I have combined, hand-colored, and scratched original and found footage and inserted 16mm images into S8mm width.
This is my first conscientious film-making effort. In it I try to create the filmmaker's worst nightmare. Footage looks stepped on, over-developed, improperly color balanced and worst of all it feels as if it will catch in the projector at any second.
This film examines the end of the spectrum opposite "perfect narrative film." It is an attempt to make the viewer re-examine what it is they really look at when watching a film.
1985, S8mm, b&w/color/si, 2.5m, $20
This is a film in which I sought to explore various qualities of light, motion, and texture and the relationships between these three elements that give film its special quality. It combines original black and white, original color, found footage and hand-colored leader. This film is a lesson in editing and observing the subtleties of motion and the dynamic interplay between the lighting and texture of that motion.
1987, S8mm, b&w/color/si, 4.5m, $20
At one time I had a job driving in San Francisco. One damp foggy night I drove down the length of Market Street from the top of the hill to the Embarcadero. I was inspired to make a time-lapse movie while driving, using high speed film. This singular piece of footage became the structure on which I built a more complex film.
I wanted to work solely in black and white and combine film I'd shot at various locations in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Also this film was a continuation of the exercise I'd started in REGARDING MOTION.
1988, S8mm, b&w/si, 4.5m, $20
I have combined films of various stocks over a period of three years. This is a final exercise in the series that I began in REGARDING MOTION and carried through CITY CITY, DAY NIGHT. This film searches for the limits of the medium like a hound following a scent. It is a study of motion looking down, looking in, looking out, and looking up. It is at one time the observer and the observed. I am trying to make the viewer feel the frame's edges and feel the film; to observe what is moving into the frame and what the frame is moving.
1986-1988, S8mm, b&w/color/si, 4.5m, $20
June '87: coming back from a Grateful Dead show at the Ventura County Fairgrounds our 1968 Volkswagen broke down just 30 miles north of Bakersfield at 11 p.m. We were towed to the Motel 6 and checked into a room. Heat. Dust. Boredom. Prisons with invisible bars.
1988, S8mm, color/si, 4.5m, $20
Have we abolished sexism in the late 1900s? Look at our own lives; look at our own attempts to fight sexism. Are we successful?
FILM FOR ... is a collection of found and original footage as well as of dialogues and statements, documenting gender politics and the lack of a substantial change in spite of our perceptions to the contrary.
"Al's first 16mm film is a fine example of found footage making a man's point of view on feminist issues. The film activates the viewer's need to be active in establishing the meaning of gender specific training films for girls and boys of the 1950s. See and delight in this new work." - Barbara Hammer
1989, 16mm, b&w/color/so, 7.5m, $25
MEMORY EYE examines the process of remembering: a flickering memory, images emerging from childhood glimpses of an old photo, a familiar sound or smell. This is a filmic exploration of the places where memory is held and the importance of its flickering images.
The main body of the film was shot on VHS, video 8 and S8mm, then rephotographed and optically-printed as many as six to eight times, creating a stylized, flickering multilayer of color and black-and-white imagery reminiscent of childhood memory.
1989, 16mm, color/so, 5.5m, $20
NO OUTLET is a reinterpretation of Sartre's play No Exit. We live in a world filled with images of violence against the intellect of both women and men. Our culture is so suffused with violence we tend to forget how much we allow our intelligence to be insulted. We must begin to examine the absurdity of the extremes we are subject to. This film displaces scenes of violence from their original setting to show how absurd and oppressive cinematic violence is, and how the viewer can be led away from reality by displacing emotional integrity we would normally reserve for actual daily events.
1990, 16mm, b&w/color/so, 6.5m, $20
The seemingly hopeless landscape of the late 20th century is often symbolized by goals seen at the end of a long and disorienting path, that once achieved are forgotten in the rush to attain the next goal. Miguel de Cervantes' character Don Quixote de la Mancha is a relic from an era which tried to conquer the known world in much the same way as we do today. Guided by the hand of God, his chivalric notion that moral and just might will rescue civilization from the anarchy of nature proves really to be a hideous folly .... QUIXOTE DREAMS is a surreal exploration of the Quixote myth, a traveling matte fantasy in which an exhausted Don Quixote collapses into a cinematic dream world in which he discovers the futility of blind faith and emerges rehumanized.
1990-1991, 16mm, color/so, 10m, $30
Made with Larry Kless.
During the Persian Gulf War, Americans were treated to hundreds of hours of broadcast television saturated with every imaginable element, which, in the name of freedom, underlined the moral and just cause for the mass destruction of Iraq. NEW WORLD ORDER employs the soundbites, slogans, and images from the war that describe the spectacle of commodity associated with commercial television. Combined with live-action protest footage and video banned from national broadcast, NEW WORLD ORDER questions the validity of media authority and the ideological characteristics of our society.
1991, VHS, color/so, 9m, $25 Home; $45 Other
La Reina de los Sueños
Reina de la casa, Reina de la sombra
Reina de viento, Reina del trueno
Mujer admirada, Mujer iluminada
In childhood, we see the world as a mystical universe continually reshaping itself. The miraculous is part of the everyday until we are taught to separate the real from the imaginary. When we split the two, we unlearn the secret language that speaks to us in dreams. In dreams, the images come like waves to the beach. Los sue-os that come with our eyes wide open are the reminders of how close we are to the mythical world and how we choose to block it out of the everyday. Those visions/visitations are the windows to our hearts. At the deepest levels, the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe becomes one of the focal points through which we see into the humanity of each other. These things must always be relearned.
1992-1993, 16mm, color/so, 10m, $35
VHS Sale: $20 Home; $70 Other
Kinochestvo is the art of organizing the necessary movements of objects in space as a rhythmical artistic whole, in harmony with the properties of the material and the rhythm of each object." From WE, Varient of a Manifesto, Dziga Vertov, 1922
Kinodelic is the art of organizing the necessary movements of color film stock through the optical printer in harmony with the internal rhythm in the music of Jimi Hendrix." From US, A Variant of a Variant, Alva, 1995
Exhibition: Film Arts Festival, 1995; Lollapalooza Tour, 1995; Other Cinema, SF, 1995; SF Cinematheque, 1995.
1995, 16mm, color/so, 4m, $20
Dust was shot on location in Singapore, where after nearly a year of dramatic encounters with people in places I never knew existed, I tried to capture some of the spiritual aspects of the culture on film. What began as an exercise to keep pace with my artistic desire to capture those secret moments on film, became a project to discover what is left of an ancient culture that is being swept away by accelerated obsolescence.
1997, 16mm, color/so, 12m, $40
If you play with the flicker of projector light enough, you can get some crazy images to lay on the retina like little secret messages. This wacky little film is simple and short, and nearly meaningless. It was produced over a period of weeks while playing in my garage with sharpies, bleach, rub-on textures and found footage. A return to some cameraless filmmaking basics, TINY RUBBER BAND is inspired by the things I found on the floor of my classroom after my students had left for the day.
1998, 16mm, color/so, 4m, $20
Made with Ellen Ugelstad.
1999, 16mm, b&w/so, 2m, $20
An exciting day in the life of a rookie lawman. He has never had to fire his weapon, respects his superiors, and is always ready for any emergency - day or night.
2001, 16mm, color/so, 4.5m, $20
2003 16mm color/sound 6.5 minutes $20 rental
Film For ... and Quixote Dreams
See film descriptions above.
1989/1991, VHS, color/so, 18m, $30 Home; $60 Other