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Originally set for Smithsonian screening,
films now to be seen only at UB
“Portraiture in Queer Experimental Cinema,” a program of short films originally developed as part of the scholarly symposium around the groundbreaking Smithsonian Institution exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” will be screened at UB on Feb. 28.
Jonathan Katz, UB associate professor of visual studies and curator of the Smithsonian exhibition, says the film program, curated by Ed Halter, one of the foremost authorities on queer experimental film, now will be seen only in Buffalo, offering an opportunity to see films so rare that some exist only in a single copy. The program originally had been scheduled to be screened at the Smithsonian.
The 10-film 71-minute program will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts, North Campus. It will be free and open to the public.
“We will present a program of short films and videos by queer artists spanning half a century that let us consider how various aspects of portraiture play out within different approaches to experimental cinema,” Katz says. “It will include work by Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Gregory Markopoulos, Su Friedrich, Barbara Hammer, Sadie Benning and others.”
The program is sponsored by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and co-sponsored by the UB Department of Visual Studies, the UB Gender Institute, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, the UB Art Gallery, the UB Department of Media Studies and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
Films on the program are those by Kenneth Anger, “Puce Moment,” 1949, 16mm, sound, 6 min.; Andy Warhol, “Mario Banana #1,” 1964, 16mm, silent, 4 min.; Andy Warhol, “Mario Banana #2,” 1964, 16mm, silent, 4 min.; Edward Owens, “Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts,” 1967, 16mm, silent, 9 min.; Gregory Markopoulos, “Ming Green,” 1966, 16mm, sound, 7 min.; Barbara Hammer, “Dyketactics,” 1974, 16mm, sound, 4 min.; Su Friedrich, “Cool Hands, Warm Heart,” 1979, 16mm, silent, 14 min.; George Kuchar, “I, An Actress,” 1977, 16mm, sound, 9 min.; Sadie Benning, “If Every Girl Had a Diary,” 1990, video, 8 min.; and Glen Fogel, “Endless Obsession,” 2000, 16mm, sound, 6 min.
Curator Ed Halter is a 2009 recipient of the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation and programmed and oversaw the New York Underground Film Festival from 1995 to 2005.
He has organized screenings and exhibitions at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Cinematexas, PS1, Artists Space, Eyebeam, the Flaherty Film Seminar, Participant Inc. and the Museum of Modern Art. He is a visiting assistant professor in the Bard College Department of Film and Electronic Arts.
Halter has lectured at Harvard University, New York University, Yale University, among others; at Art in General, Aurora Picture Show, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology; the Images Festival, the Impakt Festival and Pacific Film Archive. He is the author of “From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games” (2006) and a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn.
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