Événement

Sistiaga's ERE ERERA BALEIBU ICIK SUBUA ARUAREN with Savage Republic

Presented by San Francisco Cinematheque
in association with RE/Search, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the San Francisco Bay Guardian

"Basque abstract artist Jose Antonio Sistiaga painted directly onto film with homemade inks to create this silent 1970 feature. But Sistiaga's strangely titled work ... is different from the films of Stan Brakhage, who didn't come to film from painting and had his own rhythm. [...] [I]ts combination of color and 35-millimeter 'scope (with about half an hour in black and white) yields the kind of spectacle one associates with musicals and [science fiction] epics." (Jonathan Rosenbaum)

A hand-painted masterpiece of the 1970s; a legendary band of the 1980s. Sistiaga's rarely-screened ERE ERERA BALEIBU ICIK SUBUA ARUAREN is a work of uncompromising beauty that absolutely deserves a wider appreciation. Savage Republic, one of the unrecognized godfathers of post-rock, formed roughly three decades ago in the midst of the Los Angeles punk rock scene and quietly disbanded in 1989. In recent years, they've reformed and their unique sound (imagine a Middle Eastern surf band backed by the rhythm section from Joy Division) is as compelling and inexorable as ever. For Cinematheque's season opener, SR -- original members Ethan Port and Thom Fuhrmann joined by Alan Waddington and Kerry Dowling -- performs a newly commissioned score to Sistiaga's prodigious work, presented in a stunning 35mm print from Paris. Not to be missed!