Oscilloscope
Guest Curator
Once Within a Time, dirs. Godfrey Reggio and Jon Kane, 2022
GUEST CURATOR
Oscilloscope Laboratories
The collectivist film company pays us a visit with a special slate of global cinema and deep cuts
When Oscilloscope Laboratories launched in early 2008, co-founder Adam Yauch—MCA of the Beastie Boys, for the uninitiated—wanted the company to be cut from the same cloth as the indie record labels he grew up listening to and relying on for their curation. It’s a different time now than it was then, and that curatorial tenet has been replaced by algorithms and AI in so many places. Not so at Galerie, and not so at Oscilloscope. Which is why it’s so exciting, from one curator to another, for us to be able to present this cross-section of diverse films from the O-Scope catalog to Galerie’s discerning audience. We hope they speak to you like they spoke to us, and we’re confident they will. What they say is anybody’s guess. Happy viewing. —the Oscilloscope Laboratories team
Select Films from the Oscilloscope Collection
WHAT HAPPENED WAS…, DIR. TOM NOONAN, 1994
A vastly under-seen and underappreciated gem from a master of theater and motion pictures, Tom Noonan’s What Happened Was… is a perfect example of an economical stage-to-screen adaptation that remains wholly true to its dramaturgical source material while becoming completely cinematic in its new form. Sure, it’s two people in one location, but the claustrophobia feasts on itself to regurgitate a vibrant New York City vibe (sometimes brilliantly captured through the creative use of windows). Allow the discomfort to wash over you. It reveals something very human underneath.
Going All the Way, dir. Mark Pellington, 1997
Going All the Way original press compilation reel
Mark Pellington’s Going All the Way is the epitome of what O-Scope stands for: It’s both unconventional and the result of a laborious creative endeavor in the name of art. Pellington’s first feature was not without its production complications. Hindsight can be 20/20, and 25 years on, what filmmaker wouldn’t want to revisit their first, fraught production when presented the opportunity to do so? The Director’s Edit presented here represents the truest version of Pellington’s book adaptation and was constructed from a wholesale re-edit that necessitated returning to the original camera negatives (45 reels of them, to be exact), since nearly an hour of footage was not in the theatrical cut. Also, this thing’s got a pretty good cast!
Contemporary Color, dirS. Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, 2016
Temporary Color, dir. John Wilson, 2016
Unadulterated joy springs from this grandiose performance film, unlike any other that you’ve seen. When asked early on about their inspiration for the film’s aesthetic, the Ross brothers first and most prominently name-checked The Muppet Show. It’s unexpected…until you watch the film. And when your inspiration stems from something that can please a 4-year-old and an 84-year-old alike, you just might end up with a universal crowd-pleaser. The fact that it originated with creative genius David Byrne probably didn’t hurt.
The Tale of King Crab, dirs. Matteo Zoppis and Alessio Rigo de Righi, 2021
Matteo Zoppis and Alessio Rigo de Righi’s The Tale of King Crab is a film that defies temporality. We know it was made in 2021, but if 100 years from now an unmarked copy is pulled from a time capsule, those aliens won’t know if it was from 1963, 1973, 1983, 19…you get the point. What they will know is that it’s beautiful to look at and it’s accessible to them, in spite of the cultural differences (they’re aliens, after all!), because at its heart it is a treatise on storytelling, one of the oldest and truest creative mediums humankind (and I assume alienkind) has ever known.
Gods of Mexico, dir. Helmut Dosantos, 2022
In the spirit of the nonnarrative, dialogue-free, nonfiction films of Godfrey Reggio, Ron Fricke, and others, Helmut Dosantos’s Gods of Mexico presents a gorgeous snapshot of a Mexico unfamiliar to most people—we travel to each of its states—and presents the peoples and their cultures as the diverse world that it is, without ever exoticizing them. The film is a visual and aural feast and communicates a full-fledged story without ever resorting to the typical understanding of how we think a narrative is supposed to be told.
LOVE LIFE, DIR. KŌJI FUKADA, 2022
If Douglas Sirk were alive and Japanese, he would have made Love Life. That might be a bit reductive and simplistic, but it’s also not off-base. Kōji Fukada mines plenty of ideas and events that many might think of as tropes but are really at the heart of any successful melodrama. Is it heightened reality? Absolutely. Does it speak to humanity? Absolutely. Does it simultaneously, unceremoniously tear your heart from your chest and also inject you with a feeling that reminds you what can be great about personhood? Hell yeah, it does.
Once Within a Time, dirs. Godfrey Reggio and jon Kane, 2022
The Making of Godfrey Reggio's Once Within a Time, directed and produced by Mara Campione
Godfrey Reggio has spent his entire career creating oddball art that runs afoul of conventional, commercial moviemaking. Once Within a Time is a culmination of that career trajectory. With a filmography concerned with the ill that humanity wreaks on our planet, Once Within a Time is the cherry on top, both because it continues to address Reggio’s concerns and also because it does so in the sweetest way he’s employed to date—it’s playful, it’s funny, it’s filled with children. And it’s those children, and Reggio’s own childlike perspective, that make Once Within a Time not just an environmental polemic, but an uplifting vision of what the future could be.
