A Stranger Calls at Midnight, A Self-Interview of Sorts, Alfred Leslie, 2008, 32 minutes - from DVD (click on image to play)
NEW LUX DVD PUBLICATION
Alfred Leslie, Cool Man in a Golden Age, Selected Films
Published by LUX, London in June 2009, priced £20) (DVD 9, NTSC, Region 0, EAN 5065000981020)
Available from the LUX SHOP
LUX is proud to announce the release for the first time on DVD of the films of seminal American filmmaker and artist, Alfred Leslie which will be launched at Tate Modern on Wednesday 24th June (details below).
LUX Alfred Leslie DVD reviewed in Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/dvd-reviews/5977203/Alfred-Leslie-Cool-Man-in-aGolden-Age-DVD-review.html
Alfred Leslie is a pivotal American artist-painter-filmmaker whose work spans the past fifty years. A celebrated contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists and a key figure in the extraordinary social milieu of downtown New York from the 1950s and 60s to the present, his own canvases were amongst the most revered of his peers. In 1959 he made Pull My Daisy with the photographer Robert Frank and in 1964 collaborated with the inimitable poet Frank O’Hara on The Last Clean Shirt. In 1960 he edited and published the amazing collection of texts and drawings that form the ‘one shot review’ The Hasty Papers – in and of itself a summation of cultural activity with contributions from Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery and Fidel Castro amongst many others. Leslie dramatically moved away from abstraction to make giant almost hyper-real portraits, the majority of which were destroyed in the now infamous fire that ripped through his studio and its neighbouring blocks on October 17 1966. This utterly devastating event, that completely destroyed paintings, films and manuscripts, continues to inform his work today.
Cool Man in a Golden Age presents a selection of his key films on DVD for the first time alongside a new video ‘self-interview’ and a rare television documentary from 1966 featuring Frank O’Hara and Alfred Leslie as well as a new essay by Ian White.
DVD Contents:
Pull My Daisy, Alfred Leslie & Robert Frank, 1959, 29 minutes
The Last Clean Shirt, Alfred Leslie & Frank O’Hara, 1964, 42 minutes
Birth of a Nation, Alfred Leslie, 1965 – 1998, 40 minutes
A Stranger Calls at Midnight, A Self-Interview of Sorts, Alfred Leslie, 2008, 32 minutes
USA Poetry: Frank O'Hara, Richard O. Moore/WNET, 1966, 15 minutes
LAUNCH EVENT
Wednesday 24 June 6.30pm, Tate Modern http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/film/18200.htm
Cool Men in a Golden Age: Alfred Leslie and Frank O'Hara
An evening celebrating the creative collaboration between two key figures of the post-war New York arts scene, who together brilliantly captured the heady excitements of a golden period in the city’s artistic life. A artist of diverse talents and prodigious energy, Alfred Leslie (b. 1927) is internationally celebrated for both his abstract expressionist and realist paintings and his films which include the seminal beat document Pull My Daisy (1959, with Robert Frank). Frank O’Hara (1926–1966) was one of the most original and influential American poets of the twentieth century, the laureate of the New York scene whose position as curator at the Museum of Modern Art gave him unique sensitivity of the visual arts. Leslie and O'Hara met when Leslie had a solo show at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in Manhattan which was then a kind of home base for the 'New York School' poets such as O'Hara and John Ashbery. Leslie and O'Hara became close friends - collaborating with, talking to, promoting and adoring each other until O'Hara's untimely death in 1966.
Introduced by author and poet Dr Daniel Kane. Senior Lecturer in American Studies at University of Sussex.
This event marks the launch of the DVD Cool Man in a Golden Age, Alfred Leslie Selected Films (LUX, London, 2009) and book We Saw the Light, Conversations between the New American Cinema and Poetry by Daniel Kane (University of Iowa Press, 2009)
The Last Clean Shirt, Alfred Leslie & Frank O’Hara1964, 42 minutes, 16mm
In a letter to his friend and collaborator, the poet Frank O'Hara, Leslie writes: "We will shoot for two SEPERATE LEVELS on the film. One is the VISUAL, the other the HEARD & the spectator will be in TWO places or more SIMULTANEOUSLY. NOT AS MEMORY BUT AT THE SAME MOMENT. PARALLELISM! MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW!" It is a blueprint for The Last Clean Shirt in which a man and a woman take a car ride through the streets of downtown Manhattan. A clock on the dashboard foregrounds the fact that the film is a single shot. The woman speaks in double-talk Finnish, interpreted by the beautiful and brilliant story told via O’Hara’s subtitles that run throughout.
USA Poetry: Frank O'Hara, Richard O. Moore/ WNET1966, 15 minutes, video
Frank O'Hara discusses with Alfred Leslie, his work and the relationship between poets, playwrights, and artists. O'Hara also reads some of his poetry and talks about some of his friendships with other artists. Filmed on March 5, 1966 at the home of Frank O'Hara and the studio of Alfred Leslie in New York City.
