Celebrating Canyon Cinema: Create - December 1, 2012

Celebrating Canyon Cinema: Create
12 noon, 2 and 4 pm
Saturday, December 1, 2012
McBean Theater



The Exploratorium’s Cinema Arts is pleased to partner with San Francisco’s great film institution Canyon Cinema, to present the final Celebrating Canyon Cinema: Create — a three-part series of family-friendly short film programs. Create screens on Saturday, December 1, at 12 noon, 2 and 4 pm. Among the undiscovered gems from the Canyon Cinema archives are Stan Vanderbeek’s Wheeeels No. 1 and Barry Spinello’s Sonata for Pen, Brush and Ruler.




The full program is as follows:

Hand-Eye Coordination (2002, 10 min, 16mm) The hand of the artist, Naomi Uman, is the literal star of this collage film in which images move, shift, and are manually manipulated, bringing the oft-forgotten act of creation to the forefront.

Sonata for Pen, Brush, and Ruler (1968, 11 min, 16mm) His first foray into filmmaking, Barry Spinello’s camera-less animation is a work of impressive length which he constructed over 7 months, individually painting 16000 frames before syncing them to an inventively simple pulsating soundtrack.

Colour Separation (1974, 3 min, 16mm), by Chris Welsby, is based on the color separation process. When projected, the film resembles a moving impressionist painting in which time seems to participate in constructing the color image.

Wheeeels No. 1 (1968, 5 min, 16mm) A carefully constructed collage of motor-culture comes to life in Stan Vanderbeek’s irreverent animation. Vintage magazine photos are dismembered and rebuilt into garish machines playing out a fantasy auto show.

Newsprint (1972, 5 min, 16mm) A celluloid transcription of the Sunday news, Guy Sherwin broadcasts the black and white text and sounds of newsprint through the light of a 16mm projector in this camera-less animation.

These screenings are generously supported by a grant from the National Alliance of Media Arts Centers (NAMAC). Support for NAMAC has been provided by the Metabolic Studio, a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation.