Canyon Cinema celebrates fifty years with screening of seminal experimental films
at BAMPFA
Distributor presents an evening of work from its founders and their contemporaries as a
part of its Canyon Cinema 50 project
(5/3/17)
Berkeley – Canyon Cinema travels to Berkeley this week for a special screening of
pivotal works from its collection. As a part of Canyon Cinema 50, its celebration of half
a century in continuous operation, and together with the Berkeley Art Museum and
Pacific Film Archive’s ongoing series Hippie Modernism: Cinema and the
Counterculture, 1964-1974, the distributor will co-present Elegy To Ecstasy, an evening
of films made by some of the most influential figures in the history of avant-garde
cinema.
The event will take place on Thursday, May 11, at 7:00 PM at the Pacific Film
Archive, and will be followed by a conversation between Canyon’s Director Antonella
Bonfanti and former PFA director and Canyon Cinema manager Edith Kramer.
The program begins with Mass for the Dakota Sioux, a meditation on life and death by
Bruce Baillie, who started projecting films in his backyard under the name Canyon
Cinema in 1960. Chick Strand, who was also a part of the cooperative in its infancy, will
be represented through her film poem Angel Blue Sweet Wings, as will Barbara Hammer,
whose transgressive lesbian “commercial” Dyketactics is also on the bill. The night also
includes Straight and Narrow, a visual and rhythmic study by arch-minimalist Tony
Conrad, My Name is Oona, Gunvor Nelson’s lyrical portrait of her daughter,
Amphetamine, by Warren Sonbert and Wendy Appel, and Incantations by Peter Rose.
What these works share, according to BAMPFA associate film curator Kate MacKay, is
their “celebration of bodies, film, and light.”
By focusing on the works of the organization’s founders and Canyon filmmakers adjacent
to them, the programmers hope to emphasize the West Coast distributor’s outsize role in
shaping and disseminating alternative, artist-made work, as well as highlight the ongoing
vitality of its collection. Edith Kramer, the manager of Canyon Cinema from 1967 to
1970, will be in attendance to discuss the organization’s early years and pivotal place in
the history of experimental cinema.
Since its formal incorporation in 1967, Canyon Cinema has successfully built an artistcentered distribution model organized around a collection of more than 3,200 works from
across the world. The Canyon Cinema 50 project celebrates fifty years in operation with
United States and international touring programs, a new website for filmmakers and
scholars, and a year of events across the Bay Area. Local programming continues in June
and July with screenings hosted by Dominic Angerame, Gordon Ball, and Ernie Gehr.
Tickets to Elegy to Ecstasy are $7.00 for BAMPFA Members and $12.00 for the general
public, and can be purchased online at bampfa.berkeley.edu.
About Canyon Cinema
Canyon Cinema is a nonprofit film and media arts organization that serves as one of the
world’s preeminent sources for artist-made moving image work. 2017 marks its 50th
anniversary. The organization celebrates this milestone through the Canyon Cinema 50
project, which includes a screening series in the San Francisco Bay Area, US and
international touring programs showcasing newly created prints and digital copies, and an
educational website including new essays, ephemera, and interviews with filmmakers and
other witnesses to Canyon’s 50-year history. More information can be found at
canyoncinema.com.
About Hippie Modernism
Presented by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film
Archive (BAMPFA), Hippie Modernism: Cinema and Counterculture, 1964– 1974 is a
four-month film series focused on the radical cinema of the 1960s and early 1970s. The
series, organized by BAMPFA’s Associate Film Curator Kate MacKay, is shown in
conjunction with Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia (February 8 through May
21, 2017), a major exhibition of over 400 works examining the intersection of the radical
art, architecture, and design of the counterculture period.
Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia is organized by the Walker Art Center in
association with the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film
Archive (BAMPFA). The exhibition was curated by Andrew Blauvelt, Director of
Cranbrook Art Museum. The BAMPFA presentation is organized by Director Lawrence
Rinder and guest curator Greg Castillo, Associate Professor of Architecture at the
University of California, Berkeley.
The exhibition is made possible with support from the Martin and Brown Foundation, the
Prospect Creek Foundation, Annette and John Whaley, and Audrey and Zygi Wilf.
Support for the exhibition catalog is provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced
Studies in the Fine Arts and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support
of Walker Art Center publications. The BAMPFA presentation is made possible with
generous support from Coleman Fung, Frances Hellman and Warren Breslau, Nion
McEvoy and Leslie Berriman, Carla and David Crane, Goodby Silverstein & Partners,
and Beth Rudin DeWoody.
BAMPFA
Internationally recognized for its art and film programming, the UC Berkeley Art
Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is a platform for cultural experiences that
transform individuals, engage communities, and advance the local, national, and global
discourse on art and film. Founded in 1963, BAMPFA is UC Berkeley’s primary visual
arts venue with its screenings of some 450 films and presentations of up to twenty
exhibitions annually. BAMPFA’s mission is to inspire the imagination and ignite critical
dialogue through art and film.
The institution’s collection of over 19,000 works of art dates from 3000 BCE to the
present day and includes important holdings of Neolithic Chinese ceramics, Ming and
Qing Dynasty Chinese painting, Old Master works on paper, Italian Baroque painting,
early American painting, Abstract Expressionist painting, contemporary photography,
and Conceptual art. BAMPFA’s collection also includes over 17,500 films and videos,
including the largest collection of Japanese cinema outside of Japan, impressive holdings
of Soviet cinema, West Coast avant-garde film, seminal video art, as well as hundreds of
thousands of articles, reviews, posters, and other ephemera related to the history of
film—many of which are digitally scanned and accessible online.
Social Media
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Media Contacts
John Schmidt
Canyon Cinema 50 Publicity & Publications Manager
[email protected] // 720.280.9769
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