Frameworkers!
Once again I completely forgot to list my stuff on This Week... So, for those in Chicago: (And thanks to Stephen Kent Jusick!) White Light Cinema, in Conjunction with The Nightingale Theatre and the Bob Mizer Foundation, Presents: The Pioneering Physique Films of Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild A Two-Night Illustrated Lecture/Screening Series with NYC Curator/Writer/Publisher Billy Miller in Person! Saturday and Sunday, May 5 and 6, 2012 At the Nightingale Theatre (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) White Light Cinema is excited to present two nights of rare work (from the 1940s-90s) by pioneering gay physique and erotica photographer and filmmaker Bob Mizer, accompanied by short illustrated lectures each night by New York City-based curator/writer/publisher/artist Billy Miller (editor and publisher of the Straight to Hell chapbook series). Miller has organized exhibitions of Mizer¹s photography and curated screenings of Mizer¹s work for MIX: New York Queer Experimental Film Festival and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco). For these special Chicago screenings, Miller has been collaborating with Dennis Bell of the Bob Mizer Foundation to organize a selection of rarely seen (and in some instances, never seen) work from the vast Mizer archive. For most of his career, Mizer¹s films were playful, tame (as seen todayrisqué at the time) works of young men posing, flexing, wrestling, and goofing off, but in states of near nudity. On the surface, they (and his photography magazines) were marketed as physique materialssupposedly intended for bodybuilding and physical culture adherents. But, of course, they were really meant for gay male readers and viewers and walked a fine line as to what was legally permissible. As the decades progressed, Mizer¹s work became more overt in its sexual intention and in its explicitnessmoving from posing straps to full nudity to hard-core content (though he disliked making these later films, only doing so to stay viable as a business). Billy Miller¹s illustrated lectures and selection of films will provide an overview of Mizer¹s pioneering effortsfrom his beginnings in the early 1940s to the end of his career and beyond, with some consideration of his legacy and influence on subsequent artists, filmmakers, and the gay adult film industry. Mizer¹s work is only now beginning to receive more sustained attention and interest. Thanks to Dennis Bell at the Bob Mizer Foundation, the curatorial work of Billy Miller, and the release of (still a tiny fraction!) a number of Mizer¹s films on DVD, the vital role of Mizer as a cultural and social game changer and his status as an artist can start to be fully appreciated. Saturday, May 5, 2012 8:00pm Program 1: Bob Mizer and the Athletic Model Guild The Early Years, Life, and Legacy Billy Miller in Person! Tonight¹s program will include a slideshow and lecture outlining Mizer¹s early-to-mid career films and an overview of the artist¹s life and legacy. Films showing range from 19541969 and include: Booking A Hood GoGo Steve & Eddie Jealous Cowboy Trick or Treat Park Theatre intermission segments Plus additional titles TBA Digital Projection Sunday, May 6, 2012 8:00pm Program 2: From Posing Straps to Porn AMG in Transition and Mizer¹s Influence Billy Miller in Person! For this program Miller will present a selection of mid-to-late career films and videos from Mizer¹s later, and more ³hard core² period along with an accompanying presentation of the artist¹s influence and connections to the history of the adult/porn industry and the unfolding of the sexual revolution. Films showing range from 19691990 and include: Max Irish vs. Bill Jason Jake Scott session #1 Erotic Positions For Consenting Adults Night In A Dungeon Blowjob Film Tests Plus additional titles TBA Digital Projection ³Pioneering photographer and filmmaker Bob Mizer (19221992) was known for pushing societal boundaries in his work. Mizer¹s earliest photographs appeared in 1942, and in 1947 ³society² pushed back when he was convicted of the unlawful distribution of obscene material through the US mail. The material in question was a series of black and white photographs, taken by Mizer, of young bodybuilders wearing what were known as posing strapsa precursor to the G-string. He would serve a nine-month prison sentence at a work camp in Saugus, California, for what today are extremely tame images. At the time, however, the mere suggestion of male nudity was not only frowned upon, but also illegal. In spite of societal expectations and pressure from law enforcement, Mizer would go on to build a veritable empire on his beefcake photographs and films. He established the influential studio the Athletic Model Guild (AMG) in 1945 with one or more still-unidentified partners, but by the time he published the first issue of his magazine Physique Pictorial he was operating the studio on his own. With assistance from his mother Delia and his brother Joe he would go on to photograph thousands of men, building a collection that includes nearly one million different images and thousands of films and videotapes. Despite the difficulties and legal restrictions that he faced, Mizer continued in the pursuit of his vision, influencing artists as varied as Robert Mapplethorpe, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Bruce Weber, Jack Pierson, and many others. Examples of his work are now held by esteemed educational and cultural institutions the world over, and can be found in various books, galleries, and private art collections. One of the most prolific and varied photographers in history, much of his work remains unseen and has only recently beginning to come to light thanks to the work of Bob Mizer Foundation. An exhibit at the Exile gallery in Berlin, Germany was an initial peek into the yet-to-be-fully-exposed scope of his output. And recent film screenings at NYC¹s Mix Festival and at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts are part of an ongoing exploration of his many and varied films which span an almost half century of creation.² (Billy Miller) More info on Bob Mizer and related projects: http://thisisexile.com/artists_BMizer.html# <http://thisisexile.com/artists_BMizer.html> www.bobmizer.com <http://www.bobmizer.com> More about Straight To Hell: Straight To Hell (a.k.a. ³The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts²) was initially conceived of and founded by cult writer Boyd McDonald in the early 1970s and quickly gained a large international following and underground notoriety due to a combination of graphic sexual content, radical politics, and stinging wit. The unique concept of Straight To Hell remains unchanged to today: via a New York City P.O. Box, readers are invited to send their accounts of true sexual experiences to the editor. Over the decades Straight To Hell has become an infamously comprehensive and uncensored library of homosexual practice and identity. The resulting series is a uniquely democratic and powerful collection of bizarre, funny, scary, and raunchy stories documenting the real and often embarrassing sex lives of a wide range of mendetailing a continuous chronology spanning nearly a century. Although text contributions are almost entirely published as anonymous, over the decades contributors have included: William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, Raymond Pettibone, Dennis Cooper, David Sedaris, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Hurles (Old Reliable), Brian Brennan (Latino Fan Club), Slava Mogutin, Bruce LaBruce & many others. Current editor Billy Miller is at work now on a new issue. Interested parties are encouraged to write to: Box 20424 NYC 10023, or online at: [email protected] confidentiality is assured (no names needed). http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2008/11/billy-miller-christian -siekmeier-and.html More about Billy Miller: Billy Miller is an artist-curator-writer-filmmaker-and independent publisher. His artwork has been exhibited internationally at P.S.1/MoMA, John Connelly Presents, Team gallery, Visionaire Gallery, Andrew Edlin gallery, D¹Amelio Terras gallery, Dietch Projects, Galerie du Jour, Kunstverein München, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts among others, and he has curated shows and events at The Randolph Street Gallery Chicago; The Jersey City Museum; Artists Television Access; The Center for Book Arts, Anna Kustera gallery, Autoversion gallery, Munch gallery, and Famous Accounts gallery in NYC; EXILE Gallery Berlin, and other galleries and cultural institutions. His writing has appeared in publications such as INDEX, BUTT, VICE, WON Magazine, K48 and many others, and he is the editor and publisher of a number of independent publications including: When Johnny Come Marching Home Again, No Milk Today, and the cult series Straight To Hell (a.k.a. The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts). Miller is currently working with an international team of filmmakers on a documentary about the Occupy movement. http://a-poor-wayfaring-stranger.blogspot.com/ These programs take place Saturday, May 5 and Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 8:00pm each night at The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.). Admission: $7.00-10.00 sliding scale each night. Website: www.whitelightcinema.com
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