Double Feature!
MAGIC AND THE MOVIES
(Various 16mm films, Approx. 60 min.) and
SHORT FILMS BY MARY BETH REED
(16mm, Approx. 50 min.)
with filmmaker Mary Beth Reed
7:00 pm, Carver Healing Arts Gallery
Admission Free

According to noted film scholar Erik Barnouw in his book, The Magician and the Cinema, “Nineteenth century magicians brought to their profession a zestful appetite for science … every new scientific invention had magic possibilities. The magician made it his business to stay a step or two ahead of public understanding of science.” Thus, began the relationship between magicians and the movies. Magicians used magic lanterns and movie projectors to create illusions, which led many of them to explore filmmaking itself. The “trick film” was a staple of early cinema – by turning off the camera you could make someone or something appear or disappear, like magic.

This program features a variety of films and filmmakers which highlight this connection between magic and the movies –  from early magician-film pioneer, Georges Méliès (A Trip to the Moon, 1902), to amateur filmmaker extraordinaire Sid Laverents, whose film Multiple SIDosis was named to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2000.
Program introduced by film critic and author Peter Schilling, Jr.

Filmmaker Mary Beth Reed is a recent addition to the faculty of the VCUarts Cinema Studies program, and her films employ a variety of methods – hand painting and processing, travelling mattes, optically printed imagery both fabricated and found and soundtracks both original and popular. With roots to filmmakers Stan Brakhage (JRFF guest 1996), Richard Myers (JRFF guest 2001), and Bruce Baille to painters like Robert Rauschenberg, her works have been screened in festivals and museums in Europe and the U.S. Films to be screened: Floating Under a Honey Tree, Sandcastle, Moose Mountain, Sunday Afternoon, Collaboration with Stan Brakhage/Garden Path, and Montessori Sword Fight. Reed will be available for a Q&A session after the screening.