Beginning in the early 1960s, one of the main venues where audiences could watch underground films outside of New York City was the midnight movie screening series called Underground Cinema 12.

In 1997, the Chicago Underground Film Festival held its fourth annual edition and published a four-page pull-out section in the Chicago-based political magazine Lumpen.

The Underground Film Journal has recently uncovered that there was a previous New York Underground Film Festival — in 1970! This event is totally unconnected to the ’90-’00s era festival and featured a weeklong series of screenings in mid-October of that year, from October 12 to 19.

This is Part Two in a series about Chicago’s Experimental Film Coalition; and covers their screening series. 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.

1963 was a pivotal year in the history of avant-garde film in the United States. In Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney calls it “the high point of the mythopoeic development within the American avant-garde.”

One screening, so many interesting names involved. The first being Gregg Barrios; who is now well-known for his poetry, playwriting and friendship with James Franco. However, nothing about the films he made in the ’60s can be found online. (That the Journal can find anyway.)

The 51st annual Ann Arbor Film Festival features films by Kevin Jerome Everson, Lynne Sachs, Kent Lambert, Jodie Mack, Jack Smith and tons more.

On Feb. 11, 2012, the Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn, New York screened long lost films by iconic and hugely influential underground filmmaker Jack Smith was screened.

Feb. 11: To celebrate the opening of an exhibit celebrating 50 years of the Film-makers’ Coop, come see some rare Jack Smith films.

Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures features very innocent groping and nudity, but was one of the most notorious films of the early ’60s.