Chicago Cinema Forum and Sonotheque present:

THE ACTUALITY SHOW
Fundamentals of Cinema in Tracking Shots, Nature and Kissing (1893 - 1905).

With live musical accompaniment by students of Columbia College's MFA
Music Composition for the Screen program.

'Actuality film': the crude, unorganized footage of a real place,event, thing, etc., generally referring to the first decade of cinema's creation, when filmmakers weren't filmmakers but "operators" who captured nature and the modern world using hand-cranked cameras. Hovering between the mundane (workers leaving a factory) and the
extraordinary (President McKinley makes a personal appearance), these fragments often reveal inadvertent truths about the manipulations inherent to both documentary and fiction filmmaking. Actualities are thought of as static, grainy, boring, primitive (Gorky's "Kingdom of Shadows"); taking a closer look, they contain the ambition of a modern cinema that finds virtue in the simple observation of the world's splendor (contemporary masters such as Hou Hsiao-hsien and Abbas Kiarostami come to mind).

THE ACTUALITY SHOW takes a look at three phenomenon of actualities from 1893- 1905: the invention of the tracking shot by mounting cameras to trains and other movable machinery; the unpredictable, astonishing
presence of nature and wildlife that found its way into the early cinema frame as a testament to the power of documentary; and the human kiss as an electrifying presentiment of the power of a new art form to
inspire love and change.

The program includes PASSAGE THROUGH A TUNNEL and THE GOLDFISH BOWL from the Lumière factory; PROF. WELTON'S BOXING CATS and THE MAY-IRWIN KISS from the Edison Co.; INTERIOR NEW YORK SUBWAY and THE WESTINGHOUSE WORKS by G.W. Bitzer; THE GEORGETOWN LOOP from the Biograph Co.; THE KISS IN THE TUNNEL by George Albert Smith; among many others!

Original music composed and performed by:
Elon Arbiture
Jordan Balagot
Duncan Blickenstaff
Joseph Cooper
Mae Crosby
Andrew Edwards
Victor Hernandez-Sumpfhauser
Robert Ramos
Marjorie Rusche
Nathaniel Smith
Michelle Tyler

Program runs approximately 90 minutes with brief pauses between films.
DVD projection.

Doors open 7, show starts 8pm

$7 cover / 21+ event

FULL DETAILS:
www.chicagocinemaforum.org