FILM

Co-presented with the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Aurora Picture Show presents the 48th Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour- 16mm Program, the hall of fame for experimental media. Saturday, January 15, at 7PM. Location: Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Brown Auditorium.

Aurora Picture Show and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston partner to welcome back the 48th Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour. This year, we are pleased to present an evening of 16mm films from AAFF. Ann Arbor Film Festival has been at the forefront of experimental and avant-garde programming for decades featuring works from leading and emerging filmmakers. This superbly curated collection of short films features works by Jim Trainor and Naoyuki Tsuji, Denise Oleksijczuk, Alexandra Cuesta, Peter Herwtiz, Gregory Godhard and Steve Cossman, Laida Lertxundi and Robert Todd.

Role (Directed by Denise Oleksijczuk; Canada; 9 min.) Based on a reconsideration of Robert Bresson´s 1967 film Mouchette, this film presents a new end to the story. Casting herself as a grown-up Mouchette, the director reinterpret´s Bresson´s depiction of a child´s impoverished solitude, her Christ-like suffering, and reframes the infamous suicide scene as a clumsy experiment rather than a transcendent release.

TUSSLEMUSCLE (Directed by Steve Cossman; USA; 5 min.) An animated exploration of humanity´s ecological relationship and the ritual of restoration. This dynamic piece is composed of 7,000 single frames which were appropriated/recycled from view-master reel cells and hand-spliced to create a linear filmstrip.

Piensa en Mi (Directed by Alexandra Cuesta; USA/Ecuador; 15 min.) Moving from east to west and back, the windows of a bus frame fleeting sections of urban landscape. Throughout the day, images of riders, textures of light, and fragments of bodies in space come together to weave a portrait in motion; a contemplative meditation on public transport in the city of Los Angeles. Isolation, routine, and everyday splendor create the backdrop of this journey, while the intermittent sounds of cars construct the soundscape.

Zephyr (Directed by Naoyuki Tsuj; Japan; 6 min.) Continuing from where Tsuji´s charcoal animation The Place Where We Were leaves off, "Zephyr refers to the Greek god of the west wind who takes a baby inside the sun. What kind of experience is waiting for the baby?"—Tomio Koyama Gallery, Kyoto

Gesturings (Directed by Peter Herwitz; USA; 7 min.) "This film represents the apotheosis of my hand painted film style and the belief that in the materiality of film, everything is a kind of gesture: color, rhythm, texture, splice marks, funky tape splices, fingerprints, and dirt. I worked on and off on the film for seven years. Reprinting each frame twice, my hope was the slowing down would echo Baudelaire´s Lux, Calme, et Volupte (luxury, calm, and pleasure). The film is dedicated to Bill Brand." — Peter Herwitz

The Presentation Theme (Directed by Jim Trainor; USA; 14 min.) A Peruvian prisoner of war finds himself outmaneuvered by a bloodsucking priestess. Based on a true story.

Collide-a-Scope (Directed by Gregory Godhard; Australia; 3 min.) In September 2008, Swiss physicists began experiments using the most powerful ´atom-smasher´ ever built, the Large Hadron Collider. They hoped to find the theoretical Higgs-Boson Particle, aka ´God Particle.´ This film contains secret footage of those results.

Golden Hour (Directed by Robert Todd; USA; 17 min.) What if the looking glass were a window and a mirror?

My Tears Are Dry (Directed by Laida Lertxundi; Spain/USA; 4 min.) Hoagy Land´s song is played and the lyrics reference the eternal sunshine of California and its promises.

The Ann Arbor Film Festival is the longest-running independent and experimental film festival in North America, established in 1963. Internationally recognized as a premiere forum for independent filmmakers and artists, each year's festival engages audiences with remarkable cinematic experiences. The six-day festival presents 40 programs with more than 160 films from over 20 countries of all lengths and genres, including experimental, animation, documentary, narrative, hybrid and performance based works.

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Image Credit: Piensa En Mi by Alexandra Cuesta.