America
Films by Brian L. Frye
Sunday, May 17th · 2PM

The RPM Festival presents "America," a program featuring seven short films by Brian L. Frye on May 17th 2PM at The Brattle Theater, Cambridge, MA. The entire program will be screened on 16mm prints, showcasing films created between 1999 and 2002.

Brian L. Frye is a filmmaker, writer, and law professor whose work explores the relationships between history, society, and cinema through archival and amateur images. His films have been exhibited at prestigious venues including the Whitney Biennial, the New York Film Festival’s “Views from the Avant-Garde,” and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His short films are held in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum and distributed by the Filmmaker’s Coop.

In addition to his filmmaking, Brian is an accomplished writer whose work has appeared in publications such as October, Film Comment, and the Village Voice. He holds a J.D. from NYU School of Law, an M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and a B.A. from UC Berkeley. His current research focuses on intellectual property and charity law, with a particular emphasis on artists and arts organizations.

Across the Rappahannock
16mm, color, silent, 9mins

On December 12, 1863, General Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Potomac engaged General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Before Burnside's army could enter the town, Union engineers were forced to lay pontoon bridges across the Rappahannock River under withering fire. Close combat through the streets of Fredericksburg and multiple assaults on the Confederate army entrenched in the heights behind the town resulted in heavy Federal casualties, which forced an eventual withdrawal. In November, 2001, I attended a small and relatively informal reenactment of the battle of Fredericksburg. About a hundred men and women did their best to illustrate the actions of the thousands of young men who offered their lives a century earlier. An air of absurd theater suffused the entire event, which provided the ground for its peculiar truth. Everyone played their part exceedingly honestly and well, and left something on the film I was myself surprised to find there.

Kaddish
16mm, color and b/w, sound 11 min, 2002

"Here is my covenant with you, says the Lord: My spirit that is upon you, and the words I have put in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth or the mouths of your children or the mouths of your children's children – the Lord says – from now through all eternity." – Isaiah 59:21. A fragment of tinted nitrate. An acetate recording of a wedding ceremony. Echoes of the bitter sweetness of the Spirit on the tongue of Man. As Frampton tipped his hat to Gloria, so might I.

Lachrymae
16mm, color, silent, 3 min, 2000

".. and yet of that living breathing throng, not one will be encased in a material frame. A company of ghosts, playing to spectral music. So may the luminous larvae of the Elysian fields have rehearsed earth's well beloved scenes to the exiled senses of Pluto's Queen." – W. K. L. Dickson

Oona's veil
16 mm, b/w, sound, 9 min, 2002

It explores the only existing screen test of Oona O'Neill Chaplin, which Frye re-photographed, treated with chemicals, and damaged to examine the fleeting nature of her film career. The film is in the Whitney Museum of American Art permanent collection.

Robert Beck is Alive & Well
16mm, b/w. sound, 3min, 2002

"Vitam cum morte mutavit!"

Robert Beck was an American soldier from Chicago who served in the First World War. Struck deaf and dumb by shellshock, Beck was sent to an English sanitarium to convalesce. At some point, the patients attended a movie. Beck began to laugh, and was suddenly cured of his affliction. He became the patron saint of New York’s Robert Beck Memorial Cinema, dedicated to films which recall the marvelous. On September 26, 2000, Stuart Sherman, the great performance artist and filmmaker, presented several of his films, interspersed with “perfilmances,” in which he re-enacted the passion of Robert Beck. This film is a record of that “spectacle,” shot by Lee Ellickson, and accompanied by Maria Callas. Stuart Sherman died on September 14, 2001 in San Francisco. This may have been his last New York performance.

The Anatomy of Melancholy
16mm, b/w, sound, 10min, 1999

What can consummate the 20th century and all its disasters? An opening in blood and terror, the gnashing of teeth and cracking bones, air as heavy as the burden of our souls in our throats; snap snap and all's well that ends in a second act to mirror the first. This short century, punctuated by the grandest catastrophes, waits patiently for its proper third and final act – the players have lost their taste for soliloquy, but the gestures may yet come easily, and with the facility of one who no longer must watch that his hands do as told. Hence this "entr'acte"; a bowed head as a chariot approaches, the Sun King, waiting still for the moment when he might again assume his throne. Yea, for though they lament, the passion is theirs alone, the knife they hold to their own throats, waiting for that terrible voice which speaks in thunder and fire...

The Letter
16mm, b/w, sound, 11min, 2001

The War is Beautiful in Springtime
16mm, Color, 6 min, 2002