LUX / ICA Biennial Launch Event: Little Stabs at Happiness

A revival of Little Stabs at Happiness, the music and film club presented by Mark Webber at the ICA from 1997 to 2000. Early evening experimental films and contemporary music will be followed by a rare screening of Roberto Rossellini’s The Machine that Kills Bad People (La Macchina ammazzacattivi). When the credits roll, the volume rises, as original Little Stabs DJs and special guests spin disco anthems, new wave big beats and smash hits of yesteryear.

8pm: Quiet Music & Underground Films
Irm & Ed Sommer, Nitsch, 1969, 16mm, 14 min
Tony & Beverly Conrad, Straight and Narrow, 1970, 16mm, 10 min
Manuel De Landa, Incontinence: A Diarrhetic Flow of Mismatches, 1978, 16mm, 18 min

9.30pm: Feature Film
Roberto Rossellini, The Machine that Kills Bad People (La Macchina ammazzacattivi), 1952, 16mm, 83 min. In Rossellini’s satirical comedy, a photographer uses a magic camera to avenge corruption and greed.

11pm: Music & Dancing
Real songs with a beat you can dance to.

1am: Close

Biography:

Mark Webber is an independent curator of artists’ film and video, and a programme advisor to the BFI London Film Festival. Major projects to date include Shoot Shoot Shoot: The London Film-Makers’ Co-operative & British Avant-Garde Film 1966-76, Reverence: The Films of Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow) and Expanded Cinema: Film as Event, Spectacle and Performance. He is currently preparing several publications including Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos and Critical Mass: An Oral History of Avant-Garde Film. Together with Gregory Kurcewicz, B.R. Wallers and Zoë Miller, Webber presented the music and film club Little Stabs at Happiness at the ICA from 1997 to 2000. He also plays guitar in the pop group Pulp.

www.biennialofmovingimages.org.uk