FRIDAY, APRIL 4 – 10 PM
WARNING: These films contain flashing lights which may not be suitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy.
Destiny supplants space and time as La Cueva, Spectacle, and the MassArt Film Society become perfectly superimposed. The show begins with a vintage Super 8 print of Warm Broth (1988), one of Luther Price’s most iconic films from his period of films made under the moniker “Tom Rhodes,” while also highlighting the participation in that film of Laurie McKenna, a former student of Levine and friend + collaborator of Price whose video Why the Long Face (1997) we will also screen. By rendering tribute to Levine, we will also attend to his own talents at rendering tribute to others: to Marjorie Keller, Anne Charlotte Robertson, to Stan Brakhage, to his Father, and—especially in this program—to Luther Price (aided in this tribute by short films by Laurie McKenna, Annalisa D Quagliata Blanco, and Linnea Nugent). Not for the only time in this retrospective, these artists will go searching for each other in that most interstitial space of transit: dreams.
The program notes of the Saul Levine retrospective in Mexico are available here.
WARM BROTH
Dir. Luther Price/Tom Rhodes, 1988
35 mins, Super 8mm
Print provided by Canyon Cinema.
“Everything will be ok, just close
your eyes little thing
go to sleep little fuck
feel my hand on your warm
forehead
It’s cold isn’t it? Ice cold.
“Dream of something real sweet
for mommy
Mommy likes sweet things
Dream of a merry-go-round and
cotton candy
“Mommy’s hand got all warm
resting on your tiny head
See, look at mommy’s hand
It got all warm now
“You’re running a slight fever
Mommy will get you some
water
And you’re running a slight
fever
“Little fuck don’t have to go to
school tomorrow
but no playing in the yard
Someone could see you
And I’ll be an unfit mommy
You’ll have to stay in all day
“but now, dream of the prettiest
flower for mommy
I’ll make you oatmeal first thing
And you could tell me the color
of the –
prettiest flower.”
-Luther Price/Tom Rhodes
WHY THE LONG FACE
Dir. Laurie McKenna, 1997
26 mins
A former student of Levine and collaborator and friend of Price, McKenna made this short about Nancy Luce, a desperate, creative, Martha’s Vineyard oddball of the mid 1800s. Using old photographs, puppets, toy models, and off-the-cuff footage, McKenna creates a lonely work as daring and personal as that of her teachers and peers.
GOODTIME CHARLIE BIRTHDAY
Dir. Laurie McKenna, 1997
2 mins
A film of stuffed animals, haunted by a lullaby. Much like Price, McKenna makes visible the horror hiding beneath the surface of familiar American scene audio: rehearsal cassette recording, vocals: Laurie and Tom Rhodes (Luther), the Fabulous Turquoise Rain and Shines, 1987.
AGGREGATE
Dir. Laurie McKenna, 2020
6 mins
McKenna’s pandemidiario conjures desert punk powering the aggregate of memory and charcoal and grounds national rupture in a sonic package.
“A whole formed by combining several (typically disparate) elements” – Laurie McKenna
OUTCRY (FOR LUTHER)
Dir. Annalisa D. Quagliata Blanco, 2015
1 min
“Luther Price’s handmade film work demonstrated the vagaries of trauma internal to the medium itself: the simultaneously world-destroying and world-repairing possibilities of unmaking and remaking of the body of the film strip. Annalisa Quagliata has taken up the lessons of Price’s handmade film course at MassArt, maintaining their queer resonances while reshaping them with the perhaps unanticipated application to the unmaking and remaking of myths of the Mexican body politic. This 2016 tribute to Luther Price, made in that same MassArt course before Quagliata’s return to Mexico, reminds us of the facilitating possibilities of the body in disintegration. A 16mm optical sound bar is the skeleton on which it all hangs.” – Byron Davies
WAS ONCE ONE
Dir. Linnea Nugent, 2023
3 mins
“Was Once one is the auditory artifact of since lost Luther Price speaking on what was once one film that belonged as two.” – Linnea Nugent
CRESCENT
Dir. Saul Levine and Pelle Lowe, 1993
5 mins, Super 8mm
Print provided by Saul Levine.
“A conversation with Pelle Lowe.” – Saul Levine
SCHMATEH IV & SCRAPE
Dir. Saul Levine, 1986
8 mins, Super 8mm
Print provided by Saul Levine.
Two portrayals on one reel. A Portrait of Pelle Lowe and A Portrait of Laurie McKenna aka Bud Scrape.
READY-MADE
Dir. Saul Levine and Pelle Lowe, 1993
4 mins, Super 8mm
Print provided by Saul Levine.
“A film made by Pelle Lowe and myself, READY-MADE is a single work in itself, and also exists as part of a series of works that Pelle and I made reflecting on Manet’s painting OLYMPIA, including it’s reception, it’s relationship to painting, sex work, imperialism, the Paris Commune, sex, drugs and rock roll, ect.” – Saul Levine
Special thanks to Annalisa D. Quagliata Blanco, Saul Levine, Byron Davies, Lumia Lightsmith, Stephen Cappel, Nicolas Cadena, Mono No Aware, and Kathy Del Beccaro.
Davies and Lightsmith co-curated this screening, in addition to providing the program notes. The banner and poster image for this program come courtesy of David Michael Curry, who participated in the filming of Warm Broth. Davies’ research project “Materialism and Geographic Specificity in the Philosophy of Film” forms the basis for these screenings, which are supported by Salón de Cines Múltiples.
