The following notes on the Cinema 16 Anthology program were written by Matt St. John, PhD, Manuscript Specialist at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Television Research (WCFTR). This program of short films, the culmination of a series at the Chazen Museum of Art that has put the spotlight on the collections of the WCFTR, will screen on Sunday, April 27 at 2 p.m. The Chazen is located at 750 University Avenue. Admission is free!
By Matt St. John
Selections in this program:
A Movie (Director: Bruce Conner, 1958, 12 min.), Bridges-Go-Round (Director: Shirley Clarke, 1958, 8 min.), La Taranta (Director: Gianfranco Mingozzi, 1961, 19 min.), Gyromorphosis (Director: Hy Hirsh, 1956, 7 min.), Laughing Gravy (Director: James Horne, 1931, 20 min.), Metrographic (Director: Vittorio Speich, 1958, 3 min.), Les Bains de Mer (Happy Days, Directors: Jean L’Hote and Charles Prost, 1959, 15 min.).
A program that presents the experimental films of Shirley Clarke and Bruce Conner alongside the antics of Laurel and Hardy may seem strange at first glance, and it is, undeniably. But such surprising pairings frequently appeared in the eclectic, creative programming at the renowned film society Cinema 16. Amos Vogel started Cinema 16 alongside his wife Marcia Vogel in New York City in 1947, and the non-profit film society was an institution of the city’s film culture from its establishment until its end, due to financial constraints, in 1963. The program for each month was typically shown four or five times, and screenings took place at the 1600-seat auditorium at the Central High School of Needle Trades (now the High School of Fashion Industries) and at other Manhattan venues like the Paris Theatre and the Beekman Theatre. With 7000 members at one point, Cinema 16 was the largest film society in the U.S.
Over sixteen years, the Vogels presented films that could not be seen theatrically elsewhere, such as avant-garde films, documentaries, and medical films, to the enthusiastic audience of Cinema 16 members. In the 1952-1953 brochure, Amos Vogel described the need to structure the film society as private screenings for members: “Legal restrictions, censorship regulations, profit considerations prevent public showing of a vast store of outstanding social documentaries, controversial adult screen fare, advanced experimental films, classics of the international cinema, and medical-psychiatric studies.” In many of the monthly programs that he curated, Vogel balanced challenging, sometimes disturbing selections that would run afoul of censors (or the tastes of mainstream film exhibitors) with more approachable, lighthearted fare. He also distributed many of the titles to other film societies, making his taste a major influence on the film society culture that grew across the United States starting in the 1950s.
Cinema 16 programs typically included short films pulled from a few disparate categories. In brochures and program notes, the films for each screening were often labeled by category: scientific, experimental, documentary, dance, comedy, and many others. In a 1948 article titled “Cinema 16 Explained,” Vogel describes the motivation for this type of programming, which began with the earliest screenings in 1947 and lasted throughout the film society’s existence, as a way “to reach a broader and more differentiated audience.” Cinema 16 occasionally showed features, like Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959), which screened at Cinematheque earlier this semester. Other programs were organized around specific topics. For example, the February 1956 program “The Brain” featured a set of restricted medical and psychiatric films, and the May 1956 program “Horror in the Cinema” paired excerpts from films including Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925) and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Roy William Neill, 1943) with a full screening of Jacques Tourneur’s feature Cat People (1942). Despite the variations, Vogel most often curated the monthly Cinema 16 program by pulling films from a range of categories.
The selections for this Cinematheque program were inspired by that approach, with seven films that Vogel screened or distributed through Cinema 16: experimental shorts (A Movie, Bridges-Go-Round, and Gyromorphosis), an animated film (Metrographic), a documentary (La Taranta), a comedy (Laughing Gravy), and something in-between: a satirical travelogue (Les Bains de Mer). The films are all presented on 16mm or 35mm prints from the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, with some titles from Vogel’s collection at the archive.
This program begins with two acclaimed and influential experimental films, both from 1958. After screening it in January 1961, Vogel described Bruce Conner’s A Movie in the Cinema 16 rental catalog as “a pessimistic comedy of executions, catastrophes and sex, magically compiled from cowboy films, movie titles, calendar art, jungle movies and newsreels.” Bruce Conner is among the major experimental filmmakers who Vogel promoted to American audiences, like the second filmmaker in this program, Shirley Clarke. The 1959-1960 Cinema 16 brochure briefly characterizes Bridges-Go-Round as “Sensuous patterns of bridges in space.” This print of Bridges-Go-Round includes both versions of the film back-to-back, as director Shirley Clarke often showed it. The first version features the score by Louis and Bebe Barron, and the second is scored by jazz producer Teo Macero.
The third of the selections represents a type of documentary that Vogel frequently programmed at Cinema 16, an ethnographic film about a unique social practice. In his March 1963 program notes, Vogel describes La Taranta as an “authentic ethnological document” that “records the seizures of Italian peasant women who consider themselves bewitched by the mythical spider.” A striking, rare representation of a local tradition, La Taranta also exemplifies the international short films, in this case a documentary, that Vogel brought to audiences.
Vogel showed Hy Hirsh’s 1956 film Gyromorphosis (pictured above) in December 1958, as part of a Cinema 16 program of award winners from the International Experimental Film Festival in Brussels. The program notes include Hirsh’s description of how he approached filming Constant Nieuwenhuys’s constructive sculptures for Gyromorphosis: “I put into motion one by one pieces of this sculpture and with colored lighting filmed them in various details, overlaying the images on the film as they appear and disappear.” The fifth film in this program disrupts the run of experimental and documentary films with a comedy – a strategy often employed by Vogel. In the Cinema 16 rental catalog, Vogel called Laughing Gravy “one of the best Laurel and Hardy comedies” and “a perfect program lightener.” Vogel showed and distributed many Laurel and Hardy shorts through Cinema 16, often placing them in programs where they stood out in stark contrast, presumably as “lightener.”
The last two films in this program are rarely screened shorts from the late 1950s. Vogel distributed both titles after showing them at Cinema 16. In the catalog, he described Vittorio Speich’s animated film Metrographic as “a charming and cryptic fantasy, stylish and irresistible,” and he wrote a brief, enticing summary of Les Bains de Mer (Happy Days): “A satirical and candid impression of French bourgeois ‘enjoying’ the seashore, written and directed by [Jacques] Tati’s gagwriter, Jean l’Hote.”
While experimental films are often siloed in discrete program blocks today, Vogel’s Cinema 16 brochures, program notes, and distribution catalog show a different approach – one that celebrates the breadth of filmmaking that lies outside the commercial mainstream, and even takes detours to appreciate some of the mainstream’s finest comedic work. Vogel’s taste was deeply expansive, and this screening offers a rare chance to enjoy a range of notable films that he championed.