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Doors 7pm / Show 7:30pm
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Presented by San Francisco Cinematheque
The Visible Press is a London-based independent imprint for books on cinema and writings by filmmakers, dedicated to producing high quality and lasting publications of writings that might not otherwise be available. Managed by film curators Mark Webber and María Palacios Cruz, Visible Press publications include volumes by filmmaker/ideologues Thom Andersen, Peter Gidal, Gregory J. Markopoulos and Lis Rhodes as well as the recent Afterimage Reader. Tonight’s screening recognizes two recent publications by The Visible Press: The Afterimage Reader and Lis Rhodes: Telling Invents Told.
In celebration of these two publications, this mash-up program features works by two artists embodying the political and formalist poles of radical filmmaking, placing Jean-Luc Godard’s aggressively polemical, haranguing and rarely seen Marxist screed British Sounds (1969, co-directed with Jean-Henri Roger) in dialog with a selection of works by British filmmaker Lis Rhodes, including the early-1970s direct film works—Dresden Dynamo (1971) and Notes from Light Music (1975, a single-strip translation of the legendary double-screen Light Music, 1975)—and the cryptic and poetic essay film Light Reading (1978).
SCREENING:
British Sounds (1969) by Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Henri Roger; 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 52 minutes
Dresden Dynamo (1971) by Lis Rhodes; color, sound, 5 minutes
Notes from Light Music (1975) by Lis Rhodes; b&w, sound, 12 minutes
Light Reading (1978) by Lis Rhodes; b&w, sound, 20 minutes
At the present time we need to show in a polemical but positive way the destructive and creative aspects of working as women in film, and examine these phenomena as products of our society and the particular society of film/art. Women filmmakers may or may not have made “formalist” films, but is the term itself valid as a means of reconstructing history? Is there a commonly accepted and understood approach? […]Women have already realised the need to research and write their own histories; to describe themselves rather than accept descriptions, images and fragments of “historical evidence” of themselves; and to reject a history that perpetuates a mythological female occasionally glimpsed but never heard. Women are researching and conserving their own histories, creating their own sources of information. Perhaps we can change, are changing, must change the histor[…] (Lis Rhodes: “Whose History?” [1979]. Reprinted in Telling Invents Told)