funny / not funny

Some recent writing for your online enjoyment:

At Artforum: Gustav Deutsch, Bruce Baille, Wang Bing, Godard's Made in USA

At Triple Canopy: an essay on the work of DC genius Jeff Krulik. (I like to think of it as part of a trans-publication "comedy trilogy" with recent writings on Jerry Lewis and Cory Arcangel.)

Joke Book

Newish piece of mine on The Total Film-Maker by Jerry Lewis over at Artforum, timed for his appearance at the Museum of the Moving Image this past weekend.

Blue is Beautiful

A short article by me on Jennifer Reeves's When It Was Blue, which she will perform tomorrow night at The Kitchen, is now online at Artforum.

LA, RR, IWRC?

OK a few things.

First, a photo of me and Jeff Krulik at last Saturday's event in Los Angeles, taken by Andrew Lampert, who also happened to be in town. Thanks for all those who attended (which included Badlit's Mike Everleth and Jessica Everleth (née Villines), Mike Plante, Morgan Fisher and Stanya Kahn), and thanks to Matt Keegan for putting the event together. Maybe I will have an mp3 of the talk courtesy of Jeff at some point.

Second, a link to a new article I just published at Artforum on this week's "Views from the Avant-Garde" program.

Third, have you been to In What Respect, Charlie? It's a group blog on the election brainchilded by Jim Finn with the participation of myself and a gaggle of others.

Chafed Moments

New piece up on Moving Image Source: an interview with Robert Downey Sr!

Also, a little publicist bird tells me that Bob Downey will appear in person at Anthology on Sept 18 to do a Q&A after Chafed Elbows and then an intro before Moment to Moment. Both films are highly recommended!

Wild Times by Ed Halter - Moving Image Source

Land Survey

I've got a new article up at Moving Image Source today on John Gianvito's Profit motive and the whispering wind and other experiments in the political landscape film.

This Land Is Your Land by Ed Halter - Moving Image Source

Upcomingness

Two upcoming events I'll be a part of--you can be too! Just come to one or more of them and then you will be a part of them.

On Friday June 6, I'm moderating a panel at the New Museum presented by Rhizome as part of Internet Week. It's called Net Aesthetics 2.0 and will comprise a panel of potent notables: Tom Moody, T. Whid, Petra Cortright, Damon Zucconi and Jennifer and Kevin McCoy. We shall discuss the current state of internet art. More details at Rhizome.

On Wednesday June 11 I'll be reading at KGB Bar in the East Village as part of an event devoted to Exile Cinema: Filmmakers At Work Beyond Hollywood, the new collection of essays edited by Michael Atkinson. Other readers will include B. Kite and Stuart Klawans. I love the idea of reading film criticism live! My selection will be a chapter I wrote on the films of James Fotopoulos. (Christ, it's been Flavorpilled--I better wear a clean shirt.)

What Fools These Mortals Be

Brian Frye posted this haunting viddy a while back, taken during his show at Light Industry on April 1, 2008. I'm only just catching up to it now.



Also added his blog A Young Whig to the sidewise roll to your right.

Famous Amos

My godchild Tiana's birthday is coming up this weekend (turning five!). So I bought some more books for her as a gift--The Red Balloon, The Story of Ferdinand, Harold and the Purple Crayon, a weird and wonderful Maurice Sendak-illustrated obscurity called A Hole is to Dig: A First Book of First Definitions, and finally this gem pictured above.

Experimental cinephiles will recognize Amos Vogel as founder of Cinema 16, early shaper of the New York Film Festival and author of the definitely not-for-kids-book Film As a Subversive Art. Sendak also did artwork for advertisements for Cinema 16's children's shows. Kino-geeks take note: one of the stores on the street is called "Marcia's"--no doubt after Marcia Vogel, Amos's wife and co-runner of Cinema 16--and the film society itself hangs its shingle a little ways down the block!

Light Linking

The first show of Light Industry happens tonight at 8pm! Here's some recent chatter from Internetland:

Filmmaker Magazine blog

Rhizome

BadLit

Brownstoner

ArtCal

Documents on Art & Cinema

Invisible Cinema

GreenCine Daily

(photo: the view from outside the entrance to Light Industry's digs!)

In Exile

Noted typomane Mike Atkinson announces blogwise that Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood is finally hitting the shelves of your local bookstore, virtual versions included.

I happened to hold a physical copy of this tome myself this past weekend while meandering through the academic press book-faire set up within the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Philadelphia. I should have snapped a phone-pic to document my findings, which felt something like a Bigfoot sighting for this long-rumored release. The design looks good and the book feels solid in the hand in that wonderfully durable heavy-glossy-paper academic-publishing way, even if its contributors have fewer Ph. D's and more Certificates of Survival from film criticism's School of Hard Knocks (or is it a School for Scoundrels? My diploma has become too smudgy to tell).

Here's the redoubtable table of contents from the SUNY Press site:

Table Of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction Michael Atkinson Part 1: Rockets from East Asia 1. Double Trouble: Tsui Hark & Ching Siu-tung Howard Hampton 2. Bullet Ballet: Seijun Suzuki Jonathan Rosenbaum 3. Kuala L'Impure: The Cinema of Amir Muhammad Dennis Lim 4. A Kurosawa Kiyoshi Kit B. Kite 5. The Bong Show: Bong Joon-ho Ed Park Part 2. On the European Outskirts 6. Beyond the Clouds: The Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan Geoff Andrew 7. Pawel Pawlikowski: Dreaming All My Life Jessica Winter 8. Bela Tarr Jonathan Romney 9. Blunt Force Trauma: Andrzej Zulawski Michael Atkinson 10. Sharunas Bartas Laura Sinagra Part 3. Documentarians and Mad Scientists 11. Ken Jacobs David Sterritt 12. A Few Moments of Arousal in a Film by Martin Arnold George Toles 13. Ross McElwee Godfrey Cheshire 14. Judith Helfand: Secret Stories, Video Diaries, and Toxic Comedy Patricia Aufderheide Part 4. Lost between Genre and Myth-Making 15. The Beardo: José Mojica Marins Guy Maddin 16. Dellamorte Dellamore and Michele Soavi Maitland McDonagh 17. Guy Maddin Mark Peranson 18. James Fotopoulos Ed Halter 19. Christopher Munch: For Those We Have Loved Graham Fuller Part 5. Defiant Lions of the New Wave Generation 20. Pleasures of the Flesh: Walerian Borowczyk David Thompson 21. Chris Marker: The Return to Work at the Wonder Factory Joshua Clover 22. Moebius Dragstrip: Monte Hellman Circles Back Chuck Stephens 23. The Not-Too-Long Discourses of Chantal Akerman Stuart Klawans List of Contributors Index

$999...or 666?

On eBay: some Kenneth Anger-related photo negatives for sale, for which the seller theorizes about postmodernism:

SCORPIO RISING

1963 MC Motorcycle Club Photo Negative

ITEM: SCORPIO RISING 1963 MC Motorcycle Club Photo Negative.

DETAILS: Unpublished 60 mm photo negative of Scorpio Rising MC leader wearing his club colors in Washington Square Park, New York. The club was the subject of a Kenneth Anger film in 1963. This photograph is of the actual leader of the gang. Bruce Bryon portrayed him as Scorpio in the film. Visit our ebay store for other Scorpio Rising Motorcycle Club items.

FYI: Scorpio Rising is an avant-garde, experimental film by Kenneth Anger. The film was produced in 1964 and initially shown on the underground film circuit. It features no lines of dialogue, accompanied instead by music from popular 50's and 60's artists including Ricky Nelson, The Angels, Bobby Vinton, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles and Martha Reeves & the Vandellas. It is considered to be one of the first post-modern films and an influence to future directors such as Martin Scorsese and David Lynch.

Arcane Project

* * * * *

ARCANE PROJECT

8PM FRIDAY
FEB. 8, 2008

NATIONAL ARTS CLUB
15 GRAMERCY PARK SOUTH
New York City

An evening of glass slides, magic lantern projections, and antique technologies,
in inventive combinations, with silent films and sound recordings
played on the wind-up Victrola and other musical devices.

Lary Seven, Joel Schlemowitz and Bradley Eros,
experimental film artists and collectors of obsolete media artifacts,
present a night of uncanny images:
mysterious travels,
occult iconography,
bizarre creatures,
industrial detritus,
and
the strange and wondrous
landscapes of fairy tales,
fables and myths
of the artificial sublime,
displayed through
the translucent exotica
of hand-tinted photographs,
decayed surfaces,
and
the odd symbols
and
illustrations
of the mundane
made marvelous.

Light Reading

Here's an interesting folio I found whilst gallivanting through eBay tonight: Still Light, a limited edition tome by Robert Beavers from 1971, offered for sale out of the Netherlands, complete with an autographed letter, signed by Beavers to John Gielgud (!) (?). I assume the book comprises notes on his film of the same name. At almost $300 it's far beyond my book budget, but that price is more than half what a seller on Amazon is asking.





More on Beavers by J. Hoberman, an issue of Millennium Film Journal on Robert Beavers and Gregory Markopoulos from 1998, and extensive notes from the programme "To the Winged Distance: Films by Robert Beavers" at the Tate. I've written various reviews of his work over the years as well.

Film-Makers' Cooperative Benefit

Press release attached for the upcoming benefit silent auction and screening for the Film-Makers' Coop in New York. I went to this a couple years ago and amazing things were being auctioned...one thing, I remember, was a guided shopping spree with M.M. Serra called "I'll Be Your Mirror". Extremely recommended!

* * * * *

____________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: MM Serra
Tel: (212) 267-5665 Fax: (212) 267-5666

HAPPENING NOW AT THE FILM-MAKERS’ COOP
BENEFIT SCREENING AT MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP
66 East 4th Street (betw. 2nd Avenue and the Bowery) in New York City.

On Saturday, February 23, 2008, at 8PM internationally acclaimed filmmakers and media artists will rally in support of The Film-Makers’ Cooperative at a Winter Benefit Screening and Silent Auction at the Millennium Film Workshop. Doors and auction open at 7PM and screening begins at 8PM.

The evening’s theater screening features a special program curated by Caroline Koebel of historic and contemporary works inducted recently into the world-famous FMC collection and will begin at 8 pm.

New works at the 2008 FMC benefit screening include “Beirut Outtakes” by Peggy Ahwesh, “Faux Movements (Wrong Moves)” by Pip Chodorov, “Capitalism: Slavery” by Ken Jacobs, “Description of a Struggle” by Bosko Blagojevic, “The Small Ones” by Lynne Sachs, “1/3 (One Over Three)” by Chiaki Watanabe, “Carnalavare” by Flavia Souza, “The Glowing Woman” by Joel Schlemowitz, “Meet Me In Wichita” by Martha Colburn, and “Backcomb” by Sarah Pucill. As well, the recent digital preservation of Jud Yalkut’s 1967 “Kusama’s Self-Obliteration” and a newly acquired print of Mike Kuchar’s “Tone Poem” will be shown. Many of the artists will be present.

This is an international program of works by artists of diverse cultural backgrounds. In its timeliness and breadth of style, the show echoes the original mission of the Film-Makers' Coop.

Film-Makers’ Coop Executive Director M.M. Serra asserts, "It will be a phenomenal night, and an unusual screening of rare and contemporary avant-garde, cinematic treasures."

In addition to the screening the evening will include Two Boots pizza, refreshments and the Coop’s annual silent auction, giving viewers the opportunity to bid on works of art, rare books and other ephemera from the world of the Film-Makers’ Coop.

The program was conceptualized and curated by FMC Board member Caroline Koebel.

Founded in 1962, The Film-Makers’ Cooperative is the oldest and largest artist-run collection of avant-garde cinema in the nation. Proceeds from the benefit will support the Coop’s preservation efforts and the distribution of over 4000 films in its collection.

Tickets: $10-$25 sliding scale (tax deductible contribution) Tickets may be purchased by calling the Coop office (212) 267-5665 or at the door. Cash or credit cards accepted. This event is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. For further information, go to our website: www.film-makerscoop.com

Contact:
MM Serra, Director
Film-Makers Cooperative at The Clocktower Gallery, 108 Leonard Street, New York City 10013

Weiner Words

My recent review of Lawrence Weiner's film and video retrospective, coming soon to Anthology.

Seven Instances of the Austrian Avant-Garde

A short essay I wrote on Austrian avant-garde film, commissioned for Innovative Film Austria 07/08, is now available online as a pdf.

On Criticism

This is from a while back, but the folks at The Spectator posted this excellent take-down of mediocre critics:

We therefore very often find, that Persons the most accomplished in Ridicule are those who are very shrewd at hitting a Blot, without exerting any thing masterly in themselves. As there are many eminent Criticks who never writ a good Line, there are many admirable Buffoons that animadvert upon every single Defect in another, without ever discovering the least Beauty of their own. By this Means, these unlucky little Wits often gain Reputation in the Esteem of Vulgar Minds, and raise themselves above Persons of much more laudable Characters.

If the Talent of Ridicule were employed to laugh Men out of Vice and Folly, it might be of some Use to the World; but instead of this, we find that it is generally made use of to laugh Men out of Virtue and good Sense, by attacking every thing that is Solemn and Serious, Decent and Praiseworthy in Human Life.

Apprenez à faire un dessin animé

Le link

Future So Bright

"In the Light, in the Dark, with Guitar." A spiffy profile of Matt McCormick upon occasion of his Future So Bright at the Lee Center for the Arts, Seattle.

"After Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick screened his film The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal at Sundance Film Festival, galleries and museums began asking to show it—including such prestigious venues as the Museum of Modern Art and the Serpentine Gallery in London. The film would play on a loop in some corner, looking for all the world like a clever piece of video art. More than once, he says, a collector approached him to inquire about buying the work. He'd say yes, but instead of naming a four-figure price, he'd direct the collector to www.peripheralproduce.com, the website of his own small distribution company. The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal retails at $24.95, and it comes with nine other short films...

"But there are differences between experimental film and video art, and most have to do with the way the pieces are displayed and marketed. Video art is seen in galleries and museums; it plays in a loop rather than over a discrete stretch of time. The videos are produced in very small editions, like prints, and if you want to own one, you have to shell out. Experimental films, meanwhile, are screened in theaters or on DVD, and an inexpensive copy can often be found for every prospective buyer.

It's hard to say whether there are any real justifications for this distinction. Perhaps the act of putting the video on a gallery wall does the trick. (The would-be collectors of The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal might beg to differ.) Remember, though, that the artist's act of selection from his or her environment—that slightly musty justification for Duchamp's readymades or the impulse behind Yoko Ono's Sky TV, an early precursor of video art—occurs whenever a documentary filmmaker aims a camera. Moreover, a great deal of experimental film includes found components. You can see this influence in filmmakers active in the '90s, especially—McCormick scored his own trove of 16 mm film as a Portland-area ABC affiliate emptied its film archive and transitioned to video."