Movies above Madison: MMoCA's Rooftop Cinema

Tonya | 6/01/2007 3:29 pm | Screen Siren

On June 8th at 9:30 pm, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art's Rooftop Cinema series will kick off in the museum's rooftop sculpture garden with a program of avant-garde sci-fi shorts, and will continue every Friday night until the end of June. I interviewed Tom Yoshikami, programmer of the Rooftop Cinema series and of the UW-Cinematheque, about the programs, the avant-garde, and the highlights of the series.

Tonya: What is the overarching idea for the four nights of the Rooftop Cinema series? How do you see the four nights as parts of the same whole?

Tom Yoshikami: Good question. While there is no one overarching idea linking all four programs together - besides being a collection of accessible and wonderful short avant-garde and documentary films - each series focuses on a particular theme or style and will accumulatively show, I hope, the diversity of avant-garde work made over the past half- century. Our first program highlights a genre - Sci-Fi - while our second focuses on a technique - we will actually screen a handful of films made using different animation techniques, from 3-D CGI to spray paint. Our third program is loosely based on the concept of the battlefield - in which we will show images of battle and destruction  - and our final program is comprised of a series of films that creatively play with words.

T: Is this your first year programming the Rooftop Cinema series? How will it differ from previous years?
 

TY: This is my second year programming Rooftop Cinema. The big difference this year is our integration of video. Last year we only showed films on 16mm, and this year we'll be able to show a broader range of works by incorporating video. Otherwise, besides the films being different, things should run similarly to last year. Oh, I should mention that last year we noted that the start time would be 9:00 while this year we're saying 9:30. We're going to wait until it gets just a bit darker outside before we fire up the projectors. 
 

T: What kind of work goes into collecting the various films of the series?
  TY: The conception of each program usually began with my desire to show one particular film. For instance, our program entitled W.O.R.D. G.A.M.E.S. began with the idea to show Robert Nelson's Bleu Shut, a film I'd seen years ago but has been long since unavailable on any format. When I learned that the Academy Film Archive had just restored the film and were working with Canyon Cinema to distribute the film, I knew we had to program a series with Bleu Shut on the bill.
 

T: What are your favorite films of this series? Any must-sees?
 

TY: In addition to Bleu Shut, which is my first absolute must-see, two other films that I'd highly recommend (and I highly recommend all of the films, of course) are Chris Marker's La Jetee, an incredible French film from 1963 that served as the basis for Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, and Dominic Angerame's Anaconda Targets, a powerful film  that uses footage from a US-led military operation in Afghanistan and  which played at the 2006 Whitney Biennial.
 

T: What do you hope people will take away from the screenings?

TY: I think that a lot of people may have preconceived notions about avant-garde or experimental films, and I hope that these programs will open up people's eyes to the wonderful diversity and pleasures of avant-garde films. I really do think that people will have a lot of fun at these screenings.

T: Can the avant-garde be entertaining? Is this for film buffs only?

TY: Absolutely to your first question; absolutely not to your second!  Avant-garde films can be extremely entertaining and I hope this series demonstrates that. I guarantee that there's at least one (but probably a whole lot more) film(s) in our series that anybody reading this will love. There's such diversity in avant-garde film - many of these films will make you think about the medium differently, many will make you laugh, and many will send shivers up your spine.

T:What's next for you after the Rooftop Cinema series is completed?

TY:  Although my tenure at the UW Cinematheque draws to a close at the end of June, my wonderful co-programmer Karin Kolb and I have been working on the Cinematheque's summer series, which kicks off July 6 with a special screening of John Frankenheimer's Seconds. After that we will show a mini Robert Altman retrospective and a series of recent, award-winning African films. The series will run Thursday and Friday nights until August 3rd. In the fall I'll be working with the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies  on organizing the "Tales from the Planet Earth," an environmental film festival that  will take place November 2-4, 2007, in Madison.

 

 

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