STIMULATION THEORIES - Ten Euphoric Films Tracing The Edge Of The Tangible
FRAMES welcomes Chicago-based archivist & programmer Ben Creech to present a curated selection of experimental short films from the PICTURE START collection.
“In contrast to both mainstream fictional narrative and softcore indirection, hardcore tries not to play peekaboo. It obsessively seeks knowledge, through a voyeuristic record of confessional paroxysm, of the thing itself. It attempts to solicit what it can never be sure of: the out-of-control confession of pleasure, a hardcore frenzy of the visible.” — Linda Williams
There is a frenzied pulse at the heart of each of these films, to speak or name the unnameable, to caress the intangible, that drives them to their own individual ends. Some of them linger on one detail, eating a fruit or articulating a relationship, and attempt to get closer and closer to understanding just the one thing, in all of its multitudes. Others yearn to contain the vastness of the infinite into the sensory container of a single film. Can every dirty word be enunciated, and what happens to their scandalous qualities, when made so objective? Yet other films pursue, doggedly, the erotic in all its surreal possibilities, knowing that even the body is not a limit, and intensities like these are experienced briefly, showing the full capacity of all that rests inside us. Each film, in its own way, accesses the curious frontier between vision and touch, between stasis and movement, in ways that actively invigorate us in the audience, stimulating our brains and bodies with constant transformation, and the provocative expansiveness of the erotic. — Ben Creech
Content warning:
Some films contain flickering images & sexually explicit material, viewer discretion is advised.
PROGRAM
TEARING
Katherine Li | 1981 | 1 minute
A ticket changing hands, sheets of paper tearing in half, even the buttcrack of a worn pair of jeans has to rip sometimes. A building collapses on the viewer (perhaps in the style of Keaton), knuckles crack til fingers fall off, amid clowns and masks, childbirth and butcher shops. This fluid, shifting, dreamlike approach to image association would be refined in Katherine Li’s later film SABINA, funded by the National Film Board of Canada.
PENETRALIA
Karen Aqua | 1976 | 4 minutes
Using the human eye as a stage, this film traces a person’s journey to penetralia, the innermost place. Into the eye jumps a human figure, becoming a bird, a fish, a winged horse, and a winged man in the process, before returning to the surface of the visible.
WET
Chel White | 1984 | 4 minutes
A synth score, composed by the filmmaker, tracks the dappled light off the surface of a pool in this aquatic flicker film. As a woman dives lithely into the depths, the water is the deepest blue, but it inverts and alternates its colors: to red, white, and sometimes pitch black. How can water be made visible, if its nature is constantly changing?
SHE HAS HER MOMENTS
Steve Estes | 1980 | 8 minutes
A journey through drawn, painted, sketched and rotoscoped portraits of a woman that flicker and animate through all of her different faces. The energy goes from lively to haunted and back, as the soundtrack swerves like a car radio tuner, but perhaps there’s no better way to make a composite portrait that holds all the infinite multitudes of one’s beloved.
ORANGE
Karen Johnson | 1970 | 3 minutes
“Have you ever been turned on by an orange?” is scrawled by the filmmaker onto the countdown leader of this sumptuous, luscious masterpiece that won top prize at the First International Erotic Film Festival in San Francisco in 1970. It consists totally of extreme closeups of an orange, as it is undressed and eaten by a hungry mouth. This film is presented on a rare LPP copy.
DESIRE PIE
Lisa Crafts | 1977 | 5 minutes
Suggesting the possibility of a “cosmic rhythm,” this film is a sensual rendering of a woman’s imagination, explicit in its sexuality. An animated celebration of universal lovemaking as demonstrated by a pair of lovers metamorphosing into a spectrum of ages, races and possibilities.
— Intermission —
BLUE STREAK
Mark Rappaport | 1971 | 15 minutes
This early short film by Mark Rappaport moves between two modes - first, black and white shots of nude people are subtitled by every single dirty word that can be summoned to the task: body parts, sex positions, even words that might, elsewhere, be totally innocuous. These sequences are alternated by gorgeous color footage of natural landscapes, while a narrator reads erotica. An attempt to exhaust the vulgar, this film explores the limits of language while riffing on the notion of a “blue movie.
RANDOM POSITIONS
Jo Bonney & Ruth Peyser | 1983 | 8 minutes
Humorous and disturbing, this film depicts the socially acceptable but often destructive roles people play in sexual relationships. Two young men drink beer and watch TV while discussing the pros and cons of marriage and children; a chaotic club scene deals with the more superficial aspects of coupling; two women have a bedroom conversation on possessiveness and insecurity in relationships, which stresses the universal nature of these attitudes, transcending gender or sexual preference.
OBJECT CONVERSATION
Paul Glabicki | 1985 | 10 minutes
A series of source objects are presented, defined, demonstrated, discussed, spoken about, juxtaposed and progressively re-invented during the course of a multi-layered visual and aural “conversation”. An eye-popping frenzy of mathematics, language, architecture, an endless array of classical knowledge and diagrams, making its own kind of music.
XFILM
John Luther Schofill | 1968 | 13 minutes
This film is a very personal exploration of film as an abstract, kinetic medium. The film, after many months of experimentation with rhythm and form, finally collected and crystallized when Schofill heard Bill Maraldo’s unusual electronic tape piece. The opening of XFILM grew from his hearing of that piece, and he still believes that the first five minutes of this film are the most inspired filmmaking he has yet done. Tape composition by William Maraldo.
Total duration : 71 minutes + brief intermission
All program notes by curator Ben Creech
About the collection
In 1981, after years of projecting and teaching experimental film in Champaign, IL, Ron Epple launched Picture Start, a modest regional distribution company platforming independent filmmakers. Some filmmakers at Picture Start would go on to create major Hollywood blockbusters, others would retreat into obscurity after the transitions to video and digital. Picture Startwas active for 12 years until Epple's passing, when the films were transferred to Chicago Filmmakers co-op for safekeeping.
In 2024, Chicago Filmmakers partnered with local projectionist and archivist Ben Creech to assess and repair the collection, determining which prints were still projectable. In 2025, they collaborated on a monthly film series titled Picture Restart, suggesting a new future for these films. Throughout 2026, many of these films will tour regional film venues across the Midwest and beyond.
“Another distributor who deserves credit for distribution of these films in the early days is Ron Epple… without distribution, these 70's animations would never have been seen.” — Sally Cruikshank
This event has been made possible through a contribution by The Cambia Development Foundation through Forest City Gallery.
Poster Design by Joe Heindl