Category — Film Series

Thursday, July 31st at 8pm

The Bridge Summer Film Series starts off with a special guest this year: puppet-master and Charlottesville ex-patriot BenJones. In 2005, Jones was living in New York City running a comic-book store called Jigsaw. He created two puppets as a promotional device for the store: Dr. Kranium, the stodgy, humorless mad scientist; and Milton, his long-suffering, wisecracking robot servant; The Jigsaw Video Show was born. Three years and two cities later, the comic store has closed down, but the puppet show lives on! Milton and Kranium have re-located to Charlottesville and are still producing short, internet-distrubuted episodes on a weekly basis.

Informed by an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure British sitcoms, a comprehensive understanding of time-tested vaudeville gags, years of stage experience, and a lifelong obession with the Muppets, Jones has infused The Jigsaw Show Thing with sharp wit, crack comic timing, memorable original music, and a confounding ability to portray multiple puppet-characters simultaneously. Over the course of the show’s 35+ episodes, extended plot-lines have slowly developed, memorable bit characters have become full cast members, and show has taken on a humorously self-referential and self-depricatingly autobiographical tone. To read more about the The Jigsaw Puppet Thing, check out this article in the C-Ville Weekly.

Weekly episodes of Jigsaw are available online, but the show best appreciated in large doses with a crowd of friends; that’s precisely what we’ll do on July 31st, as we gather at The Bridge for an evening of Jigsaw’s finest episodes, hosted by Jones and Milton themselves, who will provide snarky introductions, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and witty commentary. It starts at 8pm sharp, with a suggested donation of $5.

Thursday, August 14 at 8pm

This Summer, local filmmakers Riley Duncan and Caleb Plutzer will present the newest version of Pid Geon Babylon, the acclaimed video documenting the exploits of the local skateboarding crew The Argyle Team. Pid Geon Babylon screened at The Bridge in it’s original form last summer, and the new improved version of the video contains new titles, different music (possibly with live accompaniment — details TBA), and new footage including skating in NYC, as well as a short VA-based super-8 exploration film.

We expect a healthy audience of local skateboarders, but would also like to extend the invitation to those members of the community who may not be directly involved with or aware of Charlottesville’s healthy skating community; skateboard culture is a fascinating American subculture and a valuable folk-art tradition, and skate videos contain many aspects which may be fascinating and enjoyable even for those who have never skated themselves.

There is a suggested donation of $5 at the door, and the screening begins at 8pm.

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Important Scheduling Change

This screening will now take place on Thursday, June 5 (rather than Friday, May 23 as originally scheduled.) Click here for info about part one of our May ‘68 screenings.

For the second part of our screening Thursday, June 5, we’ll check out Jean Genet in Chicago, Frédéric Moffat’s queer re-writing of the events surrounding the 1968 National Democratic Convention, followed by The Whole World is Watching, Raymond Pettibon’s feature-length 1988 video, created for the 20th anniversary of May ‘68. Referred to as the west coast’s “dubious homage” to the 60’s radical underground, it was produced with a dry apocalyptic crudity and starts a cast of notable musicians and art-punk figures such as Kim Gordon and Mike Watt.

Friday, October 24

The multimedia dance duo Hooliganship will be presenting the freshest incarnation of Cartune Xprez, a 70-minute program of short animated videos that celebrates the wilderness of imagination through motion pictures. Featured artists include Bruce Bickford, Eric Dyer, Shana Moulton, Takeshi Murata, and more. Alongside this cartoon theater they will be performing their most recent piece entitled Realer in which audiences strap on a pair of 3D glasses to bear witness to a televised parade gone awry.

This touring program, which roughly mirrors an upcoming Cartune Xprez DVD publication, will provide a rare opportunity to see videos by emerging artists as well as internationally known artists. Collectively, their resume includes collaborations with Frank Zappa and major exhibitions at the Whitney Biennial, the MOMA in New York, the Sundance Film Festival, and many other institutions throughout the world.

Thursday, May 22 at 8pm

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the May 1968 Protests, The Bridge will be holding a special two-part film screening this Spring; the films will deal both directly with the events of May ‘68, as well as with the larger theme of leftist political and social struggles in France and the US.

On Thursday, May 22nd, we’ll watch Can Dialectics Break Bricks?, the classic situationist film by René Viénet in which a martial-arts film has been re-dubbed with dialogue reflecting radical social and political concerns. We’ll also screen Pig Power, an impressionistic document in which members of the Black Panther party discuss their conflicts with the police, and New Left Note, Saul Levine’s frenetic kaleidoscopic portrait of women’s liberation and the antiwar movement.

Important Scheduling Change

Please note that the second part of this screening has been postponed; these videos will now show on Thursday, June 5. Click here for information about Ni Dieu ni maître, Part 2.

Thursday, May 8th at 8pm

The Spring Film Series continues with a set of poetry-themed films; films made by poets, filmed interpretations of poems, and attempts at representing poetry through film language. Included are Last Clean Shirt by Alfred Leslie and Frank O’Hara, Four in the Afternoon by James Broughton, Visions of a City by Lawrence Jordan, and In Bed by Rudy Burckhardt.And as the film reels get rewind, we’ll also get the chance to hear readings by local high school ingenue Hannah Webster, the bard of Ghosttown Mia Noffsinger and the “Poet Laureate of Athens”, Jeff Fallis.

Thursday, April 24, 8PM

The Bridge and the Virginia Film Society are pleased to welcome visiting artist and film-maker Jeanne Liotta, who will present a program entitled Thursday Evening in the Universe: Hymns to the void, the stars in their courses, the earth under your feet wobbles and drifts. She’ll present a constellation of works by herself and others, a selection of made, found, and borrowed volumes in various projection formats on the material subjects of landscape, science, and natural philosophy.

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Thursday, April 10 at 8pm
To commemorate the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, the Bridge will be screening For Life, Against the War… Again, a 90-minute program of films made by a large group of contemporary filmmakers, directly addressing the war.

The original For Life, Against the War was a 1967 program of films made to address the Vietnam War; this sadly necessary follow-up program features works by Bradley Eros, Ken Jacobs, MM Serra, and many more; there are 25 short films in total, most of them are around 3 minutes in length.

Thursday, February 28

Loosely defined as a film in which the cinematic language attempts to represent an inner psychological state, the Psychodrama was the first significant American movement in avant-garde film, and the precursor to many of today’s experimental film traditions. Picking up where the European Surrealists had left off, these post-war filmmakers created darkly poetic personal masterpieces while stretching the boundaries of representational film language.

We’ll start with Meshes of the Afternoon and At Land, two influential classic by Maya Deren, widely considered the godmother of American experimental film. We’ll also watch Kenneth Anger’s first film Fireworks, as well as two films by Anger’s overlooked contemporary Curtis Harrington, Picnic and On the Edge.

We’ll also explore more recent films that continue the psychodramatic tradition while exploring new territory, including Failed Cardigan Maneuver by the stop-motion animator Lewis Klahr, and two films by Matthias Müller: Sleepy Haven, his homage to Anger’s Fireworks, and the hypnotic and unforgettable Alpsee.

All films will be shown in their original 16mm format; admission is $5, and it begins at 7pm.

Thursday, February 14, 7PM

Our second annual Valentine’s Day screening will be significantly more optimistic than last year’s, but perhaps equally as cold. The evening’s selection of films will be highlighted by Never Weaken, a brilliant 1921 short in which a heartbroken Harold Lloyd leaps out his office window, only to find himself hanging precariously the I-beams of a skyscraper under construction.

We hope to begin an irregular tradition of screenings silent film comedies at The Bridge; these are some of the first masterpieces of the medium, and these films are best enjoyed with a friendly crowd. Bring a date, or meet one there as you seek solace and reprieve from the cruelest of holidays. Admission is $5, and the screening begins at 7PM.