Treasures IV presents works by 27 artists - from Bruce Baillie to Andy Warhol - who worked outside the mainstream and redefined American cinema in the decades following World War II.
"The American avant-garde presents a stunning alternate history of cinema - an entirely different set of possibilities, another world of images and sounds - but the films have always been difficult to see," said NFPF Board member Martin Scorsese, who wrote the foreword to the Treasures IV program notes. "That is why I'm so excited by this new set in the Treasures from American Film Archives series." The five-hour set samples an array of film types and styles, from abstract animation to documentary.
Showcasing classics as well as rediscoveries, Treasures IV includes Hollis Frampton's (nostalgia); The Riddle of Lumen by Stan Brakhage; Go! Go! Go!, Marie Menken's love note to New York City; Fog Line by Larry Gottheim; New Improved Institutional Quality by Owen Land; Andy Warhol's drag queen portrait Mario Banana (No. 1); Ken Jacob's Little Stabs at Happiness and Ron Rice's Chumlum, both with Jack Smith; and The End, Christopher Maclaine's Beat meditation on the bomb; as well as works by Bruce Baillie, Wallace Berman, Robert Breer, Shirley Clarke, Joseph Cornell, Storm De Hirsch, Lawrence Jordan, George Kuchar, Standish Lawder, Saul Levine, Jonas Mekas, Robert Nelson and William T. Wiley, Pat O'Neill, Paul Sharits, Jane Conger Belson Shimane, Harry Smith, and Chick Strand. Treasures IV is the first anthology of the period available on DVD.
The works are selected from the preservation work of five of the nation's foremost avant-garde film archives: the Academy Film Archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of Modern Art, the Donnell Media Center of New York Public Library, and the Pacific Film Archive. None of the films have been available before in high-quality video.
