Canyon Cinema 50: Associations

Legendary experimental film distributor Canyon Cinema celebrates its fiftieth anniversary with a national tour of four programs that represent a rich panoply of independent artist-made films. 

Program Two: ASSOCIATIONS is titled after John Smith’s 1975 film, a joyfully dense rebus-like image-word construction. Smith’s film is preceded by Sara Kathryn Arledge’s rarely seen 1958 work What Is A Man, a film years ahead of its time, and Mark Toscano’s 2012 piece Releasing Human Energies, which utilizes film laboratory test footage of a “China Girl” set to a found text read by Morgan Fisher. The program also features Abigail Child’s classic 1989 film Mercy, from her celebrated “Is This What You Were Born For?” series; canonical works by Phil Solomon, Barbara Hammer, Robert Breer, and Robert Nelson; and two recent restorations: the humorously poignant Confessions by Curt McDowell and Akbar, Richard Myers’s extraordinary 1970 portrait of young black filmmaker and student, Akbar Ahmed. Total running time: 90 minutes

Program includes: 

Releasing Human Energies* (Mark Toscano, 2012, 5.5 min.)
What is a Man? (Sara Kathryn Arledge, 1958, 10 min.)
Associations (John Smith, 1975, 7 min.)
Hot Leatherette* (Robert Nelson, 1967, 5 min.)
Dyketactics (Barbara Hammer, 1974, 4 min.)
Flower, The Boy, The Librarian (Stephanie Barber, 1997, 5 min.)
The Snowman (Phil Solomon, 1995, 8 min.)
Swiss Army Knife with Rats & Pigeons* (Robert Breer, 1981, 6 min.)
Confessions* (Curt McDowell, 1971, 11 min.)
Thine Inward-Looking Eyes (Thad Povey, 1993, 2 min.)
Mercy* (Abigail Child, 1989, 10 min.)
Akbar* (Richard Myers, 1970, 16 min.) 

*recent restorations and new prints