Rock Ross: Go Like This (16mm)
Presented by Canyon Cinema
Filmmaker Rock Ross in person for a post-screening audience Q&A!
Canyon at The Roxie is back with a spotlight on local legend Charles Rock Ross! Rock Ross: Go Like This surveys 20 years of the filmmaker’s “frivolous and socially irresponsible films” (The Athens News), bringing together 16mm prints and camera originals from the Academy Film Archive and Canyon Cinema collections.
The longtime Bay Area independent filmmaker, musician, and organizer has been crafting wryly exuberant, riotous work since the early-1970s. After receiving his BFA and MFA in Filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute, Ross worked as Film Inspector and Shipper for the Canyon Cinema Co-op from 1975 to 1978, Editing Facility Manager for Film Arts Foundation from 1982 to 1986, and in 1988, served as Director of the Ann Arbor Film Festival. As a founding member and projectionist of the No Nothing Cinema (1982-1997) and New Nothing Cinema (1997-2017), Ross has screened thousands of independent and experimental films and videos. As a title designer, from 1978 to 2013, Ross designed thousands of titles for independent films, shooting directly on film using his own animation stand. He has also scored a number of films with his band, The Goat Family, which formed in 2003.
“Film as art has no bounds… For me its potential is as exciting as pure white noise.” – Rock Ross
Screening Line-up:
Sosueme (Rock Ross, 1988, 6.5 minutes, b&w, sound, 16mm)
Till My Head Caves In (Rock Ross, 1983, 4.5 minutes, b&w and color, 16mm)
Baglight (Rock Ross and Michael Rudnick, 1996, 4.5 minutes, color, sound, 16mm)
Autumnal Diptych (Rock Ross, 1989, 5.5 minutes, color, sound, 16mm)
Go Like This (Rock Ross, 1985, 4 minutes, b&w, sound, 16mm)
Vespucciland, the Great and Free (Rock Ross, 1982, 3 minutes, color, sound, 16mm)
Charcoal Narcissus (Rock Ross and Michael Rudnick, 1999, 2.5 minutes, b&w and color, silent, 16mm)
Just Another Girl (Rock Ross, 1982, 4 minutes, b&w and color, sound, 16mm)
Thoughtless (Rock Ross and Michael Walsh, 2002, 4 minutes, color, silent, 16mm)
Exclaim Her Limitless Wisdom (Rock Ross, 1984, 2 minutes, color, sound, 16mm)
Psycho Porpoise (Rock Ross, 2002, 2.5 minutes, color, sound, 16mm)
Stupor Mundi (Rock Ross, 1996, 11 minutes, b&w, sound, 16mm with live piano accompaniment)
With special thanks to Mark Toscano and the Academy Film Archive. Stupor Mundi still courtesy of Walker Art Center.