SEE Magazine
Copyright © 1998. All Rights Reserved.
ON SCREEN
BY SCOTT LINGLEYPREVIEW
Cut-up: Beat Counterculture on Film
Edmonton Art Gallery
Thursdays, July 9-30The concept of underground culture has pretty much been shot to hell. "Underground" has become just another adjective for advertisers, like "extreme" or "light": they'll append it to anything to con rebellious kids out of their allowance.
But back in the late 1950s and early '60s, underground actually meant something to Beat poets and film-makers who wanted to express their ideas in media that had been dominated by mass-market, status quo thinking.
An upcoming film series at the Edmonton Art Gallery explores the fruits of the Beat vision as it found expression in underground film and the subsequent appropriation of the beatnik stereotype by Hollywood for its own meretricious ends. The screenings are free but you must be 18 to attend.
On Thursday, July 9 at 7 p.m. the EAG presents Loves Ya, Brion Gysin Loves Ya and Poetry in Motion, two documentaries from the '80s about artist Brion Gysin, who is the subject of an extensive ongoing EAG exhibit entitled I Am That I Am. At 9 p.m. catch John Cassavetes' Shadows (1957-9), a legendary independent film about a doomed interracial love affair.
At 7 p.m. on July 16, the Cool City program features a series of short films by Larry Jordon, Bruce Connor and others, followed at 9 p.m. by Roger Corman's Bucket of Blood (1959), an el cheapo horror-comedy ripe with beatnik stereotypes.
On July 23 you can see Ron Rice's The Flower Thief (1960) at 7 p.m., followed by two films by Andy Warhol: Haircut and Blowjob (1964) at 9 p.m. Considering Warhol's Sleep was eight hours of a guy sleeping, you should know exactly what you're in for.
The program on July 30 will feature a series of short films under the collective title Cut Ups at 7 p.m., followed by Charles Haas' The Beat Generation (1959) at 9 p.m.
For more information, call Marie Lopez at 422-6223.
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