TT Takemoto in person
From cinema’s pre-sound era to the present day, the dance and musical genres have captivated audiences in their fusion of choreography, camerawork, performance and song. Presented as part of the 4 Star Theater’s month-long series Get Down, Get Down: A Celebration of Dance Films, Cinematheque presents this program of work appraising, celebrating and at times critiquing the intoxicating spectacle of the filmed musical and dance film through gestures of appropriation, revision and citation.
In this program, mash-ups and remixes abound—from The Sound of Music to Apocalypse Now to Singing’ In the Rain to the American Music Awards—in works by Gregg Biermann (Happy Again), People Like Us (The Sound of the End of Music) and Michael Robinson (Mad Ladders)—while Animal Charm and Maria Magnussen find moments of pop surrealism in anonymous found material. Rhea Storr’s Madness Remixed examines the century-long controversies around Josephine Baker’s infamous banana skirt while TT Takemoto’s Looking for Jiro uses camp drag performance (and homoerotic breadmaking) to perform a queer meditation on WWII Japanese-American internment. Program opens with Kevin Jerome Everson and Kahlil I. Pedizisai’s Glenville—inspired by the 1898 William Selig-directed Something Good—Negro Kiss, the earliest on-screen kiss involving African Americans—and concludes with Leslie Thornton’s Another Worldy, an icy plunge into the terror at the heart of the American musical. Program also features Jeanne Liotta’s operatic rayogram Loretta. (Steve Polta)
SCREENING:
Sunspots and Solar Flares (2013) by Maria Magnusson; digital video, color, sound, 3 minutes
Glenville (2020) by Kevin Jerome Everson and Kahlil I. Pedizisai; digital video, color, sound 2 minutes
Loretta (2003) by Jeanne Liotta; 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 4 minutes
Lightfoot Fever (1996) by Animal Charm; digital video, color, sound, 2 minutes
Happy Again (2006) by Gregg Biermann; digital video, color, sound, 5 minutes
The Sound of the End of Music (2010) by People Like Us; digital video, color, sound, 4 minutes
Mad Ladders (2015) by Michael Robinson; digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes
Madness Remixed (2021) by Rhea Storr; digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes
Looking for Jiro (2011) by TT Takemoto; digital video, b&w, sound, 6 minutes
Another Worldy (2001) by Leslie Thornton; digital video, b&w, sound, 22 minutes
Exhibition files from the Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Center, Lightcone, LUX, Picture Palace Pictures, Video Data Bank and individual artists.