Experimental Film

Still Raining Still Dreaming ('08-2009) by Phil Solomon

20 January, 2011 by Andrew Rosinski

(2008-2009, digital video, sound, in progress)

Believe it or not, esoteric film sages, i.e., Phil Solomon, are open to the possibilities of working with video — and even video games. Here are two stills from Solomon’s Still Raining Still Dreaming, a film that takes images from the notorious wanton car-jacking shoot-em-up Grand Theft Auto video game; part of a series that also includes Rehearsals for Retirement (2007), Untitled (For David Gatten) (w/ Mark Lapore, 2005), and Last Days in a Lonely Place (2007).

More: http://philsolomon.com

Stills: Quick Billy (1971) by Bruce Baillie

16 January, 2011 by Andrew Rosinski

Quick Billy (1971) by Bruce Baillie

Found via the Anthology Film Archives.

© Bruce Baillie.

Posted in avant-garde, experimental film, film stills and frame scans
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TRIPTYCH by Bruce Conner, 1961/2003

7 January, 2011 by Andrew Rosinski

TRIPTYCH, 1961/2003 Archival pigmented inkjet on rag paper 41 x 27.5 in. Edition of 6

Posted in art, avant-garde, experimental film, film
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A Holiday Appeal from Anthology Film Archives

17 December, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

Anthology Film Archives: Celebrating 40 Fantastic Years!

The following letter was sent in an Anthology Film Archives email. Considering not everyone subscribes, nor understands what the A.F.A. is, it’s a good idea to share. Jonas Mekas, Founder and Artistic Director of the Anthology Film Archives, explains that sometime in the future, the Anthology Film Archives will big time lift their website to the next level. If you can spare some change, I strongly suggest supporting the Archives by contributing a Merry Christmas tax-deductible donation by clicking here.

Anthology Film Archives, congratulations on 40 years! We love you!

The following text is verbatim from an A.F.A. email sent out today:

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Dear Friends,

As someone who values and supports independent cinema and culture, we here at Anthology Film Archives thought you should know that this year marks a momentous occasion in our history - our 40th Anniversary! We have been preserving, exhibiting, and promoting independent and artist-made film since 1970, and continue to represent an essential part of the cultural landscape. As we enter our fifth decade, we hope you’ll consider supporting Anthology, by making a tax-deductible donation, becoming a member, or giving a gift membership this holiday season at anthologyfilmarchives.org/support

We are convinced that the best way to commemorate our vital contributions to film culture is to make our anniversary year a milestone in the next chapter of our existence. To that end, we are bringing Anthology fully into the digital era, embracing the potential to share our collections and programs with a worldwide audience. In July we launched the first phase of a completely new website, an enormous upgrade both aesthetically and practically, which features:

improved graphics;
streamlined screening information; and
a vastly expanded section for our collections of films, stills and audio!

Work is also progressing on an even more ambitious digital initiative, an AFA Library and Archive Collections website, which will offer scholars and students of independent cinema and contemporary art unprecedented access to resources including:

rare, unique, and historic streaming films, videos, and audio files;
webpages devoted to individual film and video artists;
study sections dedicated to historic movements, themes, styles, and
genres in independent and artist film; and
scanned magazines, journals, and files containing correspondence, reviews,
and program notes.

We are currently developing this site with initial funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and anticipate launching it in early 2012.

While we are striving to expand online access to our collections, we remain as committed as ever to the unique experience of viewing actual film prints with an audience, in a movie theater. Our exhibition program is consistently praised by critics, fellow curators, and filmgoers from all over the world. 2010 saw numerous acclaimed programs, as well as a series of special events marking our 40th anniversary, beginning with a wildly successful benefit concert featuring performances by Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, and Kenneth Anger. These events, scheduled throughout 2010 and continuing into 2011, include special screenings with Jim Jarmusch, John Waters, and others. And soon all our programs will be presented in the best possible conditions, thanks to our success in securing grants from the city and state to upgrade our main theater’s projection and sound systems with state-of-the-art equipment.

This year saw exciting accomplishments attesting to our health and longevity, as we increased our funding from the city and state; placed a major locational work by Paul Sharits at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum; saw an increase in attendance of over 20%; loaned films to over 30 institutions; preserved 25 films for the future; and initiated an art project for which some of today’s most acclaimed artists will create limited-edition works which will be reproduced for the covers of our exhibition calendars. As we enter our fifth decade on the threshold of Anthology’s expanding internet and social networking presence, and on the cusp of new digital endeavors, we are determined to make Anthology’s work permanently accessible for generations to come.

Stay tuned for updates on Facebook, Twitter, and especially our website, which will soon include online ticketing and credit card payment at our box office! We want to make your time with us – whether on our website or in our theaters – as pleasurable as possible.

We need your support to help us complete these projects and continue the momentum as we celebrate four decades. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today at anthologyfilmarchives.org/support

Best wishes for a cinematic New Year,
Jonas Mekas, Founder and Artistic Director
and the Staff and Board of Anthology Film Archives

Posted in avant-garde, event, experimental film
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Ann Arbor Film Festival DVD Collection: Volume 3

12 December, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

AAFF DVD Collection: Volume 3

You know, a great many associate Christmas Day with opening gifts. This Christmas, sit down by the fire light with your kids and your cuddle-duds and give them the gift of avant-garde with the giving of the AAFF DVD Collection: Volume 3.

The first 200 DVDs come in a screen-printed matteboard case, printed by Michigan-based print-shop, VGKids (VGkids printed the dinca stickers as well), and include a set of five postcards with original artwork by filmmakers Martha Colburn, Lewis Klahr, Julie Murray, Michael Robinson and Deborah Stratman.

$18 plus shipping 

NTSC DVD Region 0 (All)
 Total Runtime: 106 minutes
BUY HERE

View film information here.

Posted in animation & motion design, avant-garde, documentary / ethnography, experimental film, film, video art
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Review: Cry When It Happens (LLORA CUANDO TE PASE, 2010) by Laida Lertxundi

3 December, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

Laida Lertxundi film still

LAIDA LERTXUNDI, 2010

SPAIN/USA

16mm, 14 min, color, sound

Yogi Berra, The great philosopher of baseball, once said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” This quote is polysemic, and it certainly applies to baseball, and art, and everything else.

Laida Lertxundi‘s latest film, Cry When it Happens (2010), opens two getting dreamy, on a couch, with bodies snapped together. Next, we admire the blue-sky with a dash of rainbow. After that, some lovely green. These are typical ingredients of a Laida Lertxundi film: these elements and more are strung together to paint and allegory of boundless opportunity, observation, and transformation. Observe the pond and see its ripples; see its ripples and see where they move; see what they touch, and what touches what, and the inception of the what.

As with her other films, there is a specific object that is a central story-telling device. In Footnotes to a House of Love, the object is a small tape player; My Tears are Dry is heavily centered around a tape player as well. In this film, the object is a small television set that is playing imagery of the sky, observational images introduced in the opening of the film.

Verily this television is the vise of the allegory, in that this viselike object is mounted to a workbench, clamping this particular story together. Look further, and you will see other items that sit on the workbench, and, of course, this workbench is in parked in a garage of ideas, and open up the garage door and you will find an entire world of sunny ideas. It’s tempting to run and digress with this russian box idea — return to mission control — this object is the weaver of this story and the projector. It projects. It projects literally, metaphorically, and allegorically.

As with her other films, Laida makes some bold choices with music, and music serves as a beacon, vivid and bright, bold with emotion, a far-reaching light. Music featured in this film is from Beethoven, Black Velvet, The Blue Rondos, and Laura Steenberge; be that as it may, “Little Baby” by the Blue Rondos is the track of the film, and its lyrics carry. Laida’s films carry music that will stick with you afterward.

Cry When it Happens is an allegory wrapped in themes of discovery, longing and looking, positive upward movement, with heavy-metal themes of molten transformation at core. This is not a personal tale; this is a transcendental tale told in a simple and effective manner that participates in the tremendous ongoing dialogue of avant-garde cinema. Since the beginning, it has been heart-to-heart, avant-garde from the start. — AR

Posted in avant-garde, experimental film, film, reviews
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11 Frames: Third Eye Butterfly (1968) by Storm de Hirsch

22 November, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

11 Frames from Third Eye Butterfly (1968) by Storm de Hirsch

found via Anthology Film Archives.

© Anthology Film Archives

SUBMIT: Call For Entries – 18th Chicago Underground Film Festival

22 November, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

Call For Entries – 18th Chicago Underground Film Festival

June 2011 at the Gene Siskel Film Center

“Now in our 18th year, The Chicago Underground Film Festival exists to
showcase the defiantly independent filmmaker. Our mission is to
promote films and videos that experiment in form, technique, or
content and to present adventurous works that challenge and transcend
expectations…if you suspect your film is “underground,” it probably
is.

Founded in 1994, The Chicago Underground Film Festival is dedicated to
the work of film and video makers with defiantly independent visions.
Unlike many other “independent” film events our goal is not to imitate
old guard, market-driven festivals such as Sundance. Instead we seek
to create our own particular niche by presenting an accessible,
user-friendly showcase for Avant-Garde and cult cinema. CUFF presents
a wide range of work exploring the many definitions and
interpretations of the concept of “underground”. From alternative
music films and political agitprop to high camp and formal
experimentation. We like films that go beyond expectations and genre,
films made with passion, obsession and drive. The Chicago Underground
Film Festival is an official program of IFP/Chicago”

“The granddaddy of all currently running underground film festivals” -
Mike Everleth, badlit.com

Early Deadline: Dec. 1
Regular Deadline: Feb. 1
Final Deadline: March 15

Chicago Underground Film Festival
c/o
IFP/Chicago
PO Box 3065
Chicago IL 60654
U S A

Phone: (312)506-4699

info@cuff.org

Posted in animation & motion design, avant-garde, experimental film, film, glitch, video art
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Everyone Gets Hurt But There's No One To Blame, December 7th and 8th, Portland, Oregon

22 November, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

All My Life (1966) by Bruce Baillie

DECEMBER 7 + 8

Guest curated by Pablo de Ocampo

All My Life by Bruce Baillie [1966, 16mm, 3 min. ]
Footnotes to a House of Love by Laida Lertxundi [USA/Spain, 2007, 16mm, 13 min. ]
Four Seasons by Keren Cytter [Israel, 2009, video, 12 min. ]
Angst Essen / Eat Fear by Ming Wong [Singapore, 2008, video, 27 min. ]
Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof by George Kuchar [1961, 16mm, 4 min. ]

Footnotes to a House of Love
Cinema Project
Portland, Oregon
December 7th and 8th, 7:30 PM

http://cinemaproject.org/screenings/Fall/2010/everybody-gets-hurt/

Melodrama—the combination of the Greek word for music (melos) and the French word for drama (drame)—forms the core of this program, guest curated by Cinema Project co-founder Pablo de Ocampo. In each of these works, the artists pursue the melodramatic and use it as the basis for exploring cinematic narrative.

In Bruce Baillie’s drama without actors, All My Life, an Ella Fitzgerald song is juxtaposed with a slow, sincere gaze upon the blue skies of California. Keren Cytter’s Four Seasons is a series of deadpan, forlorn exchanges between a man and a woman in an apartment. In Ming Wong’s Angst Essen / Eat Fear, a reconstruction of Fassbinder’s 1973 film Ali, Fear Eats the Soul, Ming casts himself in all the roles, reflecting this narrative about identity and difference back on himself. Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof closes the screening as a brief epilogue from the long-standing master of kitsch and cult, George Kuchar. A short musical prelude and interlude will accompany the work in this program, check the website for more details later this fall.

Posted in avant-garde, experimental film, film
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Review: Footnotes to a House of Love (2007) by Laida Lertxundi

18 November, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

A film by Laida Lertxundi, 13 minutes, 16mm, color, sound, 2007.

There is a punk-rock aesthetic that’s hard to pin in Laida Lertxundi‘s 12 minute 2007 film, Footnotes to a House of Love. It is filled with old music, including tunes from The Kinks, Leslie Gore, Ari Up — most notably “Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand)” by the Shangri-Las (listen below) — and all of these tunes add to the timeless desert setting.

The film tugs love, music, and a sense of waiting in a space that is beyond any place. The film is very much about a sense of place, and in this case, it’s about an old house in a California desert. Characters, played by non actors, seem to pass time by idling along in the desert. Seemingly they are waiting for something, but we don’t know what. They smoke cigarettes, experiment on the cello, listen to music on an old tape player, carry wooden palettes, rummage and read.

A white sheet, introduced in the opening shot, is a motif that carry many a motif. A couple makes love on this sheet. In one scene, the couple is by this sheet, one lays and reads, the other walks up, stands, and takes a pee. They act as if they are far away, even though they are close. The actors seemingly are interchangeable, but they are acting out some sort of love story. A call and dance.

This is an energetic film with a punk-rock delight. Laida’s playful experimentation with framing, sound and image, diagetic and non-diagetic sound, creates a sleepy desert peace that soaks up sun and reflects light, much like the filmic white sheet. — AR

More:

http://laidalertxundi.net

“Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand)” by the Shangri-Las

Posted in avant-garde, experimental film, film, film stills and frame scans, reviews
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CHRIST CASTING OUT THE LEGION OF DEVILS by Bruce Conner

11 November, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

CHRIST CASTING OUT THE LEGION OF DEVILS, 1987, 2003 Tapestry 104.5 x 115 in. Edition of 6

“Bruce Conner’s innovative work in media as diverse as assemblage, drawing, collage, photography, and film has led to his recognition as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Conner’s work is often characterized by unexpected juxtapositions, from which relationships emerge between far-ranging cultural and historical fragments.

His tapestries were woven from digitally manipulated translations of small-scale paper collages; most of the images used in the collages were taken from old illustrated books on the New Testament, the life of Christ, or the Bible. The figures have been re-imagined as players in allegorical scenes, addressing themes of mortality and the relationship between medicine and myth. There is a sense of self-examination and emotional inquest throughout; when Donald Farnsworth asked Conner if one of the figures was a self-portrait, Conner replied, “All of them are me.” -Nick Stone

CHRIST CASTING OUT THE LEGION OF DEVILS is derived from the 5 1/4 x 6 1/16 inch paper collage of the same name by Bruce Conner, dated September 21, 1987. The collage was scanned and digitally edited by Bruce Conner and Donald Farnsworth at Magnolia Editions in Oakland, CA. The weave file was created by Donald Farnsworth using techniques developed by Donald Farnsworth and John Nava. It was woven on a Jacquard loom in Belgium with cotton threads.”

Source: Magnolia Editions

Posted in art, avant-garde, experimental film, film
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