Six Films by Adam Beckett

• VENUE NOMA Gallery
• LOCATION San Francisco, CA
• DATE August 28, 2010

Film screening of Adam Beckett’s animations, co-organized with Nate Boyce and Marcella Faustini. Closing event for Nate Boyce’s solo exhibition “Parallel Series I & II”

Description Adam Beckett emerged from the Experimental Animation program at CalArts in the 1970s. Although Beckett’s career was brief, only lasting a decade, he is renown for his unique, meticulous production process using the optical printer. This tool allowed filmmakers to rephotograph multiple strips of film into one strip, creating optical effects such as fades, dissolves, and the matting of images. The effects produced by optical print…ers were later carried over into computer graphics by digital compositing techniques, and indeed at times Beckett’s films seem remarkably prescient of this future path. Using both an optical printer and an animation stand, Beckett would gradually reposition and reshoot his intricate drawings into animated loops in order to create slight variations that guide the evolution of the figures and shapes depicted. The optical printer was also variously used to make rhythmic patterns by offsetting the frame or to re-frame sections of the drawings. Beckett’s animations appear to organically morph and mutate, often to a lively a soundtrack. This program includes the following films: Kitsch In Synch (1975), Flesh Flows (1974), Sausage City (1974), Evolution of the Red Star (1973), Heavy-Light (1973), Dear Janice (1972)