Experience curated screenings from the Library's 16mm film collection and participate in guided discussions about film, history, and archives. Join guest curator and writer Juan Barquin of "Flaming Classics" as they share their selected film lineup featuring pioneers of experimental cinema. See the longer event listing for details on the films to be screened. For more information, please contact the library at 305-375-5572 or specialcollections@mdpls.org. Ages 19 yrs. +
About the guest curator:
Juan Barquin is a Miami-based writer, programmer, filmmaker, and co-creator of the queer film series Flaming Classics. They aspire to be Bridget Jones.
For this month's screening, they've selected the following films:
AN IMPOSSIBLE VOYAGE (1904) 15 MIN.
This reproduction of George Méliès' hand-tinted journey film shows a spectacular trip to the sun and back. Méliès employs a number of special effects such as pyrotechnics, miniatures, stage machinery, substitution splices and dissolves to show the journey of a group of savants from the Institute of Incoherent Geography as they use every known means of transportation to travel from the Alps to the Sun, and under the sea.
EMAK-BAKIA (1926) 18 MIN.
Emak-Bakia (Basque for Leave Me Alone) is a 1926 film directed by Man Ray. Subtitled as a cinépoéme, it features many techniques Man Ray used in his still photography (for which he is better known), including Rayographs, double exposure, soft focus and ambiguous features. The film features sculptures by Pablo Picasso, and some of Man Ray’s mathematical objects both still and animated using a stop motion technique.
GEOGRAPHY OF THE BODY (1943) 8 MIN.
A quotation from Aristophanes, “The desire and pursuit of the whole is called love,” precedes views of a man and a woman’s bodies, often in extreme close up. Off-screen, a voice recites fragments of oracular literature and purple prose. We see an eye, an ear, a mouth, a tongue, bits of hair, a hand, the tips of fingers, toes. Occasionally, the frame includes a larger scape of a body: a chest, a back, a breast. Usually, the camera is stationery; sometimes, it moves across a body, remaining in close up. They hold hands for one moment. The bodies are without clothes; no genitalia are visible. This controversial film from pioneer filmmaker Willard Maas makes a daring analogical pilgrimage evoking the terrors and splendors of the human body as an undiscovered, mysterious continent. The commentary by poet George Barker uses the imagist-symbolist poetic technique.
THE BED (1968) 19 MIN.
The Bed is a merry allegory which celebrates impudently and imaginatively just about everything that could happen in bed (and some things that couldn't) - birth, young love, loneliness, dreams and death, amid all sorts of hanky-panky from fetishism to plain old lechery.
NARCISSUS (1983) 22 MIN.
In this short film by Norman McLaren, dancers enact the Greek tragedy of Narcissus, the beautiful youth whose excessive self-love condemned him to a trapped existence. Skilfully merging film, dance and music, the film is a compendium of the techniques McLaren acquired over a lifetime of experimentation.
About the Division of Special Collections & Archives
Miami-Dade Public Library System’s Division of Special Collections & Archives holds rare and irreplaceable historical documents for the benefit of the public and scholarly community. They oversee the Helen Muir Florida Collection, 16mm Film Collection, Cuban Collection of Rare Books & Ephemera, Genealogy Collection, Vasari Project, and rare & antiquarian books from as early as the 17th century. The Division's primary goal is to provide the public with the contents of the vault at their request. Its collections include rare books, original manuscripts, over 18,000 photographs, prints, artifacts, audiovisual resources, and electronic media.
About the Film Collection
The 16mm film collection has been part of the Library's holdings for over 55 years. Its first films were part of the City of Miami’s public library and began in the 1960s before there was a county library system. When MDPLS was formed, the County supplemented its local funding for films with Federal LSCA grants (Library Services and Construction Act). Apart from leased feature films, all films were purchased for free exhibition for the life of the print. Subjects within the collection include experimental/avant-garde art films, non-narrated films, children’s films, Black history, Floridiana, and local history. Today, there are over 4,000 films within the collection.
AGE GROUP: | Adult (19+) |
EVENT TYPE: | Special Event | Special Collections | Performances & Presentations | Movies | In-Person | History |