Lewis Klahr: Circumstantial Pleasures

Circumstantial Pleasures, by Lewis Klahr

Sunday November 20, 2022, 7:30 pm

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Lewis Klahr: Circumstantial Pleasures

At 2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 W. Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90057

In person: Lewis Klahr

Tickets: $12 general, $8 students/seniors, free for Filmforum members

At

Masks are still required at Filmforum shows - N95 or KN95. 

We’re happy to welcome back Lewis Klahr with the long-overdue Los Angeles premiere of his feature film Circumstantial Pleasures!

“Leaving the seductive mid-century imagery that he’s best known for far behind, Circumstantial Pleasures looks at the raw materials of contemporary life and distills them into a demanding and powerful work of anxiety, alienation, agitation, and abrasion. The film consists of six short works (ranging from two to 22 minutes) that convey the experience of being alive in the 21st century in ways that few other films have…

When Circumstantial Pleasures premiered at Light Industry just as the pandemic’s spread was becoming more evident, a common audience response was how prescient the work was. And it’s true that the images of folks in N95 masks and hazmat suits hit much differently now than they did when the work was being created over the past six years. For me, it’s the depopulated landscapes and nominal presence of humans in these vast open spaces that seem even more charged because of COVID-19. But I saw Circumstantial Pleasures for the first time long before the pandemic was in the air and the work essentially had the same resonance back then. This isn’t a work that illustrates anything that the pandemic has wrought. This is a work that illustrates that the pandemic is a symptom of a larger and more systemic situation that humans have caused in the natural world.”  ---Chris Stults,  Assistant Curator Film/Video Wexner Center for the Arts

The full Chris Stults article is here.

A Surface of Circulation: Lewis Klahr interviewed by Courtney Stephens here. 

J. Hoberman on Circumstantial Pleasures here.

Screening

Circumstantial Pleasures (2013-2019, 65m)

Capitalist Roaders (2016, 18 mins.); music: David Rosenboom, Tom Recchion
Ramification Lesions (Microbial Stress) (2019, 10 mins.); music: David Rosenboom
Rachet the Margin (2016, 7 mins.); music: Tom Recchion
Virulent Capital (2018, 9 mins.); music: David Rosenboom
High Rise (2016, 3 mins.)
Circumstantial Pleasures (2019, 22 mins.); music: Scott Walker

Lewis Klahr has been making films since 1977. He is known for his uniquely idiosyncratic collage films, which use found images and sound to explore the intersection of memory and history. Klahr's films have screened extensively in the United States, Europe and Asia – in venues such as New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Biennial, the New York Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, The Tate Modern, the Pompidou Center, REDCAT and the LA County Museum of Art.

In May of 2010 The Wexner Center for the Arts presented a 5 program retrospective of Klahr’s films. In March 2013 his digital Films received a weekend retro at the Museum of the Moving Image this was accompanied by an 8-page profile/interview in Artforum. His film “Wednesday Morning Two A.M.” was awarded a Tiger Award for Best Short Film at the 2010 International Film Festival at Rotterdam. His epic cutout animation “The Pharaoh’s Belt” received a special citation for experimental work from the National Society of Film Critics in 1994. Klahr's feature length film "The Pettifogger" was selected as one of the best films of 2012 by Artforum Magazine. He has also received commissions from European arts organizations such as the Gronnegard Theater in Copenhagen (Lulu) and the Rotterdam International Film Festival (Two Minutes to Zero). Klahr’s work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Collecion Inelcom as well as various private collections.

Klahr’s feature length series Sixty Six premiered in December 2015 at MoMA in a sold out screening. It was included on the NY Times critic Manohla Dargis’ 10 Best Films of the year list. Throughout 2016 and 2017 Sixty Six extensively toured the U.S., Europe and Asia in film festivals, cinemas and museums.

Klahr was The Wexner Center for the Arts 2010 Media Arts Residency Award Winner, the 2013 Brakhage Vision Award winner, a 1992 Guggenheim Fellow and has also received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the NY State Council of the Arts, Creative Artists Public service, the Jerome Foundation and Creative Capital.

Lewis Klahr lives in Los Angeles and teaches full time in the Theater School of the California Institute of the Arts.  His work is represented by The Anthony Reynolds Gallery in London, UK.