ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Nanook of the North (with DJ accompaniment), The Mouse That Roared, and Night of the Living Dead are among the classic 16mm films slated for screening in the Anchorage Museum auditorium at 7 p.m. Wednesdays from Oct. 12 through Dec. 21. Called Celluloid Wednesdays, this midweek film series co-sponsored by the museum and Alaska Moving Image Preservation Association (AMIPA) offers audiences the chance to view celluloid film prints on the big screen. Admission is free.

“Grandmother of today’s cinema, celluloid film is an endangered species prized for its sensual dimension and enduring influence,” says Anchorage Museum Curator of Film and Archives Michael Walsh. “This film format remains a valuable resource for contemporary artists and archivists, and it’s time to revisit these films in their original medium.” Celluloid Wednesdays presents a survey of historic narratives, documentaries, educational, ethnographic and experimental films that reflect the evolution of film as a medium.

In addition to films from AMIPA archives, also showing are new documentaries about legendary artists like Tony Conrad and George and Mike Kuchar, programs dedicated to important living artists working in Northern climates, and films by filmmakers who have dedicated their life’s work to Alaska.

ANCHORAGE MUSEUM

The Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center is the largest museum in Alaska and one of the top 10 most visited attractions in the state. The museum’s mission is to connect people, expand perspectives and encourage global dialogue abut the North and its distinct environment. Learn more at www.anchoragemuseum.org

CELLULOID WEDNESDAYS FILM SCHEDULE

(All films are presented on 16mm unless otherwise noted):

October thru December 2016

7 p.m. Oct. 12
Nanook of the North by Robert Flaherety
1922, Run time: 50 minutes
Live DJ accompaniment by Team Danger
Truth in History?
Subtitled A Story Of Life and Love in the Actual Arctic, this groundbreaking film launched the documentary genre. Robert Flaherty combined ethnography, the travelogue, and fictional filmmaking techniques to reveal the human drama of one Inuit family’s survival in the extreme conditions of Canada’s Hudson Bay. Despite the staged fictional scenes in the film, that can be seen as controversial, it remains a very important work of cinematic history. Co-Sponsored by AMIPA; film from AMIPA collection.

7 p.m. Oct. 19
The Mouse That Roared directed by Jack Arnold starring Peter Sellers
1959, Run time: 1hour 25 minutes
Politics is no laughing matter.
When the tiny nation of Grand Fenwick’s only export, a special wine, begins to be produced in California, their entire economy collapses. Things look dire until Prime Minister Rupert Mountjoy (Peter Sellers) points out that no country that has declared war on the United States has ever gone hungry. When Field Marshall Tully Bascombe (Peter Sellers) and the 23 other men in the Grand Fenwick army invade the United States, their plan to immediately surrender unravels. Co-Sponsored by AMIPA; film from AMIPA collection.

7 p.m. Oct. 26
Night of the Living Dead Directed by George Romero
1969, Run time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Zombie Apocalypse Halloween Celebration
A disparate group of individuals takes refuge in an abandoned house when corpses begin to leave the graveyard in search of fresh human bodies to devour. The pragmatic Ben (Duane Jones) does his best to control the situation, but when the reanimated bodies surround the house, the other survivors begin to panic. As any semblance of order within the group begins to dissipate, the zombies start to find ways inside. Night of the Living Dead was such an underground hit upon its release, it subsequently changed the genre of horror film. Co-Sponsored by AMIPA

7 p.m. Nov. 2
The Alaskan Eskimo
Summer of the Loucheux: Portrait of a Northern Indian Family
Eskimos: A Changing Culture
Right the Wrong: Ethnographic Films with live performance by AKU-MATU
Co-Sponsored by AMIPA; films from AMIPA collection.
7 p.m. Nov. 9
Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present by Tyler Hubby
2016, Run time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Tony Conrad is one of the great American artists of our time, yet to the world at large he remains vastly under appreciated. Since the early 1960s, Conrad’s films and compositions have been the stuff of legend for artists and musicians everywhere. His inter-disciplinary repertoire has single-handedly created and influenced major film and compositional movements. He performed in and recorded the soundtrack to Jack Smith’s legendary Flaming Creatures. He turned the paradigms of cinema upside down with The Flicker, a film composed of only black and white frames. His development and practice of just intonation and minimalism through his work with Stockhausen and La Monte Young still has the music establishment scratching their heads. His pivotal role in the formation of The Velvet Underground has directly or indirectly influenced everyone who has picked up a guitar since. As an early adopter of activist public access television he democratized the emerging medium of portable video. In his later years he continues to perform and make work that pushes the boundaries of reason and he is finally beginning to receive worldwide attention. Utilizing intimate footage of Tony and his collaborators shot over the last 22 years, as well as his own archive of recordings and films, Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present mirrors Conrad’s own playfully radical approach to art making. The non-linear structure Conrad used to wildly free associate his streams of consciousness reveal an honest and humane way of navigating a remarkable, creative life. Projected digitally.

7 p.m. Nov. 16
MOTHER by Vsevolod Pudovkin story by Maxin Gorky
1926, Run time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Pelageya (Vera Baranovskaya) can’t undertand why her son (Nikolai Batajov) is organizing a workers’ strike, while her boorish husband (Aleksandr Chistyakov) is trying to suppress it. When the latter is killed, Pelageya unwittingly gives up her son to the authorities, and is horrified when he is sent to jail. Gradually, as she begins to understand her son’s ideological position, she commits herself to the revolutionary cause and fights to free her son. Co-Sponsored by AMIPA; film from AMIPA collection.

7 p.m. Nov. 30
Local Spotlight: WARD HULBERT, A Life in Celluloid.
Ward Hulbert moved to Alaska in 1958 as a captain in the army. His first post was in the Buckner Building in Whittier. Inspired by it’s people and the landscape, Ward began taking pictures and shooting 16mm film shortly after arriving. He has since become a painter, a sculptor, and video artist. He is currently writing a book about the Buckner Building. Ward will show 35mm slides, 16mm film, digital video and read a few pages from forthcoming book.

7 p.m. Dec. 7
Appropriately Hollywood: Experimental Filmmakers Appropriating Hollywood Imagery
Works screened
Alone, Life Wastes Andy Hardy – Martin Arnold Run time: 15 minutes
A Movie – by Bruce Conner, Run time: 15 minutes
Low Light Life – George Kuchar, Run time: 15 minutes
Scorpio Rising – Kenneth Anger, Run time: 30 minutes
Perils – Abigail Child, Run time: 5 minutes
Outdoor screening on the roof of the 5^th Ave parking garage. Co-sponsored by the Anchorage International Film Festival and the Anchorage Community Development Authority.

7 p.m. Dec. 14
It Came from Kuchar by Jenifer Kroot
2009, Run time: 1 hour 26 minutes
The Kings of Underground Cinema[xyz-ihs snippet=”adsense-body-ad”]Long before YouTube, there were the outrageous, no-budget movies of underground, filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar. George and Mike grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s. At the age of 12, they became obsessed with Hollywood melodramas and began making their own homespun melodramas with their aunt’s 8mm camera. They used their friends and family as actors and their Bronx neighborhood as their set. Early Kuchar titles featured in this film include I Was A Teenage Rumpot and Born of the Wind. In the early 1960’s, alongside Andy Warhol, the Kuchar brothers shaped the New York underground film scene. Known as the “8mm Mozarts,” their films were noticeably different than other underground films of the time. They were wildly funny, but also human and vulnerable. Their films have inspired many filmmakers, including John Waters, Buck Henry, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin and Wayne Wang (all are interviewed in this film). Despite having high profile fans, the Kuchars remain largely unknown because their only ambition is to make movies, not to be famous. Digital projection.

7 p.m. Dec. 21
Orphaned Film Night
Run time: 1 hour and 30 minutes
Narrowly defined, an orphaned film is a motion picture abandoned by its owner or caretaker. More generally, the term refers to all manner of films outside of the commercial mainstream: public domain materials, home movies, outtakes, unreleased films, industrial and educational movies, independent documentaries, ethnographic films, newsreels, censored material, silent-era productions, stock footage, found footage, medical films, government films, and sundry other ephemeral pieces of celluloid. Co-Sponsored by AMIPA; film from AMIPA collection.

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