An Evening with Lewis Klahr Prolix Satori (2008–2010) + More

Klahr often groups his short films into larger series, and his residency award invigorated him to create a flurry of videos that inaugurate a major new open-ended series, Prolix Satori, which Klahr foresees working on for the rest of his career.

At tonight’s screening Klahr will be on hand to unveil (at least) six new Prolix Satori animations. Wednesday Morning Two A.M. (2009), the winner of a Tiger Award for short film at the 2010 Rotterdam Film Festival, is a twice-told tale of lost love set to songs by 1960s’ girl-group The Shangri-Las. Lethe (2009) presents an affecting 22-minute melodrama scored to a plangent symphony by Gustav Mahler. False Aging (2008), also part of this series, was voted one of the best films of the decade by several participants in a recent Film Comment poll. In addition to the Prolix Satori videos, the program features samples of Klahr’s exquisite 16mm film work, including his masterful Daylight Moon (2002), which offers a child’s view of film noir. (app. 100 mins., video and 16mm)

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This evening's screening includes the following films:

Her Fragrant Emulsion (1987) (11 mins., 30 secs., 16mm)
“In Her Fragrant Emulsion, Klahr immolates himself in the androgynous presence of [the] marginalized actress, nitro-burning funny-car diva Mimsy Farmer (Hot Rods to Hell, Riot on Sunset Strip).… He glues onto clear film leader tiny sliced strips and celluloid shrapnel bits of her Mimsiness clawed and gorged out of the 1969 shot-in-Italy hippie-noir feature Road to Salina. The images in Fragrant Emulsion barrage the viewer exclusively with elusive and erotic glimpses of this somewhat Sebergian former star of what can now be wistfully called skin flicks. The 8mm textures and enervated color of the serrated images rip open a piñata of sad nostalgias…”—Guy Maddin, Village Voice

Daylight Moon (2002) (13 mins., 16mm)
“There are things I could say about Daylight Moon, but very few I want to before someone sees it. But I will say this: of all the films I’ve made using collage to muck around in the past, this one gets the closest to what I’m after.”—Lewis Klahr

False Aging (2008) (14 mins., 30 secs., video)
“It’s hard to believe that False Aging clocks in at under 15 minutes, given how powerfully it evokes passing decades punctuated by muffled eruptions of longing and regret. A button revolves around a clock—and the world moves with it. Klahr shares Joseph Cornell’s alchemical genius, but his collaged reveries cast deeper shadows and offer little magical protection from death and disappointment.”—Kristin M. Jones, Film Comment, Top Ten Films of 2008

Wednesday Morning Two AM (2009) (6 mins., 30 secs., video)
"This is the first completed film of a new series entitled 'Couplets.' These will generally, but not exclusively, organize themselves around the pairing of various pop songs and, just as in these song lyrics, the theme of love."—Lewis Klahr

"An intimate and poetic study of the darkness of love and the beauty of texture—Wednesday Morning Two AM combines figurative realism with pure abstraction to remind us of the value of the small and the handmade."—International Film Festival Rotterdam Tiger Award short film jury statement

Interview with Klahr

Nimbus Smile (2009) (8 mins., 30 secs., video)
Nimbus Seeds (2009) (8 mins., 30 secs., video)
Cumulonimbus (2010) (9 mins., video)
In this grouping of three related videos on the subject of romantic triangles, Klahr expands his explorations of memory, love, repetition, narrative, and loss in surprising new ways until the films build into complex emotional and artistic experiences. His approach to inter-film montage (the interconnected relationship of different films to each other) reaches its fullest expression with these new works.

Lethe (2009) (22 mins., video)
One of Klahr's longest films, and one of his most straightforward narrative melodramas, Lethe conjures up the full emotional spectrum and storytelling potential of a film by Vincente Minnelli or Douglas Sirk, even though the only sets and actors are cut-out pieces of paper brought to life by Klahr’s imagination and storytelling abilities. Without sacrificing his signature forms of poetic abstraction and uncanny imagery, Klahr tells a tale ripped out of a pulp novel. An older scientist devises a way to win the love of a beautiful younger woman, and the film deals with the psychic fallout of this relationship rains on the woman.

Studio Visit with Filmmaker Lewis Klahr from Wexner Center on Vimeo.