Distinguished Professor Emeritus and legendary avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs will perform and screen recent films for two nights in Mississauga and Toronto.
NERVOUS MAGIC LANTERN
Friday November 18
8–10pm
Instructional Centre, Room 245, UTM
Ken Jacobs' legendary Nervous Magic Lantern is a performance of live cinema without film. The performance consists of a projector, crafted by Jacobs himself, that produces three-dimensional abstractions without the use of celluloid. Based on the magic lantern of the 19th century, the projector is manually operated and relies on the play of light, objects and transparencies to produce large scale abstractions in motion.
SEEKING THE MONKEY KING
Saturday November 19
7–9pm
University College, Room 140, St. George Campus
This screening will be followed by a reception at the University of Toronto Art Centre lounge from 9–11pm. All are welcome!
This is the Canadian premiere of the recently completed and already widely celebrated film, Seeking the Monkey King.
“Set to the music of J. G. Thirlwell, this digital video largely consists of valleys and hills of what look like crumpled foil that Mr. Jacobs, through his manipulations, has turned into landscapes that shift, undulate and seem to pop off the screen as if in 3D. Often tinted golden yellow and blue (colors used in the silent era usually to denote day and night), the images sometimes freeze and are amended by on-screen history lessons, political commentary, moments of sentiment and words of advice: “Read Marx. See René Clair’s 'Nous la Liberté.' To which I will add: See this movie.”
—Manohla Dargis, New York Times
“Be prepared for a cinema experience that takes a place between two and three dimensions, pushing time to take on substance and enveloping you into the a world beyond the surreal. This has been an epic undertaking, incomparable with any other avant-garde film you've ever seen.”
—Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective
The following short films will also be screened:
Capitalism: Slavery (2006)
The Surging Sea of Humanity (2006)
Capitalism: Child Labor (2006)
Another Occupation (2011)
Speakers in the Arts
Nervous Magic Lantern
November 18, 8–10pm
Seeking the Monkey King
November 19, 7–9pm
Performance Documentation
- Artist
- Ken Jacobs
Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Ken Jacobs, was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1933. He studied painting with one of the prime creators of Abstract Expressionism, Hans Hofmann, in the mid-fifties. It was then that he also began filmmaking (Star Spangled To Death). His personal star rose, to just about knee high, with the sixties advent of Underground Film. In 1967, with the involvement of his wife Florence and many others aspiring to a democratic—rather than demagogic—cinema, he created The Millennium Film Workshop in New York City. A nonprofit filmmaker's co-operative open to all, it made available film equipment, workspace, screenings and classes at little or no cost.
The Blackwood
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
[email protected]
(905) 828-3789
The galleries are currently closed.
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The Blackwood is situated on the Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Seneca, and Huron-Wendat.