June 2015

Please note that all Laughtears.com events are listed on the calendar on our website https://www.laughtears.com/ - the opening page there is the best source for the most updated information, or call 310 306 7330. What follows is more details..

We welcome your participation in our Beyond Baroque events.

Beyond Baroque http://beyondbaroque.org/ 681 Venice Blvd, Venice, CA 90291, 310-822-3006.
Besides our occasional special events, we welcome you to our monthly film series - PLEASE NOTE that 7 DUDLEY CINEMA meets regularly at Beyond Baroque on 4th Sundays. Free street parking.

Our monthly discussion group - every Third Wednesday for MOM - Meditations on Media discussion group, 7-10pm, free (McLuhan Or Marx, Metaphors On Methods, Massage Or Medium, etc) http://www.venicewake.org/Events/current.html

Thank you,
Gerry Fialka pfsuzy@aol.com 310-306-7330,
https://www.laughtears.com/ and http://www.venicewake.org/
Fialka bio: https://www.laughtears.com/bio.html
Lectures-Screenings https://www.laughtears.com/workshops4.

(programs subject to change, but not likely)

"Gerry Fialka is Los Angeles' preeminent underground film curator." - CinemaWithoutBorders.com

Laughtears.com Beyond Baroque EVENTS 

Sunday, June 28 - 5th ANNUAL LIT SHOW Film Festival - Gerry Fialka screens rare literature films (Burgess, Billie Holiday, W Lewis) to celebrate THE LIT SHOW on July 18th, starring LA's Diva Deluxe SUZY WILLIAMS & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. You've read the book, now hear the songs. NOW SEE THE FILM. 7pm free  https://www.facebook.com/events/821809101222676/
 

July 5, SUN 7:30pm ROBERT & MICHAEL ALTMAN FILMS – Robert’s son Michael (in person) screens rare films: Robert Altman’s Jazz ’34 at 7:45pm (1997, 72m)was shot entirely on set in the film’s “Hey Hey Club” during the filming of his 1997 film “KANSAS CITY”. Narrated by Harry Belafonte this film features jazz and jams from the cast of the film comprised of the worlds best of the best musicians including Ron Carter, Jesse Davis, David “Fathead” Newman, Don Byron, Russell Malone, Mark Whitfield, Christian McBride, Tyrone Clark, James Carter, Don Byron …. just to name a few. One of the highlights of the film includes a stunning “Battle of the Saxes” featuring Craig Handy and Joshua Redman recreating an actual event which took place some 60+ years earlier between Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young that will leave you breathless and awestruck. Jazzual bliss. Michael Altman’s internationally acclaimed and awarded film (over 20 Festival wins around the world in 2012), AMERICAN SONGWRITER at 9pm (2012, 55min) is a kaleidoscopic musical road trip down a million mile highway of poetry, philosophy and life featuring Nashville hit songwriter Danny Darst.  Altman’s American Songwriter traverses the bedrock and backbone of Darst’s gritty lay it on the line storytelling style as one of Americana’s most talented songsmiths. Danny Darst, longtime confidant and friend of Altman’s late father Robert Altman takes us from sea to shining sea through his songs and stories. Travel with us through sixty years of boot leather and worn out steering wheels as American Songwriter draws you into Darst’s struggles growing up poor, how he discovered who he was and found redemption through the love of a good woman. It is the tale of an authentic American man. Followed by discussion and a live Danny Durst performance.  Pot au Feu at 7:30pm (1965, 9m) Robert Altman’s parody short film on the lore and glories of smoking Mother Nature’s herbal panacea “Pot”. Written, produced, directed and shot by Robert Altman in his backyard and “around town” in 1965. This rarely seen short film by one of Marijuana’s biggest and best known advocates from the early 60’s until his death in 2006. LIVE MUSIC with  Danny Darst and discussion at 10pm

SAT, July 18 - SUZY WILLIAMS - THE LIT SHOW is the 10th annual celebration of song and literature starring LA's Diva Deluxe & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by TOLKIEN, OSCAR WILDE, Hafitz, Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the song. "Suzy's voice is vibrant and lusty...great gusto and bold emotion." - Nat Hentoff. Admission $15. 8pm   https://www.facebook.com/events/661591090641619/

SUN, July 26, 7pm - The Source Family (2012, 98 minutes) is an engaging documentary film directed by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos that recounts the story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 and the Source Family, which was a radical experiment in '70s utopian living. Their outlandish style, popular health food restaurant, rock band, and beautiful women made them the darlings of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip; but their outsider ideals and the unconventional behavior of their spiritual leader, Father Yod, caused controversy with local authorities. They fled to Hawaii, leading to their dramatic demise. Years later, former family members surface and the rock band reforms, revealing how their time with Father Yod shaped their lives in the most unexpected ways. Special guests in discussion after the film. Free, donations appreciated.

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Aug 23 SUN
- I'LL LITE YOUR PYRE - Exorcising The Jim Morrisn - Will Erokan & Gerry Fialka's psychedelic multi-media party probes the 50th anniversary of The Doors' birth in Venice.  Live experimental cinema, music, poetry and dance reimagine the Menippean satirized influence of Jim Morrison on Rockers, Nomads, Punks and the Boardwalk's Crusties. As spect-actors in the Global Theater, hack your own doors of perception. We welcome your rewordings of song lines like: "LA woman's coming after you" into "LAPD's coming after you," and "I woke up this morning & got myself a beer" into  "I woke up this morning & cut off my left ear."

Immerse yourself into deconstructing the motives and consequences of power, fame, drugs, rock star worship, public nudity and the Gulf of Tonkin, which Morrison's dad orchestrated. Explore Antonin Artaud's theories in Theatre and Its Double, which influenced Morrison. Uncover the subliminal social and psychic effects of loud music, poetry, and  "exorcism," which comes from the Greek word "exorkismos" meaning "binding by oath" and from the French "exorciser" meaning "to invoke spirits."

The title I’LL LITE YOUR PYRE is from Finnegans Wake, which was written by James Joyce, who said, "It is a curious thing how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMbx1f43Y9A

“Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin…To feel on the verge of an exorcism...” – Jim Morrison.

"The urgent effort of the poets to gain a hearing for their intuitions is always lost on the public." - McLuhan, whose book Understanding Media is seen in Oliver Stone's The Doors. "All bad poetry springs from genuine feelings" - Oscar Wilde. 
The Doors took their name from the title of Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception, which was derived from a line in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.”
Free, donations appreciated. 7pm Transcendentally reinvent rock! This is not a classic rock sing-along.
 
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Aug 30, 7pm
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF KARL KROGSTAD (2015, 160 min.) http://www.karlkrogstad.com/ Humorous & deeply human true story of the maverick filmmaker's 40 years of making compelling movies. With Gus Van Sant & Tom Robbins, who describes Karl as "both a slave to beauty & a lenient master of it, he's a Picasso-esque ceramicist, a Euro-juicy painter, an excellent cook & a stand-up comic." Free Laughtears.com Donations appreciated

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Sunday, Sept 27, AN EVENING WITH PABLO FRASCONI – Interview=7pm, Films=8:30.  Since 1969, Pablo Frasconi has made films about the U.S. bicentennial, gentrification, childhood literacy, public art, creativity, civil liberties and poetry, including, Towards the Memory of a Revolution ('76, 53m), The Woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi ('87, 25m), Survival of a Small City ('86, 57m), broadcast nationally on PBS, and, The Longing ('08,15m) They have screened world-wide. He has received many grants. He is currently Professor of Practice in the Production Division at the School of Cinematic Arts at USC where he teaches Editing; Creating Poetic Cinema; Nature, Design and Media (in the new Media Arts + Practice Division); The Global Exchange Workshop at the Communication University of China in Beijing & USC; mentors advanced graduate projects, and coordinates the first year of the graduate M.F.A. production program. He recently designed and taught the USC-YouTube Creator Institute; a workshop at the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching on Contemplative Pedagogies; and a seminar in Transmedia and Political Engagement.
FILMS at 8:30pm (followed by Q and A with Pablo)  THE LIGHT AT WALDEN ('14, 39m) is a meditation    shot at Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts, interweaving pieces of Henry David Thoreau’s texts and a war resister’s personal
journey on a wilderness island in Canada. The filmmaker, as a young man during the U.S. / Vietnam War, attempts to follow Thoreau’s principles: building a cabin and living sustainably in the woods, “to front only the essential facts of
life.” This is one story among the nearly 125,000 war resisters in Canada. Music composed by John Luther Adams, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Charles Ives, Arvo Part, Karen Tanaka and others. With two shorts by Frasconi: THE SONG OF THE SOUL ('99, 6m), an adaptation of Walt Whitman's Children of Adam: From Pent-up Aching Rivers, and,    LOOK OUT    ('06, 8m), an adaptation of Wendell Berry's poem. Free, donations appreciated

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SUN, Oct 18 - MADNESS AS MUSIC –  Gerry Fialka & Brad Kay probe sanity and the creative process. Charles "Buddy" Bolden (1877-1931), the man credited with pioneering jazz, had schizophrenia and could not properly read music because of impaired motor function. His lateral, freewheeling approach may have been the roots of the very essence of jazz – improvisation. http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct01/melody.aspx  "You can't prove you are sane, unless you have discharge papers from a mental hospital." - McLuhan. “You’re driving me sane” – Peter Lorre. Chogyam Trungpa says "If there is no sense of rejoicing and magical practice, you find yourself simply driving into the high wall of insanity." Delve deep into Oliver Sacks, Thelonius Monk, shamanism and more. With live music, films, discussion and Insane Crazy Blues.

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Oct 25, Nov 22, Dec 27 - TBA
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Sunday, Jan 24, 2016- 13th Annual VENICE FILM FEST - Colorful history of films made in Venice California, and celebration of the otherwordly happenings at the legendary Venice West Gallery (birthplace of the Beats), aka Sponto Gallery with live performances. Experience the essence of Spontofication Rituals in art, music, poetry and the freedom of creativity. With Jeffery Stanton, the return of Black Shoe Polish at the Venice Street Fest 10 years later, and more.
RARE clips include -  noted English architectural critic Reyner Banham on VENICE.

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Sat, Feb 6, 2016 - 6th annual POETRY OF VENICE PHOTOGRAPHY - 2-4pm: panel discussion , 4-6pm: Opening for PHOTO SHOW in Gallery, free admission Paramedia ecologist Gerry Fialka hosts a panel discussion of award-winning Venice photographers, who explore landscapes of the human psyche and push pictorial representation beyond! Examine the trance-inducing transforming power of cameras in our community by way of McLuhan. With B MEADE, KRISTY CAMPBELL, MARGARET MOLLOY, Dave Healey http://www.davidhealeyphotography.com/ (Time Magazine, NY & LA Times), Todd Von Hoffmann, Larry Brownstein, TRISH ELLEBRACHT and more

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“Poets and artists live on frontiers. They have no feedback, only feedforward. They have no identities. They are probes.” – McLuhan, Culture is Our Business (1970) 

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Free film screenings with fiery discussions at 3 different venues: Beyond Baroque, Unurban, Talking Stick 310-306-7330 Laughtears.com

Documental - Select Mondays at Unurban 6-10pm https://www.laughtears.com/documental.html at 3301 pico blvd santa monica ca 90401 310-315-0056 free

7 Dudley Cinema - 4th SUNDAYS 7-10pm https://www.laughtears.com/7dudleycinema.html at 681 venice blvd venice ca 90291 310-822-3006 , free

Subversive Cinema - select Sundays at Beyond Baroque

  To screen your film, contact: Gerry Fialka pfsuzy@aol.com, 310-306-7330 , laughtears.com

"The atmosphere is wildly eclectic and the programming excitingly nonjudgmental: High, low, old, new, obscure, pop, the good, the bad, and the ugly...The place is open to everything and bursting with ideas." - Village Voice on Anthology Film Archives in NY - much like we provide.

Fialka's new book project - AVANT GARDE FILM & The ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL HISTORY BOOK
https://www.laughtears.com/Ann%20Arbor%20Film%20Festival.html

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archive2015
Sunday, April 26 - 7pm - LET'S OWN IT!: The Struggle of the Lincoln Place Tenants Association (1998, 31 minutes) Karen Brodkin's (in person) inspired film on Venice activism. All across the nation affordable housing remains an elusive goal and, often, the cause of bitter conflicts and struggles. Nowhere is this truer than in urban areas of California, with its large populations of ethnic minorities, the elderly, and immigrants. This excellent and upbeat case study follows the decade-long struggle of a group of tenants working toward the creation of a permanently affordable housing community in Venice, Calif., a traditionally liberal beach NEIGHBORHOOD ON THE west SIDE of Los Angeles. The video documents how a group of retired residents joined forces with younger residents -- primarily women and single parents -- to fight against a demolition and redevelopment proposal that would effectively displace 1,500 people from a large apartment complex called Lincoln Place. Built in 1950, Lincoln Place is one of the largest sources of affordable housing in the area. Its residents are ethnically diverse and of mixed ages and incomes --a vibrant community which inspired residents to dream of ownership of the complex and defend their homes. Their strategies, anxieties, and conflicts with the owner/developer, their efforts to gain the support of other Venice residents, and their unprecedented victory over the owner at City Hall make this important video an outstanding teaching tool for a variety of courses in sociology, social psychology, urban studies and planning, anthropology, and women's studies. Produced by Karen Brodkin, and Mary Hardy at UCLA. Followed by rare film on Los Angeles architecture at 8pm.  Laughtears.com  Free, donations appreciated.
 
Sunday, May 10 -    7 Dudley Cinema - EXPERIMENTAL FILMS     Narrative is born among the "animal necessities of the spirit" because we are "waiting to die." - Hollis Frampton. Laughtears.com  Free, donations appreciated. 7pm
 
Sunday, May 17 - DANCE THE LIGHT FANTASTIC by Rag'n'Bones, who perform live dance, music and poetry with avant garde moving image art to revolutionize spontaneous dancification rituals. Can we tell the dance from the dancer? Laughtears.com Free, donations appreciated. 7pm
 
Sunday, May 24 - 7 Dudley Cinema - Folk Music FILMS Laughtears.com Free, donations appreciated. 7pm
archive 2013
March 7, Thurs - HARRY's HIP HOP FILM NITE - Extraordinaire dancer Harry Weston's pops. locks, breaks & b-boys street dance history with rare film clips & live demonstration: West African, Gene Kelly, Michael Jackson, Pina Bausch & James Brown - Get up offa that thing, dance 'till you feel better, Try to release that pressure. Free 730pm
April 4, Thurs RIA LIVE CINEMA https://laughtears.com/RIA.html 7:30pm (aka OUR EYE AYE = RIA = Resonant Interval Algorythmns) Video artists-Social engineers Will Erokan, Gerry Fialka, John Cannizzaro & poets, dancers, musicians = LIVE CINEMA probing the filmed close-up on the human eye, as seen in Un Chien Andalou, Man With The Movie Camera, Frank Zappa's 200 Motels, and Blade Runner. Delve deep into the reel motives and consequences of the Ludovico treatment from A Clockwork Orange, which originated in the novel by Anthony Burgess, who was directly influenced by James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The Wake turns the eye into an ear via Finneganese (language about language): "Television kills telephony in Brothers’ broil. Our eyes demand their turn. Let them be seen." and "what can't be coded can be decorded if an ear aye seize what no eye ere grieved fore." Experience the RIA "live cinema" immersion into post-hypnotic hyper-maximum stimulation triggering McLuhan's Menippean satirized Gesamtkunstwerk. Peter Greenaway presaged the complex clairvoyance of Erokan's birth on September 30, 1983 by declaring "Cinema's death date was 31 September 1983, when the remote-control zapper was introduced to the living room, because now cinema has to be interactive, multi-media art." The retrocausality of this non-existent date renders an effects-precede-causes half- truth. "A half truth is still alot of a truth" – McLuhan. Explore & re-explore the sensory simultaneity of integral awareness (IA being the flip of AI - artificial intelligence) in passing through the vanishing point when seeing oneself both as oneself and as the other. It may be the death and rebirth of agraRIAn, AlgeRIA, antiquaRIAn, appropRIAtion, AquaRIAn, barbaRIAn, & AbdeRIAn laughter, which comes from rustic simpletons who would laugh at anything or anyone they did not understand. RIA is a drowned river valley that remains open to the sea. This evokes the Wake and Frank Zappa's "The ocean is the ultimate solution." "But that the white eye-lid of the screen reflect its proper light, the Universe would go up in flames" - Luis Bunuel. (ALSO *** RIA LIVE CINEMA screens April 6, Sat, 8pm at EchoParkFilmCenter.org N Alvarado St. @ Sunset Blvd. LA 90026 213-484-8846 $5)
+++April 7, Sunday IG NITE - Iggy Pop Celebration at beyond baroque 681 venice blvd venice ca 90291 310-822-3006 free WITH LIVE MUSIC including the amazing Raw Power Rangers & PANEL DISCUSSION with REVEREND DAN of MusicForNimrods and RARE FILM CLIPS 7pm
SUNDAY, May 26, 7pm MATT McCORMICK FILMS - experimental documentaries focusing on the sublime decay of contemporary culture and the landscape both urban & rural. LA Premier of The Great Northwest . http://www.rodeofilmco.com/ Matt McCormick is a Portland, Oregon based artist, award winning filmmaker and noted video installation artist. His work extends documentary and experimental filmmaking, focusing on the sublime decay of contemporary culture and the landscape both urban and rural. His work spans mediums and defies genre distinctions to fashion witty, abstract observations of contemporary culture and the urban landscape. His project Future So Bright maps and catalogs the abandoned spaces in the American West, while American Nutria "examines the plight of an imported species while chastising capitalism’s tendency to create its own disasters." The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal makes the observation that the process of destroying one art form unwittingly creates another, while his installation piece Ride a Wave To Tomorrow’s Sunset reflects on society’s need for ‘synthetic meditation’. The Great Northwest (2012, 70 minutes) Matt McCormick's engaging experimental documentary based on the re-creation of a 3,200 mile road-trip made in 1958 by four Seattle women who thoroughly documented their journey in an elaborate scrapbook…Fifty years later, Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick found that scrapbook in a thrift store, and in 2010 set out on the road, following their route as precisely as possible and searching out every stop in which the ladies had documented.In 1958, Bev, Berta, Sissie and Clarice packed into a Plymouth and hit the road. Visiting tourist attractions and national parks in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon, they explored the Pacific Northwest just months before the construction of dams and the Interstate Highway System would drastically change the landscape. Along the way they took photographs, kept notes, and collected menus, brochures, post-cards and receipts, all of which the organized into a crafty scrapbook.Patiently shot with an observational and voyeuristic approach, The Great Northwest is a lyrical time-capsule that explores the fragility of history while documenting the present. Using only location sound recordings and void of any narration or music, the film paints a portrait of the region while exploring how the visual landscape of the region has changed over the past 50 years. While documenting transformations in culture, architecture, and land-use, the film explores the region’s relationship to natural resources, looks at the history of roads, and considers the impact of tourism on the history and development of the American West.The Great Northwest has shown at venues including The Museum of Modern Art, The Rotterdam International Film Festival, and the Tacoma Art Museum. http://www.rodeofilmco.com/2011/the-great-northwest-2/ and The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal - Emerging from the human psyche and showing characteristics of abstract expressionism, minimalism and Russian constructivism, graffiti removal has secured its place in the history of modern art while being created by artists who are unconscious of their artistic achievements.
+++ (third sunday) Sunday June 16 - 730pm - 3rd ANNUAL LIT SHOW Film Festival - Gerry Fialka screens rare literature films to celebrate THE LIT SHOW on July 20th, starring LA's Diva Deluxe SUZY WILLIAMS & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the songs. NOW SEE THE FILM.
+++SAT, July 20, 2013 - 730pm SUZY WILLIAMS - THE LIT SHOW is the 8th annual celebration of song and literature starring LA's Diva Deluxe & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Hafitz, Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Admission $15 Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the song. "Suzy's voice is vibrant and lusty...great gusto and bold emotion." - Nat Hentoff.
Sunday, July 28: HIPPIE REVOLUTION FILMS – Tune in, turn on and drop out ! Rare films on music, and politics. The hippies were heirs to a long line of bohemians that includes William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Hesse, Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde, Huxley and utopian movements like the Rosicrucians and the Theosophists, and most directly the Beats.
Sunday Aug 25: (POSTPONED) AVANT GARDE ADVERTISING FILMS - "Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century." - Marshall McLuhan
Sunday, Sept 22: BAROFF & CLARK FILMS - Michael Baroff Films at 7pm (45 minutes, 2010-12) Baroff (in person) uses the camera much like a sketchbook to serendipitously record what attracts his attention while in public environments. These unscripted visual scenes, ambient sounds and overheard talk, in which he does not overtly intervene, are then minimally edited or montaged, to create a sense of context, meaning and affect. The individual videos can be viewed from a range of stylistic perspectives including abstract, scenic, narrative, meditative, or social commentary.
Jon Clark Films at 8pm: Clark's (in person) SPECTRUM HUNTER (2012, 32m) - Discover a collection of haunted media, a benevolent tribe of new wave witches, a Goth teenager with real magic powers, a bizarre cult that inhabits abandoned malls, & much more. Trailer: http://vimeo.com/33506063 Clark's work deals with childhood, memory, the uncanny, and the obscure corners of popular culture. Referencing an early 90s aesthetic, influenced by laserdiscs, pogs, and dark allure of arcades, this film captures the ineffable fantasy in the mind of kids that dedicated their lives to these things. Also: Clark-directed animations and music videos (2008 3m).
Sunday, Oct 27: MAXWELL STREET REVISITED - Jazz historian Sherwin Dunner (in person) host an evening of inspired music films. Bargains and blues could be found on any Sunday at the biggest, brassiest open air street market in America which thrived for over 100 years before it was paved over for the University of Illinois at Chicago expansion in 1994. We'll be showing AND THIS IS FREE (1963, 50 minutes), the groundbreaking cinema verite film which captures Chicago's Maxwell Street market in full glory on a typical Sunday – a vibrant mix of blues and gospel singers, hustlers, pitchmen, pushcart vendors and preachers. Shoppers could find great deals, but also were prime for fleecing. With a sly wink, one of the stores even chose the name “Cheat You Fair.” We'll also see MAXWELL STREET - A LIVING MEMORY ( 2002, 30m) on Maxwell Street from the perspective of the Jewish merchants who worked there, found footage and a photo slide show. Plus live blues music.
Sunday, Nov 24: POP ART FILMS "The very first Pop Art exhibit or artifact named by the noted critic Harold Rosenberg was Marshall McLuhan's book THE MECHANICAL BRIDE, which came out in 1951." - Robert Dobbs. "Art is anything you can get anyway with" - McLuhan
SPECIAL EVENT - Thursday Dec 19, 7:30pm, free: METAPHOR AS MEMORY - Gerry Fialka probes McLuhan and Chris Marker, who said "I remember the images I filmed. They have substituted themselves for my memory. They are my memory - the act of remembering is not the opposite of forgetting." "All active media are metaphors in their power to translate experience into new forms...what is a meta phor?" - McLuhan. "Remember to forget" - James Joyce. (SPECIAL Laughtears.com events+++)
Sunday, Dec 22: GOSPEL MUSIC FILMS traces the evolution of Gospel through its many musical styles - the spirituals and early hymns, the four-part harmony-based quartets, the integration of blues and swing into Gospel, the emergence of Soul, and the blending of Rap and Hip Hop elements. Gospel music also walked in step with the story of African-American culture - slavery, hardscrabble rural existence and plantation work, the exodus to major cities, the Depression, World War II, civil rights and empowerment.
Sunday, Jan 26, 2014- Eleventh Annual VENICE FILM FEST - Colorful history of films made in Venice California, and celebration of the otherwordly happenings at the legendary Venice West Gallery (birthplace of the Beats), aka Sponto Gallery with live performances. Experience the essence of Spontofication Rituals in art, music, poetry and the freedom of creativity. SPECIAL Laughtears.com event+++
Sat, Feb 1, 2014 - 4th annual POETRY OF VENICE PHOTOGRAPHY - 2-4pm: panel discussion , 4-6pm: Opening for PHOTO SHOW in Gallery, free admission Paramedia ecologist Gerry Fialka hosts a panel discussion of award-winning Venice photographers, who explore landscapes of the human psyche and push pictorial representation beyond! Examine the trance-inducing transforming power of cameras in our community by way of McLuhan. With KRISTY CAMPBELL, MARGARET MOLLOY, SARAH SEELINGER. Photo show also includes:
Dave Healey http://www.davidhealeyphotography.com/ (Time Magazine, NY & LA Times), Alfred Benjamin (Holocaust survivor who shot Hitler in his teens http://photo.net/leica-rangefinders-forum/00JFeb), Leland Auslender (also shot experimental films of Venice West Cafe over 4 decades ago), Ned Sloane, Todd Von Hoffmann, Don Beswick. (SPECIAL Laughtears.com event+++) 
SUNDAY, Feb 23 - CHILDREN OF THE STARS at 8:30pm http://www.childrenofthestarsfilm.com Perrine's engaging documentary tells the strange but true story of a UFO contactee group who relive their past lives on other planets by making their own science fiction films. In 1973, Ruth Norman, a 73 year old widow and self described cosmic visionary purchased 67 acres of land in the mountains east of San Diego, California as a landing site for the Space Brothers, emissaries from the Intergalactic Confederation. Nearly 40 years later, a group of dedicated followers still await their arrival. At the Unarius Academy of Science death does not exist, Nicola Tesla was a Space Brother, Satan drove a Cadillac and science fiction is real. To relive their pasts the students film their own sci-fi extravaganzas with the increasingly extravagant Ruth Norman as the star and the lines between fantasy and reality dissolve. Using spectacular footage from original Unarius films and Hollywood Sci-Fi flicks to illustrate, comment upon, and subvert interviews with the remaining Unarius students, “Children of the Stars” covers millions of years, hundreds of galaxies and dozens of B movies to present a sympathetic look at faith and how people justify it in different ways. 7pm preshow LIVE MUSIC and POETRY & Experimental films with Rag'n'Bones
SUN, March 23 - NATASHA MAIDOFF LIVE CINEMA - 8pm - Venice artist Maidoff's work-in-progress The Sleepwalker magically merges live dance and video projection performance to expand the viewing experience. Also, Curator Lance Richter screens rare experimental films at 7pm
Sun, April 27 - KENT HAYWARD FILMS (in person) – 7-10pm. SUNSET TO SUNSET (’10, 3m) A stop-motion walk across Los Angeles, in which the filmmaker comes face to face with the city instead of watching it blur by through a windshield. Screened at over 25 film festivals, including Dances with Films, DocuWest, New Filmmakers and Film Independent's Cinema Lounge. AUGUST(’13, 10m) Stolen moments, both real and imagined, from a return to rural Michigan. STANDBY… (’93, 3m) Vintage raw footage of a series of interviews with all of the “content” cut out. A playful look at what people do before "action" and after "cut." SEDIMENTATION (’96, 5m) An experimental short film exploring a condemned structure creaking over Castaic Lake. PORTRAITS (’95-present, 6m) Excerpts from an ongoing collection of character studies. HOMESTEAD ARTIFACT (’00, 49m) A personal documentary about the filmmaker’s family rediscovering their lost homestead in rural New Mexico and the pieces of history buried there. Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas: “Deeply affecting… Hayward has succeeded beautifully.” LA Weekly: “An affecting rumination on the importance of memories.” Hayward teaches film classes at Cal State Long Beach, Loyola Marymount University and El Camino College and has worked in the entertainment industry on many film and television productions, including The Aviator, Eureka!, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and The Dark Knight Rises.
Sunday May 25 - PSYBERNETIC DREAMING with RIA LIVE CINEMA (RIAPD) - Social engineers Will Erokan & Gerry Fialka's post-hypnotic triggering and hyper-maximum multi-media "live cinema" event reinvents McLuhan's Menippean satirized Gesamtkunstwerk and breaks the Finnegans Wake code: "what can't be coded can be decorded if an ear aye seize what no eye ere grieved fore." Turn your eyes into ears. Poets, dancers & live music conjure the hidden psychic effects of "mediaphyillia autisticus." "It is based upon individual thinking, scientific know-how, quick exchange of facts, high-tech ingenuity, and practical, front-line creativity." "We call the free-agent who thinks for him/herself 'cybernetic' from the Greek word for pilot. The word 'psychedelic' means ecstatic or mind-opening. 'Psybernetic' refers to psychedelic experience expressed in electronic form." RIA is "composed of quick-thinking, open-minded, change-oriented, innovative individuals who are adept in communicating via the new cyber-electronic technologies." These quotes inspired by Timothy Leary. This media yoga session enables participants to meta-analyze the dualities of form and content. Embrace contradictions. Examine electronic interdependence, all-at-onceness, effects preceding causes, sense-ratio-shifting, metaphor and abstraction. Discern patterns that emerge in perceiving perception itself ! Percept plunder for the recent future. The Ecstatic Beats of the 1950s, the Blissed Out Students of the 1960s, the Anarchist Yippies of the 1970s, the Cyberpunks of the 1980s, and the Hackers & Ravers of the 1990s, the Post Information Hipsters & ParaMediaEcologists of the 2000s, and the Occupiers & Millennial Matrix Dot Commies of the 2010s continue to fabricate the Cyber Culture.https://laughtears.com/iwantmyRIA.html
Sunday, June 22 - 4th ANNUAL LIT SHOW Film Festival - Gerry Fialka screens rare literature films to celebrate THE LIT SHOW on July 19th, starring LA's Diva Deluxe SUZY WILLIAMS & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the songs. NOW SEE THE FILM. This year we explore McLuhan as Finnegans Wake. In 2014, book readers across the world celebrate the publications of two books: James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (75th year) and Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media (50th year).
Sunday July 27 - AVERAGEMAN (2012, 78 minutes) Rush Riddle's (in person) fun feature film captures the spirit of underground Los Angeles flipping into the over ground. Directed by Steve Hanft. Starring Richard Edson with Gwen Casella, Dick Rude, Zander Schloss, Carole Citrone, Eddy Ruscha, and Paloma Parfrey. Space aliens have come to earth to save the human genome, which they fear is doomed to a pending nuclear holocaust. Their “ORB” tells them to look for George Clooney, then after it breaks and is repaired says to look for Greg Classen. Greg is a sad-sack, continually mugged in inner city L.A. There is deja vu and people reappearing as if in a Vonnegut karass. It’s a cerebral type of comedy with great instrumental music by Double Naught Spy Car and others. The Mental Blocks play Body Surfin’ to Waikiki live in the movie at Shady Hills Mental Resort. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfXRUGJIen8 and http://averagemanthemovie.com/index.html Film at 7pm, Discussion at 8:30pm. Live music at 9pm by Treehouse (Rush, Carey Fosse, Pat Hoed & Andy Sykora)
Sunday, Aug 24 - Avant Garde Rock Films
Sunday Sept 28 - OF TWO MINDS (2013, 89 min) Take your best day and your darkest moment...and multiply by a million. Award-winning filmmakers Doug Blush and Lisa Klein (in person) reveal the intimate lives of extraordinary people living with bipolar disorder, including Los Angeles artist Carlton Davis and more. Variety says "fascinating...intelligent...and compassionate" and NPR says "provocative, intimate, gritty filmmaking". Winner of both the 2013 VOICE and PRISM awards for Best Documentary and Grand Jury and Audience Award at the Los Angeles United Film Festival.
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TWO SPECIAL Laughtears.com Beyond Baroque Events - FREE
SAT, July 19 - SUZY WILLIAMS - THE LIT SHOW is the 9th annual celebration of song and literature starring LA's Diva Deluxe & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Hafitz, Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the song. "Suzy's voice is vibrant and lusty...great gusto and bold emotion." - Nat Hentoff. Admission $15. 8pm
SUN, Oct 5 - LET'S AX LIKE WHITE PEOPLE - HOLD MY JAMMIE WHILE I GO PEE? - Mackdaddy founder of avant-funksters Black Shoe Polish, Gerry Fialka and Brad Kay, music historian and jazz pianist supreme probe the motives and consequences of the Minstrel Show, voluntary Negritude, Afrofuturism (Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix), the relationship of Duke Ellington & Marshal McLuhan, and Lenny Bruce & Frank Zappa, who said, “ I'm not black, but there's a whole lots a times I wish I could say I'm not white.” Why do whites emulate blacks? Shoe fly in da buttermilk. Trading dozens. If ya can't dazzle'em wif yer brilliance, baffle wif yer bullshit. Gwine up to Hebbin. Louie Armstrong's white pot dealer Mezz Mezzrow writes that from the moment he heard jazz he "was going to be a Negro musician, hipping [teaching] the world about the blues the way only Negroes can." "I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the dark things of the cosmos." - Sun Ra. "We just play Black, We play what the day recommends." - Miles Davis. "In my kosmos, there will be no feeva of dischord." - Krazy Kat. "I've got a move that tells me what to do." - James Brown. Get deep in the swamp muck with live music and rare film clips. 7pm, free admission.
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archive 2012-
SAT, July 14, 7:30pm - SUZY WILLIAMS - THE LIT SHOW is the 7th annual celebration of song and literature starring LA's Diva Deluxe & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Admission $15 Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the song. "Suzy's voice is vibrant and lusty...great gusto and bold emotion." - Nat Hentoff. Admission $15
SEPT 22, SAT, 7:30pm - ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE - Gerry Fialka with poets, dancers & musicians probe technology & poetry and celebrate Richard Brautigan's fifth poetry publication which envisions a world where cybernetics has advanced to a stage where it allows a return to the balance of nature and an elimination of the need for human labor. "All of us have a place in history. mine is clouds." - Brautigan. "Poetry is nothing but a machine made of words." - William Carlos Williams. Free admission, donations appreciated.
Fialka's interactive workshop probes our interrelations with technology, art, music and literature. By flipping McLuhan's From Cliche to Archetype, he sheds new light on Calder, Man Ray, Giacometti, Jean Tinguely, video games, robotics and Sol LeWitt's proposition that "the idea becomes a machine that makes the art." Examine the resonating intervals and inventory the hidden effects of machines as extensions of our human senses. How and why do we anthropomorphize the idea of cyborgian culture? "Upon this faith in Art as the organic heart quality of the scientific frame of things, I base a belief that we must look to the artist, of all brains, to grasp the significance to society of this thing we call the Machine." - Frank Lloyd Wright. "Poetry is nothing but a machine made of words." - William Carlos Williams. "Art is dead -long live Tatlin's new machine art." - John Heartfield & George Grosz."What does it allow us to ignore?" - Jacques Ellul. Includes screening of: I AM NOT A ROBOT - Mark X Farina & Gerry Fialka's 14 minute film probes the percept of technology "being alive" by evoking early Russian film and Constructivism. Cultural icons from James Joyce to Robby the Robot to Marilyn Monroe are your humanoid guides through new art technologies. Can machines surpass humans in the creative process? How are robotics restructuring patterns of social interdependence in Art, Science and Nature? Cine-poets Farina & Fialka reframe our collective compliance in anthropomorphizing media as art forms. In the spirit of McLuhan's mosaic writing, this collage film propagates mythic thinking, in the Jungian sense, where people mime cues from technology used by millions. By flipping the art museum video installation experience into media yoga, one can download morphic resonance into the nervous system as a Zen experiment. What is the future of art and artificial intelligence? See the likeness & difference in Anticipatory Mindfulness and Android Meme. Summon the impossible by examining what Derrida calls "the absence of presence." "The future of the future is the present." - McLuhan. "I wouldn't be seen dead with a living work of art." - Museum curator.
MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) The public is invited to Gerry Fialka's engaging interview of
RICHARD METZGER, who will address the metaphysics of his calling and the nitty-gritty of his craft. https://www.laughtears.com/mess.html and https://www.laughtears.com/
SUNDAY, Sept 23, 2012 at 7:30pm at Beyond Baroque http://beyondbaroque.org/ 681 Venice Blvd, Venice, CA 90291, 310-822-3006, free admission, donations appreciated.
Richard Metzger, founder of Dangerous Minds.net blog and author of Disinformation: The Interviews and Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide To Magick & The Occult, is interviewed by GERRY FIALKA.
Richard Metzger is one of the founding "dangerous minds" of the popular Dangerous Minds.net blog. Previously he was known for being the creative director of the New York-based counterculture multi-media publisher, The Disinformation Company Ltd. For two years he was the on-camera host and the director of the "Disinformation" television show on the Channel 4 broadcast network in the UK. He has worked with Ann Magnuson and Johnny Knoxville. Metzger is the author of two books. Disinformation: The Interviews (2002) features unedited interviews with several of the characters and thinkers who were guests on the series such as Marilyn Manson, Kenneth Anger, Joe Coleman, Robert Anton Wilson and Genesis P. Orridge. Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide To Magick & The Occult (2004) is an anthology of occult essays.
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2012 FILMS-
PLEASE NOTE that 7 DUDLEY CINEMA meets regularly at Beyond Baroque on first Thursdays from 7-10pm. Free street parking.
THERE ARE some exceptions, like upcoming Feb 4 2013 is on Saturday.
for immediate release contact: Gerry Fialka 310-306-7330 PFSuzy@aol.com
7 DUDLEY CINEMA at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd, Venice CA 90291, 310-822-3006, free admission, 7-10pm Info: 310-306-7330 Laughtears.com Every First Thursday
Thurs, June 7, 2012 - REJOYCE BLOOMSDAY - Celebrate James Joyce's Bloomsday with live performances and ultra rare film clips of Joyce and Marshall McLuhan, whose translation of FINNEGANS WAKE reveals the cloned ESP of global memory theater probing. venicewake.org
Thurs, July 5 - 2nd ANNUAL LIT SHOW Film Festival - Gerry Fialka screens rare literature films to celebrate THE LIT SHOW on July 14th, starring LA's Diva Deluxe SUZY WILLIAMS & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the songs. NOW SEE THE FILM.
Thurs, Aug 2: SARAH & GEOFF SEELINGER FILMS - Venice artists screen & discuss their experimental films which illuminate the space with found happenings, the driftwood of consciousness and contemplation of family life.
Sarah's works are meditations of discovery both external and internal. She works with moments, rhythms and sounds of early morning walks along the shore of Venice beach. Her videos offer contemplative space with found happenings, collective consciousness, observation and profundity in footsteps. Often her videos harken to "actualities", simple events happening before the camera that evoke wonder of the ordinary, and illuminate the visual and auditory spectacle often missed in the midst of experienced phenomena.
Geoff's works play with moments close to home. From a patio above the garage, neighborhood and kids spaces, he explores the margins between documented fragments, perception and imaginary realms. Everyday family moments, as well as mundane events resonate through abstractions that loosen the hold of cinematic reality. Much of his work, explores the possibilities of the PXL2000 toy camera with grainy black and white half resolution image captures which magnify interpretive possibilities. Like a slinky, animated forms suggest fluidity between planes, as coils of time expand, contract and knot, toward contemplation of family life, personal delights, ominous threats and complexities of the narrow physical place that we occupy in daily life.
Thurs, Sept 6: PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKER - Historian/Lit Critter Gerry Fialka screens films and discusses the interconnections between film and poetry. These artforms expand our notions of reality both inner and outer. How is the interior dialogue (consciousness) the essence of the human condition? How does it inform content vs. form issues? Explore Poe, the Symbolists, Hollis Frampton, Walt Whitman, William Farley, Jack Kerouac, Charles Olson, Henry Ferrini, Robert Creeley, and Beat films up to contemporary New Media makers. Drawing on witty and insightful analysis of poet/experimental filmmakers Jean Cocteau, James Broughton, Maya Deren, Marie Menken, Abigail Child, Bob Branaman, Jack Smith, Yoko Ono and Stan Brakhage, Fialka reviews first-person lyrical visions. This multi-media event includes rare film clips of Diane DiPrima, Amiri Baraka, Bukowski, Beckett, Burroughs and Gary Snyder, as well as live readings accompanied by film projections that stir up new metaphors via self-reflexive synthesis. Come into deeper awareness of synesthesia and the non-physical via spoken word and moving image art. "All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling." - Oscar Wilde. Radically change the paradigms of sense ratio shifting. Turn the eye into an ear ala McLuhan's percepts. Fialka's observations provoke the rascality retrieval of Man (Cine-poem) Ray and Curtis Harrington, who transformed Poe into cinema. "Poets understand texts better than most information technologists." - Jerome McGann. "You don't have to be a communist to be anti-capitalist. It is enough to be a poet." - Jonas Mekas, seminal experimental filmmaker.
THURSDAY, Oct 4 - MARK CANTOR's JAZZ FILMS - Screening and discussing sonic cinema, seminal historian CANTOR pulls from his stellar collection of over 4,000 separate titles to feature rarities in jazz, blues, Swing, Western Swing, pop, rhythm and blues, country-western, vernacular dance & vaudeville with Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan, Benny Goodman, Ernie Andrews, Art Blakey, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Buddy Collette, Erroll Garner, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Louis Armstrong, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, Dinah Washington and many more. http://www.youtube.com/user/CantorJazzOnFilm?feature=watch "Mark Cantor has one of the very best collections of jazz films in the world. He was an invaluable asset to our Jazz series whose generous advice helped us unearth some extraordinary footage. Mark is an essential resource to anyone making a film about jazz." - Ken Burns. Film archivist and historian Mark Cantor has been active as a researcher and preservationist in the area of music on film for the past thirty years. During that time he has assembled one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of popular music on film existing in the United States.....more than four thousand titles in total. Along with the public exhibitions of jazz and blues films, Mr. Cantor has served as a consultant in the production of a large number of documentaries and feature film presentations. His footage has been widely used by television/documentary/CD ROM producers, and has been shared in such presentations as "The Soundies: Music For the Eyes"; "Celebrating Bird"; "The Many Faces of Billie Holiday"; "Satchmo"; "Glenn Miller - America's Musical Hero"; "Thelonius Monk: Monk's Music"; "Benny Goodman: Adventures In The Land Of Swing"; the Academy Award-nominated "A Great Day In Harlem," and its follow-up, "The Spitball Story"; "Ella Fitzgerald - Something To Live For." Mr. Cantor was a consultant and archivist for both the Showtime special "It's Black Entertainment" as well as Ken Burns' nineteen-hour television documentary "Jazz." In 2007 Mr. Cantor was the lead consultant and on-screen commentator for the PBS special "Soundies: A Musical History." As a well-known authority on the subject of music on film, Mr. Cantor is contacted on a regular basis by filmmakers, television producers, newspersons and writers for information relating to jazz music and its documentation on film. He regularly publishes articles on jazz film in the Journal of the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors.http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2012/03/mark-cantors-treasure-trove-of-vintage-jazz-footage-on-film.html
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-06-04/news/va-43088_1_jazz-film
THURS, Nov 1: 2nd Annual LARRY "WILD MAN" FISCHER NITE - Celebrate a sympathetic and touching journey through the thunderstorms of the mind of paranoid-schizophrenic Larry "Wild Man" Fischer and his discordant encounters in the music business live readings, performances and rare film clips. Fischer wandered the mean streets of L.A. singing his totally unique brand of songs for 10¢ to passersby. He was discovered by Frank Zappa, with whom he cut his first record album, including the enduring dada rock classic "Merry Go Round." A precursor to punk, Fischer became an underground club and concert favorite. Over the course of 40 years, he appeared on national television (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in) and the Top 50 music charts in England, was the subject of his own comic book, was the first artist to be recorded on Rhino Records, and sang a duet with Rosemary Clooney. Hear testimonies in DERAILROADED: INSIDE THE MIND OF LARRY "WILD MAN" FISCHER, Josh Rubin & Jeremy Lubin's acclaimed 2006 documentary, with Frank & Gail Zappa, Weird Al Yankovic, Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh, Solomon Burke, Dr. Demento, and Billy Mumy (Barnes & Barnes). "The troubled life & distorted times of LA's 'Godfather of Outsider Music'...equal parts hilarity & heartbreak" -MOJO.
THURS, Dec 6: VERONIKA KRAUSAS' MUSIC & FILMS - Composer Veronika Krausas screens films and discusses her music. "In all her creative endeavors, be they music, performance, film or photography, she is a compiler, forging compositions in a literal sense through a vast archive of accumulated observations and the unlikely connections between them. Sonically and visually, she is intrigued by dissonance. Krausas is a student of randomness, engineering conceptual juxtapositions of elements that have haphazardly intruded into her consciousness and piqued her interest." -Shan Nys Dambrot, Art Critic & LA Weekly. "Krausas' extraordinary works eschew the commonplace, the pretty, and the predictably lyric sensibility to explore a more provocative and uncharted path…a sortie into an incongruous universe where forking paths inexplicably converge, and where discordances co-exist in subtle sympathy… [Her] pieces invoke a place beyond comfort or familiarity, and deliver the listener into a crossroads of authentic grace, discovery, and delight." - Quintan Ana Wikswo, Catalysis Projects. http://www.veronikakrausas.com/
Thurs, Jan 3, 2013- TENTH Annual VENICE FILM FEST - Colorful history of films made in Venice California, and celebration of the otherwordly happenings at the legendary Venice West Gallery (birthplace of the Beats), aka Sponto Gallery with live performances. Experience the essence of Spontofication Rituals in art, music, poetry and the freedom of creativity. This year features Wadada (seminal Venice street performer of roots-rock-reggae), Lynne Littman's 1976 Oscar-winning short film about Jewish elders in Venice Number Our Days, and Buddy Clark's infamous 70 minute film of the legendary Dumpster Diving Fashion Show from Sponto Gallery.
Sat, Feb 4, 2013 - Third annual POETRY OF VENICE PHOTOGRAPHY - 2-4pm: panel discussion , 4-7pm: Opening for PHOTO SHOW in Gallery, free admission Paramedia ecologist Gerry Fialka hosts a panel discussion of award-winning Venice photographers, who explore landscapes of the human psyche and push pictorial representation beyond! Examine the trance-inducing transforming power of cameras in our community by way of McLuhan. With KRISTY CAMPBELL, MARGARET MOLLOY, SARAH SEELINGER. Photo show also includes:
Dave Healey http://www.davidhealeyphotography.com/ (Time Magazine, NY & LA Times), Alfred Benjamin (Holocaust survivor who shot Hitler in his teens http://photo.net/leica-rangefinders-forum/00JFeb), Leland Auslender (also shot experimental films of Venice West Cafe over 4 decades ago), Ned Sloane, Todd Von Hoffmann, Don Beswick.
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more 2013 events:
April 6 and Oct 19, 2013 - TBA
SAT, July 20, 2013 730pm SUZY WILLIAMS - THE LIT SHOW is the 7th annual celebration of song and literature starring LA's Diva Deluxe & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Hafitz, Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Admission $15 Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the song. "Suzy's voice is vibrant and lusty...great gusto and bold emotion." - Nat Hentoff. Admission $15
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ARCHIVES:
Gerry Fialka started producing events at Beyond Baroque years ago. His interview series MESS have included John SInclair, Ann Magnuson, Ed Landler, Simon Forti and more.
His special events have included:
MESS (Media Ecology Soul Sessions) on 11-11-07: DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL: LA ALT RADIO HISTORY with GERRY FIALKA, Reverend Dan of Music For Nimrods, Stray Pop's Stella and Martin Perlich
The Genuine Fake Fake Fake (Fake) Film Festival http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuWGzxWRjrc
and more
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2011 archive-
at Beyond Baroque http://beyondbaroque.org/ 681 Venice Blvd, Venice, CA 90291, 310-822-3006,
SAT, Feb 5, 2-4 for panel discussion - No one turned away due to lack of funds, $7 admission
4-7pm Opening for PHOTO SHOW in Gallery, free admission
POETRY OF VENICE PHOTOGRAPHY - Paramedia ecologist Gerry Fialka hosts a panel discussion of award-winning Venice photographers, who explore landscapes of the human psyche and push pictorial representation beyond! Examine the trance-inducing transforming power of cameras in our community by way of McLuhan. With Dave Healey http://www.davidhealeyphotography.com/ (Time Magazine, NY & LA Times), Alfred Benjamin (Holocaust survivor who shot Hitler in his teens http://photo.net/leica-rangefinders-forum/00JFeb), Leland Auslender (also shot experimental films of Venice West Cafe over 4 decades ago) and Kristy Campbell http://www.kristycampbell.com/ and more. INCLUDES PHOTO SHOW in GALLERY .

SAT, April 9. 7:30pm. BUNUEL & BEEFHEART: B&B SOFTWARE
- Music-Film-Poetry Fusioneer Gerry Fialka's last sigh is "I've gotta beef in my heart." Imagine the meta-mystery when the where's and how's of these two Dadas, Luis Bunuel and Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) meet in this vibrANT interactive workshop with live recitations from Beefheart's lyrics and Bunuel's nonpareil autobiography My Last Sigh, and ultra-rare film clips. Study the evolution of environments shaped by their technologies (film, music, books, paintings) and the hidden effects. With special guests & Reverend Dan of MusicforNimrods.net. No one turned away due to lack of funds.
Thurs, June 2. IN BLOOM - 7pm Celebrate James Joyce's Bloomsday with rare film clips and live readings from The Marshall McLuhan-Finnegans Wake Reading Club http://www.venicewake.org/ who prioritize effects before causes. The gap is where the action is. Mash up resonating intervals with magical parallelisms. As McLuhan is music of the future, Joyce's doubleness in Ulysses bridges the ancient and modern worlds by a continuous parallel of the interface between myth and realism, order and anarchy. "Joyce uses the pun as a way of seeing the paradoxical exuberance of being through language. - McLuhan. Percept plunder for the recent future.
FRIDAY, June 3, 7:30pm. HAWBUCKIN' HOBOS - Why was dressing up like hobos for Halloween so popular for baby boomers? Cultural anthropologist Fialka explores America's affection for free spirit and the open road. Utilizing rare audio and film clips, Fialka arouses insight into music experimenter/hobo Harry Partch and folk singer/labor & peace activist Utah Phillips, who said "Anarchy is making rules for yourself, not others." Ride the rails and taste the Mulligan stew of the genuine tramp troubadour Harry "Haywire Mac" McClintock. "My hobohemia is the place to be" - Lorenz Hart. What is the difference between a bum and a hobo? Beyond Baroquer Richard Modiano was told by Allen Ginsberg that one past Halloween Allen and Bob Dylan dressed up like hobos and went trick or treating with Bob's kids. With special guests & Reverend Dan of MusicforNimrods.net. No one turned away due to lack of funds.
SAT, July 16, 7:30pm. THE LIT SHOW is a 6th annual celebration of song and literature starring LA's Diva Deluxe SUZY WILLIAMS & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the song. Admission: $15.
SAT, Sept 24. 7:30pm. RED POET (2010, 60m) Filmmaker Matthew Furey’s Red Poet paints a soulful picture of San Francisco’s own Jack Hirschman and brings to the silver screen the singular life of a troubadour for modern times. A modest Bronx childhood leads to a shooting star career in academia. Short-lived teaching posts at Dartmouth and UCLA give way to an all but homeless life as a North Beach hipster of the street. Through it all Hirschman perseveres, publishing 45 books of poetry and making Poet Laureate of his beloved city in 2006. Red Poet is a life story lived on its own terms: "This is not a film of a Poet! Whether you know Jack Hirschman as the last Beat, US Mensch #1, the most unflagging political poet on the planet...after seeing Red Poet you will have a new friend, a new source of inspiration and just possibly a renewed belief that maybe species homo sapiens ain’t so bad after all!” - Bob Holman. No one turned away due to lack of funds. Also LIVE readings of radical political poetry hosted by Gerry Fialka and Richard Modiano.
Sat, Oct 22, 7:30pm. BEYOND GESAMTKUNSTWERK - The German composer Richard Wagner first used the term "Gesamtkunstwerk" ("the total artwork") in his 1849 essay "Art & Revolution." Paramedia Artist Gerry Fialka joins with local filmmakers (John Cannizzaro & Mark X Farina), poets, musicians, dancers & Reverend Dan of MusicforNimrods.net to reinvent this multi-media, intermedia and transmedia extravaganza, aka "Gesamtkunstwerk". The one-of-a-kind interactive immersion teaches the history and future of live cinema. Expand "centers without margins" in an interdisciplinary collaboration of film, video, dialogue, theater and music. By reinventing the influences of Melies, Vertov, Warhol, Marker, James Joyce and more, participants transform the boundaries between art and science. All crew, no passengers! Explore circling the square and the mysteries of art. With anticipatory mindfulness, this multimedia synthesis shows how artists work much faster than theories evolve. Get educated as entertainingly as possible and discover what comes after the Internet. Entertrainment? "Will it be an event about a fake original or original fake?" - Peter Greenaway. They become what they behold.
From Buñuel's live narration to Stan VanDerBeek's exemplary multi-media Movie-Drome to Gene Youngblood's Synaesthetic Cinema to Ann Arbor Film Festival's Pat Olesko's interactions with her filmic self, the combo of film and the physical body has been transformative. Carolee Schneemann, Sun Ra and PXL THIS's King Kukulele have used their bodies as projection screens. Fialka surveys the historical context of pioneers Jack Smith and Alan Kaprow, who dissolved boundaries between film, art and life.
Cultural Revolutionary Gerry Fialka and participants' fun otherness probes the creative process and interrelations between experimenters and audience. The mash-ups and transformations of cinema with new media, video, computers, and performance art are deeply examined and demonstrated.
Explore the creative process by retooling McLuhan's percept: "May I suggest art in the electronic age is not a form of self-expression, but a kind of research and probing. It is not a private need of expression that motivates the artist, but the need of involvement in the total audience. This is humanism in reverse, art in the electric age is the experience, not of the individual, but of a collectivity." No one turned away due to lack of funds.
MOVED TO BEYOND BAROQUE -Thurs, June 2. IN BLOOM - 6:30 party and 7pm for films Celebrate James Joyce's Bloomsday with rare film clips and live readings from The Marshall McLuhan-Finnegans Wake Reading Club http://www.venicewake.org/ who prioritize effects before causes. The gap is where the action is. Mash up resonating intervals with magical parallelisms. As McLuhan is music of the future, Joyce's doubleness in Ulysses bridges the ancient and modern worlds by a continuous parallel of the interface between myth and realism, order and anarchy. "Joyce uses the pun as a way of seeing the paradoxical exuberance of being through language. - McLuhan. Percept plunder for the recent future. Also join us for Gerry Fialka’s presentation on James Joyce and Experimental Film https://www.laughtears.com/wakedreamawake.html at http://www.joyceconference2011.com/
Celebrate the relighting of the Sponto NEON SIGN - 7 Dudley Cinema at 4 minutes and 20 seconds after 7pm, party starts at 630pm on the front lawn
6:30 -party on the front lawn of Beyond Baroque lawn
7:04:20 - Relighting of SPONTO neon
7:15 FILM: (free in theater) Wing Of Art- Joseph Campbell on Finnegans Wake (57 minutes, 1990)
8:15 FILM: The Unlucky Sailor (9 Unread Chapters of Finnegans Wake) (36 m, 2010) by Gary Kibbins “Kibbins’s new films raise profound questions about the languages used to construct and deconstruct the world, while at the same time having that rare quality of being uniquely, laugh-out-loud funny.”
9:00 FILM: Joseph Campbell on Ulysses (57m, 1990)
Thurs, July 7. LIT SHOW FILM FEST - 7pm - Cinematic preview for Suzy WIlliams' LIT SHOW July 16 - rare film clips with/about Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Marlon Brando singing Tennessee Williams lyrics.
Thurs, Aug 4. SEVEN DEADLY CINEMA - experimental films to political activist cinema to lit, art, poetry, music flix to avant garde documentaries, this series provokes new questions and features fiery discussions. (titles TBA)

Thurs, Sept 1. ATOMIC SUBLIME (2010, 72min) at 7pm. Jesse Lerner's (in person) enlightening found footage collage essay engages the history and politics of modern art in the United States. There is a fundamental tension at the heart of this history, a tension that helps define the structure of this experimental documentary. On one hand the Abstract Expressionist painters, like many other modern artists working in the USA during the years after World War II, were often red-baited. Given that modern art originated in Europe, the critics stated, it was almost certainly (at the very least) “un-American,” if not dangerously communist and subversive. At the same time, the USSR endorsed [socialist] realist painting, and tolerated very little else. For those who sought to define the USA in opposition to the Soviet Union, the monopoly that figurative painting enjoyed on the other side of the Iron Curtain implied that abstraction out to be an ally of capitalist democracy. Perhaps for this reason, and certainly quite improbably, the U.S. State Department exported Abstract Expressionist painting (and photographic reproduction of these works) around the world. The debate over the political underpinnings of gestural abstraction rarely addressed the artworks themselves; it rather provided a forum for conflicting ideological and cultural agendas to rehearse their differences in a new arena. Found footage filmmaking struck me as a particularly appropriate way to tell this story, not simply because the great wealth of little-known material that could be enlisted to tell this history, but also as an acknowledgement of the work of some of the Abstract Expressionists’ most striking contemporaries on the West Coast (e.g. Bruce Conner, Wallace Berman) who used assemblage and collage for very different ends. Their work often brought into the foreground the political concerns (and the always looming threat of nuclear annihilation) that so-called “New York School” always left implicit. While researching this complex story of culture and politics, its contemporary resonances struck me as powerful and telling. More than a series of historical episodes--some little known, others familiar--the narrative that this documentary relates is a timely one about the relations between the state and the arts, and about the politics, fear and ideology too often exiled from the histories of modernism. "After watching any or all of Lerner's films, you are likely to have a bundle of questions stockpiled in your freshly zapped brain" -GreenCine.com
Thurs, Nov 3. DERAILROADED: INSIDE THE MIND OF LARRY "WILD MAN" FISCHER (2006, 86m) at 8pm. Josh Rubin & Jeremy Lubin's (in person) sympathetic and touching journey through the thunderstorms of the mind of paranoid-schizophrenic Larry "Wild Man" Fischer follows his discordant encounters in the music business. Fischer wandered the mean streets of L.A. singing his totally unique brand of songs for 10¢ to passersby. He was discovered by Frank Zappa, with whom he cut his first record album, including the enduring dada rock classic "Merry Go Round." A precursor to punk, Fischer became an underground club and concert favorite. Over the course of 40 years, he appeared on national television (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in) and the Top 50 music charts in England, was the subject of his own comic book, was the first artist to be recorded on Rhino Records, and sang a duet with Rosemary Clooney. With Frank & Gail Zappa, Weird Al Yankovic, Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh, Solomon Burke, Dr. Demento, and Billy Mumy (Barnes & Barnes). "The troubled life & distorted times of LA's 'Godfather of Outsider Music'...equal parts hilarity & heartbreak" -MOJO. Preshow at 7pm features live readings and performances.

Thurs, Dec 1, 2011. YANQUI WALKER AND THE OPTICAL REVOLUTION (2009, 33m) at 7pm - Kathryn Ramey's inspired experimental documentary about a, now obscure, American expansionist and military dictator, William Walker who, through military force and coercion, became president of Nicaragua in 1856. The film blends found footage, documentary photography, ethnographic inquiry and personal travelogue with experimental film techniques such as hand-processing, optical printing and hand conducted time-lapse to detour and derail the various approaches to history making that have been applied to this story. Yanqui WALKER as a contemporary work of film art, not only tells us something about history and how it connects to current political, social and economic situations but also how art and poetry can be a means to subvert and transcend even the most oppressive of narratives. Seminal experimental filmmaker/curator Jonas Mekas says "You don't have to be a communist to be anti-capitalist. It is enough to be a poet." PONTECORVO's POLITICAL POETRY at 8pm - Rare clips and fiery discussion on the motives and consequences of the acclaimed 1965 film of urban terrorist insurgency THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, which was obligatory viewing for the Black Panthers, and was used as a training film for Bush's Pentagon's special operations chiefs in 2003. Pauline Kael wrote " Gillo Pontecorvo is the most dangerous type of Marxist - a Marxist poet."
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more 2012 archive-
Thurs, Jan 5, 2012 - Ninth Annual VENICE FILM FEST - Colorful history of films made in Venice California, and celebration of the otherwordly happenings at the legendary Venice West Gallery (birthplace of the Beats), aka Sponto Gallery with live performances. Experience the essence of Spontofication Rituals in art, music, poetry and the freedom of creativity.

Thurs, Feb 2 - NATASHA MAIDOFF FILMS & MORE - Venice dancer/filmmaker MAIDOFF's (in person) sensual cinematic explorations set modern fables in motion. With more experimental films by Marc Olmsted, Alfonso ALvarez, Thad Povey, Jeanne C. Finley & John Muse. Free


Sat, Feb 4 - Second annual POETRY OF VENICE PHOTOGRAPHY - 2-4pm: panel discussion , 4-7pm: Opening for PHOTO SHOW in Gallery, free admission Paramedia ecologist Gerry Fialka hosts a panel discussion of award-winning Venice photographers, who explore landscapes of the human psyche and push pictorial representation beyond! Examine the trance-inducing transforming power of cameras in our community by way of McLuhan. With KRISTY CAMPBELL, PAULA GOLDMAN, MARGARET MOLLOY, SARAH SEELINGER.
Photo show aslo includes:
Dave Healey http://www.davidhealeyphotography.com/ (Time Magazine, NY & LA Times), Alfred Benjamin (Holocaust survivor who shot Hitler in his teens http://photo.net/leica-rangefinders-forum/00JFeb), Leland Auslender (also shot experimental films of Venice West Cafe over 4 decades ago), Ned Sloane, Todd Von Hoffmann, Don Beswick.

Thurs, March 1 - HELEN HILL FILMS - Magical cinema by seminal experimental animator & social activist who championed low-budget and do-it-yourself approaches to filmmaking. With husband PAUL GAILIUNAS' (in person) The Florestine Collection - 100 handmade dresses found in a trash pile in New Orleans. Free
The Florestine Collection (2009,31min) Experimental Animator Helen Hill found more than 100 handmade dresses in a trash pile on one Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans. She set out to make a film about the dressmaker, a deceased African-American seamstress. The dresses and much of the film footage were later flood-damaged by Hurricane Katrina while Helen was still working on the film. Helen was murdered in a home invasion in New Orleans in 2007. Her husband Paul Gailiunas completed the film, which includes Helen’s original silhouette, cut-out, and puppet animation, as well as flood-damaged and restored home movies.
Thurs, April 5 - ROD BRADLEY FILMS - BRADLEY's (in person) moving portraits of poets, painters and jazz musicians reveal inner consciousness. Free
SAT, June 2 - MESSIN' With MEZZ MEZZROW - Gerry Fialka & jazzbos reinvent the seminal music book Really The Blues by Mezz Mezzrow (Louis Armstrong's herbalist) and Bernard Wolfe (cybernetics pioneer) with LIVE music, readings and rare film clips. Mezz influenced everybody from Henry Miller to the Beats to Tom Waits to gangster rappers. This book is the On The Road of its time.
Also at http://litquake.org/ Oct 14, 2012 at http://www.birdbeckett.com/ bookstore 430pm free
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"My four hour conversation with Gerry Fialka was fun and enlightening. I agree with art critic Doug Harvey that Fialka should have his own department at Cal Arts. His astute probing of James Joyce, McLuhan, Duchamp, Zappa and the hidden psychic effects of media is infectious and comprehensive." - Historian Paul Cronin https://laughtears.com/workshops_summary.html

To screen your film, contact: Gerry Fialka pfsuzy@aol.com, 310-306-7330, laughtears.com
"The atmosphere is wildly eclectic and the programming excitingly nonjudgmental: High, low, old, new, obscure, pop, the good, the bad, and the ugly...The place is open to everything and bursting with ideas." - Village Voice on Anthology Film Archives in NY - much like we provide.
Fialka's new book project - AVANT GARDE FILM & The ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL HISTORY BOOK
https://www.laughtears.com/Ann%20Arbor%20Film%20Festival.html
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ALSO join us: The Marshall McLuhan-Finnegans Wake Reading Club http://www.venicewake.org/
& Gerry Fialka’s presentation on James Joyce and Experimental Film https://www.laughtears.com/wakedreamawake.html

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