"On The Bowery" Screens at Oddball Films August 29, 2009

Event: “On The Bowery” Guest curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present Lionel Ragosin’s rarely screened tour de force documenting the human desolation in New York’s skid row. A unique combination of scripted scenes utilizing real locations and real life alkies presaged the direct cinema experiments of the 1960s with devastating effect. Most of the cast was dead within a year of its release, and despite critical recognition and restored re-release at the Anthology Film Archives in 2007, it remains criminally unknown, out of print on VHS and never released on DVD.
Plus, the short impressionistic film “3rd Ave El” by Carson Davidson and the animated short “Returnable Botttle” by Johan Hagelback. Note: “On The Bowery” will be shown on video, the two shorts are 16mm.
Date: Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 8:30PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco 94110
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or [email protected]
Web: http://www.flarerecord.com/?p=298

“On The Bowery”
Screens at Oddball Films

On Saturday, August 29, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present a screening of the 1956 rarity On The Bowery, one of the most astonishing and unforgettable docu-dramas ever filmed. Shot in 35mm (the lightweight sync-sound and high speed film 16mm cameras utilized in the 1960s were not yet available), director Lionel Ragosin worked with real life alcoholics as actors, scripting the piece during six months of rehearsals. The result was something that positively reeks of sordid reality, but is much more engaging than any straight documentary. Plus, the short film “3rd Ave El” by Carson Davidson and the animated short from Sweden “Returnable Bottle”.
Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00. Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: [email protected] or 415-558-8117.

Films Include:

“On The Bowery” (B&W, 1956, 65 mins.)

Director Lionel Ragosin’s first film is a remarkable achievement- an uncompromising work of art and an incredible document. Ostensibly the story of Ray, who arrives in the Bowery looking for day work and makes “friends” quickly by buying a round of drinks. He is taken under wing by a somewhat fatherly figure who binges with him and immediately pawns his suitcase for flop and muscatel money (and a certain kind-hearted gesture at the film’s end).

It is a film of indelible portraiture; the plot, as it is, exists largely to transfer our protagonists (and the camera) between congregations of winos, from gin mills to games of dominos around a flophouse common room’s pot-bellied stove, from a listless sermon at the Bowery Mission to bums in a side street squeezing a “Good morning” cup of pink lady from a can of Sterno. All throughout, the film looks hard at that which we’re accustomed to turning away from, exposing a litany of exploded hairdos, gardens of gin blossoms, trench-like worry lines, loose blubbery lips, toppled orthodontia, eyes glistening from burrows, noses pitted like no-man’s-land or broken across the bridge (even a couple of visages that are positively Beckettian). In numerous bar scenes, the atmosphere is palpable: the Rheingold on tap, the raw onions in the beards, the cracked-leather barstools soaking up rancid farts. – Nick Pinkerton, Glasses Full of Rye

On The Bowery was nominated for an Academy Award in 1957 and profoundly affected the direct-cinema scene of the 1960s, England’s Lindsay Anderson (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, If…) and John Cassavettes:

To tell the truth as you see it, incidentally, is not necessarily the truth. To tell the truth as someone else sees it is, to me, much more important and enlightening. Some documentaries are fantastic. Like Lionel Ragosin’s pictures, for instance; like “On The Bowery”. This is a guy who is probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time, in my opinion. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks, the Cahiers du Cinema crowd, the underground or anyone else. – John Cassavettes

Further Reading Nick Pinkerton’s essential review of the 2007 re-release of On The Bowery and a primer on Ragosin: http://www.reverseshot.com/article/on_the_bowery

“Returnable Bottle” (Color, 1977, 12 mins.)
Swedish animation by Johan Hagelback tackles a rather grim subject with humor and pathos- much like “On the Bowery”, but a wordless tale with the animator’s freedom of fantasy.

“3rd Ave El” (Color, 1954, 11 mins.)
By the great Carson Davidson (director of the Oddball Films favorite Help, My Snowman’s Burning Down), this impressionistic picture of a ride on the elevated 3rd Ave. train (long since torn down) passes over the Bowery but shows little of the desperate struggles in its shadow.

Curator Biography:
Pete Gowdy (aka DJ Chas Gaudi) is host of San Francisco’s Shellac Shack, a weekly 78 rpm listening party and a DJ specializing in vintage sounds: soul, jazz, country, punk and new wave. A graduate of the Vassar College Film Program, he is an associate producer of Marc Huestis Presents, the long-running movie legend tributes at the Castro and Victoria Theatre.

Official Website: http://www.flarerecord.com/?p=298