FOUND FOOTAGE PROGRAM
The films gathered here all riff on the Western by repurposing, reediting, or manipulating footage – or in the case of THE SONG OF RIO JIM, soundtrack material – taken from classic instances of the genre. Raphael Montañez Ortiz COWBOY AND "INDIAN" FILM 1958, 2 min, 16mm-to-DCPThis film is constructed from randomly spliced pieces of Anthony Mann's WINCHESTER '73, which the artist had chopped with an axe and ritually cleansed by shaking the pieces inside a medicine bag while singing Yaqui healing chants. Hans Scheugl SAFETY FILM 1968, 4 min, 16mm "SAFETY FILM consists of a Hollywood Western shot directly off a movie screen and restored to its raw form – an act that strips the film of its narrative, reduces its size, and drains all color from the CinemaScope and DeLuxe Color Western." –MUBI Maurice Lemaître THE SONG OF RIO JIM 1978, 6 min, 16mm "This film – designed to pay tribute to Ince and to Hart, ancestors and creators of the cowboy film – has a 'western' story but it is not on the image – which is black from beginning to end – but in the sound. […] During the screening, the spectator will thus be able to imagine all possible westerns and anti-westerns." –LIGHT CONE Peter Tscherkassky INSTRUCTIONS FOR A LIGHT AND SOUND MACHINE 2005, 17 min, 35mm "THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY is retold through intense, widescreen 35mm warping and warbling techniques. It will change your ideas about the expressive potential of optical printing and sound remixing." –Sean Uyehara, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Rebecca Baron & Douglas Goodwin LOSSLESS #3 2008, 10 min, digital Removing key frames from a digital version of John Ford's THE SEARCHERS, Baron and Goodwin attack the film's temporal structuring to render a kinetic "painted desert" of the West. John Klacsmann & Walter Forsberg TECHNICOLOR N.G. 2014, 20 min, 16mm, live score In this film, "a Technicolor dye transfer printing error mis-registers a 1967 B-Western, revealing cyan ghosts and cinema's psychedelic underpinnings." With a live score by Forsberg and Klacsmann, the film is a mesmerizing investigation into the unseen foundations of the cinematic image of the West.