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Film Love presentsClassics of the Avant-Garde, Part Two:
Line Describing a Cone, and artists’ films by Gordon Matta-Clark and Jamie Nares
*Please note: due to the interactive nature of Line Describing a Cone, tickets are limited.
A one-night-only program of three historic artists’ films – featuring a projection of Anthony McCall’s landmark Line Describing a Cone, which can only be experienced in person.
It begins with a small white dot at the bottom of the black frame. By the film’s end thirty minutes later, a full circle has slowly, silently been drawn to fill the frame. This is all that happens onscreen in Anthony McCall’s 1973 film Line Describing a Cone. But as the title indicates, the drama is in the space between the projector and screen, because the screening room is filled with a light haze from a fog machine. As the circle progresses onscreen, a cone of light and fog is gradually formed in the room, with the base of the cone at the screen and the apex at the projector lens. Line Describing a Cone is a unique viewing experience, for viewers are encouraged to interact directly with the cone of light. On December 11, 2025, the Plaza Theatre and Film Love will host this elegant work of cinema, which can only be experienced as a live projection.
Line Describing a Cone is a profound and beautiful meditation on the nature of projected light, and a direct, three-dimensional experience of the ancient questions of geometry that govern our physical lives and social being. In a foreboding age of increasingly violent spectacle, media saturation, and cultivated lack of trust, Line Describing a Cone reclaims the moving image for a different world, one with the possibility of contemplation, of nurturing, of people enjoying the occupation of space and the passage of time together.
Shown alongside McCall’s film are two remarkable and rarely screened artists’ films from the same era. Gordon Matta-Clark’s Conical Intersect, directly inspired by Line Describing a Cone, documents Matta-Clark’s giant cone-shaped cut into a 17th-century apartment building due for demolition in Paris. Filmed in evocative Super 8-mm, Jamie Nares’s Pendulum documents a day in 1976 New York City, on which Nares repeatedly swung a heavy ball suspended on a rope from three stories above the street. Pendulum is many films: a poetic meditation on physics, a visually addictive DIY thrill ride, and a striking record of a long-gone Tribeca of eerily deserted streets and massive spaces available for play.
All three of these films dramatically reconfigure spaces: Matta-Clark’s building cut, Nares’ transformation of a Manhattan block into the setting for a kinetic installation, and Line Describing a Cone, which encourages viewer interaction with the projected light beam and thus requires an adjustment of the cinema space of the Plaza Theatre. None of these three films is available on consumer video, so this screening represents a rare opportunity for experiencing them.
Pendulum (Jamie Nares, 1976) 17 min, digital video from Super-8mm
Conical Intersect (Gordon Matta-Clark, 1975) 20 min, digital video from 16mm
Line Describing a Cone (Anthony McCall, 1973), 30 min, 16mm
This program contains one intermission.
Thanks to Flux Projects for their support of this program.
CLASSICS OF THE AVANT-GARDE PART TWO: LINE DESCRIBING A CONE is a Film Love event. The Film Love series provides access to great but rarely seen films, especially important works unavailable on consumer video. Programs are curated and introduced by Andy Ditzler, and feature lively discussion. Through public screenings and events, Film Love preserves the communal viewing experience, provides space for the discussion of film as art, and explores diverse forms of moving image projection and viewing.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Plaza Theatre, 1049 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30306-4219, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
