• Mass for the Dakota Sioux
  • Dyketactics
  • My Name is Oona
  • Angel Blue Sweet Wings


Elegy to Ecstasy: Films from Canyon Cinema



In Conversation

  • Antonella Bonfanti

    Antonella Bonfanti is director of the Canyon Cinema Foundation; committed to building community around film, she has organized screenings and events across North America.

  • Edith Kramer

    Edith Kramer was manager of Canyon Cinema from 1967 to 1970 and film curator at SFMOMA before joining the BAMPFA staff in 1975; she was senior film curator and PFA director from 1983 until her retirement in 2005.

Fifty years after incorporating as an artist cooperative in 1967, Canyon Cinema continues to champion avant-garde and experimental filmmaking in the Bay Area and beyond. Today the internationally renowned distributor cares for a collection of some 3,500 works representing the full range of experimental cinema from the 1930s to the present. A celebration of bodies, film, and light, this program features a selection of works made by several of Canyon’s founding members and their contemporaries. From the mournful lyricism of Mass for the Dakota Sioux to the transcendent kisses of Amphetamine, the rapturous commingled bodies of Dyketactics to the sensory bliss of Straight and Narrow, these films embed elegy and ecstasy in the emulsion of 16mm film.

– Kate MacKay

Films in this Screening

Mass for the Dakota Sioux
(Mass for the Dakota Sioux)

Bruce Baillie, United States, 1963, 1964

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • English
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 16mm
  • 20 mins
source
  • Canyon Cinema

Amphetamine

Warren Sonbert, United States, 1966

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 16mm
  • 10 mins
source
  • Canyon Cinema

Incantations

Peter Rose, United States, 1971

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 9 mins
source
  • Canyon Cinema

Dyketactics

Barbara Hammer, United States, 1974

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 4 mins
source
  • Canyon Cinema

Angel blue sweet wings
(Angel blue sweet wings)

Chick Strand, United States, 1966

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • English
Print Info
  • 16mm
  • 3 mins
source
  • Canyon Cinema

My name is Oona
(My name is Oona)

Gunvor Nelson, United States, 1969

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • English
Print Info
  • 16mm
  • 10 mins
source
  • Canyon Cinema

Straight and Narrow

Tony Conrad, Beverley Conrad, United States, 1970

The flicker phenomenon used to explore subjective color.

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 16mm
  • 10 mins
source
  • Canyon Cinema