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Countercultures and Undergrounds at Pacific Film Archive


Rental fee: $12

Discounted fee for BAMPFA members: $8

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Some of the filmmakers on this program explicitly embrace counterculture movements’ radical political goals while others’ ideological concerns are implicit, but all of the films are unified by their allegiance to a range of underground, youth, or countercultural phenomena. Several of the films document performances, ephemeral actions, or interventions in public space. Narcisa Hirsch’s Marabunta involves the interaction of a film audience after seeing Antonioni’s Blow-Up. Enrique Pineda Barnet’s Juventud, rebeldía, revolución offers documentation of a performance by an international collective led by Cuba’s Grupo de Teatro Experimental. Manuel DeLanda’s Ismism captures the filmmaker’s interventions on Manhattan billboards. Sérgio Péo’s Esplendor do martírio visualizes a group of intellectuals occupying and disrupting urban space, later to be removed by the Brazilian military. Rolando Peña, an iconic figure of Venezuela’s avant-garde, produces an impossible dialogue in Cotorra 2, echoing the complex relationship between intellectual debates and the noise of “progress.” Alfredo Gurrola’s Super-8 trip, based on a poem by Tomás Segovia, points to preoccupations of a radical, alternative culture.

—Los Angeles Filmforum

Films in this program:
Juventud, rebeldía, revolución
Enrique Pineda Barnet, Cuba, 1969
Spanish with English subtitles
30 mins, Color, 35mm transferred to digital

Ismism
Manuel DeLanda, Mexico/US, 1979
6 mins, Silent, Color, Super 8 transfered to digital

Marabunta
Narcisa Hirsch, Argentina, 1967
8 mins, B&W, 16mm transferred to digital

Esplendor do martírio
Sérgio Péo, Brazil, 1974
10 mins, Color, Super 8 transfered to digital

Cotorra 2
Rolando Peña, Venezuela, 1976
10 mins, Color, Super 8 transfered to digital

Segunda primera matriz
Alfredo Gurrola, Mexico, 1972
Based on: a poem by Tomás Segovia
Spanish with English subtitles
13 mins, Color, Super 8 transfered to digital

  • Runtime

    85 minutes