Notícias

When "Star Trek" debuted in 1966, no one could possibly know the impact that it would have on not only the world of television, but on pop culture as a whole. Since that time, the series has spawned numerous spin-offs, more than a dozen feature films, and more fanfiction than any one human could ever read. Captain James Tiberius Kirk (William Shatner) and the rest of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise are recognizable to just about everyone, even if they've never seen the series. The show's impact is immense, and in 1985, series creator Gene Roddenberry earned a very special honor for his part in it all. 

Plenty of movie stars and directors have been immortalized on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, with their names on plaques inside of giant stars on the sidewalk, but Roddenberry was the first television writer and/or producer to given a spot. Let's take a look at Roddenberry's legacy,...

Apple TV+ released a new trailer for its drama “Fancy Dance” starring Lily Gladstone and Isabel Deroy-Olson.

The film follows Jax (Gladstone), who has cared for her niece Rokie (Deroy-Olson) since her sister’s disappearance by scraping by on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma. Every spare minute goes into finding her missing sister while also helping Roki prepare for an upcoming powwow. When she risks losing custody of Roki, the two hit the road and scour backcountry to track down Roki’s mother in time for the powwow.

“Fancy Dance,” a Confluential Films and Significant Productions/Aum Group production, is produced by Deidre Backs, Erica Tremblay, Heather Rae, Nina Yang Bongiovi and Tommy Oliver. Bird Runningwater, Lily Gladstone, Forest Whitaker and Charlotte Koh serve as executive producers.

Watch the trailer below.

DeNiro Con Unveils Lineup for Event During Tribeca Festival

DeNiro Con, celebrating 80 years of the actor who co-founded the Tribeca festival,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSAn Inconvenient Truth.Participant, the socially conscious production company, has closed, which filmmaker Julie Cohen called “devastating news to anyone who cares about documentaries.” Their twenty-year track record includes many nonfiction films, such as An Inconvenient Truth (2006), but also narrative features like Spotlight (2015) and Roma (2018).New data suggests that Hollywood production has gradually rebounded after last year’s WGA and SAG strikes, though not to the levels of the “peak TV” streaming bubble.The Archival Producers Alliance has drafted best practices for the use of generative AI in documentary, cautioning against the “danger of forever muddying the historical record.”In PRODUCTIONMartin Scorsese is reportedly developing a Frank Sinatra biopic, to star Leonardo DiCaprio as the crooner and Jennifer Lawrence as Ava Gardner.

While Christopher Nolan recently directly explored the creation of the atomic bomb, a long-lost 1961 film explores the landscape directly after the dropping of the bomb in uniquely expressionistic fashion, set against the racial politics of the decade. Helmed by theater director Peter Kass and shot by radical visualist Ed Emshwiller, it’s now been restored in 4K by UCLA Film & Television Archive and Lightbox Film Center, University of the Arts at Illuminate Hollywood laboratory, in collaboration with Corpus Fluxus and Audio Mechanics from the 35mm picture, the soundtrack negative and the original 1⁄4” stereo master recording of Lejaren Hiller’s score. Ahead of a May 10 release at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center and May 12 at LA’s American Cinematheque from Arbelos, the new trailer has now arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “Emerging from the void, mysterious drifter Gaunt (The Sting’s John Heffernan) wanders the upstate countryside in a...

It really needn’t be said how much Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture winner “Oppenheimer” has brought the aftershock of the atomic bomb ripping through the public consciousness again.

So the current zeitgeist is as good as any for boutique distributor and arthouse restoration outfit Arbelos to uncover a lost 1961 gem: Peter Kass’ 1961 “Time of the Heathen.” Set in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bomb, the avant-garde drama was shot by American science-fiction artist Ed Emshwiller as cinematographer. The film’s bold visuals are on full display in the exclusive trailer, hosted by IndieWire, below for the re-release of “Time of the Heathen.” Arbelos will open the film at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center on May 10 and at LA’s American Cinematheque on May 12.

Kass, who died in 2008, was best known for his work as a theater instructor in New York, collaborating with the likes of Faye Dunaway,...

Relativity (1966)My long-awaited first visit to the International Film Festival Oberhausen was canceled last year, due to the pandemic, so I was thrilled to finally experience the festival this year, albeit via streaming. The 67th edition took place in a dual format, online and with somewhat expanded in-person screenings in Oberhausen (though the online offerings themselves were ample). Founded in 1954, Oberhausen played a decisive role in fostering avant-garde and experimental filmmaking during the Cold War, when much of Eastern Europe suffered the brunt of censorship. It wasn’t uncommon for films that remained unscreened or were banned in their native countries to premiere and win prizes at Oberhausen, and so be saved from critical and public oblivion. Given its longstanding legacy, it was invigorating to see Oberhausen bring a wide-ranging historical perspective to its online platform. Such emphasis helped avoid a common pitfall at other, more industry-driven festivals, whose online...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Museum of Modern Art

“It’s All in Me” surveys black heroines onscreen.

Films by Fassbinder, Mike Leigh, and more play in a series on television films.

Metrograph

The earth is ending and there’s nothing we can do, but “Climate Crisis Parables” will send you out with some great movies.

“To Hong Kong with...

Adolfas Mekas made his mark in American independent filmmaking with this avant-garde comedy that shook up film festivals circa 1963. Although it is said to have inspired Andy Warhol, it’s its own animal entirely, eighty minutes of cinematic frivolity that’s too sincere to be a parody of the filmic conventions it so happily celebrates.

Hallelujah the Hills

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1963 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 82 min. / Street Date October 30, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Peter Beard, Sheila Finn, Martin Greenbaum, Peggy Steffans, Jerome Raphael, Blanche Dee, Jerome Hill, Taylor Mead, Ed Emshwiller.

Cinematography: Ed Emshwiller

Film Editor: Louis Brigante, Adolfas Mekas

Costumes: Bathsheba

Original Music: Meyer Kupferman

Produced by David C. Stone

Written and Directed by Adolfas Mekas

Trying to describe Adolfas Mekas’ Hallelujah the Hills is a real chore. It is avant-garde in a way that no longer seems all that ‘avant,’ yet its impact in 1963 was very strongly felt in independent filmmaking everywhere.

This is Part Two in a series about Chicago’s Experimental Film Coalition; and covers their screening series. You can read Part One here.

Formed in 1983, the Experimental Film Coalition started holding regular monthly screenings starting in 1984. The screenings brought to Chicago the work of independent, experimental filmmakers across the country, as well as screening local work.

Screenings were held at the Randolph Street Gallery, an alternative performance and exhibition space located at 756 N. Milwaukee Ave. The Gallery eventually closed down in 1998 and donated their archives to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; which exhibits some of the Coalition’s flyers on their website.

Below is a sample of screening information culled from those archives, listed in chronological order:

1984

March 23

2 Razor Blades, dir. Paul Sharits

Make Me Psychic, dir. Sally Cruikshank

Unsere Afrikareise, dir. Peter Kubelka

Roslyn Romance, dir. Bruce Baillie

Musical Poster #1, dir. Len Lye

April 27

Rainbow Dance,...

1963 was a pivotal year in the history of avant-garde film in the United States. In Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney calls it “the high point of the mythopoeic development within the American avant-garde.” He explains:

[Stan] Brakhage had finished and was exhibiting the first two sections of Dog Star Man by then; Jack Smith was still exhibiting the year-old Flaming Creatures; [Kenneth Anger‘s] Scorpio Rising appeared almost simultaneously with [Gregory Markopoulos‘s] Twice a Man. The shift from an interest in dreams and the erotic quest for the self to mythopoeia, and a wider interest in the collective unconscious occurred in the films of a number of major and independent artists.

(An inclusive list of American avant-garde films made/released in 1963 can be found here.)

On Christmas Day of 1963 began the weeklong third edition of Exprmntl, a competition of worldwide avant-garde films held in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium. The two previous Exprmntl competitions took place in 1949 and 1958. Exprmntl...

In 1966, as the underground film wave was sweeping the country, a Boston off-shoot of New York City’s Film-Makers’ Cinematheque opened at a performance space at 53 Berkeley Street. Underground films were shown on weeknights, while on the weekends the space transformed into a music venue called The Boston Tea Party.

The Cinematheque and the Tea Party were founded and run by a controversial figure named Mel Lyman, a harmonica player and the leader of a hippie commune in Boston’s Fort Hill neighborhood. Lyman has also been considered a cult leader on par with Charles Manson, except Lyman’s followers never actually murdered anyone. According to the book Apocalypse Culture, Lyman claimed to be an extraterrestrial and was seemingly obsessed with “ruling” the country’s underground culture.

Whatever Lyman’s background, the Cinematheque showed some cool films, according to the actual flyers from that time period below. Click each poster...

Thanatopsis by Ed Emshwiller. Made 1960-62, according to Sheldon Renan’s An Introduction to the American Underground Film.

The film’s opening title card is followed by a text card that reads: “Becky Arnold & Mac Emshwiller in a film by Ed Emshwiller”.

The original source of this bootleg is unknown, but there are several uploads to be found online that appear to be from the same source.

(Click image to read article as originally printed.)

From the Arizona Republic, March 16, 1964:

Twelve American filmmakers will receive a total of $118,500 from the Ford Foundation in its first move to aid creative artists in motion pictures. The grants range up to $10,000 for a one-year period. They will be used by the recipients either to produce short films or for travel and study.

The awards are part of a long-range plan of the foundation to include motion pictures in its program.

The undertaking was described as a “pilot project” by W. McNeil Lowry, director of the foundation’s program in humanities and the arts, when it was established last June.

The moviemakers chosen are professionals but their works are generally unknown to viewers of popular film fare.

The 12 winners were selected from 177 nominees considered by a panel of judges. More than 400 letters had been sent to producers, directors, writers, critics...

Above: Italian 2-foglio for Loves of a Blonde (Miloš Forman, Czechoslovakia, 1965).As the 54th New York Film Festival winds to a close this weekend I thought it would be instructive to look back at its counterpart of 50 years ago. Sadly, for the sake of symmetry, there are no filmmakers straddling both the 1966 and the 2016 editions, though Agnès Varda (88 years old), Jean-Luc Godard (85), Carlos Saura (84) and Jirí Menzel (78)—all of whom had films in the 1966 Nyff—are all still making films, and Milos Forman (84), Ivan Passer (83) and Peter Watkins (80) are all still with us. There are only two filmmakers in the current Nyff who could potentially have been in the 1966 edition and they are Ken Loach (80) and Paul Verhoeven (78). The current Nyff is remarkably youthful—half the filmmakers weren’t even born in 1966 and, with the exception of Loach and Verhoeven, the old guard is now represented by Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodóvar,...

D.A. Pennebaker puts cinema verité on the map with his terrific up-close docu portrait of Bob Dylan as he runs from concert appearances to hotels, cutting up with his friends, practicing with Joan Baez and giving reporters grief. Criterion's extras give us the best look yet at Pennebaker's innovative approach: don't direct, observe. Dont Look Back Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 786 1967 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 96 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 24, 2015 / 39.95 Starring Bob Dylan, Donovan, Joan Baez, Alan Price, Albert Grossman Cinematography Howard Alk, Jones Alk, D.A. Pennebaker Production Designer James D. Bissell Music performed by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Donovan, Alan Price Produced by John Court and Albert Grossman Written, Edited and Directed by D.A. Pennebaker    

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

"I am not a folk singer. Do not call me a folk singer." The man who turned pop music on to socially conscious poetry is...

Thom Andersen and Pedro Costa on stage at the Courtisane Festival. Photo by Michiel Devijver.This year’s Courtisane Festival paired Pedro Costa and Thom Andersen as their artists in focus. Both filmmakers hung out with each other and the public for the full five days of this under-recognized gem of a festival in Ghent. What at first might seem very different directors with distinct backgrounds actually proved to be kindred spirits. In the end credits of his new cine-history, The Thoughts That Once We Had, Andersen thanks Costa, because “without [him] this motion picture would have been poorer.” Andersen has admired Costa’s work ever since he discovered In Vanda’s Room (2000) at the Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in 2001. He wrote about this experience and about Colossal Youth (2006) in Film Comment in 2007. Andersen has invited Costa to CalArts, where he teaches, more than once, and Cinema Scope published a...

The Ann Arbor Film Festival celebrates its epic 53rd annual edition on March 24-29 with a colossal selection of experimental short films and features.

Feature film highlights include the documentary Speculation Nation by regular collaborators Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat, which examines the recent Spanish housing crisis; a new ethnographic doc by Ben Russell, Greetings to the Ancestors, which plunges deep into the culture of South Africa; and Jenni Olson’s grand California study The Royal Road.

Short film highlights include the much anticipated new film by Jennifer Reeder, Blood Below the Skin, a narrative following a week in the dramatic and romantic lives of three teenage girls; a new music video by Mike Olenick called Beautiful Things with music by The Wet Things; new animations by Don Hertzfeldt, World of Tomorrow, and Lewis Klahr, Mars Garden; plus new experimental work by Vanessa Renwick, Peggy Ahwesh and Zachary Epcar.

Special...

From The Pocono Record, The Stroudsburgs, Pa. – Sat., Feb. 5, 1966. Article Excerpt:

Film Can Borrow From All Arts

By Charlotte Roberts

Pocono Record Reporter

Stroudsburg – As an art form, film is unique in its capacity for incorporating elements from other art forms.

To projected photography have been added the dimensions of motion, sound, graphic art, drama, and frequently music and dance.

“Underground” film makers have begun to realize further dimensions which can be projected on film. Some film artists paint and scratch designs directly on film to evolve a new kind of moving art.

One journalist has noted three directions in the experiments of contemporary film makers. He writes that they are all forms of departure from the narrative or dramatic form “which has dominated the major body of cinema since the early 1900s:

“That of the realists who pursue an unvarnished view of life; and in contrast the work of...

Merry Christmas from the Bad Lit crew! Ok, that’s just me, but I wish everybody who is taking time out of their special day today a wonderful holiday and may all your dreams and ambitions come true.

So, since the birth of Jesus falls on a Sunday this year, here is an abbreviated list of links for you to enjoy. Give ‘em a graze then go back and spend the rest of your time with your loved ones.

First up, Ed Emshwiller was a ’60s underground filmmaker who doesn’t get a lot of press. He was also an accomplished illustrator whose works landed on the covers of many, many sci-fi magazines. Courtesy of Golden Age Comic Book Stories, here is a collection of alien-themed Santa Claus covers Emsh — as he was called — from Galaxy magazine in the 1950s.Here’s a touching story from Cineflyer about exiled Zimbabwe...

HollywoodNews.com: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that they will explore the physical realities of science fiction movies in the three-evening series “Out of This World: The Science of Space Movies” beginning on Thursday, August 5. “Out of This World” will continue on Friday, August 6, with a presentation of Fritz Lang’s 1929 silent classic “Woman in the Moon” and conclude on Saturday, August 7, with screenings of “Project Apollo” (1968) and “For All Mankind” (1989), documentaries that focus on Nasa’s Apollo program.

All three evenings are being presented by the Academy’s Science and Technology Council. The following is information for each night:

“Out of This World: The Science of Space Movies”

Thursday, August 5, 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, Beverly Hills

Hosted by Adam Weiner, the program will examine the physics principles behind many science fiction movies and explore how the fictional world...

So, I’m currently working on a big research project, the results of which won’t be seen unless you happen to be poring through Bad Lit’s sister site the Underground Film Guide — and the way that site is woefully under-updated, why would you?

The Ufg, as I like to call it, is a database project of underground filmmakers and films. Recently I decided to halt adding new entries and to make the old filmmaker entries I previously uploaded more comprehensive. One way I’m doing that is going through books on underground film and, if a filmmaker is written up in each book, I’ll add that book’s info to the filmmaker’s profile. If you’re interested and want an idea of what I’m talking about, go look at John Waters’ entry and scroll down to the book section.

One book that is a tremendous...

Embedded above is a six-minute excerpt from the classic 1963 underground film Hallelujah the Hills, written and directed by Adolfas Mekas. (I’m assuming it’s the opening based on the title credits, but one never knows.) The film is a screwball comedy about two men trying to get over the heartbreak of losing the same woman. After a madcap dash through the woods in a jeep, the pair of losers get the bad news that the love of their lives has married someone else. It’s a funny opening.

The excerpt was uploaded by the French artist video distribution company re:voir that also sells a full copy of the film. I’m not sure if their DVDs will play in the U.S., but if you’re interested you can always ask, I suppose.

Adolfas Mekas is, of course, the brother of Jonas Mekas and who has directed several films himself.

I just found out the other day that the American Film Institute (AFI) used to give out an annual Maya Deren Independent Film and Video Artists Award to celebrate achievements in underground and non-commercial independent filmmaking.

Information about this award is difficult to come by, so I thought I’d post up all of the recipients in one easy to browse list on Bad Lit. While I’m sure AFI has kept records of the award — and hopefully have video somewhere of the recipients accepting it, if there were indeed award ceremonies — none of that is currently live on their website.

I compiled the list of winners, which is posted below, from records on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). I’m just going under the assumption that the IMDb info is indeed correct. However, I believe it is as I did happen to find some corroboration on some of the...

Movieheads who like to consider themselves as alternative still often shrink from the demands and new thinking required of even the oldest and most conventional "avant-garde" film, a situation that the ubiquity of the DVD format hasn't done very much to mitigate. So be it: the hardy envelope-pushers in the crowd have enjoyed unforeseen access to the quasi-genre's history by now (the DVD menu format is a peerless mode of presentation for motley underground shorts, to be surpassed only, I suppose, once quality streaming-tube clips can be curated and thrown onto our mega TVs instead of our laptops). If you count Image's "Unseen Cinema" mega omnibus and Facets' "The Lawrence Jordan Album" among your prized media possessions as I do, then the good work of the National Film Preservation Foundation will already be on your radar: their robust, elaborately documented orphan-film collections (newsreels, shorts, home movies, etc.) have often featured avant-gardisms,...