THE THEMERSONS AND THE REMAKE OF PHARMACY
BY BRUCE CHECEFSKY
December 4th, 2001 7PM

Location One is pleased to announce Bruce Checefsky’s presentation of the groundbreaking work of experimenal filmmakers Franciszka and Stefan Themerson. Perhaps the most influential of Polish cutting-edge artists, the Themersons produced five short films between 1930 and 1937 in Warsaw that rank among the greatest of European avant-garde: Pharmacy, Europa, Moment Musical, Short Circuit and The Adventure of a Good Citizen. Whereas only the last three films survived the war, a remake of Pharmacy (1930, b/w, silent, 3 minutes) was produced in Budapest in 2001 under the direction of award winning animator and film writer Laszlo L. Revesz and Bruce Checefsky. Bruce Checefsky will present a short contextual history of the photogram as it relates to the Themersons and show slides of his work followed by a screening of Pharmacy (2001, b/w, silent, trt 4:40 minutes). Checefsky explains: “Our remake of Pharmacy is not a reconstruction of the original but an interpretation based on surviving documents, film stills, and notes. I wanted to remake Pharmacy because it was an extremely important film. It is a way of talking about a sort of stimulant to make the thinkable something as yet untaught. It points to that strange zone where art and action discover secret and unpredictable relations with one another. The problem is how to inhabit this condition and how to continue the underground aesthetics of resistance and extend it into the problematic borders of and in our view of justice” Bruce Checefsky is an artist/photographer based in Cleveland. He is director of the Reinberger Galleries, Cleveland Institute of Art and has organized and curated numerous exhibitions. His own works have been presented in solo exhibitions in numerous countries such as Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Japan, The Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine.

The event is organized jointly by Location One and the Polish Cultural Institute.