“Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area” illuminates history of alternative cinema after World War II

In 1991, experimental filmmaker Ernie Gehr directed a 41-minute film from the outdoor glass elevator at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. He captured this view of the city from every possible angle in “Side/Walk/Shuttle,” appearing to defy the laws of gravity. It’s what Steve Anker, the dean of the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts, calls a beautiful experience of vertigo.

This is one of the films that will be shown at the Hammer Museum on Friday, Jan. 14, as part of the film and video series “Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945″“2000,” co-presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Pacific Film Archive, the Los Angeles Film Forum and the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater.

Anker co-authored the book by the same name, along with Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid, film and video curators at the University of California, Berkeley, Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Published last October, after 10 years in the making and about 60 commissioned writers, “Radical Light” celebrates the Bay Area’s long-standing contribution to this genre.

“The Bay Area was one of a handful of places in the world that had been a home and had nurtured alternative cinema,” Anker said. “It’s not like there wasn’t great work being made … in many other capitals, but the Bay Area, as a somewhat set-apart geographical area, was always a magnet for … pioneers who really wanted to shed themselves of traditions of the past.”

“Radical Light,” named for the commonality of manipulating light in these films and videos, begins in 1945, with the end of World War II when many were ready for a change.
“There seemed to be a whole new spirit of adventure,” Seid said. “People were looking for a sense of renewal.”

Thanks to the emergence of film as an art form and cinema studies around the same time, an audience quickly grew for alternative film and video. One motivation behind these films has stood strong over the six decades covered in the book.

“The alternative media community, whether it’s abstract and poetic films or whether it’s video that is very visceral and earthbound, is kind of critically looking at culture and at the way in which we receive and digest moving images which are very influential in our world view,” Seid said. “(Filmmakers are) inventing new ways to describe the world and in certain ways to contest the world.”

The book, which has led to a gallery exhibit in the Berkeley Art Museum consisting of ephemera from this time period, as well as the nationwide film tour with Los Angeles as its first stop, ends in the year 2000. Seid said the end of the millennium created a good closure point to talk about a history, one which he said he hopes gets the chance to tell its story.

“What we’re hoping for is the rediscovery of a lot of work and an upsurge in this community,” Seid said. “We’re hoping people will look back instead of just contemplating the newest things that are released, as fascinating as they may be.”

But this isn’t to say they don’t recognize the more recent contributions to the alternative film and video scene.

“I think it’s more exciting than ever,” Anker said. “There are more people trying their hand at it because of the easy access to tools.”

Anker defined alternative film and media as a form of expression that discovers new ways of working with film as opposed to commercial cinema, which doesn’t always concern itself with being individual. However, he also said it does influence commercial films, with directors such as David Lynch and David Fincher acknowledging that they were heavily influenced by experimental filmmakers.

“This is a very important filmmaking community that hasn’t had a tribute of this scale before,” said Shannon Kelley, head of public programs for the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

This tribute is a two-part event at the Hammer, with “Landscape as Expression” as the overarching theme of the films on Jan. 14 and “1961-71″ on Jan. 21. Anker will be present for both, and Seid and Geritz will be in attendance for the first day.

Though technology such as DVDs provides easier access to early work in alternative film and video, Kelley said the joint presentation of some of these film prints pulled from various archives and private collections is a rare occurrence.

“I like to recommend when rare and beautiful things happen that we all try to make a little time for that and be ready for an experience that will surprise us,” Kelley said.