Los Angeles Dreaming:  Mike Stoltz and Alee Peoples

7.30pm Thursday 11th April | $7 ($5 for AFW members) | AFW/Arena, 2 Kerr St, Fitzroy

AFW is delighted to be presenting a program of 16mm films from Los Angeles based film artists Alee Peoples and Mike Stoltz. Stoltz and Peoples have both established themselves as prominent figures in the US experimental film scene each having screened their work in all the classic classy venues and festivals you can name. And now their work is here with us with a selection of seven beautiful prints hot off the plane.

Come see some contemporary West Coast film style!

PROGRAM
 

Spotlight on a Brick Wall, Alee Peoples + Mike Stoltz, 2016, 16mm, 8′
A performance film that navigates expectations of both the audience and the makers. A series of false starts. Dub treatment on the laugh track. 

With Pluses and Minuses, Mike Stoltz, 2013, 16mm, 5′
“…Stoltz shakes and dislocates audio and image with volume and pitch variations, editing the 16mm film in camera, varying the focus and the shot length of every frame, shifting background and foreground, turning and spinning the camera hand-held positions, and allowing sequences of black that punctuate the image’s algorithms. The filmmaker’s dance transforms abstraction into personal experience. He is an active agent of the surrounding world, and of the opportunities that open and close before us” – Mónica Savirón, Lumiere

Them Oracles, Alee Peoples, 2012, 16mm, 7′
Them Oracles is a skeptic investigation of what an oracle can be and what it would sound like. Human desire and blind faith allow, and maybe even will, these mystic soothsayers to exist.

Decoy, Alee Peoples, 2017, 16mm, 10′
Decoy sees bridges and walls as binary opposites and relates them to impostors in this world. Humans strive for accuracy. You don’t always get what you wish for.

Half Human, Half Vapor, Mike Stoltz, 2015, 16mm, 12′
“This project began out of a fascination with a giant sculpture of a dragon attached to a Central Florida mansion. The property had recently been left to rot, held in lien by a bank. Hurricanes washed away the sculpture. I learned about the artist who created this landmark, Lewis Vandercar (1913-1988), who began as a painter. His practice grew along with his notoriety for spell-casting and telepathy. Inspired by Vandercar’s interest in parallel possibility, I combined these images with text from local newspaper articles in a haunted-house film that both engages with and looks beyond the material world.” – MS

If You Can’t See My Mirrors, I Can’t See You, Alee Peoples, 2016, 16mm, 12′
A study of the frame. An equal exchange between friends.

Under The Atmosphere, Mike Stoltz, 2014, 16mm 14′
Filmed on the Central Florida “Space Coast”, site of NASA’s launch pads. Dormant spacecraft, arcane text, activated landscape, and the surface of the image work towards a future-past shot reverse shot.