I began making films in 1970. In 1975, along with Jerry Orr and Jerry Tartaglia, I co-founded Berks Filmmakers, Inc. which is still functioning today in Reading, Pennsylvania as a showcase for experimental film and video. My films tend to be either spontaneously shot, in-camera-edited, sync-sound (or silent) Super 8's often "about" places, nature, travel, friends and the everyday miracles of life ("The films ... reveal a wonderful sense of the qualities of the medium and an appreciation for capturing small, resonant moments." - Kathy Geritz), or they become 16mm, carefully scored and manipulated, optical printer works, always lyrical, sometimes ecstatically so.
In 1990, I discovered the affordable image manipulation potential of consumer video, especially its mixing, wiping and colorizing technology (like optical printing in real time). Since then I have been making tapes (using Hi-8 and recently, digital tape) specifically designed for projection, thereby carrying over something of the scale and attention to surface detail and texture that characterized my films. "The most important aspect to Adlestein's approach to video is that it is irrefutably and defiantly filmic. ... It is sublimely tactile where most videos tend to be impersonally cool and hard. ..." - Albert Kilchesty
Finally, my experimental films/tapes are attempts to see something of Beauty and Truth not only with but - as Blake admonished - THROUGH the eye (film stock, tape, camera, printer, mixer, etc.) and to share this experience with the viewer.
After Bernini's "Ecstasy": baroque excess and dazzle; shot in S.M. della Vittoria in Rome.
"Essential viewing for church groups, art history classes, fledgling saints and martyrs of all ages." - Albert Kilchesty, "Heavenly Visions" program notes, LA Filmforum, 1985
Exhibition: SF Cinematheque; Pasadena Filmforum; LA Filmforum; Frontera Media Arts, El Paso; Collective for Living Cinema, NY; Millennium, NY.
1983, 16mm, color/so, 4.5m (18fps), $20
Comprised of four short films on a single reel: SORRENTO, a shutter / stutter study of Italian street life (shooting through wooden shutters had the feel of a zoetrope); LA VECIA, awakening one morning to a light projection from the Grand Canal that Venetians call la vecia; BOMARZO, sacred wood monsters built by Turkish prisoners for Count Orsini in the 16th Century; EMBARKATION TO THE ISLE OF CAPRI, after Watteau and Fellini.
"An exquisite travel film." - Linda Gross, The Los Angeles Times; "Two of my favorites, SORRENTO and EMBARKATION, are very conceptually simple but highly elegant studies." - Tom Chomont, Independent Eye
Exhibition: Ann Arbor S8mm Festival; Collective for Living Cinema, NY; Inter-film, Berlin; LA Filmforum; Millennium, NY; Pasadena Filmforum; Pittsburgh Filmmakers; Quebec Int'l S8mm Festival; SF Cinematheque.
1980-1985, S8mm, color/so, 11.5m (18fps), $25
A movie/meditation on scenes from Nathaniel West's Miss Lonelyhearts.
"Faithful to West in spirit ... a remarkable film." - Tom Chomont, Independent Eye
Exhibition: Collective for Living Cinema, NY; Frontera Media Arts, El Paso; LA Filmforum; Millennium, NY.
1985, 16mm, color/so, 20m, $60
A study of the male and female nude; in honor of the painter Harry Koursaros and the classical beauty he loved. Photos and paintings by Koursaros. The first 2.75 minutes are silent.
"The most erotic film elegy that I can recall ever seeing." - Albert Kilchesty
Exhibition: Collective for Living Cinema, NY; Millennium, NY; MIX NYC: Second NY Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film/Video Festival.
1987, S8mm, color/so, 10.5m (18fps), $30
LA 3/87, sync. sound memento of West Coast visit (Buddy K., the desert, Filmforum, Hollywood). Cited by Howard Guttenplan as one of the outstanding films of the 1988 Exit Art Int'l Forum of S8mm, New York; WILDWOOD 2/88, a Sunday/winter drive to the Jersey shore and back. Two films on one reel.
Exhibition: Collective for Living Cinema, NY; Exit Art Int'l Forum of S8mm, NY; Millennium, NY.
1987-1989, S8mm, color/so, 10.5m (18fps), $30
A portrait of Philadelphia-based poet and painter Candy Kaucher; three cameras shooting (randomly on/off after J. Cage), synch sound; camera rolls A/B/C printed.
Exhibition: Conspiracies, NY, 1992
1989, S8mm, color/so, 11m (18fps), $25
Comprised of three short films: SELINUNTE, Greek ruins in Sicily; you can hear the stones breathe; VERONA, Guisti Gardens, Castelvecchio, the Adige, Piazza delle Erbe; BAY OF NAPLES, serene blue bay with Vesuvio looming.
"The films in ITALIAN PLACES and MORE ITALIAN PLACES, a series of S-8 films made over the course of a decade, display the same obvious love of place which permeates Adlestein's earlier films made in his rural Pennsylvania surroundings. Ostensibly a grouping of films constructed in a travel/home movie format, the individual films ... go well beyond the confines of that idiom as they explore, both playfully and philosophically, qualities of light, cultural differences and the very nature of travel and tourism itself. ... Along with Richard Lerman's ongoing S-8 sound Transducer Series, Adlestein's ITALIAN PLACES is one of the more satisfying 'series' of Super-8 films currently being made." - Albert Kilchesty
1989, S8mm, color/so, 12.25m (18fps), $35
A continuation of some of the concerns of my ITALIAN PLACES series (spontaneous, in-camera responses to place and situation) with the addition of the layering of images and sounds - through AB printing - which the overwhelmingly sensuous plentitude (paradoxical in a place that has whispered "Death" to so many) of Venice suggested.
"Venise dousse son plaiser tout de suite." - Jean Cocteau
1989, S8mm, color/so, 11.5m (18fps), $35
An homage to Storm De Hirsch (one of the pioneers of the New American Cinema and an early master of the artistic use of Super 8 in her wonderful Cine Sonnets). Layered - AB-printed - seasonal images and sounds bursting into being and fading simultaneously.
"Exuberance is beauty .... Energy is Eternal Delight." - William Blake
1990, S8mm, color/so, 11m (18fps), $35
Two nature lyrics on one reel. In the first, Debussy meets the Jersey shore (La Mer was on the tape recorder plugged into the camera - bits of it came over to the film with every shot of the waves). The second film (shot the next day, after a weekend of filming water) was a response to a most garish, almost frighteningly beautiful, harbinger of spring.
1990, S8mm, color/so, 5m (18fps), $20
His paintings are there, in the landscape of Provence. #1 starts in Avignon then moves up and down Mt. St. Victoire. #2 again moves up and down; this time the deserted, ancient hill town of Les Baux, haunted by ghosts of the Troubadours.
1991, S8mm, color/so, 5.5m (18fps), $20
Three short experimental video lyrics based on the classical figure.
The first, a Pre-Raphaelite necro-figure; the second, figures,
procreative and pagan; the third, two figures, one ravaged by time,
the other preserved by art:
Der Tod Und Das Madchen (1999, 5:30, hi-8) - gothic figure and liquid
ground; based on Schubert's lieder.
Leda and the Swan (1999, 8:00, hi-8/mini-DV) - a musical
(Shostakovich) video based on Yeats' sonnet. (Homage to Kurt
Kren.)
Sicilia (1999, 4:30, mini-DV) - a meditation on life and death
embodied in the corpses of Palermo's catacombs and in a 5th century
B.C. Greek statue unearthed (in the 1970s) on the island of Motya.
(Director's Citation, Black Maria Film Festival, 2000)
1999-2000, VHS only, 18 min. total, call for pricing
ITALIAN OPTICALS includes ST. THERESA and SERENISSIMA (1980, silent, 7m): Venice, floating bauble.
1980-1985, VHS, color/si/so, 30m, $50 Home; $100 Other
Includes selections from OPTICAL LYRICS (1977-1981, 16mm, silent): SWAN BOAT (1979, 5m) is an impressionistic image from the Boston Public Gardens (shot in S8mm) optically manipulated and blown up to 16mm on the J.K. Printer. PIE PLATES (1980, 6m) takes an image of metal pie plates used to scare away pests in our garden, shot in S8mm, manipulated and blown up to a black and white contrast 16mm zen-and-John-Cage-inspired meditation on stillness, motion, chance/choice, yin/yang.
Also includes three selections from M-95 MINIATURES (1979-1981, S8mm, silent): SHADOW HUNTING (1979, 2m) is an impressionist cine-painting (shot slightly undercranked for 6fps projection on the Kodak M-95 projector) of the filmmaker out for images following his dog out for rabbits. AMISH (1980, 30sec) was shot at a quiet shopping center parking lot in Kutztown to celebrate the quiet, image-resisting life he inhabits. (Self-processed black and white.) WOODSWALK (1981, 3m) is a black and white grain-song of the Oley Valley.
CONCORD (1987, S8mm, silent, 4m) contains lush over/underwater glimpses of a pool in the Catskills. FONTANA (1988, S8mm, silent, 7m) is a self-portrait of the filmmaker as grotesque Roman fountain. S-8 Diaries: LA 3/87 and WILDWOOD 2/88.
Exhibition: Collective for Living Cinema, NY; Cornell Cinema, Ithaca; Exit Art Int'l Forum of S8mm, NY; LA Filmforum; Millennium, NY; Pasadena Filmforum; Pittsburgh Filmmakers; SF Cinematheque.
1979-1988, VHS, b&w/color/so, 38.5m, $60 Home; $100 Other
See film descriptions above.
1987/1989, VHS, color/so, 41m, $60 Home; $100 Other
Comprised of two Super 8, sync-sound, edited-in-camera films, CEZANNESCAPES #1 & #2 and SPRING/FALL CINESONGS FOR STORM DE HIRSCH. Both films have been selected for MoMA's (NYC) "Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Film" series (1998-1999).
1991/1990, VHS, color/so, 16.5m, $35 Home; $100 Other
Six short experimental videos that explore the lyric/romantic interface of landscape and electronic art: OLEY - during harvest time in the Oley Valley I first discovered electronic, real-time "optical printing"; WATERSCAPE - lyric liquifaction at Napegue Harbor, Long Island; Alvin Novak at the piano playing Beethoven; OUTSIDE IN - "Lace sweeps itself aside," a domestic yardscape based on Mallarme's "Une dentelle s'abloit"; WITCHWAY - under the spell of an Oley spirit and her familiar; DER TOD UND DAS MADCHEN - gothic/erotic figure and (liquid) ground, based on Schubert's "Death and the Maiden"; TAORMINA/ETNA - (silent) a place pulsing with the beauty of life and the promise of death. (Selected for MoMA's "Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Film" series [1998-1999].)
1993-1996, VHS, color/si/so, 43m, $60 Home; $100 Other
Comprised of LOTUS LYRICS (10:35m), NARA (3:35m), KANNON (5:50m). Images gathered at temples and gardens in Kyoto and Nara in 1994 and later (1995-1998) composed as three short experimental videos in light of form/emptiness wisdom of the Heart Sutra.
1998, VHS, b&w/color/so, 20m, $35 Home; $100 Other
Three short experimental video lyrics based on the classical figure.
The first, a Pre-Raphaelite necro-figure; the second, figures,
procreative and pagan; the third, two figures, one ravaged by time,
the other preserved by art:
Der Tod Und Das Madchen (1999, 5:30, hi-8) - gothic figure and liquid
ground; based on Schubert's lieder.
Leda and the Swan (1999, 8:00, hi-8/mini-DV) - a musical
(Shostakovich) video based on Yeats' sonnet. (Homage to Kurt
Kren.)
Sicilia (1999, 4:30, mini-DV) - a meditation on life and death
embodied in the corpses of Palermo's catacombs and in a 5th century
B.C. Greek statue unearthed (in the 1970s) on the island of Motya.
(Director's Citation, Black Maria Film Festival, 2000)
1999-2000, VHS only, 18 min. total, call for pricing