October 9, 2009

Karen and I went to see an offering of abstract films/animation at the UW Cinematheque tonight. Marco Pogo was there, but he has been to every Cinematheque showing since the Com Arts kids started this program, except for maybe that one time when he to my friend's art installation. I think he wears the same shirt each time; it is a cardinal red sweatshirt that says Cincinnati, I think, I am not sure, though, I really don't give it a good look as he might think I am staring at him or something.

The films were introduced by their creator, Joost Rekvold. He is a very nice man, very thin and pale and wore an interesting array of threadbare clothes. Mr. Rekvold teaches at Leiden University, which I thought was ironic for the day in that the London Times had released its top 200 universities, and Leiden was right next to the UW at 61.

The films were interesting, but I thought that maybe he should have showed them separately, as even this avid fan of abstract film (i.e., geek) found watching the pieces a bit challenging all in a row. Still, it was nice to see these on a big screen. It reminded me of the time when there was a showing of German abstract animation from the 1920's at the Elvehjem back in 1992, and I saw it after I gave my graduate seminar class a presentation on the very same subject, talk about coincidences; everyone from my seminar went to the showing that night, except I think for Donald Crafton, our professor, but he told me he went to an earlier showing the next time I saw him at the Crystal Corner bar. Not that I really cared, but from the guy who wrote his dissertation called Before Mickey, you would think he might be remotely interested, and he even had the pleasure of interviewing Boris Kaufmann, whose brother was the famed Dziga Vertov, before Boris passed on. We parked in the Lake Street parking lot ($3.45).

There weren't many college kids out that night, maybe it was the H1N1.