HUGO / JACOBS / LEVITT / MAAS
Ian Hugo BELLS OF ATLANTIS (1952, 10 min, 16mm. Preserved by the Library of Congress through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation.) A film poem, based on Anaïs Nin's HOUSE OF INCEST, narrated by and featuring Nin. "[BELLS OF ATLANTIS was] inspired by the prologue to my HOUSE OF INCEST and the line: 'I remember my first birth in water.' The film evoked the watery depths of the lost continent of Atlantis. It is a lyrical journey into prenatal memories, the theme of birth and rebirth from the sea." –Anaïs Nin Ken Jacobs LITTLE STABS AT HAPPINESS (1959-63, 18 min, 16mm. With Jack Smith.) "Material was cut in as it came out of the camera, embarrassing moments intact. 100' rolls timed well with music on old 78s. I was interested in immediacy, a sense of ease, and an art where suffering was acknowledged but not trivialized with dramatics. Whimsy was our achievement, as well as breaking out of step." –Ken Jacobs Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb, and James Agee IN THE STREET (1952, 12 min, 16mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.) "Informality is indeed the crucial and virtually definitive quality of IN THE STREET; it is even the guiding principle and vision. […] This is the extreme realization of a classic 'naturalistic' genre, the German 'street film,' where the street was imaged as the arena of the everyday and random, the channel in which the 'stream of life' conveniently became microcosmic." –Ken Kelman, THE ESSENTIAL CINEMA Willard Maas GEOGRAPHY OF THE BODY (1943, 7 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology with support from The National Film Preservation Foundation.) "The terrors and splendors of the human body as the undiscovered, mysterious continent." –Willard Maas CLICK HERE TO BOOK TICKETS NOW!