Saul Levine

Saul Levine

Nacimiento : , New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Historia

Saul Levine, born in New Haven Connecticut, is a maker and advocate of avant-garde film and more recently video. He is currently a professor at MassArt where he has taught for over 30 years and programmed the longstanding MassArt Film Society. His work has been screened nationally and worldwide, most recently in Ontario, MOMA (NYC), Lima and Prague. He is based in Boston and hardly leaves town.

Perfil

Saul Levine

Películas

A (possible) trip around the world in super 8
A brief documentary focused on the history of experimental Super 8mm filmmaking. Prominent figures of the "s8" boom of the 1970s discuss their work and their first encounters with the medium.
On Another Note
Director
Notes on chance, readymades, and time. Shot at Massart graduation 1997 and Boston 4th of July97. Some of the people appearing are Barbara Bosworth, Stephen Tourlentes, Roy Decarava. Edited shortly thereafter, printed DECEMBER2018 released 2019.
Note to Tetsua
Director
Moon flight loud silence soft dark hard light a Ray o gram made with a camera out of sight
Caw Notes
Director
As the crow flies, as the crow cries, as the crow alites CAWS
Light Lick: Love Stain
Director
Dreaming In The Dark
Director
For Dreaming the Dark: hands that see, eyes that touch, Ana Vaz invited artists and filmmakers whose work trust cinema’s capacity to transform relationships between the body and the camera to propose works that will engage with both perception and embodiment. Could cinema be an art of embodiment? By what rituals and actions could vision become tactile?
Light Licks Series
Director
LIGHT LICKS are a series of films, which are made frame by frame often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed. LIGHT LICKS are ecstatic flicker films inspired by jazz and mystic visionary practice.
Light Licks: Pardes: Counting Flowers on the Wall
Director
Wild flowers, morning glories, an urban jungle an eden for a petite Tyger.
Entry Note
Director
A small apocalypse prophecy on the threshold of disaster world/home
Light Lick: Amen
Director
A stark portrait of my father at daily morning prayers to which I respond, AMEN. Light Licks are a series of films I began in 1999. The films are made frame by frame, often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed. Light Licks are ecstatic flicker films inspired by jazz and mystic visionary practice, and extend my interest in the ways film can be a medium of visual improvisation.
Light Licks: Pardes: Wild Blue Yonder
Director
"Wild Blue Yonder" era la canción del cuerpo del ejército en que se encontraban el tío y el padre de Saul Levine cuando este nació en 1943.
Dead Day Window Display Note
Director
Every fall a store called NOMAD in Cambridge, on Mass Av,e puts up a window display of Mexican Day of the Dead pieces. My birthday is November, 3, so I am hyper aware of the death/resurrection fall celebration --. this is my sidewalk pedestrian note.
Light Licks: Pardes: Night Time is the Right Time
Director
LIGHT LICKS are a series of films, which are made frame by frame often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed. LIGHT LICKS are ecstatic flicker films inspired by jazz and mystic visionary practice. PARDES is ancient Persian for walled garden. In Hebrew and Aramaic it means paradise, heaven,the garden of Eden, the peak or terminus of ecstatic visionary, trance flight. NIGHT TIME IS THE RIGHT TIME: moon play light garden be loved
Light Licks: Pardes: Drowned Hat Rescue Media City Motown Jump
Director
Película perteneciente a la serie Light Licks filmada durante la celebración del festival Media City en Windsor.
Falling Notes Unleaving
Director
"FALLING NOTES UNLEAVING is made from footage gathered in the fall of 2012 and edited in early 2013. Anne Charlotte Robertson, friend and fellow Super8 filmmaker, died. I attended her funeral and filmed the burial of her ashes. She was famous for her diary films and I thought it important to honor her work by filming an event that she could not." - Saul Levine
Light Licks: By the Waters of Babylon: I Want to Paint It Black
Director
LIGHT LICKS are a series of films, which are made frame by frame often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed. LIGHT LICKS are ecstatic flicker films inspired by jazz and mystic visionary practice.
Light Licks: Daily Camera
Director
LIGHT LICKS are a series of films, which are made frame by frame often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed. LIGHT LICKS are ecstatic flicker films inspired by jazz and mystic visionary practice.
Light Licks: By the Waters of Babylon: This May Be The Last Time
Director
LIGHT LICKS are a series of films, which are made frame by frame often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed. LIGHT LICKS are ecstatic flicker films inspired by jazz and mystic visionary practice.
Dreams and Apparitions of Mark LePore
Director
On 9/11/2005, Mark Lapore took his own life. I first met Mark at SUNY Binghamton in the fall of 1973, when I took my film production class. Over the years we became friends and colleagues, film/video makers and teachers. In the aftermath of his death, I decided to record unedited monologues by people who knew him from Mass Art--recounting their dreams or apparitions of Mark. I used an old black and white Panasonic studio camera similar to one he had been playing around with; I wanted a different quality to the image from HD and the Panasonic ghosted the image. I had thought it would be a web based work and nonlinear, but Erica Beckman's section, which we edited according to her instruction, changed my plan--it was a definite ending and a surprise to me. I found the piece worked as a projected linear experience. I urge you to watch it once that way.
Light Licks: By the Waters of Babylon: In the Hour of the Angels
Director
LIGHT LICKS are a series of films, which are made frame by frame often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed. LIGHT LICKS are ecstatic flicker films inspired by jazz and mystic visionary practice.
Light Licks: By the Waters of Babylon: Jamming
Director
LIGHT LICKS are a series of films, which are made frame by frame often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed. LIGHT LICKS are ecstatic flicker films inspired by jazz and mystic visionary practice.
Light Licks: Detour
Director
S8mm, b&w/si, (18 fps)
Light Lick: Born Under a Bad Sign
Director
Super 8mm / color / silent / 18fps
Off Selexa
Director
Karine Albano narra su experiencia con un antidepresivo llamado Selexa.
911-Serra's Morning
Director
La directora de la Film-makers' Coop, M. M. Serra, relata sus experiencias de la mañana del atentado contra el World Trade Center, un mes después de los hechos.
Dream Story
A short video in which Levine, facing a crescent moon, remembers Marjorie Keller telling a dream she had with her female friend, also a film director, who had died.
Dream Story
Director
A short video in which Levine, facing a crescent moon, remembers Marjorie Keller telling a dream she had with her female friend, also a film director, who had died.
Toscanini's European Sidewalk Cafe
Director
Workers and customers at a coffee bar in a winter twilight. S8mm, b&w/si
Light Licks: Only Sunshine
Director
A midsummer daydream. S8mm, color/si, (18fps)
Light Licks: I Saw the Light Praise the Dark
Director
The first black and white LIGHT LICK. S8mm, b&w/si, (18fps)
Melts Into Air
Director
ALL THAT'S SOLID (and) MELTS INTO AIR are each separate films shot at an exhibition of the urban landscape artist Tyree Suyton in Cambridge at Harvard. I was struck by the redemptive critical and visionary character of his work which struck me as similar to G.M. Hopkins or Clarence Smith. Coincidentally as I was shooting these films I went to a screening of Charles Burnett and asked him what film he would like to make but couldn't get the money for. He replied, "a feature narrative about Tyree Suyton." So I put together four of the films from Spring 2000 into a four-film work called "4 For Charles Burnett - All That's Solid Melts Into Air". They are: ALL THAT'S SOLID, LIGHT LICK, TOSCANINI'S EUROPEAN SIDEWALK CAFE, and MELTS INTO AIR.
All That's Solid
Director
ALL THAT'S SOLID (and) MELTS INTO AIR are each separate films shot at an exhibition of the urban landscape artist Tyree Suyton in Cambridge at Harvard. I was struck by the redemptive critical and visionary character of his work which struck me as similar to G.M. Hopkins or Clarence Smith. Coincidentally as I was shooting these films I went to a screening of Charles Burnett and asked him what film he would like to make but couldn't get the money for. He replied, "a feature narrative about Tyree Suyton." So I put together four of the films from Spring 2000 into a four-film work called "4 For Charles Burnett - All That's Solid Melts Into Air". They are: ALL THAT'S SOLID, LIGHT LICK, TOSCANINI'S EUROPEAN SIDEWALK CAFE, and MELTS INTO AIR.
Light Lick: Get It While You Can
Director
LIGHT LICKS are a series of films, which are made frame by frame often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed. LIGHT LICKS are ecstatic flicker films inspired by jazz and mystic visionary practice.
Light Lick: Az Sent (Amazing Grace)
Director
Harvard square stroll, talking to myself. Super 8mm / color / silent / 18fps
Kibitzer
Director
Plano fijo del padre de Saul, Julius Levine, jugando al scrabble con su asistenta.
Yoren
Director
2000 film by Saul Levine
Whole Note
Director
A film by Saul Levine
August Moon and Sea
Director
A portrait of Nancy Golden, a summer evening and Nancy photographing rocks at Singing Beach. 16mm,18fps / Super 8mm, 18fps
Rolls and Stumbles with Cherries in the Middle
Impersonations for the camera by Alison Tsoi, Nina Fonoroff, and Saul Levine. Additional camera by Silvia Gruner. (For Pelle Lowe and Luther Price)
Rolls and Stumbles with Cherries in the Middle
Director
Impersonations for the camera by Alison Tsoi, Nina Fonoroff, and Saul Levine. Additional camera by Silvia Gruner. (For Pelle Lowe and Luther Price)
As Is Was
Director
This film was shot the same weekend as Z (Zee Not Zed), when Stan Brakhage was visiting University of Rhode Island, where Marjorie Keller was teaching at the time. They get some coffee, then go for a walk on a beach in an old whaling harbor.
Light Hit
Director
Textures of some Polaroid pictures found buried under snow. Leather jacket as pool for them to be hit (by light).
Crescent
Director
A conversation with Pelle Lowe
Z (Zee Not Zed)
Director
Stan Brakhage with a movie camera. Winter seascapes.
Ready-Made
Director
A film made by Pelle Lowe and myself, Ready-Made is a single work in itself, and also exists as part of a series of works that Pelle and I made reflecting on Manet's painting OLYMPIA, including it's reception, it's relationship to painting, sex work, imperialism, the Paris Commune, sex, drugs and rock roll, ect.
Spun
Director
A portrait of Amanda Katz (Posner) spinning, weaving and talking. A film about story telling rather than one that tells a story. The VHS copy of this tape was one of the most rented tapes in the local film section of the Brookline Videosmith.
Departure
DEPARTURE is a film that was shot in 1976-77 during a year when I lost my job due to both cutbacks at the campus at which I taught and my involvement in the movement against them. I collected footage and imagined I would edit the film together the night I left. I was unable to do this and it took several years to finish it.
Later, Later, Dutch Master, Later
Conceived, performed and edited by Saul Levine. Camera by Pelle Lowe. The title says it all. "A film in the old style." -- Bill Brand
Departure
Director
DEPARTURE is a film that was shot in 1976-77 during a year when I lost my job due to both cutbacks at the campus at which I taught and my involvement in the movement against them. I collected footage and imagined I would edit the film together the night I left. I was unable to do this and it took several years to finish it.
Is As Is
Director
A portrait of a mother with her arms full in the backyard bathing her twin babies as the early spring light sings and dances. Later the father cooks a fish. Marjorie Keller is the mother.
As Is Is
Director
Kerry Laitela delivers an elegiac account of the passions and struggles of a female chameleon.
Later, Later, Dutch Master, Later
Director
Conceived, performed and edited by Saul Levine. Camera by Pelle Lowe. The title says it all. "A film in the old style." -- Bill Brand
Preview
Director
Camera: Sylvia Gruner & Pelle Lowe
Notes After Long Silence
Director
Levine's grammar is set up to join media images without hiding the seams; media images of race and sex, love and violence, work and play, and presence and memory blend into a song of sorts of our time.
Submission
Himself
A confrontational rant addressed to the judges of the films entered in a Super 8 competition at No Exit. Both Mark and I were surprised when not only was it shown at the festival but it generated much laughter and angry conversation. -Saul Levine
Submission
Director
A confrontational rant addressed to the judges of the films entered in a Super 8 competition at No Exit. Both Mark and I were surprised when not only was it shown at the festival but it generated much laughter and angry conversation. -Saul Levine
A Few Tunes Going Out: A Brennen Soll Columbus N Medina
Director
A FEW TUNES GOING OUT series: part 3
A Few Tunes Going Out: Groove to Groove
Director
“[GROOVE TO GROOVE] continues this kind of portraiture, concentrating on Mai Cramer and Levine, and develops the 'bi-lingual' paradigm of film and music. The phantasmagoria of splices becomes the lexicon for Levine's improvisational study of making film, music and jokes." - Marjorie Keller. Featuring: MAI CRAMER & JESSE GREEN BLUES BAND.
Shmateh III
Director
"A portrait of Picasso young and old, sung by the wind." - Saul
Mortgage On My Body
Director
Stations throughout Connecticut and even New York City. Riding around with my father and back to the gas station.
Note to Poli
Director
NOTE TO POLI is, in the words of his student and fellow experimental filmmaker Marjorie Keller, "a note to the filmmaker Poli Marichal 'about' penetration." P. Adams Sitney observed that the film revealed "the visionary power of sexuality for the filmmaker" and it is indeed one of his most sexually visceral. Levine contrasts the startling frankness of the sexual activity that opens the film with the calm of a young person at rest with a cup of coffee and the serenity of post-coital cigarette smoke hanging in the air.
New Left Note
Director
As editor of "New Left Notes", the newspaper of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Saul Levine was at the center of multiple radical political movements. Filming from 1968-1982, he employs a rapid fire editing style to create a frenetic, kaleidoscopic portrait of the antiwar movement, women's liberation and the Black Panthers.
Unemployment Portrayal Note
Director
A fim by Saul Levine
Bopping the Great Wall of China Blue
Director
Directed by Saul Levine.
Nearsight
Director
"Afternoon idyll with Nancy Frumkin."
Twilight Portrayal: Sheryl Kaye
Director
At twilight in Binghamton, two filmmakers exchange portraits.
Rambling Notes
Director
I am just a rambling guy - here today, gone tomorrow. Sitting in the back of Dan's french car. French woman going to NYC for the first time. Reflections of the car - now static. Chicago as seen from Gunnar Juhansson's and Ruby Rich's apartment. N.B. Project at 18fps
Notes of an Early Fall
Director
Made in Binghamton in 1976 - a warped record constructed out of visits to the zoo, relatives and various locations. Appearances by obsessive birds, caged bears and hungry rams. "Certain shots are very evocative, such as a long shot of a group of people sitting on a park bench, one person playing a song on a recorder. The sound of the music, its fragility, is matched by the distance of the shot, lending a feeling of precariousness to the moment. There is a repeated shot of a warped record playing, with the same musical phrase endlessly repeated. The shot is an interior one, with the lighting casting a golden glow on the scene. The warped repetitions begin to reverberate with suggestions of frustrations." – Daryl Chin, The Soho Weekly News "His first talkie, NOTES OF AN EARLY FALL is a characteristically raw work that parlays even the sound of microphone rumble into a formal element.
Breaking Time part 1
Director
Directed by Saul Levine.
Film Notebook: Part 1 (For Saul)
Himself
Film Notebook Part 1 from 1975 is a beautiful collection of daily fragments which Keller shot from her life the way one would write in a journal. She documents the world around her in a spontaneous home movie fashion then employs meticulous editing, making subtly poetic connections between shots and throughout the film.
Cartoons: Before the Fact
Himself
Made at S.U.N.Y. at Binghamton as a class exercise, filmmaker Saul Levine performs with students who each try to mimic his previously recorded phrase and then try to imitate each other imitating the recording.
Note to Colleen
Director
1974 (R8, 7m)
The Big Stick / An Old Reel
Director
Saul Levine spent six years (from 1967-1973) cutting up and re-editing 8mm prints of two Charlie Chaplin shorts, IN THE PARK and EASY STREET, into a dynamic yet dreamy deconstruction of physical and narrative movement. What begins with Chaplin looping around in circular repetitions between a cop and an ominous vagrant becomes more fractured as the film expands. News footage of police arresting protesters (shot from a television screen on black-and-white 8mm film) is cut into the comedy of cops and criminals (a shot of political reality amidst slapstick fantasy) and images are abstracted by rapid-fire cutting. Even the physical cuts on the celluloid become part of the image as Levine chops through the frames themselves, leaving broad gashes on the screen and fracturing images until they overlap with the next shot and the suggestions of narrative are whirled into a frenzy of motion.
On the Spot
Director
Shot on a farm in Friendsville Penn. where Saul lived in a trailer with Dan Barnett; shot from the same spot over the course of several Fall weeks, a single frame study of the movements of people and livestock (horses, cows, sheep, etc); clouds sun and moon constructs of stasis and change.
Note Chicago Reds and Blues
Director
Concerned with the relation of a word to what we hear or see in our mind when we see it. How this relates to film and color.
Lost Note
Director
Saul Levine began Lost Note as a love poem to his wife but before he finished the film everything had changed. This film is all that was left – 68/69 was a period of violent transition for many. The film was formally challenging, editing footage with in-camera superimpositions and cutting b&w with color.
Star Film
Director
STAR FILM stars a hand-made emulsion.
Note to Pati
Director
Something of an aesthetic convergence between the diaristic autobiographies and quotidian images of Jonas Mekas (as illustrated in his Diaries, Notes and Sketches chronicles) and the hand crafted dissonance and material violence of Stan Brakhage, “Note to Pati” presents a seemingly typical winter scene – the day after a snow storm as a suburban neighborhood digs out from under the accumulation and children make the most of an unexpected day off from school by playing in their winter wonderland. Saul Levine’s images are diffused, faded, and ephemeral, made all the more dissociating by Levine’s disorienting rapid cut editing, restless and twitching camerawork, and destabilized, quick pan sequences – an evocation of a transitory and wide-eyed innocence. —filmref.com
Note One
Director
A study of my parents in grey and white. An evening film. My mother lights the sabbath candles, cooks, crochets, sleeps, talks to father reading the paper – we are together. This is the first completed note.
Note to Erik
Director
"NOTES is a series I started in 1968. NOTE TO ERIK was the second one completed but the footage goes back to 1966 when I saw the footage I loved it but didn't feel ready to deal with it. Seeing Sharon Moss again who had moved to NYC from Storrs, CT inspired me to return to this footage to make a note to a mutual friend ERIK KIVIAT. It took about 2 years for me to feel I could respond to the generosity of her performance and the images I had gathered and shaped in my camera. Sharon Moss and her cats play and dance naked in the snow." - Saul
Saul's Scarf
Director
Free for benefits and free showings. "we turning in side take it without them it closes Castles color You must pass through it before it closes open unstolen stop it closes castles color the before turning prism face the kiss half a beat time delay in image behind the cloth the rainbow bridge the rainbow bridge." – Erik Kiviat