A bagatelle for Joseph Cornell: A screening of filmic ephemera and wonders presented in anticipation of the centennial of Cornell’s birthday Sunday, December 14th, 2pm FREE Woodland Pattern Book Center’s Open House Woodland Pattern Book Center 702 E Locust 414 263 5001 Hail and Season’s Greetings – December 24th marks the centennial of the birth of Joseph Cornell, the singular American artist celebrated for his haunting boxes. In anticipation of this anniversary, the UWM Film Department will present a screening for Joseph Cornell, offering a deliberately hodgepodge program of filmic ephemera and early cinematic wonders. Having screened Cornell’s own films at a number of Woodland Pattern screenings in the past, we will offer at this Open House a different kind of projected tribute. Cornell was principally a watcher, a collector. Cinema beguiled him and he was a proud owner of a library of 16mm films that he would happily share. The Open House screening will echo the programs Cornell would present, as well as offer images kindred in spirit. This free screening will offer some early cinematic trick films, by Melies and Zecca; shimmering filmic visions of some of Cornell’s beloved film actresses and ballet dancers (Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, and Anne Pavlova); and some films from, we think, artists akin to Cornell’s sense of play and assemblagist wonder (Sidney Peterson’s 1947 dance film, Clinic of Stumble; Jerome Hill’s 1968 bird animation The Canaries; and Courtney Hoskins’ 2002 Snow Flukes, which aligns ice skating and Felix the Cat). Also to be presented is Larry Jordan’s Cornell,1965, a short and personal documentary of Cornell at work, made by Cornell’s one-time collaborator. Offering detailed close-ups of many Cornell boxes, this film also offers the only film footage available of Cornell. Something of a children’s party for adults (and save, perhaps, for some glimpses of a skinny-dipping Hedy Lamarr, suitable for children as well), this screening, offered as a tribute and a commemoration, aspires to the delight that Cornell hoped to reveal with a projector. All the best and later on – Carl Bogner Film Department / University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 414 229 4758