Montage: Mass A Metaliturgy, 1962

About

Mass: A Metaliturgy (1962)

By Joan Robertson (with Wayne Sourbeer, uncredited) Music: Donald Erb

Though this film is not technically in the Montage series, Sourbeer reported that this film was a collaboration between him and actress/artist Joan Robertson. She was making the film as part of a class project and art exhibition. Sourbeer is not credited, but the film has similarities to the Montage series film and the playful early Dada films. It is a series of images shot around a scrap yard, with Robertson interacting with some of the objects there. Unlike the Montage films all of which are in color, this film is black and white. Robertson's sister Jane was also an actress and the female lead of the Wichita independent film The Shortest Straw (1968).

The Montage Series

By Ben Urish

Beginning in 1951 Wichita, Kansas had a vibrant and adventurous film society. The Wichita Film Society (WFS) was a focal point for those interested in the cinema arts and was both an institution of education, exhibition, and a hub for other aspects of the local art and theater scenes.

By the late 1950s, the WFS had several members and frequent patrons who wanted to make films of their own and in 1959, three of them formed Montage Productions, named after their interest in the films (and film theories) of Sergei Eisenstein and V.I Pudovkin. The films in the series eventually were tied together by two broad and broadly defined attributes: 1) they were about people or places (or both) in Kansas, and 2) the films were artistic representations of other artistic representations, broadly defined. The series lasted until 1965 by which time the members' careers took them away from Wichita and each other. Each film had its premiere at a WFS screening.

Credits as they appear in the films and a brief synopsis of the films are printed below.

In the early and mid-1980s, I researched the history of The Wichita Film Society and as a result, came across the information about the Montage films written here.

Through other local filmmakers and former WFS members, I was able to get in touch with Corban LePell, Wayne Sourbeer, Richard Wright, and Bruce Conner. They shared their memories and insights and either loaned me copies of their films or told me where to find them. Eventually, the WFS rescreened their films for the public along with more recent films by local filmmakers.

I then got the idea to try and finish their unfinished works and began to read up on the town of Nicodemus, the subject of one of their unfinished Montage Productions.

Soon, however, I decided to make a film of my own, in more or less the same style that they had used. That film is listed here as well. Years later, former WFS chairperson Rob McHenry also made a film inspired by the Montage series and that film is also listed here.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

Archive

Internet Archive, in More feature films

Licence or status

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, as the Internet Archive states it.

Credit

Demolition Kitchen Video

Language

English

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed