16MM RUN
Edward Owens, Taylor Mead
Screening and conversation with Vittoria Bonifati, Marco Giusti and Luca Lo Pinto
#Agora
16MM RUN, the experimental film programme in collaboration with Villa Lontana, concludes on Tuesday, December 10, with Tomorrow’s Promise (1967, 44′) by Edward Owens (1949–2010) and Home Movies Rome/Florence/Venice/Greece(1965, 14′) and Home Movies N.Y.C. to San Diego (1968, 19′) by Taylor Mead (1924–2013) — two filmmakers who challenged traditional formal and narrative conventions, crafting personal visual languages centered on the concept of travel.
The event, which marks the conclusion of the program that began in 2021, will feature Marco Giusti, film critic, essayist, television writer and director, for a conversation with Luca Lo Pinto and Vittoria Bonifati on the role of analog experimental cinema in the contemporary cultural landscape.
On this occasion, a limited edition collection will be presented, gathering the films that have been part of 16MM RUN: from the beginning of the series with Storm de Hirsch and Carolee Schneemann to today with Edward Owens and Taylor Mead, passing through Jack Smith, Maya Deren, and many others. Together, these films form a significant archive of experimental cinema from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
Edward Owens, Tomorrow’s Promise, 1967
16mm, color, silent, 44.75 min
With Tomorrow’s Promise, Edward Owens explores existential void, identity, and introspection, combining intimate portraits, evocative imagery, and technically complex editing. The film carries a strong emotional charge, enhanced by the use of color and visual structure, which seem to suggest a shifting mood and an inner journey.
«Tomorrow’s Promise is a film about vacantness. Which physically does ‘begin’, reversed, upside down on the screen (but by what premise is it supported? , e.g. the film, so chimerical as life itself, follows its own way), suddenly another such position is taken (not in reverse), this time by a male figure and soon, in this same section, the girl of the reversed image reappears posed in a different way; a way obsessed by ‘mood’. Then a technical play of in-the-camera-editing occurs, more intense, brighter than in the first, reversed section. There are several inter-cuts which serve, in this and each subsequent section unto the end, as relative links into the final section: which is actually the ‘story’. The story the protagonist and her hero try to tell in their way is apophysis; except that ‘pictures’, clear visions take the place of words. My film could have been edited with precise tensions and a lucid straight narrative, but it was my aim to ‘re-create’ the protagonist of my personal life.» – Edward Owens
Taylor Mead, Home Movies
«My home movies which weigh 2 pounds so far began in Mexico City where I got bored and bought a 50-ft. Keystone at National Pawn Shop-I was immediately turned on-to the City, to Mexico-it really makes a difference-and in 16mm-but I wanted to shoot in color and it costs about 10 dollars/50 ft. in Mexico so I had to push single frame button much of the time-oh me, but its lovely anyway-I kept pushing once I crossed border into U.S. and N.Y. and Malibu. » Taylor Mead
Taylor Mead, Home Movies – Rome/Florence/Venice/Greece, 1965
16mm, color, sound on tape, 14 min
The film follows the author on a journey through some of the most iconic cities in Italy and Greece, including Rome, Florence, Venice, and various locations in Greece. Shot with a handheld video camera in an amateur and spontaneous style, the footage captures the essence of the 1960s “do-it-yourself” tourism, alternating between moments of Mead’s typical lightheartedness and irreverence and evocative images of the historic and cultural places visited. The combination of majestic settings and informal cinematography creates a personal and intimate account of a trip through Europe, with a laid-back and unconventional approach that reflects the free-spirited nature of the cinematic avant-garde of that time.
Taylor Mead, Home Movies / N.Y.C. to San Diego, 1968, 19′
16mm, color, sound on tape, 19 min
The film documents a journey starting from New York City and ending in San Diego, capturing fragments of daily life and random moments along the way. Shot in the amateur style typical of home videos, Mead uses a handheld camera to film spontaneous scenes, landscapes, and people encountered during the trip. The film reflects Mead’s experimental aesthetic and anarchic spirit, characterized by a free, unscripted approach. Without dialogue or a soundtrack, the short focuses on the images, presenting a visual journey through 1960s America with a sense of creative freedom and personal exploration.
The event will take place at the museum’s cinema hall.
Free admission until capacity is reached.
With the support of Fondazione Dino ed Ernesta Santarelli.
On this occasion the archive of 16MM RUN will be presented in the form of a limited edition poster.
EDWARD OWENS (1949–2009) was a queer African-American filmmaker who was involved with the New American Cinema of the 1960s. He is best known for his experimental films Remembrance: A Portrait Study (1967) and Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts (1968-70). When he moved to New York City as a young man, Owens was hired by Jonas Mekas to work at the Film-makers’ Cinemateque. When Mekas saw Owens’ films he was invited to join the FMC for distribution as a part of the New American Cineam movement. In 2016, Executive Director MM Serra collaborated with IndieCollect to preserve the four Owens films within the NACG collection through a 5k digital scanning process. The digital transfer was supervised by NACG’s digital media specialist Sheldon Henderson.
TAYLOR MEAD (1924–2013) was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised by divorced parents mostly in the wealthy suburb of Grosse Pointe. He appeared in Ron Rice’s beat classic The Flower Thief (1960), in which he “traipses with an elfin glee through a lost San Francisco of smoke-stuffed North Beach cafes.. .” Film critic P. Adams Sitney called The Flower Thief “the purest expression of the Beat sensibility in cinema.” Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman called Mead “the first underground movie star.”In 1967 Taylor Mead played a part in the surrealistic play Desire Caught by the Tail by Pablo Picasso when it was set for the first time in France at a festival in Saint-Tropez, among others with Ultra Violet. In the mid-1970s, Gary Weis made some short films of Mead talking to his cat in the kitchen of his Ludlow Street apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side called Taylor Mead’s Cat. One film of Mead extemporizing on the virtues of constant television watching aired during the second season of Saturday Night Live. In 1995 Mead spent eight hours a day for a week at the Bon Temps bar, New Orleans, being documented in the photobooth costumed as a series of Warholian characters for Blake Nelson Boyd’s documentary Photobooth Trilogy. Characters included Superman and Mickey Mouse from Warhol’s Myth series and references to Mead’s performances in Lonesome Cowboys and Nude Restaurant. While living on Ludlow Street, Mead read his poetry regularly at The Bowery Poetry Club. His First book of poems “Taylor Mead on Amphetamines and in Europe” was written in 1968. His last book of poems is called A Simple Country Girl. He was the subject of a documentary entitled Excavating Taylor Mead, by Jim Jarmusch which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005. The film shows him engaging in his nightly habit of feeding stray cats in an East Village cemetery after bar-hopping, and features a cameo by Jim Jarmusch, in which Jarmusch explains that once, when Mead went to Europe, he enlisted Jarmusch’s brother to feed the cemetery cats in Mead’s absence. Mead appeared in the final segment of Jarmusch’s 2003 film Coffee and Cigarettes. He has been “a beloved icon of the downtown New York art scene since the 60s.”
MARCO GIUSTI (Grosseto, 1953) is a film critic, essayist, television writer, and director. He served as a television executive for RAI – Radiotelevisione Italiana from 1996 to 2021. He is the creator and writer of the programs Blob (Rai Tre, 1989–present), Blobcartoon (Rai Tre), and Cocktail d’amore (Rai Due, 2001). Giusti also conceived, authored, and hosted Stracult, a cinema magazine on Rai Due, from 2000 to 2020. He contributed to the film pages of Il Manifesto (1988–2010) and L’Espresso (1988–2000). Since 2011, he has been a film critic for the website Dagospia, providing daily coverage on new releases, under the column Il cinema dei Giusti, along with reviews, festival reports, obituaries, and box office updates. Giusti has authored around 20 books on cinema. Notable works include: Laurel & Hardy, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1978; Mel Brooks, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1981; Dizionario dei cartoni animali, Milano, Vallardi, 1993; Dizionario dei film italiani Stracult, Milano, Sperling & Kupfer, 1999; Dizionario del western all’Italiana, Milano, Oscar Mondadori, 2007; 007 all’italiana. Dizionario del cinema spionistico italiano con tutte le locandine più belle, Milano, Isbn, 2010; Il grande libro di Ercole. Il cinema mitologico in Italia, with Steve Della Casa, Roma, Sabinae, 2013; Dizionario STRACULT della Commedia Sexy, Milano, Bloodbuster edizioni, 2019; Polidor e Polidor, Bologna, Cineteca di Bologna, 2019; Tutti i film di Franco e Ciccio, Milano, Bloodbuster edizioni, 2024. He has also written books on the history of Italian television and advertising, such as Il grande libro di Carosello. E adesso tutti a nanna…, Milano, Sperling & Kupfer, 1995. In 1993, Giusti received the Pino Pascali Prize for his documentary Pino Pascali o La pelle del serpente (Rai Tre), which was presented at the Venice Art Biennale. In 2004, he curated the retrospective Italian Kings of the B’s – Storia segreta del cinema italiano for the Venice Film Festival. He also curated retrospectives on Spaghetti Westerns (2007) and Italian comedy cinema (La situazione comica, 2010) for the same festival. Most recently, Giusti wrote, conceived, and starred in two films: Roma santa e dannata (2023), with Roberto D’Agostino, and C’era una volta Napoli (2024), with Ciro Ippolito.