Absteigend (2012)

WHO: Paul Clipson is one of Frisco Bay's leading experimental filmmakers over the past decade or so. Even if you haven't heard of him you may have seen his handiwork as projectionist for SFMOMA until it closed earlier this month. This video shows him at work, and gives a glimpse of the remarkable storyboards he's created to assist reel changes.

WHAT: Clipson's Absteigend might be called a music video for a song on Evan Caminiti's Thrill Jockey album Dreamless Sleep, except that there's nothing "video" about it in its original form. Shot and processed using Super-8 film, this brief New York "city symphony" was one of the highlights of this Spring's Crossroads Festival put on by SF Cinematheque. Sophie Pinchetti puts it succinctly when she says the filmmaker "explores the melancholic beauty and solitude of the industrial cityscape". You can follow that last link and watch it online, but there's no substitute for seeing it in its "reel" form.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at 8:00 PM at Artists' Television Access.

WHY: Tonight Absteigend screens as part of a full program of Clipson's recent film work, which will include a performance by Clipson and sound artist Marielle Jakobsons. The unique Artists' Television Access is an improbable survivor of multiple real-estate booms on the Valencia Street corridor, and one of the last neighborhood storefronts essentially retaining the same character it had twenty years ago. ATA is a perfect place to see small-gauge film and video that you'd be hard-pressed to see play at any other venue. Its July calendar includes documentaries Directing Dissent (about a political activist) and The Space Invaders: In Search of Lost Time (about arcade games) as well as a showcase for Oakland collective Elements of Image Making, an open screening and more.

HOW: Tonight's films screen as Super-8mm projections.