Miles and time away, two cinemanomads began Cinemanomad, a screening "society," with projections on walls, in lofts, in restaurants, in galleries, of their favorite films (En rachâchant, Au hazard balthazar, The Great Ectasy of the Sculptor Steiner), site-specific projections that did not take place in a black box, were not sealed off from outside events, in fact, were interrupted, by fights, daily life, airplanes, waiters. Many planned projections (the film festival on the walls of the visiting filmmakers' motel rooms) never materialized. SMALL FILMS FROM BIG CITIES dancing on the limestone behind Club de Ville announced the arrival of Athina Rachel and Cinemanomad to Texas, while David Barker traveled further West to establish first the San Diego and then the Los Angeles offices. From the new base, they made films and continued to infect local communities with a passion for potent cinema. With Rachel returning to Greece in May 2001, it was no surprise that David headed back to the Lone Star State to join the Austin crew as Cinematexas Artistic Director. From Greece, Rachel is planning to expand the project of small films to big cities, or big films to small cities in Europe while Micah starts as Berlin special agent a few days after the lights dim on this year’s festivities.
So that's the story so far, or part of it. Cinematexas in Austin keeps expanding drastically its "strictly cinema" scope. Parallax View, the explosive media detournement lab, and Terra Cognita, the city-wide moving image installation series, have grown since their initiation last year to be as significant in size and participation as the Competition section. (check pages X and X). Eye+Ear continues to explore the sonic fringe with collaborative performances by avant-punk icons the Ex, dancer Katerina Bakatsaki, the incredible Miranda July, remix master Zac Love, and Jan St. Werner aka Lithops aka a mouse on mars.
In ‘strictly cinema,’ we’re thrilled to offer a major retrospective of seven of Rachel’s female avant-garde heroes, women who have inspired not only her own kino-vision, but the vision of Cinematexas from the start: Leslie Thornton, Trin T. Minh-ha, Peggy Ahwesh, Greta Snider, Ximena Cuevas, Elisabeth Subrin, and Miranda July. See page XX for eight carefully packed programs of their work.
We’re also proud to host the first ever US retrospective of pioneering Austrian filmmaker and curator Peter Tscherkassky. His 1999 film OUTER SPACE had its US premiere at Cinematexas two years ago, winning both an International Gecko and the Audience Award, and was cited as one of the 10 best films of the year in Film Commentt. Peter will be presenting a program of his own groundbreaking work, as well as a program of outstanding Austrian avant-garde films from Sixpack, the distribution company he cofounded.
We’ll be adding a couple more days to the week, because we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to offer you a once-in-a-lifetime screening of archival prints of fourteen short films by Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, one of the most influential animators in the world, direct from the Prague Film Archive. Plus a rare screening of two of Andy Warhol’s landmark featurettes: My Hustler and Vinyl (the latter introduced by Leslie Thornton). And finally, don’t forget the International and Student Competitions, the heart and soul of Cinematexas, where we’re screening approximately 150 gems mined from the corners of the world.
Enjoy the meal!
David Barker
Cinematexas Artistic Director
Athina Rachel Tsangari
Cinematexas Founding Director
