PRESENCES + DOPPELGANGER
Joe Gibbons PRESENCES 1974-90, 45 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm blow-up. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Film Preservation Foundation. A long-term project started in the 1970s, PRESENCES compiles a series of portrait films featuring the filmmaker's colleagues, friends, and family. A stepchild of sorts to Andy Warhol's SCREEN TESTS, in these silent films Gibbons places each subject in front of a Super 8 camera and then exits the room, leaving his stars to their own devices. Look out for the filmmaker's parents, filmmakers Peter Kubelka and Tony Conrad, and many other faces from the filmmaker's past. Preceded by: Peggy Ahwesh DOPPELGANGER 1987, 8 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from New York Women in Film and Television's (NYWIFT) Women's Film Preservation Fund. "It's a portrait of my friend Renate, who was born in Berlin and spent her early childhood playing in the rubble after WW2. She tells stories and recites entries from her diary in both English and German, evoking history, trauma and lost loves. Shot in long verité-like takes, in Super 8 sound, with several color hand processed scenes." –Peggy Ahwesh