With excerpt from Mare's Tail (U.K., 1969). With the introduction of Mare's Tail, British artist David Larcher was immediately compared to Stan Brakhage and Ken Jacobs. This monumental film-exploring the textures of the film surface, cinematic space, the edges of vision-engages an episodic structure to test the timbres of autobiography. Larcher's early opus was described by Stephen Dwoskin: "Mare's Tail is an epic film flight into an inner space. It is a 2-1/2 hour visual accumulation; it is the filmmaker's personal odyssey, the odyssey of each of us. The lines move into shapes which move into orbits and your eyes water into colors. The film becomes one of the most vital penetrations into the experience of seeing." Larcher next trained his eye on Monkey's Birthday, shot while traveling in a convoy along the Afghanistan border. Screened using dual projectors, the two-hour film depicts various geographies, both real and imaginary, in a frenzied montage of exotic architecture and spirited faces. Comprising "cinema veritable plus 2%," this is indeed a film and more so, "2-1/2 miles of film" that takes the ordinary and transforms it into the "extra super ordinary" (the artist's words). Or as Heathcote Williams has noted, "a generous genius has stretched the celluloid durex further than anyone else, and snapped it to give birth to a feast of instinct." -Steve Seid

• Mare's Tail (excerpt, 20 mins, Color/ B&W, 16mm). Monkey's Birthday (120 mins, Color/ B&W, 16mm, Twin screen projection). (Total program: 140 mins plus discussion, From the artist)