Underground Film Links: September 30, 2012
By Mike Everleth ⋅ September 30, 2012
- This week’s Must Read is actually a series from Melanie Wilmink’s new blog. One of her posts totally won the Underground Film Journal over with the introductory sentence: “Short films regularly draw the short stick when it comes to being written about.” Ain’t that the truth! So, Melanie rights this wrong with an amazingly well-thought out article/review of the “Crime Wave” shorts at the Calgary International Film Festival that digs deep into issues of cinematic authenticity. Then, she has more in-depth reviews of the “End of Days” shorts program at the fest. Finally, at least for now that I know of, she tackles the anthology film V/H/S, which has been getting lots of press, and hammers it for its overt misogyny.
- Wanna hear Jonas Mekas talk lovingly about his five Bolexes?
- The Manitoba Scene got filmmaker Deco Dawson to write an essay about his award-winning short film Keep a Modest Head, an experimental biopic about French surrealist Jean Benoît. (Dawson debuted the film in his hometown of Winnipeg at WNDX last night.)
- OaklandNorth has a lengthy piece on the Oakland Underground Film Festival, which is going on right now.
- The Huffington Post has a great spotlight on Michael Melamedoff’s The Exhibitionists, which debuted at the Arizona Underground Film Festival a few days ago. (To be reviewed on the Underground Film Journal soon!)
- Title Magazine has a brief piece on Jeff Krulik’s legendary Heavy Metal Parking Lot, but the article places the film into some great context and is thus worth a read. I’d never think to compare the film to Casablanca, but it makes sense.
- Fangoria magazine has a lengthy interview with Curtis Prather, who runs the greatest horror movie festival in the world, Spooky Movie. Big year for the fest, big year for Prather … So, congrats!
- The Winnipeg Free Press has a great personal profile of Cecilia Araneda, the executive director of the Winnipeg Film Group and a filmmaker herself who was born in Chile before her family was forced to move north following the ouster of Salvadore Allende in 1973.
- Donna k. has a nice review of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 film Wages of Fear, but, more importantly, she stresses the inarguable importance of seeking out and supporting local film communities.
- One+One’s Bradley Tuck and Melanie Mulholland take a look at Noribumi Suzuki’s 1973 film Sex and Fury and decide the movie’s not really about either of those things mentioned in the title.
- Chopping Mall begins to tackle the Italian giallo genre with Sergio Martino’s 1973 thriller Torso.
- J.J. Murphy reviews Dan Sallitt’s over-looked 2012 indie drama The Unspeakable Act, about a brother and a sister who act as lovers. Murphy says “indie gem deserves to be seen more widely.”