Oddball Films and guest Curator Landon Bates bring you
Signifying
Nothing: Cinema of the Absurd, an exciting
exploration of--you guessed it!--the absurdity inherent within the human
condition. For a sort of philosophical primer we'll begin our inscrutable
screening with that ambassador of angst, that emissary of alienation, that duke
of despair, that prophet of pointlessness: that’s right, it’s Albert Camus in Albert Camus: A Self Portrait (1971). This film gives
a glimpse of Camus's French-Algerian beginnings, an overview of his most
important works, and features rare interview footage with the man himself; and,
it will be appropriately succeeded by Sisyphus (1975), a mesmerizing
animation of that symbolic struggle up the mountainside of life. We'll then make a pit-stop in the mind of
Eugene Ionesco, a worthy representative of the Theatre of the Absurd, with a
dramatization of his play The New
Tenant (1975), in which
a simple-seeming man is revealed to be obsessed with his possessions, flooding
his new apartment with a never-ending stream of furniture. A piece of
furniture also figures prominently in our next film--so much so that one might
even call it the main character: this film is Roman Polanski's classic short, Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958),
wherein two boys, with their beloved bureau in tow, wander the city streets
wanting only to find a peaceful place in the din of the modern world. Our
concluding film features yet another existential outcast, namely Herman
Melville's stubborn scrivener, in that fictive forbear of the absurdist genre: Bartleby (1969). This
soul-enlivening evening of fun-filled futility is not to be missed. 
Date: Thursday,
February 28th, 2013 at
8:00pm
Venue:
Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission:
$10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com
or (415) 558-8117
“The divorce between man and his
life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of the absurd.”
- Albert Camus
Featuring:
Albert Camus: A Self Portrait
(Color, 1971)
Albert Camus was one of the 20th
Century's most eminent philosophers, often associated with existentialist thought,
and one of the fathers of the philosophy of absurdism. Absurdity, in
Camus's view, involves the inevitable human struggle for some sort of clear or
definite sense of meaning in a complex world where such meaning cannot readily
be found. Among Camus's most important writings are The Myth of
Sisyphus, a sort of treatise on the absurdity inherent in the human
experience, and his philosophical novels, The
Stranger, and The Plague. This profile of the
philosopher/novelist/political thinker, provides an all-too-brief overview of
Camus's life and work, paying special attention to the locales of his boyhood
in French Algiers. Also included is interview footage in which Camus
discusses some of his writings and views.
Sisyphus (B+W, 1975)
Sisyphus is an artistically spare depiction of the Greek myth of
Sisphyus, sentenced to eternally roll a stone up a mountain. The animated story
is presented in a single, unbroken shot, consisting of a dynamic line drawing
of Sisyphus, the stone, and the mountainside.
The
New Tenant (Color, 1975)
Based on the absurdist play by Eugene
Ionesco, “The New Tenant” is an existential spectacle of terrifying simplicity
about a man overwhelmed by his objects.
Two
Men and a Wardrobe (B+W, 1958)
Roman
Polanski’s darkly comic early film has many of the director’s preoccupations
already present: alienation, crisis in identity, and a bizarre view of humanity
that sees us as some very strange animals. In this quasi-surrealist jaunt, two
otherwise normal looking men emerge from the sea carrying an enormous wardrobe,
which they proceed to carry around a nearby town. Seeking fun, solace, or maybe
some place to put the damn thing, all the two find is rejection at every turn.
Watch Polanski in a bit part he later reprises in Chinatown. “Two Men and a Wardrobe” initiated Polanski’s
collaboration with Krzysztof Komeda, the great Polish jazz composer who went on
to score such Polanski hallmarks as Knife in the Water, Cul de
Sac, and Rosemary's
Baby.
Bartleby (Color, 1969)
An affecting adaptation of Melville's
haunting short story, “Bartleby, The
Scrivener,” in which a forlorn copyist, hired by a Wall Street lawyer,
becomes increasingly enigmatic as his willingness to do work gradually
diminishes, eventually to the point of total inactivity. The lawyer,
through whose perspective the events of the story are related, finds Bartleby
inscrutable, and finds himself somehow impervious to his employee's
insubordination. James Westerfield plays the lawyer, and a young Barry
Williams (aka Greg in The Brady Bunch) has a small role as one of Bartleby's officemates.
Melville's story prefigures Kafka's
nightmarishly mundane fiction, and can likewise be seen as a forbear of the
Absurdist Theatre movement. Also, Albert Camus, in a personal letter to a
friend (unpublished until 1998) cited Melville as an influence.
Curator’s Biography:
Landon Bates is a UC Berkeley graduate of English
Literature and plays drums for the duo Disappearing People.