Tag Archives: UCLA Film and Television Archive

BELA TARR’S DAMNATION

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In all our movies, the location has a face. It looks like an actor… In the beginning, we were just talking about social conflicts, and then we were opening, opening, opening. Now we had to show the landscape and the time… When we did location scouting [for DAMNATION] we kept seeing the cable cars. It was awful weather, we were very poor and just trying to do something, but one thing was sure—the cable cars kept going. The most important part of these movies is mostly the location—you have to go and find the visual elements, something which is real. — Béla Tarr

DAMNATION—starring Vali Kerekes as a married but very independent nightclub singer and Miklós B. Székely as a philosophical barfly obsessed with her—features Tarr’s signature characters and landscapes in various states of abjection and decay rendered through spellbinding cinematography and poetic resignation.

Tarr’s first collaboration with writer László Krasznahorkai, DAMNATION has been restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative by the Hungarian National Film Institute–Film Archive under the supervision of the director.

The film will stream online over the next several days, presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. See link below for details.

DAMNATION

UCLA Film & Television Archive

Through Thursday, November 5.

Béla Tarr, Damnation (1988), with Vali Kerekes and Miklós B. Székely (second from top and below). Images courtesy and © the filmmaker and Arbelos Films.

TESSA HUGHES-FREELAND

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Join Tessa Hughes-Freeland for a virtual screening of her work, followed by a live conversation with the filmmaker, moderated by Jack Sargeant.

Presented by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the program of Hughes-Freeland’s shorts includes BABY DOLL (1982), JOKER (1983), PLAY BOY (1983), DIRTY (1993), NYMPHOMANIA (1994), and GIFT (2010).

See link below for details.

SELECTED WORKS BY TESSA HUGHES-FREELAND, 1982–2010

Friday, August 14.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

See Tessa Hughes-Freeland—Passed and Present, published on the occasion of the 2019 exhibition Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project.

Tessa Hughes-Freeland, from top: Nymphomania (In collaboration with Holly Adams); Joker; Baby Doll; Play Boy; Tessa Hughes-Freeland: Passed and Present catalog cover, courtesy and © the filmmaker and Arturo Vega; portrait of the filmmaker, courtesy and © Grace Roselli. Film stills courtesy and © Tessa Hughes-Freeland.

OUT IN PUBLIC

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This week, the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Andrew J. Kuehn Jr. Foundation present OUT IN PUBLIC, a program of short films highlighting “different historical moments and ways of being out and queer in public, from a Gay-In at Griffith Park to a Memorial Day barbecue at a campsite in southern Illinois. Each shines with the energy of summer revelry while conveying the importance of claiming a public space for LGBTQ identity as the literal and metaphoric grounds on which to build a community and a movement.”*

The films include The Liberation of Griffith Park, or A Gay Time Was Had By All (1971, directed by Matt Spero), S.P.R.E.E. on a Spree  (1970, Pat Rocco), and Tales of the Pit (1997, directed by Anne Chamberlain, who will appear in a pre-recoded post-screening Q & A).

OUT IN PUBLIC will begin with a live introduction from UCLA Film & Television Archive programmer Paul Malcolm and Outfest UCLA Legacy Project manager Brendan Lucas.

OUT IN PUBLIC rsvp*

Friday, August 7.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

From top: Pat Rocco (left) and a friend at a SPREE (Society of Pat Rocco Enlightened Enthusiasts) event in the 1970s; Gay Pride march on Hollywood Boulevard, 1970s (2); advertisement for the first Pat Rocco Male Nude Film Festival, 1970s; SPREE members at the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Images courtesy and © the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and the USC Digital Library.

ALLYSON NADIA FIELD AND MARSHA GORDON

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When we began researching SCREENING RACE IN AMERICAN NONTHEATRICAL FILM, we put out a call to archivists for suggestions of lost, hidden or neglected films that deserved scholarly attention.

Stephen Parr of Oddball Films, who passed away in 2017, enthusiastically recommended Nikolai Ursin’s BEHIND EVERY GOOD MAN (circa 1967), a short 16mm portrait of a transgender African American person. Mark Quigley at UCLA made it possible for us to view the film, which had been recently restored. We were moved by its sophisticated engagement with questions of gender, sexuality and race. Noah Tsika of Queens College wrote a thoughtful and deeply informed essay on the film’s representational politics as well as its subject’s self-presentation.

Rediscovering an important film in the archives like BEHIND EVERY GOOD MAN and helping bring more attention to it energized us—it’s one of the reasons we do what we do. — Allyson Nadia Field and Marsha Gordon, editors of Screening Race

Top and below: Nikolai Ursin, Behind Every Good Man (circa 1967) (2), courtesy and © the filmmaker. Above: Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film (2019), edited by Allyson Nadia Field and Marsha Gordon, courtesy and © Duke University Press.

SÁTÁNTANGÓ STREAM

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The structure of SÁTÁNTANGÓ came from the novel… [which] we didn’t change. László Krasznahorkai wrote twelve chapters, six forward and six back, which is the structure of the tango. — Béla Tarr

SÁTÁNTANGÓ has a reputation for duration (long) and velocity (slow). Think of it as a suspended thriller playing out over several episodes.

For a limited time, Arbelos Films and the UCLA Film & Television Archive are presenting the opportunity to watch the seven-hour film at your leisure—over a 72-hour period.

Devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours. I’d be glad to see it every year for the rest of my life. — Susan Sontag on SÁTÁNTANGÓ

See link below for details.

UCLA Film & Television Archive presents

SÁTÁNTANGÓ

Béla Tarr, Sántátangó (1994). Images courtesy and © the filmmaker and Arbelos Films.