Organ concert tomorrow
Northwest organist Margaret
Irwln-Brandon will perform in
Eugene on Friday.
She will play the new organ in
Central Lutheran church, at the
corner of 18th Avenue and Potter
Street. The organ, custom built for
the church by John Brombaugh of
Ohio, has three manuals and
tracker action.
Irwin-Brandon is an accomp
lished performer and teacher
Last year she spent seven months
touring Europe, where she per
formed in concerts from Spain to
Scandinavia. In addition, she was
organ professor at the Jyvaskyla
Arts Festival in Finland.
Irwin-Brandon is presently on
the music faculty at Pacific Luther
an University in Tacoma She
also directs La Chanterelle, a
baroque performing group.
A Northwest resident since
1968, Irwin-Brandon has taught at
Lewis and Clark College, Portland
State University, the University of
Oregon. Reed College and the
Portland Art Museum School.
Before coming to the North
west, .Irwin-Brandon was a Ful
bright scholar in Munich Her
American studies include a mas
ters degree in performance from
the New England Conservatory in
Boston.
The Friday concert which be
gins at 8 p.m will include works by
. 4
Bach, John Bull, Schumann and
Liszt.
Tickets are $1 for students and
$2.50 for general admission. Tick
ets are available from the church
office (345-0395) and at the door
Harpsichordist
plays Monday
in Beall Hall
Jacques Ogg, a world re
nowned harpsichordist from the
Netherlands, will perform at the
University on Monday
During the recital. Ogg will play
selections from Philips,
Sweelinck, Couperin, J S Bach
and Haydn
Ogg was bom at Maastncht in
the Netherlands in 1948 He had
music lessons from the age of six
and gave his first concert when he
was 15
Ogg is on the faculties of both
the University of Amsterdam and
the Conservatory of Music of
Gromgen He plays in two princi
pal consorts, the De Egelentier.
which specializes in French and
high baroque and rococo music,
and with the Arcadia Musicale. a
woodwind group performing
Italian and French music of the
1500s through 1800s
The concert begins at 8 p.m. in
Beall Concert Hall Admission is
free
Pho© by Bab I ntxty
Photography display
opens at Art Museum
Bob Embrey. a photography teacher at Western Washington State
College in Bellingham, has a one-man show ot his color photographs at
the Photography at Oregon Gallery. Museum of Ah The photographs
were made in Mexico in 1975 and were first shown at the Seattle Ah
Museum
Embrey prints his own color photographs through the dye-transfer
process that is one of the most permanent of all color processes In
November. 1976, Embrey was in Eugene for a conference of the Soci
ety for Photographic Education/Nohhwest where he gave a domonstra
tion of his printing techniques
The photographs will be on exhibit at the Museum until April 29
The Museum s hours are from 12-5, Tuesday-Sunday
Black Sunddy indicative of increasing
decline of commercial US movies
Whatever happened to Behim Fehrrxu? Black Sunday
may not do much, but it answers that deathless quoshon,
end trots old Bekim, unchanged since his Heeling stardom
in 1970 s big bomb. Tho Adventurers, out tor a scene ot
■hooting and chasing that typifies the movie in its length
and dreariness
Despite whet you may have heardol producer Robert
Evans painstaking care, director Jotxi Fmnkonheimor s
talent tor action, and the ascendant st»ol Marthe Keller,
the lact remains that Black Sunday is piddling
I hough the book the movie is tweed on was sup
posedly mspirod by tho terrorist attack at the Munich Olym
pics this him is one ol the least plausible*. least gnpping,
least convincing suspense thrillers I c*i recall
By KBISTI TURNQUIS1
Ol the Emerald
We must oxpecl some contrivance^ thriller plots, as
the genre thnvos on coincidence and iraves o( late How
ever I Black Sunday is so utterly absurd^ to seem crafted
out of discarded reels of The Hmdetiurg, TV movies
(everyone s favorite rotten example) Tm Minute Warning
and any number of Charlie Chan moiis (Charlie Chan
Meets a Terrorist?)
The disaster film olements are obvwis and laughable
Palestinian torronsts stage bloody ati*» on Americans,
protesting continued U S support of law Do they bomb
crowdod places? Kidnap hosta*r> and hold tf|« under
seige? Nothing of the sort wi^Pould Be mor^Bift and
guertllaesque than dispatching a womanegunt to soduce a
crazed Vietnam vet. who |ust happens tolly the Goodyear
Blimp which |ust happens to be schedubd lor a peaceful
waft over the Super Bowl game7
Stay with mo. folks (if you don t itiurxJorstandable)
Now. once agent and vet are in the Mfnp a position of
strength if over there was one (the ung*Ny hulk looks like
an errant football with gland trouble), they strafe the
helpless crowd? Drop explosives gas. H ether articles of
direct destruction? You guessed it Appgfentty realizing the
carnage wreakable from a slow-movinglltmp to be rather
limited, the duo have devised a gizmo (tested in brutal and
extraneous dotail) engineered to tiro thousands of tiny
darts into the spectators, and they station that in the blimp
Direct and efficient, no9 Wonder why they didn t think to
poison the dart tips while they were at it
Wo must congratulate Evans and Frankenheimer for
their restraint True, they treat us to unrelieved, senseless
killing, awkward acting (every foreign accent clashes),
gimmicky editing and filming (perhaps one dart was saved
for John Alonzo s relentlessly hand held camera7) And it's
also true that the only touch of suspense comes at the end,
white most episodes consist of protracted gun-battles and
sadistic threats played at the speed of a snail
Of course, we can t excuse the idiocy of the package,
which dulls any issues raised by terronsm as a political act.
or the qualities ol such, whether they be ethics, idealism,
dedication or fanaticism Lot s not forget the official refusal
to cancel the Super Bowl ("it would be like canceling
Christmas, a man says in unconsciously apt comparison)
is tacitly condoned by the sheer listlessness of the se
quence. when it should have been treated as black com
edy
I know. Evans and Frankenheimer must be cntiazed
tor casting and direction of actors, as well Publicized
Marthe KeNer is Teutonic and blah as the fiery Palestinian
Robert Shaw (as an Israeli with a brogue) continues in his
Jaws and Swashbuckler tradition, tackling yet another ex
hausting role such as might try even Clint Eastwood s
talents Only Bruce Dern as the vet is effectively cast, and
even he sometimes seems to be playing comedy
Yes. Black Sunday is a synthetic slew of bloody vig
nettes tied together by fast editing and John Williams
(Jaws) unsubtle score It sadly demonstrates the further
decline of the commercial Amencan movie, and our inability
to recapture any of the tricks directois like Huston, Hitch
cock and Frankenheimer himself ( in The Manchurian
Candidate) had down pat
But—Evans and Frankenheimer spared us some
what After all, they could have had the blimp go down in the
Bermuda Triangle, only to be attacked by a gigantic shark
spewn forth by an undersea earthquake, resulting in a
mammoth tidal wave, which sinks a |ammed pleasure boat
sailing in the vicinity, which necessitates a rescue helicop
ter which is grabbed out of the sky by a giant ape hand
‘Kesey’ reveals what’s coming
along with drafts of what’s gone
Kesey
Edited by Michael Strelow and the stall of
Northwest Review
Published by Northwest Review Books, 1977
By MARK ROWE
Ot the Emerald
Ken Kesey i name we all know from one
source or anomer Some of us remember him
through 7 om Wolfe s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,
others through hts own published works, One
Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Sometimes A
Great Notion, and a loose amalgam of this and
that titled Kesey 's Garage Sale, but the point is we
all remember the Ken Kesey of almost a decade
ago
There is a Ken Kesey today, though, and we
may soon hear from him agar if/when Viking
Press publishes Ins new novel, as yet unseen and
tentatively entitled "The Demon Box." However,
tor those "Keseyphiles" who cannot wait that
long, the Northwest Review has just published
Kesey which includes two complete sections from
the new novel, some early notes on the drafts of
Sometimes A Great Notion, two excellent intro
ductions to the volume, and a smattering of
photos, drawings, and miscellaneous items
Dearest Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on this
poor contused tormented and just plain
scared-silly old soul down on her bony knees
in the dark tor the first time In Heaven knows
how long begging bless me and forgive me
but honest to betsy Lord i always figured that
tor one thing You had enough sparrows to
keep Your eye on "
So begins Seven Prayers by Grandma Whit- *
tier (senalized in Kesey s magazine Spit In The
Ocean) with the first prayer on Good Friday
In Seven Prayers ' Kesey continues to wnte
in the style of Sometimes A Great Notion, which is
to say that the narrative changes from first person
in the italicized prayer, to a third person in the bulk
of the narrative, then back to a solid first person
(Grandma Whittier), and closing with another
passage told from the third person When I asked
him about this he replied that he was "trying to get
the rhythm of breathing , feeling of prayer
Yoknapatawpha was the word he used to de
scnbe his Faulknenan prose. Read aloud it soon
leaves the reader breathless for lack of punctua
tion; the first two pages lack a single period,
comma, or semi-colon
Because "Seven Prayers is part of a larger
work, Kesey uses the third person sections "for an
overview if the work were by itself (I would)
take out the third person and use the first person
throughout
Malcolm Cowley, in his introduction, makes
the observation that Keseys ‘hallucinated but
everyday style didn’t have the fatal notion of
some Beat writers, the notion that the capture of
the moment could only endure if left untouched
Kesey is a craftsman This can be seen in the
way he builds up the prayer until it includes the
here and now But his determination to achieve a
final effect can best be seen in the early drafts and
notes of Sometimes A Great Notion included in
this volume There is his concern with names;
whether to call family "Stamper or “Strieker;'’ his
efforts in three short stories called “Spring Rain"
(which, by the way, were never intended for publi
cation but were included because they were later
incorporated as a character study in Sometimes A
Great Notion) to portray a teenage boy running for
shelter from the Oregon ram, only to be cut off by a
train. Kesey is, in short, a study in the craftsman
ship and personal growth of Kesey the wnter.
As for a set date for publication of the new
novel, well, Kesey hinted that there had been
several already One of these days, however, the
literary consciousness of Amenca wi!l once again
be assaulted by a long overdue renaissance of
one of our best writers
In addition to his writing Ken Kesey has also
been involved in the Spnng Trip and Hoohaw, the
second annual of which will be held on the Univer
sity campus May 7th. A taste of what you may be
in for, or at least what went down last year, may be
seen on KVAL Apnl 22nd
Mimmaker arrives to discuss
his documentary methods
By PETER DURYEA
Of the Emerald
Did you ever wonder what's ir
your EMU hamburger?
How would you like to meet the
cow that feeds you?
Well Frederick Wiseman will in
troduce you to your hamburger via
his film "Meat,’ which is the voy
age of a cow s life in the pasture to
the cellophane wrapped ground
round found in the supermarket
The movie and its maker will be
here Tuesday night at 7 p m in the
Ballroom to discuss the aspects of
his documentaries that appeal to
the audience There is no charge
for this event
Wiseman was a lawyer and a
teacher before fie became a film
maker His first film "Titcut Follies
was taken at an institution for the
criminally insane, serving as both
a hospital and a jail. He took his
students there because he
Cultural rorum hosts
award-winning filmmaker
Ernie Gehr one of the most noted of the "new wave" of contem
porary filmmakers, will be appearing on the University next Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday (see schedule below) He will be lecturing and
showing his films, including the award winning "Serene Velocity and
three new, and as yet untitled, films. Sponsored by the E M U. Cultural
Forum, all lectures and film showings are free of charge. The public is
welcome to attend
Ernie Gehr’s contribution to "structural cinema," that form that
concentrates on directing the consciousness to the here and now and
dealing with present tense reality, has gained him international recogni
tion. His film Serene Velocity is generally considered his best to date
Many of his films have won awards at the Independent Filmmaker
Competition and the USA Film Festival
He has taught at Yale and Bard and was invited to the First
Montreux New Forms in Film Exhibition in Switzerland as well as the
Berlin International Film Festival. The Village Voice has called him
"the most brilliant new filmmaker to receive recognition during the 70 s
Gehr will be in 180 PLC from 6.30 to 8 p m on Wednesday and
Thursday. On Friday he will be in 202 Villard from 2:30to 3:20p m and
will return to 180 PLC from 7 to 10 p.m that evening
Page 4 Section B
wanted them to see the inside of
the kind of institution they might
someday be committing someone
to.'
Ever since he has shown us
these institutions, among them
Welfare and High School
both of which the Cultural Forum
has screened during the past
months
The analogy between High
School and the military is explicit
This one of Wiseman s focal
points. As he concerns himself
with one institution, it comes out
looking quite like another
It is only through a discreet and
discerning eye that he balances
these ambiguities Perhaps a bet
ter example is taken from Meat
It is the cow sstory, raised with the
sole intent of killing them for us to
eat But the expressions of the
meatpackers during lunch match
the vacant stares of the cows at
the troughs Both man and the
cows appear to be bored beyond
belief
The lines of the men standing in
gore are as removed from the
situation as the meat is absent of
life. The rows of animals being cut
up are parallel to the systemized
lines of the workers, some of
whom wear headphones of music
to help pass the time An electric
prod keeps the cattle moving, just
as the management (or music)
4‘
Frederick Wiseman will be
show his film Meat
Pfcoto court My ol EMU Cultural Forum
m the EMU Ballroom at 7 p m Tuesday 10
Keeps the workers working
Meat is a testimony to the efti
ciency of production line
cdpuahsm Wiseman does more
than fulfill a lournalistic function
while revealing those who do our
dirty work for us He engages us
emotionally and simultaneously
presents a complex and ambigu
ous reality that challenges our
preconceptions
What's more, "Meat is an out
rageously tunny film Although de
void of narration, this movie s bite
is in its powerfully bitter images,
taken from the glib facts of life
rather than fiction
It is a fine opportunity for any
one interested in film, journalism
or public institutions to meet a
master of his craft
Thursday, April 14, 1977
Gay social attitudes explored in ‘Fox and His Friends’
By DAVID CO URSEN
Rainer Werner Fassbinder is one
of the most celebrated, and certainly
the most prolific of the generation of
outstanding young West German
film-makers whose emergence is
bwng proclaimed not only in film
lournals, but also in Time, News
week and even Rolling Stone The
general concensus seems to be that
Fassbinder, who has made over two
do/en films in the last eight years, is
about to be discovered by American
audiences Recent showings of his
films m New York have been phe
nomenally sucessful, critics are
comparing him to Godard, and. like
Lina Wertmuller, Fassbinder is cur
rently working on a first English
language film protect
Despite all this national attention,
however Fassbinder is virtually un
known m Eugene Three of his films
have been shown on campus, to au
diences that have ranged from small
to |ust short of nonexistent, and
Eugene s supposed art house has
shown rio sign of any awareness of
Fassbinder's existence Thus it has
been lolt to Cinema 7, less preten
tious but evidently more knowledge
able about foreign product, to pro
vide iho local theatrical opening ol a
Fassbinder film. Fox and His
Friends, which starts a four-day run
Monday
Fassbinder s work is cortainly dis
tinctive, and Fox is an ideal show
case lor his talents and his eccen
tricities The subject matter, social
distinctions among gay men, is par
Oregon Daily Emerald
ticularly perilous, since homosexual
ity is still ' controversial enough that
it might easily pre-empt our attention
But Fassbinder, gay himself, treats
the subject matter-of-factly, using it
as a way ol focusing on the treachery
and exploitation involved in sexual re
lationships, even when there is no
sexism involved For the characters
in this film, it is social class that
counts for everything, and Fox, the
lower class hero who wins a lottery
and a bourgeois lover at about the
same time, is a social outsider, per
petually isolated by the unacceptabil
ity of his sloppy clothes, bad table
manners, and coarse language As a
result, several hundred thousand
marks and an indeterminate length
of time later, Fox loses his new
friends He has never become com
fortable with their bourgeois values,
but, in attempting to do so. he has
alienated himself from his own
friends, his lifestyle, and. finally, from
himself Left alone, he is utterly lost
and finally, in despair, kills himself,
using that most bourgeois of drugs,
Valium
The melodramatic story-line
doesn t really suggest how rich and
complex a film Fox is Fassbinder is
ambivalent about traditional narrative
film-making, preferring to use the
story as an aid in exploring the
nuances of character and social set
ting that are his primary interests
Visually, he detaches the camera
from the action, viewing his charac
ters from an objective distance, using
close-ups sparingly, and often plac
ing objects in the extreme foreground
to emphasize the distance between
the camera arid the action Several
times in the film he employs another
distancing device having the charac
ters. after completing a sequence, ar
range themselves into tableaus and
freeze, holding the pose until the
opening of the film that it is he, not
they, who are out of place Between
the first shot of the film, the garish
neon landscape of a carnival, and
last, nightmarish image of a sterile
' 1 aiHIHMMHnBBBHI
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, above left, acts in the film "Fox and His
Friends that he also directed
screen darkens; this creates a
dream-like effect that is evocative but
certainly not "realistic
Fassbinder s concern for visual
expressiveness extends even to the
casting of the film He himself plays
the central role of Fox. largely, it ap
pears, because his features are so
expressive With his face in a per
petual squint, he looks something like
an imp. a touchingly human figure in
a world peopled by humanoids, their
faces with the impassive (lawless
ness of masks It is clear from the
subway station, the terrain is occa
sionally more elegant but seldom any
more hospitable to human life
Throughout the film, Fassbinder
focuses with almost horrifying inten
sity on the dehumanizing effects of
this bourgeois world Although his
sympathies are obviously with the
exploited, he presents them and their
exploiters alike as trapped within
their social situations. Fox s lover
may take his money and then leave
him, but Fassbinder understands the
dynamics of exploitation well enough
to know that any person needs to be
able to justify his own actions to him
seif As a result, the lover convinces
himself that Fox was unworthy of his
money, that people like him are too
crude to feel despair. From this
perspective, he can believe that he
has not only been 'fair but has re
stored the money and the social
order to their nghtful states It is this
complacent dishonesty and the re
duction of human relationships to ex
changes of commodities that are the
unspeakable horrors
Despite his preoccupation with
politics. Fassbinder declines to sug
gest any solutions It is, after all. two
children who see Fox dead in the sta
tion. go through his pockets for
money, and. finally, steal his jacket
as well. Fassbinder's impassive di
rectorial gaze explores this, like ev
erything else in the film, with a preci
sion and a detachment that are al
most clinical But. despite the pro
found despair that sustains it. Fox is
so intense that it seems hypnotic and
even, in a perverse way. exhilarating.
Fassbinder is a fascinating director,
at once uncompromising, forceful,
and endlessly inventive
Shanng the program with Fox will
be two short films by another West
German, Werner Herzog, the most
exciting film-maker of his generation
The shorts, "Last Words" and Pre
cautions Against Fanatics," do not
really suggest the size of Herzog's
talent, but both are delightfully funny
testaments to his respect for the
human capacity to endure As such,
they effectively counter-point
Fassbinder s angry chronicles of de
spair
Page 5 Section B