Until recently, the MRC's collection of Polish films has concentrated largely on a few ground-breaking directors, such as Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieslowski. Thanks to the gentle prodding and advice of a faculty friend, we've recently broadened the collection to include these fascinating offerings from lesser-screened Polish auteurs:

 Kingsize. This allegory made during the communist era in Poland contrasts two imaginary worlds, one made up of dwarves and the other inhabited by people of normal stature. While the dwarves scheme to get ahead in the meager environment of Drawerland, the Kingsize people magically move from one dimension to the next, granting them many privileges, including the company of women. Juliusz Machulski (Sexmission) directs. 1988. DVD 6249

Mother Joan of the Angels. One of the landmarks of modern Polish cinema, this gripping adaptation of Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun (like Ken Russell's The Devils), transposes the action to a 17th-century Polish convent, where a priest investigates demonic possession among nuns. But the exorcist finds himself involved in an unavoidable mutual attraction with the Mother Superior. Full of brilliant symbolism, Jerzy Kawalerowicz weaves a powerful allegory of good vs. evil, chastity vs. eroticism. 1960. DVD 5536

Austeria (The Inn) Early in World War I, a group of Orthodox Jews flee from the Cossack army in Polish Galicia. A secluded country inn becomes their temporary refuge, where emotional attachments, brief love affairs and even a renewed faith in humankind inspire these desperate individuals. From Jerzy Kawalerowicz, the director of Joan of the Angels. 1988. DVD 5030

Border Street (Ulica graniczna) A masterpiece of Polish cinema, a tragedy about the Warsaw ghetto involving an old tailor who tries to save his daughters and others. The film culminates with the Warsaw uprising of 1943, when Jews, with the support of the Polish underground, take up arms and die fighting. With passages of visual brilliance. Directed by Aleksander Ford. 1948. DVD 6008

Sex Mission (Seksmisja) A science fiction film about the year 2044. Two men, voluntarily hibernated in 1991, are awakened 53 years later to learn that males don't exist anymore. A nuclear war destroyed everything, including men. Women are ruling from the underground. Facing harsh treatment from their female guards, these two men are determined to save themselves and reestablish the male population. Directed by Juliusz Machulski. 1984. DVD 6247

“One belongs to New York instantly; one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years” --Thomas Wolfe

None of us has control over the place of his or her birth; we see first light in Patterson or Paducah or Pasadena, and that’s pretty much that. Whatever we may feel about our hometown or the place we’ve currently come to hang our hat, somewhere along the line many of us also adopt a spiritual home or two. You don’t really even need to have lived in a city for it to tantalize you or speak to your soul. Over time, I’ve formed serious romantic attachments to a number of such dream metropolises. San Francisco--my own personal Oz. Paris--mais naturellement! And then there’s New York, my true karmic home. As much as I love the Bay Area, I often find the lyrics to Dave Frishberg’s “Do You Miss New York?” buzzing through my skull: “Do you miss the anger, the action? Does this laid-back life style lack a certain satisfaction?” My infatuation with Manhattan definitely extends to the movies (or as my wife has observed: “How many times can a sane person watch Annie Hall!?). Fortunately, there’s no dearth of great Big Apple documentaries to somewhat assuage my longing for egg creams, Central Park, and the glint of the Chrysler Building at dusk.

New York in the Fifties.  2001. 52 min. DVD 1527

Based on the lamentably out-of-print 1992 memoir of the same name by journalist Dan Wakefield, NY in the 50s provides a charmingly desultory tour of The Apple in its culturally supercharged, booze-and-cigarette propelled post-war heyday. Wakefield and other rapidly graying hipsteratti appear on screen to tell the story of an earnest young generation of domestic refugees from the Eisenhower-era American mainstream looking for psychic asylum, enlightenment, and kicks on the isle of Manhattan, particularly in the village known as Greenwich.

Top Hat and Tales. 2001. 47 min. VIDEO/C 8492

How is it that a raw-boned, cowlick-haired, hard-drinking, gruff-speaking, ex-hobo journalist from the province of Aspen, Colorado came to create a publication that virtually defined the urbane style and image of Jazz Age New York in the popular imagination? That’s precisely what Harold Ross did in founding a little humor magazine called The New Yorker in 1925. Top Hat and Tales traces the often picaresque life and times of Ross, his magazine, and the unruly coterie of brilliant writers, cartoonists, and overworked fact-checkers that put The New Yorker on the literary and cultural map.

Picturing a Metropolis: New York City Unveiled.  2005. 152 min.  DVD 4670

Part of the fabulous Unseen Cinema collection of early American avant-garde films, Picturing a Metropolis offers a unique cinematic panoply of New York images, from the turn of the Century to the1930s.  The short films in the New York volume run the gamut from early Edison and Bioscope actualities of New York streets, buildings, bridges, and waterfronts, to experimental 1920s and 30s cinematic tone poems--“city symphonies”-- that attempted to visually capture the varied textures, patterns, movements, and moods of the great city. 

New York: A Documentary Film. 1999-2004. 152 min. DVD 3765-DVD 3770

As might be expected from a Burns Brother (Ric), New York is a fatly funded, thoroughly researched, and impeccably shot, narrated, and scored film that derives a good deal of its documentary effectiveness from the use of recognizable talking heads and spectacular archival photos and footage. Burns’ film chronicles the history of New York City from from its discovery in 1609 to 2003. Although it’s a story well-worth watching in its entirety (eight, sixty-minute installments), I do particularly like the fourth and fifth segments (“Power and the People” and “Cosmopolis), that look at the influx of immigrant populations into the city, and NY in the Jazz Age (including the Harlem Renaissance) respectively.

        --Gary Handman
 

Moffitt Library - First Floor - 510-642-8197

Thanks to the funding support of UCB art librarian, Kathryn Wayne, MRC has recently acquired a fabulous group of performance works and experimental films from Electronic Arts Intermix in New York and Video Data Bank in Chicago.  Artists represented include Vito Acconci, Bill Viola, Nam June Paik, Carolee Schneemann, and others.  Amazing stuff!

A sampling of these new additions is offered below.  For a complete listing of MRC's Avant-garde and Experimental film and performance works, click HERE 

The Red Tapes. Vico Acconci.   Considered to be Acconci's master work, this three-part epic is one of the major achievements in the video medium. Designed originally for video projection, the work is structured to  merge video space--the close-up--with filmic space--the landscape. Acconci maps a topography of the self within a cultural and social context, locating personal identity through history, cultural artifacts, language and representation.  DVD 5361 

Body Collage.  Carolee Schneemann.    Body Collage is a visceral "movement-event" from 1967, in which Schneemann paints her body with wallpaper paste and molasses, and then runs, leaps, falls into and rolls through shreds of white printer's paper, creating a physicalized corporal collage. "My intention was not simply to collage my body (as an object), but to enact movement so that the collage image would be active, found, not predetermined or posed," writes Schneemann.  Originally produced as a film on Sept. 12, 1967. VIDEO/C MM1061

Video Synthesizer and TV Cello Collectibles: 1965-1971.   Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut.  Video commune filmed in 1970; TV cello premiere filmed in 1971 at the Bonino Gallery in New York City.   These rare early collaborative works by Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut are historically significant as well as remarkably prescient. Recorded between 1965 and 1971, these 'video-films' reveal insights into the evolution of Paik's work and are among the earliest explorations of the interfacing of film and video. Video Commune is Jud Yalkut's documentation of Paik's first interactive television "performance" and also marks the debut of the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer. The images were generated directly from the synthesizer and mixed with prerecorded Japanese TV commercials with Beatles music. TV cello Premiere is a silent film of Charlotte Moorman in her first performance on Paik's "TV cello," in 1971.  VIDEO/C MM1053

Check out the Nam June Paik web site HERE!

Tony Sinking into the Floor Face Up and Face Down.  Bruce Nauman. In this film, a companion to Elke, the performer's task was to imagine himself sinking into the floor. The resulting images portray him stretched out on the floor, sometimes face up, sometimes face down, in a series of dissolves.  VIDEO/C MM134

Rare Performance Documents. Nam June Paik. Vol. 1: Performance documentation, Aachen, Germany (1965) -- Charlotte Moorman at the Howard Wise Gallery (1969) -- TV bed, the Everson Museum of Art (1972) -- TV cello performance (1973) -- Waiting for commercial (performance, 1972) -- New television workshop performance (1917) -- Vol. 2: Hand and face (1961) -- Fluxus sonata at Anthology Film Archives (1975) -- Violin dragging, Brooklyn, NY (1975) -- Tribute to GM (aka Video Venus) (1978) -- Nam June Paik with The Bad Brains (1991) -- Evening with Nam June Paik at the Kitchen (1994)   Ranging in length from 2 to 8 minutes, these performances are from Nam June Paik's personal archives and date from 1961-1994. Many include collaborations with Charlotte Moorman. VIDEO/C MM1050

Check out the Nam June Paik web site HERE!

Flux Concert.  On March 24, 1979, The Kitchen hosted a concert of reconstructed historical Fluxus performances. Over forty short pieces by thirty artists and composers were performed (with occasional assistance from the audience). Among the pieces featured were compositions by reknowned Fluxus artists Yoko Ono, Ben Vautier, Le Monte Young and George Maciunas. Performers include Simone Forti, Dick Higgins, Yoshi Wada and Geoff Hendricks.  82 min. Video/C MM1059

 

Check out the Fluxus portal HERE! 

 

Red Tape--Collected Work. Bill Viola. Playing soul music to my freckles so they won't get lonely -- A non-dairy creamer -- The semi-circular canal -- A million other things (2) -- Return.
Red Tape is a collection of short pieces that function thematically as a larger meta-work. In each of these performative, structuralist exercises, a specific function of perception or representation --as articulated through video technology-- becomes a metaphor for a perspective of the self. Here, Viola establishes themes that recur throughout his work, including cycles of light and dark and the metaphorical restructuring of the passing of time. Writes Viola, "A single figure appears in all the works as either the instigator or recipient of various actions performed on or initiated by nature, culminating in a ritualized cycle of death and renewal."  VIDEO/C MM1055

 

Check out the Bill Viola web site HERE!
 

The UC Berkeley Media Resources Center has officially jumped on the blog bandwagon!  In the coming months, we hope to post news about new and notable MRC acquisitions, notices of new research tools, and other cool buzz from the basement of Moffitt Library.  We may even--gulp--get into the podcasting business.

Stay tuned!

New and Cool

This semester, MRC has installed 42" plasma screens in the two MRC group viewing rooms.  The picture quality is astounding!  The MRC group rooms may be reserved for the screening of materials in the MRC collection bygroups of three or more.  For more information regarding policies for the use of these rooms, click HERE.  MRC has also recently brought online a larger multi-use space (room 150D Moffitt, southwest corner of the first floor), which includes data and media projection equipment.  The room will accommodate up to 49 people, and may be reserved for screening MRC collections by groups of 20 or larger.  For more information regarding the use of 150D, click on the link above.

The Director Speaks!

OK, he's not saying much.  But check out MRC Director Gary Handman's first remarkably klutzy attempt at podcasting.  Looking for rich content?...don't hold your breath. 

• Click HERE to listen