Walking the fine line

Filmmaker’s work, ‘Line,’ received with praise, confusion, disgust at her first UC Irvine screening.UC IRVINE -- It was quite an unusual opening for a movie, especially to a generation that grew up on Steven Spielberg epics and Disney musicals.

At the UC Irvine Film and Video Center on Thursday night, three dozen viewers sat watching a silent white screen, with a thin diagonal line and a small black dot that slowly advanced from one corner to the next. As the dot made its trek, a young blond woman appeared on the right side of the screen, watching the dot, scribbling with a pen and occasionally turning to grin at the camera.

The film in question is Yvonne Rainer’s “Line,” and it is the first movie that the heralded dancer and filmmaker has shown at UCI since becoming a distinguished professor in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts last summer. The audience’s reaction ranged from adoration to confusion to outright disgust -- but to Rainer, who has made a life of confounding viewers’ expectations, that was hardly new.

“These films require a certain kind of patience,” the 71-year-old director told the crowd after the night’s program, which included “Line” and her 1972 feature film, “Lives of Performers.”

Even beyond patience, the films that Rainer presented on Thursday may have required a meditative state of mind. “Line” carries out its simple premise for 10 minutes, while the 90-minute “Lives of Performers” can best be described as dreamlike -- a mixture of documentary footage of a dance rehearsal with a fragmentary love-triangle story, mostly told in pantomime with Rainer providing voice-over narration.

Rainer’s filmmaking style, as she explained to the audience, grew out of her dance work in the 1960s: stark, minimalist, challenging. Some of it is outright puzzling, but it can also blossom into haunting images. One memorable sequence in “Lives of Performers” features the three actors in the love triangle standing side by side, stoically acting out a tale of pregnancy and betrayal while the narrator provides commentary.

For most of the viewers at the Film and Video Center, Rainer’s films felt like capsules from a bygone era -- a time when audiences thirsted for new ideas, when artists believed that their work could change society as well as culture. The question-and-answer session that Rainer held afterward showed that provocation could work both ways.

“If I was in a good mood, I would say I wasn’t smart enough for this movie,” a young man at the back of the theater snapped at her. “But since I’m not in a good mood, I’d say the last two hours have been a complete waste of my time.”

The man went on to tear apart Rainer’s work, calling it “inane” and obscure for obscurity’s sake. Rainer, who said she had put up with extreme reactions in the past, answered the criticisms casually.

“You’re free to walk out if you want,” she told her detractor, noting that most of the fragmentary images in “Lives of Performers” came out of Hollywood films, soap operas and other everyday media.

Others in the crowd were almost enchanted by Rainer’s work. One woman said that “Line” reminded her of going to her first Quaker meeting.

“You’re supposed to [enter] in silence and go into a state of meditation,” she explained.

Rainer admitted that her films had never had wide distribution, mostly appearing at festivals, museums and out-of-the-way cinemas. Although most of her works are rarely screened, she has built up a critical following, winning the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival for her 1990 film “Privilege.”

The cofounder of the avant-garde Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s, Rainer became the first distinguished professor in the School of the Arts when she joined the UCI faculty last year. Over the last 30 years, she has taught at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, won numerous academic awards and directed seven feature films.

After the UCI screening, students said they appreciated the ambition of Rainer’s work, even if they didn’t understand every frame.

“It was simultaneously a little bit frustrating and a little bit boring to watch, but there are scenes that really jump out and stay with you,” said visual studies major Mark Cunningham, 23.