by Cliff Froehlich, Executive Director of Cinema St. Louis

In partnership with Cinema St. Louis, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts invited local filmmakers to realize their dreams–that is, to make oneiric works in conjunction with the Pulitzer’s exhibition Dreamscapes–and the results will soon shimmer into view, in an appropriately surreal manner, on the building’s walls.

Thirty-three films were submitted, diving deep into their makers’ unconscious. From the sunken treasure hauled up from the darkness, Cinema St. Louis has selected twenty-two videos to display on Friday, June 24. As night falls, the films will be projected onto three of the Pulitzer’s façades, inviting viewers to share in the creators’ entrancing dreams and disquieting nightmares.

The free event, Dream Sequences: Film Night at the Pulitzer with Cinema St. Louis, begins at 8pm, with the locally produced works serving as palate-whetting appetizer for the main course: a double bill by surrealist master Luis Buñuel. Buñuel’s films, the short Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) and the feature The Phantom of Liberty, will be projected across the Pulitzer’s shared courtyard onto the wall of Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; chairs will be supplied.

Leading off the Buñuel program will be a pair of exceptional films from the St. Louis film competition: Zlatko Cosic’s Brainstorm, which received honorable mention, and Brendan Leahy’s The Tower, which was awarded a $500 prize. The Buñuels and the spotlighted local works will be played with sound; the films projected on the Pulitzer’s walls will be silent.

The other Dreamscapes competition works chosen to screen are the following:

Artifacts, directed by Michael McCubbins
Blackbirds, directed by Alex Lopez
Calling the Loop, directed by Amy Mack
Dog’s Dream, directed by William Morris
The Divide, directed by Trent Fred
The Inheritance, directed by Sandra Olmsted and Vanessa Roman
A Lens Apart, directed by William Flynn
Love, Guns and Amy, directed by Marttise Roosevelt Hill
Lucy’s Dream, directed by Clara Smith
Prelom, directed by Zlatko Cosic
Rapunzel, directed by Marie Bannerot McInerney
Rare Gold, directed by Peter McLeod Seay
Sleep Film, directed by Jonathan Eberle
Swing, directed by William Morris
Terranocturne, directed by R D Zurick
This Monstrous Traveler in Hashish, directed by Chris King and Poetry Scores
Transmorph Dreams, directed by Erin Taylor
Untie, Unfasten, Undo, directed by Amanda Pfister and Manda Remmen
When …, directed by Bruce Van Reed
Who Is This Place, directed by Jacob Lanum Read the rest of this entry »

Cinema St. Louis and The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts invite St. Louis-area filmmakers to project their imaginations on the Pulitzer’s world-renowned building by creating short silent films that employ dreamlike imagery.

In conjunction with the current exhibition Dreamscapes, on view until August 13, the Pulitzer will host an event that showcases dream-related films by local filmmakers. These shorts will be projected on several exterior surfaces at the Pulitzer on Friday, June 24, at 8:00 p.m.

One of the works–chosen by the Pulitzer and Cinema St. Louis–will be highlighted at the event, and the filmmaker will receive a prize of $500.

Cinema St. Louis will also choose several of the films to screen as part of the
St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, held in early August.

READ MORE AT CINEMASTLOUIS.ORG.

Tonight, in the midst of being open late for the first Thursday of the month, we’re also hosting a light-inspired film night.  The projections will get going around 8:30pm – when it finally starts to get a little darker out!- but you can come by and see the exhibition anytime after 6pm.

Similar to last year’s “Water Works” event, we’ve invited St. Louis-area filmmakers to submit short, silent films, this time employing light as the key element.  The submitted pieces have been put on a loop and will be projected on multiple exterior walls of the Pulitzer building.

During this event last year, Webster University film students took some great videos throughout the evening and interviewed both guests and filmmakers.  To listen to what they had to say and to get an idea of what tonight’s event will be like, click here, here, here or here.

We’re also kicking off our lamp collection tonight.  There will be lots more coming on that, but stop by to pick up some information on this project – and feel free to bring by an old lamp, lampshade, or lantern if you have one.

I’m out of the office today, but here’s something for your President’s Day holiday viewing pleasure. I searched “Dan Flavin” on YouTube to see what videos came up.  There’s a pretty wide selection, and I was excited to find our installation video first in the list (yesss).  A few of the videos even include a variety of artistic responses to his work.  Enjoy!

Today I have an exciting update to our website — our Multimedia section is now live!  Take a look here.

As it says in the description, this page  “features a behind-the-scenes look into the programming and exhibitions at the Pulitzer. Videos include interviews with artists, curators, Pulitzer staff, visitors, program participants, glimpses into the exhibition installation, program planning, and much more. ”

My favorite part of this section is the inclusion of “guest videographers” who will document our activities with their own unique spin.  For the first set of videos (as mentioned here),  four groups of Webster University film students did short videos showcasing the “Films at the Pulitzer: Water Works” program.  There’s also a great split-screen video of the musical performance that took place that night, in case you missed it.

And this week, we’ll be launching the first of three “installation videos”.  These are going to take over our homepage while our galleries are closed, giving you a glimpse into what’s happening at the Pulitzer while our doors are closed…

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the ongoing web projects I’m working on is adding video to our site. We’ve started working on this during Water, and have used this exhibition to figure out what kinds of videos we want to do, how we want them to appear online, etc. For Flavin, we’re hoping bring the video section out in full force.

One of the video experiments we worked on was during the local filmmaker event. Webster University students split into 4 different groups and filmed the event in their own way. It was perfect for the nature of the event, which was all about showcasing different filmmakers’ takes on one subject – water. The resulting videos created by the students are fantastic – and each has it’s own unique spin on the evening. We’ll be uploading these to our website soon — in the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at one of them!

As of today, I have more news on the Greenaway films front…. Diane Carson, an active member of the St. Louis film community, will present the films and lead a discussion with the audience afterwards.  Wondering which of his many water-related films we’ll be showing?  You’re in luck, because we have that information now too!  We’ll be showing, in chronological order:

Intervals (1969)
Water Wrackets (1978)
Making a Splash (1984)
26 Bathrooms (1985)

These films are rarely screened and definitely worth coming out to see, especially if you’ve been a fan of his work.  And even though Greenaway himself can’t attend, he’s writing something specifically for this event.  But you’ll have to come Saturday night for that.

Breaking news on the Peter Greenaway front….unfortunately we’ve learned today that he’s no longer able to attend this weekend’s film screenings. However, this is no reason to stay at home — we’ll still be showing his water-related films as planned, and the full feature of Drowning by Numbers will still take place Sunday afternoon at SLAM. I’ll keep you updated on the specifics…

In unrelated news, I read this LA Times article this morning from a link on Tyler Green’s blog. If you’re interested at all in arts education, it’s a must-read.

As promised, I have some more info on two of our upcoming Water programs…

Our next film program with Cinema St. Louis will feature a selection of water-related short films by Peter Greenaway.  Take a look at his entry on Wikipedia here and his official website here.  Many of his films have shown a strong interest in the subject of water, and he will be choosing which of these he would like to present.  He’ll be flying in to St. Louis to screen and discuss these works on November 17th.  The next evening he’ll also be participating in Cinema St. Louis’s incredible festival they organize each year– the St. Louis International Film Festival–  with another film screening held at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

We’re also planning our second-ever poetry event at the Pulitzer.  This is a part of a continuing collaboration with the Poetry Foundation in Chicago (who has an incredible website, you should take a look).  Last time, writers sat on a panel and discussed the relationship between poetry, art and portraiture.  This time, a new set of writers has been invited to discuss how poetry relates to water.  I’ve just posted the writers, their bios, and the subjects they’re planning on discussing on our website here.  I’ll keep you up-to-date on any new information as it comes…

Our discussion with Thomas Crone and Amanda Doyle on KDHX is now online, for your listening pleasure.  Matthias, Chris from Cinema St. Louis, and I discussed last week’s film event and teased the film night coming up in November.   We talked about torrential thunderstorms, how our collaboration came about, what other institutions we find inspiring, learning how to play the water glasses, and Flipper.  Click here to listen, and then click on the stream from September 10th’s show.