Looking back today at the legacy of Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) as a pioneer of American independent filmmaking, we like to think that he paved the way for us to enjoy our current freedom as spectators. When he was arrested for screening Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures” in New York City in March 1964, along with Ken Jacobs and Florence Karpf, we tend to suppose that this was eventually to ensure that we wouldn’t be penalized for watching the film today.
But maybe we haven’t advanced quite as far in our freedom and sophistication as we like to suppose. Such, at any rate, was my thought when I found myself censored on Facebook last week and banned from posting anything there for 24 hours when I tried to post the following two images:
I assume it was the second image rather than the first that led to the censorship, but given...
But maybe we haven’t advanced quite as far in our freedom and sophistication as we like to suppose. Such, at any rate, was my thought when I found myself censored on Facebook last week and banned from posting anything there for 24 hours when I tried to post the following two images:
I assume it was the second image rather than the first that led to the censorship, but given...
- 2/7/2019
- by Jonathan Rosenbaum
- Indiewire
Chis Marker's Chat écoutant la musiqueThere are dog people and there are cat people, this we know, and there are even people who claim to be of both—though latent sympathies remain unspoken, like with a parent and which child is their favorite. With the Vienna Film Festival welcoming me with a tumbling collection of dog and cat short films spanning cinema's history—the Austrian Film Museum, an essential destination each year collaborating with the Viennale, is hosting a “a brief zoology of cinema” throughout the festivities—it is clear that filmmakers, too, have their preference. Silent cinema decidedly prefers the more easily trained and exhibited canine, with 1907’s surreal favorite Les chiens savants as a certain kind of cruel pinnacle. For the cats, Chris Marker, already the presiding figure over so much in 20th century art, I think we can easily claim is the cine-laureate. One need not know...
- 11/8/2015
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
No, your computer isn’t possessed by gremlins (but how awesome would that be?). This 1993 short film experiment, "Passage à l’acte," by Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Martin Arnold, manipulates an otherwise brief scene, relatively unimportant to the main plot, from the classic "To Kill a Mockingbird." The film, which repeats almost every second from the scene a couple hundred times before moving onto the next, is described by The Seventh as, "a stuttering nightmare vision of turmoil underlying a conventional 1950s American family." However, just like any avant-garde art, the context lies in the eye of the viewer, so have fun coming up with your own interpretation of what this all means to you. In a purely technical sense, the film is quite an achievement, as long as we keep in mind that it was made in 1993. Nowadays, a kid on iMovie could pull this off in ten minutes. But...
- 8/25/2014
- by Oktay Ege Kozak
- The Playlist
According to an Equity casting notice, the revised version of the show will include some new characters- 'AuntieLoretta' and 'SirTodd Browning.' While the latter seems to be a similar to 'The Boss,' who sang the opening song in the original production, the other is described as 'the woman who saved the twins from abandonment but began to display them as curiosities for money.' Additional new characters will include a Texas lawyer named 'Martin Arnold,' and a vaudeville performer named 'Ray.'...
- 1/9/2013
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
The historic 50th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival wrapped up on April 1 with a whole gaggle of awards going to numerous filmmakers, celebrating the best in experimental, animation, documentary, Lgbt, international, music video and more categories.
The big winner of the event was Hayoun Kwon for her animated short film Lack of Evidence (Manque de Preuves), about a Nigerian child who survives a ritualistic murder by his own father. The Seoul-born, Paris-based filmmaker took home the Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival.
On the experimental film front, Betzy Bromberg won the Stan Brakhage Film at Wit’s End award for her feature-length experimental film Voluptuous Sleep; while Sylvia Schedelbauer won the Gus Van Sant Award for Best Experimental Film for her short film Sounding Glass; and Robert Todd won the Kodak/Colorlab Award for Best Cinematography for two films, Undergrowth and Within.
Renown animator Don Hertzfeldt shared the...
The big winner of the event was Hayoun Kwon for her animated short film Lack of Evidence (Manque de Preuves), about a Nigerian child who survives a ritualistic murder by his own father. The Seoul-born, Paris-based filmmaker took home the Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival.
On the experimental film front, Betzy Bromberg won the Stan Brakhage Film at Wit’s End award for her feature-length experimental film Voluptuous Sleep; while Sylvia Schedelbauer won the Gus Van Sant Award for Best Experimental Film for her short film Sounding Glass; and Robert Todd won the Kodak/Colorlab Award for Best Cinematography for two films, Undergrowth and Within.
Renown animator Don Hertzfeldt shared the...
- 4/2/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival and they’re preparing an all-out blowout on March 27 to April 1 to celebrate! The fest is crammed to the gills with the latest and greatest in experimental and avant-garde film, in addition to a celebration of classic work from Ann Arbors past.
Filmmaker Bruce Baillie was there at the first Aaff — and numerous times since. He’s back this year with a major retrospective of his entire career that spans three separate programs. Baillie, who’ll be in attendance of course, will present a brand-new restored version of his epic pseudo-Western Quick Billy, plus screenings of his classic short movies such as Castro Street, Yellow Horse, Quixote, To Parsifal and more.
There’s also a program dedicated to the films of the late Robert Nelson, including Bleu Shut and Special Warning, as well as sprinklings of underground classics throughout...
Filmmaker Bruce Baillie was there at the first Aaff — and numerous times since. He’s back this year with a major retrospective of his entire career that spans three separate programs. Baillie, who’ll be in attendance of course, will present a brand-new restored version of his epic pseudo-Western Quick Billy, plus screenings of his classic short movies such as Castro Street, Yellow Horse, Quixote, To Parsifal and more.
There’s also a program dedicated to the films of the late Robert Nelson, including Bleu Shut and Special Warning, as well as sprinklings of underground classics throughout...
- 3/7/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
"[A]lmost as long as there's been a Hollywood in Los Angeles, there has been an off-Hollywood too, the provenance of those toiling at the edge and far outside the mainstream," writes Manohla Dargis in a historical overview for the New York Times. "It's possible to follow one thread in the off-Hollywood story, its histories, productions and personalities in Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles 1945-1980, a six-month series coordinated by Filmforum, the longest-running avant-garde film organization in Los Angeles, and one of several moving-image programs in Pacific Standard Time. (Another, La Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema, was coordinated by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, where it runs until Dec 17.) An initiative of the Getty Institute, Pacific Standard Time is a sprawling collaboration of more than 60 Southern California cultural institutions that aims, as a Getty news release puts it, 'to tell the birth of the Los Angeles art scene...
- 11/5/2011
- MUBI
Luc Moullet in Toujours moins (France), a short film suspiciously formed of footage of automated terminals (ATMs, ticket dispensers, turnstiles, etc.) over three decades (perhaps culled from the director's own work?), with customary pith and concision picks up, toys with, and, like a bon mot dismissal, finally drops the many ways human interaction has been eliminated in favor of blocky mechanical interfaces. Why use real people when an automated teller can be used to distribute unemployment payments (because it is awkward for the unemployment workers to face the unemployed), baguettes (shopgirls are more expensive than flour, don’t you know), and police the state? The self-evident quality of Moullet’s humorist-material record is absolutely in accordance with the filmmaker’s style of matter of fact direct presentation. It may all seem obvious, but what Moullet gets and what makes him radical is something so few filmmakers understand, that approaching something...
- 2/10/2011
- MUBI
The 39th annual Festival du Nouveau Cinema is set to run in Montreal on Oct 13-24. But, within the overall, massive festival is the Fnc Lab, the avant-garde and experimental section that will be having screenings and live film performances every night on Oct. 14-22.
This year, the Fnc Lab is showcasing two retrospectives; plus, a short film program of strictly 16mm films, films from the Korean Jeonju Digital Project, four feature-length projects and several special one-of-a-kind performances.
The retrospectives are of two key American women experimental filmmakers. First, in conjunction with the Double Negative Collective, the fest presents a career overview of Chick Strand, the eminent ethnographic filmmaker who sadly passed away last year at the age of 77.
Then, there’s also a retrospective of playful avant-garde filmmaker Marie Losier, who is well known for her collaborations with and film portraits of key underground figures like George Kuchar, Tony Conrad and Genesis P-Orridge.
This year, the Fnc Lab is showcasing two retrospectives; plus, a short film program of strictly 16mm films, films from the Korean Jeonju Digital Project, four feature-length projects and several special one-of-a-kind performances.
The retrospectives are of two key American women experimental filmmakers. First, in conjunction with the Double Negative Collective, the fest presents a career overview of Chick Strand, the eminent ethnographic filmmaker who sadly passed away last year at the age of 77.
Then, there’s also a retrospective of playful avant-garde filmmaker Marie Losier, who is well known for her collaborations with and film portraits of key underground figures like George Kuchar, Tony Conrad and Genesis P-Orridge.
- 10/6/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
All (covert, low quality) photos below from the Tiff Bell Lightbox exhibit Essential Cinema.
Below: Annotated script of F.W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927). In the second photo you can see the cast's names (George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor) written next to the German text.
Below: a sketch diagram of a man falling from a height for Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). Caught in the reflection, Martin Arnold's Jeanne (2002), which uses footage from Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).
Below: in the lobby of the Lightbox is one of those "hip," newfangled "interactive" "new media" kinds of things, where you text a code picking one of the essential 100 films ever made, and add any comment you'd like. A random, flittering few seconds of a clip of that film are then nearly instantly played on a giant wall in the lobby, displaying the title and the comment. Below an intrepid attendee interacts with the exhibit...
Below: Annotated script of F.W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927). In the second photo you can see the cast's names (George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor) written next to the German text.
Below: a sketch diagram of a man falling from a height for Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). Caught in the reflection, Martin Arnold's Jeanne (2002), which uses footage from Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).
Below: in the lobby of the Lightbox is one of those "hip," newfangled "interactive" "new media" kinds of things, where you text a code picking one of the essential 100 films ever made, and add any comment you'd like. A random, flittering few seconds of a clip of that film are then nearly instantly played on a giant wall in the lobby, displaying the title and the comment. Below an intrepid attendee interacts with the exhibit...
- 9/20/2010
- MUBI
The full line up for the 54th BFI London Film Festival was announced in the Odeon, Leicester Square this morning, with a number of highly anticipated films set to light up the capital this October.
The festival runs from the 13th to the 28th of October and will begin with Mark Romanek’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s haunting masterpiece Never Let Me Go, and will close with Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours which stars James Franco.
Announcing the roster were Artistic Director Sandra Hebron and the Director of the British Film Institute, Amanda Nevill.
HeyUGuys will be all over the festival this year, it looks like it will be one to remember.
Click here to view the full calendar
The 54Th BFI London Film Festival Programme Launch
London, Wednesday 8 September: The programme for the 54th BFI London Film Festival, launched today by Artistic Director Sandra Hebron, showcases an array of...
The festival runs from the 13th to the 28th of October and will begin with Mark Romanek’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s haunting masterpiece Never Let Me Go, and will close with Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours which stars James Franco.
Announcing the roster were Artistic Director Sandra Hebron and the Director of the British Film Institute, Amanda Nevill.
HeyUGuys will be all over the festival this year, it looks like it will be one to remember.
Click here to view the full calendar
The 54Th BFI London Film Festival Programme Launch
London, Wednesday 8 September: The programme for the 54th BFI London Film Festival, launched today by Artistic Director Sandra Hebron, showcases an array of...
- 9/8/2010
- by Jon Lyus
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
I'm adding the make-up of the Venice Film Festival Horizons sidebar selections a little late to the site, I'm mostly curious to see the low ratio of films that'll be picked up from this section for the upcoming Tiff announcements. Deemed as re-branding of the section, a more eclectic melange of titles mixing short, medium length pics, documentaries film and feature length items, of the items that will generate the most interest are the opening and closing titles which were revealed the week before, but we should see media coverage mentions on Paul Morrissey's News From Nowhere, Jose Luis Guerin's docu Guest (I've yet to see 2007/2008's In the City of Sylvia) and Sion Sono's Cold Fish and short film offerings from Guillermo Arriaga, Isaac Julien and Clara Law. Horizons: Feature-length Works "Sleeping Beauty," Catherine Breillat (France, opener) "Oki's Movie," Hong Sang-soo (South Korea, closer) "The Nine Muses,...
- 8/2/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
I've seen a lot of Diy recuts in my time - the various versions of Star Wars: Episode 1 the populated the internet claiming to remove anything offensive to hardcore fans of the series, the Martin Arnold experimental films that make music out of a handful of frames of To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. - but nothing really comes close to the sheer impact of watching Nicholas Chatfield-Taylor's "Die Hardererer."
Composed of every frame that contains an image of fire throughout the entire tetralogy of Die Hard films, Chatfield-Taylor's 17-minute experimental film, which played at The Choice Film Showcase in Brooklyn on Monday night, is a gallery piece for a new generation. Despite the simple and hilarious concept, the film uses a purely visceral interaction with the audience to engage in a dialog about the structure and tone of these action films, cutting them down to the essence, as if written...
Composed of every frame that contains an image of fire throughout the entire tetralogy of Die Hard films, Chatfield-Taylor's 17-minute experimental film, which played at The Choice Film Showcase in Brooklyn on Monday night, is a gallery piece for a new generation. Despite the simple and hilarious concept, the film uses a purely visceral interaction with the audience to engage in a dialog about the structure and tone of these action films, cutting them down to the essence, as if written...
- 3/11/2009
- by Michael Lerman
- Cinematical
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