Underground Film Links: August 29, 2010
By Mike Everleth ⋅ August 29, 2010
- This week’s Must Read is on the brief side, so now you have no excuse not to read it. Animation god Bill Plympton is self-distributing his latest feature Idiots & Angels and he’s keeping a diary about how that’s going. His second piece goes into the reasons of why he has to self-distribute in the first place. That Plympton — a god, I tell you, a god! — has so much trouble getting his films out there is a sad, sorry commentary on lots of things.
- The Melbourne Underground Film Festival has been going on this past week and The Age profiled Joseph Sims, the director of the closing night film Bad Behavior. Meanwhile, the Maroondah Leader profiled Matt Cleaves, director of the short film RADEV. And an anonymous female blogger writes about seeing Road Train at MUFF.
- Via Professor Tryon, there’s a piece on IndieWire by Anne Thompson about the rise of microcinemas and she calls out a couple here in Los Angeles, all very nice places indeed. And, if you follow a chain of links from Thompson’s piece, you’ll find a 2007 report on microcinemas on Cineaste by Rebecca M. Alvin.
- Also, Professor Tryon has his own article up about whether or not blogging should count towards tenure. While this argument doesn’t affect me either way, I thought it was an interesting peek into the academic world, which I’m unfamiliar with even though I currently work for an academic institution (AFI). By the way: I vote yes, but I might just be an ignoramus.
- For the New York Times, Melena Ryzik writes about the hot new trend of indie music labels distributing films. And, whaddya know, this came via Tryon, too. (Dude was on fire this week.)
- In case you missed the hint on the Underground Film Journal the other day, the Austin filmmaking collective Jollyville Pictures has a new website you should check out.
- A Seasoned Taste has a piece up about the multiple animal cruelty offending ’60s TV show Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp. What makes this underground film related is that the article mentions Jeff Krulik’s documentary, I Created Lancelot Link.
- Landscape Suicide compares Jean-Luc Godard old and new. Well, new-ish.
- More awesome photos from Jennifer Oreck in Russia and the Ukraine while filming The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga.
- On Cineflyer, Kenton Smith interviews the Winnipeg exploitation filmmaking group Astron 6, which recently made a sweet distribution deal with Troma.
- On Facets Features, their new blogger Gregory Hess continues his VHS or Bust series, this time focusing on Candy Mountain, the almost-forgotten 1987 film co-directed by Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer.
- Filmmaker Luke Black goes ga-ga for the weirdo art films of Scott Amos, and embeds several pieces of Amos’ work.
- Bob Moricz goes ga-ga for the films for Michael and Roberta Findlay. Then, Bob checks out Roberta’s Tenement.
- And Mike Rollo offers an appreciation for photographer Bruce Gilden in preparation for a new film.
- Introducing the Exquisite Corpse Collaborative 8mm Film Experiment by the group Subvex. Some filmmakers confirmed for the project are Jonas Mekas, Nina Menkes, Bill Morrison, Nico B., Jesse Richards, Sam Spreckley and more.
- Jacob Gaboury of Rhizome interviews Jaimie Warren of Whoop Dee Doo, a bizarro public access kiddie program on in Kansas City. My two cents: More underground folks should make kids films, videos and TV, the way underground comics artists have a history working for Nickelodeon and such.
- Author and curator Jack Sargeant announces he’s organizing lots of screenings for the post-Sydney Underground Film Festival festivities, including one for one of my favorites, Usama Alshaibi’s The Amateurs.
- Check out the hot new medium onto which to screen films: Tree bark.
- Candlelight Stories has some of the earliest color film ever shot. It’s just a couple of screen tests, but I find the coloring to be completely creepy looking.
- Robert C. Cumbow reprints his original review of Eraserhead from 1978 in the magazine Movietone News on Parallax View. Very interesting to read this first impression.
- DINCA has lots of frames from the classic 1969 structuralist film T.O.U.C.H.I.N.G. by Paul Sharits.
- Electric Sheep previews Paris’ L’Etrange Festival.
- Glenn Kenny asks who the last unself-conscious horror movie director was. He says George A. Romero and I haven’t thought hard enough on the subject to determine if he’s correct or not. I’m not sure he is, but I haven’t had time to do the research to suggest otherwise, although George is a good pick.
- Not film: Via Mr. Ed Halter, check out the Wikipedia entry for Andy Warhol’s nephew James, a sci-fi and children’s book illustrator.
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