The season opener of the Schnitzer Cinema at The University of Oregon will be two rarely screened Andy Warhol films – “The Velvet Underground in Boston” and “Bufferin” – at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 9.
Warhol, who lived from 1928 to 1987, is considered one of the 20th century’s major visual artists. He also made hundreds of films.
“Bufferin” is a 33-minute film in which American poet, photographer and archivist Gerard Malanga reads poems and diaries in which names of actual participants have been replaced. As a result, the viewer is forced to decipher the names and context about various people, including Warhol himself.
The film was shot in 1966 and was the first film in which Warhol used the strobe cut extensively, giving the impression of a roughly edited splice. In reality, all editing was done in-camera.
“The Velvet Underground in Boston” was shot during a Velvet Underground concert at the Boston Tea Party, a rock venue in Boston that was open from 1967 to 1971. The 33-minute film includes in-and-out zooms, panning shots and in-camera edits that create single-frame images and bursts of light. The film mirrors the experience at the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a series of multimedia events organized by Warhol between 1966 and 1967.
J.J. Murphy, author of “The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol,” will introduce and discuss the films. Murphy is a critic and scholar of independent film and an author. In addition to the two Warhol films, Murphy’s 9-minute film “Sky Blue Water Light Sign” will be shown.
Upcoming programs in the Schnitzer Cinema series include “The March,” on Wednesday, Nov. 13, and “A Few Notes on Our Food Problem,” on Wednesday, Dec. 11. Both films are part of a campus wide tribute to University of Oregon alumnus and documentarian James Blue.
All films will be screened in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art Ford Lecture Hall and start at 7 p.m.
- by Katherine Cook, UO Office of Strategic Communications intern