DOCUMENTAL shows films at the Unurban Coffeehouse, 3301 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica, CA, 90404, 310-315-0056, free admission from 6-10pm. Info: 310-306-7330 For updates - www.myspace.com/sevendudleycinema
MON, June 8. DAVID LEBRUN FILMS at 7pm - Seminal Los Angeles experimental filmmaker (in person) screens his inspired and inspiring cinema which deals with space, time, anthropology an d animation. Films will include Sanctus, Tanka, the Hog Farm Movie and ot hers. "Of particular note is the filmmaker’s debut short, Sanctus (1966), which was made while Lebrun was on sabbatical from his undergraduate studies at Reed College and which finds extraordinary symmetries of motion and meaning in its juxtaposition of three radically different rituals: a Roman Catholic Ma ss, a Mexican bullfight and the hallucinogenic-mushroom ceremony of the Mazatec Indians. Better known, but no less worthwhile, the20scintillating Tanka (1976) takes us on an eye-popping journey through the Tibetan Book of the Dead as represented by a series of 16th - to 19th-centuryscroll paintings. Then, for a foray into California’s countercultural past, check out The Hog Farm Movie (1970), Lebrun’s documentary record20of the famed Tujunga commune he helped found and its (ultimately failed) attempt to transport one of its pigs to the 1968 Democratic National Convention for a proposed presidential bid. Proof that, while the idea of running a lower life form for our country’s top office isn’t necessarily a new one, it at least used to register as satire." -LA Weekly. 6pm preshow TBA
MON, July 13. VISION-CORE from 6-10pm - These stellar experimental and documentariy short films reinvent cinema language: DOUBLE THUNDER ('08, 6m) Potter-Blemar Labs socially engineer a stunning tour. The first movement of this meteorological metaphor logs a journey, through town and countryside, far away from home. The second is a composition of solace and stillness. In the third and final movement, they weather a sudden thunderstorm. FALLING FORCE ('09, 5m) Sofia Bohdanowicz's mosaic of heartbreak & vulnerability. A CITY TO YOURSELF ('08, 25m) Nicole Macdonald's inspired and inspiring reflection on Detroit's increase in space for outdoor=2 0art, less traffic, farming and urban wildlife. Re-examine the crumbling infrastructure of post-industrial city. LAND OF THE DEAD ('08, 20m) John Cannizzaro's tour through an unusual cemetery as a cinematic meditation on life and death. FORGET CASSETTES? ('08, 24m) Fred Burns investigates the legacy of the compact-cassette, revealing the impact it had and still has on peoples live s. SPEECHLESS ('08, 13m) Scott Stark interweaves medical 3D photographs of vulvas with surfaces & textures in natural & human-made environments, explicit content! Stark's RIGHT ('08, 13m) challenges political thinking with words and flag images. COLEMAN MILLER's shorts - what happens when an award winning filmmaker goes to college years earlier and makes films, that are to metaphysics what canned hams are to daylight savings time. VANCOUVER ('08, 14) Bryan Konefsky's cinematic intervention. INCOMMUNICADO (‘08, 11m) Brendan Kenney & Matthew Meyers’ documentary about miscommunication, isolation, and the dissolution of human relationships, told through an archive of hundreds of recorded phone messages. Matt Nixon's avant garde films and more.
MON, Aug 24. TIME MACHINE - ('09, 90m) Time tourists unite! Sabine Gruffat and Bill Brown (in person) travel across time and space with an evening of video performance, spoken word, scratchy records, and 35mm slides. Ride frequency waves of sight and sound with Sabine Gruffat as she navigates by the red, green and blue stars of electronic constellations. Watch and learn about Real-Time Rendering, Quartz, and Max patches as she steers you through the sensory drone of the digital and analog hyperspace. Drop out of the temporal flux and onto the lonely highway with Bill Brown as he takes you on a guided tour of memory's roadside attractions. Brown will read reports of his travels as he presents a slide show of images from the irretrievable past and the inaccessible future.
MON, Dec 7. PXL THIS 19 -toy camera film festival, deadline for entry is Oct 22.
The UNURBAN is proud to be the home of DOCUMENTAL's rebirth. Curator Gerry Fialka's DOCUMENTAL series (established in March, 1995) at Santa Monica's Midnight Special, which was the oldest political bookstore in the world, ran for 8 years. DOCUMENATAL was praised as "L.A.'s pre-eminent documentary and experimental film showcase...the holy grail"-LA WEEKLY. In RES magazine, Holly Willis declaredGerry Fialka the "Los Angeles-based independent media hero." In the Independent Film & Video Monthly, Willis proclaimed Fialka an "exemplary devotee of cinema. Thanks to Fialka's penchant for the weird and wild, L.A. gets to see material we wouldn't otherwise." "Eye-opening with postscree ning chats that cook" -LA Magazine. The LA20TIMES calls Fialka "the multi-media Renaissance man." He continues to program 7 Dudley Cinema. "Documental at the Unurban is an incredible resource in Santa Monica. After my4 hour retrospective screening there, one of my students Ikko Suzuki best summarized: ' Frankly it was one of my most memorable movie going times because I've never had such an experience of sharing impressions with neighbors in such an intimate atmosphere.' I agree. Check it out." - Sheila Laffey, award winning filmmaker/producer