Spring 2008

February 27, 2008, Wednesday, 7:00PM
Location: Coolidge Corner Theatre - Movie House II

Balagan & the Harvard Film Study Center presents:
Santiago by João Moreira Salles (Director in person)

João Salles is one of Brazil's foremost documentary filmmakers. In 1992 he began shooting a film about Santiago, the butler in his childhood home who left an indelible mark upon the family and had written over 60,000 pages of stories about the people and things that surrounded him. Salles did not finish the film for 13 years until Santiago's death rekindled Salles determination for a conclusion.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 19, 2008, Wednesday at 8PM
Location: Carpenter Center for Visual Art-Harvard University - 24 Quincy St. Cambridge, MA

Balagan, Mass College of Art Film Society and the Harvard Film Study Center presents:
Peggy and Fred in Hell by Leslie Thornton (Director in person)

Peggy And Fred In Hell is one of the strangest cinematic artifacts of the last 20 years, revealing the abuses of history and innocence in the face of catastrophe, as it chronicles two small children journeying through a post-apocalyptic landscape to create their own world. Breaking genre restrictions, Thornton uses improvisation, planted quotes, archival footage and formless timeframes to confront the viewer's preconceptions of cause and effect.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 27, 2008, Thursday, 5:30PM
Location: Museum of Fine Arts Boston- 640 Huntington Ave., Boston

Balagan & the Muesum of Fine Arts presents:
Selections of Shorts from the Black Maria Film Festival

Since 1981, the annual Black Maria Film and Video Festival, an international juried competition and award tour, has been fulfilling its mission to advocate exhibit and reward cutting edge works from independent film and videomakers. The festival is known for its national public exhibition program, which features a variety of bold contemporary works drawn from the annual collection of 50 award winning films and videos. Balagan is delighted to again co-present the Boston leg of the festival with the Museum of Fine Arts.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 30, 2008, Sunday, 5:00PM
Location: Coolidge Corner Theatre

Balagan presents:
Unidentified Vietnam No.18 & other films by By Lin+Lam (Directors in person)

Since 2001, Lana Lin and H. Lan Thao Lam have been researching an archive of South Vietnamese propaganda films at the Library of Congress. Unidentified Vietnam No. 18 is a successor to the seventeen films in the collection labeled only as  "Unidentified Vietnam, #1-17". Lin + Lam's personal, experimental film examines the contested relationship between Vietnam and the US, between history and propaganda, between democracy and nation building.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 17, 2008, Thursday, 7:30PM
Location: Coolidge Corner Theatre

Balagan presents:
Dreams and Apparations of Mark Lapore (2007) by Saul Levine (Director in person)
w/ Polina Marshakova, Adam Savje, Kim Keown, Saul Levine, Joe Briganti, Alison Holt, Schiller Diny, Luther Price and Ericka Beckman.

Each of these persons recount dreams or visions of Mark Lapore. It was made in response to his suicide on 9/11/2005. Shot with a Black & White Panasonic studio tube camera.

“Saul Levine is the foremost dissenting filmmaker in America. With about 35 years of consistent production behind him, and no signs of fatigue, he can show us the shape of a life passionately and uncompromisingly devoted to filmmaking. His works are high-energy messages of friendship, records of sexual love and political activism, radiated by humor, prophetic anger, loneliness and even though rarely, representing repose. His incessant, chaotic outpouring of political energy seems less geared to a naïve notion of bettering the world than to a perpetual pressure to keep it from getting worse.” — P. Adams Sitney.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 26 & 27, 2008, Friday 7PM & Saturday at 3PM
Location: Harvard Film Archive
Carpenter Center for Visual Art
24 Quincy St. Cambridge, MA

Balagan, the Harvard Film Archive and the Film Study Center presents:

The Sun and the Moon in Indonesia:
The Single-Shot Cinema of Leonard Retel Helmrich (Director in person)

Indonesia is one of the most populous nations on earth, and that population is among the most diverse anywhere. In order to depict and explore that diversity and its complexities, Leonard Retel Helmrich (b. 1959) aims not for a vast overview but rather focuses on the daily, the specific and the intimate. He has spent several years documenting the fortunes of one working-class family in Jakarta, headed by the matriarch Rumidjah. The two films that he made with that family, The Eye of the Day and Shape of the Moon, have won prizes at festivals from Amsterdam to Sundance.

top

Fall 2007

October 13, 2007, Saturday, 7:30PM FREE SHOW!
Location: Carpenter Center -Harvard University - 24 Quincy St. Cambridge, MA

Balagan and Mass Art Film Society present: Special Event!
Colen Fitzgibbon Retrospective: Your Basic Film
With special guests Coleen Fitzgibbon, Saul Levine, Scott MacDonald, Sandra Gibson & Luis Recoder in attendance
Balagan is delighted to bring a special retrospective screening to Boston of the works of Coleen Fitzgibbon. Fitzgibbon was active as an experimental film and video artist under the pseudonym "Colen Fitzgibbon" between the years 1973-1980.   A student of Owen Land (aka "George Landow") and Stan Brakhage during her years as a film/video student at Art Institute of Chicago (1971-73), she later attended the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program under Ron Clark (1973-74), studying with international artists such as Michael Snow, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci, Donald Judd, and Dennis Oppenheim.   Between the years 1973-1976 Fitzgibbon made some of her most rigorous experimental work to date on 16mm and super 8 film, screening at numerous international film festivals and museums, including EXPRMNTL 5 at Knokke-Heist in Belgium, Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Anthology Film Archives, Collective For Living Cinema, and Millennium Film Workshop in New York. Thanks to the caring and meticulous preservation work of Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, Balagan is thrilled to be able to bring Coleen's films back to the screen and into the contemporary dialogue of American avant-garde film history.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 26 and 27th, 2007, at the ICA Boston
Balagan and ICA Boston present: Boston area Premiere!
Czech Dream by Filip Remunda (Czech Republic)

CZECH DREAM documents the largest consumer hoax the Czech Republic has ever seen. Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak, two of Eastern Europe's most promising young documentary filmmakers, set out to explore the psychological and manipulative powers of consumerism by creating an ad campaign for something that didn't exist. CZECH DREAM - the Hypermarket for a better life!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 5, 2007 (Monday) at the Coolidge Corner Theatre 7:30 & 9:30PM
Balagan and the Harvard Film Study Center present:
Promised Paradise by Leonard Helmrich (Indonesia/Netherlands)

Artist in Attendance for Boston Premiere!

The Jakarta-based Indonesian puppeteer and troubadour Agus Nur Amal travels to Bali to call to account the people who were responsible for the bomb attack on a nightclub there on 12 October 2002. Like in his theatre shows, humour is his main weapon.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 29, 2007 (Thursday) at the Coolidge Corner Theatre 7:30PM
Balagan presents: Strange Culture by Lynn Hershman Leeson
Guest speaker to be announced
" Strange Culture is an important heads-up to what is going on in our country right now in the name of national security, and a brilliant statement on artistic freedom and the dangers it faces. This film should be seen, should be discussed and is an important document on our times."-- Film Threat

"Hershman Leeson is as interested in reinventing the doc form as she is in publicizing Kurtz's case...The director not only breaks the fourth wall, she reduces it to plaster dust...Hershman Leeson gets it. And so will viewers of Strange Culture. "-- Variety

---

top

Spring 2007

February 22, 2007, Thursday, 7:30PM
Big Balagan: Local Filmmakers - Films from Emerson
A program of films by filmmakers who teach at Emerson College: Kathryn Ramey, Robert Todd, Pierre Desr and John Gianvito.

March 8, 2007, Thursday, 7:30PM and 9:30PM
Director's Eye: Lynne Sachs and Mark Street (in person)

April 5, 2007, Thursday, 8:00PM, at the Museum of Fine Arts
The recent selection from the Black Maria Film Festival
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston
This year's Black Maria selection spans from poetic visual lyricism (Leighton Pierce, Robert Todd, John Warren) to animated mythical stories (Stacey Stears, Eric Patrick, Karen Aqua/Ken Field) to at times controversial first person accounts from different parts of the world (Sergey Litovetz - Russia, Diego Quemada-Diez - East Africa, Dan Monceaux - Australia, Jay Rosenblatt - USA). Local filmmakers John Warren. Karen Aqua and Ken Field, Robert Todd are expected to be in person.

April 19, 2007, Thursday, 7:30PM
Film as a Subversive Art - Part IV (introduced by John Gianvito)
Round four of films from the book "Film as a Subversive Art" written in 1974 by Amos Vogel, the founder of the Cinema 16 in New York, New York Film Festival and Lincoln Center Film Department. The program features "Our Lady of the Turks" by the late Italian avant-garde theater director, actor, and filmmaker Carmelo Bene. "...the most hallucinatory and original masterpiece yet created by Bene; an explosion of neo-expressionism (with surrealist overtones) unequaled on the contemporary screen. Inspired exasperated madness of this possessed moralist carries him beyond rage into black humor and grotesque, burlesque, aimed at the dead weight of a reactionary cultural matrix". - Amos Vogel

May 10, 2007, Thursday , 7:30PM
Choreographing Cinema: Part 3
Yet another re-iteration of films that pay specific attention to movement in cinema. Following two programs featured as part of the "Ideas in Motion" series of the Boston Cyberarts Festival 2005, "Choreographing Cinema: Part 3" features films wherein choreography of the camera, composition of the mis-en-scene, or editing techniques provoke viewers to react not only at psychological but also at the kinesthetic level.

---

top

Fall 2006

September 14, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM
Aftermath, aftershock, Afterthoughts, After death, after…
All the films in tonight’s opening program explore the post-experiential in different ways. Employing an array of cinematic strategies from documentary to reenactment and even animation, these filmmakers ask the question of how to comprehend the incomprehensible and how to represent catastrophe, war, and death in ways that can be both humorous and powerfully moving.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 5, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM (Premiere) ** ADDITIONAL 9:30PM show just added **
Avenge but One of My Two Eyes by Avi Mograbi (in person)
Balagan is thrilled to present the Boston Premiere of Israeli filmmaker Avi Mograbi's powerful documentary AVENGE BUT ONE OF MY TWO EYES. Inspired by the legendary myths of Samson and Massada, Avenge is a wry, provocative and mournful documentary on present-day Israel that ponders the relationship between the Jewish struggle for freedom and the Palestinian resistance - a struggle played out most dramatically in the two intifadas, the second of which is still ongoing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 19 A BALGAN DOUBLE FEATURE NIGHT!

October 19, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM
War by Jake MaHaffy (in person)
“This is the world after the end of a world... acre by acre, fence by fence, the war was lost.” WAR is a simple film portrait of four characters looking for work in the abandoned lands of rural America. Shooting alone for almost five years on a hand-cranked movie camera without a producer, crew, actors or a budget, we assembled an unconventional narrative out of these character studies, attempting in limited means to reveal the drama of a disintegrating society. - Jake Mahaffy

October 19, 2006, Thursday, 9:30PM (Premiere)
Who is Bozo Texino? by Bill Daniel (in person)
Freight rider and van tramp, Bill Daniel is back on tour screening his 16-years-in-the-making, documentary film, "Who is Bozo Texino?" --- the secret history of hobo graffiti. This gritty black and white documentary--shot entirely on film-- tells the mostly-factual account of the epic quest and unlikely discovery of railroading's most mysterious artist.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 26, 2006 , Thursday, 7:30PM (Premiere)
The Life and Work of J.X. Williams + Peep Show Curated film scholar Noel Lawrence (in person)
We present a major film discovery, a significant film by an obscure director J.X. Williams. His notorious tirade against the Chicago Syndicate comes to the screen for the first time after nearly 40 years in limbo. Produced in
Copenhagen in 1965, PEEP SHOW chronicles a secret history of the Kennedy administration, revealing a mafia plot to addict Frank Sinatra to heroin. Film scholar, curator, and archivist Noel Lawrence will give a detailed introduction on the making of the film and the colorful life of its director, including excerpts from Mr. Williams
forthcoming memoir "The Big Footnote".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 12, 2006, Sunday, 10:30AM (Museum of Fine Arts)
Description of A Struggle by Chris Marker
The State of Israel was but twelve-years-old when the great cinema essayist Chris Marker (La jetée and Sans soleil) completed this hypnotic documentary. It went on to win the Golden Bear at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival. Images of a young country whose future lies ahead and the narrator’s meditative voice-over posit an existential struggle for identity that is relevant today.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 16, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM (Premiere)
Stranger Comes to Town and other videos by of Jacqueline Goss (in person)
They say there's only two stories in the world: man goes on a journey, and stranger comes to town.
"Stranger Comes to Town" re-works an animation from the Department of Homeland Security --combining it with stories from the border, adventures from World of Warcraft, and journeys via Google Earth to tell a tale of bodies moving through lands both familiar and strange.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 30, 2006 , Thursday, 7:30PM (Premiere)
Magnavoz & American Egypt by Jesse Lerner(in person)
The American Egypt revisits the short life of the first socialist government of the Americas, the Revolution on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, 1915-1924.   Within the study of Mexico's past, the Yucatan merits consideration as a thing apart.   Attempts to secede in the 19th Century suggest Yucatan was, like Texas and California, only imperfectly attached to the Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Jesse Lerner is a documentary film & video maker and curator based in Los Angeles.

top

---

Spring 2006

February 2, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM (in person)
Director's Eye: Deborah Stratman
For the second time, Balagan welcomes Deborah Stratman ("Kings of the Sky", Spring 2005) who will be in person to present three of her films "the BLVD" (1999), "On The Various Nature of Things" (1995), "How Among the Frozen Words" (2005).

February 16, 2006, Thursday, 7:30PM
Tribute to Teiji Ito: Composer of Avante-Garde Films
Balagan celebrates Teiji Ito, a visionary composer, whose scores accompanied numerous Avante-Garde Films. Besided Maya Deren's "Meshes in the Afternoon" and "The Very Eye Of Night" Teiji Ito scored Charles Boultenhouse's HANDWRITTEN (1959, 9 minutes, 16mm) and DIONYSUS (1964, 26 minutes, 16mm), Marie Menken's DWIGHTIANA (1959, 4 minutes, 16mm) and BAGATELLE FOR WILLARD MAAS (1967, 5 minutes, 16mm), ARABESQUE FOR KENNETH ANGER (1967, 4 min.,16mm), MOONPLAY (1967, 5 minutes, 16mm), Willard Maas' ORGIA (1967, 12 minutes, 16mm), Ben Hayeem FLORA (1965, 6 minutes, 16mm), Ben Hayeem's Flora and several other films.

March 1, 2006, Wednesday, 7:30PM
Richard Broadman: Mission Hill And The Miracle Of Boston (in collaboration with Coolidge Corner Theatre and Photographic Resource Center )
In celebration of the Photographic Resource Center's recent exhibition, "Document: Contemporary Social Documentary Work from Greater Boston", Balagan co-presents a rarely-seen classic of documentary cinema, and a stunning vision of Boston history as it unfolds. Documentarian Richard Broadman's 1978 film traces the history of the Mission Hill area of Roxbury through interviews with residents old and new. In the 1970s urban renewal and a public housing project (from which Mission Hill earned it's now-standard moniker) were forcing changes on the then largely Irish Catholic neighborhood. This chronicle of racial conflict, when a new poor population butted heads with the old residents of the neighborhood, is a stunning reverse look at today's issues in the same neighborhood - where college students and young professionals are moving in and ever-soaring rents are pushing out the poor.

March 24, 2006, Firday, 8:00PM, at Revolving Museum in Lowell
Balagan on Tour in Lowell: What is Avant-Garde Film?
Location: Revolving Museum, 22 Shattuck Street, Lowell, MA 01852, http://www.revolvingmuseum.org/contact/index.html
Balagan collborates with Revolving Museum in Lowell to present three pilot programs of avante-garde films.

March 28, 2006, Tuesday, 7:30PM
Local Premiere: "Lunch with Fela" by Abraham Ravett

April 13, 2006, Thursday, 8:00PM, at the Museum of Fine Arts
The recent selection from the Black Maria Film Festival (in collaboration with Faith Quilt Project)
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston
Balagan collborates with Faith Quilt Project (http://www.faithquilts.org/) and Museum of Fine Arts to present a touring program of the award-winning shorts from the Black Maria Film & Video Festival. This particular selection of shorts from the Black Maria Film Festival conveys different approaches to exploring subject of faith on film. Diversity of genres, film forms. and content are fascinating. Filmmakers include: Sam Green (San Fransisco), Ivan Golovnev (Moscow, Russia), Sara Jane Lapp (Virginia), and others.

April 23, 2006, SUNDAY, 8:15PM at the Somerville Theatre with the IFFB
"The Paino Tuner of Earthquakes" directed by the Brothers Quay
Balagan is pleased to co-sponsor this new Quay Brothers live-action feature in partnership with the Independent Film Festival of Boston.

May 1, 2006, Monday, 7:30PM
Big Balagan: Recent Works from Boston Filmmakers
Alfred Guzzetti, Dan Sousa, Rebecca Meyers, David Baeumler, Lorelei Pepi, Robert Todd and others.

June 30, 2006, Firday, 8:00PM, at Revolving Museum in Lowell
Balagan on Tour in Lowell: Food For Thought
Location: Revolving Museum, 22 Shattuck Street, Lowell, MA 01852, http://www.revolvingmuseum.org/contact/index.html
Balagan collborates with Revolving Museum in Lowell to present three pilot programs of avante-garde films.

August 4, 2006, Firday, 8:00PM, at Revolving Museum in Lowell
Balagan on Tour in Lowell: Art and Politics through Film
Location: Revolving Museum, 22 Shattuck Street, Lowell, MA 01852, http://www.revolvingmuseum.org/contact/index.html
Balagan collborates with Revolving Museum in Lowell to present three pilot programs of avante-garde films.

top

---

Fall 2005

Septmber 22, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Visual Poetry of Matthias Müller
Balagan opens its 11th season with a mini-retrospective of films by Matthias Müller, a contemporary avante-garde filmmaker from Germany.

Septmber 29, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Environmental Film Festival: "Chain" by Jem Cohen
Balagan collaborates with the Coolidge's Environmental Film Festival and co-presents "Chain" by Jem Cohen, a chilling and yet mesmerizing journey through the vast American wasteland of chain retailers and worlds of consumer culture.

October 6, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Filmmakers from the West Coast: Rebecca Baron (in person)
Balagan welcomes Rebecca Baron, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. Her work has screened widely in international film festivals and media venues including Rotterdam Film Festival, New York Film Festival and the Viennale and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is Associate Dean of the California Institute of the Arts School of Film/Video where she teaches documentary and experimental film.

October 20, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
History of American Avant-Garde Cinema: Larry Gottheim
"Gottheim's Cinema is a quest of origins. The films elaborate a response to the fictions of our world, the construction of images and sounds, the repeating cycles of life and nature. The profoundness of Gottheim's act is to elaborate a body of work outside of fashion and within a search for an authentic language of cinematic discourse." - John Handhardt, on the occasion of the presentation of the full "Elective Affinities" cycle at the Whitney Museum, 1981

October 24, 2005, Monday, 7:30PM
Big Balagan: Robert Todd's premiere "In Loving Memory" (in person)
Balagan is excited to host Robert Todd's premiere "In Loving Memory". The film glimpses into the memories and stories of people on death row.

November 3, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Director's Eye: Soon-Mi Yoo (in person)
Soon-Mi Yoo studied German literature Seoul und photography (Master of Fine Arts) am Massachusetts College of Art. Her films and photography have been shown in numerous festivals and exhibitions, among them the International Film festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, International Center of Photography (New York), Seattle Art Museum und Boston Center for the Arts.

November 10, 2005, Thursday, 9:30PM
Boston Jewish Film Festival Shorts at Balagan
For the second time, Balagan partners with Boston Jewish Film Festival and presents a collection of shorts.Films in this program possess the nature of filmic myths. They do not represent a reality, they catch fleeting moments of it. These films also remind me of personal diaries. They are composed of sketches and notes one would make sitting in a café or going through family albums or silent home movies. By using different techniques and elements, the filmmakers skillfully organize these “notes” into visual evocative essays that collectively capture the melancholic spirit of our times and offer its audiences a space to ponder and reflect. Among the filmmaker featured are: Uri Kranot & Michal Pfeffer, Jonah Bleicher, Irra Verbitsky, Carl Ippolito, Abigail Child (in person), Esaias Baitel, Jay Rosenblatt

November 17, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Four Women Artists Series
These four American women filmmakers are pushing the boundaries of the documentary and experimental genres to create thoughtful, funny, complex and unique works. Artists featured are Arshia Haq, Hope Tucker (in person), Nina Yuen and Julia Haslett.

December 1, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Balagan and Magic Lantern Present “The Comedy Show, Part One (in Eight Parts)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. As always, Magic Lantern has your best interests at heart (ha ha), and so we’re bringing you a collection of madcap (ho ho) comic films from the sharpest kino-eyes in the (Western) world of experimental (hee hee) cinema.

December 15, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Filmic Essays: Daniel Eisenberg

Born in Israel in 1954, Daniel Eisenberg studied film at the State University of New York at Binghamton with Ernie Gehr, Larry Gottheim, Klaus Wyborny, Saul Levine and Ken Jacobs. For three decades, Daniel has been making nonfiction independent and avant-garde work, "interrogating "official" histories and investigating personal stories within the context of major social and political events." He lived and worked in Boston for 14 years but now resides in Chicago where he is the Chair of the Department of Film, Video, and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His films have screened at : Museum of Modern Art, NY; University of Amsterdam; Goldsmiths College, University of London; Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Bangkok Experimental Film Festival; Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley and many other venues.

top

---

Spring 2005

February 17, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Art and Politics: Kings of the Sky by Deborah Stratman - Boston Premiere, Official Selection of the Rotterdam Film Festival
In the spirit of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival and Balagan's "Expanded Genre of Documentary" and "Art and Politics" series, the 10th season starts with KINGS OF THE SKY by a Chicago-based filmmaker Deborah Stratman. This provocative film – a hybrid between experimental cinema and documentary genre, is about resistance, balance and fame. The follows tightrope artist Adil Hoxur as he and his troupe tour China’s Taklamakan desert amongst the Uyghurs, a turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy.

March 1, 2005, Tuesday, 7:30PM
Recent works of Abigail Child (in person)
A celebration of the recent works by the renown local filmmaker Abigail Child. The program includes the Boston premiere of The Future is Behind You, the 2005 Jury Award winner of the Black Maria Film Festival.

March 22, 2005, Tuesday, 7:30PM
Big Balagan: Ricky Leacock (in person)
A rare occasion to meet and celebrate one of the most renown documentary filmmakers Richard Leacock .

March 24, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Filmmakers on tour: Jim Finn (in person) & Arthur Jones (Chicago)
Balagan hosts an evening of new works by two Chicago-based filmmakers Jim Finn and Arthur Jones. Jim Finn makes videos about small animals, love and communism. His work has screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, New York Underground Film Festival, Cinematexas, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. His work has also appeared on the PBS and in Harper’s magazine. Arthur Jones, a graduate of RISD, is an animator and illustrator who animated shorts has shown in the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Worm Film Series (Rotterdam), Chicago International Children's Film Festival, LA Shorts, and Gavin Brown Passerby Gallery in New York.

April 7, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
You'll Pay for This! (Artists in person)
Balagan goes punk with premiere screenings of 2 local films about Boston's improtant contribution to the punk music scene in the 70's and 80's. Come see a slice of Boston's underground history and meet some punk rock legends in the flesh.

April 14, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
History of the American Avante-Garde: Ed Emschwiller
A unique opportunity to look into the legacy of one of the most interesting filmmakers of the American Avante-Garde cinema - Ed Emshwiller, whose experiments as well as collaborations with dancers, musicians, and visual artists truly expanded understanding and perception of film medium and at the same time, laid grounds for the contemporary video art.

April 21, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
The recent selection from the Black Maria Film Festival
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston
Balagan and Museum of Fine Arts are hosting a touring program of the award-winning shorts from the Black Maria Film & Video Festival. Named after Thomas Edison’s Black Maria Film Studio – the world’s first purpose built motion picture studio – the festival’s mission is to support the vision of independent film and video makers, and to present a cross-section of fresh, explorational work which is inventive, diverse, insightful, assertive and adventuresome. This program is an eclectic mix that features works by Marie Losier, Peter Rose, Abigail Child, Jim Trainor, Mara Mattuschka (Austria), Dan Boord and Louis Valdovino, Janie Geiser, Chris Landreth (Canada).

April 23, Saturday, 12PM and April 24 Sunday 6:30PM
Chain directed by Jem Cohen in The Boston Independent Film Festival
Location: Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Sq. Somerville, MA
Balagan is proud to be co-sponsoring a screening with the Boston Independent Film Festival to present the New England premiere of Jem Cohen's new experimental documentary Chain. Cohen won the Turning Leaf Someone to Watch Award at this year's Independent Spirit Awards for the genre-blending Chain, which was also named one of the "10 most promising films of the year" by Variety. Tamiko (Miho Nikaido of Hal Hartley's FLIRT, BOOK OF LIFE, and HENRY FOOL) is a Japanese businesswoman hurtling toward the bright and shiny future of "entertainment real estate." Researching amusement parks and malls, she meets with nameless potential clients and rehearses her English in anonymous business hotels. Amanda (Mira Billotte, singer for the indie bands Quixotic and White Magic, in her film debut) is a runaway who squats in abandoned or unfinished houses, makes an unsteady living cleaning hotel rooms, and spends hours wandering through the mall, gazing at objects she can no longer afford to buy. On opposite ends of the financial spectrum, both women share a dreamy isolation as they drift through the vast American wasteland of chain retailers and philosophize about their relationship to work and consumer culture. Without ever losing its political vision, Cohen's camera captures an uncanny beauty in the familiar, interchangeable landscapes of today's corporate dystopia.-Kristina Aikens

April 30, 2005, Saturday, 11AM and 1:30PM
Choreographing Cinema I and II curated by Alla Kovgan for the Dance and Technology Conference of the Boston Cyberarts Festival
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston
The two programs investigate a diverse spectrum of relationships between dance and film. These films are neither documentaries, nor documentations. All of them are rather creating/choreographing a dance, a movement or a dance-like feeling. This “hybrid film dance” – whether created by a dancer within the space of a film frame, whether choreographed through the movement of the camera and composition of the mis-en-scene, or constructed through the means of editing and such film techniques as painting on film – mesmerizes; reveals the hidden between the frames; inspires audiences to relate to cinema yet in another way, rejuvenates the eye, and offers new ways for humans to see the world. Program I features: Peter Greenaway and Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker (UK/Belgium), Daniel Shmid and Kazuo Ohno (Switzerland/Japan), Irina Evteeva and Slava Polunin (Russia), Lloyd Newson and DV8 (UK), and En-Knap (Slovenia). Program II features: Meredith Monk, D.A. Pennebaker, Stan Brakhage, Guy Maddin (Canada), Konstantin Bronzit (Russia). Artavazd Peleshian (Armenia).

May 5, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Expanded Genre of Documentary: Leighton Pierce
Balagan is proud to present 3 films by Leighton Pierce. Named by Jon Jost as a Master Minituarist, Pierce brings invisible to life, making the audiences to re-discover the world around them in the new ways.

May 7, 2005, Saturday, 11:55PM
You'll Pay for This! (Artists in person)
The second chance to see two local films about Boston's improtant contribution to the punk music scene in the 70's and 80's. Come see a slice of Boston's underground history and meet some punk rock legends in the flesh! (Repeat of April 7th program)

May 19, 2005, Thursday, 6:30PM - as part of the 21st Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival
Experimental Feature in Focus: "The Time We Killed" by Jennifer Reeves
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston
In her first feature, Jennifer Reeves creates a stirring visual poem on life in NYC post 9/11. She effortlessly combines elements of linear and non-linear narrative with documentary film to express the internal emotional life of bisexual Brooklyn writer Robyn Taylor (Lisa Jarnot), who becomes unable to finish her assignment due to feelings of paranoia, disorder, memories of past lovers, and fear of her country's current political agenda. As in her earlier shorts, Reeves challenges filmic conventions by creating a new language for herself that feels collectively old and new. Description adapted from the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. Co-presented by Women in Film & Video/New England.