Category — All Events

Thursday, September 16, 2010 | 8pm | $5

In collaboration with The University of Virginia Art Museum’s “Man Ray: African Art & the Modernist Lens” exhibition, The Bridge Film Series proposes an evening of 16mm films focusing not only Man Ray’s enduring legacy in experimental film but also on contemporary experimental filmmakers’ use of Africa as a means of reflecting on the spatial and temporal experiences of late modernity.

Elasticity
directed by Chick Strand
1976 | 25 minutes | color
Strand describes the autobiographical Elasticity as “Impressionistic surrealism in three acts. The approach is literary experimental with optical effects. There are three mental states that are interesting: amnesia, euphoria and ecstasy. Amnesia is not knowing who you are and wanting desperately to know. I call this the White Night. Euphoria is not knowing who you are and not caring. This is the Dream of Meditation. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who you are and still not caring. I call this the Memory of the Future.” — Chick Strand

Medina
directed by Scott Bartlett
1972 | 15 minutes | color
Filmmaker Scott Bartlett’s lyrical documentary of Morocco combines the rich, poetical patterns of the walls, steps and tiles, the dense calligraphic decoration, the shaded windows and veiled eyes of the city with appropriate musical score. The New York Times wrote, “It is as if all the impulse toward lyrical pattern in Bartlett’s film work had found an objective correlative in the walls, the steps and tiles, the dense calligraphic decoration, the shaded windows and veiled eyes of the city.” In his study of 1960s American experimental cinema The Exploding Eye, Wheeler Winston Dixon wrote “[Scott Bartlett's films] exemplified San Francisco’s preferred form of cinematic discourse for a later generation of artists, poets, writers and videomakers…The visual structures of Bartlett’s films influenced the images we see on MTV today, as well as the digital special effects employed in many contemporary feature films.”

7362
directed by Pat O’Neill
1965-67 | 11 minutes | color
Machine-like imagery in color or black and white gradually merges into abstracted forms of the human anatomy. Described ias “A bilaterally symmetrical (west to east) fusion of human, biomorphic and mechanical shapes in motion. Has to do with the spontaneous generation of electrical energy. A fairly rare (ten years ago) demonstration of the Sabattier effect in motion. Numbered after the film stock of the same name.” Music by Joseph Byrd and Michael Moore.

The Sleepers
directed by Mark Lapore
1989 | 16 minutes | color
Memory, as well as the residue of information in text and film from Sudan, led me to make The Sleepers in order to resolve the impression that the third world is present in the first world as an idea and a condition. The Sleepers is a film about how notions of culture are often defined by information received indirectly – information that frequently violates the particulars of people and place and makes questionable one’s ability to portray specific individuals as representatives of culture. The Sleepers concludes with a description of an African girl cleaning up after a meal being read over the image of a red storefront in New York’s Chinatown. Time and space contradict, then collapse to suggest a new third world city; a city of the imagination, where rural Sudan, China and Manhattan exist simultaneously.

Friday, October 8, 2010 | 6pm

Both local and international, Colin Cheney and Erika Meitner share the space at The Bridge for a reading from their most recent collections. Both were recently selected for the National Poetry Series.

Colin Cheney’s debut collection of poems, Here Be Monsters (University of Georgia, 2010), was selected for the National Poetry Series. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Notre Dame Review, Crazyhorse, and Gulf Coast. In 2006, he received a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and his poem, “Lord God Bird,” received a 2010 Pushcart Prize. He currently lives in Bangkok, Thailand.

Erika Meitner is the author of Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore (Anhinga Press, 2003), and Ideal Cities (HarperCollins, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner. Meitner’s poems have appeared most recently in APR, Virginia Quarterly Review, Indiana Review, The New Republic, and on Slate.com. She is currently an assistant professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she teaches in the MFA program.

Curated by Warren Craghead
Opening Reception Friday, October 1, 6-8pm | Exhibition up through October 30, 2010

Friday, August 13, 2010 | 8pm | $5 | AT RANDOM ROW BOOKS

The Bridge Film Series is pleased to welcome filmmaker Bill Daniel back to Charlottesville for his presentation of lost and found music films, SONIC ORPHANS: Lost Music Films From 1965-87. This evening of film will include a program of recently unearthed 16mm footage and a discussion of “orphan films” as well as a one-night photo exhibit and a live musical performance by local drone musician Myceum.

SONIC ORPHANS is a compilation reel of lost and found clips projected on 16mm – some silent, some that rock. Abandoned, lost, found, and now presented raw without editing, these are all celluloid gems. Daniel curates an unlikely collection of film that exists in an impossibly strange space between entertainment and the stupefying bewilderment of Useless Cinema – clips of silent outtakes, un-contextualized news, lab mistakes, abandoned student films. There is a flavor of goofy nostalgia to much of the footage, but the images are also haunting – pogoing, sneaking hits on cigarettes, meeting the gaze of someone from 20 or even 40 years ago. Part of the evening’s presentation will talk about the stories behind the films and the relationship between underground music and film cultures.

Featuring footage of: The Beatles, The Avengers, The Huns, Boy Problems, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, and Johnny Cash

Bill Daniel is a filmmaker and artist who makes work that connects with an outsider audience while he continues to experiment with survivalism and bricolage in attempts to record and report on the various social margins he often finds himself in. His documentary subjects have included bicycle messengers, radical environmentalists, hobo graffiti artists, swap meet guitar players, and rural drag racers. Daniel’s work has received awards from Creative Capital, Film Arts Foundation, and the Texas Filmmaker Production Fund, among others.

Sunday, September 12, 2010 | 8pm

Sponsored and initiated by PEP, Assembly is a regular gathering of local artists of all stripes to socialize, find collaborators, get feedback and help with work, and share work in progress. It is our belief that more unity and collaboration among individual artists in our town will lead to a more vibrant and mutually supportive arts scene in Charlottesville, and might yield a voice to speak to local government and funding organizations.

Opening Reception Friday, November 5, 6-8pm | Exhibition up through November 27, 2010

In May 2007, a decade after completing a three-year long obligatory military service in the Israeli army, Nir Avissar was drafted for nearly a month. Documenting this period with his camera enabled him to delve into several key aspects in the experience of army reservists. In Fragments of Violent Memory, he sought to explore how Israeli army reservists experience the abrupt removal from civic existence into a military one, which results in a loss of control over one’s present life. As the project unfolded, he realized that in partaking in military reserve duty one is forcibly propelled back in time, wherein his military past as a regular soldier exerts a violent control over his present experience as army reservist. The images in the project therefore deal with the contradictory—and yet complementary—conceptions of time among army reservists: historical consciousness on the one hand and memory on the other. Whereas the reservist’s historical understanding enables him to distinguish between past and present, his memory subverts this temporal boundary and fuses the two. Yet our diachronic grasp of time prevents past memories from fully merging with present experience. The violence of the past, then, only partly takes hold of the present, and thereby manifests itself as fragments, shards of the past.

Saturday, July 24, 2010 | 10am – 5pm

Swing by The Bridge after the farmer’s market for Craft Work – an event featuring local handmade and vintage wares. Items for sale include prints, paintings, jewelry, terrariums, records, reworked clothing as well as vintage items, pottery, paper goods, grilled snacks and more (ie: whatever people are making.) The talented djs of WTJU’s rock department provide sweet jamz to accompany the great summer craft fair experience 2010.

Who (to name just a few): Jeremy and Allyson Mellberg-Taylor, Tea for Two by Whitney French, Isolated Article by Elaine Butcher, A Mystery in Common by Tristan Benedict-Hall, Lost Woods Print by Thomas Dean, Clasp of Isis by Tamara Cervenka, Julia Dent Jewelry, Paul Loukides, Plan 9’s own Jimmy Blackford brings the vinyl!

Why: Firstly, 10% of the day’s sales will be donated to The Bridge to support its programs and gallery. Secondly, Charlottesvillle artisans are one of they city’s most valuable assets. To support them is to make a meaningful investment in our city’s creative culture.

Friday, July 16, 2010 | 8:30pm | $5

Loud underground music returns to The BRIDGE with 4 bands. There will be 2 PAs set up so that once the first band starts playing, the music won’t stop until the final band is finished. This “ping-ponging” between bands has proven to be super fun at past shows, and means that this 4-band show will be over about 2.5 hours from when it starts!

It’s all ages, $5, and starts around 8:30 or so. Info on the bands:

Worn In Red
(Heavy anthemic punk from Virginia on No Idea Records)
www.myspace.com/worninred

After Colony
(Melodic post-hardcore youngbucks from C’ville, VA)
www.myspace.com/aftercolonymusic

GRIDS
(Pounding discordant punk from NC)
www.myspace.com/gridsnc

Sharkopath
(Spazzy fun DC-style postpunk from C’ville)
Their online identity remains a mystery at this time.

Month of August, 2010

The Bridge will be closed for the month of August for renovations, repairs and cleaning. Doors reopen Friday September 3rd for the Opening Reception of “Site Singularity”.

Ongoing now through August 6, 2010

Piedmont Council of the Arts (PCA) is collaborating with The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, Charlottesville Parks & Recreation, and the Charlottesville Community Design Center for StoryLine 2010, a hands-on project for kids (4th-6th grade) in the Parks & Recreation summer camp. The StoryLine Project involves collaborative mural design, creative storytelling, and a unique walking expedition of downtown Charlottesville.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Working directly with volunteers (local artists, architects, poets, writers, historians, and storytellers), campers will embark on a walking expedition on July 14th (9am-12pm) to learn more about Charlottesville’s Historic Downtown Mall and Vinegar Hill neighborhood. Teams of campers and volunteers will use creative inquiry, historical information from local experts, and in-person interactions to construct a unique story about their walk and the route it covered. Campers will interact with local artists and historians throughout and after the walk to explore real and imagined stories about downtown Charlottesville’s past, present, and future.
The teams’ stories and sketches will converge on July 21st through the creation of a collaborative chalk mural on the Community Chalkboard (9am-12pm) and a live outdoor storytelling event (5pm-7pm) with youth and adult storytellers after the mural’s completion.

An exhibition of project work will take place at the Charlottesville Community Design Center (CCDC) gallery in August, opening on August 6th.