H to the IPPO

friday night's hippodrome experimental-film gathering at java lounge was a solid good time. i hope the program does something like this every other month and branches out to welcome new filmmakers; this could be the start of something cool. the show began late, at around 7:20 for future reference, but by the time curator bryan darling started up the films the audience of about 25 was quiet, well-caffeinated and ready. darling could have had a bit more confidence up there in front of the audience and also could have had a better pre- and-post film agenda, but oh well.




bryan darling introduces the program.





there were nine films and they ran back-to-back and were projected digitally on a quality screen (hint hint kabinet) with 5.1 sound. the show lasted about 35 minutes. honestly, i totally had expected this faux-film school amateur night of crappy super-8 films but that was NOT the case ... at all. repeat: these were thoughtful, well-conceived and well-crafted local films.

first up was preston allen, who premeired two video films, one shot in houston and one in downtown Sac near the railyards. his use of ambient sound collage and digitally manipulated images, along with shot repetition and other dreamlike devices, was effective. mani ramirez's two films were both single-take, black-and-white shorts featuring a naked man (the filmmaker?). in pelicula de 1978 (the best film of the evening along with allen's time and tested) a man lies naked, face down, while an individual off-screen shovels dirt onto his head. matches are lit offscreen and thrown onto the pile of dirt—it catches fire, burns for a bit, then the film ends. wow! a companion piece, titled in german (?), shows the same naked man get into a fridge while white noise saturates the audio track. the sound crescendos, then the freezer door shuts by itself. fin. both ramirez's films were about three minutes in length and were quite engaging in a stunt-film/duchampian way. the other films by darling and filmmaker evan tyler also were exciting.

filmmaker preston allen, right, confers with curator bryan darling before the start of the program.