Brava Joins The Week Long Celebration OfTthe 100 Year Anniversary of Futurism Held 10/18

On October 18, 2009, Brava joins the week long celebration of the 100 year anniversary of Futurism with SFMOMA, Italian Cultural Institute, UC Berkeley, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and The San Francisco Center for the Book.

fu·tur·ism (fych-rzm) n.

A belief that the meaning of life and one's personal fulfillment lie in the future and not in the present or past.
An artistic avant-garde movement that took technology and speed and incorporated every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture and even gastronomy.
A complex movement of artists who were imperfect, at times very mean, but saw the importance using modernity as inspiration and making use of the characteristics of the machine age.

In their manifesto, "The Futurist Cinema" (1916), F.T. Marinetti and his cohorts create the following equation: "painting + sculpture + plastic dynamism + words-in-freedom + composed noise + architecture = synthetic theater." On October 18, Brava! for Women in the Arts brings rarely viewed films and live plays together to investigate this ideal of synthetic theater.

The film program includes Anton Giulio Bragaglia's Thais (1916) - the only surviving futurist film, as well as Futurist Life Redux (2009), a remake of a lost film with contributions by George Kuchar, Michael Smith, Martha Colburn, Shannon Plumb, and Lynn Hershman among others. To celebrate the works of the Synthetic Theater, in collaboration with Luciano Cressa, the premiere Futurism Expert, the short plays by Synthetic Theater will be performed live. None of the "plays" are longer than two minutes in length. The plays will be presented intermittently between the films. There will also be an exclusive free one-time only full production of all the performance works at 6pm, October 18th, 2009. Performance will include compositions by soundscape artist Grant Goddard.

This extensive collaboration in celebration of Futurism's 100th Anniversary was the brainstorm of SFMOMA Associate Curator of Public Programs, Frank Smigiel. The collaborators for the week include the Instituto Italiano, UC Berkeley, SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Brava! for Women in the Arts, and The San Francisco Center for the Book. "It started as a simply ‘what if' conversation with Frank. From the initial discussion about the potential collaboration, I saw this as a fun opportunity to experiment. The experiment is to play with rehearsal time in the new technological age. Who knows - in the spirit of experiment, we may have one rehearsal on Skype. But given the opportunity to think in that fashion no matter how foolish, and yet, be working from early century text will be a fantastic. Futurism allowed the cultivation of seeing industry as art, art as philosophy and film as performance. I wanted Brava to be part of that experiment." Says Brava Artistic Director, Raelle Myrick Hodges.

The futurist style glorified the machine age as well as war, and Futurism's proclaimed leader F.T. Marinetti favored the rise of Fascism. "And that is why it is imperative that Brava! for Women in the Arts participates. If nothing else, then to have Marinetti rolling over in his grave" Artistic Director Raelle Myrick-Hodges laughs. But, the clichéd discussion of the Fascist elements of the Futurism movement isn't laughable. "Honestly, that is exactly why Brava needed to participate. Futurism was the first movement that was self-invented which is the central inspiration of performance art. I wanted to participate because we have reinvented these ideas, these manifestos...even if we have killed off our past, we can still be responsible contributors to the arts community by acknowledging the importance of this movement to film and live art."

Film enthusiasts should not miss these viewings. We have the opportunity to preview the Futurist Life Redux and the original Thais, the definitive work of Futurist film.

Brava has planned a full schedule of film ALL DAY October 18th with great live performances. Films to be presented:

Afternoon Performance 4pm

Amor Pedestre, Marcel Fabre (1914), 10 min.

Thaïs, Anton Giulio Bragaglia (1917), 54 min.

The Mechanical Man, Andre Deed (1921), 46 min.

Railway Station Rhythms (Impressioni vita di 1, di stazioni ritmi), Corrado D'Errico (1933), 10 min.

6pm - Free one-time only full production of all the performance works

(no films will be presented at this time.)

Evening Performance 7:30pmpm

Speed (Vitesse), Tina Cordero, Guido Martina, and Pippo Oriana (1930), 13 min.

March of the Machines, Eugene Deslaw (1929), 9 min.

Excelsior, Luca Comerio (1914), 23 min.

Egged On, Ted Sears (1926), 24 min.

Futurist Life Redux, 50 min.

Evening performance will be followed by a closing reception with all the participating organizations

Synthetic Theater Live Artists

Khamara Pettus

Jayne Deely

Liz Anderson

Jeffrey L. Moore

Matthew Reiff

Michael Heriford

Christopher Borgzinner

Michaela Ngeruizian

Summer Shuckahosee

Music compositions/collaborations

Luciano Cressa

Grant Goddard

Tickets:

Each Brava program: $10 general; $7 SFMOMA and partner institution members, students, and seniors

Both Brava programs: $15 general, $12 SFMOMA and partner institution members, students, and seniors.

Tickets available at www.brava.org or 415.647.2822

Part of Metal + Machine + Manifesto = Futurism's First 100 Years. Visit Brava's Futurism page for details.

Time:

4:00pm Afternoon Performance

6:00pm Free one-time only full production of all the performance works (no films will be shown at this time)

7:30pm Evening Performance

Location

Brava Theater Center

2781 24th Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

Date: Sunday, October 19, 2009

More information about the films:

Film Selection Curated by Lana Wilson (Performa), with theatrical installations curated by Brava Artistic Director, Raelle Myrick-Hodges.

Amor Pedestre, Marcel Fabre (1914), 10 min.

The feet of three people act out an adulterous affair in Amor Pedestre, the only filmed record of Futurist reductionist performance.

Thaïs, Anton Giulio Bragaglia (1917), 54 min.

A seemingly conventional Italian "diva" picture that builds to a wildly experimental ending, Thais is considered to be the only surviving full-length Futurist film. In it, the title character plots to seduce her best friend's crush, and the melodramatic chain of events that ensues leads to a Futuristic final sequence, shot against the visionary set designs of Futurist painter Enrico Prampolini.

The Mechanical Man, Andre Deed (1921), 46 min.

André Deed wrote, directed, and starred in this remarkable early science fiction film featuring a female criminal mastermind and a massive robot running amok. It survives only in fragmentary form, but what remains is enough to convey the fascination and terror of the mechanical monster, which Deed described as "a machine in human form built out of pure steel [possessing] a terrifying strength, an incalculable speed. . . . In short, a truly infernal invention."

Railway Station Rhythms (Impressioni vita di 1, di stazioni ritmi), Corrado D'Errico (1933), 10 min.

Gorgeous documentary depicting a day in the "iron world"-a railway station-by intermingling the repetitive motions of machines with the mechanisms of human behavior. With music by George Gershwin.

Distributor: LUCE Institute, Beta-SP

Speed (Vitesse), Tina Cordero, Guido Martina, and Pippo Oriana (1930), 13 min.

One of the only futurist films still in existence, Speed captures the dynamics of the city, with rotating views, whistling machines, articulatEd Mannequins, and homages to twentieth-century artists such as Boccioni, Mondrian, Leger, and Kandinsky, all rhythmically collaged together by Futurist painter Oriani in collaboration with writers Cordero and Martina.

March of the Machines, Eugene Deslaw (1929), 9 min.

Abstract mechanical symphony with score originally written by Luigi Russolo

Excelsior, Luca Comerio (1914), 23 min.

A grand 1881 ballet that celebrates technology and progress through tableaux saluting turn-of-the-century technological innovations-electricity, the telegraph, and the Brooklyn Bridge, among them-Excelsior was made into a film over 30 years later, as the worldwide interest in Futurism was taking off.

Futurist Life Redux, 50 min.

In 1916, the Italian Futurist artist Arnaldo Ginna directed, produced, and filmed Vita Futurista (Futurist Life), perhaps the only truly "Futurist" film ever made, now completely lost. Comprised of eleven independent segments conceived and written by different Futurist artists, Futurist Life contrasted the spirit and lifestyle of Futurists with that of the ordinary man, featuring experimental techniques such as split screens, double exposures, and hand-coloring, as well as a radical rejection of the theatricality of the stage dramas that accounted for much Italian cinema at the time. For the Performa 09 biennial, Performa and Anthology Film Archives will invite a dozen filmmakers to create their own versions of segments from Vita Futurista, reimagining this landmark film in relation to our own future. These shorts will then be compiled into one, all-new version of Futurist Life for the twenty-first century. Participating artists include George Kuchar, Michael Smith, Martha Colburn, Shannon Plumb, and Lynn Hershman among others.

 

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