There’s a new film series in Charlotte that is the only one of its kind in the Carolinas. It’s called "Wavelengths," and it shows classic experimental movies. The series will include rare 16-millimeter films that have never been digitized and that have also been shown at the MoMA in New York and the Tate in London. Joining me now to talk about is Jeff Jackson, who organized the series in Charlotte. And a quick note, he is not the state attorney general with the same name.
Marshall Terry: OK, Jeff. So, we are in pretty good company there with New York and London. So, you’re about to start the spring portion of the series and that includes a couple of these rare 16-millimeter films. What can you tell us about them?
Jeff Jackson: Yes. We have two films coming up Feb. 22. We're showing two movies by Phil Solomon, who's a wonderful director. The films are very sort of mysterious, almost psychedelic — these very sort of shadowy dream narratives that sort of recall forgotten childhood memories.
And then April 12, we're doing a number of films by Stan Brakhage, who is one of the most, sort of, famous experimental filmmakers. And we're doing films of his that sort of span his entire career — from these gorgeous hand-painted films to sort of abstract fantasias, to dance studies, to sky visions — even some films with some actors, which he's not normally known for. We're only showing about 30-35 minutes of material — because it's pretty intense visual stuff — and we don't want to burn out people's attention spans.
Terry: Well, some people are probably thinking experimental film is not for me. How do you explain films like these to someone who was unfamiliar or maybe skeptical?
Jackson: We're doing this series at Goodyear Arts. And this series is free, so there isn't sort of a barrier to entry to coming to check it out. There's something actually very entertaining about them, in the sense of you're seeing things visually that you've never really seen before — that are really dynamic, that are really unusual and that are really short.
Now, if these movies were like two hours or something like that, that might be too much. But I think for what we're showing, people might be surprised how much interest they find in these movies. And they might be surprised, too, how some elements of them have been adopted by the mainstream. They're sort of seeing the uncut versions of some visual moves that you'll see in movie credits, you'll see in advertisements, things like that. So these films have been influential and have really impacted the culture over the years.
Terry: Now, for those of us who don't speak film, what's the significance of 16-millimeter and these films not being digitized?
Jackson: Well, the films haven't been digitized, mostly because the filmmakers didn't want them digitized. And so, 16 millimeter, it's an old form, it's an old celluloid. It goes through a projector. The quality of the light is much softer, much richer, the colors are much more vibrant.
And there's also something about the frame rate that's really important for these filmmakers. A lot of the films we're showing on digital — they just don't look nearly as good and they don't have the visual impact that they do on film.
Terry: It's so easy to just pull up my phone and watch something like this on YouTube — if it's on there. But why do you think it's important for people to gather and watch movies like this on bigger screens instead?
Jackson: Well, there are certain movies that only really cast a spell that they're meant to on a bigger screen. We're moving our screenings in the summer to the Independent Picture House. And so we're going to be showing on Saturday, June 21, we're going to be showing David Lynch's "Inland Empire." And Saturday, Aug. 16, we're showing Andrei Tarkovsky's "Andrei Rublev." And we picked these films because we really felt that they only work as big-screen experiences.
I think people don't really understand sometimes there are films that when you see them at home smaller, they just seem slow. But when you see them, size really correlates a lot to the pace of the movie. And these screenings, like the 16-millimeter screenings, are going to be free. And again, that's part of Goodyear Arts. It's part of their ethos, and it's also thanks to the sponsorship of Charlotte Magazine.
The "Wavelengths" film series in Charlotte resumes this Saturday, Feb. 22, at Goodyear Arts.
