ATA Film Festival in SF starts

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Artists' Television Access celebrates independent and underground film with the 3rd ATA Film and Video Festival on October 2, 3 & 4, 2008.

On Thursday, October 2, the festival opens with Craig Baldwin's latest feature, MOCK UP ON MU. Drug orgies, spaceships and monsters, oh my… Rising from the hippie-UFO scene, MU follows the intertwined lives of Jack Parson, inventor of rocket fuel, Marjorie Cameron, new age sex leader, and L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer turned Scientology founder, as the "insansational" '60s feeds them with the occult, beatniks, and spaceships to the moon. Cultural historian and culture jammer Baldwin has made cult masterpieces like Tribulation 99 and Sonic Outlaws, and may know every conspiracy and urban legend invented from Alcatraz to Bermuda. His takes on the lurid history of the universe are crazed yet commonsensical. Mashing up real events with rumors and miles of found footage, he creates an elegiac fairy-tale so cohesive that you'll feel like a manic scholar afterwards.

Don't miss the intro act by MU-vie star, Stoney Burke as John McTaint (think McCain).

On Friday and Saturday, October 3 & 4, the festival will showcase 20 short films that run the cinematic gamut of art, comedy and lucid trip. Some of the highlights include Tony Gault’s CASE HISTORIES IN PSYCHOTHERAPY – a hilarious case study of 80s club life as interpreted by Unsolved Mysteries and then reinterpreted by Gault, the beautiful, flickering SPHINX ON THE SEINE by Paul Clipson – a luscious display of wires, lines, light and contrast, and VISIONS OF WASTED TIME – an apparently controversial but utterly unique home movie by Neil Ira Needleman. I didn’t get to see Kerry Laitala’s RETROSPECTROSCOPE but love all her work and the title is sure promising.

In addition to the screenings, the work of 11 experimental film and video artists will be displayed as installations throughout the gallery during the festival and in the ATA Window in October.

ATA is at 992 Valencia at 21st Street. Doors open at 7:30pm every night. Screenings start at 8pm. Tickets are $10. Limited amount available online.

For complete information, including interviews of the filmmakers visit http://festival.atasite.org/2008


FESTIVAL PROGRAM

Thursday, October 2 - Opening Night

Mock Up on Mu (Craig Baldwin).

Friday, October 3:

Why Was I Born (Marlon Gonzalez); Vivid Dreams (Jim Granato); Ants (Ants Ants Ants) (Clare Samuel); Case Histories in Psychotherapy (Tony Gault); Kogel Vogel (Frederico Camapanale).

The Quite Storm (Jibz Cameron); Sunshine Bob (Christian Simmons); Martha's Party (Marthaxiv) Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show (Lise Swenson/Richard Schimpf); Sphinx on the Seine (Paul Clipson)

Saturday, October 4:

Ghosts and Gravel Roads (Mike Rollo); Retrospectroscope (Kerry Laitala); Nocturnal Transmission (Carl Diehl); What for What (John Davis); Visions of Wasted Time (Neil Ira Needleman)

In Search of a Mystic Bartone (Mack McFarland); Baird's Beaked Whale (Douglas Schultz); The Stalin that was Played by Me (Daya Cahen); Infection (Esther Maria Probst); and 3x1 (Telemach Wiesinger)

Gallery Installations - October 3 & 4

Ode to Kirlian (Sam Manera) and Television for Ghosts: The Big Storm (Shalo P.)

Window Installations – October 2-October 31 (7pm-midnight)August (Vanessa O'Neill); Ozuland 002 (Carlos Sansolo) Poderia Haver Algo No Fundo Do Espelno (Ericka Frankel);Steve Martin on the Loose (Rebecca Whipple); RGB Expose (Nick Briz); The Isthmus of Kansas (Christopher Cassidy); Baghdad Plan Is a Success (Sabine Gruffat); Close to Home (Jan Hakon Erichsen); and Sandwich: The Musical (Eric Arsnow)