Continuum Film Blog

archie & leena @ diane's circus!

We're as Pleased as Punch to be included in Diane's Circus tonight!

Lubitsch Projections: “Lebensbejahend" 2004 d. Ina Archer
Archie & Leena engage in affirmative acting!

 

 

hattie at bard college!

I'm pleased to be included in a Black History Month Film festival at the Difference and Media Project at Bard.

Just in time for the Academy Awards, I will be showing:

Hattie McDaniel: A Credit to The Motion Picture Industry 2004 6m

"I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry," McDaniel said as she accepted the 1st Academy Award given to an African-American for the film Gone with the Wind.  A continuity error in a clip of the 1939 Oscars suggests that the "documentary" footage and her speech were re-staged.

Here is the original version of the speech...

 

for the rest?  See you at Bard, tonight!!

extended!! pop on over to governors island for 3 more weekends!

 
EXTENDED!

pop-up screening at governors island 3 MORE weekends!

sept. 10/11th, 17/18th and 24/25th, 2011

I'm happy to be included in a "Pop-Up Screening" of 3 of my short videos as part of The West Harlem Art Fund's

LOOSELY COUPLED, a group exhibition on Governors Island.  We'll be at No. 17 Nolan Park. Pop on over!

This weekend, The West Harlem Art Fund will host a “pop-up” film screening on Governors Island. What better way to enjoy a house but to watch movies. And these movies deal with the issues of home, memories and important places. These films are a part of a series called Upstairs in the Basement. Read more about each individual work and the artist.

Films: “Upstairs in the Basement”: 

My maternal grandfather was a contractor and a kind of inventor. He built our two homes in Macon, GA. The first one burned to the ground as firemen and the Salvation Army watched from several yards away.  I only knew the 2nd house, built in the early 1960s.  It was a fascinating collage made of discarded materials from my grandfather’s job sites where he did decorative plaster-work in both antebellum mansions and modern city buildings. As a child, I was fascinated by the precarious ladder-pull attic where he kept his inventions and other antiquated curios. I had never seen a house with an attic.

Granddaddy loved to tell humorous stories and jokes but he also told bible and ghost tales.  An anecdote that he would laughingly recount (to my embarrassment) was the time he and I were in the attic and my mother was calling for me from just below. I yelled; “I’m with Grandaddy! I’m Upstairs in the Basement!!” Telling this story would bring tears to his eyes.

The Macon house is in ruins now; our family home in New Rochelle where we lived for 40 years was sold after my father died, and my 1st apartment of my very own was overtaken by developers and recently razed. These 3 little films all have to do with movies, memories, spaces and lost or hidden images. And not incidentally, they were all created "at home"...

Short Films

“Leader Film (Civitella Ranieri)” (2009) 5 min. video/digital animation w/Viet Le, Vladimir Pistalo & Shyam Selvadurai. Divertissement set in the Civitella Ranieri, a castle in Italy.  This “scrappy” short video emulates a reel of discarded outtakes used as film leader and filler when learning to edit.

"The Lincoln Film Conspiracy Prologue" (2007) 15 min. “trailer”. A multi-generic short film and multimedia installation that combines archival film footage, new video segments and digital image manipulation, collage and montage.

Based on the history of African-American independent silent and sound cinema, LFC is the story of an archivist who is investigating the disappearance of a collection of technologically progressive black films. Did the films disintegrate or explode like many other nitrate films? Evidence of great heat was found in the vicinity of the studio’s site.  Conspiracy theories are outlined: Was there a government plot in conjunction with Hollywood to destroy these “positive” movies leaving only denigrating images of black people? Or have the movies been Abducted by Aliens?

"Il Giallo della Paine!" (2011) 8 min.   A “scary” montage of vanished spaces playfully using the visual tropes and aural cues of 1970s, American and British horror and of the Italian thriller films known as "Giallo" (Yello).

 Ina Archer — Artist

Ina was born in Paris, France. She earned a BFA in Film/Video from RISD and a MA, in Cinema Studies at NYU focusing on race, preservation, early sound cinema and technology.  Ina’s multimedia works/films have been shown  nationally including Cinema Project’s EXPANDED FRAMES: a celebration and examination of critical cinema in Portland,OR. and “Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970” at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, GA. and The Contemporary Art Museum, Houston. Her awards include residences at Vermont Studio Center,  Blue  Mountain Center and Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy. Ina was a Studio Artist in the Whitney Independent Study program, a NYFA multidisciplinary Fellow and a 2005 Creative Capital grantee in film and video, and 2010 nominee for the Anonymous Was A Woman award. She is a member of New York Women in Film and Television’s Women’s Film Preservation Fund and a board member of IMAP, Independent Media Arts Preservation.  

Ina’s film writing includes reviews for Film Comment, The NY African Film Festival, Framework, The Journal of Cinema and Media, and Black Camera. She is an adjunct professor at Parsons The New School for Design in the Foundation Program of the School of Design Strategies.

I'll see you in the basement!

 

 

temple university film & media arts visiting filmmaker series!

So the date is wrong (below) as I had to postpone earlier but I was pleased to be invited by Elisabeth Subrin to present at Temple University and I will be there on Wed. March 30th, 2011. I feel lucky to be in such good company! See you in Philly!

Oh this old thing!

Trailer for 1/16th of 100%? (1993/6)(2009) d. ina archer

"resurrectine" at ronald feldman fine arts

I'm thrilled to be included along with many of my fellow

Creative Capital grantees in:

Resurrectine, A Group Exhibition  May 15th - June 26th 2010

In Visual Arts, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts will present Resurrectine, opening May 15, which will include work by more than a dozen Creative Capital artists. Resurrectine focuses thematically on looking back to move forward, creating rebirth by recycling in this time of great change in the country and the world. Participating artists include Cory Arcangel, Ina Archer, Sanford Biggers, Luca Buvoli, Nick Cave, Liz Cohen, Brody Condon, Chris Doyle, Brent Green, Kelly Heaton, Shih Chieh Huang, eteam (Hajoe Moderegger and Franziska Lamprecht), Deborah Lawrence, Jane Marsching, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Karyn Olivier, William Pope.L, Marie Sester, Dread Scott, Paul Shambroom, Eve Sussman and Mark Tribe, among others.

I'll be showing the Prologue of The Lincoln Film Conspiracy and some lobby cards from the installation! Hope to see you!

"artist(i)" talk with filmmaker, ina archer"

Where: Rugby Library Branch, Brooklyn Public Library
When:  Tuesday, Apr 20, 4 PM
Audience: For Adults
          
Award-winning filmmaker Ina Archer will share clips from her work that have to do with African-American film images. She will show some of her film, The Lincoln Film Conspiracy, which combines archival film footage, new video segments and digital image manipulation, collage and montage.
 
Based on the history of African-American independent silent and sound cinema, this fictional film is the story of an archivist who is investigating the disappearance of a collection of technologically progressive black films (that were previously abducted by extraterrestrials!).
 

Ina Archer is a 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellow. NYFA Artist Talks are sponsored by the Brooklyn Community Foundation.

Brooklyn Public Library

 

oct. 7, 1996

Hard to believe it's been 13 years...

A Tiny Little Duck waitin' for it's Mutha! 

mixed-media collage 11 x 14 2009

The Tales of Hoffmann (1950) d./p. Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger

Lobbycard, LFC Tales of Hoffmann digital collage 11 x 14 photography: Kelly Campbell

Hallelujah! continued...

Today (January 6 , 2009) would have been my parent’s 64th anniversary.  This photo is from Paris in 1962—I’m in the picture too, due to emerge that June. Hallelujah was playing today on TMC, a nice little gift.  The story of Chick, the wonderful Nina Mae McKinney (pronounced Neye-na like me and mom’s Eye-na) and Zeke, played by the impossibly handsome Daniel K. Haynes has nothing to do with my parent’s story except that all the players are attractive and black—which is, of course, a, what? Tautology? 

Hallelujah! is also one of my very favorite films— beautiful early sync-sound, black-cast musical/drama (or a drama with music as would be common in the day) from Texan director, King Vidor.

 

A hot movie, it has all the racy cinematic stalwarts;

money, sex, religion, vamps and good girls, steamy baptisms and steamy revivals,

 "She sho' is pretty, Mammy! I never seen such big eyes in all my life!"

country folk vs. citified folk, murders, songs, dancing and jazz. While filled in some way with stereotypes; cotton-pickers, head scratching, romanticized poverty, pickaninnies—the film ultimately shows the characters as relatively whole and human within the melodramatic confines of the genre, showing loving families and a cohesive and moral community.

I think that viewers are always surprised at the intensity and modernity of McKinney’s performance.  She’s an independent and sexual woman so naturally things end badly for her but while she’s on screen she’s riveting, warm and luminous. 

 

"So you're all hopped up about that fake preacher!"

 

 Haynes—I always feel a little sadness watching him—he’s so beautiful and I always imagine him cast in all kinds of movie roles—he’s tall with a bass voice and gorgeous smile. His performance is compelling as he moves from a happy, cocky, a naïve bumpkin but a good son, to lover and fiery preacher—he suffers, murders and is humbled by his experiences.  In the realm of the Lincoln Film Conspiracy he would have been a headliner! Haynes was a Gemini like me, I see from IMDB.  He has only 9 films to his credit list, mostly bit parts between ‘34 and ‘36. He requires further investigation!

Hallelujah!

  

" on the set of my--apartment..."

As the year comes to a close:

Submitted for your approval and my chagrin, is the "industry show reel" I made in my Dean St. loft back in 2003. My space, the building, that neighborhood (blighted by developers),and the sweet little kitty, Casper, all seem very far away now but I'm so glad I have this tape.  I made it to show at Spelman Collage Museum of Fine Art when I was invited to speak there during the run of Race in Digital Space.  I feared speaking publicly for 20 minutes...but was this the solution?!
(I've got lots of pig feet and black-eyed peas to prepare so I can't do links right now but check back!  I'll remind you...)

Ina_dustrial: Ode to Robert Evans, Video 2003, pt.1 8 min

Ina_dustrial: Ode to Robert Evans, Video 2003, pt.2  2.5 min

Expanded Frames in Portland

Expanded Frames

FRIDAY OCT 17TH - LOST AND FOUND: THE FILMS OF INA ARCHER AND KEVIN JEROME EVERSON

Underwritten by Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College

6pm - Past Perfected

Introduction and Q&A with filmmaker Ina Archer
“Reconciling the desire to be included in a medium that seems determined and in fact built on exclusion; in my film and installation work, I use commercial cinema as material and appropriation and montage as strategies to negotiate the difficult relationship of marginalized people to cinema and media representations.” – Ina Archer

1/16th of 100% (1993, Hi8 Video, 22min)
La Tête Sans Corps “The Head Without A Body” (1995, Hi8 Video, 2min)
Richard Harris Music Video (2002, DV, 6min)
Hattie MacDaniel: Or A Credit to the Motion Picture Industry (2004, DV, 6min)
"Bête Noire"(2003, DV, 2.5min)
"RW" (2004, DV, 2.5min)
"Lebensbejahend" (2004, DV, 3min)
Lincoln Film Conspiracy Prologue (2007, DV, 15 min)

7:45pm - Archiving a History of Black America through Appropriated Footage

A discussion with Ina Archer and Kevin Jerome Everson moderated by Ed Halter

SATURDAY OCTOBER 18TH - OUT OF THE ARCHIVES: PRESERVING GREAT MOMENTS IN CINEMA HISTORY

2:30pm - Archiving and Access to Women's Contributions to Cinema:

The Women’s Film Preservation Fund

Artist and WFPF committee member Ina Archer speaks with curator Irina Leimbacher about the significance of public access and screenings in promoting the restoration and preservation of films in which women had a significant role.