Artists' Television Access

In pre-millennial times filmmaker Luther Price was infamous for deeply personal and aggressively visceral super-8 films (Sodom, Meat, Eruption Errection, Bottle Can) which enacted primal domestic psychodramas and/or probed the psychosexual extremes of physical experience. Moving ever onward, the 21st century 16mm films and dazzling hand-made slide work of the stridently defiant filmstrip fetishist continues to confront. Based on abjected found footage—variously looped (hideously), attacked (viciously), and over-painted (gloriously) to the point of delirium—Price’s works are dazzling bruised jewels, overwhelming to viewers in their brutal physicality, their profane beauty and their disjointed, almost limbic, narrative fragmentations. Following major screenings in 2012 at the Whitney Biennial and the New York Film Festival, CCA and Cinematheque are proud to host Luther Price for two screenings—his first in-person appearances in over a decade. (Steve Polta)

 NOTE: Each screening in this two-part series will feature Luther Price in person presenting a completely different improvised program each night. Titles to screen likely include fancy; The Biscuit Day; Deaf for Chicken Lip; Kittens Grow Up; Dipping Sause; September Song; Inside Velvet K; Shelly Winters; selections from the Ink Blots series, possibly including Aqua Woman, Sleep, Shelly Winters and The Biscuit Song; and chapters from the ongoing insectoid Christ saga Sorry, possibly to include Horns and Walking the Cross “Quatch”.

Luther Price studied sculpture and media/performing arts at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt), where he currently teaches. His films, shot primarily on Super-8, often include controversial subject matter, found footage, the artist performing in a variety of personae, and physical interventions into the actual material of the film, sometimes incorporating live performance. His work was in the 2012 Whitney Biennial and the 2012-13 exhibition Second Nature: Abstract Photography Then and Now at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. He has previously had exhibitions, screenings and performances at the San Francisco Cinematheque; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, Thread Waxing Space, PARTICIPANT INC., and Light Industry.

Presented by SF Cinematheque.