FLEX- Mark Toscano curated show

Opening the 2011 FLEX Fest in Gainesville, FL, was a curated show by festival juror and Academy archivist, Mark Toscano. These works ranged from 1957-1975, and were all shown on 16mm, sans one early PortaPak video. What is most striking to me, upon reviewing the program after the fact, is that each film in itself represents a historical document that now lives beyond it’s time. Each film is a vignette of a time, an idea, a concept. We live and think based on the world around us, and experimental film, more than perhaps any other medium, takes us into the visual minds of the past. There is a pureness to experimental media that cannot be achieved by the superficial nature of narrative films, or even traditional documentaries. This is “cinema of the mind,” and it is a rare treat to see works made by true fringe, unheralded artists from times gone by-- films simply are not made like this in our current age, experimental or otherwise.

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time known for “acid” films, which I’ve always found very misleading. While the vision for creating a particular piece may be encouraged by mind alternating substances, the technical process of creating a 16mm film is far too complex to be credited to them alone. And while a case can be made that viewing these films can be enhanced by substances, I would defiantly fist-fight anyone in the street who claimed they could not be fully enjoyed without.

Two of my favorite "acid" films in the program were Daina Krumins’ “Aether” (1972) and Ben Van Meter’s “SF Trips Festival” (1967). Both films were breathtakingly crisp on vibrant, deliciously reversal, 16mm film-- and represent a time and place when mind-expansion was much more en vogue, when there was more to our reality than body, car and iPhone. “Aether” is a candy apocalypse, terrorizing yet ever so sweet. A technicolor apparition from the center of the moon. If it were possible to see "aether" itself, not only as a gas compound, but as a real being with aspirations, conscious and soul-- it may very well look like this film.

“SF Trips Festival” documents an art festival in line with a more homespun “Burning Man.” This film consists of thee exposures on one reel of film stock, meaning that the film was exposed, rewound, re-exposed, rewound, and re-exposed again. The beauty of the film is that all three exposures are meticulous and calculated, yet fatefully random. One exposure is mainly color streaks and abstractions, while the other two contain more recognizable objects and people-- with Van Meter taking obvious care to frame each image to balance the overall final product. While the film is certainly “experimental,” there is a true organic documentary quality to the film, with a feel that you’ve been sucked into the scene rather than just examining the petri dish.

As a vintage video junkie, “Turning Over” (1975) by Morgan Fisher was a real thrill. It had a very deadpan William Wegman style, that just seems to shine in the light of grainy b/w videotape. Essentially, the video is a document of Fisher’s car “turning over” at 100,000 miles-- overly analyzed, hyper-hyped, hilarious in a British-comedy sort of way. Just as the old saying goes, “people remember you if you wear the same clothes every day,” people will also remember your film if it stretches a single moment out for 15 minutes. Love it!

Also worth mentioning, “Picasso” (1973), made as a sort of anti-homage to Pablo Picasso. Chis Langdon was said to be very disfavorable towards Picasso, and rapidly made this film within the scope of several hours. The most memorable part of the film is an inane, incessant looped recording of Picasso himself in his doddering years, mumbling something about children needing to do something or another. “King David” (1970) was an engaging documentary on a black egomaniac “Mr. T” style character in 1970s San Francisco, making me wish more filmmakers would champion their local eccentrics. Mike Henderson’s “Dufus” was a charming psuedo-documentary, staging variations of stereotyped black identities. At one point, Henderson flashes the “self” title card and childishly scampers into the frame, buck-naked and scared, as in a teenage anxiety dream. What is a self anyway? Are we to simply scroll down the list until we find the right persona? Who do you think YOU are, Bub?

Full program:
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2011
THE TOP SECRET SPACE , Gainesville, FL
CURATED SHOW: Mark Toscano

The Maltese Cross Movement (8:00/16MM/1967) Keewatin Dewdney
Logos (2:00/16MM/1957) Jane Conger Belson Shimane
Brummer’s (10:00/16MM/1967) David Bienstock
S.W.L.A. (6:00/16MM/1971) Rob Thompson
Aether (4:00/16MM/1972) Daina Krumins
Mirror People (5:00/16MM/1957) Kathy Rose
Picasso (3:00/16MM/1973) Chris Langdon
King David (9:00/16MM/1970) Robert Nelson & Mike Henderson
Turning Over (13:00/VIDEO/1975) Morgan Fisher
SF Trips Festival--An Opening (9:00/16MM/1967) Ben Van Meter
Dufus (8:00/16MM/1970/73) Mike Henderson
Throbs (7:00/16mm/1972) Fred Worden

Reviewed by d.anderson 2011