Before delving into some highlights for my upcoming calendar film program, which has everything from singing cannibals and Robby the Robot to sex addicts and Pam Grier (in-person!)… I’d like to back-track a little. In my last post I wrote that the venues where I screen films were akin to a leaky rowboat. While this statement remains essentially true, especially when we are compared to any state-of-the-art dedicated film theater, I would like to amend the metaphor a bit. In retrospect, I feel it would be more accurate to say that the film series I program is more like the Orca boat commandeered by Robert Shaw in Jaws. It’s big enough to chase large game, but you still can’t help wishing you had a bigger boat – especially when you get a clear glimpse of the challenge ahead. When I previously said that we do a lot with very little, the “we” in that statement referred to the small crew that has kept this particular boat from becoming an artificial coral reef on the ocean floor, and this despite staying afloat long past its expiration date.  READ MORE

Paul Almond’s ISABEL (1968) begins with a train journey across a snow-covered landscape. We watch as the film’s star, Geneviève Bujold, sits awkwardly in her seat and squirms uncomfortably in front of the camera’s unrelenting eye. She is biding her time by shuffling through a small stack of books and papers in an effort to fend off unpleasant thoughts and feelings. You see, Isabel is a woman haunted by ghosts. These ghosts have hidden themselves deep within the recesses of Isabel’s troubled mind but when she’s asked to return to her family’s ancestral home following her mother’s death, Isabel is forced to confront the phantoms that posses her.

READ MORE

I spent this morning watching a compilation DVD that was sent to me by filmmaker/artist/musician Cory McAbee. It was titled “TnT” (which stands for Titles and Trailers), and it was the focus of a presentation he did a few months ago for the UnionDocs Collaborative in Brooklyn in conjunction with Rooftop Films (whose byline is: “Underground Movies Outdoors”). Their program notes that short films have now become a predominant form of entertainment, thanks in part to the growing popularity of video-sharing websites. But long before everyone was glued to YouTube or their cell phone, we were (and are still) watching short films on the big screen in the form of trailers and credit sequences – both being made, for the most part, by “outside parties (who) were hired to create a short interpretation from the film itself or from unused elements.” Cory’s TnT collection were specific “short films” that had influenced his own work in meaningful ways. While I can’t think of title-sequences that have influenced my life, I can certainly think of more than a few trailers that had a big impact on who I am now.  READ MORE

This session of Night School, the midnight movie series at Facets Multi-Media, has just passed the halfway point. Night School does not run consecutively but is offered in sessions of five to ten weeks. Over the past two years, our unique take on the midnight movie has attracted several regulars who show up most Saturday nights to hear a Facets staff member introduce the film and then moderate a Q&A afterwards—in the wee hours of the morning.

The familiar faces who drop by each week have made the Night School experience much more than I imagined when my colleague, Phil Morehart, originated the program two years ago, and I signed on to help. The atmosphere has always been informal—as most midnight series tend to be—but this session has been especially warm and friendly. Groups of regulars return each week to mingle in the lobby, sign up for the raffle prize, grab an accompanying handout, and then saunter into the theater. The aura of familiarity has created a cine-club vibe that makes the interaction between the presenters and the audience more relaxed and has turned the post-movie Q&As into discussions.

READ MORE

Tonight (Friday 10/15) begins the fifth season of our late night cult movie franchise, “TCM Underground.” This feat is pretty near and dear to my heart, as I was put in charge of programming the show when it first started five years ago. As a fan of cult movies, it’s obviously a big dream come true to have the chance to program “Underground.” I’m happy that there is room for some of the strange, late-night fare amongst our other programming.      READ MORE

There were two messages:  ”Eat popcorn” and “Drink Coca-Cola.”  Vicary boasted that, during the six-week test, sales of popcorn increased 57.5% and Coke 18.1%.

READ MORE

Long ago, in a class on modern art, a professor once explained to me the value of art deemed avant-garde, underground, or even offensive. One point stuck out and has stayed with me over the years: Art that pushes the edges of accepted aesthetics, tastes, and standards—and, sometimes breaks free of them—keeps that mode of art from becoming too safe, narrow, and confined.  The theory is that if a few artists push the boundaries far beyond the norms and conventions, then those artists that prefer the middle of the road work within a broader range, preventing the art form from becoming stale, repetitive, and hollow. Not only should there be artists who push the edges, but there should be outlets for the public to see, hear, or experience that art, even if they are appalled, bored, or offended by it. It expands culture by broadening the tastes and tolerance of the mainstream public.

READ MORE

When I arrived in San Francisco one of the first things I did was look through all the film programs for the area. There were many great titles to choose from, but the one that caught my eye was only playing for two days at the Red Vic on Haight Street. The program notes promised “a feature-length ‘collage-narrative’ based on (mostly) true stories of California’s post-War sub-cultures of rocket pioneers, alternative religions, and Beat lifestyles. Pulp-serial snippets, industrial-film imagery, and B- (and Z-) fiction clips are intercut with newly shot live-action material, powering a playful, allegorical trajectory through the now-mythic occult matrix of Jack Parsons (Crowleyite founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab), L.Ron Hubbard (sci-fi author turned cult-leader), and Marjorie Cameron (bohemian artist and ‘mother of the New Age movement’). Their intertwined tales spin out into a speculative farce on the militarization of space, and the corporate take-over of spiritual fulfillment and leisure-time.” READ MORE