For the first time in over 50 years, multi-disciplinary artist Bill Brand returns to Pittsburgh to share his work. In the domain of film, Brand is widely regarded as a legend in both making his own work and, via his “one-man film laboratory” BB Optics, preserving films by others. What’s less known is that Pittsburgh plays an important role in Brand’s career. It was while here for a screening of his work at Carnegie Museum of Art that he first learned to use the JK optical printer at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. This novel tool would go on to become inseparable from Brand’s work for three decades. In his own films, the optical printer allowed him to create visually complex superimpositions and frames within frames within frames. As a preservationist (a role he inadvertently fell into due to his virtuosic skillset), Brand’s mastery of the optical printer made him the go-to person for blowing up 8mm and Super 8 to larger film gauges.
Pittsburgh Sound + Image, with the support of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry’s Director’s Fund, are honored to be able to bring Bill Brand back to Pittsburgh for discussion and for a survey of his experimental film works (presented entirely on 16mm) dating from the early 1970s up to the present.
This very special evening is timed to correspond with Brand’s 360 degree expanded cinema installation Pong Ping Pong, presented by Pittsburgh Sound + Image at Eberle Studios on Friday, April 17th and with the book launch of Invisible Fisherman: The Art of Bill Brand from Eyewash/VSW Press FAB publications.
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Doors at 7:00, screening starts at 7:30
At the Harris Theater
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About Bill Brand
Bill Brand is a multi-disciplinary artist whose films, public artwork, installations, paintings and works-on-paper have exhibited worldwide in museums, galleries, microcinemas and on television.
Bill Brand is Professor Emeritus at Hampshire College and teaches Film Preservation at New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation graduate program. He is co-owner of BB Optics, Inc., a company that specializes in archival film preservation and post-production services.
