The second annual Chicago Underground Film Festival was held in 1995, at multiple locations in the city, from Thursday, July 20 to Sunday, July 23.
The festival opened on July 20th at the International Cinema Museum with the film What About Me?, directed by Rachel Amodeo. Other highlights included a retrospective of the work of Kenneth Anger, who attended the fest and screened Fireworks (1947), Scorpio Rising (1963) and Kkk (Kustom Kar Kommandos) (1965) at the Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan, on Friday, July 21. Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin also attended and screened films on July 23; while the Reverend Ivan Stang of the Church of Subgenius screened films on July 22.
Also, Charles Pinion screened the world premiere of his feature film Red Spirit Lake, which was preceded by the short film The Operation, directed by Jacob Pander and Marne Lucas. Other short films that screened were Desktop and a preview of Monday 9:02 am, both directed by Tyler Hubby.
The festival opened on July 20th at the International Cinema Museum with the film What About Me?, directed by Rachel Amodeo. Other highlights included a retrospective of the work of Kenneth Anger, who attended the fest and screened Fireworks (1947), Scorpio Rising (1963) and Kkk (Kustom Kar Kommandos) (1965) at the Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan, on Friday, July 21. Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin also attended and screened films on July 23; while the Reverend Ivan Stang of the Church of Subgenius screened films on July 22.
Also, Charles Pinion screened the world premiere of his feature film Red Spirit Lake, which was preceded by the short film The Operation, directed by Jacob Pander and Marne Lucas. Other short films that screened were Desktop and a preview of Monday 9:02 am, both directed by Tyler Hubby.
- 7/23/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
From the Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1959:
Conviction of Raymond Rohauer, 34, on the misdemeanor charge of exhibiting “obscene, indecent and immoral” motion pictures was reversed yesterday by the Appellate Department of Superior Court.
Rohauer was arrested Oct. 11, 1957, at a theater he was operating, 366 N La Cienga Blvd., following the showing of two films, “Fireworks” and “Voices.” Police charged that the pictures dealt with homosexuality and one depicted a nude woman.
But in an opinion written by Judge Frank G. Swain and concurred in by Judge Edward T. Bishop the appellate court found that the films merely discussed sexual problems and that the showing of a disrobed woman was not in itself obscene. Judge Leon T. David dissented.
Rohauer was found guilty Feb. 20, 1958 and later was fined $250 and placed on three years’ probation. He appealed through Atty. Stanley Fleishman. The conviction was recorded in Municipal Court.
Underground Film Journal notes:...
Conviction of Raymond Rohauer, 34, on the misdemeanor charge of exhibiting “obscene, indecent and immoral” motion pictures was reversed yesterday by the Appellate Department of Superior Court.
Rohauer was arrested Oct. 11, 1957, at a theater he was operating, 366 N La Cienga Blvd., following the showing of two films, “Fireworks” and “Voices.” Police charged that the pictures dealt with homosexuality and one depicted a nude woman.
But in an opinion written by Judge Frank G. Swain and concurred in by Judge Edward T. Bishop the appellate court found that the films merely discussed sexual problems and that the showing of a disrobed woman was not in itself obscene. Judge Leon T. David dissented.
Rohauer was found guilty Feb. 20, 1958 and later was fined $250 and placed on three years’ probation. He appealed through Atty. Stanley Fleishman. The conviction was recorded in Municipal Court.
Underground Film Journal notes:...
- 7/4/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
In the Spring of 1964, Los Angeles theater manager Michael A. Getz was arrested and placed on trial for screening Kenneth Anger‘s Scorpio Rising. Below are several articles the Underground Film Journal has found that follow the progression of the case.
From the Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1964:
Festival Entry Scheduled for Cinema’s Screen
“Hallelujah the Hills,” American entry at the first New York Film Festival last September, will begin an engagement at the Cinema Theater on Wednesday.
The comedy also represented the U.S. at Cannes, Montreal, Locarno, Mannheim, and London.
This comedy which stars Peter H. Beard, Sheila Finn, Marty Greenbaum and Peggy Steffans was shot in Vermont.
“Scorpio Rising,” a short subject will accompany the feature.
From the Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1964:
Anger’s ‘Fireworks’ Screening at Cinema
The Cinema Theater has added “Fireworks” by Kenneth Anger to its current bill featuring “Hallelujah the Hills.
From the Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1964:
Festival Entry Scheduled for Cinema’s Screen
“Hallelujah the Hills,” American entry at the first New York Film Festival last September, will begin an engagement at the Cinema Theater on Wednesday.
The comedy also represented the U.S. at Cannes, Montreal, Locarno, Mannheim, and London.
This comedy which stars Peter H. Beard, Sheila Finn, Marty Greenbaum and Peggy Steffans was shot in Vermont.
“Scorpio Rising,” a short subject will accompany the feature.
From the Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1964:
Anger’s ‘Fireworks’ Screening at Cinema
The Cinema Theater has added “Fireworks” by Kenneth Anger to its current bill featuring “Hallelujah the Hills.
- 6/18/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Mike Hoolboom. Photo by Tamara de la Fuente.
Is being photographed the only way to cheat death? Ask Mike Hoolboom, in whose Public Lighting (2004) the question is posed. Presented on 8 October as part of a retrospective of his work at the eleventh CurtoCircuíto—the excellent international short film festival in Santiago de Compostela, a city in Galicia, northwest Spain—Public Lighting is in many ways emblematic of Hoolboom’s work.
To begin with, there’s its agitated, almost frantic need to pay tribute to the world and its miscellany—and to allow such heterogeneity to inform its imagistic, editorial and thematic fabrics. Separated into seven aesthetically distinct segments, Public Lighting is about the many sources of pleasure to be found in an otherwise uncertain universe. It is about Madonna, Philip Glass, New York; it’s about identity and the inevitability of change; it’s about the amusing and tragic disconnect...
Is being photographed the only way to cheat death? Ask Mike Hoolboom, in whose Public Lighting (2004) the question is posed. Presented on 8 October as part of a retrospective of his work at the eleventh CurtoCircuíto—the excellent international short film festival in Santiago de Compostela, a city in Galicia, northwest Spain—Public Lighting is in many ways emblematic of Hoolboom’s work.
To begin with, there’s its agitated, almost frantic need to pay tribute to the world and its miscellany—and to allow such heterogeneity to inform its imagistic, editorial and thematic fabrics. Separated into seven aesthetically distinct segments, Public Lighting is about the many sources of pleasure to be found in an otherwise uncertain universe. It is about Madonna, Philip Glass, New York; it’s about identity and the inevitability of change; it’s about the amusing and tragic disconnect...
- 10/21/2014
- by Michael Pattison
- MUBI
The Floating Cinema 2013: Extra-ordinary | A Weekend Of Anger: The Films Of Kenneth Anger | Robert Beavers | Brighton's Big Screen/The Duke's at Lewes House
The Floating Cinema 2013: Extra-ordinary, London
This cinema will come to you, if you're situated alongside a London canal. It's an appealing initiative, which began last year but returns with a new design, converting an old industrial barge into an eclectic touring show. You can step on to the boat for an intimate show of specially commissioned works and Michael Smith's new film about the River Lea plays later this month. There's also a horror weekend at Granary Square in King's Cross (9 & 10 Aug), and a fancy-dress screening of Tim Burton's Frankenweenie outside 3 Mills Studio, where it was made (23 Aug).
Various venues, Sat to 30 Sep
A Weekend Of Anger: The Films Of Kenneth Anger, London
That Anger is considered a pioneer of both salacious celebrity...
The Floating Cinema 2013: Extra-ordinary, London
This cinema will come to you, if you're situated alongside a London canal. It's an appealing initiative, which began last year but returns with a new design, converting an old industrial barge into an eclectic touring show. You can step on to the boat for an intimate show of specially commissioned works and Michael Smith's new film about the River Lea plays later this month. There's also a horror weekend at Granary Square in King's Cross (9 & 10 Aug), and a fancy-dress screening of Tim Burton's Frankenweenie outside 3 Mills Studio, where it was made (23 Aug).
Various venues, Sat to 30 Sep
A Weekend Of Anger: The Films Of Kenneth Anger, London
That Anger is considered a pioneer of both salacious celebrity...
- 7/27/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
If you weren't already aware amidst his scores of other side projects, James Franco has formed a musical side project, entitled Daddy, with his fellow Rhode Island School of Design alumnus Tim O'Keefe. Having only been around a year, they've nonetheless still put out two Motown-inflected EPs -- to the point where remixes are being made -- and now the actor has placed a notable influence of his at the center of his duo's latest music video. Directed by Franco as well, the six-minute clip for "Love in the Old Days (Tim James 1999 Remix)," aims for atmosphere and mystery, but most significantly, it features experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger as a theremin-playing occult priest. If that wasn't enough, the “Fireworks” and “Scorpio Rising” director also presides over a marriage between two naked lovebirds, before letting them surge with the audience of animal mask-wearing attendees for a post-ceremony rave. You won't find much else in the Nsfw.
- 3/20/2013
- by Charlie Schmidlin
- The Playlist
In the classic underground movie book Visionary Film, historian P. Adams Sitney coined the term “trance film” to describe the primary type of post-wwii avant-garde cinema that was in vogue at the time. In Sitney’s view, short movies such as Maya Deren‘s Meshes of the Afternoon, Kenneth Anger‘s Fireworks and Stan Brakhage‘s Flesh of Morning all feature somnambulist protagonists wandering through surrealist nightmare worlds of their own psyche.
Movies featuring sleepwalking main characters are, of course, the antithesis of popular mainstream entertainment, which at all times attempts to thrill the masses with tales of heroes of extraordinary abilities doing amazing things.
Flash forward about 70 years and Don Swaynos‘ debut feature film, the surrealist comedy Pictures of Superheroes, doesn’t quite fit Sitney’s “trance” mold, but it’s main character, professional cleaning woman Marie (Kerri Lendo), does appear to be sleepwalking through her life. The film...
Movies featuring sleepwalking main characters are, of course, the antithesis of popular mainstream entertainment, which at all times attempts to thrill the masses with tales of heroes of extraordinary abilities doing amazing things.
Flash forward about 70 years and Don Swaynos‘ debut feature film, the surrealist comedy Pictures of Superheroes, doesn’t quite fit Sitney’s “trance” mold, but it’s main character, professional cleaning woman Marie (Kerri Lendo), does appear to be sleepwalking through her life. The film...
- 12/3/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Trailer for The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol 1,
released by Fantoma in 2007
Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer was born on this day in 1927 and if you pay him a call at his official site, you'll find a biographical overview he's got to relish. In 2003, Maximilian Le Cain, writing for Senses of Cinema, cut straight to the chase in his opening paragraph: "Offering a description of himself for the program of a 1966 screening, Kenneth Anger stated his 'lifework' as being Magick and his 'magical weapon' the cinematograph. A follower of Aleister Crowley's teachings, Anger is a high level practitioner of occult magic who regards the projection of his films as ceremonies capable of invoking spiritual forces. Cinema, he claims, is an evil force. Its point is to exert control over people and events and his filmmaking is carried out with precisely that intention."
Then: "Whatever one's view of this belief may be,...
released by Fantoma in 2007
Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer was born on this day in 1927 and if you pay him a call at his official site, you'll find a biographical overview he's got to relish. In 2003, Maximilian Le Cain, writing for Senses of Cinema, cut straight to the chase in his opening paragraph: "Offering a description of himself for the program of a 1966 screening, Kenneth Anger stated his 'lifework' as being Magick and his 'magical weapon' the cinematograph. A follower of Aleister Crowley's teachings, Anger is a high level practitioner of occult magic who regards the projection of his films as ceremonies capable of invoking spiritual forces. Cinema, he claims, is an evil force. Its point is to exert control over people and events and his filmmaking is carried out with precisely that intention."
Then: "Whatever one's view of this belief may be,...
- 2/2/2012
- MUBI
Shadows
Written by John Cassavetes
Directed by John Cassavetes
USA, 1959
“We did everything wrong, technically…. The only thing we did right was to get a group of people together who were young, full of life, and wanted to do something of meaning.” – John Cassavetes
As one of the first movies to be produced outside of the Hollywood studio system, John Cassavetes’ self-financed Shadows (1959) is a pioneering movie in the history of American independent cinema. Favoring an approach influenced by theatre, Cassavetes cast amateur actors and friends in a semi-improvised character study about three siblings living in 1950’s New York. Produced on a small budget, Shadows was shot in Cassavetes’ own apartment and out on the streets of Manhattan, while friends stood on look out watching for the police.
In the final credits of Shadows Cassavetes mischievously proclaimed, “The film you have just seen was an improvisation”. If Jean-Luc Godard’s...
Written by John Cassavetes
Directed by John Cassavetes
USA, 1959
“We did everything wrong, technically…. The only thing we did right was to get a group of people together who were young, full of life, and wanted to do something of meaning.” – John Cassavetes
As one of the first movies to be produced outside of the Hollywood studio system, John Cassavetes’ self-financed Shadows (1959) is a pioneering movie in the history of American independent cinema. Favoring an approach influenced by theatre, Cassavetes cast amateur actors and friends in a semi-improvised character study about three siblings living in 1950’s New York. Produced on a small budget, Shadows was shot in Cassavetes’ own apartment and out on the streets of Manhattan, while friends stood on look out watching for the police.
In the final credits of Shadows Cassavetes mischievously proclaimed, “The film you have just seen was an improvisation”. If Jean-Luc Godard’s...
- 11/1/2011
- by Tom Jarvis
- SoundOnSight
In case you were too busy celebrating America's 235th birthday yesterday to check the latest indie film news, here's a place to start. Celebrate the 4th of July with Kenneth Anger’s “Fireworks” If you didn't get your complete fireworks fix yesterday, check out Kenneth Anger's classic homoerotic experimental short from 1947. Weekend Box Office: ‘Transformers 3’ Obliterates 4th Of July Weekend Record Hauling in $372 million worldwide so far, “Transformers: ...
- 7/5/2011
- Indiewire
What's a firework, anyway? A paper tube filled with something that can blow up. In the hands of Kenneth Anger, of course, it's something much more complicated and homoerotic. "In 'Fireworks,'" Anger says in the prologue, "I released all the pyrotechnics of a dream." And amazing, especially when you consider that this was made in 1947. Not for the easily offended. Credit goes to UCLA for its 2006 restoration and ...
- 7/4/2011
- Indiewire
Flaming Creatures midnight screening
Jonas Mekas’ Movie Journal: The Rise Of The New American Cinema 1959-1971 is essential reading for anybody interested in underground film. The book contains excerpts from the “Movie Journal” column Mekas wrote for the Village Voice alternative weekly newspaper for a dozen years. Also included in the book are a couple of movie posters and newspaper ads from that era, which I’ve scanned and uploaded to a photo gallery. If you click on each image in this post, it will take you to an embiggened version of it so you can look at them in better detail.
It’s tough for me to pick an absolute favorite poster out of the bunch, but I inserted the most striking above. It’s for a special midnight screening of Jack Smith’s classic Flaming Creatures. I’m guessing from the date on the poster and the year the film was completed,...
Jonas Mekas’ Movie Journal: The Rise Of The New American Cinema 1959-1971 is essential reading for anybody interested in underground film. The book contains excerpts from the “Movie Journal” column Mekas wrote for the Village Voice alternative weekly newspaper for a dozen years. Also included in the book are a couple of movie posters and newspaper ads from that era, which I’ve scanned and uploaded to a photo gallery. If you click on each image in this post, it will take you to an embiggened version of it so you can look at them in better detail.
It’s tough for me to pick an absolute favorite poster out of the bunch, but I inserted the most striking above. It’s for a special midnight screening of Jack Smith’s classic Flaming Creatures. I’m guessing from the date on the poster and the year the film was completed,...
- 11/23/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
[Our thanks to Brecht Andersch for offering his notes on this revival screening.]
In 1949, a Parisian ciné-club named Objectif 49 held a festival in Biarritz dedicated to "Film Maudit", or "Accursed Cinema". A jury headed by Jean Cocteau led the proceedings with the express mission to reevaluate and redefine what was of value in cinematic art. A slate of ignored, unfairly maligned, and/or transgressive works were held up as representative of a new filmic vanguard. Films now long accepted as major works of world cinema such as Vigo's Zéro de conduite and L'Atalante, Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, and Visconti's Ossessione were for the first time given their due. Cinematic and sexual radicalism were endorsed by Cocteau awarding the Poetic Film Prize to Kenneth Anger's Fireworks, the first serious acknowledgment of a budding genius.
Many of the great works of cinema spent their early years languishing in this uncherished category: Welles's The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil,...
In 1949, a Parisian ciné-club named Objectif 49 held a festival in Biarritz dedicated to "Film Maudit", or "Accursed Cinema". A jury headed by Jean Cocteau led the proceedings with the express mission to reevaluate and redefine what was of value in cinematic art. A slate of ignored, unfairly maligned, and/or transgressive works were held up as representative of a new filmic vanguard. Films now long accepted as major works of world cinema such as Vigo's Zéro de conduite and L'Atalante, Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, and Visconti's Ossessione were for the first time given their due. Cinematic and sexual radicalism were endorsed by Cocteau awarding the Poetic Film Prize to Kenneth Anger's Fireworks, the first serious acknowledgment of a budding genius.
Many of the great works of cinema spent their early years languishing in this uncherished category: Welles's The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil,...
- 8/6/2010
- Screen Anarchy
First the history, then the list:
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
- 5/3/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Dennis Hopper's recent announcement of terminal cancer jump-started a long-overdue appreciation of his art and life. He got a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame last month (finally), and newspaper and blog appreciations are starting to pop up, focusing mainly on Hopper the performer. That makes sense: Hopper's career spanned a half-century's worth of theater, cinema, TV and recorded music; his list of collaborators stretches from Elizabeth Taylor and John Wayne through Kiefer Sutherland and Gorillaz.
Still, one hopes descriptions of Hopper's directorial career don't start and end with "Easy Rider." Hopper's 1969 debut is notable for its alternately ecstatic and lacerating portrait of the counterculture, the then-unusual use of pre-existing pop songs for its soundtrack, adventurous editing and its status as the first independently financed feature to become a mainstream smash. But there's more to his directorial résumé than philosophical bikers.
Although he directed just seven features ("Easy Rider,...
Still, one hopes descriptions of Hopper's directorial career don't start and end with "Easy Rider." Hopper's 1969 debut is notable for its alternately ecstatic and lacerating portrait of the counterculture, the then-unusual use of pre-existing pop songs for its soundtrack, adventurous editing and its status as the first independently financed feature to become a mainstream smash. But there's more to his directorial résumé than philosophical bikers.
Although he directed just seven features ("Easy Rider,...
- 4/11/2010
- by Matt Zoller Seitz
- ifc.com
Kenneth Anger's crazy, gorgeous, disturbing films almost landed him in jail. The avant-garde pioneer talks Simon Hattenstone through all his demons
The gallery is so tiny I think I've walked into somebody's front room. A 10-minute film plays on a loop. Weirded-out rock stars who look like Mick Jagger, or who are Mick Jagger, preen, strut and do their late-1960s satanic thing. White dots form a pyramid on a black background, naked boys lounge on a sofa, marines jump from a helicopter. There's a cat, a dog, an all-seeing Egyptian eye, people smoking dope out of a skull. A synthesiser makes an unbearable noise. There are no words, no story.
Around the screen, in London's Sprüth Magers gallery, a bunch of 21st-century trendies and stoners are watching this film, called Invocation of My Demon Brother, in awe, their ages ranging from late teens to late 80s. Next door,...
The gallery is so tiny I think I've walked into somebody's front room. A 10-minute film plays on a loop. Weirded-out rock stars who look like Mick Jagger, or who are Mick Jagger, preen, strut and do their late-1960s satanic thing. White dots form a pyramid on a black background, naked boys lounge on a sofa, marines jump from a helicopter. There's a cat, a dog, an all-seeing Egyptian eye, people smoking dope out of a skull. A synthesiser makes an unbearable noise. There are no words, no story.
Around the screen, in London's Sprüth Magers gallery, a bunch of 21st-century trendies and stoners are watching this film, called Invocation of My Demon Brother, in awe, their ages ranging from late teens to late 80s. Next door,...
- 3/10/2010
- by Simon Hattenstone
- The Guardian - Film News
The 48th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival is another exciting celebration of underground film past and present, featuring two retrospectives of two master filmmakers and dozens of short films and features from some of the most gifted talents working today.
For the retrospectives, first, Kenneth Anger will be in attendance at the festival for two programs of his classic work, including Fireworks and Scorpio Rising. Plus, for the first Anger screening, the filmmaker will be joined on-stage by film critic Dennis Lim for a discussion of his work and career. The second retrospective is of the work of the late Chick Strand, who sadly passed away in 2009. Strand’s Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966) will actually open the entire festival, then there will be two retrospective screenings of her work, the first of which will be presented by film scholar Irina Leimbacher.
The rest of the Aaff lineup reads like a...
For the retrospectives, first, Kenneth Anger will be in attendance at the festival for two programs of his classic work, including Fireworks and Scorpio Rising. Plus, for the first Anger screening, the filmmaker will be joined on-stage by film critic Dennis Lim for a discussion of his work and career. The second retrospective is of the work of the late Chick Strand, who sadly passed away in 2009. Strand’s Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966) will actually open the entire festival, then there will be two retrospective screenings of her work, the first of which will be presented by film scholar Irina Leimbacher.
The rest of the Aaff lineup reads like a...
- 3/8/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Jan. 16
8:00 p.m.
Anthology Film Archives
2nd Ave at 2nd St.
NYC, NY
Hosted by: Anthology Film Archives
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) may not be considered an “underground” film, but it sure as hell looks like one, belonging to the avant-garde tradition of the “trance film,” a term coined by the writer P. Adams Sitney in his book Visionary Film.
Sitney doesn’t actually write about Vampyr in Visionary Film, but he pulls his definition of a “trance film” from another film writer, Parker Tyler. In his book The Three Faces of Film, Tyler wrote:
The chief imaginative trend among Experimental or avant-garde filmmakers is action as a dream and the actor as a somnambulist.
That was true in 1960. Sitney traced the evolution of the “trance film” from the classic German Expressionist silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to the work of American avant-garde filmmakers like Kenneth Anger...
8:00 p.m.
Anthology Film Archives
2nd Ave at 2nd St.
NYC, NY
Hosted by: Anthology Film Archives
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) may not be considered an “underground” film, but it sure as hell looks like one, belonging to the avant-garde tradition of the “trance film,” a term coined by the writer P. Adams Sitney in his book Visionary Film.
Sitney doesn’t actually write about Vampyr in Visionary Film, but he pulls his definition of a “trance film” from another film writer, Parker Tyler. In his book The Three Faces of Film, Tyler wrote:
The chief imaginative trend among Experimental or avant-garde filmmakers is action as a dream and the actor as a somnambulist.
That was true in 1960. Sitney traced the evolution of the “trance film” from the classic German Expressionist silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to the work of American avant-garde filmmakers like Kenneth Anger...
- 1/14/2010
- by screenings
- Underground Film Journal
(Note: This story will be "stickied" at the top of our headlines for the day. Being able to host it is an honor beyond words.)
It was a Blood-Red-letter day for fandom as pros and fans alike gathered to bid a reluctant “Forry-well” to the late great genre-icon Forrest J. Ackerman! Hollywood’s historic Egyptian Theatre served as a temple for the filled-to-capacity ritual sponsored by the American Cinematheque, Profiles in History auction house and the Ackerman estate.
Guests began waiting on line at around 1:00Pm for the scheduled 3:00Pm reception. By 2:30 over 200 bodies had congregated at the doors of the theater. Inside, staff was scrambling. Pieces of Forry’s collection were being displayed (A first edition of Dracula signed by Bram Stoker and almost everyone who ever played the famous Vampire on screen, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula cape and Forry’s fave prop: the “Robotrix” from...
It was a Blood-Red-letter day for fandom as pros and fans alike gathered to bid a reluctant “Forry-well” to the late great genre-icon Forrest J. Ackerman! Hollywood’s historic Egyptian Theatre served as a temple for the filled-to-capacity ritual sponsored by the American Cinematheque, Profiles in History auction house and the Ackerman estate.
Guests began waiting on line at around 1:00Pm for the scheduled 3:00Pm reception. By 2:30 over 200 bodies had congregated at the doors of the theater. Inside, staff was scrambling. Pieces of Forry’s collection were being displayed (A first edition of Dracula signed by Bram Stoker and almost everyone who ever played the famous Vampire on screen, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula cape and Forry’s fave prop: the “Robotrix” from...
- 3/16/2009
- by Uncle Creepy
- DreadCentral.com
Groundbreaking director Kenneth Anger has been chosen as the recipient of the 10th annual Outfest Achievement Award, which will be presented at Outfest 2006's opening-night gala July 6 at the Orpheum Theatre. Anger's movies range from 1947's Fireworks to 1963's Scorpio Rising, films which pioneered the presentation of homoerotic images; in 1959, he authored Hollywood Babylon, a best-selling compendium of Hollywood scandals. In other Outfest developments, five projects have been chosen for the Outfest Screenwriting Lab, designed to nurture emerging screenwriters: Sebastien Gauthier's Fucking Preston, Luther M. Mace's On the Low, Samuel Park's Shakespeare's Sonnets, Dasha Snyder's To Do and Isaac Webster's Amos and Lowell. Outfest also has added two new films to its lineup: Ron Oliver's Shock to the System: A Donald Strachey Mystery, starring Chad Allen, and Phillip J. Bartell's Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds, billed as the first American gay sequel.
- 6/28/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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