"All Words Are Flesh" at Ocularis

All Words Are Flesh: Scenes from the Gryphon Group
Sunday, January 30 at 7 pm
Ticket Price $6

Long before Todd Haynes and Sadie Benning, there were Charles Boultenhouse and Willard Maas. Along with Stan Brakhage, Marie Menken, Gregory Markopolous, Ben Moore, and Charles Henri Ford, they formed the Gryphon Group, a seminal if overlooked collective of (mostly gay) experimental filmmakers. “All Words Are Flesh” is the first in an ongoing series of programs devoted to showcasing their work, providing a revealing glimpse into film’s proto-queer underground.

Works to be screened:

Dionysus by Charles Boultenhouse (1963) 16mm, color, sound, 26 min.

“A revelation” - Jonas Mekas, Village Voice June 13, 1963

“An experiment to use the devices of the film medium to intensify the expressivity of the Greek myth of Pentheus: circling hand-held cameras for intoxication, slow-motion pans for hypnosis, single frame cutting for dismemberment, multiple exposures for metamorphosis, etc. A parody of the embrace from Last Year at Marienbad is included in the Satyr Play.” - C.B.

Narcissus by Willard Maas (1956) 16mm, b&w, sound, 59 min.

“It is, in a word, extraordinary that the vision of a couple of American avant-garde film-makers should have resulted in the full-scale attempt of this film to restate—no salvage!—the art-film tradition of Jean Cocteau!” - Parker Tyler

Blood of a Poet is reimagined in the urban wasteland of 1950s New York, Greco-homo mythmaking of the highest order.

Programmed by Thomas Beard.

About Ocularis

Ocularis is a 501©3 not-for-profit organization that provides a forum for the exhibition of independent, experimental and documentary film/video and new media, as well as international and repertory cinema. Ocularis was established in 1996 as a rooftop film series catering to local audiences in North Brooklyn. Since then, Ocularis has evolved into a weekly cinema, a producer of collaborative film/video work and an annual summer open-air screening series.

Ocularis screens weekly at:
Galapagos Art & Performance Space.
70 North 6th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.ocularis.net
tel/fax: 718.388.8713