Prismatic Ground is becoming a must-attend filmmaker-centered showcase on the rise for underground documentaries, avant-garde, and experimental cinema in the heart of New York City. Founded by Maysles Documentary Center co-programming director Inney Prakash, the initial virtual festival counter-responded to the approaches of many institutions that have inadequately handled virtual exhibitions and poorly supported artists. Prismatic Ground pays filmmakers screening fees, doesn’t divide features and shorts via “waves,” and merges early career and established voices in its accessible presentation of politically engaged, personal, and speculative imagery.
As this hybrid festival adapts the in-person components each subsequent year, the 3rd Prismatic Ground will present works at the Museum of the Moving Image, Maysles Documentary Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Dctv’s Firehouse Cinema, Light Industry, and Anthology Film Archives with limited selections available online.
Taking place May 3-7, check out our picks to see below and learn more here.
Hello Dankness (Soda Jerk)
The 2016 U.
As this hybrid festival adapts the in-person components each subsequent year, the 3rd Prismatic Ground will present works at the Museum of the Moving Image, Maysles Documentary Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Dctv’s Firehouse Cinema, Light Industry, and Anthology Film Archives with limited selections available online.
Taking place May 3-7, check out our picks to see below and learn more here.
Hello Dankness (Soda Jerk)
The 2016 U.
- 5/1/2023
- by Edward Frumkin
- The Film Stage
Since the creation of the camera and the dawn of cinema, film has been one long experiment. Experimental film has often been defined through its rejection of traditional storytelling and structure, its defiance of logic or reason while creating mesmerizing scenes through dreamlike abstraction and subjective narrative.
A key figure in the early history of experimental film was the French filmmaker Georges Méliès. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Méliès was one of the first filmmakers to use special effects and trick photography to create fantastical and surreal images on the screen. His films, such as A Trip to the Moon and The Impossible Voyage, were some of the first examples of what would later be called experimental film. Another important trailblazer during the silent era was female director Lois Weber who is credited in creating an estimated 200 to 400 films. She was credited with pioneering the use of the...
A key figure in the early history of experimental film was the French filmmaker Georges Méliès. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Méliès was one of the first filmmakers to use special effects and trick photography to create fantastical and surreal images on the screen. His films, such as A Trip to the Moon and The Impossible Voyage, were some of the first examples of what would later be called experimental film. Another important trailblazer during the silent era was female director Lois Weber who is credited in creating an estimated 200 to 400 films. She was credited with pioneering the use of the...
- 1/19/2023
- by Robert Lang
- Deadline Film + TV
The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Above: Hour Glass (1971)Film scholar Clyde Taylor coined the name "L.A. Rebellion” for a retrospective of the Black cinema made at UCLA between the 1960s and 80s that was held at the Whitney Museum in 1986. The name conflates the filmmakers’ radical aesthetics with the Watts Rebellion and Black Power and Civil Rights Movements. It does not account for the Asian, Latinx, Native American and white film students who also sought styles outside the Hollywood formula, and remains a point of contention for some of those Black filmmakers it gathers under one denomination. “Rebellion” suggests a collective response to the status quo, rather than a series of independent expressions with diverse influences and motivations. But the slogan stuck, and, for better or worse, remains the most common calling card for a...
- 2/3/2021
- MUBI
As I said, when I hosted one of screening before of the L.A. Rebellion black film series a few weeks ago, when it came to black filmmakers, these were the black filmmakers I knew and who inspired me before other more famous black filmmakers attracted the public’s attention. Long before Spike lee, Reginald Hudlin John Singleton, Antoine Fuqua, just to name a few, black cinema was defined by the works of Julie Dash, Haile Gerima, Zeinabu irene Davis Charles Burnett , Ben Caldwell, Barbara McCullough (pictured above) Billy Woodberry and Larry Clark just to name a few as well. They were all, at one time during the early 70’s to the mid-1980’s, film students at UCLA...
- 5/24/2013
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
The National Film Preservation Foundation and The Film Foundation have awarded their annual Avant-Garde Masters Grants for 2012. The overall grant award, which equals $50,000, will help restore and preserve an impressive selection of classic experimental and avant-garde films from the 1950s and ’60s by five legendary underground filmmakers: Mike Kuchar, Gregory Markopoulos, Ian Hugo, Aldo Tambellini and Jud Yalkut.
This year’s grant award will be split among five different archivist organizations, each one working on a different filmmaker’s work.
Three filmmakers will have one film each preserved: The Temenos will be preserving Cycle VII of Gregory J. Markopoulos’ epic 22-cycle film Eniaios; Anthology Film Archives will be preserving one of Mike Kuchar‘s more obscure works, Green Desire (1965); and the Trisha Brown Dance Company will be preserving Jud Yalkut’s Planes (1968), which features choreography by Trisha Brown.
Meanwhile, the Library of Congress has been awarded the opportunity to preserve...
This year’s grant award will be split among five different archivist organizations, each one working on a different filmmaker’s work.
Three filmmakers will have one film each preserved: The Temenos will be preserving Cycle VII of Gregory J. Markopoulos’ epic 22-cycle film Eniaios; Anthology Film Archives will be preserving one of Mike Kuchar‘s more obscure works, Green Desire (1965); and the Trisha Brown Dance Company will be preserving Jud Yalkut’s Planes (1968), which features choreography by Trisha Brown.
Meanwhile, the Library of Congress has been awarded the opportunity to preserve...
- 4/18/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
March 11
7:30 p.m.
Egyptian Theater
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Hosted by: L.A. Filmforum
As part of the Alternative Projections historical project, the L.A. Filmforum presents a selection of short movies from the 1970s directed by African-American filmmakers based in Los Angeles. Filmmakers included in the lineup include Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Ben Caldwell, Jamaa Fanaka and more. Caldwell, who will be in attendance, and Adam Hyman have curated this screening.
Through the Ethno-Communications Program begun in 1968, the film school at UCLA began building up a strong minority presence within its student body. In a few years, there was a significant number of African-American filmmakers that was dubbed the “La. Rebellion” by essayist Ntongela Masilela.
This group made politically and socially aware films that sought to provide an authentic reflection of the communities they came from that were not being represented anywhere else on screen. However, while...
7:30 p.m.
Egyptian Theater
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Hosted by: L.A. Filmforum
As part of the Alternative Projections historical project, the L.A. Filmforum presents a selection of short movies from the 1970s directed by African-American filmmakers based in Los Angeles. Filmmakers included in the lineup include Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Ben Caldwell, Jamaa Fanaka and more. Caldwell, who will be in attendance, and Adam Hyman have curated this screening.
Through the Ethno-Communications Program begun in 1968, the film school at UCLA began building up a strong minority presence within its student body. In a few years, there was a significant number of African-American filmmakers that was dubbed the “La. Rebellion” by essayist Ntongela Masilela.
This group made politically and socially aware films that sought to provide an authentic reflection of the communities they came from that were not being represented anywhere else on screen. However, while...
- 3/6/2012
- by screenings
- Underground Film Journal
The National Film Preservation Foundation and The Film Foundation have announced the 2010 recipients of their annual Avant-Garde Masters Grants. A $50,000 cash award will be split up among six different film preservation organizations to restore eleven classic American experimental films, including ones directed by Shirley Clarke, Stan Vanderbeek and Richard Leacock.
The films to be restored and the respective organizations restoring them are:
A Scary Time (1960), directed by Shirley Clarke and Robert Hughes, was sponsored by Unicef and combines images of American children on Halloween night with malnourished children from poorer countries all over the world to help promote the organization’s annual money-raising drives. (Museum of Modern Art) Centerbeam (1977), directed by Richard Leacock and Edward Pincus, documents the contribution of MIT artists to documenta6. (MIT) Home and Dome (1965), directed by Stan Vanderbeek, chronicles the construction of his unique Movie Drome screening structure that he built at his family home in Stony Brook,...
The films to be restored and the respective organizations restoring them are:
A Scary Time (1960), directed by Shirley Clarke and Robert Hughes, was sponsored by Unicef and combines images of American children on Halloween night with malnourished children from poorer countries all over the world to help promote the organization’s annual money-raising drives. (Museum of Modern Art) Centerbeam (1977), directed by Richard Leacock and Edward Pincus, documents the contribution of MIT artists to documenta6. (MIT) Home and Dome (1965), directed by Stan Vanderbeek, chronicles the construction of his unique Movie Drome screening structure that he built at his family home in Stony Brook,...
- 7/30/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Teshome Gabriel, a longtime professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and an internationally recognized authority on Third World and post-colonial cinema, died June 15 of a heart attack at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Panorama City, Calif. He was 70.
A pioneering scholar and activist, Gabriel had taught cinema and media studies at TFT since 1974 and was closely associated with UCLA's African Studies Center.
"He was a brilliant, gracious, elegant and generous man," said Teri Schwartz, dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. "Teshome was a consummate professional and a truly beloved faculty member at TFT. He will be greatly missed by all of us."
Born in 1939 in Ethiopia, Gabriel came to the U.S. in 1962, earning degrees in political science and educational media from the University of Utah before being hired as a lecturer at Tft in 1974. He went on to receive his master's in 1976 and Ph.D. in 1979 from UCLA and became a full tenured professor in 1995.
A pioneering scholar and activist, Gabriel had taught cinema and media studies at TFT since 1974 and was closely associated with UCLA's African Studies Center.
"He was a brilliant, gracious, elegant and generous man," said Teri Schwartz, dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. "Teshome was a consummate professional and a truly beloved faculty member at TFT. He will be greatly missed by all of us."
Born in 1939 in Ethiopia, Gabriel came to the U.S. in 1962, earning degrees in political science and educational media from the University of Utah before being hired as a lecturer at Tft in 1974. He went on to receive his master's in 1976 and Ph.D. in 1979 from UCLA and became a full tenured professor in 1995.
- 6/21/2010
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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