Peter Tscherkassky's Train Again is showing exclusively on Mubi in most countries starting March 3, 2022 in the series Brief Encounters.Again A TRAINIt all began with a wonderful piece of found footage—as is so often the case with my films. Train Again was inspired by a 5-minute roll of 35mm film that a friend had discovered at a flea market and thoughtfully passed my way. It consisted of commercial rushes for our state-owned railway, presenting ten to twelve takes of a train emerging from a tunnel in the distance, gradually approaching and finally reaching the camera which in turn pans with the train as it speeds past and disappears into the distance—at the opposite end of the frame.Aside from the pan, the takes bear an unmistakable similarity to the Lumière brothers' L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat: What begins as a long shot of a...
- 2/28/2022
- MUBI
Full Bloom is a series, written by Patrick Holzapfel and illustrated by Ivana Miloš, that reconsiders plants in cinema. Directors have given certain flowers, trees or herbs special attention for many different reasons. It’s time to give them the credit they deserve and highlight their contributions to cinema, in full bloom.Illustration: Ivana Miloš, All My Life (2021), monotype, collage and gouache on paper, 33 x 24 cmIt never will rain roses: when we wantTo have more roses we must plant more trees. —George Eliot, "The Spanish Gypsy"A pan, a landscape, a song: this is all cinema needs. At least one is inclined to believe in such an assessment when confronted with the lush beauty of Bruce Baillie’s All My Life (1966). Recorded in a rush of inspiration at the side of a road in Caspar, California, the short consists of one continuous moving shot accompanied by Ella Fitzgerald singing “All My Life” on the soundtrack.
- 5/14/2021
- MUBI
Above: All My LifeFollowing the online presentations of the Ann Arbor, Oberhausen, and Images festivals, the San Francisco Cinematheque’s Crossroads festival is the latest experimental film showcase to go virtual in 2020. While the major international festivals take their own tentative steps into the brave new world of digital this month, these modest, more specialized events have already made commendable inroads into the realm of live-streaming and on-demand viewing. What’s at stake in each of these ventures is quite different, and worth outlining: whereas festivals like the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival work to combat piracy and appease the demands of sales companies with vested interest in who sees what movies when by limiting press accreditation and geo-blocking films by region, smaller festivals that focus on artists’ cinema have more ideological issues to consider. In this field, concerns over context and materiality take precedence...
- 9/23/2020
- MUBI
Opening four years ago in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Metrograph has been a bastion for cinephiles. Since the pandemic hit in mid-March, causing all movie theaters in the city and beyond to shut down and rethink their plans, this specific theater had been relatively quiet in what lies on the road ahead. Well, it turns out they were planning something quite exciting.
Metrograph has now launched Metrograph Digital, premiering this Friday, July 24. Available nationwide, it’s a membership-based program for $5 a month or $50 annually, with previous NYC-based members already included at no cost. The first initiative is Metrograph Live Screenings, “a celebration of communal movie watching” which features a specific time where films will screen digitally, and also include intros, pre-show material, and Q&As. These presentations will be available on a live stream player, watchable on any computer and mobile device, and connectable to TVs. If you miss the initial broadcast,...
Metrograph has now launched Metrograph Digital, premiering this Friday, July 24. Available nationwide, it’s a membership-based program for $5 a month or $50 annually, with previous NYC-based members already included at no cost. The first initiative is Metrograph Live Screenings, “a celebration of communal movie watching” which features a specific time where films will screen digitally, and also include intros, pre-show material, and Q&As. These presentations will be available on a live stream player, watchable on any computer and mobile device, and connectable to TVs. If you miss the initial broadcast,...
- 7/21/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The Metrograph, the four-year old New York City arthouse that established itself as a tastemaking film venue before being knocked sideways by Covid-19, has launched an ambitious online expansion.
Metrograph Digital will debut on Friday and will be available to anyone nationwide through an online membership program. For existing Metrograph members, there is no extra charge. New members will pay $5 a month or $50 a year. Viewers can access the streaming player through laptops or mobile devices and can “cast” the films to TV sets.
The first Metrograph Digital offering is Metrograph Live Screenings, a lineup developed and curated by the theater’s programming team. An official announcement promises “a celebration of communal movie watching,” with a rotating selection of new releases and repertory titles each week, opening at set showtimes. As is the case at the Ludlow Street location, the screenings will be accompanied by introductions, pre-show material and Q&As.
Metrograph Digital will debut on Friday and will be available to anyone nationwide through an online membership program. For existing Metrograph members, there is no extra charge. New members will pay $5 a month or $50 a year. Viewers can access the streaming player through laptops or mobile devices and can “cast” the films to TV sets.
The first Metrograph Digital offering is Metrograph Live Screenings, a lineup developed and curated by the theater’s programming team. An official announcement promises “a celebration of communal movie watching,” with a rotating selection of new releases and repertory titles each week, opening at set showtimes. As is the case at the Ludlow Street location, the screenings will be accompanied by introductions, pre-show material and Q&As.
- 7/20/2020
- by Dade Hayes
- Deadline Film + TV
As a “normal” moviegoing world continues remains uncertain, quick-thinking adaptation has become the name of the name. New York City’s Metrograph, both a beloved boutique theater and growing distribution label, is leaning into that ethos with the July 24 launch of its Metrograph Digital, a platform that seeks to combine the joy of in-person moviegoing with the safety of at-home viewing.
The first Metrograph Digital initiative set to roll out is Metrograph Live Screenings, which will unspool this week with “a rotating selection of new releases and repertory titles, opening at set showtimes, with introductions, pre-show material, and Q&As specific to every show.” The program will include works by Claire Denis, Éric Rohmer, St. Clair Bourne, Ulrike Ottinger, Alain Resnais, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Satoshi Kon, Laurie Anderson, and Manfred Kirchheimer. Starting July 31, photographer and activist Nan Goldin will become the first guest programmer with a new series crafted to accompany her latest film,...
The first Metrograph Digital initiative set to roll out is Metrograph Live Screenings, which will unspool this week with “a rotating selection of new releases and repertory titles, opening at set showtimes, with introductions, pre-show material, and Q&As specific to every show.” The program will include works by Claire Denis, Éric Rohmer, St. Clair Bourne, Ulrike Ottinger, Alain Resnais, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Satoshi Kon, Laurie Anderson, and Manfred Kirchheimer. Starting July 31, photographer and activist Nan Goldin will become the first guest programmer with a new series crafted to accompany her latest film,...
- 7/20/2020
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe U.S. poster for Albert Serra's provocative Liberté, which will make for some very pleasant at-home viewing when it opens at Film Society of Lincoln Center's Virtual Cinema on May 1st. Read our interview with Serra here.The Venice Film Festival has announced plans to proceed with this year's festivities in September despite health concerns, and that further plans will be unveiled in May. Recommended VIEWINGThe official international trailer for Gerardo Naranjo's Oaxaca-set Kokoloko, which follows "a would-be girl soldier ready to do anything to escape reality, and her lover who would kill for her." It is Naranjo's first film since 2011's Miss Bala.Recommended READINGAbove: Oscar Isaac, Willem Dafoe, and Paul Schrader on the set of The Card Counter. In a new interview with Vulture, Paul Schrader shares his thoughts on the future of movies,...
- 4/22/2020
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Nobuhiko Obayashi in his "humble workspace." (Photograph by Aiko Masubichi for Mubi.) We're devastated by the loss of three great titans within the last week, each totally singular and significant to the history of movies: Bruce Baillie, avant-garde filmmaker and founder of Canyon Cinema and the San Francisco Cinematheque, the prolific pacifist and green-screen master Nobuhiko Obayashi (whose penultimate film Hanagatami was featured on Mubi in January of 2019), and Pan-African cinema pioneer Sarah Maldoror, known for her portraits of women's role in African liberation struggles. The Cannes Film Festival, which earlier announced plans to postpone the festival until the end of June to early July, has confirmed that this will no longer be possible, and that the festivities can no longer take place in their "original form." Recommended VIEWINGThis Long Century, a digital...
- 4/15/2020
- MUBI
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Bam
A series on Czech titan Věra Chytilová has commenced.
Metrograph
King Hu’s The Fate of Lee Khan has been restored.
Films about Thelonious Monk play back-to-back.
Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant and a print of Cronenberg’s Spider can be seen.
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on Latin America’s recent sci-fi...
Bam
A series on Czech titan Věra Chytilová has commenced.
Metrograph
King Hu’s The Fate of Lee Khan has been restored.
Films about Thelonious Monk play back-to-back.
Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant and a print of Cronenberg’s Spider can be seen.
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on Latin America’s recent sci-fi...
- 4/12/2019
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Eye of the NeedleThe 2018 Nyff Projections series included six features, four featurettes, and 22 short films. That’s a grand total of 1,051 minutes of programming, or just over 17 and ½ hours of experimental cinema. Obviously, in that amount of time, one could watch a Lav Diaz film. But Projections offered considerably more variety, with highlights that included a sexually ambiguous footballer given to hallucinations of giant Pekingese puppies (Abrantes and Schmidt’s Diamantino); a corpulent French monarch writhing on the floor (Albert Serra’s Roi Soleil); two restored feminist classics from the 1980s that borrowed liberally from the aesthetics of children’s TV and classic game shows (Ericka Beckman’s Cinderella and You the Better); and an unconventional documentary about the legacy of radical psychoanalysis in Argentina (Dora García’s Segunda Vez). As one might expect, certain thematic similarities began to emerge among the various films, but those are probably as much...
- 10/23/2018
- MUBI
Part One of this series is about the origin of the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema (Rbmc). Part Two covers all the screenings in 1998.
Continuing into 1999 at the Collective Unconscious theater space in NYC, the Rbmc — co-programmed by Brian L. Frye and Bradley Eros — went on hiatus for the first week of the year, but resumed on January 12. Below is a list of screenings from then until a May 18 event that celebrated the Rbmc’s first full year of existence.
The films and filmmakers selected to screen by Frye and Eros represent an interesting time in the sphere of avant-garde and experimental cinema. Up until this point, there seemed to be a distinct separation between the formal style of, say, structuralism, and the more raucous, punk rock world of the “underground.” However, in the 1990s, these two worlds appear to be colliding. The Rbmc seemed just as content screening Hollis Frampton‘s Critical Mass (Feb.
Continuing into 1999 at the Collective Unconscious theater space in NYC, the Rbmc — co-programmed by Brian L. Frye and Bradley Eros — went on hiatus for the first week of the year, but resumed on January 12. Below is a list of screenings from then until a May 18 event that celebrated the Rbmc’s first full year of existence.
The films and filmmakers selected to screen by Frye and Eros represent an interesting time in the sphere of avant-garde and experimental cinema. Up until this point, there seemed to be a distinct separation between the formal style of, say, structuralism, and the more raucous, punk rock world of the “underground.” However, in the 1990s, these two worlds appear to be colliding. The Rbmc seemed just as content screening Hollis Frampton‘s Critical Mass (Feb.
- 6/17/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
After years of planning, the Anthology Film Archives first opened its doors in New York City towards the end of 1970. That opening came with great interest and fascination of how the world’s first “museum of film” was going to operate like no other theater before it.
Articles on the Anthology’s grand opening ran in both the New York Times and New York magazine in late November. Plus, the Anthology itself ran a full page ad in the Times with the screening calendar of its first four days. Through that printed material, those early days can be pretty well reconstructed.
The Anthology itself says that it opened its doors on November 30, 1970; but, according to an article in the Times the previous day by film critic Vincent Canby, that opening was an invitation-only event at which work by George Méliès, Joseph Cornell, Jerome Hill and Harry Smith was screened. Jonas Mekas...
Articles on the Anthology’s grand opening ran in both the New York Times and New York magazine in late November. Plus, the Anthology itself ran a full page ad in the Times with the screening calendar of its first four days. Through that printed material, those early days can be pretty well reconstructed.
The Anthology itself says that it opened its doors on November 30, 1970; but, according to an article in the Times the previous day by film critic Vincent Canby, that opening was an invitation-only event at which work by George Méliès, Joseph Cornell, Jerome Hill and Harry Smith was screened. Jonas Mekas...
- 6/2/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
In December 1966, the Canyon Cinema Cooperative in San Francisco, California published their first Catalogue of experimental and avant-garde films to rent. This was four years after the Film-Makers’ Cooperative had begun distributing underground films in New York City.
Canyon first listed films to rent in the November ’66 edition of their News newsletter, then published the catalog separately one month later. In the book Canyon Cinema, Scott MacDonald notes that the News listed just 31 filmmakers with films. Only six of them had multiple films listed; while the rest listed just a single film each.
The first standalone catalogue expanded on that first listing of filmmakers, but is still a modest publication at just sixteen pages, plus the covers. The catalogue includes 45 filmmakers — some are listed as pairs — and many more filmmakers have multiple films listed. For example, Larry Jordan has eight films listed, Robert Nelson six and Bruce Baillie four.
There...
Canyon first listed films to rent in the November ’66 edition of their News newsletter, then published the catalog separately one month later. In the book Canyon Cinema, Scott MacDonald notes that the News listed just 31 filmmakers with films. Only six of them had multiple films listed; while the rest listed just a single film each.
The first standalone catalogue expanded on that first listing of filmmakers, but is still a modest publication at just sixteen pages, plus the covers. The catalogue includes 45 filmmakers — some are listed as pairs — and many more filmmakers have multiple films listed. For example, Larry Jordan has eight films listed, Robert Nelson six and Bruce Baillie four.
There...
- 5/6/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
In 1976, a crudely published fanzine devoted to the experimental film scene made its debut. It was called Idiolects and the first issue offered a definition of its name: “An idiolect is the language of an individual at a particular time.” That definition certainly could be applied to both the filmmakers covered in the zine and to the writers who contributed articles.
Although not an official publication of New York City’s Collective for Living Cinema screening society, Idiolects was closely tied to the organization, offering a “temporary” publication address of 52 White Street, New York, 10013 in the indicia. That was the Collective’s then permanent screening space in 1976 after having bopped around Manhattan for several years prior.
In addition, the Living Cinema was formed in the early 1970s by students who had studied filmmaking at Binghamton University in upstate New York and then moved to New York City. While Idiolects #1 gives no clear main editorial voice,...
Although not an official publication of New York City’s Collective for Living Cinema screening society, Idiolects was closely tied to the organization, offering a “temporary” publication address of 52 White Street, New York, 10013 in the indicia. That was the Collective’s then permanent screening space in 1976 after having bopped around Manhattan for several years prior.
In addition, the Living Cinema was formed in the early 1970s by students who had studied filmmaking at Binghamton University in upstate New York and then moved to New York City. While Idiolects #1 gives no clear main editorial voice,...
- 3/19/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This is Part Two in a series of articles on the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema (Rbmc). As detailed in Part One, the Rbmc was an experimental film screening series in New York City, started by filmmaker Brian L. Frye.
Frye programmed the first screening on May 12, 1998 at the Collective Unconscious theater space. The screening included the feature-length documentary Underground by Emile de Antonio about the left-wing militant group the Weather Underground, and a kinoscope of Richard M. Nixon’s infamous “Checker’s Speech.” At the screening, fellow media artist Bradley Eros introduced himself to Frye and the pair co-programmed the Rbmc together for several years.
The goal of the screenings was to present work that typically wouldn’t be projected anywhere else, such as small gauge film formats and expanded cinema performances. The Rbmc would also host filmmakers in town for larger shows elsewhere in the city and asked them to screen their older,...
Frye programmed the first screening on May 12, 1998 at the Collective Unconscious theater space. The screening included the feature-length documentary Underground by Emile de Antonio about the left-wing militant group the Weather Underground, and a kinoscope of Richard M. Nixon’s infamous “Checker’s Speech.” At the screening, fellow media artist Bradley Eros introduced himself to Frye and the pair co-programmed the Rbmc together for several years.
The goal of the screenings was to present work that typically wouldn’t be projected anywhere else, such as small gauge film formats and expanded cinema performances. The Rbmc would also host filmmakers in town for larger shows elsewhere in the city and asked them to screen their older,...
- 2/4/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This is Part Two in a series about Chicago’s Experimental Film Coalition; and covers their screening series. You can read Part One here.
Formed in 1983, the Experimental Film Coalition started holding regular monthly screenings starting in 1984. The screenings brought to Chicago the work of independent, experimental filmmakers across the country, as well as screening local work.
Screenings were held at the Randolph Street Gallery, an alternative performance and exhibition space located at 756 N. Milwaukee Ave. The Gallery eventually closed down in 1998 and donated their archives to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; which exhibits some of the Coalition’s flyers on their website.
Below is a sample of screening information culled from those archives, listed in chronological order:
1984
March 23
2 Razor Blades, dir. Paul Sharits
Make Me Psychic, dir. Sally Cruikshank
Unsere Afrikareise, dir. Peter Kubelka
Roslyn Romance, dir. Bruce Baillie
Musical Poster #1, dir. Len Lye
April 27
Rainbow Dance,...
Formed in 1983, the Experimental Film Coalition started holding regular monthly screenings starting in 1984. The screenings brought to Chicago the work of independent, experimental filmmakers across the country, as well as screening local work.
Screenings were held at the Randolph Street Gallery, an alternative performance and exhibition space located at 756 N. Milwaukee Ave. The Gallery eventually closed down in 1998 and donated their archives to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; which exhibits some of the Coalition’s flyers on their website.
Below is a sample of screening information culled from those archives, listed in chronological order:
1984
March 23
2 Razor Blades, dir. Paul Sharits
Make Me Psychic, dir. Sally Cruikshank
Unsere Afrikareise, dir. Peter Kubelka
Roslyn Romance, dir. Bruce Baillie
Musical Poster #1, dir. Len Lye
April 27
Rainbow Dance,...
- 12/17/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
From the San Rafael Daily Independent Journal, November 25, 1965
Film Review
by John F. Kearney
Nearly every seat was taken five minutes before the start of the movie.
By the time the wall lights in the Gate Theater, Sausalito, were dimmed, a middle-aged couple had squeezed into the last remaining space, a few feet from the screen set up on the stage.
Whatever their motives, members of the audience were in high spirits to witness the arrival in Marin of an American phenomenon known as the Underground Cinema.
There were those curious to see movies made in cellars and back yards on a shoestring by arty people who, until a couple of years ago, expressed themselves only in the relatively introvert world of canvas and paint.
Then there was the fun crowd, anxious not to miss a thing considered “in,” even if it meant having its collective leg pulled from time to time.
Film Review
by John F. Kearney
Nearly every seat was taken five minutes before the start of the movie.
By the time the wall lights in the Gate Theater, Sausalito, were dimmed, a middle-aged couple had squeezed into the last remaining space, a few feet from the screen set up on the stage.
Whatever their motives, members of the audience were in high spirits to witness the arrival in Marin of an American phenomenon known as the Underground Cinema.
There were those curious to see movies made in cellars and back yards on a shoestring by arty people who, until a couple of years ago, expressed themselves only in the relatively introvert world of canvas and paint.
Then there was the fun crowd, anxious not to miss a thing considered “in,” even if it meant having its collective leg pulled from time to time.
- 11/11/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Breathdeath by Stan Vanderbeek (1963).
At the Exprmntl 3 film competition at Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium in 1963, Breathdeath tied for 2nd place with Gregory Markopoulos‘s Twice a Man. Both men took home $2,000 in prize money.
In An Introduction to the American Underground Film, Sheldon Renan classifies Breathdeath as a “protest film,” which was a minority of underground film genre at the time. Renan also describes Breathdeath as a “collage of film technique” and considers it Vanderbeek’s best film. Throughout the book, Renan gives different completion years, both 1963-64 and just 1964. Although, in the film’s on-screen text, Vanderbeek gave the film a 1963 copyright. (See below.) (Stephen Dwoskin’s Film Is also gives Breathdeath a completion year of 1964; as does the film’s listing on the Film-makers’ Coop website.)
According to a document published in Scott MacDonald’s Canyon Cinema, in 1970, Breathdeath was one of five films acquired by the Australian National Library’s study collection.
At the Exprmntl 3 film competition at Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium in 1963, Breathdeath tied for 2nd place with Gregory Markopoulos‘s Twice a Man. Both men took home $2,000 in prize money.
In An Introduction to the American Underground Film, Sheldon Renan classifies Breathdeath as a “protest film,” which was a minority of underground film genre at the time. Renan also describes Breathdeath as a “collage of film technique” and considers it Vanderbeek’s best film. Throughout the book, Renan gives different completion years, both 1963-64 and just 1964. Although, in the film’s on-screen text, Vanderbeek gave the film a 1963 copyright. (See below.) (Stephen Dwoskin’s Film Is also gives Breathdeath a completion year of 1964; as does the film’s listing on the Film-makers’ Coop website.)
According to a document published in Scott MacDonald’s Canyon Cinema, in 1970, Breathdeath was one of five films acquired by the Australian National Library’s study collection.
- 10/8/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
“Who could fail to sense the greatness of this art, in which the visible is the sign of the invisible?”—Jean GrémillonCinema is what you imagine, and what you imagine first, in the darkness where bundles of light thrown 24 times a second at a wall produce illusion, is movement, an electromagnetic record of the past conjured into motion by your mind’s eye. A vision. So cinema is alchemy, it’s mystery. Unlike television, which is ephemeral but endless, cinema is eternal yet ever ending. (Raúl Ruiz made an entire film from the short ends of another, and the studio system of Classic Hollywood was so dedicated to The End that it couldn’t go on.) Cinema is shadow, totality, the night.Not all film is cinema and not all cinema is poetry, but poetry in the movies is always cinema. And poetry is unknowable, like the films of Paul Clipson.
- 9/20/2017
- MUBI
It’s been an interesting run-up to the Toronto International Film Festival, and in terms of the survival of the species, the good ol’ U.S.A. has been something of a race to the bottom. What would do us in first: violent neo-Nazis whose activities are almost explicitly condoned by the Klansman In Chief? Or a 1,000-year weather event on the Gulf Coast whose magnitude surely owes something to global climate change, and whose aftermath of collapsing dams and exploding chemical factories has everything to do with systematic neglect?Given the state of things down here, who wouldn’t want to repair to Canada for some challenging cinema? As always, the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) is the place to be in September, and Wavelengths once again features the best of the fest. This is because the films selected for Wavelengths are the opposite of escapism. Whether they tackle...
- 9/7/2017
- MUBI
Camilo Restrepo's Impression of a War (2015) is playing August 10 - September 8, 2017 on Mubi in many countries around the world as part of the series Direct from Locarno.Like Shadows Growing as the Sun Goes DownThe characters in Camilo Restrepo’s films make art in the face of death. They are dancers, jugglers, tattoo artists, painters, and singers who collectively rise to exorcise hardships. Their journeys are chronicled in lucid, elliptical fashion by an artist whose handheld pursuits of people endow them with explosive and ethereal impressions of force and power.Restrepo was born in 1975 in Colombia, where he lived until a scholarship took him to Europe to study painting. His first three films were shot in his birth country on Super 8 and 16mm and additionally utilized digital archival materials to tell parts of the nation’s recent past in relation to its present time; his two subsequent films were...
- 8/21/2017
- MUBI
In 1966, as the underground film wave was sweeping the country, a Boston off-shoot of New York City’s Film-Makers’ Cinematheque opened at a performance space at 53 Berkeley Street. Underground films were shown on weeknights, while on the weekends the space transformed into a music venue called The Boston Tea Party.
The Cinematheque and the Tea Party were founded and run by a controversial figure named Mel Lyman, a harmonica player and the leader of a hippie commune in Boston’s Fort Hill neighborhood. Lyman has also been considered a cult leader on par with Charles Manson, except Lyman’s followers never actually murdered anyone. According to the book Apocalypse Culture, Lyman claimed to be an extraterrestrial and was seemingly obsessed with “ruling” the country’s underground culture.
Whatever Lyman’s background, the Cinematheque showed some cool films, according to the actual flyers from that time period below. Click each poster...
The Cinematheque and the Tea Party were founded and run by a controversial figure named Mel Lyman, a harmonica player and the leader of a hippie commune in Boston’s Fort Hill neighborhood. Lyman has also been considered a cult leader on par with Charles Manson, except Lyman’s followers never actually murdered anyone. According to the book Apocalypse Culture, Lyman claimed to be an extraterrestrial and was seemingly obsessed with “ruling” the country’s underground culture.
Whatever Lyman’s background, the Cinematheque showed some cool films, according to the actual flyers from that time period below. Click each poster...
- 8/6/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Quixote by Bruce Baillie. Finished most likely in 1965, but sources place year range 1964-1967. In Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney says the film was “revised” in 1967; while in his “Movie Journal” column, Jonas Mekas wrote that the “final version” of Quixote was screened in New York City in 1968. An article in the Film Culture triple issue 67-68-69 also makes the claims that the film was “finished” (year not given), then revised in 1967; with the final version finally reaching NYC in 1968.
The version of Quixote embedded above comes via Bruce Baillie‘s own YouTube account; and, according to some new end credits, is a digital remastering of the original.
In the book Canyon Cinema, author Scott MacDonald reprints a letter written by Baillie published in the May 1965 issue of Canyon Cinema’s Cinemanews newsletter in which Baillie discusses the filming of Quixote. He writes about traveling through Nevada; Montana; Alberta,...
The version of Quixote embedded above comes via Bruce Baillie‘s own YouTube account; and, according to some new end credits, is a digital remastering of the original.
In the book Canyon Cinema, author Scott MacDonald reprints a letter written by Baillie published in the May 1965 issue of Canyon Cinema’s Cinemanews newsletter in which Baillie discusses the filming of Quixote. He writes about traveling through Nevada; Montana; Alberta,...
- 7/10/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
From the Austin Daily Texan, September 22, 1966
Film-Makers’ Co-Op Shows ‘The Wild One’
The Gulf Coast Film-Makers’ Co-Op, an off campus student organization, will inaugurate its Film Factory at 8 p.m., Friday.
Founded to encourage student film-making, Film-Makers’ Co-Op is a result of interest among university students for a place to show and make films. Spokesmen cite the fact that at present there isn’t any University course for the beginning student who wants to make creative films, and of the two courses devoted to film on campus, both are oriented for radio and TV majors.
The Group has received support from the New American Cinema groups on both east and west coasts. Independent film-makers like Bruce Baillie and Robert Nelson from California have provided films for the first program. In New York, Pop Artist Andy Warhol will provide his newest film, “Camp” with Baby Jane Holzer and Jack Smith, for...
Film-Makers’ Co-Op Shows ‘The Wild One’
The Gulf Coast Film-Makers’ Co-Op, an off campus student organization, will inaugurate its Film Factory at 8 p.m., Friday.
Founded to encourage student film-making, Film-Makers’ Co-Op is a result of interest among university students for a place to show and make films. Spokesmen cite the fact that at present there isn’t any University course for the beginning student who wants to make creative films, and of the two courses devoted to film on campus, both are oriented for radio and TV majors.
The Group has received support from the New American Cinema groups on both east and west coasts. Independent film-makers like Bruce Baillie and Robert Nelson from California have provided films for the first program. In New York, Pop Artist Andy Warhol will provide his newest film, “Camp” with Baby Jane Holzer and Jack Smith, for...
- 7/8/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?May is an interesting time for a film festival. In a sense, the calendar year for cinema is starting over in May, since that’s when two major international festivals occur—Cannes and Oberhausen. Where Cannes showcases the latest work from global arthouse auteurs—your Almodóvars and von Triers and Hanekes and the like—Oberhausen specifically focuses on short films, some of them by the world’s most prominent avant-garde filmmakers. A significant portion of what screens at both Cannes and Oberhausen will set the agenda for other film festivals in the coming year, in terms of which films and filmmakers ought to be shown.San Francisco’s Crossroads happens during May as well, and this puts it in a unique position with respect to other, larger festivals. Artistic director Steve Polta is able to assemble an experimental film festival comprised of older,...
- 5/19/2017
- MUBI
Bruce Baillie. Courtesy of Lux. The first time he saw Bruce Baillie, a fiery Peter Kubelka recounted in front of an amused audience at the Austrian Film Museum, the American filmmaker was pulling off a headstand in a classroom before taking his students out on the campus to collect garbage. In the filmmaking of Baillie and his organization Canyon Cinema, which was showcased from January 30 to February 3 in five programs curated by Garbiñe Ortega, ideas of life and community are transformed into sounds, colors and film. Sometimes those ideas exceed the films. As Mr. Baillie has put it himself in an interview with Richard Corliss in 1971, “I always felt that I brought as much truth out of the environment as I could, but I’m tired of coming out of. . . . I want everybody really lost, and I want us all to be at home there. Something like that. Actually I am not interested in that,...
- 3/21/2017
- MUBI
Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.NEWSLa chinoiseSay what? The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius is slated to make a drama out of the relationship between French New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard and his actress/muse-one-time-wife Anne Wiazemsky around the time of Godard's 1967 film, La chinoise. Sounds potentially horrible, but it is officially based on Wiazemsky's memoir Un an après. In a bizarre generational echo, Louis Garrel, so well known for embodying his father, director Philippe Garrel, in is set to star as Godard.We keep waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Terrence Malick long-in-the-making IMAX documentary, Voyage of Time. Now The Film Stage has found reference to an October theatrical release date. We'll believe it when we see it, but here's hoping.After Gavin Smith left editorship of Film Comment magazine, the Film Society of Lincoln...
- 5/4/2016
- MUBI
Art of the Real, a film series showcasing nonfiction work from around the world, remains and continues to be the most essential film event for serious and adventurous cinephiles. Once again, curated by venerable Dennis Lim and Racheal Rakes, Fslc is presenting the most impressive lineup yet: new works from Roberto Minervini, Ben Rivers, José Luis Guerin and Thom Andersen, among others. Tirelessly testing the boundaries of cinema, art and reality, these films assure me that cinema still is an artistic medium with much more to explore for a long time to come. This year, they are also highlighting American avant-garde giant Bruce Baillie's films, organized by Garbiñe Ortega. The selection of Baillie's films in this year's Art of the Real pays homage to his...
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- 4/7/2016
- Screen Anarchy
Engram of ReturningThe selection at this year’s installation of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real film festival, an annual showcase dedicated to conveying the spectrum of nonfiction filmmaking, are an intriguing bunch culled from a variety of seemingly opposing cultures, yet still exhibiting a fascination with interrogating the past. That this fixation is explored through a miscellany of aesthetic methods is only testament to the veracity of the festival’s undertaking.As this year’s sidebar retrospective of avant-garde giant Bruce Baillie’s work evinces, the nuances and vagaries of the term ‘“nonfiction” allow for fruitful pairings of works that continue the lineage of the abstract, non-narrative work that comes to define our idea of the American avant-garde with those of more familiar documentary tendencies. Daïchi Saïto’s superlative Engram of Returning, playing as part of the second shorts program,is certainly the film...
- 4/7/2016
- by Eric Barroso
- MUBI
Flicker Alley's posted a round of essays and interviews in conjunction with its release of its collection of American avant-garde works on DVD and Blu-ray. Discussed here are Stan Brakhage, Bruce Baillie, Lawrence Jordan, Joseph Cornell, Maya Deren, Shirley Clarke and more. Also in today's roundup: Books on Werner Herzog, Groucho Marx, Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, David Hare and Christopher Isherwood; new Film-Philosophy essays on Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse, Busby Berkeley, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox and Samuel Beckett. And more. » - David Hudson...
- 12/24/2015
- Keyframe
Flicker Alley's posted a round of essays and interviews in conjunction with its release of its collection of American avant-garde works on DVD and Blu-ray. Discussed here are Stan Brakhage, Bruce Baillie, Lawrence Jordan, Joseph Cornell, Maya Deren, Shirley Clarke and more. Also in today's roundup: Books on Werner Herzog, Groucho Marx, Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, David Hare and Christopher Isherwood; new Film-Philosophy essays on Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse, Busby Berkeley, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox and Samuel Beckett. And more. » - David Hudson...
- 12/24/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.NEWSFinally! New to the Criterion Collection is Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer's Day, one of the most important yet hard-to-see films of the 1990s. Also included in the recent announcement were Jacques Rivette's Paris Belongs to Us and Les Blank's A Poem Is a Naked Person.There's a new Kickstarter for "first publication on the films of Ola Balogun, the pioneer of Nigerian cinema, analysing/discovering his magical cinema."FESTIVALSThe Berlin International Film Festival Poster: The Golden Bear on the prowl! Meanwhile, more films for the Berlinale have been announced, as well as the theme—"Traversing the Phantasm"—for the essential Forum Expanded section.The 2016 Locarno Film Festival isn't until next August but we're already tantalized for their newly revealed retrospective, "Beloved and Rejected," dedicated to post-WW2 German...
- 12/23/2015
- by Notebook
- MUBI
In today's overview of new issues of film magazines and journals, we point to tributes to the late Chantal Akerman from Cinema Scope, Senses of Cinema and, in frieze, James Benning, Jem Cohen, Tacita Dean, Chris Dercon, Joanna Hogg, Sharon Lockhart and more. Among the dossiers in several issues: Pier Paolo Pasolini, William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives and Bruce Baillie and Paul Sharits. Quentin Tarantino is ushered into Senses' Great Directors Database. Adrian Martin writes about Maurice Pialat and Manny Farber. Kent Jones discusses "The Films in My Life" and his own documentary, Hitchcock/Truffaut. And much, much more. » - David Hudson...
- 12/22/2015
- Keyframe
In today's overview of new issues of film magazines and journals, we point to tributes to the late Chantal Akerman from Cinema Scope, Senses of Cinema and, in frieze, James Benning, Jem Cohen, Tacita Dean, Chris Dercon, Joanna Hogg, Sharon Lockhart and more. Among the dossiers in several issues: Pier Paolo Pasolini, William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives and Bruce Baillie and Paul Sharits. Quentin Tarantino is ushered into Senses' Great Directors Database. Adrian Martin writes about Maurice Pialat and Manny Farber. Kent Jones discusses "The Films in My Life" and his own documentary, Hitchcock/Truffaut. And much, much more. » - David Hudson...
- 12/22/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
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,...
- 10/6/2015
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Youth On The MARCHThere are 48 individual films screening in the Wavelengths section of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The relative importance of this section, amidst the vast array of offerings in this relatively huge festival, depends on your taste in movies, of course, to say nothing of your specific objectives. If you’re coming to Toronto to try to score a hot tip in this year’s Oscar race, well . . . I feel sorry for you on a number of levels. But Wavelengths is unlikely to be your jam. Originally conceived exclusively as a showcase for experimental and non-narrative films (hence the section’s title, a direct tribute to avant-garde master and Toronto native son Michael Snow), Wavelengths now encompasses the edgier, less commercial side of art cinema. This is the first of two preview essays, and my aim is to cover everything in the section. These are the...
- 9/12/2015
- by Michael Sicinski
- MUBI
The 52nd annual Ann Arbor Film Festival will be a jam-packed experimental feature and short film screening event running for six days and nights, this time on March 25-30.
Opening Night will feature a reception and an after-party, and stuffed between those will be a block of nine short films, including new ones by Bryan Boyce, Michael Robinson, Jennifer Reeder and Martha Colburn, as well as a never-before-released work by the legendary Bruce Baillie called Little Girl in which Baillie captured scenes of natural beauty.
Special Events scattered throughout the festival include a retrospective of indie filmmaker Penelope Spheeris that will feature her rock ‘n’ roll-based work, including the original The Decline of Western Civilization, plus The Decline of Western Civilization Part III, her influential punk film Suburbia (screening twice) and a collection of short films.
There will also be several films and presentations by filmmaking scholar Thom Andersen, such...
Opening Night will feature a reception and an after-party, and stuffed between those will be a block of nine short films, including new ones by Bryan Boyce, Michael Robinson, Jennifer Reeder and Martha Colburn, as well as a never-before-released work by the legendary Bruce Baillie called Little Girl in which Baillie captured scenes of natural beauty.
Special Events scattered throughout the festival include a retrospective of indie filmmaker Penelope Spheeris that will feature her rock ‘n’ roll-based work, including the original The Decline of Western Civilization, plus The Decline of Western Civilization Part III, her influential punk film Suburbia (screening twice) and a collection of short films.
There will also be several films and presentations by filmmaking scholar Thom Andersen, such...
- 3/18/2014
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Iconic underground filmmaker, and the founder of the underground filmmaking movement in San Francisco in the early 1960s, Bruce Baillie made an appearance at a two-night retrospective of his work at Los Angeles’s Redcat Theater on November 3 & 4. The Underground Film Journal attended the second night of screenings, from which the photograph above and the ones in the gallery below were taken.
The November 3 screening, which the Journal missed, included Baillie’s films Here I Am (1962), Tung (1966), All My Life (1966), Castro Street (1966), Valentin de las Sierras (1968), Little Girl (1966).
The November 4 screening was of Baillie’s feature-length epic, Quick Billy (1970), plus the short film Roslyn Romance (1977) and some unedited 16mm camera rolls taken around the time of the production of Quick Billy.
While Quick Billy is an astounding piece of film art, the real highlight of the Nov. 4 screening was the appearance of Baillie himself, who spoke for what seemed about an hour before the film.
The November 3 screening, which the Journal missed, included Baillie’s films Here I Am (1962), Tung (1966), All My Life (1966), Castro Street (1966), Valentin de las Sierras (1968), Little Girl (1966).
The November 4 screening was of Baillie’s feature-length epic, Quick Billy (1970), plus the short film Roslyn Romance (1977) and some unedited 16mm camera rolls taken around the time of the production of Quick Billy.
While Quick Billy is an astounding piece of film art, the real highlight of the Nov. 4 screening was the appearance of Baillie himself, who spoke for what seemed about an hour before the film.
- 11/5/2013
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The Ann Arbor Film Festival, having survived their half-a-century blowout in 2012, is back with another rip-roarin’ 51st edition in 2013, which will run from March 19-24, screening a mind-boggling amount of experimental short films and a few features.
Highlights of the fest include:
Special presentations by this year’s jurors, including Marcin Gizycki round-up of Polish animation from the 1950s to the present; Laida Lertxundi’s selection of some of her films as well as her biggest influences; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s mini-retrospective of his own films.
There’s also special tributes to Pat O’Neill, including a retrospective of his short films from the ’70s to the present as well as a screening of his 1989 35mm experimental epic Water and Power; Suzan Pitt, with selections of short films from her career; and a screening of Ken Burns’ latest doc The Central Park Five, co-directed with his daughter Sarah Burns and son-in-law David McMahon,...
Highlights of the fest include:
Special presentations by this year’s jurors, including Marcin Gizycki round-up of Polish animation from the 1950s to the present; Laida Lertxundi’s selection of some of her films as well as her biggest influences; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s mini-retrospective of his own films.
There’s also special tributes to Pat O’Neill, including a retrospective of his short films from the ’70s to the present as well as a screening of his 1989 35mm experimental epic Water and Power; Suzan Pitt, with selections of short films from her career; and a screening of Ken Burns’ latest doc The Central Park Five, co-directed with his daughter Sarah Burns and son-in-law David McMahon,...
- 3/19/2013
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
There was plenty of discussion across the movie blogosphere following last week's announcement that Vertigo had dethroned Citizen Kane as the greatest film of all time according to Sight & Sound's decennial poll. In addition to revealing the top 50 as determined by critics, they also provided a top 10 based on a separate poll for directors only. In the print version of the magazine, they have taken it a step further by reprinting some of the individual top 10 lists from the filmmakers who participated, and we now have some of them here for your perusal. Among them, we have lists from legends like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Quentin Tarantino, but there are also some unexpected newcomers who took part including Richard Ayoade (Submarine), Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know) and Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene). Some of these lists aren't all that surprising (both Quentin Tarantino...
- 8/6/2012
- by Sean
- FilmJunk
Photo courtesy of Abby Rose Photography.
This year marked the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which would be a milestone for any cinema-related event in the U.S. But for a festival that has carved out a niche in the area of experimental and avant-garde film and video, Aaff's achievement is especially noteworthy. Even within the rarefied realm of cinephilia, the avant-garde tends to be something on the margins, or even in the best of circumstances (e.g., the Rotterdam, New York, or Toronto film festivals) one part of a much larger whole. So the fact that Ann Arbor and its intrepid citizens have continued to support this strange little festival, and all the bizarre films the festival has thrown their way over the years, speaks very highly of both the town and the festival founders and organizers (many of whom were present for an on-stage birthday ceremony,...
This year marked the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which would be a milestone for any cinema-related event in the U.S. But for a festival that has carved out a niche in the area of experimental and avant-garde film and video, Aaff's achievement is especially noteworthy. Even within the rarefied realm of cinephilia, the avant-garde tends to be something on the margins, or even in the best of circumstances (e.g., the Rotterdam, New York, or Toronto film festivals) one part of a much larger whole. So the fact that Ann Arbor and its intrepid citizens have continued to support this strange little festival, and all the bizarre films the festival has thrown their way over the years, speaks very highly of both the town and the festival founders and organizers (many of whom were present for an on-stage birthday ceremony,...
- 5/7/2012
- MUBI
Yesterday was all about the Cannes lineup, so we've got quite a bit of news to catch up with today. First and foremost, Cinema Scope has relaunched its site with a healthy selection of pieces from Issue 50, which cinephiles lucky enough to be holding a print copy have been talking about for weeks now. Editor Mark Peranson: "So to commemorate 50 issues, I came up with the silly (not stupid) idea of deciding on the best 50 filmmakers currently working under the age of 50 (or the top, or the greatest — I've spent far too much time pondering this silly adjective). I'm anticipating heaps of criticism for this in the blogosphere, but I hope this leads to a little discussion outside of the pages of this magazine, and provides a snapshot of where cinema finds itself today."
20 of those 50 pieces are online. You'll find, for example, Raya Martin on Carlos Reygadas (and...
20 of those 50 pieces are online. You'll find, for example, Raya Martin on Carlos Reygadas (and...
- 4/20/2012
- MUBI
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival and they’re preparing an all-out blowout on March 27 to April 1 to celebrate! The fest is crammed to the gills with the latest and greatest in experimental and avant-garde film, in addition to a celebration of classic work from Ann Arbors past.
Filmmaker Bruce Baillie was there at the first Aaff — and numerous times since. He’s back this year with a major retrospective of his entire career that spans three separate programs. Baillie, who’ll be in attendance of course, will present a brand-new restored version of his epic pseudo-Western Quick Billy, plus screenings of his classic short movies such as Castro Street, Yellow Horse, Quixote, To Parsifal and more.
There’s also a program dedicated to the films of the late Robert Nelson, including Bleu Shut and Special Warning, as well as sprinklings of underground classics throughout...
Filmmaker Bruce Baillie was there at the first Aaff — and numerous times since. He’s back this year with a major retrospective of his entire career that spans three separate programs. Baillie, who’ll be in attendance of course, will present a brand-new restored version of his epic pseudo-Western Quick Billy, plus screenings of his classic short movies such as Castro Street, Yellow Horse, Quixote, To Parsifal and more.
There’s also a program dedicated to the films of the late Robert Nelson, including Bleu Shut and Special Warning, as well as sprinklings of underground classics throughout...
- 3/7/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
With the Ann Arbor Film Festival holding its 50th anniversary in 2012 on March 24 to April 1, the fest has already lined up a fantastic set of special programs to celebrate.
Previously, it has already been announced that underground film icon Bruce Baillie will be in attendance to screen three separate programs of his work that spans his fifty-plus year career. Baillie has had a long relationship with Aaff, initially screening his films at the fest’s inaugural edition in 1963.
Joining Baillie this year will be feminist filmmaking trailblazer, Barbara Hammer, who will host a retrospective of her own films on Wednesday, March 28 as part of Aaff’s Out Night. Aaff will also be honoring the late Robert Nelson, who just passed away in January, with a selection of his films curated by Mark Toscano, a close friend of Nelson’s and an archivist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Previously, it has already been announced that underground film icon Bruce Baillie will be in attendance to screen three separate programs of his work that spans his fifty-plus year career. Baillie has had a long relationship with Aaff, initially screening his films at the fest’s inaugural edition in 1963.
Joining Baillie this year will be feminist filmmaking trailblazer, Barbara Hammer, who will host a retrospective of her own films on Wednesday, March 28 as part of Aaff’s Out Night. Aaff will also be honoring the late Robert Nelson, who just passed away in January, with a selection of his films curated by Mark Toscano, a close friend of Nelson’s and an archivist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
- 2/15/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Bruce Baillie, one of the leading figures in underground film history, will be attending this year’s Ann Arbor Film Festival as part of the fest’s 50th anniversary spectacular on March 27 to April 1. He will be at the event to present three programs of his work.
Baillie has had a long association with the Aaff, having screened a mini then-retrospective of his films at the festival’s very first year in 1963.
In addition to making classic avant-garde films such as To Parsifal (1963), Quick Billy (1971) and Castro Street (1966), Baillie was also the founder of the Canyon Cinema distribution cooperative and a co-founder of the San Francisco Cinematheque.
For their 50th anniversary, Aaff will be inviting several returning filmmakers to participate in the celebration.
Baillie has had a long association with the Aaff, having screened a mini then-retrospective of his films at the festival’s very first year in 1963.
In addition to making classic avant-garde films such as To Parsifal (1963), Quick Billy (1971) and Castro Street (1966), Baillie was also the founder of the Canyon Cinema distribution cooperative and a co-founder of the San Francisco Cinematheque.
For their 50th anniversary, Aaff will be inviting several returning filmmakers to participate in the celebration.
- 1/25/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
©Paramount Pictures
“My momma always said, .Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get..” That line was immortalized by Tom Hanks in the award-winning movie “Forest Gump” in 1994. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today selected that film and 24 others to be preserved as cultural, artistic and historical treasures in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
Spanning the period 1912-1994, the films named to the registry include Hollywood classics, documentaries, animation, home movies, avant-garde shorts and experimental motion pictures. Representing the rich creative and cultural diversity of the American cinematic experience, the selections range from Walt Disney.s timeless classic “Bambi” and Billy Wilder.s “The Lost Weekend,” a landmark film about the devastating effects of alcoholism, to a real-life drama between a U.S. president and a governor over the desegregation of the University of Alabama. The selections also...
“My momma always said, .Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get..” That line was immortalized by Tom Hanks in the award-winning movie “Forest Gump” in 1994. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today selected that film and 24 others to be preserved as cultural, artistic and historical treasures in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
Spanning the period 1912-1994, the films named to the registry include Hollywood classics, documentaries, animation, home movies, avant-garde shorts and experimental motion pictures. Representing the rich creative and cultural diversity of the American cinematic experience, the selections range from Walt Disney.s timeless classic “Bambi” and Billy Wilder.s “The Lost Weekend,” a landmark film about the devastating effects of alcoholism, to a real-life drama between a U.S. president and a governor over the desegregation of the University of Alabama. The selections also...
- 12/28/2011
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
I’m never one to put significant stock in the film-based choices made by any kind of committee — be it an awards group, critics circle, soup kitchen line, etc. — but the National Film Registry is a little different. Not that they’re any different than those aforementioned organization types, but because the government assemblage preserves works deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” No small potatoes.
Their latest list — created for both public awareness and the opportunity to grumble, as I’ll do in a second — has been unveiled, and the selections are none too out-of-left-field. The biggest of these 25 would have to be Forrest Gump, a choice I fully understand but completely disagree with on an opinion and moral scale. The only other true objection I can raise is toward El Mariachi, film school-level junk from a director whose finest works are the direct result of working with those more talented.
Their latest list — created for both public awareness and the opportunity to grumble, as I’ll do in a second — has been unveiled, and the selections are none too out-of-left-field. The biggest of these 25 would have to be Forrest Gump, a choice I fully understand but completely disagree with on an opinion and moral scale. The only other true objection I can raise is toward El Mariachi, film school-level junk from a director whose finest works are the direct result of working with those more talented.
- 12/28/2011
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
The National Film Preservation Foundation has recently announced that they will be producing a second DVD set of avant-garde short films that will be released in 2013. The box set will be entitled Treasures 6: Next Wave Avant-Garde and will explore “how avant-garde film took root and spread after the 1950s as the next generation embraced diversity and forged connections with conceptual and performance art.”
Treasures 6 is the follow-up project to the amazing Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986 that the Nfpf released in 2009. This new collection will include 5 1/2 hours of about two-dozen films on a 2-disc set. Although no specific film titles that will be included on Treasures 6 have been announced yet, the Nfpf says that none of these films have ever been released on DVD before and that many of them have not even been available as good quality prints for many years.
The films chosen will come from...
Treasures 6 is the follow-up project to the amazing Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986 that the Nfpf released in 2009. This new collection will include 5 1/2 hours of about two-dozen films on a 2-disc set. Although no specific film titles that will be included on Treasures 6 have been announced yet, the Nfpf says that none of these films have ever been released on DVD before and that many of them have not even been available as good quality prints for many years.
The films chosen will come from...
- 12/8/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
"It seems curious that as little biographical information exists in the recent books about the ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner as in his movies featured in the partial retrospective of his work starting today at Film Forum," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "For much of a career that has spanned more than a half-century and circumnavigated the globe, Mr Gardner has trained the camera on people whose lives, rituals, beliefs and bodily ornamentation can seem so far from early-21st-century Western life as to be from another galaxy. Yet despite Mr Gardner's seeming reluctance to share personal details, the work in Robert Gardner: Artist/Ethnographer makes it clear that he's been telling his own story all along."
J Hoberman in the Voice: "A man of many worlds, Robert Gardner is a descendent of Boston aristocrat Isabella Stewart Gardner (as in the Museum), the founder (and funder) of Harvard's Film Study Center,...
J Hoberman in the Voice: "A man of many worlds, Robert Gardner is a descendent of Boston aristocrat Isabella Stewart Gardner (as in the Museum), the founder (and funder) of Harvard's Film Study Center,...
- 11/12/2011
- MUBI
"Roughly two years after her passing, the first of filmmaker Chick Strand's unfinished films, Señora con flores (Woman with Flowers, 1995/2011), will come to light on Monday at Redcat (co-presented with Los Angeles Filmforum), anchoring a program of classic Strand shorts that have been newly restored by the Pacific Film Archive and the Academy Film Archive." Kevin McGarry for Artforum: "Technically the screening is a 'precursor' to Los Angeles Filmforum's year-long series tracking midcentury Southern California experimental film for Pacific Standard Time, and it's fitting that the cinema arm of the chronophilic behemoth should dawn with Strand. For one, she was a cofounder of the vital Bay Area distributor Canyon Cinema. For another, she was an artist who clung enduringly to the present — an inclination that fills her work with halcyon poignance."
Karina Longworth in the La Weekly: "Shot in Mexico in the 80s (on one of the many trips...
Karina Longworth in the La Weekly: "Shot in Mexico in the 80s (on one of the many trips...
- 9/26/2011
- MUBI
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