The Pleasure Garden: A Very Queer Historical Intro to the Art of Film

with Bernard Welt
A REVOLVE/RHIZOME DC Co-Production
(Please Register to receive ZOOM info)
***All events are open to everyone - we have a suggested $5 - $20 pay what you can option, as well as free.***

Back in the 1960s, when flowers had power, and you saved water by showering with a friend, and if it felt good, you did it, queer artists introduced experimental film to sights and sounds that had seldom been seen on the screen—or in respectable society. Before the Age of Aquarius ran headlong into the Age of Reagan, they had transformed filmmaking practice and subject matter, and helped redefine art, for commercial cinema as much as for museums and galleries. We’ll look at numerous excerpts to consider why experimentalism was so queer—and why queer filmmakers were so experimental.

***Part 1*** "Flaming Creatures" ***June 14th, 7pm***

(HOSTED BY REVOLVE/HOME SCHOOL)

Artists like Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, James Bidgood, and Kenneth Anger took the essential voyeurism of cinema over the top, titillating filmgoers with views of bohemian life—an imaginary cinema space beyond the keyhole, where every perverse fantasy is realized.

***Part 2*** "Confessions" ***July 5th, 7pm***

(HOSTED BY RHIZOME DC - REGISTER HERE: https://withfriends.co/event/4627772/)

Many filmmakers use the camera to “tell their truth.” Curt McDowell, James Broughton, Fred Halsted, and Mike and George Kuchar were among those who took a good, sometimes hard look at themselves, letting the whole world watch.

Bernard Welt

, Professor Emeritus at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at The George Washington University (Washington DC), is the author of Mythomania: Fables, Fantasies, and Sheer Lies in American Popular Art and a contributor to several arts journals and catalogues. His particular area of interest is counter-realism in modern art: aesthetics of imagination, vision, and dreams. He is a widely published poet and has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Writing and a Lambda Literary Award nomination.