Underground Film Journal

Posted In » Underground Film News

Underground Film Links: July 17, 2011

By Mike Everleth ⋅ July 17, 2011

Filmmaker Adolfas Mekas
  1. This week’s Must Read: The Brooklyn Rail offers up a eulogy for Adolfas Mekas by gathering comments from the likes of P. Adams Sitney, Peggy Ahwesh, Ken Jacobs and other colleagues/contemporaries. Mekas passed away in May.
  2. The Guardian got a rare interview with Jean-Luc Godard who has declared that we are all auteurs now. Good.
  3. If you hadn’t heard, structural film pioneer Owen Land passed away last month, but news of his passing only came late last week. I think LUX has the best, most detailed obit for him. Although, the Office Baroque Gallery has a very passionate one — and I think initial word of Land’s death came from them.
  4. More Land: Making Light of It posts a scan of an interview with him conducted by P. Adams Sitney from Film Culture. (I actually happen to own two issues of Film Culture, one of which includes this great interview.)
  5. The Perth Revelation International Film Festival is in full swing right now. Out in Perth has a round-up of some of the queer-themed movies at the fest, including The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye and Bear Nation.
  6. Also at RevFest is the record shop documentary Sound It Out, which was reviewed on Cult Projections.
  7. Waco’s NPR radio station, KWBU, interviewed local filmmaker Chris Hansen regarding his production of Where We Started. Plus, the film is now going into post-production.
  8. Also on NPR — national version, I guess — a review of a Stan Vanderbeek retrospective at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, TX.
  9. Just learned this week that Montreal filmmaker François Miron is making a documentary about Paul Sharits. You can learn more about the project on the Sharits archive website.
  10. Yoel Meranda highlights some sections from underground filmmaking pioneer Sidney Peterson’s 1980 book The Dark of the Screen.
  11. Salise Hughes is putting it out there that she wants to direct music videos. So, if you’re a band, contact her! (P.S. The video she refers to in her article is here.)
  12. Journalist Kenton Smith investigates what makes Winnipeg’s Ultrasonic Film radio program so popular.
  13. Bill Plympton had a nightmarish retrospective in Moscow recently. Oy vey.
  14. I’m not posting donna k.’s summer reading list just because she gives Underground Film Press a nice plug. Ok, well, maybe a little.
  15. In England in September, the Institute of Contemporary Arts is going to hold a major Jack Smith retrospective. LUX previews the show and gives some good Smith background. Close-Up Film also writes about the upcoming show.
  16. Alex Ross Perry’s Impolex is screening in Brooklyn this week and A.O. Scott reviewed it for the New York Times. I don’t quite get the conclusion of the review, though.
  17. Alessandro Cima is creeped out by a 1957 advertisement/documentary for Redbook about suburban migration.
  18. Cinemad’s 2nd interview podcast is now up, this one conducted with Aza Jacobs.
  19. Bob Moricz has launched his own podcast. First up, a two-part discussion on the cheezy ’80s cult classic Flash Gordon.
  20. Electric Sheep analyzes the 1981 Australian mega-flop The Survivor.
  21. SnuffBox Films clues us in to an HTML5 video programming competition that sounds like fun for crafty online artists.