SF-Oakland Oct 2013 events

TO PRESS For immediate release Contact: Gerry Fialka 310-306-7330 pfsuzy@aol.com http://www.laughtears.com/ Please inform your readers, and do consider a feature article on these three upcoming FILM (and CULTURAL Happening) EVENTS hosted by Gerry Fialka Gerry Fialka has been called "the multi-media Renaissance man” - LA Times, a "cultural revolutionary" - LA Weekly, and "Los Angeles' preeminent underground film curator" - Cinema Without Borders. +++++++++++++++ I will you be in sf in oct. We welcome you to join in on our events. I hope to see you soon. Please spread the word on my three upcoming events. Oct 17, Thurs, 8pm - RIA LIVE & Lake Shrine Lecture at New Nothing Cinema 16 Sherman St (off Folsom between 6th & 7th), San Fran CA 94103, phone 310-306-7330. FREE ADMISSION Oct 18, Fri, 8pm - Winston Smith interview (and rare film clips) at Oddball Film 275 Capp St, San Fran CA 94110, 415-558-8112, rsvp info@oddballfilm.com, www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com $10 Oct 19, Sat, 8pm - RIA LIVE at Oakland’s Krowswork Gallery Will Erokan, Gerry Fialka & guests, 480 23rd Street (side entrance), Oakland CA 94612, 510-229-7035, FREE ADMISSION More details follow. (also - I encourage you to attend Phil Solomon Oct 16 at PFA http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN20432 I will be there) Thank you, Gerry Fialka 310-306-7330 PFSuzy@aol.com bio http://www.laughtears.com/bio.html http://www.laughtears.com/ and www.venice wake.org +++++++++++++ Thurs, Oct 17 at 8pm DOUBLE BILL ***Lake Shrine History with ERIC DUGDALE at 8pm ***RIA LIVE at 8:45pm with Will Erokan, Gerry Fialka & special guests: V Vale & Rock Ross (730 pm pot-luck), free admission at New Nothing, 16 Sherman St (off Folsom between 6th & 7th), San Fran CA 94103, phone 310-306-7330. New Nothing Cinema 8pm= Eric Dugdale presents the history of the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine His talk will begin with the Indians and walk listeners through the Marquez Rancho days, the Inceville film studio, developer Alphonzo Bell and the SRF, located on Sunset about a half-mile north of Pacific Coast Highway. Inceville Studio was located on the property, but burned down around 1924. Developer Alphonzo Bell, who hoped to create a residential community in Santa Ynez Canyon like the one he had established in Bel Air, hydro-blasted the site to ready it for construction in 1927. The work inadvertently created a large mud hole, later transformed as Lake Santa Ynez. But Bell's plans never came to fruition and H. Everett 'Big Mac' McElroy, the assistant superintendent of set construction for 20th Century Fox Pictures, took over the property in 1940 to build his future residence. Dugdale, a real estate broker whose passion is local history, will tell the details of those stories and how a later plan by a Texas oilman to build a resort in the canyon was altered by a dream of 'a church of all religions' and the various benefactors who made that dream come true. He will also share photographs of the property and maps of the old Rancho land grant. Dugdale's personal experience with Lake Shrine began in the early 1950s when his family joined the SRF, and the property is well entwined with his own personal history. His father was a builder and, as a boy, Dugdale tagged along when he did some remodeling on a small two-story house which later became the SRF Sunday school and now houses the SRF museum and gift shop. In 1956, the SRF monthly magazine ran a photo of Dugdale as a five-year-old, sitting in full lotus position, meditating. 8:45pm RIA LIVE CINEMA (aka OUR EYE AYE = RIA = Resonant Interval Algorythmns) http://laughtears.com/RIA.html Video artists-Social engineers Will Erokan, Gerry Fialka & guest poets, dancers, musicians = LIVE CINEMA probing the filmed close-up on the human eye, as seen in Un Chien Andalou, Man With The Movie Camera, Frank Zappa's 200 Motels, and Blade Runner. Delve deep into the reel motives and consequences of the Ludovico treatment from A Clockwork Orange, which originated in the novel by Anthony Burgess, who was directly influenced by James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The Wake turns the eye into an ear via Finneganese (language about language): "Television kills telephony in Brothers’ broil. Our eyes demand their turn. Let them be seen." and "what can't be coded can be decorded if an ear aye seize what no eye ere grieved fore." Experience the RIA "live cinema" immersion into post-hypnotic hyper-maximum stimulation triggering McLuhan's Menippean satirized Gesamtkunstwerk. Peter Greenaway presaged the complex clairvoyance of Erokan's birth on September 30, 1983 by declaring "Cinema's death date was 31 September 1983, when the remote-control zapper was introduced to the living room, because now cinema has to be interactive, multi-media art." The retrocausality of this non-existent date renders an effects-precede-causes half- truth. "A half truth is still alot of a truth" – McLuhan. Explore & re-explore the sensory simultaneity of integral awareness (IA being the flip of AI - artificial intelligence) in passing through the vanishing point when seeing oneself both as oneself and as the other. It may be the death and rebirth of agraRIAn, AlgeRIA, antiquaRIAn, appropRIAtion, AquaRIAn, barbaRIAn, & AbdeRIAn laughter, which comes from rustic simpletons who would laugh at anything or anyone they did not understand. RIA is a drowned river valley that remains open to the sea. This evokes the Wake and Frank Zappa's "The ocean is the ultimate solution." "But that the white eye-lid of the screen reflect its proper light, the Universe would go up in flames" - Luis Bunuel. RIA LIVE also - SAT Oct 19 http://laughtears.com/RIA.html RIA will be 2 hours at Oakland’s Krowswork Gallery Will Erokan, Gerry Fialka & guests, 480 23rd Street (side entrance), Oakland CA 94612, 510-229-7035, FREE ADMISSION. Check out the new issue of Canyon Cinema Magazine #2 with Fialka's article I WANT MY RIA, po box 16163, oakland ca 94610 (not available online) +++++++++++ Friday, Oct 18 ODDBALL FILM + VIDEO is proud to host MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) at 8:00pm, $10 - The public is invited to this engaging WINSTON SMITH interview by Gerry Fialka. MESS is modern thinkers addressing the metaphysics of their callings and the nitty-gritty of their crafts. www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com 275 Capp St, San Fran CA 94110, 415-558-8112, rsvp info@oddballfilm.com, More info- http://www.laughtears.com/mess.html 8pm= rare film clips, 8:30pm= interview Winston Smith is an artist who primarily uses the medium of collage. He is probably best known for the artwork he has produced for the American punk rock group Dead Kennedys. He also designed the Motéma Music logo. A version of an illustration which had been on the back cover of the Biafra/D.O.A. album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors was later featured on the cover of the April/May 2000 issue of The New Yorker magazine. His work has also appeared in Spin, Playboy, Wired, Utne Reader, Mother Jones, Metro Silicon Valley, Ugly Planet, National Lampoon, and numerous punk fanzines, such asMaximumrocknroll, Seconds, Punk Planet, etc. Smith is particularly known for his collaborations with Jello Biafra and Alternative Tentacles, for whom he has done numerous covers, inserts, advertisements, flyers, and logos. He is responsible for the famous Alternative Tentacles logo as well as the well-known Dead Kennedys logo and six of their record covers. One of his compositions, God Told Me to Skin You Alive, was used as the cover ofGreen Day's album Insomniac. His name is a reference to the character of the same name in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Smith left the U.S. in 1969 to study art in Italy and, struck by the profound social changes that had occurred during his absence from the U.S., adopted the name after returning to America in 1976. In Italy, Smith attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence studying classical Renaissance art and later won a scholarship to study Cinema at the International University of Art (Florence & Rome). For a few years he traveled throughout Italy, roadie-ing for well-known Italian jazz band Perigeo. Over the last 30 years, Winston has had numerous one-man shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, London, Antwerp, Berlin and Rome. His work has been included in numerous books chronicling the punk rock era as well as having his work included in art text books plus several book covers, such as Greg Palast's best-sellers "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and "Armed Madhouse". In addition, Winston has designed over 50 record covers including covers and insert art for Jello Biafra, Burning Brides, George Carlin and Ben Harper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Smith_(artist) and http://winstonsmith.com/ "Gerry Fialka asks unexpected Questions about important Ideas, eliciting Answers that can surprise even those doing the answering. My Interview with him taught me something about myself; it was a Gift." - David Gatten "Great interviewing requires a stimulating interviewer and Gerry Fialka is certainly that. Best part is that he makes the rare act of deep thinking in public before an audience flow as creatively and easily as a Basquiat painting." - Jay Levin, LA Weekly founder and former editor-in-chief "Fialka's cool questions are right at the heart of all my work. By far the best interview I have ever been treated to." - Ondi Timoner, only two time Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury winner "My experience in Gerry Fialka's MESS series was a scintillating discussion of history, culture, philosophy, sociology and the creative process. His questions and ideas transcend the accepted, traditional limitations of 'the interview.' " - Brad Schreiber, author, producer, screenwriter, journalist "Fialka's interview with me was an invigorating, pleasurable, philosophical, specific, awakening journey." - Harry Northup, actor and poet "Fialka's was the funniest interview I have ever had. He has developed a very wise way of triggering thoughts in the interviewee--or at least in me. He didn't ask any of the questions I always hate to be asked. It was good talking with him" - Leighton Pierce, Dean, School of Art and Design, Pratt Institute "Fialka's interview had me buzzing inside with thoughts and memories that his engaging questions set in motion. Super stimulation." - Filmmaker Larry Gottheim "Gerry Fialka comes up with some dynamite questions that never occurred to me, and he has an astonishing memory for quotations. I appreciate his great work. " - Author Kristine McKenna “I had such a great time at Gerry Fialka’s MESS Interview Series! Such provocative and unexpected questions; it was a delightful exercise for my mind. I thank him for his generosity of spirit and positive affirmations during the interview process; he made it really easy! “ Poet/Author Terry Wolverton "I had so much fun. I don't think I've ever heard such wonderful questions." - Author Janet Fitch "Fialka's interviews are more gratifying than one could imagine, exploring ideas that don't normally get discussed. With his MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) series, a cumulative effect emerges as each progressive interview builds upon and enhances the previous ones. His diligent efforts examine the impulses that motivate people. The secret to good conversation lies in the questions, and Fialka's questions are an art form." - William McNally, Activist/Author "My interview with Fialka was both a rollicking journey into the heart of deep thought and some sort of hard core, cosmic tennis match. He uses quotes to spur new thought more than old thought. It was truly 'far out.' I am grateful." - Fred Dewey, writer, teacher, editor/publisher, former director of Beyond Baroque "I was so honored to be selected for an afternoon of stimulating and rollicking conversation with you! It's rare to have an opportunity to communicate for any length of time these days. What a gift you give to your interviewees of your bright, probing and convivial interaction. You've created a simultaneously celebratory and profound happening unlike anything else anywhere. What a splendid combo of fun and intelligence you possess! Your creativity enlivens our community enormously, and I truly appreciate you. " - Poet Linda Albertano to Gerry GERRY FIALKA, film curator, writer, lecturer, probe artist and paramedia-ecologist has conducted interactive workshops at Cal Arts, UCLA, MIT, USC, San Francisco's Yerba Buena Art Center, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Culver City High School, Massey University (New Zealand), and more. His public interview series MESS has included the likes of Mike Kelley, Alexis Smith, Abraham Polonsky, Mary Woronov, Paul Krassner, Ann Magnuson, Heather Woodbury, Norman Klein, Chris Kraus, P. Adams Sitney, Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Kristine McKenna, John Sinclair, Van Dyke Parks, Orson Bean, George Herms, Doug Harvey, Janet Fitch, Jon Rappoport, Brad Schreiber, Simon Forti, Rudy Perez, Barry Smolin, SA Griffin, Bruce Bickford, Stan Warnow, Rip Cronk, Marina Goldovskaya, Harry Northup, John French, Jon Alloway, Bill Daniel, Phil Proctor, Ed Holmes (aka Bishop Joey), Marcy Winograd, Greg Burk, Kirk Silsbee among many others. Fialka's interviews have been published in books by Mike Kelley and Sylvere Lotringer. His William Pope.L interview is published in the magazine ARTILLERY Jan'08 issue. Fialka's MESS retrieves the original 1970 MESS (McLuhan Emergency Strategy Seminar) with McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, and Ted Carpenter (They Become What They Behold) all of whom stressed that breakdowns can be breakthroughs. Fialka has also interviewed Grace Lee Boggs, Ondi Timoner, Timothy A. Carey, George Clinton, Colonel Bruce Hampton, Ben Watson, Tom Gunning, Mac Rebennack (aka Dr John), Martha Colburn, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, Bill Brand, Pip Chodorov. Craig Baldwin, DJ Spooky, ruth weiss, MA Littler, Jesse Malmed, Nina Fonoroff, Gregorio Rocha, BILL MORRISON, MARK PAULINE, STEVEN CERIO, DAVID GATTEN, VERONIKA KRAUSAS, John Smith, PHIL SOLOMON, GENE YOUNGBLOOD, JAMES B HARRIS and many more. - - - - - - MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon), produced by Gerry Fialka since 1997, is based on Marshall McLuhan's insight: "If you don't study the effects of technology, you become its slave." And by "technology" McLuhan was referring to anything humans invent, from language to computers, from philosophy to books, from toothpicks to bulldozers. In dialogues with modern thinkers, MESS provides a forum for probing both the form and the content of media, and for comprehensively surveying-its services and disservices, avoiding bias or point of view. MESS is percept-plunder for the recent future. In his book "I, Fellini," Federico Fellini wrote, "I don't mind speaking autobiographically because I reveal less of myself talking about my real life than I do if I talk about the layer underneath, the one of my fantasies, dreams and imagination." MESS peers into the portals of discovering this layer. MESS seeks what lies beyond this layer. Participants -- including writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians and activists -- are the early radar systems and rear-view mirrors detecting how major transformations in technology affect us. As we live in a MESS-age, this interactive series shakes people out of their regular agendas and reality tunnels. MESS promotes mapmakers who search for new lands and new data. MESS seeks meticulous understanding of every thing we see, hear , feel, taste, and smell, passionately needling the somnambulists and proving that learning can and must be fun. As McLuhan asked, "How are you to argue with people who insist on sticking their heads in the in visible teeth of technology, calling the whole thing freedom?" "Technologies are not mere exterior ads," said Walter Ong, "but also interior transformations of consciousness." And, in his book Immediatism, Hakim Bey observed, "Simply to meet face-to-face is already an action against the forces that oppress us by isolation, by loneliness, by the trance of media." "If it works, it's obsolete." -- McLuhan. "Another fine MESS." - Random Lengths News. - - - - - - - "Gerry Fialka's MESS series is a unique opportunity to meet special artists in a unique, intimate and revealing setting. His intelligence and dedication to research leads to a stimulating and highly interactive interview that is both entertaining and amazingly enlightening." - Phil Proctor of the "Firesign Theatre" "Gerry Fialka is very special, well prepared and ready to take risks - I learned about my self! My kind of interviewer. " -Martin Perlich, author THE ART OF THE INTERVIEW "Gerry Fialka is willing to enter in new discussions even if they go against his current views. Fialka's multilayered delivery of ideas encourages the search for new questions and new paradigms that extend beyond. He is well-informed, off-beat and articulate - one of the most fascinating people I've met." - Keith Jeffries, Ascalon Films "What a great interview Fialka conducted with me. He made it so easy. There used to be people on TV who conducted interviews in depth, though few as good as Fialka. Tom Snyder was the last." - Orson Bean "Fialka is a Zen master of media shuffling your mind with McLuhanisms, and stacking the deck with fresh insights into our culture." - David Selsky, Independent Film Programmer & author of 'Worlds of Silence' "Like an eye-exam of flashing dots, my answers to Gerry Fialka's insightful questions worked like an i-exam catapulting me into my many faceted stories." - ruth weiss "Gerry Fialka is a wonderful host, able to create a joyful relaxing and concentrated atmosphere. During the Q&A he showed himself as a very eloquent critic asking deep and serious questions- always with humor, knowledge and full of energy." - Ine Poppe, Professor at the Willem de Kooning Art Academy, Amsterdam "I am very impressed by Gerry Fialka's energy in bringing together groups of people to think about ideas. That is very much in the McLuhan spirit, to create and foster interdisciplinary, living, educational projects in which people can talk about ideas. [Fialka] creates forums that bring together a plurality of critical perspectives into one multivalent conversation. " - Janine Marchessault, author of MARSHALL McLUHAN:COSMIC MEDIA. "When I participated in Fialka's MESS, he created a unique through-space kind of meditation. This collective free high fires up the ability/consciousness of not judging. It makes a gap between saying and meaning leaving a lot of room for interpretation. Really amazing event." - Marc Herbst, editor-Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. "Fialka's MESS interview series is a fascinating evening with stimulating questions and approaches. I surely enjoyed the depth of the arena and a chance to pontificate on questions of the spirit in a relaxed scenario and free speech surrounding." - Lady Lord Buckley "Gerry’s interview with me was like hypnotherapy without the snapping of the fingers to bring you back. I really felt good after that." - Lucky Otis, grandson of Johnny Otis and son of Shuggie Otis & the GTO’s Miss Mercy “Gerry Fialka has built up an important body of work in his decades of interviews. My challenge to him is: get a book deal, already.” - Tibby Rothman, Feature Writer LA Weekly, Founder/Editor VenicePaper "Gerry Fialka's interview with me at Experiments In Cinema 2011 Film Festival was a highlight. He is my new favorite person. He is writing a book on Avant Garde Film & The Ann Arbor Film Festival. He is such a trip! Totally brilliant and passionate about everything about human existence it seems, but in particular media theory, media art, media activism. He asked me all sorts of great questions." - Julie Perini, filmmaker, writer and teacher "Gerry interviewed me. I've given talks all over the world and none of them touched what happened in that interview. For 2 hours and 45 minutes, the spontaneous river rolled on. At the end of every outpouring, Gerry turned the page with a new question, and the new page was just as exciting as the last one. I guess I've been waiting for an interview like that all my life. Gerry Fialka is the world champion of interviewers, it's not even close" - Jon Rappoport, author & journalist. "Fialka is a damn good interviewer. His questions are sometimes so precise that it tickles and sometimes so grand and thought provoking that one feels on the edge of a new spiritual awareness." - Lynne Sachs, award-winning filmmaker "Being interviewed by Gerry Fialka was a real high point in my film career. His questions are wacky, discursive, cosmic, probing, thought provoking and, yes, experimental and avant garde. I left brimming with a renewed passion for the wide world of film and ideas. Gerry's enthusiasm and restless intellect are contagious." - Mark Street, award-winning filmmaker “Fialka’s questions are challenging and thought provoking. These questions rattled me for days.” -Mary Jordan, filmmaker of Jack Smith documentary "I am inspired and excited that Gerry Fialka, who holds an affinity for the Ann Arbor Film Festival, is writing a history of it. Having attended two of his 2008 AAFF workshops, I can testify he is intimate with experimental cinema and media philosophy, and is deeply dedicated to the exploration of new knowledge. " - Leslie Raymond, Professor of Art & New Media, University of Texas. "Gerry Fialka is the Studs Terkel of Venice, California - nurturing active participation for common ground." - Michele Raven, Writer/Producer "Gerry Fialka is one of the most giving impresarios that ever landed in Venice, California. He continues to fulfill Venice founder Abbott Kinney's dream of Chautauqua's influence on people. Fialka is the glue of the Venicessance. " - Jeffrey Solomon, Historian, Venicebeachwalkingtours.com - - - - - - "The confusion is not my invention...It is all around us and our only chance is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess." -Samuel Beckett. "It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else. " - Stanley Kubrick ++++++++++++++++++++ "Gerry Fialka is Los Angeles' preeminent underground film curator." - CinemaWithoutBorders.com Fialka's new book project - AVANT GARDE FILM & The ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL HISTORY BOOK http://www.laughtears.com/Ann%20Arbor%20Film%20Festival.html GERRY FIALKA's Otherzine articles- Fall 2013 TRICKSTER CINEMA http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/may-attract-other-coyotes-or-putting-on-put-ons-the-artist-as-trickster/ Spring 2013 Nothing and Stay Out http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/?issueid=29&article_id=172 Fall 2012 - Mike Kelley And Meme http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/index.php?issueid=28&article_id=165 Spring 2012 - Occupy Awake:Conscious Mapmakers On World Wide Watch http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/?issueid=27&article_id=148 Fall 2011 - McLuhan's City As Classroom Flips Into All-At-Onceness As Classroom http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/index.php?issueid=26&article_id=135 Spring 2011 - McLuhan & WikiLeaks: 'Hoedown' and 'Hendiadys' http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/?issueid=25&article_id=123 Spring 2010 - Looking Glass - Review of Millennium Film Journal #51 http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/?issueid=23&article_id=99 Spring 2009 - Dream Awake -HOW JOYCE INVENTED OTHER CINEMA & DISGUISED IT AS A BOOK http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/index.php?issueid=21&article_id=85 Thank you, Gerry Fialka pfsuzy@aol.com 310-306-7330 http://www.laughtears.com/ Bio - http://www.laughtears.com/bio.html Lectures -http://laughtears.com/workshops_summary.html and http://www.laughtears.com/workshops4.html "I left Fialka's Pixelvision Workshop inspired, recharged, eased and reconnected to the cosmic artist club!!" - Brian Thomas Bailey, artist