DOMINIC ANGERAME
ASSEMBLING MEMORIES
A FILM SELECTION
screening + Q&A
Dominic Angerame
in conversation with Martine De Biasi
15 NOV / DOM / h 20.00
WAAG
IT //
Per oltre trent'anni, dal 1980 al 2012, Dominic Angerame ha diretto Canyon Cinema, la storica cooperativa di San Francisco diventata uno dei principali distributori del cinema d'avanguardia americano, fondata nel 1967 e gestita direttamente dai filmmaker che ne facevano parte.
Canyon affonda le radici in una delle scene sperimentali più influenti della storia americana: quella di Bruce Baillie e Chick Strand, tra i fondatori di Canyon, di Bruce Conner e, negli anni Settanta, di filmmaker come George Kuchar e Barbara Hammer.
Accanto al lavoro a Canyon, Angerame non ha mai smesso di filmare. In più di cinquant'anni ha realizzato oltre sessanta film, presentati e premiati in festival di tutto il mondo.
Negli ultimi anni è tornato sulle pellicole girate nel tempo e mai montate, rimaste a lungo chiuse nelle loro scatole. Da questo materiale è nata la serie Film Diary: brevi film di pochi minuti, costruiti con frammenti di vita e di documentazione girati dalla fine degli anni Sessanta in poi, in 8mm e in 16mm. Nel loro insieme compongono un racconto personale della sua vita e della comunità artistica di cui ha fatto parte.
Assembling Memories affianca questi lavori recenti a film realizzati in passato, offrendo uno sguardo sulla scena del cinema sperimentale di San Francisco a partire dagli anni Ottanta.
Tra i titoli in programma c'è anche un film che Angerame non ha girato.
In Marriage è il suo amico più caro, Dean Snider, tra i fondatori con lui del No Nothing Cinema, a filmare il suo matrimonio al municipio di San Francisco nel 1982.
Il programma è così un invito a entrare in una memoria personale che è anche, inevitabilmente, collettiva: quella di una generazione di filmmaker che ha fatto del cinema sperimentale, e della comunità nata intorno a esso, un linguaggio e un modo di stare al mondo.
DE //
Über dreißig Jahre lang, von 1980 bis 2012, leitete Dominic Angerame Canyon Cinema, die historische Kooperative aus San Francisco. 1967 gegründet und von den Filmemacher*innen selbst geführt, wurde sie zu einem der wichtigsten Verleiher des amerikanischen Avantgardefilms.
Canyon hat seine Wurzeln in einer der einflussreichsten Experimentalfilmszenen der amerikanischen Geschichte: der Szene um Bruce Baillie und Chick Strand, die zu den Gründer*innen von Canyon gehörten, um Bruce Conner und, in den 1970er-Jahren, um Filmemacher*innen wie George Kuchar und Barbara Hammer.
Neben seiner Arbeit für Canyon hat Angerame nie aufgehört zu filmen. In mehr als fünfzig Jahren hat er über sechzig Filme gedreht, die auf Festivals weltweit gezeigt und ausgezeichnet wurden.
In den letzten Jahren hat er sich dem Material zugewandt, das er im Lauf der Jahre gedreht, aber nie geschnitten hatte und das lange in seinen Filmdosen lag. Daraus entstand die Reihe „Film Diary“: kurze Filme von wenigen Minuten, zusammengesetzt aus Fragmenten des Alltags und dokumentarischen Aufnahmen, die seit Ende der 1960er-Jahre auf 8 mm und 16 mm gedreht wurden. Zusammen ergeben sie eine persönliche Erzählung über sein Leben und über die künstlerische Community, der er angehörte.
„Assembling Memories“ stellt diesen jüngeren Arbeiten frühere Filme zur Seite und eröffnet so einen Blick auf die Experimentalfilmszene San Franciscos ab den 1980er-Jahren.
Im Programm ist auch ein Film zu sehen, den Angerame nicht selbst gedreht hat: In „Marriage“ ist es sein engster Freund Dean Snider, einer der Mitbegründer des No Nothing Cinema, der 1982 seine Hochzeit im Rathaus von San Francisco filmt.
Das Programm lädt so dazu ein, in eine persönliche Erinnerung einzutauchen, die unweigerlich auch eine kollektive ist: die einer Generation von Filmemacher*innen, für die der Experimentalfilm – und die Gemeinschaft, die um ihn herum entstand – zu einer Sprache wurde und zu einer Art des Daseins in der Welt.
ENG //
For more than thirty years, from 1980 to 2012, Dominic Angerame directed Canyon Cinema, the historic San Francisco cooperative, owned and run by its filmmaker members, that became one of the leading distributors of American avant-garde cinema. Canyon was born at the heart of one of the most influential experimental film scenes in American history: the scene of Bruce Baillie and Chick Strand, who founded it, of Bruce Conner, and later of filmmakers such as George Kuchar and Barbara Hammer.
Alongside this work, Angerame never stopped filming. In more than fifty years he has made over sixty films, and his camera followed the everyday life of that community, including the underground microcinema No Nothing Cinema, which he co-founded in 1982.
In recent years he has returned to footage shot over the decades and never edited, turning it into the Film Diary series: short films built from fragments of memory filmed from the late 1960s onward, on Regular 8mm and 16mm.
Assembling Memories moves across different periods of his life, from an anti-Vietnam War demonstration filmed in Buffalo in 1969 to his years in Chicago and the long San Francisco decades that followed, alternating these recent works of memory with earlier films made within that scene.
It also includes one film Angerame did not make himself: Marriage, in which his closest friend Dean Snider, fellow co-founder of No Nothing Cinema, filmed Angerame's 1982 wedding. Angerame, in turn, shot footage for Snider and appeared in another of his films. In this community, friendship and filmmaking were never separate.
The program is an invitation to enter a personal memory that is also a collective one: that of a generation of filmmakers who made experimental cinema, and the community built around it, a language and a way of being in the world.
Dominic Angerame //
Born in Albany, New York, in 1949, Dominic Angerame trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and moved to San Francisco in 1979, where he has lived ever since in the North Beach neighborhood. Since the late 1960s he has made over sixty films, almost all on 16mm, including a series of city symphonies devoted to the changing face of San Francisco.
His work has been shown at international festivals and institutions such as the Toronto International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, the Viennale, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Whitney Biennial.
From 1980 to 2012 he served as Executive Director of Canyon Cinema, and in 1982 he was among the founders of No Nothing Cinema. He has taught film at several universities and art schools, including the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2019 the French label Re:Voir collected nine of his films on the DVD Cityscapes. He continues to work on film.
FILM PROGRAM
52min
Note
from the filmmaker
Film Diary Series //
During my decades of filming on 16mm black and white, color reversal and negative I found a great deal of material that could be used in any projects.
I guess one would call them "stand alone pieces."
Some of them are sketches and others are complete in one way or another. I knew I just could not throw them away, ignore them, or have them sit in a can never to be viewed.
I decided to release them as they are, of course edited and finally coming to the life of their own. They are visual diaries of certain times and places and events in my filmmaker life.
Flashback
2021 / 5min / b/w + color / 16mm
At the beginning and end of each roll of 16mm I shot a small part of the film is exposed to light because of the insertion and removal of the spool of film. Oftentimes images are obscured by light flashes.
I saved many of these short segments when filming and living in Chicago.
All of these are spliced together creating a visual diary of my time spent there with my wife Susan. The time period was from 1971-1979. Most of the imagery is from our Chicago days with a couple of scenes from San Francisco.
With guest appearance of Diana Ross (see if you can find her)
Since the images are flashes and this is a look backward, I titled this short Flashbacks.
“You put the flash back in flashbacks”—Scott MacDonald
Film Diary #12: Buffalo 1969
2025 / 3 min / Color / 8mm
An anti Vietnam demonstration filmed on regular 8mm during the height of the peace movement.
I would skip a required course at the Jesuit Canisius College. The required course was Military Science where we were required to put on army uniforms and march and become members of ROTC.
New York State law at that time required Freshman to take a course in gymnastics. Since Cansius had torn down the gym, they considered marching as the same as going to the gym.
I finally passed the course with the lowest mark of "C" by turning in a final papers based on the Poetry of Ho Chi Mihn.
Marriage
1982 / 8min / BW / 16m
Made by Dean Snider //
Sound by Gregory Corso
Dean Snider documented my marriage to Susan Headley at San Francisco City Hall in 1982.
I had the pleasure of meeting Kurt Kren when he lived here in the Bay and had the chance of hanging out with him a few times.
All I remember was laughing all the time, not much else since I think the alcohol was flowing quite well.
In review of my old Regular 8mm films I discovered footage that I had shot outdoors while I was living in Buffalo, NY.
I had covered up the lens with tin foil and poked holes in it. After seeing the footage, I was reminded of Kurt and his film Asyl. So this footage is a reminder of my little time with Kurt Kren.
Film Diary #3: In Memory of Kurt Kren
2024 / 2 min / Color / silent / 8mm
Film Diary #5: Last Temptation of Christ
2024 / 2min 30sec / BW / 16mm
Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ opened theatrically one city at a time in 1988. It was met with hysterical protests from the religious right. This happened also in San Francisco at the defunct North Point Theater.
I was there to film the protests.
Battle Stations--A Navel Adventure
2002 / 7min / BW / 16mm
Starring Bruce Conner and Leyna d'Ancona. Sound design by Amy Leigh Hunter.
The plan was simple: film Angerame's friend Leyna d'Ancona performing a belly dance and superimpose it on images of the "macho" naval shipyard at Hunters Point, San Francisco. On location, everything goes wrong.
The noon light is harsh, workers honk their horns, and the earthen mounds covered in plastic turn out to hold toxic waste from radioactive ships, so Angerame decides to film them instead.
Between guards asking for permits, more than a hundred takes shot with the shutter closed, and a sudden fire the two escape by truck, the day turns into a small inferno.
A week later Angerame returns with Bruce Conner and a Geiger counter, searching for radioactivity they never find.
The film is a diary of that experience, poised between humor and unease.
Consume
2003 / 12min / Color + BW / 16mm
Starring Zhanna. Pomolusya ("I Will Pray") Ukranian Prayer performed by Zhanna, recorded and mastered by Zak May. Excepts from "Lyrical" and "Chaos" from the tribe recording of Gabrielle Roth and the Mirrors with permission from Raven Recording
Inspired by the novel FLICKER by Theodore Roszak, this film was intended to explore the images captured in the flickering light of multiple projector beams. By utilizing superimpositions within the camera, one could experience the pulsating light and explore hidden imagery through use of the "Sally Rand" that Roszak refers to.
However, once production began...the projector beams began to put both myself and my actress into a trance state due to the strobe light it presented...the resulting film turned into a trance by natural evolution and in essence the film becomes even more...
It becomes an exploration into oneself and the sense of seeing and being at the same time...both an inward journey and an outward one..
Film Diary #2: No Nothing Cinema
2024 / 2min / Color / 16mm
"No Nothing Cinema" was one of the first micro cinemas located in San Francisco. Dean Snider one of the founders of the No Nothing Cinema on Berry Street. The others included myself, Steve Schmidt, Rock Ross, Marion Wallace and Mark Stern. "No Nothing" charged no admission fees, etc.
In the courtyard we would roast Italian Sausages before each screening.
Bruce Conner would often come to the screenings, so he is also in the imagery, and it is him playing the superimposed piano/organ.
The posters on the wall are calendars of some of the previous screenings.
Premonition
1995 / 10min / BW / 16mm
The San Francisco Embarcadero Freeway comes to life in this elegy for modernity. The Freeway was deemed a triumph of engineering, a monument for human inventiveness. With the 1989 earthquake, however, the freeway was severely damaged and with it all the industrial-technological promises it held. Premonition shows the situation before the crisis, a deceptive moment of industrial harmony.
"And when the illusion disappears, that is to say when we see the being or fact as it really exists outside ourselves, we experience a strange feeling, complicated half with regret for the vanquished phantom, half with agreeable surprise for the novelty, for the actual fact."
-Charles Baudelaire