An Evening with Ken Kobland
Since the 1970s, Ken Kobland has maintained a distinguished career as a commercial cinematographer, award-winning experimental and documentary director in film and video, and teacher. In addition to his personal oeuvre of works, he has collaborated on projects for theatrical presentation with such art-world notables as Spaulding Gray, Philip Glass, and the New York City–based experimental theater ensemble The Wooster Group. He has also directed the cinematography for a range of television and theatrical works on visual artists, including Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois, and Chuck Close (for which he was nominated for an Emmy). Among his most recent projects is a series of artists’ portraits made for public television’s “ART 21.” Trained in art, architecture, and philosophy, Kobland brings an acute sense of space and its meanings to works of unusual lyricism that explore the urban environment.
PROGRAM
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Vestibule in Three Episodes
Directed by Directed by Ken Kobland.
US, 1978, 16mm, color, 24 min.
In this early film, Kobland explores a familiar urban space: the humble tenement vestibule—“a beautiful abstract space that is saturated with memories, fantasies, and the terra incognito of the everyday.” A vintage recording of a Caruso aria marks the film’s concluding segment, which features the actor David Warrilow.
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Arise! Walk Dog Eat Donut
Directed by Directed by Ken Kobland.
US, 1978, video, color, 30 min.
Russian with English subtitles.
In this early film, Kobland explores a familiar urban space: the humble tenement vestibule—“a beautiful abstract space that is saturated with memories, fantasies, and the terra incognito of the everyday.” A vintage recording of a Caruso aria marks the film’s concluding segment, which features the actor David Warrilow.
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The Shanghaied Text
Directed by Directed by Ken Kobland.
US, 1978, video, color, 20 min.
A collage of appropriated images from Dziga Vertov’s 3 Songs of Lenin, Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth, and Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon, together with a piece of erotica and Parisian newsreel footage from 1968, The Shanghaied Text is a frantically paced, highly visual dance macabre meant to challenge the expectations of the television-viewing audience. This manic anti-narrative encapsulates the civic and sexual passion of colonialization and revolution.
