Dominic Angerame

Film Diary #6 (1984 Democratic Convention)

"In 1984 the Democrat Party Convention was held in San Francisco. The contenders included Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson against the front runner Walter Mondale. I was able to receive a guest pass as someone who supported Gary Hart. Guests were roped off in an area adjacent to the delegates. Movement was restricted for guests, and I had to capture imagery from my own vantage point." — DA

War Zone

“WAR ZONE (...) Angerame’s unique take on the history, geopolitics and present-day of the DMZ, which emerges as a complex site that goes well beyond its borders. (...) one of Angerame’s most original and remarkable works to day (...) revealing the intricate complexities of the area and capturing the tension that is still in the air.” — Kornelia Boczkowska, author of Lost Highways, Embodied Travels: The Road Movie in American Experimental Film and Video

Film Diary #2 (No Nothing Cinema)

" (...) documents the beginnings of San Francisco’s radical microcinema (...) a landmark venue for showcasing the work of independent and experimental cinema (...) a group of local 'emergency filmmakers,' including Angerame, the revolutionary spirit and passion of those who organized and came to the shows. Bruce Conner, Toney Merritt, and others. " — Kornelia Boczkowska, author of Lost Highways, Embodied Travels: The Road Movie in American Experimental Film and Video

Aeon

“AEON (...) draws parallels between the earthly and the heavenly, linking the San Francisco cityscape and city dwellers to outer space (...) brings the (holy) spirit to life (...) one of Angerame’s major and most mature works to date” — Kornelia Boczkowska, author of Lost Highways, Embodied Travels: The Road Movie in American Experimental Film and Video

Film Diary #9 (Water Fall)

These are the waterfalls in Yosemite National Forest. The mesmerizing movement of water. Film ends with two dolphins sun bathing.

Film Diary #4 (Forest Lawn Cemetery)

Dedicated to Stan Brakhage "Before being introduced to 16mm filmmaking I was filming with a cheap Regular 8mm camera my sister had given me. I lived around the corner from Forest Lawn Cemetery on Main Street. This place I would often visit to either drop LSD or just for some serenity." — DA

The San Francisco Art Institute (A Ghost Story)

“A beacon of creativity, a cauldron of experimentation and a haunted space of an (im)possible future — (...) continues Angerame's (...) collaboration with musician Kevin Barnard (...) provides a nuanced and uplifting score which projects unexpected hope into the tragedy of this film art requiem. Angerame's cine-documentation always speaks to beautiful and redemptive new forms in the face of seemingly impossible odds.” — David Sherman, filmmaker, professor

Film Diary #5 (Last Temptation of Christ)

"This is dedicated to Rosemary Manno, a dear friend that passed away in 2021. Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” opened theatrically one city at a time in 1988. It was met with hysterical protests from the religious right. This happened also in San Francisco at the defunct “North Point Theater”. I was there to film the protests." - DA

Film Diary #3 (In Memory of Kurt Kren)

"I had the pleasure of meeting Kurt Kren when he lived here in the Bay and had the chance of hanging out with him a few times. All I remember was laughing all the time, not much else since I think the alcohol was flowing quite well. In review of my old Regular 8mm films I discovered footage that I had shot outdoors while I was living in Buffalo, NY. I had covered up the lens with tin foil and poked holes in it. After seeing the footage, I was reminded of Kurt and his film ASYL." — DA

Film Diary #8 (Papa John Creach)

Filmed in Chicago 1978, Papa John Creach playing with Grace Slick and Hot Tuna. "I filmed from stage side one roll of Reg 8mm black and white. As the film ran out of the second side of the film, someone from security tapped me on shoulder and demanded that I give him the film. I started fast talking and told him that I would stop filming, he still demanded the film. I then opened the camera and showed him that there was no film left in the camera. That seemed to please him and he left." — DA

Film Diary #1 (Robert Fulton III)

"I traveled to Albany, NY, and called Robert Fulton and stated that I wanted to come and visit him in Newtown, CT. 'You can’t get here from there, look out the window and tell me what the clouds look like,' he said. I described them the best I could and he said, 'Meet me at Butler Aviation at the Albany airport, I will fly there in my plane and pick you up.' This film is a short homage to Bob and his family during the weekend I stayed at the Fulton Estate in Newtown." — DA

Film Diary #7 (Psalm Sunday)

Dedicated to my dear friend Suzanne Kelliher. Sound: “Feather” by Kevin Barnard "This is a portrait of a camping trip to the Cottonwood Mountains and Joshua Tree and the Sultan Sea. It was Palm Sunday. When I went to title the film it naturally came out as Psalm Sunday, more appropriate." — DA

Luminae

Short film by Dominic Angerame.

Khorosho

"In June 1999 dear friends Agnetta Falk and Jack Hirschman were married at Matt Gonzales' place in the Mission. I was there with my 16mm Bolex and filmed part of the ceremony and crowd. After almost 30 years I finally made this footage into a finished film. It features many of our dear friends both living and deceased. In honor of Jack and Aggie's wedding anniversary I finished the film over the weekend." – Dominic Angerame.

Prometheus

“I've never seen light that looks or feels so dark; forward moving possibility united with so much cosmic terror.”—Marilyn Brakhage

Prometheus

“I've never seen light that looks or feels so dark; forward moving possibility united with so much cosmic terror.”—Marilyn Brakhage

Prometheus

“I've never seen light that looks or feels so dark; forward moving possibility united with so much cosmic terror.”—Marilyn Brakhage

Flashbacks

"At the beginning and end of each roll of 16mm I shot a small part of the film is exposed to light because of the insertion and removal of the spool of film. Oftentimes images are obscured by light flashes. I saved many of these short segments when filming and living in Chicago. All of these are spliced together creating a visual diary of my time spent there with my wife Susan. The time period was from 1971-1979. Most of the imagery is from our Chicago days with a couple of scenes from San Francisco. Since the images are flashes and this is a look backward, I titled this short Flashbacks." --DA.

Have Another Espresso

A parody of being a bohemian hanging out in a coffee shop all day.

Revelations

REVELATIONS is a continuation of what I call my "City Symphony" series. This works includes footage that was shot from the late 90s to the present. My filmmaking is inspired by filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov, Joris Ivens, Walter Ruttman and Robert Fulton. (Dominic Angerame)

The Soul of Things

A poetic black and white celluloid film depicting the city landscape (San Francisco) in a state of constant change.

Anaconda Targets

"Anaconda Targets , a documentation tape of aerial bombings by the American military in Afghanistan, depicts the devastating effect of smart bombs. Not often featured in media reports, the soldiers' voices form the soundtrack that accompanies these chilling images. The document has been appropriated by filmmaker Dominic Angerame as a critique of his government's military aggression." - Susan Oxtoby

The Waifen Maiden

Starring Zhanna. Gamaya ("Lead Us") a Sanskrit mantra performed by Zhanna, recorded and mastered by Zak May. This is a haiku and offers a prelude to CONSUME

Consume

Inspired by the novel Flicker by Theodore Roszak, this film was intended to explore the images captured in the flickering light of multiple projector beams. By utilizing superimpositions within the camera, one could experience the pulsating light and explore hidden imagery through use of the "Sally Rand" that Roszak refers to.

Pixiescope

A film that seems to be partially created by the magic that only pixies can create. I went out shooting with my Bolex with the intention of shooting a series of very short one second movies. When the film was returned to me by the lab I discovered that superimposes over the images I had shot were images that I did not shoot. There appeared superimposed images of various women flexing their muscles and posing for some unknown camera person besides myself. This film is a result and a sort of homage to pixies wherever they may be.

Battle Stations – A Navel Adventure

Starring Bruce Conner, a belly dancer, a geiger counter, and a toxic waste dump.

Line of Fire

Angerame's film juxtaposes footage of the auteur's conflagrated material possessions after an apartment fire with an angiogram of his coronary arteries, exploring the temporal nature of both spaces.

In the Course of Human Events

By focusing on demolition precipitated by the Loma Prieta earthquake, Dominic Angerame suggests that the natural disaster simply highlights the intrinsically destructive aspects of urban development. This negative spectacle is all the more striking for taking place in San Francisco, the backdrop of innumerable Hollywood narratives and avant-garde films.

Premonition

The San Francisco Embarcadero Freeway comes to life in this elegy for modernity. The Freeway was deemed a triumph of engineering, a monument for human inventiveness. With the 1989 earthquake, however, the freeway was severely damaged and with it all the industrial-technological promises it held. Premonition shows the situation before the crisis, a deceptive moment of industrial harmony.

Deconstruction Sight

Longtime San Francisco filmmaker Dominic Angerame turns the classical city symphony on its head by focusing on demolition rather than forward​-​progress. Filmed in the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake, DECONSTRUCTION SIGHT plays like an avant-garde disaster movie, an anti-spectacle in flaring black-and-white.

Continuum

In CONTINUUM, the world, the workers within the world and the labor of making the film itself are equated through montage and a brilliantly concentrated filmic "painterliness." The result is an experimental film which is at the same time a document of propaganda in the sense that at its conclusion, one finds oneself closer to the science of the motion of society in its monumentality with streets, buildings, the building of them and the workers and their instruments, creating a constructivist poetry within the eyes.

Phone/Film Portraits

This film utilizes a telephone answering machine as the basic structure. During the past year I kept all the messages recorded on this machine, and then asked many of my friends for permission to shoot a ten second filmic portrait of them, with the messages used as a soundtrack. The resulting work is this piece which becomes a statement of the modern society and our technology at work.

Hit the Turnpike!

The ultimate rejection film. A compilation of many of the rejection notices and letters that I have received during my fifteen years of making films. "Films that offer an intelligent glimpse of the personal struggle and/or foibles of their creators seem destined for a warm reception in any festival. In the world of independents, a short like HIT THE TURNPIKE! is the finest way to end a lengthy screening. For those unfortunate enough to have suffered the agony of rejection or decision, HIT THE TURNPIKE! is the kind of film that encourages you to leave the disappointment behind.

Voyeuristic Tendencies

Voyeuristic Tendencies is not so much a film about voyeurism as it is our tendency to be voyeuristic. That tendency, nurtured by the filmmakers carefully crafted succession of visual teases and exploited by the camera's ability to become our eyes, becomes in increasingly evident as the film progresses. The camera teases the viewer, in this case, co-voyeur, not with sexual or erotic innuendo, but rather with graphic and aesthetic challenges. The partially opened window of a woman's dressing room forces us to realize our urge to see more about these hidden worlds. This type of cinematically- induced self- realization makes Voyeuristic Tendencies a powerfully human film.

Honeymoon in Reno

I was hoping to strike it rich on our honeymoon in Reno. In a way I did, seeing that the camera was filled with very rich imagery in recording this visual journal of our brief visit. The soundtrack is a creation of Katie Steinorth who translated the Buddhist chant of “Om Ma Ni Pad Me Hum” into the words “Oh, Money Bring Me A Home.” —Canyon Cinema

The Mystery of Life (As Discovered in Los Angeles)

"If you have to beg, or steal, or borrow, Welcome to Los Angeles, City of Tomorrow." - Phil Ochs, to whose memory this film is dedicated. First impressions of LA, Forest Lawn Cemetery, the Tropicana Motel, and the sandy beaches of Venice and Long Beach.

A Ticket Home

Going home – from west to east; return. Part of a series of turning points. Recording a journal in color language; shadows of faces. Realities and memories come out frame by frame. The rhythm of a summer vacation. Rituals of light to dark – manifesting form. This is a translation of old friends and old places. A ticket home.

I'd Rather Be in Paris

I'D RATHER BE IN PARIS depicts the filmmaker's visual concern with his physical environment by autobiographically exploring his alternatives: Chicago, San Francisco, and the editing room itself. These urban explorations tend to concentrate on high- speed assemblages of cityscape abstractions.

SFAI (Art Institutionalized)

A humorous parody on the condition of creative film studies in art schools and colleges in general. The sound-track is a composition combining the musical score from the film Ballet Mechanique and the voices of film students testing various pieces of film recording equipment and complaining about grades and procedures. The visuals reveal a modern day mechanical ballet performed by the instructor (myself) on the dada chessboard of absolute reality to the automatic beat of an intervalometer clicking time away one frame per second, as he attempts to relay technical data to his students.

Freedom's Skyway

July 5, 1980. Summertime, San Francisco's Chinatown. A gang of Chinese firework dealers dispose of their unsold goods to the glory of emulsified film. Negative explosions give way to the gateway of reversal images. This film utilizes high speed negative film to enhance grain and image deterioration. Must be projected at silent speed.

Neptunian Space Angel

Soundtrack: Subduing Demons in America, John Giorno; Actress: Lillian North. A film dealing with the alteration of human scaling within the 16mm frame. The "star" walks from one edge of the screen, passes the center, but never reaches the opposite edge. Shot in extreme slow motion, this film creates an unusual and bizarre sense of timelessness and distance. This allows the viewer to become involved with every subtle movement within the frame. The "center" of the frame is constantly emptying itself, creating a vacuum, and is left entirely open, only to be filled again, not with images, however, but with the mind's eye. The space created in the center of the frame allows one to pass through the film and enter an inner dimension of visual perception. A cycle is attained whereby the film, emptying itself, gives the viewer the space he needs so that he may feed energy back into the space. This film is a unique approach to dealing with space that surrounds filmic images.

El Train Film

Song of the El Train in Chicago. The lab did not sync this film correctly and makes this film what it is.

Demonstration '68

Anti-war demonstration, 1968, New York City march to Sheep's Meadow, shows Vets against the war, Yippies, arrests, and flags of a half-forgotten revolution.

Delaware Park

Soundtrack: Ed Sanders. Filmed in Buffalo, 1969, completed in Chicago, 1973. Acid in the park, broken images, danger symbols of the fleeting moments.

Demonstration

Anti-war demonstration, 1968, New York City march to Sheep's Meadow, shows Vets against the war, Yippies, arrests, and flags of a half-forgotten revolution.