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Show Pmjc Bt Thursday, January 28, 1982 The Newspaper 0 Go Pack Your Ears! The Ear Candy Company brings to Park City an adventure in music. Lightweight Astraltune stereo cassette players available for rent on a daily basis at the Powder Room T-shirt shop on the Resort Plaza. Caution: Astraltunes may be habit forming. Give them a try! Video enters competition for first time Film Festiv al Guide at the Golf Course Park City's Finest Restaurant Open nightly 6:00-11:00 Sunday Brunch 11:00-2:00 Live Entertainment Friday & Saturday Tom Distad Reservations Please 649-7177 Available for Private Parties of 20 or more. by Rick Brough So who dresses up and goes out to watch television? Well, maybe you should, with 24 video works competing com-peting for honors, for the first time, at the U.S. Festival. The works along with video pieces that aren't competing, will be screened at the Shadow Ridge. The finalists are divided into two categories. In documentary, we find : Documentary "Albert Whitlock: Master of Illusion". A lot of the scenic vistas you have seen in the movies are created on an easel. (Remember the ghostly New England town in the TV ads for "Ghost Story"? Right out of Whitlock 's paintbrush!) Walton Dornisch and Mark Horowitz concentrated on Whitlock's special effects for Mel Brooks century-jumping epic, "History of the World: Parti." "The CriscoKid"was Michael Ray Hammond, and his disease was Epidermolysis Epider-molysis Bullosa, which plagues the victim with welts and blisters. A pain remedy devised by his nursesbandages nur-sesbandages coated with Crisco gave Michael his nickname. His brave story has an unhappy ending (he has died since Jeanne Wolf made her film). But this video work has been acclaimed ac-claimed as a moving portrait of his struggle. Young Michael's idol, Johnny Cash, said of him, "(He) makes me want to jump up and go out there and sing." "Down on South Beach." Located at the tip of Miami Beach, South Beach sprang up in the 30s and 40s, when Havana was still the "in" resort area to go. It was the seed from which the whole beach resort area grew in fact, it is the only 20th-century representative on the National Register of Historic Places. But how the big bands have left and the distinctive Art Deco look has faded. Mel Kiser and Corky Irick survey sur-vey the area inhabited by older residents who once loved it as the vacation spot of their youth. "Frank: A Vietnam Veteran." A explosive reminiscence of the Asian war. Frank talks about "the shadow that never leaves." He talks about his nerveless brutality as a G.I., about the almost sexual joy of blowing bodies into pieces and "lighting up the gooks" with lead. It was only after he returned home that the impact im-pact hit him. He joined the one-third of Vietnam veterans who suffer from recurring nightmares, and suffered bouts with alcohol, drugs, and a divorce. Producers Vince Canzoneri and Fred Simon end their film by pointing out that Frank has since undergone hospitalization for stress, and now is employed in social work. "Hobo": For Fry Pan Jack, it started years ago when he went out to pick up bread for his sister. On impulse im-pulse he hopped a passenger train and didn't see his sister until nine years later. She asked him where the bread was. Producer Tom Finerty, who jumped on a train him self at age 17, examines the hobo code of ethics, their beginnings with homeless Civil War veterans and the legendry Depression years, and visits the Hobo Convention Conven-tion in Britt, Iowa. "Holiness People." "'Dramatic' is the word that best describes ... the Appalachian Ap-palachian religious sect known as the 'Holiness Movement'," says the press material. "Crazy" is also a word that comes to mind for skeptics. These fervent Christians claim to speak in tongues and say they cast out devils. They drink strychnine and handle deadly snakes without apparent ap-parent harm. Produced by Larry Sulkis. "I Don't Matter I Don't Care." The film examines the troubled teenagers of an upstate New York town named Greenwich. Green-wich. If they haven't dropped drop-ped out of school, they will. If they haven't been in jail, they're going to be. Michael Marton's film focuses on Scott, one of seven children. Confronted at school with choices he doesn't understand, under-stand, Scott is more at home in the local pool hall, which is where the film finds, and leaves, him. "Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together." Three ska K1A Park Station 950 Park Avenue For Information on Complimentary Skating Passes Call: 649-7220 649-1922 Skate Rental Available at Park Station ? DW generations of piano players in New Orleans rehearse together, in a funny, exasperating process, to get a blues number ready for performance, When one of them, Professor Longhair, dies two days before the show (you wouldn't believe that in a fiction piece, would you?) his comrades "Tuts" Washington and Allen Toussaint carry on with a musical tribute to their friend. Made by Stevenson J. Palfi. "Pick Up Your Feet: The Double Dutch Show.": In Skip Blum-berg's Blum-berg's film, four-member teams compete in this annual an-nual event, where contestants contestan-ts skip two jumping ropes rotating in opposite directions. direc-tions. Definitely not for those who can't pat their heads and rub their stomach at the same time! The teams include in-clude the Jumping Joints and the Fantastic Four, who predict, "We're gonna be four little old ladies ... and we're still gonna be jumpin' rope." "Run to the Sun." No other marathon has such a grueling route. The mountain moun-tain road on the island of Maui climbs 37.5 miles from the Pacific shores to the summit of the Haleakala volcano. Equal doses of beauty and pain are present. Produced by Barry Rivers. "Salmon on the Run". The salmon must swim upstream against, not just the current, but logging work, and hydroelectric dams. When the suggestion is made to "ocean ranch" the fish, producers Lynn Adler, Steve Christiansen, and Jim Mayer, leave us wondering if we need to manage every aspect of nature. "Signed, Sealed and Delivered." Dangerous working conditions at the Post Office? All too true, says this documentary, which follows the efforts of militant workers to protest unsafe conditions at a monster mon-ster sorting plant in New .-Jerseyi" The' film-shows a workers : striker which rdied for lack of national support; the strike leaders being fired in resprisal, they included the husband of film-maker Tami Gold); the death of a 25-year-old worker sucked in by a conveyor belt and ripped rip-ped apart by machinery; and the admission by a postal official that the machine's safety was wired "off" to increase production. This video work, co-produced co-produced by Gold, Erik Lewis and Dan Gordon, has been used by postal locals across the country. "The Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup." Roun-dup." In a traditional event, snakes are gathered, captured, milked, skinned, and eaten, even though the original need to hold down their population no longer exists. Laurie McDonald examined the psychological reasons for the gleeful, killing and for such ceremonies as the crowning of a Snake Queen. Along the way, she also cures her fear of snakes. "Who Will Protect the Family." Frances Fitzgerald and Victoria Costello follow the fight over the Equal Right Amendment in North Carolina. From church to legislature to kitchen-table caucus, the activities ac-tivities of both sides in the debate are studied. Film Art The following films are competing in the Film Art category. "Amarillo News Tapes." A sHy of TV news in the making, as the local news team covers a mayor's race, an explosion, and a killer tornado. Proauceu uy Doug Hail, Chip Lord, and Jody Proctor. "Artifacts, Pure and Applied." Look ma, no hands. A series of pieces in which the camera movements have been' preprogrammed on a computer. com-puter. "Chott el-Djerid." That's the name of a vast dry lake in the Sahara where mirages form. The region is contrasted to the blizzards of Canada, with its own particular par-ticular disorientation. The film becomes a study on reality. "The Complete Dale Hoyt." An angry voice on the telephone grows more and more hysterical as it fails to reach its number through the operator. This is one of several sketches conceived con-ceived by an "angry, aggressive" video artist. "How to Fly." A video piece that uses mice, cockroaches, and airplanes, and promises to "alter the formal expectations of the television audience." "Ism." Producer Bernd Kracke plays with the electronic elec-tronic reproduction of the human image, changing its scale, making it clearer or sharper, covering or exposing ex-posing the physical form. "Love Tapes." Video artist Wendy Clarke invited people to face a camera, choose their own background music, and talk about their feelings on love for three minutes. Afterward they could decide to edit their remarks, dispose of them, and or add them to Clarke's collection of "Love Tapes." Some cried, some were wistful, and one pulled a plastic bag over his head. "Music Word Fire & I Would Do It Again (Coo-Coo): 'The Lessons." Almost indescribable: in-describable: a chapter in a TV video opera about the World's Greatest Piano Player, who passes on his wisdom to a select group through video tapes. Each of his Lessons develops a visual structure ("grid, verticals") which is also associated with one of the characters. Huh? . .... i ' i(, .'Olympic Fragments." Frag-ments." Filming "at the Lake Placid Games, video artists Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn concentrate on the grace and excitement of the athlete's activity, not the "thrill of victory and agony of defeat. For instance, a ski jumper is not considered for his victory, but for the poetry of his ecstatic suspension in mid-air. "Smothering Dreams." Producer Joseph Reeves cuts back and forth mercilessly between myth and reality, between children playing with toy guns and soldiers on patrol. "Video Ecotopia." Artist Stephen Bock asks: what would the technical process of video be like in Ecotopia? A political conceit which suggests that California, Califor-nia, Washington, and Oregon secede to become an ecological state. "Videograms." More no-hands experimentation with electronic production of video. Artist Gary Hill seeks an electronic language, a video poetry. And ... In addition to these contestants, con-testants, the video offerings include nine TV movies, works like "Friendly Fire", with Carol Burnett "Playing For Time" with Vanessa Redgrave, and the final episode of "Roots II." Other shorter pieces include commercial parodies from "Saturday Night Live" and "Elephant Parts" a musical comedy by former Monkee Michael Nesmith. Right of the bat, we should tell you one important thing about searching for these video programs on your schedule. Many of the competing com-peting video works are short films, and therefore have been combined into programs, No. 1 through No. 15. For information on the content of these programs, seethe video schedule. |