POSTPONED - Vitreous Chamber: Malic Amalya & Nathan Hill
Vitreous Chamber: Malic Amalya & Nathan Hill
POSTPONED to help slow the spread of COVID-19, following State and County recommendations
Los Angeles Filmforum and Dirty Looks present
Vitreous Chamber: Malic Amalya & Nathan Hill
At the Echo Park Film Center, 1200 N. Alvarado St., Los Angeles CA 90026
Vitreous Chamber is the audio/visual project of Malic Amalya & Nathan Hill. Collaborating since 2014, they make experimental 16mm films and analogue videos with electronic musical scores. Visceral and cacophonous, their work traverses gritty landscapes of abandoned buildings, blast zones, and back rooms. They burn 16mm film, smear Vaseline on camera filters, and hand-build A/V machinery.
Malic & Nathan co-direct, as well as provide critical assistance for the other's individually directed projects. They have been artists-in-residence at Signal Culture in upstate New York and are currently Affiliate Artists at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California. Their work has screened widely, including in Light Field (San Francisco), Onion City (Chicago), Anthology Film Archives (NYC), Portland Museum of Art (Portland, OR), Queer Arts Festival (Vancouver), Melbourne Queer Film Festival, MIX Copenhagen, Scottish Queer Film Festival (Glasgow), and EXiS Festival (Seoul). Their film Vaseline is distributed by Collectif Jeune Cinema in Paris. Malic holds an MFA in Film from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MA in History & Theory of Contemporary Art from the San Francisco Art Institute of Chicago; he is a faculty member at CCA and CCSF. Malic & Nathan live in Oakland, CA.
Tickets: $12 general; $8 students (with ID)/seniors; free for Filmforum Members and Friends of On Location, available through Restless Nites at https://restlessnites.com/events/vitreous-chamber or at the door.
For more information: www.lafilmforum.org or 323-377-7238
DickHole
A film by Nathan Hill
2018, Analogue to Digital Video, 6.5 minutes
A meditation on hard-gay aesthetics and the solitary experience of the home video viewer. Filmed with Newvicon tube, Hi8, CCTV cameras and bits and pieces from various VHS tapes, using heavy, real-time video manipulation.
FlyHole
FlyHole
A film by Malic Amalya
2017, 35mm Slides to Digital Video, 6 minutes
In this dual projection slide show of collaged imagery, FlyHole tells the story of a housefly who transitions into a man in order to cruise gay bars. Text and images are appropriated from the March 1985 issue of the adult, gay digest magazine, Manscape, including illustrations by Mike Kuchar.
Post-Mundane Sludge
Post-Mundane Sludge
A film by Nathan Hill
2020, Analogue to Digital Video, 5 minutes
LA Premiere!
Post-Mundane Sludge explores themes of the body, mortality, ephemerality, and sexuality with experimental video as its vehicle. This video was created at the Signal Culture Artist Residency in upstate NY.
Song for Rent, After Jack Smith
Song for Rent, After Jack Smith
Directed by Malic Amalya
2019, 16mm, 7 minutes
LA premiere!
With Kate Smith singing "God Bless America" looped in the background, experimental filmmaker Jack Smith starred as Rose Courtyard—a drag character based on Rose Kennedy—in his 1969 film, "Song for Rent." In this adaptation, closed captioning and audio description make "Song for Rent, After Jack Smith" accessible to a wider audience, while also playing a central role in the film's structure.
Gold Moon, Sharp Arrow
A film by Malic Amalya & Max Garnet
2012, 16mm, 11 minutes
Against a backdrop of electrocution, dominance, and scientific precision, wasps nest in an abandoned refrigerator, eyelashes flutter, and curtains blow in open window. Adapting Stanley Milgram's 1963 experiment on obedience to authority, Gold Moon, Sharp Arrow explores how queer communities reenact, resist, and respond to assimilation, coercion, and trauma.
Vaseline
Vaseline
A film by Malic Amalya & Nathan Hill
2016, 16mm, 6 minutes
Caught in a system of confinement, surveillance, and restriction, a leather fag eludes the state by recalling his lover bathed in Vaseline.
Towards the Death of Cinema
Towards the Death of Cinema
A film by Malic Amalya & Nathan Hill
2014/202/, 16mm Performance with Live Sound, 30 minutes
Accompanied by a live synthesizer score, projected 16mm film melts and burns from the heat of a film projector. If, as film theorist, Paulo Cherchi Usai, argues, “cinema is the art of destroying moving images,” Towards the Death of Cinema expedites this inherent process of destruction for the viewing audience to witness in real time.