Filmforum Tackles the ‘Beast’ : Movies: The organization is in the midst of the most ambitious piece of programming it’s ever attempted. The citywide festival includes about 150 experimental films.

The thing you have to remember about experimental film is that its roots are in the static visual arts rather than the movies.

A rigorously conceptual practice that concerns itself with such things as the mechanics of perception, the believability of images and the dismantling of cinematic cliches, experimental films care not a whit about linear narrative, heroes and villains and box-office prowess. They are, in short, diametrically opposed to all the Hollywood industry holds dear.

So, don’t show up at “Scratching the Belly of the Beast: Cutting Edge Media in Los Angeles, 1922-94,” with a bag of popcorn prepared to click off your mind--this history of experimental film in Southern California requires some effort by the viewer.

Given that, it’s not surprising that the 19-year-old Filmforum, the L.A. showcase for experimental film that organized the event, is for many filmgoers a well-kept secret. Founded in 1975 by Terry Cannon, Filmforum relocated in 1984 from its first home in Pasadena to the downtown Wallenboyd Center, where it operated until 1987, when it began presenting films at LACE. Filmforum has been without a permanent home since 1992, and for the past year and a half most of its programming has been presented at Hollywood Moguls, a cafe on Hudson Street in Hollywood with a 99-seat theater. This May, Filmforum reunites with LACE when both will resurface in new digs at the Newberry Building on Hollywood Boulevard.

The fact that Filmforum has thrived as an idea rather than an actual place for almost two years, makes it doubly impressive that it is currently in the midst of the most ambitious piece of programming it’s ever attempted. A seven-week, citywide festival presented in conjunction with the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library, the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, MOCA, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Beyond Baroque, “Scratching the Belly of the Beast” will include a series of roundtable discussions and several special events. The soul of the festival, however, is the 150 films that will be screened.

Organized by Filmforum’s director Jon Stout, the festival kicked off last Thursday with the premiere of the fourth film by Gregg Araki. From there, the series spins out into an elaborately structured affair that includes programs conceived by nine guest curators, four evenings celebrating local organizations that have kept experimental film alive here for the past 70 years, shows devoted to groundbreaking explorations in animation, and seminal video works done by visual artists such as William Wegman, Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden.

In surveying this series, the question arises as to whether there’s anything distinctly regional about experimental film in L.A. Taking a cursory glance at this far-flung array of films, the answer would be no; each filmmaker included has developed a singular style unique unto itself. When one digs deeper, however, recurring motifs begin to appear. At the top of that list is the fact that experimental film in L.A. is obsessed with mainstream movies to a far greater degree than the experimental film of New York or the Bay Area.

This concern is particularly apparent in Monday’s program, curated by film scholar David James. Titled “The Distinction of Idioms: Non-Industrial Film in Los Angeles,” the program includes Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapich’s German Expressionist influenced 1928 essay on the perils of Tinseltown, “Life and Death of 9413--A Hollywood Extra,” along with important works by seminal L.A. filmmakers Chick Strand and Morgan Fisher that deconstruct the cinematic experience. Also included is Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon” (1943), a groundbreaking work that filters Hollywood cliches, specifically those of film noir and women’s movies of the ‘40s, through a feminist lens.

A second recurring regional tick surfaces in Wednesday’s program, “Independent Animation in the Los Angeles Area,” curated by Maureen Furniss. Paralleling a venerated tradition in local visual art, animated films hereabouts indicate an enduring love for eye candy. Is this to suggest we’re just a dumb blond city? Not exactly, but the look of things has always counted for a lot in L.A. The local penchant for richly optical art can be traced from Stanton McDonald-Wright’s Synchromist paintings of the ‘20s and ‘30s, to the Lyrical Abstraction of artists like Sam Francis, to the Finish Fetish school that blossomed in L.A. in the ‘60s, up on through the Light and Space art of the ‘70s. Similarly, there’s a tradition here of filmmakers who’ve made unabashedly lush “paintings” on film.

More often than not, these cinematic paintings are scored to music, and included in Wednesday’s programs are several visual symphonies by celebrated animator Oskar Fishinger, as well as works by brothers John and James Whitney, who pioneered the use of computers in films synthesizing abstract design and music. “Why do they always have to play with mice?” James Whitney once asked in reflecting on the limits of animated films, and the point of the work in this program is to transcend that cliche.

The program on Feb. 21, “Looking Over an Underground” is one of the most fascinating bills in the series, including such treasures as artist Wallace Berman’s “Untitled 1957-65.” Since his death in 1977, Berman’s influence on the art of L.A. has become increasingly apparent, and opportunities to see this, the only film he made, are rare. A short collage of Pop imagery, Berman’s modest film is a remarkably beautiful evocation of the audaciously sexual youth culture of the ‘60s. Also on the program, curated by filmmaker Thom Andersen, is “Marcello, I’m So Bored,” a hilarious short that director John Milius made in 1966 with John Strawbridge.

Other programs of note include “Radiating Visions: A Tribute to the Creative Film Society,” curated by Angie Pike and slated for March 5. A film distribution service founded in 1957, CFS handled everything from William Hale’s “The Towers,” a short documentary on L.A. folk artist Simon Rodia, to Art Clokey’s “Gumbasia,” an exercise in stop-action animation that served as the prototype for his subsequent series “Gumby.” Curator Claire Aguilar’s program of March 28, “Personal Visions: Mapping Territories in Southern California,” is highlighted by an excerpt from “The Works,” a collaborative film by L.A. historians Reyner Banham and Mike Davis, and “Bump City,” a short made by Pat O’Neill in 1964.

O’Neill is acknowledged as one of the most influential experimental filmmakers to emerge from L.A., and his 1988 film “Water and Power” is considered his masterpiece. The series wraps up on March 31 with a screening of that film, which is a highly abstracted examination of the relationship between nature and the industrial civilization of Southern California.

Screening with “Water and Power” is Charles Burnett’s exquisitely realized 1977 debut feature, “Killer of Sheep.” Best known for the critically acclaimed “To Sleep With Anger,” Burnett paints a haunting portrait of the life of an alienated slaughterhouse worker living in South-Central; this beautifully scored film is a defining work on late 20th-Century life in L.A.

The festival will throw a party for itself March 30 when it presents “Salome” and “The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome,” two films by legendary bad boy of the underground Kenneth Anger (Anger’s “Puce Moment” and “Kustom Kar Kommandos” are included in other programs). The director will be in attendance, as will “Inauguration” stars Cameron and Samson DeBrier.

A disciple of Aleistair Crowley, Anger hammered out a Dionysian approach to filmmaking best described as a demented hybrid of Cecil B. DeMille and Pasolini. Bringing homosexual themes to the screen with candor and wit long before that was considered acceptable, Anger’s films combine elements of high camp and mythology to explore various American outlaw subcultures.

Today, Anger’s films may strike some as just this side of silly, but they were nothing short of revolutionary in their day. It’s often been the case that innovations hammered out by experimental filmmakers have been appropriated by the mainstream film industry and transformed into popular cliches. So before you dismiss one of these films, check the date when it was made; that may make it clear why it’s regarded as an important piece of history.

* Guest-curated programs will be presented at Hollywood Moguls on Monday nights. A series of feature films made by local experimental filmmakers will screen Tuesdays at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library. The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities will present a series of roundtable discussions Wednesday evenings at Hollywood Moguls. Roundtable discussions and screenings at the Central Library are free; admission to other events varies. Information: (213) 663-9568.