The Structuring Strategies class and film series at CalArts welcomes New York-based experimental filmmaker Fred Worden to the Bijou Theater Tuesday night (Feb. 22). He’ll be screening and discussing several films in the program, After Hours in the Cerebral Kitchen.
Worden, who received his MFA from CalArts in 1973, has been making experimental films for the past four decades. His work emphasizes the visual—rather than narrative—aspects of the medium while drawing on abstract art and music as sources of influence.
According to the artist’s website, his films develop from his interest in “intermittent projection as the source of cinema’s primordial powers. How a stream of still pictures passing through a projector at a speed meant to overwhelm the eyes might be harnessed to purposes other than representation or naturalism.”
Currently an Associate Professor of Film/Video at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus, Worden’s films have been shown in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, The Museum of Modern Art, The Centre Pompidou, The Pacific Film Archive, The New York Film Festival as well as international festivals in London, Rotterdam, Toronto and Hong Kong.
Worden brings several films to the screening tonight, including his 1973 CalArts thesis film Throbs (16 mm, 10 mins.). He describes the film as “A first stab at orchestrating the flow of images on a purely kinetic/musical basis—a product of the then-wondrous seeming optical printer housed in the bowels of the CalArts Film School. My first ride on that big machine.”‘
Structuring Strategies presents
Fred Worden: After Hours in the Cerebral Kitchen
CalArts’ Bijou Theater
Tuesday, Feb. 22
7 pm
Free
The still image and the video clip is from Worden’s film 1859, which was screened at last year’s Sonic Acts XIII festival in Amsterdam.