Al Wong

The Devil's Cleavage

George Kuchar

Curt McDowell, Virginia Giritlian

"One of Kuchar’s few feature-length works is this ribald pastiche to postwar Hollywood melodrama, that period when the studios were trying very hard to be adult. The intricate, overheated plot involves a nurse trapped in an unhappy marriage who escapes the big city in search of greener pastures in Blessed Prairie, Oklahoma. Swerving from earnest homage to dark satire, Kuchar simultaneously imitates and savages the legacy of Sirk, Preminger and Minnelli that inspired him, gleefully intertwining the suggestive and the scatological, while also pointing towards the later postmodern parodies of Cindy Sherman. The Devil’s Cleavage is also a rich time capsule of 1970s San Francisco, replete with cameos from Curt McDowell and Art Spiegelman." —hcl.harvard.edu

Discount House

Al Wong

This film depicts a man in search of a relationship. However, after experiencing a number of situations, he realizes that the true relationship is with himself.

Screen, Projector & Film

Al Wong

This film deals with filming (taking) and (giving) projecting into the same space of present and past.

Tea for Two

Al Wong

The objective is to show myself visiting myself, and then showing the frustration of loneliness, by trying to be with myself. –Al Wong

Working Class

Al Wong

Usla Schneider

This film depicts the cycle of the City of San Francisco, as one proceeds through a day of work.

Moving Still

Al Wong

This film is still a close part of me. I don’t think I could make another one like this again. It deals with space on many levels within a single movement, a movement that has a circular form that involves each viewer within the film itself.

Same Difference

Al Wong

Al Wong’s Same Difference was composed over the course of a year, a 16mm camera set up on a tripod in the artist’s kitchen capturing views of the San Francisco hills through a large double window. Artist Ursula Schneider sits on a chair underneath the window, her presence and stillness an essential part of the work. With Schneider’s body in the centre of the frame, Wong shot freely at different times of day and night, cloudy or empty skies, and experimented with in-camera effects and editing to compose complicated choreographies of light, clouds and atmosphere.

24 F.P.S.

Al Wong

I first started by taking a black 16mm film leader and holding a magnifying glass above the film. I then used the sunlight to burn each frame in the film leader. At the same time that I was burning the film leader, I was also filming the process of burning each frame. After developing the film, I then physically burned each frame with a soldiering iron in the exact same area that it was burned by the sunlight. The result was that when projected, one would see the filming of the burn at the same time one sees a single frame action of the physical burning of the film, followed by other concepts dealing with 24 frames. 24 frames make one second and this gives the illusion of smoothness. However, because each frame was burned, it gives an animated impression together with the smoothness of 24 frames.

Twin Peaks

Al Wong

Al Wong

While working as a delivery driver, artist Al Wong became captivated by the meditative qualities of the looping roads around San Francisco’s Twin Peaks. But rather than a simple documentation of these journeys, this long-form structural film utilises Wong’s conceptual explorations to create a stunning, sensual work of pure cinema that continually upends our perceptual expectations. On the soundtrack, we hear the continual lapping of ocean waves. A student of the legendary Sōtō Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Al Wong here creates a film which perfectly symbolises the endless cycles discussed in Zen Buddhist philosophy. A monumental, largely-unseen masterwork 1970s avant-garde film, Twin Peaks has been restored in 16mm by the Pacific Film Archive and will be screened outside of the United States for the first time at Sheffield DocFest.