Psychedelic Cinema: Light Show Films by Ken Brown
Special Features: Silent with live musical accompaniment by the Psychedelic Cinema Orchestra
Between 1967 and 1969, Ken Brown created short Super-8 films to be projected with the light show at the premiere rock club in Boston, Massachusetts, The Boston Tea Party. The resulting films, collected here as the "Psychedelic Cinema" program, stand today as an amazing window on another time. Swirling colors and lights, clip art animations, cinéma vérité images of '60s youth culture and fashions, flickering candle flames and flowers in bloom meld together in fluid, dream-like montage. The films originally illuminated the stage for Jimi Hendrix, The Velvet Underground, The Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Sly and the Family Stone, Neil Young, The Who, Pink Floyd and the Hallucinations (soon to become the J. Giles Band).
Total program approx. 60 min.
No AFI Member passes accepted.
About Ken Brown
Ken Brown is an animator, cartoonist, graphic artist and filmmaker. His film and video work has been broadcast on MTV, VH-1, AMC and Public Television's SESAME STREET, while his artwork has received gallery exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Zurich and Tokyo. A 40-year retrospective of Brown's film and video work was screened in 2007 at Anthology Film Archives in New York.
About the Psychedelic Cinema Orchestra
The Psychedelic Cinema Orchestra are Boston-based musicians Ken Winokur (Alloy Orchestra), Jonathan LaMaster (Cul de Sac) and Russ Gershon (Either/Orchestra). The three members combine composed melodies with improvisation, reacting to the images on the screen.
The group is led by Alloy Orchestra's Ken Winokur, who has been at the helm of the band Roger Ebert called, "the best in the world at accompanying silent films." Winokur will play a more conventional drum kit for this show, as well as hand drums and his signature "junk." Winokur has collected a backing track of sound bites from some the psychedelic era's most influential figures: Timothy Leary, Spiro Agnew, Alan Watts, Bella Abzug, Martin Luther King, Jr., LBJ and many others.
Multi-instrumentalist and composer Russ Gershon is the founder of Boston's Either/Orchestra, frequent collaborator with Ethiopian legends Mahmoud Ahmed and Mulatu Astatke, and member of Hypnosonics and Orchestra Morphine, both associated with the late Mark Sandman. He has also performed or recorded with headliners from Cab Calloway, the Four Tops and Medeski Martin & Wood to Throwing Muses and Willie Loco Alexander. Gershon was nominated for a Grammy for his composition "Bennie Moten’s Weird Nightmare."
Jonathan LaMaster performs on electric violin, guitar, bass guitar and electronics. Again, these conventional instruments will be routed through a complex chain of electronic effects to create an otherworldly sound. LaMaster has worked with Cul de Sac, perhaps Boston's second-most prominent silent film accompanists. He fronted the band Saturnalia, an improvisational ensemble of strings, theremin and horns.
Run Time: 60 Minutes
Opening Date: Saturday, November 13, 2021
Genre: Experimental
