In conjunction with the publication of PFA's first book, Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000, edited by Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz, and Steve Seid, the Pacific Film Archive is presenting a film and video series that explores the themes and movements, and traces the historic chronology of alternative film and video in the Bay Area. The history of avant-garde cinema in the region goes back to the 1940s, when surrealist-influenced films were created through San Francisco Art Institute workshops, in some of the country's earliest filmmaking classes. Around the same time, artists such as Harry Smith and Jordan Belson began painting directly on celluloid or sculpting light on film. By the end of the fifties, the first film assembled entirely from already existing film footage would be made by Bruce Conner, and poet Christopher Maclaine would have completed his formative first film, a startling apocalyptic vision. Some artists, such as Stan Brakhage, Abigail Child, and Peter Hutton, made films during relatively brief stays around San Francisco, but others such as Lawrence Jordan, Gunvor Nelson, and George Kuchar developed long-term careers in the area. Many began as poets, painters, and sculptors, but as the sixties moved into the seventies more and more came to identify themselves primarily as film or videomakers. A parallel wave of artists adopted the emerging technology of video as their principal tool of expression, while Stephen Beck, Skip Sweeney, Warner Jepson, and others developed a language of image-processing that pulled psychedelia into an electronic realm.

Featured Works:

Highlights of the series include artists in attendance at many shows, archival prints and recent preservations, and the rediscovery of long-forgotten works. An accompanying gallery exhibition further elucidates this history through photographs, posters, flyers and ephemera.

Program information:

Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area

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