Making History in Avant-Garde Film: James Benning's Utopia

Sun, Mar 26
7:30pm
$8 general, $5 Cinematheque members, Seniors, Disabled, Students (w. ID)

Film scholar Jeffrey Skoller continues his investigation of avant-
garde film's multi-faceted relation to history with tonight's
screening of James Benning's Utopia. Visually reminiscent of the
"California Trilogy" in its carefully wrought long takes of
landscapes-here of Death Valley and southwards, past the Mexican
border-Utopia "steals" its soundtrack wholesale from Richard Dindo's
film about the last days of Che Guevara and his unsuccessful Bolivian
campaign. With the intriguing notion of "virtual histories," Skoller
examines Benning's piece and its insinuations about the political and
topographical history of Southern California as a "complex interplay
between events that actually did happen and what can be imagined or
desired in relation to them."

Venue:

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street
San Francisco

Additional Info:

415-552-1990
www.sfcinematheque.org