Program 1 - Amy Halpern: Unowned Luxuries
curated by David Lebrun and Mark Toscano
▴ David Lebrun in person ▴
Thursday, March 30, 2023 @ 7pm
The Lab (2948 16th Street, SF, CA)
Total running time: 71 minutes
$6 - 10 sliding scale - tickets available at the door
Festival passes available for purchase here
“Amy Halpern (1953–2022) is cherished not only for her memorable and beautiful films, but also for her inexhaustible engagement and enthusiasm as a devoted presence in the Los Angeles film and arts community. She had a profound curiosity about nearly everything and everyone she encountered, and her extensive body of film work reflects this passion for the sights, sounds, textures, and complex connections to be found and explored in the world around.
This eclectic program includes an intricate sampling of Amy Halpern’s films spanning multiple decades. The title, Unowned Luxuries, not only derives from a small series of short films she authored (two of which are featured in this program), but could be understood as defining a larger philosophical approach Amy took to her filmmaking practice. Many of her films take the form of loving and attentive appreciations of people, animals, places, things, and experiences that she related to as “luxuries” for her to hold, treasure, and share, and yet which retain their essential autonomous qualities to resist complete capture, remaining “unowned” despite also being Amy’s (and ours) to behold and delight in.” -Mark Toscano
All films directed by Amy Halpern. All prints are courtesy of the Amy Halpern Collection at the Academy Film Archive. Special thanks to David Lebrun and Mark Toscano.
Films include:
Access to the View
2000 | 2 minutes | 16mm | color | sound
Filament (The Hands)
1975 | 6 minutes | 16mm | b&w | silent
Slow Fireworks
2019 | 2 minutes | 16mm | color | silent
Pythoness
1979 | 2 minutes | 16mm | b&w | silent
My Dear Evaporant,
2022 | 6 minutes | 16mm | color | silent
Pouring Grain
2008 | 3 minutes | 16mm | color | silent
Cheshire Smile
2012 | 5 minutes | 16mm | color | sound
My Mink (Unowned Luxuries #2)
2019 | 4 minutes | 16mm | color | silent
Unowned Luxuries #3
2020 | 2 minutes | 16mm | color | silent
# 27
2019 | 3 minutes | 16mm | color | silent
4 Fingers, 5 Toes
2022 | 11 minutes | 16mm | color | silent
Three-Minute Hells
2010 | 14 minutes | 16mm | color | sound
Elixir
2009 | 7 minutes | 16mm | color | silent
Chabrot
2022 | 4 minutes | 16mm | b&w | sound
Ferociously curious, brilliant, and talented, Amy Halpern (1953-2022) grew up in New York studying dance, which provided her with a great appreciation and gift for movement. This would be central to her filmmaking, in terms of the cinematography and the actions captured, as well as in the strong metaphors she summoned about breaking bonds and evoking freedom, beauty, care, and wonder. Halpern formed close relationships with many in New York’s experimental film community, including Ken and Flo Jacobs, with whom she collaborated on the New York Apparition Company, devoted to 3D shadow play. Halpern made nearly 40 films and one
feature, almost all on 16mm.
During the 40 years she spent in Los Angeles, she collaborated with such luminaries as Pat O’Neill, Charles Burnett, and her husband David Lebrun. Halpern grew close with the legendary filmmaker Chick Strand and appears in her film Soft Fiction among other influential and formative west coast experimental films. She and her films inspired countless artists, including those she taught at various institutions around L.A., most notably at the University of Southern California. Halpern brought people together for a common good, cofounding two screening cooperatives: The New York Collective for Living Cinema (1972–82) and the Los Angeles Independent Film Oasis (1975–80).