Jennifer Montgomery

Jennifer Montgomery showed two super-8 films. The first was How to Use Equipment, which was from a New York film club project, and was pretty funny. It was basically people trying out super-8 filming and projection, and featuring the amateurishness. My favorite scene was a woman on the telephone with an early 90's computer behind her. This clash of technology between the old (super 8) and the new, relatively, is viscerally exciting for me. Recording my lp's onto my computer is probably one of the most satisfying activities there is in my opinion.
Her structure for Notes on the Death of Kodachrome was emblematic of this juxtaposition; she starts with her friends in a very strange art film from the early 80's w/ naked people and such on super 8, and then spends the rest of the time looking for the equipment she used to make that film. She films her quest on digital video, revisiting with all of her old friends, who are now fairly famous folks. She talked to Todd Haynes, writer and director of the film Far From Heaven, and recounts a dream about a super 8 projector she had. After the conversations which seem to go around more than through any memories of the 70's and 80's, she has a vignette on super 8. The vignette is her dream, where the projector is made out of kitchen apparatuses, and she is an oriental emperess. I found it to be quite entertaining, and wished there would have been more comic super 8 vignettes instead of all that talking.