CO-PRESENTED BY NARROW ROOMS

Los Angeles- and San Francisco-based filmmaker Ken Camp was first brought to the attention of EZTV founder John Dorr through their mutual friend Leonard Lumpkin. Impressed by Camp’s first short THE SECRET LIFE OF PATTY HEARST (a quotidian look at the heiress-turned-terrorist’s “missing year” from 1976) and his starring role in James Robert Baker’s MOUSE KLUB KONFIDENTIAL (1976), Dorr invited him to make a gay soap opera called AS THE WORLD BURNS that could be split up across the inaugural EZTV screenings held at the West Hollywood Community Center in 1982. Camp would continue to be associated with the organization throughout the next decade, using its facilities to edit his two subsequent video features HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS (1984) and MANTRA (1992).

This program – which also represents the August installment of Adam Baran’s ongoing series “Narrow Rooms” (click here for more details) – pairs HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS with the first episode of AS THE WORLD BURNS and the (sort-of) trailer for Camp’s as-yet-unfinished Super-8mm horror feature AFTER THE COMET – none of which have ever been screened in New York. All are new restorations from the original film and video elements.

Warning: this program features flicker effects.

Ken Camp SHOCK VIDEO (1985, 12 min, Super-8mm-to-DCP)
Comprised of footage shot for his as-yet-unfinished Super-8mm horror feature AFTER THE COMET, Ken Camp’s SHOCK VIDEO is a disturbing reflection of the filmmaker’s time living in San Francisco during the latter half of the 1970s, a period that saw not only the blossoming of gay liberation, but the Patricia Hearst kidnapping, the Jonestown mass suicide, a series of bombings committed by the New World Liberation Front, the assassination of Harvey Milk, and multiple gay serial killers like the Doodler and the Freeway Killer. Originally assembled and transferred to video for screenings at Los Angeles DJ and promoter Jim Van Tyne’s legendary Theoretical parties, Camp views SHOCK VIDEO as both something of a trailer for AFTER THE COMET and its own distinct work.

Ken Camp AS THE WORLD BURNS: EPISODE 1 (1982, 19 min, SD-video-to-DCP)
“It’s the Reagan era… and all of the husbands in the neighborhood are mysteriously beginning to turn gay.” –Ken Camp

Ken Camp
HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS
1984, 63 min, SD-video-to-DCP
“The Los Angeles freeway killer takes a drive to Las Vegas – and back. This video by Ken Camp is both trancelike and troubling, taking the viewer across the desert of California, through Nevada, and into ‘the frightening zone where lay the genetic codes and memories that make us all killers.’ In STEREO sound.” –EZTV GUIDE