Coming Soon!

Still from 'Hallelujah the Hills' (Adolfas Mekas, 1963)

Experimental Memoria III: Adolfas Mekas

Featuring: Hallelujah the Hills (1963)

Wednesday, May 23, 2012 ~ 7:00 PM only
Northwest Film Forum (1515 12th Ave. ~ on Capitol Hill, between Pike & Pine)
Advance tickets available online

Experimental Memoria is a special series commemorating the work of three notable experimental and underground filmmakers who passed away in 2011.

Adolfas Mekas (Sept. 30, 1925 - May 31, 2011) co-founded, with his brother Jonas, the groundbreaking journal Film Culture, co-founded the film department at Bard College where he taught for decades, and made a handful of films that left their mark on the New American Cinema movement. His debut feature, Hallelujah The Hills, is a lighthearted surreal comedy in which two men vie for the love of Vera, played by two different actresses to capture the suitors' visions of the ideal woman. Simultaneously an art film and a parody of art films, it is packed with references to silent comedy, the French New Wave and even Kurosawa's samurai films.

"A slapstick poem, an intellectual hellzapoppin, a gloriously fresh experiment and experience in the cinema of the absurd."
Time magazine

"Imagine a combination of Huckleberry Finn, Pull My Daisy, the Marx Brothers, and the complete works of Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith, you have got it. What have you got? A film which is both hilariously funny and ravishingly lyrical."
The Guardian (UK)

Illustration showing how film passes through a movie projector.

The Sprocket Society seeks to cultivate the love of the mechanical cinema, its arts and sciences, and to encourage film preservation by bringing film and its history to the public through screenings, educational activities, and our own archival efforts.

Since 2008, we have produced film screenings in Seattle, with programs ranging from silent film, to documentaries, to experimental and electronic cinema, to the Secret Matinee series (complete with weekly serial episodes), and more.

To receive announcements of upcoming events subscribe to our email list by inquiring at sprocketsociety [at] gmail [dot] com. We also have an official Facebook page.

Past Programs by The Sprocket Society Have Included:

  • Georges Méliès: Impossible Voyager - Special Effects Epics, 1902-1912 — Seven films by the first screen magician, including unconventional musical selections, live narration and Victrola accompaniments by Climax Golden Twins.
  • Visions: Animation and Abstraction, Masterpieces 1908-1976 — 19 films by 15 directors in 90 minutes. With films by Emile Cohl, Harry Smith, Len Lye, Mary Ellen Bute, Oskar Fischinger, Larry Jordan, Hans Richter, Robert Breer, Stan Brakhage, Piotr Kamler, and more.
  • First Light: The Birth of Cinema 1895-1901 — Pioneering films by the Lumière brothers, the Edison Company, Georges Méliès and James Williamson. Plus short documentaries about magic lanterns and the Library of Congress paper print collection.
  • Breakaway: Films by Bruce Conner, 1958-2004 — Brilliant and influential experimental works made primarily with found footage.
  • The Heart of Life — Robert Enrico's stunning trilogy of award-winning films based on Ambrose Bierce short stories.
  • First Words: The Birth of Sound Cinema, 1895-1929 — Rare short films tracing the evolution of sound cinema, plus live re-enactments of Lyman Howe's pioneering Victrola accompaniments.
  • Halloween Spook Show I & II — Spooky short films and live-action insanity, with complimentary death insurance.
  • D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) — The epic "film fugue" interweaving parallel tales in four historical epochs.
  • Focal Points: Short Documentaries from 1969 — Co-presented as part of the year-long 1969 series, NWFF, 2009.
  • Sixties Synaesthetics — Experimental films by Robert Breer, Storm De Hirsch, Cecil Stokes, Jud Yalkut, Scott Bartlett and Tom DeWitt, Barry Spinello, and Tony Conrad. (Co-presented as part of the Visual Music series, NWFF, 2010.)
  • Funny Stuff: Silent Comedies and Cartoons — Classic two-reeler comedies, plus rare silent-era cartoons
  • Secret Matinees — Recreating the weekend matinees of yore, with weekly serial episodes and secret classic features.
  • and others...

Friends of The Sprocket Society