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Schnitzer Cinema returns with a season inspired by "West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977"

Local filmmakers Steve Christiansen and Loren Sears are included in the line-up

 

EUGENE, Ore. -- (January 28, 2013) – Eugene-based media artists Steve Christiansen and Loren Sears, along with Chip Lord, the co-founder of the legendary Ant Farm media collective, are among the special guests presenting screenings in the Schnitzer Cinema this winter. This season’s programs complement the JSMA exhibition “West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977,” running from February 9 through April 28. Cosponsored with the Cinema Pacific film festival, Schnitzer Cinema is the JSMA's monthly showcase for adventurous cinema, featuring screenings and live presentations or Skype dialogues with special guests.  Starting at 7 p.m., the Schnitzer Cinema screenings are free and include free popcorn and soda.

 

Cinema Pacific festival director Richard Herskowitz has curated a winter season that begins with guest artists Steve Christiansen, Loren Sears, and Chip Lord presenting works they created themselves and in collaboration with media collectives Ant Farm and TVTV. The season will culminate with the popular Black Maria Film and Video Festival in its fourth annual appearance in the Schnitzer Cinema series.

 

“Two Eugene-based media artists, Steve Christiansen and Loren Sears, were significant contributors to West Coast radical media during the 1965-77 period covered by the ‘West of Center’ exhibition,” says Herskowitz. ”It’s very exciting that they will be coming to Schnitzer Cinema to present work from the period.”

 

The season opens on Wednesday, February 13, with guest Steve Christiansen, a Eugene artist who was part of the original TVTV collective.  TVTV was a pioneering video collective based in San Francisco from 1972 to 1979, whose radical coverage of national events took on the establishment with a “guerilla television” aesthetic and politics.

 

As part of the evening’s program, Christiansen will show clips from “Four More Years,” TVTV’s radical coverage of President Richard Nixon’s nomination at the 1972 Republican Convention; “TVTV Looks at the Oscars,” a look at the 1976 Academy Awards; and “Lord of the Universe,” the documentary film about Guru Maharaj Ji at "Millennium '73,” an event in November 1973 at the Houston Astrodome.

 

Along with screening highlights from TVTV’s documentaries, Christiansen will share his own personal stories of working as a videographer with the collective starting in 1972. As a student at Antioch College in 1968, he had access to some of the first portable camera equipment, which he used to self-teach videography skills. Influenced by the work of early guerrilla television groups like Ant Farm and Videofreex, Christiansen spent four years traveling with the TVTV collective and honing his craft.

 

In 1983, he started InterVision, a full-service media design and development company. Based in Eugene, Oregon, InterVision provides a wide range of services to clients in both the public and private sector, including project management, scriptwriting, graphic design, video production, 3-D animation, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), website development, database design and development, learning management systems and app development for mobile platforms.

 

Upcoming programs in the Schnitzer Cinema series include a presentation by Eugene based film and video artist Loren Sears on Wednesday, March 13 of “The Pacific Lake” and “The Haight-Ashbury Quartet.” Each of the four films in the quartet, which dates from 1967 to 1971, is a personal documentary that uses superimposition and optical printing to portray private and communal life in San Francisco.

 

On Wednesday, April 17, Chip Lord will present “The Video Art of Chip Lord and Ant Farm” as the opening night event of the Cinema Pacific film festival. As a member of Ant Farm (1968-1978), Chip Lord produced the video art classics “Media Burn” and “The Eternal Frame” as well as the Cadillac Ranch sculpture in Amarillo, Texas. Since 1980, he has worked independently and in collaboration, producing video installations and single channel videotapes. The screening is cosponsored by Cinema Pacific and the Departments of Architecture, Art, and the History of Art and Architecture. Lord will also present an artist talk on Thursday, April 18 in conjunction with his work in “West of Center.”

 

The season closes with the return of The Black Maria Film and Video Festival on Wednesday, May 8. The festival is an international juried competition with a mission to exhibit and reward cutting-edge works from independent film and video makers. Animated, documentary, and experimental films by established and emerging artists are featured in this year’s program.

 

All films will be screened in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art Ford Lecture Hall and start at 7 p.m. Schnitzer Cinema is brought to you in partnership with Cinema Pacific and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

 

About the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

The University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is a premier Pacific Northwest museum for exhibitions and collections of historic and contemporary art based in a major university setting. The mission of the museum is to enhance the University of Oregon’s academic mission and to further the appreciation and enjoyment of the visual arts for the general public.  The JSMA features significant collections galleries devoted to art from China, Japan, Korea, America and elsewhere as well as changing special exhibition galleries.  The JSMA is one of six museums in Oregon accredited by the American Association of Museums.

 

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is located on the University of Oregon campus at 1430 Johnson Lane. Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Sundays. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for senior citizens. Free admission is given to ages 18 and under, JSMA members, college students with ID, and University of Oregon faculty, staff and students. For information, contact the JSMA, 541-346-3027.

 

About the University of Oregon

The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of "Very High Research Activity" in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.

 

Contact: Debbie Williamson Smith, 541-346-0942, debbiews@uoregon.edu

 

Links: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, http://jsma.uoregon.edu

Cinema Pacific, http://cinemapacific.uoregon.edu/