News

We celebrate the experimental cinema legend for her centennial.

This Saturday is the 100th anniversary of Maya Deren’s birth, making it a time to honor the filmmaker, her work, and her significance and legacy within not just the arena of experimental cinema but film history in general. Regardless of the surreal, poetic content of her films, which include Meshes of the Afternoon (with husband Alexander Hammid) and At Land, she’s important as a pioneer and theorist of independent film. It’s mostly through the latter that we can find her filmmaking advice and lessons, all of them more than 50 years old but still relevant to aspiring cinema artists today. Here are six of the tips, collected from her writings, lectures, and interviews:

1. Amateur Filmmaking is for Lovers

If you’re looking for advice on breaking into Hollywood, Deren’s tips are not for you. She was a big proponent of “amateur” filmmaking, which...

“As many viewers of Maya Deren‘s Meshes of the Afternoon and David Lynch‘s Mulholland Drive have recognized, there are many similarities between these two filmmakers,” writes Joel Bocko over at Fandor Keyframe. “An ordinary key is charged with dangerous supernatural power; characters multiply, bending space and time; an Angeleno atmosphere in which daydream becomes nightmare — these are just a few of Meshes‘ and Lynch’s common touchstones.” This video finds the visual connections between Lynch’s work from Twin Peaks onwards and Deren’s best-known short.

Since Mary Pickford began United Artists in 1919 with her then-husband Douglas Fairbanks and their friends Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, the idea of women in film has propelled not just from starring in or writing films, but producing, directing, and creating a cinematic universe of their own. The topic rings perhaps even more relevant today, as the issue of equal pay and proper roles for women in the industry remains unsolved and in need of a drastic, timely change. Read More: Jennifer Lawrence Talks Gender Pay Inequality In a new video essay by Fandor, other directors were asked to pick their favorite films directed by women and be ranked from 20-to-1. The list spans decades, going as far back as 1943 to Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon,” a circular, surrealist masterpiece, and as recent as the brilliant Kelly Reichardt’s 2011 western drama “Meek’s Cutoff.” The ever-inspirational and paramount...

In the new issue of The Cine-Files, professors candidly discuss teaching single films. You'll find pieces on Hollywood classics (Casablanca, Pillow Talk), experimental landmarks (Meshes of the Afternoon), even television (The Wire). Also in today's roundup: Nathan Silver's Stinking Heaven, Simon Callow's Orson Welles biography, a new book on Harry Lange's designs for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, lists of best TV shows (Slant goes for Hannibal and Hitfix for The Leftovers), Karina Longworth on Gloria Grahame, news of forthcoming films from George Clooney and Anton Corbijn's next project, and the first trailer for Steven Spielberg's The Bfg. » - David Hudson...

In the new issue of The Cine-Files, professors candidly discuss teaching single films. You'll find pieces on Hollywood classics (Casablanca, Pillow Talk), experimental landmarks (Meshes of the Afternoon), even television (The Wire). Also in today's roundup: Nathan Silver's Stinking Heaven, Simon Callow's Orson Welles biography, a new book on Harry Lange's designs for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, lists of best TV shows (Slant goes for Hannibal and Hitfix for The Leftovers), Karina Longworth on Gloria Grahame, news of forthcoming films from George Clooney and Anton Corbijn's next project, and the first trailer for Steven Spielberg's The Bfg. » - David Hudson...

“Criminally unfair. Those are the two words that spring to mind when I consider the fate of female directors throughout the short history of the cinematic medium. Not enough opportunity. Appalling sexism. Terrible chance and circumstances, coupled with biases, slander and mistrust,” our friend Scout Tafoya stated when asking a group of critics for their favorite films directed by female filmmakers. He added, “When I began asking for these lists from all the critics below many replied reluctantly. Their reasoning that so many of their films would be modern, that so many of the classics would be homogenous, is not without justification. But it’s no one’s fault that we all fall back on the same seven classics.”

He continues, “It’s a worldwide shortage of support and funding for female artists. It’s a lack of distribution of more esoteric work by women. It’s many major film...

Read More: Remembering Chantal Akerman: 8 Films Now Streaming Online Maya DerenIt's nearly impossible to begin a discussion on experimental film without including Maya Deren, whose foremost 1943 film "Meshes of the Afternoon" has become one of the most influential and important works in the early experimental movement. Shot on 16mm with a windfall she received after her father's tragic death, the film was one of the first to employ narrative structure in an experimental framework, helping to change the cinematic landscape of avant-garde film and cementing Deren as an indispensable participant in the practice of experimental media. A vocal supporter of independent film, famously stating, "I make my films for what Hollywood spends on lipstick," Deren was a pioneer of the Diy film movement and is, for many, the definitive mother of experimental and avant-garde film. Barbara HammerBarbara Hammer’s introduction to the world of cinema was a bit...

Get your beret and warm up the espresso! Some of the most famous deep-dish art film is here -- in HD -- starting with attempts to translate various art 'isms' to the screen, to graphics-oriented abstractions, to 'city symphonies' to the dream visions of Maya Deren and beyond. The careful remasters reproduce proper projection speeds and original music.   Masterworks of American Avant-Garde Experimental Film 1920-1970 Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley 1920-1970 / B&W and Color / 1:33 full frame / 418 min. / Street Date October 6, 2015 / 59.95 With films by James Agee, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Rudolph Burckhardt, Mary Ellen Bute, Joseph Cornell, Jim Davis, Maya Deren, Marcel Duchamp, Emien Etting, Oksar Fischinger, Robert Florey, Amy Greenfield, A. Hackenschmied, Alexander Hammid, Hillary Harris, Hy Hirsh, Ian Hugo, Lawrence Janiac, Lawrence Jordan, Owen Land, Francis Lee, Fernand Léger, Helen Levitt, Jan Leyda, Janice Loeb, Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Dudley Murphy, Ted Nemeth, Bernard O'Brien,...

First off, let's make one thing clear. We're not scratching our heads at Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" making the BBC's 100 greatest American films. That movie, of which an image accompanies this post, not only made the list, but ranked appropriately at no. 25. It's the rest of the selections that have us scratching and, yes, shaking our heads in disbelief. A wonderful page view driver, these sorts of lists make great fodder for passionate movie fans no matter what their age or part of the world they hail from. There is nothing more entertaining than watching two critics from opposite ends of the globe try to debate whether "The Dark Knight" should have been nominated for best picture or make a list like this. Even in this age of short form content where Vines, Shapchats and Instagram videos have captured viewers attention, movies will continue to inspire because...

Leave it to the Brits to compile a list of the best American films of all-time. BBC Culture has published a list of what it calls "The 100 Greatest American Films", as selected by 62 international film critics in order to "get a global perspective on American film." As BBC Culture notes, the critics polled represent a combination of broadcasters, book authors and reviewers at various newspapers and magazines across the world. As for what makes an American filmc "Any movie that received funding from a U.S. source," BBC Culture's publication states, which is to say the terminology was quite loose, but the list contains a majority of the staples you'd expect to see. Citizen Kane -- what elsec -- comes in at #1, and in typical fashion The Godfather follows at #2. Vertigo, which in 2012 topped Sight & Sound's list of the greatest films of all-time, comes in at #3 on BBC Culture's list.

Every now and then a major publication or news organisation comes up with a top fifty or one hundred films of all time list - a list which always stirs up debate, discussion and often interesting arguments about the justifications of the list's inclusions, ordering and notable exclusions.

Today it's the turn of BBC Culture who consulted sixty-two international film critics including print reviews, bloggers, broadcasters and film academics to come up with what they consider the one-hundred greatest American films of all time. To qualify, the film had to be made by a U.S. studio or mostly funded by American money.

Usually when a list of this type is done it is by institutes or publications within the United States asking American critics their favourites. This time it's non-American critics born outside the culture what they think are the best representations of that culture. Specifically they were asked...

From The Berkshire Evening Eagle, August 1, 1947:

Photo caption: Maya Deren: Looking for a flying saucer?

The samples of modern “art” which demand (and are given) a thousand lines of carefully written prose to explain the artist’s meaning have nothing on three short films to be shown tonight at the Berkshire Museum as one of the features of members’ night. Maya Deren, who conceived and is featured in each of the silent strips of acetate sent along a few pages to explain what the spectator will see tonight.

She writes of the first film, “Meshes of the Afternoon,” “It is concerned with the relationship between the imaginative and objective reality. The film begins in actuality and eventually ends there. But, in the meantime, the imagination, here given as a dream, intervenes. It seizes upon a casual incident and elaborating it into critical proportions, thrusts back into reality the product of its convolutions.

The next big things in comedy, theatre, dance, art, film and music feature in a packed programme

Every September the Melbourne Fringe festival lurches over the horizon. Last year, 3400 independent artists mounted shows in more than 147 venues across Melbourne, ranging across visual arts, film, music and every kind of performance you could shake a stick at. And then there's the after-show parties at the Fringe Club and the Warren. Between now and 6 October, you need never go home.

The Fringe is proudly open access, so make it part of your schedule to see some artists you've never heard of before: they might be the next big thing. Choosing among hundreds of acts is tough, but I screwed up my courage, plunged into the programme and excavated some promising acts. Here, in no particular order, are my top 10 picks.

Yes Dance

Choreographer Rennie McDougall is one of the up-and-coming talents of the Melbourne dance scene.

With cinematographer and 2nd unit director credits already under his belt, Adam Rehmeier burst onto the indie film scene with his feature film directorial debut, The Bunny Game (2012), in which Rodleen Getsic plays a desperate prostitute who ends up fighting for her life after hooking up with a maniacal trucker. The critically-acclaimed black and white film is somber, gritty, and saturated with panic and dread. Rehmeier's follow-up feature is something of a companion piece: Jonas (2013) is a brooding, sinister, and intelligent film that's as fascinating as the director's methods in creating it. Gregg Gilmore plays Jonas, who mysteriously washes up on a beach, then proceeds to gather an audience for "God's Big Message." Jonas will be released September 11th, and you can watch it in its entirety, absolutely free, at jonasmovie.com. Rehmeier generously took some time to discuss with FEARnet his unique films and his intriguing filmmaking tactics. FEARnet:...

In the classic underground movie book Visionary Film, historian P. Adams Sitney coined the term “trance film” to describe the primary type of post-wwii avant-garde cinema that was in vogue at the time. In Sitney’s view, short movies such as Maya Deren‘s Meshes of the Afternoon, Kenneth Anger‘s Fireworks and Stan Brakhage‘s Flesh of Morning all feature somnambulist protagonists wandering through surrealist nightmare worlds of their own psyche.

Movies featuring sleepwalking main characters are, of course, the antithesis of popular mainstream entertainment, which at all times attempts to thrill the masses with tales of heroes of extraordinary abilities doing amazing things.

Flash forward about 70 years and Don Swaynos‘ debut feature film, the surrealist comedy Pictures of Superheroes, doesn’t quite fit Sitney’s “trance” mold, but it’s main character, professional cleaning woman Marie (Kerri Lendo), does appear to be sleepwalking through her life. The film...

Justine Smith

Bright Star, Jane Campion

Orlando, Sally Potter

Trouble Every Day, Claire Denis

Cleo 5 a 7, Agnes Varda

A New Leaf, Elaine May

The Night Porter, Liliana Cavani

American Psycho, Mary Harron

Anatomy of Hell, Catherine Breillat

Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow

Everyone Else, Maren Ade

Ricky D

Connection, Shirley Clarke

Wuthering Heights, Andrea Arnold

35 Shots of Rhum, Claire Denis

Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Derin

Seven Beauties, Lina Wertmuller

The Hitch-Hiker, Ida Lupino

Lina Wertmuller- Swept Away

Meek’s Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt

Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel

Xxy, Lucía Puenzo

Special mention:

Skyscraper – Shirley Clarke

Wasp – Andrea Arnold

On Dangerous Ground – Ida Lupino (uncredited)

Wanda

Chris Clemente

Little Miss Sunshine, Valerie Faris

American Psycho, Mary Harron

Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola

We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsay

Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold

Monster, Patty Jenkins

A League of Their Own, Penny Marshall

Wayne’s World, Penelope Spheeris

Clueless, Amy Heckerling

Point Break,...

(In Alphabetical order)

Meek’s Cutoff

Directed by Kelly Reichardt

Kelly Reichardt had a stellar if hushed 2000s, and then she commenced the current decade with a film that is already beginning to feel like an unsung modern classic. Meek’s Cutoff is one of those exhilarating instances in which a marriage of disparate styles produces something tricky to imagine, but perfect to behold: a period piece set in mid-1800’s Oregon, shot in academy ratio and classically beautiful for it, but with Reichardt’s signature severe naturalism. The result is so stark and understated that it begins to feel graceful, weirdly epic. A small caravan of settlers (featuring Michelle Williams and a once again devout Paul Dano) hires a guide, big-talking Stephen Meek, to help them navigate the Oregon Trail. As the terrain grows less forgiving and water evermore scarce, the settlers begin to wonder if the route Meek...

After much media hoopla about "Vertigo" toppling "Citizen Kane" in its poll, Sight and Sound magazine have now released the full version of its once a decade 'Top 250 greatest films of all time' poll results via its website. The site also includes full on links showcasing Top Tens of the hundreds of film industry professionals who participated in the project.

For those who don't want to bother with the individual lists and to save you a bunch of clicking, below is a copy of the full 250 films that made the lists and how many votes they got to be considered for their positions:

1 - Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) [191 votes]

2 - Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) [157 votes]

3 - Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) [107 votes]

4 - La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939) [100 votes]

5 - Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) [93 votes]

6 - 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) [90 votes]

7 - The Searchers (Ford, 1956) [78 votes]

8 - Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) [68 votes]

9 - The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer,...

This Week’s absolute Must Read proves exactly why you should never absolutely trust what you read on IMDb. You may think it’s a 100% accurate website, but you’d be wrong. How wrong? The Temple of Schlock runs down the data on a bevy of ’70s exploitation films that are mis-dated, mis-credited and mis-titled. Posts like this prove how invaluable a research website the Temple is. Invaluable, I tell you! Plus, they have the ad mat for ’72′s Outside In, another incorrectly credited film.The Village Voice wrote up a very lengthy profile of NYC icon Lloyd Kaufman. About freakin’ time they did!Plus, 366 Weird Movies has the full rundown of Troma movies on YouTube. And, is Meshes of the Afternoon a “weird” movie?Salise Hughes releases an original digital drawing based on her upcoming Charades project that is really, really cool looking.Aryan Kaganof posted up a scan...

Jason Sperb's new book, Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South, will be out soon from the University of Texas Press.

In other news. "Barbara, a slow-burning drama set in communist East Germany from director Christian Petzold, is the front runner for this year's Lolas, Germany's equivalent of the Oscar, with eight nominations, including best film." Scott Roxborough has more in the Hollywood Reporter; the Süddeutsche Zeitung has the full list. The awards will be presented in Berlin on April 27.

Los Angeles. "Maya Deren's best-known achievement, her remarkable 1943 dream-poem Meshes of the Afternoon, was just the beginning of a too-brief career," writes Tom von Logue Newth in the Weekly. "Her output would extend from experiments in psychodrama, like Meshes and Witch's Cradle, a fascinating, barely edited collaboration with Marcel Duchamp made during Deren's short period in Hollywood; to highly personal dance...

Working on and scanning through Bad Lit’s Underground Film Timeline periodically, I am continually struck and impressed by the strong efforts of a certain, key few individuals who have both set down an official historical course and have charted a definitive future for avant-garde and experimental film. Without these individuals’ efforts, perhaps there would not be a history for me to attempt to chronicle on this website.

Typically, these individuals have worn multiple hats in their artistic careers, serving as filmmakers, curators, lecturers, journalists and such. While much of their work was about promoting underground film as a valid and to-be-respected art form, there is also a strong component — if not a guiding component — of self-preservation.

That is not to imply a disparagement on their accomplishments as being merely self-serving, but the survival of the one does lead to a survival of the many. That is, if one can...

July 8 & 9

8:00 p.m. (both nights)

The Dryden Theatre

900 East Avenue

Rochester, NY 14607

Hosted by: The Dryden Theatre

The world’s greatest documentary filmmaker, Jeff Krulik, will make a special two-night live appearance at the Dryden Theatre on July 8 & 9! On July 8, he will be screening his latest masterpiece, Heavy Metal Picnic, along with his most infamous film, Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Then, on July 9, he will screen a collection of his legendary short docs, such as King Of Porn, Obsessed with Jews, I Created Lancelot Link, Ernest Borgnine On The Bus, Mr. Blassie Goes To Washington, and more.

As great an opportunity to see any collection of Krulik’s work may be, it’s really a special bonus to go hear him speak in person. He is an amazing yarn-spinner and, listening to him talk, you really get to understand what makes his films so wonderful. His passion for life...

Given the recent furore over certain Sky Sports presenters being a bunch of sexist bastards, it seems a relevant time to celebrate the female contribution to cinema – which is still largely unappreciated with women directors still making up a small percentage of directors and other creatives. But they’re awesome and they’ve now got their own festival to show off their work.

We’ve been sent over the press release and festival line up. The Bird’s Eye View Film Festival takes place in London from March 8th – 17th. The programme includes new films, documentaries, retrospectives and panel discussions.

From the press release:

The hotly anticipated Birds Eye View Film Festival 2011 (Bev) programme has been announced by Rosamund Pike at a private launch event on 25 January. The Festival returns for its seventh annual celebration of women filmmakers from 8-17 March at BFI Southbank, the Ica the Southbank Centre, with...

 

Director Adam Rehmeier has this cool film called The Bunny Game coming to film festivals this year. The Bunny Game follows a prostitute looking for her next meal hitches a ride with a trucker that leaves her praying for her next breath. This film isn't for everyone but for the fans who love shocking moments  and torture scenes this will be a treat for you.  The cast and crew took this film past the limits. Actress Rodleen Getsic gives a standout performance and shows just how much she'll "Really Do" for a project she believes in! Check out my latest "Versus" with Adam Rehmeier as he gives GeekTyrant the first sneak peak at the making of The Bunny Game. Film Festival don't pass up this cool film!

 

Brian  S- Hey Adam, first off how did you get into the film making biz?

Adam Rehmeier- I've always been interested in storytelling.

Yes, even an inanimate object can be fascinating in this excerpt from Barbara Hammer‘s Duchampian exercise Maya Deren’s Sink, in which an ordinary bathroom fixture is given great cultural significance. Of course, the movie is about much more than a sink. Instead, the object is used as a conduit to explore the legacy of Deren’s impact on the world, both by the films she made and by her, shall we say, larger than life personality.

If you happen to watch a lot of Pawn Stars on the History Channel, as I have been lately, you’ll have learned that just because an item is old and was owned by a famous person that that doesn’t magically conjure upon it great monetary value. However, there is great emotional value placed upon such things, such as this particular sink that is a great conversation starter.

“Why, this is...

While there hasn’t been an explosion of documentaries made about the great underground filmmakers, the fact that any have been made about these groundbreaking, but still mostly obscure to the general public, directors seems like a great accomplishment.

Plus, these seven documentaries listed below are all available for easy viewing on DVD or VOD, which is more than can be said for many of the subjects’ actual movies.

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, dir. Mary Jordan. (Amazon | Netflix) Jack Smith is one of the most complicated figures in underground film history, but Jordan’s documentary provides an in-depth portrait of this reclusive artist who ended up alienating his closest friends and ardent supporters. Turning his back on the film world after directing one of the most notorious movies ever made, Flaming Creatures, Smith would go on to be an admired performance artist who would act sporadically in others’ art films.

A lot of hay has been made lately about the future of Netflix streaming movies over the Internet for its subscribers as opposed to their original business model of being a mail-order DVD rental service. A good recent article on the subject was written by Chuck Tryon, who waded through all the hype and arguments against to try to figure out what impact Internet streaming of movies has on the movie industry.

Well, forget about the industry for the moment. How is Netflix streaming affecting the underground filmmaker?

Personally, I’m not a Netflix subscriber, so wading through their offerings is a bit more difficult for me. However, I was still curious if the company was streaming any underground movies. To find out if they were, I ended up searching a website called Instant Watcher, which is a company independent of Netflix, but uses a Netflix developer Api to scan...

In the fall of 1946, Frank Stauffacher mounted a major, and very influential, retrospective of avant-garde film in the U.S. at the San Francisco Museum of Art. The series was called “Art in Cinema” and it featured ten different programs from filmmakers in the U.S., France, Germany and Canada.

By the mid-’40s, the avant-garde hadn’t taken a strong hold in the U.S. yet, so the majority of the films screened came from Europe, or by Europeans who relocated to the U.S. However, by that time also, the European avant-garde had pretty much completely petered out. Still, Stauffacher wanted to show that there was a continuity to avant-garde film history that, up until that point, had yet to be fully considered.

In conjunction with the series, the San Francisco Museum of Art published a catalog, pretty much like one would find with any major art exhibit.

František Vlácil, Edinburgh, Glasgow & London

While the likes of Milos Forman and Jirí Menzel benefited from attention focused on Czech cinema in the late-60s and early-70s, František Vlácil wasn't so lucky. He's been mentioned in the same breath as Welles, Tarkovsky and even Kurosawa; and on home turf, his 1967 historical drama Marketa Lazarová is considered a masterpiece. Yet few of Vlácil's films have ever been shown in the UK. Vlácil, who died in 1999, kept working up to the late-80s, and this selection gives a good indication of his range, incorporating Marketa Lazarová alongside lesser-known works such as The Little Shepherd Boy From The Valley and Shadows Of A Hot Summer.

BFI Southbank, SE1, to 30 Sep; Filmhouse, Edinburgh, to 3 Oct; Glasgow Film Theatre, Tue to 28 Sep

Ray Harryhausen, London

In the year of his 90th birthday, Ray Harryhausen can't say he feels too overlooked these days, especially after...

Nicholas Roeg's directorial debut Walkabout (1971) is one of those films that one could justifiably write either briefly or at great length about. The script, an adaptation of James Vance Marshall's novel, was rumored to have been between 14 and 60 pages and can be effectively summarized in three sentences. After their father (John Meillon) commits suicide during a trip to the Australian outback, a young woman (Jenny Agutter) and her younger brother (Luc Roeg, the director's son) face the harsh, foreign, environment alone. While struggling to find their way back to Sydney, they meet a young Aboriginal boy (David Gulpilil) who helps them survive by hunting and providing water. As the trio gets closer and closer to civilization, their relationships to one another begin to shift, producing life-altering consequences.

That, in a nutshell, is the plot the film. That said, given Nic Roeg's previous background as a famous cinematographer...

This is a weird one. The best I can do is tell you what I think it is. The actual title of the above embedded video is Corrupt.Maya.Deren by an entity called Videogramo. What I believe it is, is a corrupted or digitally manipulated version of Maya Deren‘s classic underground film Meshes of the Afternoon. However, the original film is completely unintelligible and what we have is a hypnotic swirl of digital blurs, squares and flashes of light.

Although it’s virtually impossible to tell what we’re actually looking at, I believe through certain sound cues — the sound doesn’t kick in until a few minutes in — that this is Meshes of the Afternoon. But, the soundtrack to the original film by Teiji Ito doesn’t match up exactly as I believe the audio has been as corrupted as the video, so I can’t say for certain.

Anybody who’s ever written or attempted to write a screenplay has run into the dreaded “Hollywood formula.” There’s even an entire industry of seminars, books and videos built of experts who explain all the rules one needs to follow in order to write a winning, successful screenplay, such as specific plot points that need to fall on specific pages, proper character arcs, etc.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that formula. (Full disclosure: I love formulaic Hollywood movies.) Plus, Guidelines are actually a good idea for the beginning writer who’s not quite sure how to begin. (More disclosure: I’ve written my own share of “guideline”-based screenplays that never sold.) However, resistance to these guidelines start to build up thanks to the overly aggressive nature that each expert tries to instruct writers to follow them. What should be helpful guidelines become absolutely unbreakable “rules” enforced by...

It’s been a relatively slow news week, as I’m sure you all have noticed. And as the week comes to a close, it’ll likely slow down even more.

So, I thought, let’s have a little fun! As the title of this post asks, what are you watching? What films have you seen this week, and what did you think of them? Any you’d recommend the rest of us see? Any we should stay away from? They could be films you saw in a theatre, at home on DVD, on TV, Cable, on the web, in a cafe, library, wherever. And they don’t have to be “black films.”

I re-watched La Haine last night, a film I actually like… well I did like it, until Qadree said something that made me think about it differently, and quelled my enthusiasm for it. Thanks a lot Qadree...

First the history, then the list:

In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.

Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.

The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.

Embedded above is the 1980 short film Parataxis by Rochester, NY-based animator Skip Battaglia. This structuralist film reimagines the same scenario — a man checking out a cute chick in a department store — with different reshufflings of the order of the exact memory of the event. As Skip notes, Parataxis is considered the first xerographically animated film produced on a Xerox 6500 Color Copier on paper. While it’s a fascinating technique executed imaginatively, I want to discuss something else:

Skip was one of my film professors at the Rochester Institute of Technology (1988 – 1992) and had a phenomenally huge impact on my life. While my life and career didn’t go in the direction of creating films, Skip really instilled and inspired in me new ways of looking at the world differently. He had a way of looking at your footage and, while seeing and appreciating it for what it was and what you...

Jan. 16

8:00 p.m.

Anthology Film Archives

2nd Ave at 2nd St.

NYC, NY

Hosted by: Anthology Film Archives

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) may not be considered an “underground” film, but it sure as hell looks like one, belonging to the avant-garde tradition of the “trance film,” a term coined by the writer P. Adams Sitney in his book Visionary Film.

Sitney doesn’t actually write about Vampyr in Visionary Film, but he pulls his definition of a “trance film” from another film writer, Parker Tyler. In his book The Three Faces of Film, Tyler wrote:

The chief imaginative trend among Experimental or avant-garde filmmakers is action as a dream and the actor as a somnambulist.

That was true in 1960. Sitney traced the evolution of the “trance film” from the classic German Expressionist silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to the work of American avant-garde filmmakers like Kenneth Anger...