Friday August 7, 7:30pm
Recycled and Borrowed: Found Footage works
Videos by Roger Beebe
admission $6 (free for Members) – artist in person!
Still from “Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes), Part 2: The Crying Game” (Roger Beebe, 2014)
Microscope is very pleased to welcome filmmaker and curator Roger Beebe back to New York and the gallery, this time for a rare program of his video works. The night features the debut of Beebe’s just completed “REVERSED RITES/RIVER RIGHTED”, which as indicated by the title re-reverses “River Rites” by Ben Russell; New York premieres of “Congratulations (One Step at a Time”), which will be playing pre-show, and of “Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes), Part 2 “The Crying Game”; as well as a handful of earlier works made during the past decade or so, including “Touch Me Karakoke” (2008) and “Dirty Harry and the Hendersons” (1998).
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ROGER BEEBE has screened his films around the globe at such unlikely venues as the CBS Jumbotron in Times Square and McMurdo Station in Antarctica as well as more likely ones including Sundance and the Museum of Modern Art, with solo shows at Anthology Film Archives, The Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico City, and Los Angeles Filmforum, among many other venues. Beebe is also a film programmer: he ran Flicker, a festival of small-gauge film in Chapel Hill, NC, from 1997-2000 and was the founder and Artistic Director of FLEX, the Florida Experimental Film Festival from 2004-2014. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the Ohio State University.
Program:
Congratulations (One Step at a Time)
2014, HD video, excerpt from 62 minute loop
Notes on gender in the 21st Century. A sad sequel to “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby.”Education as factory farming. Congratulations to the cattle.
Dirty Harry and the Hendersons
1998, 3/4” video, 2 minutes 30 seconds
“Dirty Harry and the Hendersons” is a found footage video that critiques both the rogue cop that I learned to love in my youth and the happy nuclear family with their barely concealed murderous desires.
Famous Irish Americans
2003, DV, 8 minutes
Who’s your famous Irish American? Georgia O’Keefe? William McKinley? Sandra Day O’Connor? How about Shaquille O’Neal? This videotape is a secret history of some of our most overlooked Irish-American citizens; a hyperflat exploration of race, America, and the limits of binary thought.
Touch Me Karaoke
2008, DV, 4 minutes
Maybe it’s a savvy re-reading of the macho posturing of Mudhoney’s indie anthem, but more likely it’s just a (fairly effective?) piece of shock cinema. A sex-ed sing-along.
REVERSED RITES/RIVER RIGHTED
2015, HD video, 11 minutes
Ben Russell’s “RIVER RITES” re-reversed to its original forward motion.
Beginnings
2010/rev. 2011, digital audio, 5 minutes
A lazy man’s Biblical concordance. A new start for the start. A mechanical rescrambling of a(n all-too) familiar audio text that produces concrete poetry and an ideological unveiling. An experiment in “contracted cinema” or a “zero-projector film.”
Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes), Part 2: The Crying Game
2014, HD video, 21 minutes
It’s all right to cry. Sometimes it’s better than all right. Jury Citation, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Honorable Mention, IC Docs Best Personal Documentary, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival.
Still from “Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes), Part 2: The Crying Game” (Roger Beebe, 2014)
All images courtesy of the artist
