Necrology (1970)

WHO: Standish Lawder made this short film, and makes a brief appearance in it as well. (He's the one smoking in the above screen shot.)

WHAT: It's definitely best not to read about this film at all before seeing it, because almost anything anyone could write about it might give the game away. (Though it's certainly easy to appreciate the film while knowing about its secrets, there's always just one first time...) But in case you've seen it recently and would like to read some good analysis of it, try Ed Howard's write-up.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at 7:00 at the Exploratorium's Kanbar Forum.

WHY: It's hard to believe that the Fall SF Cinematheque calendar is down to only a few last shows, but all of them are unique, only-in-cinema events, at least in part because they involve filmmaker-in-person appearances. Tonight's screening of Necrology and eight other Lawder works will be followed by November 29th's YBCA showing of Nicolas Rey's anders, Molussien with its usual randomized reel sequence, and in December the Exploratorium will host Alex MacKenzie for multi-screen projector performances.

Luckily SF Cinematheque is not the only game in town for experimental film viewing. The Exploratorium shows shorts programs every Saturday afternoon in its still-new screening space, Artists' Television Access hosts Craig Baldwin's Other Cinema and the female-filmmaker-centric GAZE series, the Pacific Film Archive still has a couple screenings left in its Alternative Visions series, and even Oddball Films is known to show the occasional avant-garde classic; this Friday night Bruce Conner's Report makes it onto a John F. Kennedy-themed program. Watching experimental film at home is often the equivalent of looking at a zine full of poorly-photocopied versions of 20th-century paintings, so get out there and see what these films were really meant to look like!

HOW: On a 16mm program of nine short films by Lawder, with the director in person.