About the Event
A Night of 16mm Conspiracy: UFO! JFK! CIA! ON FILM!
Programmed by Adam Paradis
Friday, November 22, 7:00pm
TRIBULATION 99: ALIEN ANOMALIES UNDER AMERICA
Craig Baldwin, 1991, 48min, 16mm
Unrelentingly lurid and equally hilarious, TRIBULATION 99: ALIEN ANOMALIES UNDER AMERICA might be an X-ray of a rabid slacker’s seething brain. This 48-min. “pseudo-pseudo-documentary” is a skewed history of US intervention in Latin America AND a hysterical satire of conspiracy theory. With a sci-fi plot suggesting that current unrest can be blamed on space aliens who live under atomic test sites, the film illustrates its argument with images culled from newsreels, horror flicks, and everything in between. The film may induce in some the symptoms of information overload, brought on by the flashing graphics, manic gestures, and cheesy special effects. – Other Cinema
ROSWELL
Bill Brown, 1994, 20min, 16mm
“Bill Brown’s ROSWELL … takes a fanciful, humorous look at the supposed crash of a flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, an ‘event’ UFO-types cite to this day as evidence of a massive government cover-up. Brown, a recent Harvard graduate who appears in the film and whose voice is heard on the sound track, seems to take the event seriously. He wonders what the craft was doing in Roswell of all places, speculating it was piloted by a ‘star boy … joyriding through the cosmos’ who ‘got lost and lost control.’ But Brown also sees his subject playfully, as if through a child’s eyes - objects suggest others, nothing has a stable meaning, flying saucers are fun. The film begins with a Frisbee flying through the air, a metaphor repeated many times. The fish-eye lens used for some landscape shots curves the horizon line, making the sky seem enclosed - navigable, traversable. In the film’s strongest image Brown stands facing the camera with a sheaf of papers in his hand, as an animated drawing of a spaceship scoots across the paper, suggesting a connection between UFO fantasies and the magical possibilities of cinema.” - Fred Camper, reviewing the Onion City Film Festival in the Chicago Reader.
Discounted parking available in Founder’s Court lot, $6 flat fee, credit card required.
Free and open to the public.
