Of the seven features I watched in full whilst at the 2009 CineVegas Film Festival, it seemed that the bravest endeavors, those that took the greatest stabs into the unknown both formally and conceptually, were actually shot on film. If this isn’t notable enough in a space increasingly dominated by digital photography (and, all too often, an aesthetic indifference that fails to push beyond the ease of use of the tools), the fact that films like Impolex, Modus Operandi and Redland are all the first features of men either barely or not quite the age of 30 is astounding. While other young filmmakers exploit ever-changing technology to shrink production budgets and experiment with non-theatrical models of distribution, Alex Ross Perry, Frankie Latina and Asiel Norton have made uncompromising films that defy contemporary technological trends and notions of financial convenience.
When it comes to It Came From Kuchar, Jennifer M. Kroot’s deceptively breezy documentary about experimental filmmaker brothers George and Mike, I am without a doubt a member of the choir. George Kuchar was my independent study advisor when I was an undergraduate at the San Francisco Art Institute, and much of Kroot’s film documents his life and times at that alma mater of mine. George is seen clomping through the bayside, architectural masterpiece of a campus, slightly hunched, with appreciative students trailing off him like some kind of handycam-weilding, Bronx-accented, beautiful schlock-peddling pied piper. George isn’t the right professor for everyone — as John Waters puts it in the film, “I think some of his students are probably horrified and leave” — but for me, as a very, very serious studier of cinema who took my own attempts at filmmaking very, very seriously, George gave me a much-needed license to have fun with film, to play and pursue the weird. As Brook Hinton, another SFAI stallwart, says of George’s work in the film, it’s “profound, has great beauty, and yet doesn’t take itself too seriously.” George Kuchar is a walking whoopie cushion n a world of art school pretensions … except, you know, funny.
So I can’t proclaim distance, but I can express my appreciation for Kroot’s film as a creative exemplar of how to make a talking head documentary becomes , and salute it as a much-needed work of historiography. As Anthology Film Archives’ Andrew Lampert notes on screen, there is no complete Kuchar filmography — George in particular works so fast, and with an attitude that renders distinctions between video diary, collaborations with students, and his “Real” movies so meaningless, that even the completists can’t completely keep up. Kroot’s film is clearly the result of intimate access to not only the brothers and their films (thus rendering the doc something like a Greatest Hits reel with commentary), but even to some of their unused archival footage.
Ray Pride points to a trailer for 13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, a DVD from Plexifilm featuring 13 of Warhol’s 16mm, single-shot portraits of his superstars and Factory drop-ins (including Dennis Hopper, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick and Nico), set to original songs composed by ex-Luna/Galaxie 500 frontman Dean Wareham and his wife/bassist Britta Phillips. Plexifilm says it’s the “first ever authorized DVD release of films by Andy Warhol,” and in addition to the basic DVD, they’re also offering a $250 limited edition package, featuring “a deluxe gatefold LP-style package with an exclusive poster and booklet,” as well as an archival print from a frame from your choice of one of the screentests. Or you can just watch the pretty trailer over and over for free.
Art Radio International renegotiated the terms of its lease of the Clocktower Gallery with MoMA recently, consequently serving subleasers The Film-Maker’s Co-op (FMC) with an eviction notice. Founded nearly 50 years ago, FMC is one of the longest-running distributors of experimental and independent film in the world, its offices operating in the same building since 2000. The organization houses thousands of 16mm prints, many of them unique and irreplaceable including those by Stan Brakhage, Paul Sharits, Carolee Schneeman, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Jennifer Reeves, Jack Smith, Ken Jacobs, Peggy Ahwesh, Joyce Wieland, Michael Snow, Maya Deren, Marie Menken, Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Martha Colburn, Leslie Thornton, and literally hundreds of other artists, as well as an invaluable paper archive of letters, program notes and other materials. According to sources moving these fragile prints will take thousands of dollars the Co-op simply can’t afford.
Art Fag City passes along word that a significant archive devoted to art and experimental film is in danger of becoming homeless. The FMC is petitioning Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin in the hopes she’ll help them either stay in the Clocktower or find a new space (and presumably the resources for the move). More details at the link.
“It is a travesty that Mekas’ stark vision of elegiac melancholia has not been rewarded with the coveted Golden Popcorn statue,” Boston University film studies professor Ray Carney said. “His [1997] film Letter From Nowhere—Laiskas Is Niekur No. 1 should have easily walked away with Best On-Screen Duo, or Best Kiss, or at least Best Ass.”
Tee hee and everything, but there actually isn’t a huge gulf between Mekas’ most recent major project and the kind of thing you might see on post-Tila Tequila MTV.
I’ve been tracking the odd pop cultural situation that awaits this month’s release of The Tracey Fragmentsfor awhile now. The film, which I’ve written about before, stars Juno phenom Ellen Page; it premiered at Berlin in 2007 and played tons of festivals, but by year’s end had failed to secure U.S. theatrical distribution. Then, in February of this year, when Page was at the peak of her powers as a precocious Oscar nominee and face of one of the biggest “surprise” hits in recent memory, Tracey was picked up by ThinkFilm for domestic distribution.
This is a film which, despite positive reviews and an award from Berlin, went almost completely unnoticed when it screened at Toronto in September, largely because it didn’t have a distributor that could afford to hire track suited boys to pass out branded Tic Tacs on its behalf. And yet, as soon as ThinkFilm put out a new trailer for the film, it promptly attracted a bunch of negativeblog attention, ranging from unfair to inaccurate.
The Playlist passes along word that MVD is gearing up to release a new DVD set featuring previously unreleased film and video work by photographer/experimental filmmaker Richard Kern. The disc includes six “bonus” shorts, which might be enough for any Kern fan, but here they’re ancillary to the main event, called Extra Action. Theofficial synopsis of Extra Action reads like Girls Gone Wild with hipster cred:
Photographer Richard Kern likes real women: unpretentious, unadorned, and definitely undressed. Those who love Kern’s books know each is an invitation to join him as he follows them through their homes-or his New York apartment-from backyard to kitchen to bathroom to bedroom, capturing every sexy and embarrassing moment. Whenever Kern photographs one of these energetic, clothes-dropping exhibitionists, he brings out a video camera and asks them to “roll around and do something interesting for a few minutes”. Extra Action documents 60 of these innocent amateur incidents set to an original musical score by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.
I wonder if this is just marketing copy, or if Extra Action is as cheesy as it sounds. I’m a fan of the Kern shorts that I’ve seen, because even when they’re grotesquely sleazy (or, in the case of Straw Dogs, mostly just grotesque), they’re also funny and even witty. And Money Love (which I think is the same think as Scooter & Jinx, which is included as a bonus on this DVD) actually plays like punk critique of pornography. In the hopes that Extra Action is something along the same lines, I’ve embedded it above.
This weekend in Telluride, I recorded an audio interview with experimental filmmaker George Kuchar. We talked about YouTube, the trickle down economics of DIY filmmaking, and Telluride’s history as a haven for criminals and whores. Somehow, someway, the audio file got corrupted and the interview is unusable. Which is really depressing, because this interview was kind of a big deal to me. When I was 20 years old, I moved from Chicago to San Francisco, and I did it for George Kuchar.
(That’s not entirely true, but it might as well be. Years later the other factors that led to the move–petty relationship problems, an intolerance for Midwest winters, a foolish youthful faith in the power of geographical change to correct deep-seated emotional issues–seem far less significant.)
I was already skipping classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to watch George Kuchar’s movies at the Video Data Bank. Shot first on Super 8mm, then 16mm, then prosumer video, sometimes aided by his brother Mike, the Kuchar films were cheap and intentionally schlocky, but the best of them were somehow funny, poignant, and even beautiful. They were exactly the kind of movies I wanted to make! The idea of finishing my final three semesters of art school in a sunny clime, where I would take classes with Kuchar and surely in no time convince him to take me under his wing–it was like an actionable fantasy.
Of course, the reality of it was nothing like I fantasized. …Read more
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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I’ve been tracking the odd pop cultural situation that awaits this month’s release of 
