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In addition to giving audiences a peek at award-winning foreign films, genre-bending independent movies and audience-pleasing cult flicks, Nob Hill’s Guild Cinema has a history of supporting cinematic art in all its forms. Traveling film creatives passing through Albuquerque often set up shop at the Guild for a night of mind-bending, film-based experiments.
On Wednesday, Jan. 15, filmmaker Roger Beebe is taking over the space for an original program of 16mm multi-projector performances celebrating the 25th anniversary of his first touring program. The program features several newer, short-form works including 2024’s “un arbre,” 2019’s “Lineage (for Norman McLaren)” and 2021’s “Home Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry.” These are presented alongside some of his best-known projector performances – including the seven-projector, show-stopping throw “Last Light of a Dying Star” (2008/2011). He will also include a sampling of recent “essayistic” videos, presented as live-narrated documentaries. These works take on a range of topics from the forbidden pleasures of men crying in “Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes)” to the racial politics of font choices with “The Comic Sans Video.”
Guild owner Keif Henley calls Beebe “a die-hard veteran of multi-channel projectionist art” and says this Albuquerque screening “has the added bonus of being live and on-the-spot.” Henley is no stranger to film art, having run the Guild for decades and being a former president of Albuquerque’s volunteer-run micro-cinema organization Basement Films. “Coming from my old stomping ground of Basement Films,” says Henley, “you better believe I’m excited to host this.”
Since 2006 Beebe’s work as a filmmaker has consisted primarily of multiple-projector performances and essayistic videos that explore the world of found images. He has screened his films around the globe at locations both traditional (The Museum of Modern Art, The Los Angeles Filmforum) and unusual (the CBS Jumbotron in Times Square, McMurdo Station in Antarctica). He is currently a professor in the Departments of Art and Theatre, Film and Media Arts at Ohio State University.
Films for One To Eight Projectors – A Multi Projector Performance Tour by Roger Beebe takes place Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 7 p.m. at Guild Cinema (3405 Central Ave. NE). General admission tickets are $8 and are available now at Guild Cinema.