You know their chairs, now see their short films

By Kristen Peterson

Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Charles and Ray Eames were midcentury modernist cultural icons who were always moving forward, turning the next corner and seeing what they could accomplish. Their revolutionary quest to design high-quality, affordable furniture and housing for postwar America still resonates.

We know their Eames lounge chair and the super comfy, slick molded plywood, plastic and aluminum furniture.

But how well do we know their film shorts? (“Powers of Ten” aside.)

The Eameses made more than 100 short films from 1950 to 1982. As with their design work, they overlooked nothing, played with everything, were whimsical, scientific and prolific. Their shorts about mathematics, science, art lectures, gallery shows and creatively choreographed displays of products fill a vast archive. They even did a training film for the Clown College of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

On Thursday the Dam Short Film Festival pays homage to the Eameses’ films with a retrospective showcase that includes “Powers of Ten,” a 1977 collaborative effort with IBM that captures the universe in factors of 10, beginning with a shot of a couple in a park and then expanding out into the universe before zooming back in to the interior of an atom.

“They did some things in short films that I haven’t seen anyone else do,” says Lee Lanier, who co-founded the film festival with his wife, Anita.

This is the first year the Dam Short Film Festival, held annually in Boulder City, has showcased retrospectives. In addition to the Eameses, it will feature “The Amazing Universe of Jim Blashfield,” known for his 1980s music videos and animated works.

The festival has a full schedule of shorts in varying genres. So grab some snacks and settle in for three days of horror, comedy, drama, animation, romance, documentaries, art flicks and panels.

The festival actually has a theater this year to showcase the hundreds of local, national and international shorts. Rather than walking past the Boulder Theatre to the makeshift theater inside the American Legion Hall (as filmgoers have done in the past), guests can plop themselves into cozy chairs in the 400-seat movie theater. No more converted American Legion.

The festival begins at noon Thursday and continues through Sunday.

The Eames showcase:

• “Lounge Chair” (1956) — fun promotional assembling of an Eames lounge chair

• “Design Q & A” (1972) — Charles Eames discusses design

• “Tops” (1969) — spinning tops set to a jazz score

• “Powers of Ten” (1977) — a moving snapshot of the universe using “infinite zoom”

• “House: After Five Years of Living” (1955) — the Eames house, designed and built by the couple in 1949

• “Exponents: A Study in Generalization” (1973) — a colorful mathematical romp

• “Blacktop” (1952) — abstract water and soap set to a score by Elmer Bernstein

• “Goods” (1981) — an excerpt from Norton Lectures in Poetry

• “Toccata for Toy Trains” (1957) — the magical world of toy trains.