News

If you weren't already aware amidst his scores of other side projects, James Franco has formed a musical side project, entitled Daddy, with his fellow Rhode Island School of Design alumnus Tim O'Keefe. Having only been around a year, they've nonetheless still put out two Motown-inflected EPs -- to the point where remixes are being made -- and now the actor has placed a notable influence of his at the center of his duo's latest music video. Directed by Franco as well, the six-minute clip for "Love in the Old Days (Tim James 1999 Remix)," aims for atmosphere and mystery, but most significantly, it features experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger as a theremin-playing occult priest. If that wasn't enough, the “Fireworks” and “Scorpio Rising” director also presides over a marriage between two naked lovebirds, before letting them surge with the audience of animal mask-wearing attendees for a post-ceremony rave. You won't find much else in the Nsfw.

Landmark and controversial Gay movies at Lacma On March 23, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will be screening two film programs inspired by its current Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit: "America’s Most Wanted: The Queer Underground," featuring Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures, Jean Genet's Un Chant d'Amour, and Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising; and "Temptations: My Hustler and Mala Noche," featuring Andy Warhol's My Hustler and Gus Van Sant's Mala Noche. The screenings are free of charge. The 26-minute Un Chant d'Amour is Genet's sole film; considering its theme and stylistic approach, the film, as to be expected, faced censorship issues at the time of its first screening in the U.S. in 1966 (sixteen years after it was made). The Lacma release (see below more information on each film) describes Un Chant d'Amour (aka "A Song of Love") as "an iconic landmark of queer cinema for its lyrical,...

From the New York Times obituary for film critic Andrew Sarris, who passed away today:

In 1966, at a screening of Kenneth Anger‘s Scorpio Rising, Mr. Sarris noticed an attractive young woman, Ms. Haskell. He wandered over. “He had this courtly-as-learned-from-the-movies manner,” Ms. Haskell recalled. “Afterward he took me out for a sundae at Howard Johnson.”

(“Ms. Haskell” is film critic Molly Haskell, who would become Sarris’ wife.)

Scorpio Rising as hot heterosexual pick-up movie? Interesting…

The obituary also notes that Sarris was also a writer for the Mekas brothers’ Film Culture magazine.

Trailer for The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol 1,

released by Fantoma in 2007

Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer was born on this day in 1927 and if you pay him a call at his official site, you'll find a biographical overview he's got to relish. In 2003, Maximilian Le Cain, writing for Senses of Cinema, cut straight to the chase in his opening paragraph: "Offering a description of himself for the program of a 1966 screening, Kenneth Anger stated his 'lifework' as being Magick and his 'magical weapon' the cinematograph. A follower of Aleister Crowley's teachings, Anger is a high level practitioner of occult magic who regards the projection of his films as ceremonies capable of invoking spiritual forces. Cinema, he claims, is an evil force. Its point is to exert control over people and events and his filmmaking is carried out with precisely that intention."

Then: "Whatever one's view of this belief may be,...

Underground film-maker with a bent for the tawdry and camp

If ever there were an exemplar of Susan Sontag's definitions of camp, it would be the work of the underground film-maker George Kuchar, who has died of prostate cancer aged 69. Although Kuchar was unknown to Sontag at the time she wrote Notes on Camp (1964), she could have been referring to his no-budget pictures with her general description of camp as being "serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious. The essence of camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. The ultimate camp statement is it's good because it's awful."

Around the time of Sontag's seminal essay, there emerged a series of influential "outrageous" camp films such as Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures (1963), which depicted a transvestite orgy, Andy Warhol's Blow Job (1963) and Kenneth Anger's gay biker movie...

Nicolas Winding Refn was in attendance at the Empire Big Screen for a screening of his upcoming film Drive. While there he talked at great length about Drive and his future projects, including Logan's Run and hopefully Wonder Woman.

The Playlist has provided ten highlights from the Q&A. Beware, there are some mild spoilers for Drive below so do not read if that bothers you:

1. Refn’s has been told by studio executives that his dream adaptation of “Wonder Woman” depends on the success of his first blockbuster, “Logan’s Run”

“I would love to make ‘Wonder Woman.’ And I also think that Christina Hendricks would be the perfect Wonder Woman, but Warner Bros haven’t called yet. But I’m getting closer with ‘Logan’s Run.’ I think someone said to me in a meeting that if I get ‘Logan’s Run’ right, then I’ll get ‘Wonder Woman.

The Electric Cinema - the oldest cinema in London - will be celebrating its 100th birthday this Saturday (26th February) with the 'Eclectic Electric All-Nighter'.

The venue will be screening a selection of films from the Cinema Club's 1970s programmes, and is set to be guest curated by Peter Howden.

Screenings begin at 11pm with Michael Powell's recently restored  psychological masterpiece Peeping Tom (1960) before being followed by Roger Corman's The Trip (1967), Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising (1964) and finishing off with Thx 1138 (1971), Star Wars director George Lucas' very first feature film.

Tickets from £22.50

For more information, email allnighter@electrichouse.com

*Release courtesy of Freud

Daniel Green

cine-vue cinema film news the electric cinema eclectic electric all nighter london peter howden michael powell peeping tom roger corman the trip kenneth anger scorpio rising thx 1138 george lucas...

Welcome to the first Underground Film Links post of 2011! I predict it’s going to be an amazing year for these! (So, get to work…)

This week’s must read is a fine list of resolutions for filmmakers put together by Scott Macaulay of Filmmaker Magazine. This is one of those articles I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy, but they’re really great suggestions. Since the year ended, there are, of course, lots of lists going around. First, In These Times has a round-up of the 10 Best Political Documentaries, which covered some pretty big issues. R. Emmet Sweeney of TCM’s Movie Morlocks has his Top 10 Genre Movies of 2010, of which I’ve only seen The Crazies and thought was great as well. SF360 has a mess of Top 10s in its annual survey of Bay Area critics. This is notable particularly since Jonathan Marlow of the S.F.

“The day that cinema was invented was a black day for mankind.” That’s a quote by Kenneth Anger made back in 1969 in an article in the British magazine Cinema and reprinted in P. Adams Sitney’s book Visionary Film. In a much more jovial mood in the above embedded video, watch Anger entertain the crowd live onstage at the 48th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival during a retrospective of his films. The video reveals lots of interesting things, like he loathes Marilyn Manson and hangs out backstage at Jonas Brothers concerts.

That’s how you know that Anger is the real deal. Wearing a bright red sweater and an ecstatic smile, he looks more like your eccentric uncle at the family Christmas gathering than the master of Satanic cinema like Scorpio Rising, Lucifer Rising, Invocation of My Demon Brother, Ich Will! and more. The man, if anything, is no poseur.

It seems like only yesterday that the American Film Institute released their 100 Years...100 Movies [1] list. Actually though, it was over 10 years ago when we first got our look at that "definitive" list of the 100 best American movies. They then did a ten year anniversary of it in 2007 with only minor adjustments and both years Citizen Kane held the number one place as the best American movie. Of course, the problem with those lists is that they only list American films. While Hollywood might be considered the epicenter of film, the art form itself spans the globe, way beyond American borders. That's why the Toronto International Film Festival came up with their Essential 100 movies. Created by merging lists made by Toronto Film Festival supporters along with another made by their programmers, these are supposed to be the 100 essential movies every cinephile must see. And it starts off with a bang as Citizen Kane has been toppled.

Having heard the arguments on both sides of the online piracy debate for years, my own personal feelings — for the most part — fall on the anti-piracy side.

The debate really came to a head in the underground film world a few weeks ago after the non-profit site UbuWeb was hacked. UbuWeb is a website that started by hosting orphaned and out-of-print films and videos, embedding them for free to watch.

My own feelings about UbuWeb are mixed. First thing, I don’t consider them to be a piracy site. Also, I’m generally supportive of their efforts, which allows for otherwise impossible-to-see films and videos to be viewed. For example, Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, one of the most influential underground films of all time, will probably never get a proper DVD release thanks to all kinds of rights issues. Other than random arthouse theater screenings, UbuWeb is really the...

Flaming Creatures midnight screening

Jonas Mekas’ Movie Journal: The Rise Of The New American Cinema 1959-1971 is essential reading for anybody interested in underground film. The book contains excerpts from the “Movie Journal” column Mekas wrote for the Village Voice alternative weekly newspaper for a dozen years. Also included in the book are a couple of movie posters and newspaper ads from that era, which I’ve scanned and uploaded to a photo gallery. If you click on each image in this post, it will take you to an embiggened version of it so you can look at them in better detail.

It’s tough for me to pick an absolute favorite poster out of the bunch, but I inserted the most striking above. It’s for a special midnight screening of Jack Smith’s classic Flaming Creatures. I’m guessing from the date on the poster and the year the film was completed,...

It’s been a big week — and not quite in a good way — for Richard Wolstencroft of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, whose home was raided by Australian police looking for banned film L.A. Zombie. It’s a situation that sucks because it’s happening at all, but good because it’s bringing attention to archaic Australian censorship. The story was written up everywhere from the New York Times to The Advocate. Nicest of all, though, was a personal letter of support from Noah Cowan of the Toronto International Film Festival, which screened the film earlier this year. Jay Hollinsworth created a simply amazing poster mashup of one of the most hackneyed visual cliché’s of all time: Looking down a foreshortened gun barrel. Great job, Jay! Oscars.org has video highlights from the Governor’s Awards, including tributes to Jean-Luc Godard from Haskell Wexler, Vincent Cassel, Phil Robinson and more.

This Underground Film Timeline project update should come with the disclaimer “As far as I know for now.”

So, as far as I know for now, I’ve completed a DVD Underground index page that includes all the DVDs and DVD box sets — plus one Blu-ray — that includes avant-garde and experimental films that appear on the Timeline. A further disclaimer by me goes that the list only includes products released by U.S. distributors and are available on either Amazon and/or Netflix.

With that in mind, I’ve only added sixteen entries, which really surprised me at how few old avant-garde films are available to today’s audiences. If I’m missing any, please feel free to drop me a line — again keeping in mind I’m only interested in U.S. products right now. For example, I know re:voir puts out some great DVDs, but — also, again, as...

The Toronto International Film Festival recently released its list of 100 Essential Movies, which ranges from Salo and Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising to standards like 8 1/2 and Vertigo. There are some more recent films on there, as well, like Pulp Fiction and Oldboy, but many are Film School 101. That said, I'm still going through it, crossing off the ones I haven't seen and making sure to add them to my Netflix queue.

The thing is, there are so many "essential movie lists" out there. AFI has scads of them; you can choose from The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time, the 10 Top 10, which is split up into categories like animation, sports, and courtroom dramas, or even Greatest Movie Musicals. Plenty of other film magazines and websites offer their own take on the classics, like The Guardian's list of 100 Films to See Before You Die (a pretty daunting title) and The New Classics according to Entertainment Weekly.

When John Waters, in a classic aphorism, said that “everyone looks better under arrest,” he was talking about the scurrilous ’70s — the age of Charles Manson and Patty Hearst and Jim Jones — but the words apply perfectly to our era (think Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Martha Stewart, Mel Gibson), and I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen as riveting an example of the principle as what’s on display in The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector. For much of this electrifying, one-of-a-kind, crime-meets-beauty-meets-tragedy documentary (it was made for the BBC, and directed by Vikram Jayanti), we watch as Phil Spector,...

Heterosexual sports meets gay pride in Noam Gonick‘s short video No Safe Words, which is embedded above. This work was originally meant to be seen as a multichannel installation piece, but I think it plays just fine as a single video playing on a computer monitor. Presented as a generic sports promotional video complete with fast-paced music, screaming announcers, bold graphics and multiple screens, No Safe Words reveals a darker, totalitarian bent to such “fun” activities such as half-naked men being bound and waterboarded.

The first torture sequence in which one of the players has his jersey ripped off, then is held down while being bound and having alcohol poured all over his body reminded me of the infamous mustard hazing scene in Kenneth Anger‘s seminal Scorpio Rising. In that scene, during a Halloween party, a man is held down, stripped and mustard poured all over his genitals.

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.

It’s the new retro-sci-fi hero for the ages: Rocket John! He wears a big, rocket-y lookin’ helmet; straps an actual rocket to his back and rockets — sort of — his way into way crazy adventures. Plus, he has one of the coolest theme songs of all time. This song puts Queen’s Flash Gordon to total, irrevocable shame. Watch Rocket John’s grand adventure embedded above.

There’s much to love about this snappy little film directed by Curtis L. Wiebe, Marlon Wiebe and Rick Unger of Phantom Planet Films. The song is by the Secondhandpants, which I’m pretty sure came first before the film. The first thing I especially love about this film is the balls it takes to put on a weird getup and ride public transportation in the name of art.

Also, whether intentional or not, several parts of this film are reminiscent of some classic underground films.

Dennis Hopper's recent announcement of terminal cancer jump-started a long-overdue appreciation of his art and life. He got a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame last month (finally), and newspaper and blog appreciations are starting to pop up, focusing mainly on Hopper the performer. That makes sense: Hopper's career spanned a half-century's worth of theater, cinema, TV and recorded music; his list of collaborators stretches from Elizabeth Taylor and John Wayne through Kiefer Sutherland and Gorillaz.

Still, one hopes descriptions of Hopper's directorial career don't start and end with "Easy Rider." Hopper's 1969 debut is notable for its alternately ecstatic and lacerating portrait of the counterculture, the then-unusual use of pre-existing pop songs for its soundtrack, adventurous editing and its status as the first independently financed feature to become a mainstream smash. But there's more to his directorial résumé than philosophical bikers.

Although he directed just seven features ("Easy Rider,...

Kenneth Anger's crazy, gorgeous, disturbing films almost landed him in jail. The avant-garde pioneer talks Simon Hattenstone through all his demons

The gallery is so tiny I think I've walked into somebody's front room. A 10-minute film plays on a loop. Weirded-out rock stars who look like Mick Jagger, or who are Mick Jagger, preen, strut and do their late-1960s satanic thing. White dots form a pyramid on a black background, naked boys lounge on a sofa, marines jump from a helicopter. There's a cat, a dog, an all-seeing Egyptian eye, people smoking dope out of a skull. A synthesiser makes an unbearable noise. There are no words, no story.

Around the screen, in London's Sprüth Magers gallery, a bunch of 21st-century trendies and stoners are watching this film, called Invocation of My Demon Brother, in awe, their ages ranging from late teens to late 80s. Next door,...

The 48th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival is another exciting celebration of underground film past and present, featuring two retrospectives of two master filmmakers and dozens of short films and features from some of the most gifted talents working today.

For the retrospectives, first, Kenneth Anger will be in attendance at the festival for two programs of his classic work, including Fireworks and Scorpio Rising. Plus, for the first Anger screening, the filmmaker will be joined on-stage by film critic Dennis Lim for a discussion of his work and career. The second retrospective is of the work of the late Chick Strand, who sadly passed away in 2009. Strand’s Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966) will actually open the entire festival, then there will be two retrospective screenings of her work, the first of which will be presented by film scholar Irina Leimbacher.

The rest of the Aaff lineup reads like a...

On Sunday, Martin Scorsese was given the Golden Globes Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award honoring him equally for his long filmmaking career and for his film preservation work.

In 1990, Scorsese created The Film Foundation along with several other distinguished filmmakers like Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. The Foundation runs several programs dealing with film education, artists’ rights and film preservation.

Actual film is an extremely brittle material prone to rapid decay. Due to improper storage and care, the Foundation says “half of all American movies made before 1950 have already disintegrated and are lost forever, and a mere 10 percent of the films produced in the United States before 1929 are still in existence.”

While the Foundation doesn’t provide a full list of films it has helped preserve — and hopefully someday it will — there is a sample list on their site that specifically includes two underground films.

The term “underground film” has never enjoyed a popular definition. Oh, some writers have attempted formal definitions, but I doubt there will ever be one that is popularly agreed upon. It’s not even a term that can be agreed upon to be used. But, it is used and I personally have billed this site “The Journal of Underground Film,” so I thought I’d give my general perception of what “underground film” might mean to contribute to an ongoing dialogue about it.

And I prefer to consider writing a post like this as contributing to a dialogue because I do not have any interest in trying to build a definition myself. However, what I can say is that “Underground film” is not a genre. Actually, what leads me to use the term “underground” is that it feels to me to be a catch-all for other genres.

Avant-garde, experimental, poem,...

This is the 2nd post in a series covering the most outrageous moments in underground film history. You can follow the entire series here.

Film: Scorpio Rising

Director: Kenneth Anger

Year: 1964

Did Kenneth Anger unintentionally make the first underground snuff film in 1964? Anger filmed a motorcycle race for his most famous film, Scorpio Rising, and captured one poor guy whose bike veered out of control and crashed on the side of the track. Although the dude is seen wearing a helmet, his head smacks the ground at a very unnatural angle.

Although it’s not clear in the film itself that anything unduly tragic has happened, on the commentary track Anger did for Fantoma’s 2-volume DVD retrospective of his work, the filmmaker says:

I’m sorry the fellow was killed, but it wasn’t like I tripped him. It was a freak accident and he did die. I photographed him when he’s dead.

(Note: This story will be "stickied" at the top of our headlines for the day. Being able to host it is an honor beyond words.)

It was a Blood-Red-letter day for fandom as pros and fans alike gathered to bid a reluctant “Forry-well” to the late great genre-icon Forrest J. Ackerman! Hollywood’s historic Egyptian Theatre served as a temple for the filled-to-capacity ritual sponsored by the American Cinematheque, Profiles in History auction house and the Ackerman estate.

Guests began waiting on line at around 1:00Pm for the scheduled 3:00Pm reception. By 2:30 over 200 bodies had congregated at the doors of the theater. Inside, staff was scrambling. Pieces of Forry’s collection were being displayed (A first edition of Dracula signed by Bram Stoker and almost everyone who ever played the famous Vampire on screen, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula cape and Forry’s fave prop: the “Robotrix” from...

Groundbreaking director Kenneth Anger has been chosen as the recipient of the 10th annual Outfest Achievement Award, which will be presented at Outfest 2006's opening-night gala July 6 at the Orpheum Theatre. Anger's movies range from 1947's Fireworks to 1963's Scorpio Rising, films which pioneered the presentation of homoerotic images; in 1959, he authored Hollywood Babylon, a best-selling compendium of Hollywood scandals. In other Outfest developments, five projects have been chosen for the Outfest Screenwriting Lab, designed to nurture emerging screenwriters: Sebastien Gauthier's Fucking Preston, Luther M. Mace's On the Low, Samuel Park's Shakespeare's Sonnets, Dasha Snyder's To Do and Isaac Webster's Amos and Lowell. Outfest also has added two new films to its lineup: Ron Oliver's Shock to the System: A Donald Strachey Mystery, starring Chad Allen, and Phillip J. Bartell's Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds, billed as the first American gay sequel.