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Afterimage: The Films of Leslie ThorntonPost an Event »

Pacific Film Archive

October 15 - October 16, 2014

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2575 Bancroft Way

Berkeley

,

CA

94720
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Afterimage: The Films of Leslie Thornton

We are delighted that Leslie Thornton will present two programs of her work drawing on old and new technologies as part of our Afterimage series. Based in New York, she teaches at Brown University. Whether using found footage and sound she has gathered or her own image and aural tracks, Thornton’s investigations into the making of meaning are unparalleled—beautiful and poetic, while often perplexing and surprising. 
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Wednesday, October 15, 2014 @ 7:00 p.m. 
Peggy and Fred in Hell (US, 1985–2013)
In Conversation with Leslie Thornton and Pooja Rangan. Pooja Rangan is assistant professor of culture and media at the New School in New York, and is completing a book on the humanitarian impulse in documentary.

In her recently completed landmark series, Peggy and Fred in Hell—worked and reworked over nearly thirty years and incorporating film and video—Leslie Thornton examines sexual differences and experiences on the edge. Peggy and Fred are two eerie children inhabiting an eerie world, the more so for its seeming familiarity. While nothing much really happens in hell—Peggy and Fred sing, dance, explore—neither does much make sense. Purposely, evocatively, Thornton creates ambiguous, puzzling images and sounds whose meanings are elusive, obscured; she presents a world where meaning is fluid rather than fixed. 

• (95 mins, B&W, 16mm/Digital with Video Monitors, From the artist, BAM/PFA Preservation Print of The Prologue)
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Thursday, October 16, 2014 @ 7:00 p.m. 
An Aesthetic of Uncertainty: Cinema by Leslie Thornton (US, 1983–2014).
In Conversation with Leslie Thornton and Pooja Rangan.

Tonight's program features a selection of Leslie Thornton’s short films and digital videos that explore how the West looks at the East; how we look at animals, nature, and each other; and how technology impacts these interactions. It includes Thornton's lush and evocative Adynata, which uses excerpts from Theresa Hak-kyung Cha's Dictée and a host of well-known films to create a semiological overload. Her recent Philosophers Walk on the Sublime takes us to the Alps to talk about philosophy. For Sahara/Mohave, Thornton set out to “hone an ‘aesthetic of uncertainty’ to question our understanding of the real”—an apt description of her life’s work.

Adynata (1983), 30 mins, Color, 16mm, BAM/PFA Preservation Print
Sahara/Mohave (2006), 12 mins, Color, Digital, From the artist
SONGS One Two Three (2012), 14 mins, Color, Digital, From the artist
Binocular Menagerie (2014), 3 mins, Color, Digital, From the artist
Philosophers Walk on the Sublime (2013), 15 mins, Color, Digital, From the artist

Total running time: c. 75 mins