M A G I C E Y E

I sense a luminous transparency...

2010-06-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

I came across a fantastic description of the final moments of Peter Rose's film SECONDARY CURRENTS, a film about language, in Scott MacDonald's book Screen writings: scripts and texts by independent filmmakers.

"The rolling credits may conclude the viewer's experience of film-as-perspectival-illusion, but-especially at 16mm screenings-this ending is often followed by the end leaders (with various kinds of language printed or written on them) that signal the conclusion of the film's material journey through the projector... Rose provides a reward for those viewers energetic enough to wonder if the text they see on the leader merely encodes the standard information common on film leader or adds to a film that has continually surprised our expectations of other forms of text. The reward is fittingly, one final text: 'I sense a lumionous transparency, a limitless linear aperture of indecipherable articulate intelligence-I sense arising, a silent perpendicular emissary unfolding from the invisible. It is becoming a vast, provotic, spectral. All is clear now !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'"

A few more for good measure: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To see the film go here.

The Films of Phil Solomon | Baltimore City Paper

2010-04-07T07:51:00.000-07:00

"Solomon's treated imagery becomes a symphonic remembrance of a life: The images themselves look ephemeral, like they're always about to dissipate into the ether, lending the viewing experience a curious preciousness- something about the fleeting nature of the images makes savoring them feel all the more meaningful." - Bret McCabe

Full review: The Films of Phil Solomon | Baltimore City Paper

Let's go to the cinema!

2010-03-26T21:15:00.001-07:00

This would make a nice theater.

The Films of Phil Solomon

2010-03-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

Magic Eye & Johns Hopkins University present

The Films of Phil Solomon

Thursday, April 8^th - 9pm - $9.50

The Charles Theater (1711 N. Charles St.)

Magic Eye and Johns Hopkins University are pleased to host an evening of film and conversation with acclaimed experimental filmmaker Phil Solomon. Visiting the east coast for the opening of his multimedia installation “American Falls” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Phil Solomon will make his Baltimore debut at the Charles Theater. The screening will include excerpts from “American Falls” and a selection of his films and videos, including his 1989 film “Remains To Be Seen” which Stan Brakhage named as one of his Top Ten Films of All Time for Sight and Sound magazine.

Solomon’s film work employs an array of chemical and optical treatments to explore the natural state of decay of 16mm film. The results produce a molten emulsion unique to his cinema, a visually mesmerizing struggle between a captured image and the materiality of the medium.

"Although part of a long avant-garde tradition, Mr. Solomon makes films that look like no others I've seen. The conceit of the filmmaker as auteur has rarely been more appropriate or defensible — The liberating effect of Mr. Solomon's work suggests a rather different realm: Film Meets Vision, Rejoice!" – Manolha Dargis, New York Times

His recent video series called “In Memoriam, Mark Lapore” operates in the genre of machinima. Appropriating scenes from the lawless world of Grand Theft Auto, Solomon quells the crime wave and creates a trance-like wandering through a desolate urban landscape. The trilogy, named as one of the Top Experimental Films of 2007 by the Village Voice, will close the evening’s program.

Phil Solomon teaches at University of Colorado – Boulder. He has participated in two Whitney Biennials and has had three Cineprobes (one-man shows) at the Museum of Modern Art. He has won a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1993) and The Thatcher Hoffman Smith Award (2007), as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Capital Foundation.

2010-02-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

Magic Eye's inaugural screening at the Charles was a success!
Here's the final line-up:

INFINITY FLOAT, Kari Altmann (2009)
SMOKE CIRCLE, Justin Kelly (2009)
ON THE SHORES OF LAKE SUPERIOR, Clarissa Gregory (2008)
LE MATIN, Karen Yasinsky (2007)
TURNED ON (Ecstatic Sunshine), Mark Brown (2009)
PROUD FLESH, Jenny Graf & Chiara Giovando (2008)
PINKY SWEAR/MAKE A WISH, Justin Kelly (2008)
PARAPETI’EM, Andrew Maussert-Mooney (2008)
10 MILE STEREO (Beach House), Kari Altmann (2009)
BITTERBITTERTEARS, Catherine Pancake (2010)
LASER BALLOON, Justin Kelly (2008)
BASEMENT BLEEDS, Jimmy Joe Roche (2009)
EVERYDAY BAD DREAM, Fred Worden (2006)
FIGURE SKATING II, Lauren Friedman (2006)
THE ENDS, Kristen Anchor (2009)
BREATH DEATH, Stan VanDerBeek, (1964)
VENETIAN BLIND, Fred Worden (1979)
T,O,U,C.H,I,N,G, Paul Sharits (1968)

More of Lauren Friedman's videos including FIGURE SKATING II, the darling of the night, can be found here.

Have you ever seen it rain teddy bears?

Some stills from Monday's show

2010-02-19T08:09:00.000-08:00

Kari Altmann's Infinity Loop

Jimmy Joe Roche's Basement Bleeds

Clarissa Gregory's On The Shores Of Lake Superior

Catherine Pancake's bitterbittertears

Andrew Mausert-Mooney's Parapeti'em

Kristen Anchor's The Ends

2010-02-18T06:46:00.000-08:00

" 'T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G' was the first film Sharits completed here in Baltimore. Like “Piece Mandala” before it, it is an overwhelming stream of flashing colors which obliterate each other in succession as the viewer’s eye hangs, as if suspended in the field of vision, within a brilliant approximation of the reality of the succession of frames past a light-beam. Within the field, votive-like, hangs the image of a young man (David Franks)’s bust. He gazes down at the pair of scissors he holds open around his out-stretched tongue. He seems forever about to slice the fucker off in a moment of ecstatic self-mutilation. Unlike the silent “Piece Mandala,” however, “T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G” has a soundtrack. Composed by David Franks, the sound component to “T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G” outdoes Steve Riech’s early tape-phase pieces in its raw, direct message: a singe word, spoken at the height of counterculture, at the height of the Love Generation, over and over on top of itself seemingly a million times so densely that the ear hears entire sentences spun from its single sound: DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY…" - Ian Nagoski, Frameworks Archives

BMORE REPRESENTS / Charles Theater / Mon, Feb 22 / 9:30pm

2010-02-18T06:26:00.000-08:00

Magic Eye is proud to present a night of short films and videos created by Baltimore artists. This group features work by Kari Altmann, Kristen Anchor, Mark Brown, Lauren Friedman, Jenny Graf, Clarissa Gregory, Justin Kelly, Andrew Mausert-Mooney, Catherine Pancake, Jimmy Joe Roche, Paul Sharits, Stan Vanderbeek, Fred Worden and Karen Yasinsky. The films, dating from the early 60s to contemporary work, range from experimental narrative to animation, music videos and performance documentation.

In celebration and remembrance, Magic Eye will screen Paul Sharits’ T,O,U,C,H,I,N.G (1968) featuring the Baltimore poet David Franks.

Monday, February 22nd

Charles Theater (1711 N Charles St)

9:30pm

Notes by Paul Sharits

2010-01-06T10:36:00.000-08:00

This Feburary's Magic Eye will feature work by the structuralist filmmaker Paul Sharits.

Where will the screening be? Who knows!

RIP The Lof/t

PASSERINE : a projector performance by Raha Raissnia and Kenny Wollesen

2009-11-24T15:03:00.000-08:00

Photo from Raissnia's Traces

MAGIC EYE presents “Passerine”
Sunday, December 6th – 8pm - $6
The Lof/t at Load of Fun (120 W. North Ave)

Magic Eye is pleased to present Raha Raissnia and Kenny Wollesen on their Baltimore debut. They will premiere a sound / performance collaboration titled "Passerine".

Raissnia is Brooklyn-based expanded cinema artist. Influenced by the work of Harry Smith, Bruce Conner, Jim Davis and Paul Sharits, she incorporates painting, live projection and installation in her performances. Combining collaged and hand-painted 35mm slides with 16mm film projections, Raissnia’s projections produce a “slow-moving montage during which scenes are at once temporary and aleatory. The arrangement underscores cinema’s inherent paradoxical structure of manipulating stillness to conjure up the illusion of movement.” (R.R.)

Recent exhibitions include Miguel Abreu Gallery (NY), Kill Your Timid Notions Festival (Dundee, Scotland) and Xippas Gallery (Paris).

“My work in general aspires to music. Time dimension, like in music, structures the unfolding of my still images, whether they be paintings, drawings, or hand painted collaged slides and films. I am interested in producing synaesthesia effects. In my film performances I use my prepared projectors like musical instruments and incorporate improvisational techniques.” – R.R.

Drummer Kenny Wollesen is an artist of astonishing versatility, skill, and ingenuity. He has been one of the most active musicians in N.Y.C.'s downtown jazz and avant-garde scene. In the recent years he has been leading his own highly innovative and artistic bands: Himalayas and Wollesonic Laboratories for which he collaborates on making a variety of homemade instruments that are surreal, filled with subtlety and ingenuity. These bands tend to perform in unusual settings and events and evolve and morph with time. The members of these bands include such artists as Dalius Naujo, Jonas Mekas, Jonathan Haffner, Jeniffer Harris, and many more.

Kenny has long been collaborating with John Zorn and is a member of his band Masada. He has been touring and recording extensively with Bill Frisell and the band Sex Mob.

Projector Performance by Raha Raissnia

2009-11-23T09:08:00.000-08:00

Here are a few stills from a performance by Raha Raissnia and Charles Curtis. Live sound and exquisite college of 35mm slides and 16mm film projections. These photos are from the 2008 Kill Your Timid Notion festival in Dundee, Scotland.

Raha will be performing at the next Magic Eye on December 6th.

The Landscape Show

2009-10-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

Magic Eye presents:

“Survey of the Landscape”

Sunday, October 18^th – 8pm - $5

The Lof/t at Load Fun (120 W. North Ave)

Survey of the Landscape is the first of a series of screenings focused on the landscape film. The conversation begins with Larry Gottheim’s meditative “Fog Line” and continues with Deborah Stratman’s “From Hetty To Nancy,” a fascinating work that blends documentary and experimental film.

Larry Gottheim’s “Fog Line” (1970)

“One stares, one stares, and the fog begins to lift, the exquisite image reveals itself. The three patchy trees, the landscape lines, the tension lines, the moving ghost animals, the moving emulsion swirls, all impress themselves on consciousness, are consciousness. Still, rigid lines attempt to contain the amorphous elusive moving fog. Line nature competes with fog nature, but all is harmony, bathed in gorgeous paleness.” - Larry Gottheim

From his late-1960s series of sublime “single-shot” films to the dense sound/image constructs of the mid-1970s and after, his cinema is the cinema of presence, of observation, and of deep conscious engagement. While addressing genres of landscape, diary and assemblage filmmaking, Gottheim’s work properly stands alone in its intensive investigations of the paradoxes between direct, sensual experience in collision with complex structures of repetition, anticipation and memory. (REDCAT)

Deborah Stratman’s “From Hetty To Nancy” (1997)

"The stoic beauty of the Icelandic landscape forms a backdrop for a series of witty and caustic letters written at the turn of the century by a woman named Hetty as she treks with her companion Masie, four school girls and their school marm. The film juxtaposes Hetty's ironic cataloguing of the petty social interactions as they endure discomfort and boredom with historic accounts of catastrophes that reveal the Icelandic people subject to the awesome forces of nature." - Deborah Stratman

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker interested in landscapes and systems. Her films, rather than telling stories, pose a series of problems - and through their at times ambiguous nature, allow for a complicated reading of the questions being asked. Many of her films point to the relationships between physical environments and the very human struggles for power, ownership, mastery and control that are played out on the land. (pythagorasfilm.com)

Idle Hands

2009-09-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

Feuerfaust / Firefist from Thorsten Fleisch on Vimeo.

Surfin' the net, I found this Thorsten Fleisch film. Perhaps a response to the German cautionary tale Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug (The Dreadful Story About Harriet and the Matches)?

Best of Baltimore

2009-09-18T08:20:00.001-07:00

Magic Eye was voted the Best New Film Series in Baltimore! Read the City Paper's kind words here.

The Films of Saul Levine, Jonathan Schwartz, Fern Silva and Anne Robertson

2009-09-01T17:12:00.000-07:00

Magic Eye is proud to present Passages To and From: The Films of Saul Levine, Jonathan Schwartz, Fern Silva and Anne Robertson. Acting as letters to friends, postcards from far off places and passages from diaries, these selected films are in turn domestic and ethnographic, frenzied and delicate. Sunday, July 26th / 8pm / $3 / The Loft

"Saul Levine is the foremost dissenting filmmaker in America. With about 35 years of consistent production behind him, and no signs of fatigue, he can show us the shape of a life passionately and uncompromisingly devoted to filmmaking. His works are high-energy messages of friendship, records of sexual love and political activism, radiated by humor, prophetic anger, loneliness and even though rarely, representing repose.” - P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film

“Schwartz collects images/sounds for this project - a reflection of the maker’s experience, feelings, and most of all, the participation of walking, looking, and listening. His films speak with many voices - the associational values of experimental cinema, the patience of objective documentary, emotional levels of narrative, and intellectual/research oriented foundations of an essay.” – Christopher May, curator for TIE

“Since 2005, Fern Silva has been an active filmmaker whose personal journeys and impulsery disposition give rise to his visionary process. He has created a body of film, video, and projection work that conveys a congruent existence through the aesthetics of reflections and detriments within controlled microcosms.” – The Film-makers’ Cooperative

“Robertson’s ‘home movies’ are powerful because they simultaneously confirm and critique home-movie conventions...Robertson documents her own recoveries and relapses, both visually and vocally; her bipolar rhythms are expressed and managed through her films.”
– Scott MacDonald, The Garden in the Machine

2009-09-01T16:58:00.000-07:00

From CYCLOPTICALLY

2009-09-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

Notes for the show

Photos by Andy Cook

Bruce McClure comes to Baltimore

2009-08-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

"CYCLOPTICALLY THROUGH THE WINDOW DISKS - THERE'S RINGS FOR ALL!"
A projector performance by Bruce McClure
The Loft / May 16th, 2009 / 8PM

Photo by Robin Martin

Magic Eye is proud to host expanded-cinema artist Bruce McClure in his Baltimore debut. McClure, who recently opened for Throbbing Gristle, will perform two half-hour live projector performances. Working with four modified 16mm projectors, film loops, guitar pedals and a handmade soundboard, McClure plays the mechanical supports of film like musical instruments. Harnessing the strobing light and percussive sounds from his stockpile of projectors, McClure’s performances are an improvisational audio-visual experience not to be missed.

“At the circus, in the safety of our seats, we watch the elephant coaxed into intemperate feats. As the lights come up we realize that we never left the velveteen plush of the movie house. Products of the 19th century, incandescent light and its offspring, the movie projector, were given a voice in the 1920’s by optical sound. These revolutionary technologies may be languishing at the edge of extinction but will be celebrated and preserved as echoes and afterimages of the machine age resonating in the vitality of the 21st century consciousness." - Bruce McClure

Bruce McClure lives in Brooklyn, New York. Celebrated by the noise music, experimental film and fine art communities, McClure’s performances have stunned audiences at the Kill Your Timid Notion Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival “Views from the Avant-Garde”, the Toronto International Film Festival and the 2002 and 2004 Whitney Biennial. He is a recent recipient of the 2008 Alpert Award in the Arts.

A look into the past

2009-08-25T18:25:00.000-07:00

On January 17th, Magic Eye held it's inaugural event at the Carriage House. The screening featured the films of Robert Todd. He selected work from his prolific filmography and was in attendance. Personal favorites included:

QUALITIES OF A STONE (2006)

DIG (2007)

ROSE (2008)

On his recent work:

“These films offer a series of celebratory explorations, and, in some cases, transformations, of varied components of my life. To me, this set of works is an odd blend of performance and alchemical construction, freedom and control, a highly crafted and rather baroque diary.” (RT)

“Since 1989, Boston-based filmmaker Robert Todd has been quietly developing one of the most distinctive bodies of work in the American film scene. Todd’s beautifully shot films draw together documentary and experimental elements; they don’t hew to a single, clearly defined style, but nevertheless show a consistency of poetic vision, spirit, and purpose. Through suspended moments of reflection and anticipation, Todd’s films explore the difficult-to-define emotions engendered by the stresses of civilization.” – Cinémathèque Ontario

Here We Are

2009-08-25T17:58:00.000-07:00

Magic Eye now has an internet home. Here you can read about upcoming events at our real-life home at The Loft.

The Loft is located in the Load of Fun building at 120 North Avenue in Baltimore's Station North Arts & Entertainment District.