Saturday, May 25, 2024, 8:00 pm, , classic-editor, classic-editor
JEANNE FINLEY’s RED BOAT CROSSING + BARON’s NEAREST NEIGHBOR + NEW EXPERIMENTAL WORKS
Our seasonal mini-fest of innovation in film form, this Spring’s NEW night boasts a healthy crop of contemporary visions, each program-half anchored by the NorCal theatrical debut of a major essay from our State’s most esteemed women makers…both in person! Yes, SF‘s Jeanne Finley and LA‘s Rebecca Baron are both in the house to introduce their sublimely smart cine-meditations—Finley‘s 40-min. Red Boat Crossing on her mother’s European experience in WWII, and Baron‘s 20-min. Nearest Neighbor–a collab with Cal Arts’ Doug Goodwin–on human communication with both birds and computers. Baron/Goodwin‘s provocative thought-experiment is showcased in the opening half– they self-consciously exploit AI agency to generate novel image/sound relations, comparing and contrasting communication with animals to that with machines, and so affording new understandings of language acquisition in both Nature and Technology. And in the program’s finale, Finley takes her camera back to France‘s southern coast, to the precise location of the Allied landing and where her mother, 65 years earlier, had served on a Red Cross ship, tending to the War wounded–the resulting footage later layered with memorabilia discovered in a long-lost family trunk, Captain‘s logs, letters, phone calls, and archival footage–all weaving a rich tapestry of memory, history, and heroism. ALSO: The in-the-flesh return of Canadian whiz-kid Jake Scott with his 15-min. live expanded-cinema piece On Leadership, TT Takemoto‘s lovely Lion in the Wind, Alex Miller’s Denis Anatomy, and new shorts from Bryan Boyce,Yuyan Wang, and Others TBA! Free pencils. $12