Category — Film Series

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.

Thursday, January 31, 7PM

Created between 1991 and 1995, this cine-poem by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel criss-crosses from Niger to France, Greece and the Czech Replublic, traveling in time with Robert Lax’s “silent jam sessions,” the tight-rope dancing of avant-garde circuses and the nomadic pastoralists of the Saharan interior.

The score for this film was created by Fred Frith, who will be visiting and performing at the University that same week… more details about those events can be found here.

Wednesday, January 30th, 8PM

Our friends at the Black Cat Skate Shop present a special one-off screening of The Man Who Souled the World, a recent documentary about skateboarder Steve Rocco and World Industries, the controversial skateboard company that transformed the subculture by utilizing tactics of manipulation, subversion and ambush to rewrite the rules, conquer the corporate giants who controlled the industry, and usher in a new era of skater-owned companies and skate-inspired entertainment.

The screening is free, and begins at 7PM. There will be live musical entertainment afterwards: “scuzz-rock to melt your face,” courtesy of The Unholy Four.

Thursday, January 10 at 7PM

Our first screening of the year will correspond appropriately with this month’s Audio January event; hosted by Melissa Ragain from the UVa Art History department, this evening’s selection will feature experimental films with soundtracks by noted minimalist and experimental composers, including Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Cale, Albert Ayler and David Byrne.

The films themselves are Michael Snow’s “New York Eye and Ear Control,” Robert Nelson’s “Oh Dem Watermelons,” Tony Conrad’s “Straight and Narrow,” William Farley’s “Tribute,” Standish Lawder’s “Corridor” and “Two Films I Never Made” by Herbert Jean De Grasse.

All winter screenings are on Thursdays at 7pm, and the admission is $5.

Thursday, December 6 at 7PM
Our 2007 Fall Series concludes on December 6 with far-out animations and performance art videos by the art collectives Paper Rad and Forcefield. PaperRad synthesizes popular material from television, video games, and advertising, reprogramming these references with an exuberantly neo-primitivist digital aesthetic. Forcefield, an artist collective from Providence, Rhode Island, has forged an interdisciplinary practice that includes music, performance, installation, textiles, printmaking, and video. Oscillating between humor and menace, their willfully crude videos employ vintage analogue signal-processors and defunct electronics, the anonymous artists shrouded in knit outfits.

Admission is $5, and the screening begins at 7:00. Please stay tuned for announcements regarding the upcoming Winter Film Series!

Thursday, November 15 at 7pm

Local filmmaker Kevin Everson will be screening a selection of his short films, which are largely about responding to daily materials, conditions, tasks and gestures of people of African descent. He has completed a combination of thirty feature and short films about the working class culture of Black Americans and other people of African descent. His films focus on conditions, tasks, gestures, and materials in these communities. Everson’s artwork and films have been exhibited around the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Thursday, October 18 at 7pm

Oct 18th’s screening will be a night of spooky and sinister experimental films, including several ghastly and ghoulish short works to get us all in the mood for the Halloween season.

The evening’s debaucherous delights will include two works by legendary filmmaker Kenneth Anger: Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, a satanic ritual in film language, and Invocation of My Demon Brother, a mystical journey scored by Mick Jagger on the Moog synthesizer.

There will also be two avant-garde responses to the modern slasher-horror film: The Scary Movie, Peggy Ahwesh’s 1993 film in which two small girls re-enact the genre’s stereotypes, and Outer Space, in which Peter Tscherkassky re-appropriates horror-movie footage, literally deconstructing the image to implicate the viewer in a murder.

The screening will begin with The Furies, a silent work by early Hollywood auteur Slavko Vorkapich, and will conclude with Häxan, Benjamin Christensen’s feature-length Swedish pseudo-documentary about witchcraft from the 1920’s. We’ll be showing the hour long 1967 re-edit, which has a free-jazz soundtrack and narration by William S. Burroughs.

Thursday, September 27 at 7pm

An evening of intricate shadow puppet short films created by the early twentieth-century German artist Lotte Reiniger. “I believe in the truth of fairy-tales more than I believe in the truth in the newspaper,” said Lotte Reiniger, the shadow puppeteer who in 1926 created The Adventures of Prince Achmed, possibly the first feature-length animation film. Using scissors and black paper, she created silhouettes of extraordinary delicacy and subtlety. Inspired by Eastern silhouette puppetry, Reiniger began performing her own shadow puppet shows for family and friends as a child. She went on to make many beautiful films until her death in 1981. Most of her films are difficult to find outside of Europe, so we are especially thrilled to screen a series of her short animations.