The “narrator” is another artist who speaks, in an emotional way, about why she obsessively seeks and collects other people’s discarded images at resale shops and garage sales. She tells of a need to give the lost images a voice -- even if only an imagined one. The film asks – what is reality and how do we shape it in the age of personal computers?

The Penfield Road
Diane Kitchen
1998, 5 min, Color, 16mm, USA
Kitchen uses still images taken from postcards, from the 1950s and 60s to create a fable, concerning the landscape and the open road.

The Bear Garden
Andrea Leuteneker
2000, 17 min, Color, 16mm, USA West Coast Premiere
The Bear Garden is a hand-manipulated, painted and optically printed film; a meditation on historical trauma. By imaging the furnaces of Dachau and the Kristallnacht with a landscape of sulfur and dye, Leuteneker creates a materialist essay on the spiritual in art and the mental detritus of a post war generation.

The Wind Between My Ears
Carol Beecher & Kevin Kurytnik
2000, 2 min, Color, 16mm, Canada California Premiere
An inside look at viewing popular culture.

Skate
Cade Bursell
2001, 5 min, Color, 16mm, USA
Bursell hand paints liquid emulsion onto the footage of a young girl skating. Using sandpaper she creates another level of image and movement transforming a once simple scene into a multi layered moment in time.

Untitled
Maya Cybelle Carpenter
2001, 8 min, Color, 16mm, Silent, USA
This hand-processed and painted film is a silent experiment with space and movement.

Bloemschikken
Francien van Everdingen
1999, 3 min, Color, 16mm, Silent, Netherlands
US Premiere
Flowers, Flowers, beautiful Flowers!

Curtain of Eyes
Daniele Wilmouth
1997, 13 min, 16mm, b/w, Japan
Curtain of Eyes combines Japanese Butoh dance with psychological imagery and choreographed photography. Over a six month period, Wilmouth collaborated with the Kyoto based Butoh dancer Katsura Kan and his dance company The Saltimbanques, to create movements for both dancers and camera. The result is an exploration of intimate relationships and bi-cultural identity.

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Program 8
How Do I Look?
Characters reveal the power of the gaze. Through heart felt documentaries, innovative narratives and outrageously funny animated films these filmmakers explore what it is to be objectified and how characters can reclaim the gaze by staring back!

PROGRAM#1
Maedchen In Uniform

PROGRAM#2
An Uneasy Feeling About It

PROGRAM#3
Rebels With A Cause

PROGRAM#4
Is This Desire?

PROGRAM#5
In Search of Home

PROGRAM#6
Political Warfare

PROGRAM#7
A Structured Moment

PROGRAM#8
How Do I Look?

Ladies Tea
Paula Durette
2001, 2:30 min, Color, SVHS, USA Northern California Premiere
The politics of lesbian bars: to see and be seen.

Inside/Out
Jennifer Petrucelli
2000, 8 min, Color, 16mm, USA
Inside/Out explores one woman’s struggle to deal with Bells Palsy, a disease that has left half her face paralyzed. The film delicately considers how our faces masks and exposes us. (Golden Gate Award Winner).

The Amazing Meat Girl
Nine de Janvier
2001, 5 min, Color, 16mm, USA Bay Area Premiere
3D animation and optically printed Super 8 film footage make up The Amazing Meat Girl … literally a meat girl.

Palindrome
Rebecca Reynolds
2000, 11 min, b/w, 16mm, USA
Palindrome uses a split screen to explore desire and the desire to become formless – to be invisible.

Aerosol
Mandy Siu
2001, 8 min, Color, 16mm, USA Northern California Premiere
Aerosol is a hilarious and unsentimental film that examines how women strive for physical perfection.

Jack the Nose and Jane the Thumb
Margit Lillak
2001, 3 min, Color, Beta SP, Estonia US Premiere
This surreal animated short follows Jack and Jane as they learn to live with their mistakes and embody their habits.

Erika in Amerika
Antonia Baehr
2000, 10 min, b/w, 16mm, Germany West Coast Premiere
Part performance art, part grotesque animated narrative, Erika In Amerika explores one woman’s quest to understand American culture and our ideals of beauty.

BeauteouS: Stephanie
Giovanna Chesler
2000, 15 min, Color, 16mm, USA
A woman born with a cleft lip and palate recounts the more than twenty plastic surgeries she endured to transform her face. Her story challenges the societal standards of beauty which instigated these painful surgeries.

Skinny Teeth
Jennifer Reeves
2001, 7 min, Color, VHS, USA West Coast Premiere
Utilizing motivational tapes and amateur video footage shot in the late 1980’s, Skinny Teeth chronicles the escapades of two punk girls who wreak havoc in a Ohio Mall. This is an examination of teenage angst as the protagonists push the boundaries of “appropriate” behavior and dress in public spaces. (Reeves’ films Chronic and Monsters in the Closet screened at MadCat in 1998, We Are Going Home screened in 1999).

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