Chick Strand’s “Cartoon Le Mousse” was among the restored films preservationist Mark Toscano introduced last night in 4070 Vilas.
If you asked Mark Toscano — a preservationist who restores experimental film with the Academy Film Archive — even he would admit that avant-garde cinema can be a tough sell for audiences. Last night, UW Cinematheque’s “Treasures from the Academy Film Archives” series hosted Toscano and a slew of restored 35mm prints in a program entitled “Bursting at the Seams.” The name is apt. Among the program’s whopping 13 separate films, many works seemed preoccupied with escaping the physical limitations of the medium itself.
Two Stan Brakhage selections, Very and Night Mulch, featured examples of the artist painting over dual reels for a trailer to the 2000 drama Quills, fudging out nearly any recognizable marketing elements. Now Playing by Susan Rosenfeld induced laughs from the audience with its tiresome opening crawl of endless pull quotes over a silent, black background. Chick Strand’s Cartoon Le Mousse is introduced by a flamboyant woman, replete with a glittering dress and feathered boa as prefaces a hodgepodge of Disney cartoons and pre-existing media with both French and English dialogue.
The most difficult film in the programming, Chicago Loop (from Milwaukee’s own James Benning) incited a number of walkouts. The film reassess three locations in the Chicago area — including Wrigley Field — through a dizzying set of camera pans. Benning’s camera jerks left in one shot, then right in another, then further left in yet another until it’s worked its way back around to the beginning. Benning repeats and speeds up each successive revolution, interjecting every cut with words, numbers, and gibberish. As difficult as Benning’s film was to process for those in attendance, Toscano suggested it was even harder to restore it. As the evening’s only non-photochemically preserved piece, the Academy Films Archive spent over $25,000 on scanning and corrections, even bringing in Benning himself to help supervise color correction. The completed 4k digital transfer was then re-recorded back to a 35mm print — no easy feat.
Despite the work involved, Toscano was proud to champion the physical preservation of cinema. The Academy Film Archive remains one of the few American outlets that still emphasizes non-digital film restoration. Considering the avant-garde’s lack of appreciation in public exhibition, the large crowd in 4070 Vilas Hall last night did suggest one thing: someone’s doing something right.