Cleveland Free Cinema: The Films of Robert Banks and Bruce Checefsky
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Cleveland Free Cinema: The Films of Robert Banks and Bruce Checefsky

Representing Cleveland, Ohio, longtime friends Robert Banks and Bruce Checefsky have been making underground films using innovative animation techniques and reconstructed images and texts for decades. View their celebrated solo, avant-garde works along with a new, never-before-seen collaboration. Please note Motion Picture Genocide contains some violent imagery. Total runtime: 30 minutes.

Screening right here for free beginning at 10 am (CDT) April 6 until April 19.

About the FilmsMoment Musical by Bruce Checefsky A re-creation of a 1933 commercial, lost during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, animates photograms of light-pierced jewelry, porcelain, and glass to music by Ravel. 2006, 16mm transferred to digital, sound, 6 min. X: Baby Cinema by Robert Banks Drawing by hand directly on 16mm film, Banks challenges commercial appropriations of the image of Malcolm X. 1992, 16mm transferred to digital, sound, 4 min. Doctor Hypnosin, or the Technique of Living by Bruce Checefsky and Robert Banks The artists collaborate on a new short experimental film, inspired by a 1923 scenario written by Serbian poet Salomon Monny de Boully, with a musical score composed and performed by Tad Mike. 2021, 35mm transferred to digital, sound, 6 min. A Woman and Circles by Bruce Checefsky Using a vintage 35mm camera, the director re-creates the unmade film script of a Polish poet living in Paris in the 1930s. Revealing successions of negative and positive images, the figurative and abstract film pays homage to a surrealist and poetic vision. 2004, 35mm transferred to digital, 10 min. Motion Picture Genocide by Robert Banks A hand-painted film collage questions the often-violent portrayals of race in mainstream media. 1997, 16mm transferred to digital, 3 min.
AccessibilityThis program will have closed captioning. For more information about accessibility, or to request additional accommodations, call 612-375-7564 or email access@walkerart.org. For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.