Lewis Klahr’s Vintage Graphics Tell ‘Future’

For his highly evocative “Tales of the Forgotten Future,” which Filmforum screens tonight at 8 at LACE, filmmaker Lewis Klahr digs into a treasure-trove of vintage graphics to bring the past alive with a powerful emotional effect.

A master of decoupage, Klahr cuts out figures from old magazines, comic books, etc.--the list of his source materials is endless--and animates them against backgrounds of photographs, engravings and so on.

However, for all its reprocessing and layering, his work is fundamentally a rigorous example of achieving maximum impact through minimal means.

What he achieves is two-fold: to evoke the American experience through popular culture, especially of the ‘40s and ‘50s, and to tell us little stories, often merely narrative fragments, to create the effect of eavesdropping on life.

He takes us into the idealized, homogenous world of advertising and commercials, in which everyone is WASP-y, well-dressed and well-fed, only to reveal beneath impeccable surfaces a whole range of emotions--fear, loneliness, sexual craving.

Most poignant is the endless parade of pert, smiling Jon Whitcomb/Barbie doll-like creatures, calling attention to an image that straitjacketed a generation (or two) of young American women.

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