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UNDERGROUND USA
I'm curious to see the New Museum's new East Village USA exhibition, which memorializes the downtown art world of the early to mid 1980s, a time in which art, fashion, film, hip-hop, and rock all jostled and congealed into a movement that can now be encapuslated into something like, well, a museum exhibition. (That it was also a time when AIDS rampaged through the New York arts community gives the show its measure of sadness for those who lived in New York at the time and knew many of these people.)
Writes curator Dan Cameron, "Imagine a village where everybody is an artist, nobody has or needs a steady job, and anyone can be the art world's Next Big Thing. Such was the myth (and occasionally the reality) of the East Village in the mid-1980s, when glamour and sleaze were nearly indistinguishable, and the boy next door was an androgynous, foot-high-peroxide-pompadour-sporting singer named John Sex. It was the height of the Reagan era, with its Cold War paranoia, intensified by growing nuclear fears, and inner cities and civic institutions in a state of increased upheaval and decay. Meanwhile, the East Village was busy inverting the values of trickle-down economics and gunboat diplomacy by transforming itself into the American dream's dark underside, its evil twin, its inner child run amok."
Unfortunately, despite the use of the word "film" in the New Museum's promo material, a quick glance at the artist's roster indicates that the scene's vital underground filmmaking is unrepresented. Richard Kern pops up as does Charlie Ahearn, but where are Eric Mitchell, Beth and Scott B, Amos Poe, Jim Jarmusch, Sara Driver, and the many others whose film work was as much a part of this scene as the visual art?
Anyway, I'll check out the show nonetheless but while doing some web surfing to find out what's in it, I came across this great piece by novelist and former art critic Gary Indiana published in New York magazine. It's his own personal and opinionated history of the period, one that winds through tales like buying gin-and-tonics for depressed serial killer Joel Rifkin to this elegantly melancholy conclusion:
I'm not prone to much sentimentality, but you should treasure your own history, however weird it is. William Burroughs once told me, "People like us are lucky because every shitty thing that happens to us is just more material." So I wouldn't miss the New Museum show for anything. I want to remember the many people I love who are gone and remind myself how much I love the ones who are still here. And I'll let you in on a little secret: If you live long enough, you even get fond of people you thought you hated.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/11/2004 04:52:54 PM Comments (0)
BACK IN THE DAYS
Kudos to Indiewire for nabbing the text of Dan Talbot's engagingly long-winded speech at last week's Gotham Awards. Personally, I found Talbot's trip down memory lane kind of a blast, sitting as I was before the teleprompter which kept flashing "Please wrap it up!" Anyway, for notes on how it used to be in NYC art film exhibition, click on the above.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/10/2004 11:13:18 AM Comments (0)
VIDEOBLOGS
Via Green Cine Daily comes a link to the following posting at Chuck Olson's Blogumentary:"It's happening.
"What blogging does for print journalism, podcasting does for radio and videoblogging does for [film and video]. It's rough around the edges, it's unpredictable, it's real. And it's putting the means of media production into the hands of the people."
The Videoblogging.info site includes a small but growing list of pioneering videobloggers.
And the new genre is already developing its own alternative media: As Shannon Noble writes in a recent posting at Vlog:tacit: By clicking on the image above you can see "an example/suggestion for an alternative vlog style in response to the kind of work that one can see on a vlog site called Rocketboom. Purely suggestive. WARNING: the images I've used in this piece are from military footage of a violent nature."
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 12/9/2004 10:30:05 AM Comments (0)
WEIRD SCIENCE
On Nov. 18, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation quietly convened a hearing in order to decide whether to establish Congressional financing for the study of "porn addiction."
Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), chairman of the Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee, and a right-wing Christian, arranged for the hearing.
Four "experts," all with ties to conservative organizations, presented testimony. No one from the adult entertainment industry was invited to contribute.
The hearing represents an interesting tactic by the religious right in their ongoing war on adult entertainment. The First Amendment Free Speech provisions of the U.S. Constitution have frustrated efforts to supress porn in the United States. By presenting pseudo-scientific theories that pornography has a drug-like effect on viewers, anti-porn activists hope to pull an end-run around the Constitution.
Dr. Judith Reisman, Ph.D, testified, "Thanks to the latest advances in neuroscience, we now know that pornographic visual images imprint and alter the brain, triggering an instant, involuntary, but lasting, biochemical memory trail, arguably, subverting the First Amendment by overriding the cognitive speech process." [emphasis added]
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 12/8/2004 05:47:02 PM Comments (0)
I don't know about you, but I'm enjoying tremendously Manohla Dargis's film writing in the New York Times, particularly the more freewheeling attitude that runs through her pieces. Her Godard interview of a few weeks back was brilliantly edited. Leaving in his intellectual japes and her bemused ripostes -- bits that might have been edited out in the hands of another Times critic -- both made the piece entertaining and indicative of Godard's entire enterprise. In today's Times, Dargis steps in front of her byline to frankly answer questions from readers. (Registration required.) In response the various queries she raves about Li Yang's underseen Blind Shaft, canonizes Bad Santa as a new holiday classic, and responds to a reader who asks, "Hasn't the bar been set too high for a medium that is meant to entertain? Must a film always improve upon the art?"
Her response winds through a great story about a bored Paul Schrader falling asleep during Warren Beatty's Reds, to a discussion of James Agee, before winding up with the following:
I thoroughly understand the desire for entertainment (really!), but movies were never "meant" to be any one thing. The medium was seized on by opportunistic business types early on, but it was always also a medium for artists, intellectuals and those for whom a life in the movies means something more than just a succession of pneumatic blonds and a swank Beverly Hills address.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/8/2004 04:18:15 PM Comments (0)
Forty seven projects have been selected for CineMart 2005, the largest co-production market worldwide, to be held January 30 - February 3 during the 34th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.CineMart invites a select group of co-producers, television buyers, sales agents, distributors and fund representatives to meet up with a projects' representatives. Year-round, CineMart continues to actively support the selected film projects through alliances and partnerships with other international film festivals, training organizations and funding bodies.
"The record number of 539 entries provided us with a good overview of the current, very lively market situation for small and medium budget films," said CineMart director Ido Abram. "The overall high quality of this 47-strong CineMart 2005 selection and the expected presence of some 800 buyers and financiers makes Rotterdam the ideal industry platform at the beginning of the new year. As is our objective, this 2005 Selection not only introduces new talent but also welcomes back directors and producers familiar with 'the Rotterdam experience'. The CineMart, the Hubert Bals Fund, the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition and the other programme sections tie up wonderfully. CineMart 2005 has a strong line-up with strong projects about strong people in strong stories."
The CineMart 2005 selection (alphabetically by project title) includes:
(film project title; director; production company; country):
6IXTYNIN9, Jim Fall, Bohemian Films & ShadowCatcher Entertainment (USA)
55 MEN ON HORSEBACK, Peter Greenaway, The Kasander Film Company (Netherlands / UK)
AMERICAN WIDOW, Christian S. Leigh, American Widow 2 Ltd. (UK / Germany)
BELINDA'S NOTES, Dorthe Sheffman, MF Films (New Zealand)
CATCHING A GLIDE, Sunu Gonera, Maxi D. Productions (Zimbabwe / South Africa)
CHAMELLE, Marion Hansel, Man's Film Production (Belgium / France)
CHE TZE, Zhang Yi-Bai, Arclight Pictures (Taiwan/China/Hong Kong)
THE CLOGGED TOWN, Gert Embrechts, Filmprodukties de Luwte (Netherlands / Belgium)
EL CUSTODIO, Rodrigo Moreno, Rizoma Films (Argentina / Germany)
DARATT, Mahamat Saleh-Haroun, Chinguitty Films (France / Chad)
LE DERNIER DES FOUS, Laurent Achard, Agat Film & Cie / Ex Nihilo (France)
DOCHTERTJE, Boris Paval Conen, SNG Film BV (Netherlands)
L'ETE INDIEN, Alain Raoust, Sunday Morning Productions (France)
EXHIBIT A, Dom Rotheroe, Bent Films (UK)
FALLEN HERO, Partho Sen Gupta, Santocha Productions (France / India)
FIVE WORLDS, U-Wei bin HajiSaari & Garin Nugroho & Sobhi al-Zobaidi & Kamal Tabrizi & Homayoun Paiz, leBrocquy Fraser Productions Ltd (Malaysia / Indonesia / Palestine / Iran / Afghanistan)
HAMACA PARAGUAYA, Paz Encina, Slotmachine (Paraguay / France)
HAMELIN, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 1001 Productions (Japan / France)
HEI AN ZHUAN, Zhang Ming, Nitu Film Production (China)
HELEN, Sandra Nettelbeck, Echo Lake Productions (Germany / USA)
HONEYDRIPPER, John Sayles, Anarchists' Convention (USA)
JAS SUM OD TITOV VELES, Teona Mitevska, Sisters and Brother Mitevski Production (Macedonia)
JEAN-BAPTISTE, Wayn Traub, Sciapode (Belgium / France)
JOHANNA, Kornel Mundruczo, Proton Cinema Ltd (Hungary)
KILOMETRE ZERO, Hiner Saleem, la Cinefacture/Memento Films Production (France / Iraq)
LIVERPOOL, Lisandro Alonso, Fortuna Films (Argentina / Netherlands)
MAJAK, Maria Saakyan, Andreevsky Flag Film Company (Russia)
MAN AND WOMAN, Fatmir Koci, KKoci Productions (Albania / Belgium / France)
THE MIRACLE OF MONTHLERY, Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, Lama Films (Israel)
THE NANA SAGA, Adrian McDowall, Slate Films (UK)
OU EST LA MAIN DE L'HOMME SANS TETE, Guillaume Malandrin, La Parti Production, (Belgium / Luxembourg)
PUFFBALL, Nicolas Roeg, Tall Stories (UK / Canada)
RAFINA, Sabiha Sumar, Vidhi Films (Pakistan)
SANGRE, Amat Escalante, Mantarraya Producciones (Mexico)
LA SANGRE Y LA LLUVIA, Jorge Navas, Patofeofilms (Colombia)
SCAR, Teboho Mahlatsi, Bomb (South Africa)
SMALL CRIME, Christos Georgiou, Lychnari Productions (Cyprus / Greece)
SMOKE AND OCHRE, Willem van de Sande Bakhuyzen, Riba Filmproductions (Netherlands)
LA SOLEDAD, Jaime Rosales, Fresdeval Films (Spain)
STILL LIFE, Jia Zhangke, Xstream Pictures (China)
SUBURBAN MAYHEM, Paul Goldman, Doll (Australia)
SUPLENT, Martin Krejci, Bionaut Pictures & Barrandov Studios (Czech Republic)
A THOUSAND OF PLATEAUS, Jang Sun-Woo, East Film Co Ltd. (South Korea)
TU ES DIEU, Delphine Kreuter, Les films du poisson (France)
WAITER, Alex van Warmerdam, Graniet Film (Netherlands)
WHITE MALE HEART, David Mackenzie, Hepp Film & Brocken Spectre (United Kingdom / Sweden)
WUNDERKIND, Michiel van Jaarsveld, Motel Films (Netherlands)
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 12/8/2004 01:03:29 PM Comments (0)
I haven't seen The Incredibles yet, but when I do I'll be parsing its politics like some sort of Frankfurt School flunky because of a number of conversations I've been drawn into recently about the film. My brother calls it the best animated movie he's seen, but at my Gotham Awards table the other night, a publicist and editor attacked it for what they read as its regressive politics. For a sort of Incredibles study guide, check out this piece in The Guardian's newsblog that deftly summarizes the various critiques of Brad Bird's Pixar creation. The piece begins by evoking Nietzsche ("The Incredibles is the story of how the egalitarian drive in modern America killed off the superhero. It's a passionate and politically incorrect plea for truth, justice and the Nietzschean way," writes Cosmo Landesman in The Sunday Times), moves through Ayn Rand, who is namechecked by the New York Times's A.O.Scott, before Richard Goldstein in Times and Seasons reaches back and finds the film's philosophies as stemming from the writings of Thomas Hobbes.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/8/2004 01:01:06 AM Comments (0)
PAIN, SUFFERING AND THE AMERICAN WAY
Producer, screenwriter and co-president of Focus Features James Schamus penned this sharp essay in In These Times on one short-term goal progressive citizens can rally around during their post-election blues: oppose the nomination of White House Legal Counsel Alberto Gonzales to the position of Attorney General.
Schamus explains:
The mainstream media uses the word "torture" to describe those (hundreds of) documented cases of "isolated" incidents, performed by those "few bad apples" at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. When it comes to the pervasive use of torture at Guantánamo's Camp X-Ray and scores of other secret military prisons around the globe, the media has preferred the term "abuse." It's a word that takes the edge off.
That may be changing with the leak late in November to the New York Times of a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that said the Bush administration had institutionalized a system that uses "refined and repressive" methods "tantamount to torture" to extract information from prisoners at Guantánamo. "The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," said the report...
Against this background noise, George Bush is grooming Alberto Gonzales, White House legal counsel and a long-time political ally from Texas, for the Supreme Court. The first step in this process is to install him as attorney general. As White House sources told the New York Times, his Senate confirmation process for attorney general will be a dry run for a future Supreme Court nomination.
In addition to serving as the president's lawyer, Gonzales is, in fact, Mr. Torture himself: the man who laid out for the Bush administration the arguments for voiding the Geneva Conventions and end-running the War Crimes Act, thereby providing legal cover for the horrors inflicted on those unfortunate enough to disappear into the new American global gulag.
Via Ray Pride and his new Movie City Indie blog.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/7/2004 10:33:44 PM Comments (0)
Amazon.com has produced a series of five short films distributed only on Amazon.com as a free holiday gift to its customers. Each Tuesday from November 9 through today, Amazon.com released a new film in the Amazon Theater series, which customers can view directly from the Amazon.com homepage. All five films are available for viewing on Amazon.com through the end of the holiday season. The final film in the Amazon Theater short film series, "Careful What You Wish For," stars Geoffrey Gould, Patty Lotz, Raymond O'Connor, Pras Michel and Daryl Hannah and is directed by Acne Films. The film debuts today on Amazon.com's homepage.
"With offices in Stockholm and London, Acne Films is an offshoot of Swedish-based design agency Acne. Acne Films has been producing and directing film projects since 1997. Early work includes five seasons of sketches on the hit late-night European talk show "Sen Kvall Med Luuk"; title sequences for several television shows; and music videos, including the 1999 Swedish Grammy Winner "Four Big Speakers" by Whale. The first foray for Acne Films in the American market was ESPN's "Shelf Ball" TV spots. Acne Film is now expanding its reach to all kinds of filmmaking, including documentaries, short films and feature films. Acne Films currently has seven directors working in different constellations."
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 12/7/2004 05:42:28 PM Comments (0)
According to an article posted on the MediaRights Web site, "The theatrical release of the film Born into Brothels (ThinkFilm) on December 8, 2004, presents Kids with Cameras with an opportunity for outreach and exposure most young nonprofit organizations may never enjoy. The organization, dedicated to the empowerment of children through the art of photography, fulfills its mission through a model that was initiated with children of prostitutes in Calcutta. Born into Brothels is about the fascinating creation of this model.
"The Sundance-award winning documentary Born into Brothels, co-directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski, recounts Zana's inspired journey to the red light district of Calcutta. She went to India to take pictures of the prostitutes and ended up teaching their children photography. The film captures Zana's work with the kids over a number of years as they learn how to tell their own stories and reach their dreams for an education, the only way to escape the crime and poverty of the red light district."Kids with Cameras sells prints of children's photography and uses 100 percent of the proceeds to fund new educational programs.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 12/7/2004 02:08:42 PM Comments (0)
The Sundance Institute today announced the films selected for the Short Film Program at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, taking place January 20-30, 2005, in Park City, Utah. The Festival selected 82 short films -- dramatic, documentary, and animated -- from a total of 3887 submissions from U.S. and international filmmakers. In addition to screening at the Festival in Park City, many of the short films will be available free-of-charge to film at the Sundance Online Film Festival starting January 20, for five months following the close of the Festival.According to the release issued by the Festival, "This year's short films take all the chances and push boundaries. From a compelling look at a former child star to a life lesson in infidelity; a satirical look at spelling bees and the conflict in the West Bank retold as West Side Story; a personal story about a young Inuit man who attempts to bond with his father; and the story of a love affair lasting 60 years -- this collection of U.S. short films captivate the viewer as never before."
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 12/7/2004 01:30:33 PM Comments (0)
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE WORK
I always admire those who are able to lay either their professional and personal lives out online for all to see. One person who does this when it comes to his independent film producing is Muse Production's Chris Hanley, who has made an entertaining habit of posting on his website copies of business emails he's received under the apt header of "Scathing Letters." For a while the letters sections was filled with angry back-and-forths from folks like Vincent Gallo and Don Murphy over older Muse projects, but Hanley has updated the site recently with two choice bits of correspondence, both of which probably give budding indie filmmakers more insight into this business than a raft of cinematic self-help books. (Click on the link above and then go to the mailbox and click through to the four letters that comprise page two.)
The first is an irate email from actor and I Love Your Work writer/director Adam Goldberg about the distribution hell his film, which Muse produced, is in. The film, which premiered in Toronto last year and stars Giovanni Ribisi and Christina Ricci, was co-financed by fellow producer Cyan Pictures and foreign sales agent Fireworks and seems to be in some kind of bad place now that Fireworks is defunct but contractually holds approval rights for North American distribution. If you wonder about the drama that can go into the financing of low-budget independent film, check out this correspondence.
The second set of exchanges is between Muse's Robert Hanley, New Line's Bob Shaye, and director David Cronenberg over script coverage New Line commissioned for a Roberta-scripted, Cronenberg-directed adaptation of Martin Amis's novel London Fields. In passing, Shaye forwards the coverage which Muse posts on its site. Here's an excerpt:
"London Fields is a fairly disjointed and predominantly nonsensical drama that fails to offer much in the way of a coherent plot, developed characters or a satisfying ending. Things seem to take place randomly, with little reason for events to occur. The main characters are incredibly simplistic and unsympathetic and we never connect with either on a deeper level. Because we aren't involved with the plot or characters emotionally, we simply do not care about what transpires. It is unclear what the authors were attempting to accomplish in this screenplay, but it is safe to say that whatever it is they did not succeed. Perhaps they were going for a quirky, gritty drama/thriller, but this story doesn't possess the intensity or coolness necessary to pull that off. All in all, London Fields is an utterly uninspired script that falters instantly out of the gate and never recovers; making it an unmitigated pass on all levels."
After Robert cc's Cronenberg on her reply, he writes back to her assistant, "Please let Roberta know that I agree completely with her letter to Bob Shaye re that fussy, petulant reader's report. It's a laugh. I wonder what that reader would have said about my script for Crash." Want to see who you agree with, Cronenberg or Shaye? Read the script online here.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/6/2004 04:26:59 PM Comments (0)
LUCKY STARS
Producer Matthew Greenfield, whose credits include Miguel Arteta's features Star Maps, Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl and this year's Sundance-bound The Motel recently became the Associate Director of the Feature Film Program at Sundance Institute, but he emailed the other day to tell us about his new non-film venture. He and writer Laurence Dumortier have launched Cloverfield Press, "a boutique publishing house dedicated to bringing new literary and artistic voices to a discerning public." Graphic design is an important component of the press's mission statement: "We hope to create books as visually beautiful as they are intellectually and emotionally stimulating. Cloverfield Press is inpired by the example of Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press which published works by visionaries as well as modern masters, combining them with the best of modern design."Cloverfield Press's first two titles are now out. The Museum of Contemporary Art is Carol Treadwell's novel about motherhood which arrives with a quote from Lovely and Amazing filmmaker Nicole Holofcener: "Carol Treadwell's The Museum of Contemporary Art is an intimate glimpse into the sad, beautiful truth that once you have a baby, nothing will ever be the same." Ventura County (pictured) is Dumortier's own short novel. And in 2005 the press will publish filmmaker and performance artist Miranda July's The Boy from Lam Kien.
The two new titles can be purchased via the website above or, presumably, at literary bookshops.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/5/2004 09:54:09 PM Comments (1)
Essential NYC weblog The Gothamist has posted this interview with actor, former therapist and filmmaker Robert Margolis. It's part of the site's series of pieces on interesting New Yorkers who aren't necessarily household names but whose life and work reflect deeply on the city we at Filmmaker live and work in. Margolis's latest film is a "faux documentary following the trials and tribulations of the fictional Robert Margolis, an actor, a pretty bad one at that, living on the fringe, trying to balance the demands and practicalities of every day life with his dream of becoming a successful actor."
From the interview:
"I totally believe that art can be an essential way for people to heal from traumatic events in their lives. One thing that struck me when I worked as a therapist was that it wasn't necessarily the traumatic event itself that caused people to get sick, but it was their inability to process the event. Sexually and physically abused children are a prime example. Not only are they terribly mistreated and wounded, but often their abusers force them to deny the reality of their abuse. They are forced to pretend that 'everything is fine'.
"I think many adults are in the same bind, carrying around terrible experiences that they've never been allowed to express and process. And this takes a very destructive toll on people. The character in Insanity says that he uses his acting as a way of dealing with painful experiences in order to move past them. And I think that art serves that purpose both for the artist and the viewer. As I mentioned earlier, I think working on this film was a way for me to have a dialogue with myself and really helped me to work on core issues in my life. Hopefully, it resonates with an audience as well."
Co-directed by Frank Matter, the no-budget film is making the festival rounds where it has won several awards.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/5/2004 09:36:20 PM Comments (0)
Chicago-based critic Ray Pride has appeared many times in Filmmaker's pages, but now readers can catch a daily -- or, if the first week's posts are any indication, near-hourly -- dose of Pride in his new Movie City Indie blog up at the ever-growing web empire that is Movie City News. Pride's links-scouting is already impeccable. So far he's posted links regarding the firing of Buenos Aires Film Festival head Edgardo (Quintin) Antin, Robert Altman directing an opera based on The Wedding, Isabelle Huppert on making a new Cimino film based on an Andre Malraux novel, and Alexander Payne on hating gladhanding and awards season. We'll be lifting from him -- er, I mean, reading him -- regularly.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/5/2004 06:07:55 PM Comments (0)
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