Tuesday, December 09, 2025
7:00 PM
The Civic PAvilion, Boston City Hall
Admission: FREE with RSVP

The Civic Pavilion
Boston City Hall

Rebecca Barten and David Sherman, experimental filmmakers and accidental neologists, coined the term “microcinema" in 1994 in order to re-imagine what a film exhibition space could be. Barten/Sherman present a new live cine-essay about their influential DIY exhibition space, Total Mobile Home microCINEMA and the extraordinary experimental cinema culture that exploded in 1990’s San Francisco. Mapping a moment in underground cinema that began in an illegal basement space using scavenged technologies to cultivate an intimate immensity of makers and audience, the presentation offers a historically singular window into the structure of their curatorial investigations and their small gauge community creation! From the historical avant-garde to late century transgressive moving image practices, Barten/Sherman’s presentation synthesizes video documentation, curated films, oral histories, writings, ephemera and live expository interludes about and through the Total Mobile Home lens.

“Small informal cinematheques and film clubs had, of course, existed since the beginnings of cinema. What Barten and Sherman brought was not only a practice, but also an ethos that stressed the values and benefits of the smaller-scale, and spoke to a generation dissatisfied with the impersonal limitations of older, top-down models.” -Light Industry, Brooklyn, NY

The Futurist - Emily Richardson
Ipswich, UK | 2010 | 4 | 16mm > digital

Cellar Sinema - George Kuchar
San Francisco, CA |1994 | 12 | SD > digital

Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor -
Lynne Sachs
Brooklyn, NY | 2018 | 8 | Super 8mm and 16mm > digital

Degrees of Limitation - Scott Stark
San Francisco, CA| 1982 | 3 | 16mm > digital

Parallel II - Harun Farocki
Berlin, Germany | 2014 | 9 | digital

Roman Chariot - David Sherman
Tucson, AZ | 2004 | 3 | SD > digital

war song - Rebecca Barten
Tucson, AZ | 2023| 3 | 16mm > digital

Total Mobile Home Mail Project (excerpt)
1994-2023 | 7 | 35mm slides > digital

Luther Price's Clown Two: Scary Transformations (excerpt)
Boston, MA | 1994| 8 | SD > digital

Total: 57:00

The Futurist -Emily Richardson
Ipswich, UK | 2010 | 4 | 16mm > digital

The Futurist is a condensed experience of film viewing, a single 360-degree animated shot in an empty 1920s cinema where the sound becomes a cacophony of past projections and the aural experience is closer to that of the projectionist than the audience.

Cellar Sinema - George Kuchar
San Francisco, CA |1994 | 12 | SD > digital

A descent into the blackness of the projected image and the curators who flick the switches and grease up all moveable parts for hot action when the lights go out.

Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor - Lynne Sachs
Brooklyn, NY | 2018 | 8 | Super 8mm and 16mm > digital

From 2015 to 2017, Lynne Sachs visited with Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer and Gunvor Nelson, three multi-faceted artists who have embraced the moving image throughout their lives. From Carolee's 18th Century house in the woods of Upstate New York to Barbara's West Village studio to Gunvor's childhood village in Sweden, Lynne shoots film with each woman in the place where she finds grounding and spark.

Degrees of Limitation - Scott Stark
San Francisco, CA| 1982 | 3 | 16mm > digital

A single 100' roll shot with a hand-wound 16mm Bolex. For each shot the camera was wound one additional time, allowing me to make it a little bit farther up the hill. Will I reach the top before the film runs out? A study in self-imposed limitations.

Trace of a Parallel II - Harun Farocki
Berlin, Germany | 2014 | 9 | digital

Parallel II explores the borders and boundaries of the game worlds. The work follows character’s attempts to escape the edges of their animated world by any means, and seeks to reveal what lies outside of the defined spaces and digital borders.

Roman Chariot - David Sherman
Tucson, AZ | 2004 | 3 | SD > digital

A vehicle of consciousness navigates the vertiginous labyrinths of San Francisco. Roman Chariot was filmed over several months with a spy camera mounted on a baby carriage.

Trace of a war song - Rebecca Barten
Tucson, AZ | 2023| 3 | 16mm > digital

After the filmmaker, Stan Vanderbeek died in 1984, I swept up small pieces of 16mm. film from his dusty studio floor. Thirty-eight years later, a celluloid trance collage of his lost images and language fragments emerges in war song.

Trace Total Mobile Home Mail Project (excerpt)
1994-2023 | 7 | 35mm slides > digital

In 1994, TMH sent disposable cameras and cassette tapes to filmmakers and artists across the country asking them to document their workspaces for a dissolving slideshow exploring home as the genesis of creativity. This excerpt includes photographs by the artists Robert Frank, Carolee Shneemann and Rudy Burkhardt.

Luther Price's Clown Two: Scary Transformations (excerpt)
Boston, MA | 1994| 8 | SD > digital

A documentation of a performance by transgressive Super-8 filmmaker Luther Price at TMH in 1994. He inhabits multiple personas including a perverted clown, a dandy doll de-facer and a living ice cream sundae.