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September 6th 2009
Re: Sam Francis Premier 9/11 7PM NYC Anthology Film Archives w Jeffrey Perkins
From: Artist Organized Art
To: The Subscriber Email Address

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ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES

U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN
Jeffrey Perkins

“THE PAINTER SAM FRANCIS”

September 11 to 17
40 Years in the making

FILMMAKER, JEFFREY PERKINS, IS PRESENT OPENING NIGHT
“Despite his New York School affinities, Mr. Francis spent little time in the city. He came to maturity around 1950 while living in Paris, from a distance taking command of a style whose practitioners were generally a generation older. He had his first exhibition in Paris in 1952 and was an instant success. Throughout the 1950′s he was probably the American artist of his generation most celebrated in Western Europe and Japan.” — Roberta Smith, The New York Times, Nov.8, 1994

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Stephanie Gray at publicity@anthologyfilmarchives.org

Anthology is thrilled to present the U.S. Theatrical Premiere Run of artist and filmmaker Jeffrey Perkins, THE PAINTER SAM FRANCIS. Forty years in the making, THE PAINTER SAM FRANCIS is Mr. Perkins’s lyrical and intimate portrait of a friend, mentor, and leading light of American abstract art.

The film retraces Francis’s life and career from his childhood in California to his artistic maturation in post-war Paris, his time spent in Japan, and his return to the United States. Hinging on an interview that Perkins conducted with Francis in 1973, as well as extended scenes of the artist at work in the studio, the film provides deep insight into a man for whom creativity was a powerful life-sustaining force.

Interviews with friends, family, and fellow artists – including Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, Bruce Conner, Alfred Leslie, and others – illuminate a mysterious and complex personality, and its reflection in a body of work that is simultaneously diverse and singular.

For Francis, art was a path to transcendence; for Perkins, Francis was art. The film is a labor of love, a moving portrait of a man, and a tribute to the power of art.

“When Sam Francis said, ‘I paint time,’ this concept could very well have been the primary template for the making of this film. When one considers that I started filming Sam Francis in his studio in Santa Monica in 1968, and that the film was completed in 2008 – a forty-year life span – ‘time’ must be seen as the best possible metaphor to describe it.

Sam Francis was an abstract painter, and therefore the dimensions of the subject do not follow the preconceptions that form our lives, but rather, spread across space and time in certain ways that are not spelled out for us in logic.”

“The very idea of abstract painting was not about logic; there was an individual anarchy about making truly abstract paintings, and of course Sam Francis was about that. All I could do in making a film about him was to facilitate the mechanical witness to the act of painting, and to attempt to ‘interview’ him.” — Jeffrey Perkins
Friday, September 11 through Thursday, September 17 at 7:00 & 9:00 nightly. Additional screenings on Saturday and Sunday at 3:00 & 5:00.THE FILMMAKER WILL BE PRESENT ON OPENING NIGHT, SEPT. 11, FOR AN INTRO and Q&A SESSION at the 7pm and 9pm shows.