A Philological Quandary, Kenneth Anger’s ¡Que Viva Mexico!

According to director Bruce Posner, “The three parts developed over a year period of intense study during the mid-1970s. It sort of began and ended my dependency on ‘high-tech’ equipment to make films and led me through the equally intensive parameters of what motion picture film could reproduce on a visceral, detail-oriented level. In contrast to the high-end 2K digital technology used to restore ‘Manhatta’ and ‘Ballet Mechanique,’ I learned filmmaking decades earlier on a 35mm Oxberry beam-splitter, multi-head, aerial-image bi-pac optical printer — a dinosaur by today’s standards and all hand operated prior to the advent of computer-assists, this machine was precise and exact to the frame. ‘S&J: Pt. 3’ took 26 hours to shoot straight thru without one mistake.”

A 2021 experimental film utilising, among other things, a clip from Gaston Velle's Voyage autour d’une étoile (1906).

2 projectors/screens, color, silent

“Aged in Wood” (a Christmas gift for my friends and loved ones… ) 1947, 1974, 1975, 2011, 2020, 16mm 24 fps, 1:37:1, to 2K DPX 10bit 4:3 to 16mm, clr, silent, 4:24 mins.

Documentation of Sonia Landy Sheridan and Aldo Tambellini in conversation with Bruce Posner.

A report from the field (Dartmouth College) on July 25, 2020 with update posted August 21, 2020

"The film acts as an epithet for what everyone knows about our meager place in the universe. Succinctly stated in Jack Arnold’s "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957) and loosely ad-libbed by me in an inspired Cageian manner via a pompous (but difficult to produce) single-frame optical pan traversing the lofty soliloquy. The toilet paper in the bare autumn tree was encountered early one morning outside the school of the Art Institute of Chicago on Columbus Drive. With eclair and 12-120 zoom in hand, it was a no brainer. The combinations illustrate a mocking attitude that is much in line with most Hollywood expressionism, lofty ideals via a crass medium."

The film grew out of the home movies made by my father and then by me. Led to one of the first optical printer films produced at The Florida Optical House, Miami, and shot by Albie Krieger. Combines Reg 8mm, 16mm and 35mm with most derived from 16mm. the sources and content are obvious, with the overall experience somewhat unresolved. tho the ending is explicit and direct. hence "the quickie version" title for a film that has been reworked in differing versions and number of projectors and screens. (Bruce Posner)