https://lightindustry.org/totalmobilehome
Presented by Rebecca Barten and David Sherman
The microcinema as we know it today began in 1994 when Rebecca Barten and David Sherman, filmmakers and “accidental neologists,” started operating Total Mobile Home microCINEMA illegally out of the basement of their rented San Francisco apartment, building benches that seated thirty and cutting a projection booth into a hole in the wall. Small informal cinematheques and film clubs had, of course, existed since the beginnings of cinema. What Barten and Sherman brought was not only a practice, but also an ethos that stressed the values and benefits of the smaller-scale, and spoke to a generation dissatisfied with the impersonal limitations of older, top-down models. “As filmmakers reliant upon our own funds, functioning totally out of the mainstream, we wanted to create an intimate non-institutional space right in our basement, where the distance between film and audience and artist and audience might be activated and transformed,” they later reported. “Our operating budget was extremely low—we used discarded, donated, and rebuilt equipment, made our own seats, designed our own posters and calendars, and did publicity word-of-mouth and through the local free papers. Our standards for any particular show were extremely high—even at our tiny scale, we believe that we competed favorably with the corporate megaplexes in the quality of our film prints, sound system, and amenities.”
Total Mobile Home ran for four years, hosting over 120 events, often with filmmakers in person. The literally home-made cinema allowed for an intimacy impossible at traditional venues. “Our audiences responded wonderfully, often remaining well after the show to participate in all sorts of conversations that went late into the night. As small as we were, we got correspondences from all over the world, from people passing through San Francisco, curious about or interested in bringing their own films to our space.” The model was designed as self-sustaining, and their space never received grants; its economics depended on Barten and Sherman’s total commitment and the reciprocal support of their audiences. “With a suggested $5 donation at the door, we managed to ‘float’ our cinema, meeting our modest operating costs and offering visiting artists $100 honorariums (which filmmakers incidentally often refused as excited as they were by such a special exhibition context). We used the word TOTAL as the first word in many of our programs because of the built-in rebellion factor: TOTAL war, TOTAL failure, TOTAL rube goldberg, TOTAL tantric tantrums, and TOTAL ARTIST MONSTER were some examples.”
In a rare East Coast appearance, Barten and Sherman will join us at Light Industry to survey the history of Total Mobile Home, through a program that includes films by Guy Sherwin, Lynne Sachs, and Scott Stark; restored video documentation of Luther Price performing Clown 2: Scary Transformation and Stuart Sherman performing A Christmas Spectacle; footage of salons with Bruce Baillie and Sidney Peterson; George Kuchar’s video portrait of the space, Cellar Sinema; a re-examination of TMH’s Home Mail Project, that included photographs by Carolee Schneemann, Robert Frank, and Rudy Burckhardt; as well as recorded oral histories from Brian Frye, Steve Anker, and other eyewitnesses.
Tickets – Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door.
Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 7pm. No entry 10 minutes after start of show.