SFCINEMATHEQUE & Vallejo Experimental Arts Present: Micro Spells @ Odd Fellows Lodge

Presented in association with Vallejo Experimental Arts
Admission: Sliding scale, $20 suggested / $16 Cinematheque Members
No one turned away for lack of funds. All proceeds go to pay the artists.
Note that tickets for this event are available at the door only. This venue has 250 seats — it will not sell out!

Micro Spells: Expanded Cinema & New Music Performance is a quarterly series of live collaborative exchanges between artists working within the areas of performance cinema and the sonic arts, curated by John Davis & Steve Polta and presented by San Francisco Cinematheque and Vallejo Experimental Arts. Each live event will offer audiences an opportunity to share in the multisensory integrations and temporal shifts unique to the juxtaposition of moving images and sound, featuring artists from California and beyond. 

Micro Spells, program 1: Light Waves & Sound Forms
Music In The Air by Scott Stark; sound/music performed by Mabbie Bug.
Persistence of Vision No Longer Exists by Anna Geyer; sound/music performed by Transient.
EROSION IS THE MASTER PLAN by Zack Parrinella; sound/music performed by Josh Wismans.

Scott Stark has produced more than eight-five films and videos since 1980. Additionally, he has created a number of gallery and non-gallery installations using film and video and elaborate photographic collages using large grids of images. Born and educated in the midwest, he has always been interested in aggressively pushing his work beyond the threshold of traditional viewing expectations, challenging the audience to question its relationship to the cinematic process; yet he also tries to build into the work elements of humor and incongruity that allow the viewer an entryway into the work while maintaining a critical distance. Both a passionate purist and a cynical skeptic, he likes to emphasize the physicality of film while cross-referencing it to the world outside the theater, attempting to lay bare the paradoxes of modern culture and the magical nature of the perceptual experience.

Anna Geyer is an award winning experimental filmmaker and writer. Her films have screened in many festivals internationally.  A fascination with non-traditional methods of both production and presentation is apparent in her work. Cameraless, non-representational work has been the emphasis of much of her recent effort, although she frequently describes her work as, “experimental with a narrative bent.” Live three projector loop sets often performed in collaboration with local musicians combine the technology of the past and present and intermingle abstract imagery, live action footage and degraded digital imagery. “At times I employ a fourth projector. I do so in order to allow a frame to get stuck in the gate and burn.” In off-moments while not combusticating imagistic realities, Anna teaches film at CCSF.

Josh Wismans and Zack Parrinella are good friends who met in Oakland but had many life overlaps. This is their first time making work together.

Mabbie Bug (Luca McGrath and John Davis) work at an intersection, at times engaging one another with musical instruments and electricity.

Transient (David Molina + Edwin Ayala) Founded in 2000, Transient is a solo and collaborative project in which Molina explores electro-acoustic, ambient, noise, industrial, free improvisation and experimental music. He sometimes plays traditional acoustic instruments or invented and found object instruments and filters them through electronics and effects pedals, loops them and then alters the samples in real time. The results can be meditative soundscapes which are either light, beautiful and haunting, or dark and disturbing. Other times it can be beat driven layers of noise, or a wall of shoegaze noise guitar. In 2020 he released the live album It Was Always Here with trumpet player Darren Johnston. For 30 years he has created music and sound design for theatre, dance, performance art and video productions. Since 2010 he has invented instruments that are part of large scale multi media installations displayed at galleries and museums. Most of his work focuses on social justice and he often collaborates with marginalized & oppressed communities. Their personal testimonies become the storyline for each piece.