Sunday June 14 * 7pm * REGISTER TO RECEIVE ZOOM LINK

The Pleasure Garden: A Very Queer Historical Introduction to the Art of Film

Back in the 1960s, when flowers had power, and you saved water by showering with a friend, and if it felt good, you did it, queer artists introduced experimental film to sights and sounds that had seldom been seen on the screen—or in respectable society. Before the Age of Aquarius ran headlong into the Age of Reagan, they had transformed filmmaking practice and subject matter, and helped redefine art, for commercial cinema as much as for museums and galleries. We’ll look at numerous excerpts to consider why experimentalism was so queer—and why queer filmmakers were so experimental.

Part 1 - Flaming Creatures June 14 (Part 2 will take place July 5)
Artists like Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, James Bidgood, and Kenneth Anger took the essential voyeurism of cinema over the top, titillating filmgoers with views of bohemian life—an imaginary cinema space beyond the keyhole, where every perverse fantasy is realized.

About the instructor:
Bernard Welt is Professor Emeritus at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at The George Washington University (Washington DC), where he taught courses in the history of cinema, film theory, and the evolution of representations of sex in American cinema. He is the author of Mythomania: Fables, Fantasies, and Sheer Lies in American Popular Art and of essays on film, books, theater, and visual art in many journals and magazines, and serves as the Vice Editor of Straight to Hell: The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Writing and a Lambda Literary Award nomination.

A Co-Production of Rhizome DC and Home School at Revolve: http://www.revolveavl.org/home-school

Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Welt all proceeds will be split by Rhizome DC and Revolve AVL. Please donate if you are able. (It is not necessary to donate in order to participate - just enter $0 when asked for contribution amount.)