Previous Calendars
Season 4: Spring 2013
Contraband Cinema had a short season Spring 2013 because other film projects. The IOWA Film Mafia took over Contraband for a show of their work, and the Atlanta Film Festival invited Contraband Cinema back to host their experimental program.
Season 3: Fall 2012
Season Three of Contraband Cinema brought rare, new, and local films to hundreds of Atlantans with 3 events at 2 different venues. Hitch and his double came to Atlanta in Johan Grimonprez's film Double Take. We watched Sports films by Miranda July, Brett Kashmere, Laura Kissel, Niklas Vollmer and Vanalyne Green. And took in an out-of-this-world live performance by Gregory Zinman (video), Leo Goldsmith, and Nat Hawks (Christian Science Minotaur)
Season 2: Spring 2012
Season two of Contraband Cinema brought rare, new, and local films to hundreds of Atlantans with 6 events at 4 different venues. For Love / Not Love curator Gregory Zinman brought us erotic films on 16mm. At Skip The Oscars we skipped the Academy Awards with Soda_Jerk and local filmmakers to defend our rights against SOPA and PIPA. Our After School Special took us back to the days where 16mm film was an instructional tool in American classrooms. Then for Atlanta Film Festival Experimental Shorts we teamed up with Atlanta Film Festival to celebrate experimental film. For Living Cinema we brought underground film legend Craig Baldwin to Atlanta for 3 shows with help from Film Love and GSU's Peripheral Visions. Finally, at Witnesses to Wind and War we showed the brilliant work of Kelly Sears and Ruth Dussuealt.
Season 1: Fall 2011
Season one of Contraband Cinema brought rare, new, and local films to over 100 Atlantans with 3 events at 3 different venues. Memory Ciphered in Celluloid hosted the Georgia premiere of Helen Hills The Florestine Collection, Bill Morrison's The Film Of Her, and a collection of 16mm educational films presented by RUDERMEDIA (Ben Ruder) at Atlanta's oldest single screen independent theater, the Plaza Theatre. Experiments in Terror was a collaboration with our local horror film festival Buried Alive Film Festival. Director of the festival Blake Meyers co-curated a line-up spearheaded by Kenneth Anger's Invocation Of My Demon Brother on 16mm. The event took place at the spooked abandened schoolhouse known as the Arts Exchange. Avant To Live brought the focus on local camera-less works by mostly local filmmakers, Robbie Land, Christopher Childs, Michael Betancourt, Anna Spence, and the southern premiere o Sylvia Schedelbauer's Sounding Glass. This standing room only event was a touchstone for the intimate, engaged, local, community oriented screenings Contraband Cinema strives for heading into Season 2.
This inaugural season of Contraband Cinema could not have been possible without the assistance of Andy Ditzler, Craig Baldwin, Gideon C. Kennedy, Charles Judson, Gabe Wardell, Paula Martinez, Bradley Elfman (name), John Robinson, Ben Ruder, Mark Basehore, and Mary Beth Byram.