“Celestial Navigations: The Short Films of Al Jarnow,” the first film compilation by Numero Group, will make its Chicago debut this Friday and Saturday night at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

For producer Michael Slaboch, seeing this labor of love come to fruition has been a long time coming and so far has garnered two sold out screenings at the 92Y Tribeca in Manhattan.

“The project took four years from first thought to the screening in New York City last weekend,” said Slaboch.  “The first two and a half years it sat on the dry erase board.”

Al Jarnow made short animated, time-lapse and stop motion films from 1969 through the mid 1990’s for “Sesame Street” and “3-2-1 Contact” but also created a substantial body of avant-garde experimental films that are also included on the DVD.

Slaboch reviewing one of Jarnows film strip at the Numero Group office.

“About a year and a half ago we met with Al for the first time and once he was on board, then we started to aggressively contact Sesame Workshop to get someone in their legal department to let us license the twenty-plus films from them.”

After finally getting someone there to get on board with their concept for the DVD compilation the rights were secured and production began.

“We headed out to Al’s house where we watched around a hundred 16mm reels to find the best prints of his independent work and some Sesame Street material, and we ended up putting 45 films on the DVD.”

In the spring of 2009, Slaboch and a four person film production crew spent three days in Northport, Long Island interviewing Jarnow the for a documentary that is included on the DVD and will be shown along with 15 of Jarnow’s films at the Gene Siskel Film Center this weekend.

Transcribing interview with Jarnow for documentary.

“We made a 30-minute documentary that deconstructs his creative process and also gleaned loads of ephemera for the 60 page book included with the DVD that has essays on Al and the 1970s New York City avant-garde film scene.”

Since 2003, the independent record label Numero Group has been turning out albums full of rare and forgotten music compiled from sources from across the world.

With offices located in the lower level of a house in the Little Village neighborhood, the four person operation comprised of founders Ken Shipley, Tom Lunt, along with Rob Sevier and Slaboch epitomizes a do-it-yourself model.
The space is cramped, doubling as a stockroom with the walls lined with shelves stacked with albums that will be handled by the guys to fill orders around the globe.

“UPS knows this address very well,” Slaboch said while preparing a package for delivery to one of several Chicago record stores that carry the label’s releases.

Numero Group painstakingly researches, re-masters and repackages music that has been lost, forgotten or never heard.  They go to great lengths to do more than a simple reissue by including background essays, detailed liner notes, scores of images and any other relics available to create a complete story.

“The process of putting this DVD together has been very similar to making one of our records, in the sense that the memorable films speak for themselves but that’s not enough to warrant reissuing them for us,” said Slaboch. “There always has to be a story with one of our mainline releases, and luckily Al has a tremendous tale with great cultural importance.”

Examining Jarnow animation cels

In five years they have produced 34 CD’s, 21 vinyl LPs, 16 45s, eight 12 inches, and two sets of baseball-style trading cards of Numero Group artists, and promoted sold-out concerts featuring Numero Group performers and house band JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound at the Park West and Lincoln Hall.

“We’re thinking about creative ways to share music, films, photographs, and stories with people through a physical form that they want to own and hold and experience and not just have it be a bunch of zeros and ones that they download.”

But the group’s ideas and aspirations are still expanding.

Numero Group branched out by creating the label’s first full size book of photography by Michael L. Abramson titled, “Light: On The Southside” that depicts nightlife on the South Side of Chicago from 1975 to 1977.

Looking at a test page for "Light: On the Southside"

Released last fall, the 132 page hard back book showcasing more than 100 photos from the city’s nightclubs also included a two LP set of 17 songs by Chicago blues and soul legends making it one of the most expansive releases for the label to date.

So does producing a DVD and a 132 page photography book signal a shift toward visual media for the label?

“Not necessarily.”  Slaboch said. “We just want to share and preserve things that we think are historically important and inspiring. Whether that’s photographs of South Side blues clubs, short films that tens of millions of people have seen but have no idea who made them, or compiling the entire output of Syl Johnson’s career up to 1972, it’s all the same to us.”

While their releases may not be soaring to the top of Billboard charts, the label is thriving and a variety of releases are planned for the coming year including the complete recordings of Syl Johnson from 1959-1972, a three CD set from the Boddie Recording Company out of Cleveland, and another installment in their Local Customs series this time focusing on the Beaumont, Texas Lowlands Studio.

But for Slaboch it’s about more than simply digging up old relics, for him the drive comes from, “Meeting the artists and learning more about their lives and what drove and inspired them to make their music and films or run regional record labels. Many of the people we deal with are significantly older than us, by 30 or 40 years and there’s a lot to learn from their lives and experiences.”

“Celestial Navigations: The Short Films of Al Jarnow” trailer:

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“Celestial Navigations: The Short Films of Al Jarnow” screens at 8 p.m. Friday Feb. 19 and Saturday Feb. 20 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, $10 tickets can be purchased via TicketMaster or at the theater box office (no service fees).

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