Underground Film Links: June 26, 2011
By Mike Everleth ⋅ June 26, 2011
- This week’s Absolute Must Read is Robert Koehler’s mind-blowing essay on film criticism and film advocacy. Structured around the offerings of the Los Angeles Film Festival, Koehler really hits on the core problem about film writing on the web. Here’s the key part of the article: “This is ideology, all right: The Ideology of advertisers, the force that most fundamentally drives ‘their’ criticism. It informs movie websites and blogs as much as the papers, by the way, as more and more websites are propelled forward by the hits metric that advertisers gauge in order to determine whether or not they want to invest in a given site.” (For the record: “A criticism of advocacy” is a good description of the Underground Film Journal. And I run tons of ads!)
- A great “must read” contender is this funny Pittsburgh City Paper article about the FBI releasing — then retracting — their report on Andy Warhol filming Lonesome Cowboys in Arizona. The sexual activities that were filmed bothered some of the locals, and excited some others. Funniest part of the report: “All of the witnesses’ names are blacked out — even the names of the horses.”
- For Reverse Shot, Genevieve Yue reviewed the offerings of the third annual Migrating Forms experimental media festival, which was held back in May.
- Time Out Chicago previewed the 23rd annual Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, which is happening right now.
- I’m going to clean this up a bit, but filmmaker Mark Potts has some good advice for his peers: Just make stuff.
- Jack Sargeant is busy posting up some of his older articles written for FilmInk. In this one, he profiles the legacy of another Jack: Jack Smith, he of Flaming Creatures fame.
- Fangoria interviewed indie horror filmmaker Joseph Christiana, for a long, nice piece.
- Rick Trembles sends Super 8 to Motion Picture Purgatory.
- Stephan Popescu, filmmaker and founder of the Sydney Underground Film Festival, has two new interactive pieces in an exhibit promoting the power of touch.
- Donna k. examines the pop-up cinema phenomenon, where backroom theaters have replaced the speakeasy’s of yesteryear.
- Baylor University profiles one of their own, director Chris Hansen, about the making of his latest film, previously called An Affair and now formally titled Where We Started.
- Australian radio 612 ABC Brisbane has posted an audio interview with Chris Sun, director of the horror flick Come and Get Me.
- In the New York Times, Roberta Smith reviews Ryan Trecartin’s latest video exhibit at PS1, Any Ever, and profiles the young artist.
- For Rhizome, Jacob Gaboury takes a look at the new solo show by Cory Arcangel at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
- For Hammer to Nail, Tom Hall reviews Alex Ross Perry’s The Color Wheel.
- Landscape Suicide has lots of stills from Godard’s Film Socialisme and Jean-Daniel Pollet’s 1963 film Méditerranée, plus even more depressing quotes about the world today.
- Cineflyer has a film quiz-slash-wordsearch created by Winnipegger Walter Forsberg. Also, Kim Nguyen on the films of Toronto-based artist Aleesa Cohene.
- The Phantom of Pulp reviews a trio of very diverse films: Tree of Life, Mosquito the Rapist and Black Bread. (Although, if you click on this just for the Tree of Life review, be forewarned that the other two reviews are not for the squeamish.)
- Although he doesn’t say it outright, Lenny Lipton — a 3D movie expert these days — implies exactly what’s wrong with the current 3D fad: The crappy systems will prevail over the better ones.
- Not quite underground, but I’m linking to this Glenn Kenny personal beach movie anecdote because it references No Wave music and New Jersey legend Uncle Floyd.
- Not film, but Nathan Wrann has a great post on his reasons for self-publishing, which can be applied to self-film-distribution, if you will, which Wrann is familiar with both.
- In an interesting think piece, Brian Newman has some problems with Kickstarter, but not the kind of problems you might think. Mostly, he’s worried about communal fundraising eliminating traditional funding for the arts.
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