Herb Shellenberger of Pet Milk steps up to curate July’s weekly music/movie night. $5 admission, as always…
Tuesday, July 10 : PET MILK with FUTURE SHOCK (1972)
Tuesday, July 17 : JESSE KUDLER & ALEX TYSON with 16MM EDUCATIONAL FILMS
Tuesday, July 24 : TOM GUYCOT with QUIET COOL (1986)
Tuesday, July 31 : TBA
Tuesday, July 10
PET MILK performs, followed by a screening of a 16mm print of FUTURE SHOCK (1972)
PET MILK is a band from Philadelphia formed in 2010, proponents of punklife and kitchen-sink romance, perennial victims of post-teenage ennui. We love noise and pop, are influenced by Black Tambourine, Nico and New Order, and are currently recording our debut LP with Josh Meakim (of A Sunny Day in Glasgow and Arc in Round). We encourage you to tell someone that you love them and to mean it.
FUTURE SHOCK (dir. Alexander Grasshoff, 1972, US, 16mm, 43 mins)
Orson Welles narrates this pseudo-documentary film, inspired by the book of the same name in which writer/futurist Alvin Toffler coins the term “future shock” as a certain psychological state that affects humans as a product of “too much chance in too little time.” Welles, in his Cheshire cat beard and cape phase, sounds overwhelmed describing a society of disconnected people with “temporary friends,” these changes ultimately resulting in “the death of permanence.” At times resembling a Mondo film, Future Shock is unintentionally hilarious and filled with gems of 70s psych-pop and synth soundtrack music familiar to those who have seem 70s educational films.
Tuesday, July 17
JESSE KUDLER & ALEX TYSON improvise and interact with 16mm educational films from the 1950s-1970s
JESSE KUDLER creates concrete music on the computer, composes low-tech multi-channel sound works, and improvises on cheap consumer devices: a no-name electric guitar, hand-held cassette recorders, radios and transmitters, various small junk, and pedals/electronics. Kudler attended public school until Wesleyan University, where he studied music with Ron Kuivila, Alvin Lucier, and a little bit with Anthony Braxton, among others. He eventually became active as an organizer and performer in improvised, experimental, and electronic music. Kudler is the co-founder and co-Director (with Ian Fraser) of the Philadelphia Sound Forum. His fans often refer to him as “the Kud.”
ALEX TYSON is a visual artist and musician working in Philadelphia. He creates visual music, documentaries and dance for camera and is co-founder of Data Garden, a trans-digital journal, record label and events producer that is interested in the mixture of biological and digital technologies.
16MM EDUCATIONAL FILMS from the collection of the curator (Herb Shellenberger). More info on film titles and program running time TBA.
Tuesday, July 24
TOM GUYCOT performs with backing video from his collection of action/cult/horror VHS, followed by a VHS screening of QUIET COOL (1986)
Inspired by the stark and eerie sounds of early electronic film scores and library recordings, the atmospheric synthscapes of TOM GUYCOT evoke fantasies of abandoned cities at night, where uncertainty and fear lurk at each turn.
QUIET COOL (dir. Clay Borris, 1986, US, VHS, 80 mins)
”Quiet Cool” is an action film set in the leafy Northwest, in a town whose marijuana growers object mightily to the efforts of one New York City policeman (James Remar) to cramp their style. The policeman and a teen-age sidekick (Adam Coleman Howard), acting as a kind of Rambo and Son, execute a wide variety of impalings, hookings and garrotings, not to mention the usual gunplay. ”Quiet Cool” follows Joe Dillon (Mr. Remar, who has a suitable tough-guy style and often looks as if he’s just eaten something awful) from New York to a woodsy little place called Babylon. He is summoned there by an old girlfriend (Daphne Ashbrook) who’s worried about some missing relatives. She runs a store that does especially good business in camouflage netting and gardening tools. ”O.K.,” she tells Joe, giving him a tour of Babylon, ”so it’s not SoHo. But it used to be a terrific place.” But now the town is dominated by three color-coordinated baddies – silent, stone-faced killers with white, black and red hair – and a lawman (Jared Martin) who’s in cahoots with them. – Janet Maslin, New York Times, 11/8/86
Tuesday, July 31
TBA
About the curator:
HERB SHELLENBERGER is a musician, filmmaker and curator based in Philadelphia. He is guitarist/songwriter in PET MILK and has performed with Brown Recluse and Amateur Party. He has worked at the Ibrahim Theater @ International House Philadelphia since 2008, where he has curated both film and music programs. He has also booked DIY concerts (with Grace Ambrose) as No Wavelength since 2010 and has been involved in the collectively-run studio/performance space Cha Cha Razzi since early 2012.
BLACK CIRCLE CINEMA is his new outlet to curate and present film and video screenings in Philadelphia. More information coming soon.