San Francisco Cinematheque's 16th Annual CROSSROADS Festival runs three days (Fri/29–Sun/31) at Gray Area in San Francisco and features eight curated programs of experimental and avant-garde cinema. The festival presents works by established and emerging filmmakers including Ken Jacobs, Kevin Jerome Everson, Janie Geiser, Jerome Hiler, Jodie Mack, Tomonari Nishikawa, Cauleen Smith, Greta Snider, Scott Stark, Dianna Barrie and Richard Tuohy. Program 1 includes Scott Stark's Bay Area premiere, a 15-minute film that uses 1950s stereo photographs to transform suburban cocktail parties and tourist trips into a hypnotic visual playland and opens with Ken Jacobs' Flo Rounds a Corner (1999). Program 2 screens Daniel Menche and Karl Lemieux's Celluloid Between the Wounds; the pair are known for projection work with the post-rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Having conceived and directed more than 85 films over the past 45 years, Scott Stark is easily one of my favorite filmmakers working in the world today. The Bay Area premiere of his latest 15-minute masterpiece employs a batch of 1950s "stereo photos" transforming suburban cocktail parties and tourist trips into a hypnotic "visual playland." Stereo cameras emerged in the 1940s and 50s, utilizing two different lenses that took twin shots of scenes, which then were supposed to be viewed in dedicated image viewers.
I have compiled a spoiler-free list below of my favorite "Ficks' Picks" from this slimmed-down spectacle of eight curated programs, showcasing many legendary filmmakers such as Ken Jacobs, Kevin Jerome Everson, Janie Geiser, Jerome Hiler, Jodie Mack, Tomonari Nishikawa, Cauleen Smith, Greta Snider, Scott Stark, Dianna Barrie and Richard Tuohy, as well as a bodacious bevy of returning and fresh voices.
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