Between Two Cinemas

For the past thirty years filmmaker/archivist Ross Lipman has cut a winding path between classic international cinema and the American avant-garde. In this riveting work, he looks back at a life in the cinema and an indescribable divide at the heart of it. Part biography, part clip essay, part abstract painting, Between Two Cinemas integrates 4K restorations of his old films, linking them inside a new documentary/essay. It uncovers previously unseen archival material on Stan Brakhage and Andrei Tarkovsky and adds new collaborations with artists including director Bruce Baillie, cinematographer Babette Mangolte, composer Mihaly Vig, and synthesizer pioneer Patrick Gleeson. Between Two Cinemas is an enthralling exploration of discord and resonance between two divergent film cultures, and the worlds from which they emerge.   

(USA, 2018, 84 min., DCP)

Ross Lipman is an independent filmmaker and archivist. Formerly Senior Film Restorationist at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, his many restorations include Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep, Kent Mackenzie's The Exiles, and works by Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Clarke, and Kenneth Anger, among others. He has received Anthology Film Archives' Preservation Honors and the National Society of Film Critics' Heritage Award, and his essays on film history, technology, and aesthetics have been published in Artforum, Sight and Sound, and numerous academic books and journals. His films have screened internationally and been collected by museums and institutions including the Oberhausen Kurzfilm Archive, Budapest's Balazs Bela Studios, The Academy Film Archive, and Anthology Film Archives.