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Spring Forward: REDCAT 2010

By Holly Willis
December 14, 2009
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Here's what I like in a movie: "No montage, no human subjects, minimal visual content, and the artists basically pissing on the fourth wall by calling attention in every way possible to the artifice of what they're doing." This is how Chris Langdon and Fred Worden described their 10-minute, 16mm film Venusville, from 1973. The pair, then students at CalArts, made a series of irreverent punk films that played with filmmaking conventions, and several of these will be screened in a show titled "Now, You Can Do Anything: The Films of Chris Langdon" in January at REDCAT, the downtown center for contemporary culture organized by California Institute for the Arts. Indeed, REDCAT just announced its spring 2010 line-up, and the film program includes an exhilarating list of works by avant-garde filmmakers who've been making cutting edge films for more than a decade. The opening show features the first digital project by LA filmmaker James Benning, for example, while later shows include a dual-projector screening of When It Was Blue by Jennifer Reeves, work by the amazingly talented experimental filmmaker Julie Murray in April and two more poetic documentaries by LA-based photographer and filmmaker Sharon Lockhart. Download a PDF of the spring schedule here, or see more at the REDCAT site. [Image: from Venusville]

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