Deerhoof perform Heaven and Earth Magic soundtrack April 27, 2006

*Thu, Apr 27* / 9:45 / Castro / HEAV27C

*
Heaven and Earth Magic
*
Avant-pop band Deerhoof will play an original score live to beatnik icon
Harry Smith's master film work and will follow up with a free-form musical
set accompanying the projection of Smith's Films 1-5 from The Early
Abstractions.
DIR: Harry Smith (USA 1962, TRT 80 min)

THU 4/27 9:45 CASTRO HEAV27C

To cinephiles, Harry Smith is best known as a practitioner of visual music,
a specialized experimental film form. And, for many, *Heaven and Earth Magic
* represents Smith's masterwork in this form. Attempts to explain the film
rub against the point of it. The narrative aspect features a woman chasing a
dog that has taken her watermelon. Surrounding this "tale" is a series of
synesthetic transformations and Kabbalistic icons, a synthesis of the
organic and spiritual with the arbitrary and random. Moreover, the
title *Heaven
and Earth Magic* is merely a convenience as this, like so many of Smith's
films, was originally "Untitled." Smith traded in ambiguity, and not only in
the film world. He has been alternately described as a filmmaker,
musicologist, linguist, alchemist, collector and crackpot. While the intense
impact he made on American culture cannot be denied, it seems that his
figure has only recently popped up at the fringes of popular
consciousness?erhaps this is just as he would have wanted. It's doubtful
that a full accounting of all of his contributions will ever be made, but
luckily the Harry Smith Archives have helped to preserve many of his
writings, art works and films. With help from the Archives, SFIFF is honored
to present *Heaven and Earth Magic* with an original score composed and
performed live by avant-pop band Deerhoof. After the feature film screening,
Deerhoof will play free form while we project *Films 1-5* of Smith's *Early
Abstractions* (1946-50).