Karaoke

Karaoke premiered at this year's What They Could Do, They Did in Edinburgh, and was well received in most quarters. The paparazzi were on hand to shoot the hotly anticipated red carpet premiere event, and they weren't disappointed by the array of stars on show, including the leads Tom Moore and Alice Saint, and soundtrack producer Daniel Jones, who attended with his beautiful girlfriend Julia Hodgson.

Pap photos by Julia Hodgson 

The rest of Edinburgh was a real treat too. If you take a look at my YouTube channel, highlights will be springing up over the coming months.

The Pictures (zine)

The Premiere Issue of The Pictures is now available for the price of an S.A.E. Its 38 pages feature a semi-argumentative interview with the legendary Jonas Mekas, a talk with Quiet City director Aaron Katz, gossip on The Curse of The Dark Knight and Karaoke production stills, with beautiful illustrations by Tom Moore and Katherine Hardy. All content is (so far) exclusive to the zine, and won't appear here for quite some time. Drop me a line to get your copy.

Ecstasy

Here is a short film.

The Pictures (night)

Saving the best for last, The Pictures has found a home at Bardens Boudoir in Dalston where, starting from October 15th, we'll be screening the best of London's film scene (see below for submission info) alongside international premieres and exclusive screenings of anything that interests us. This is pretty fucking exciting. There'll be free zines and free popcorn and bingo. Here's the blurb:

PREMIERE NIGHT: 15th OCTOBER
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=26285297345

October Special Presentation:
Llik Your Idols: The Cinema of Transgression
no wave cinema documentary featuring Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch, Joe Coleman, Thurston Moore, Richard Hell et al.

View the trailer

WARNING: THIS FILM CONTAINS EXPLICIT IMAGERY AND SUBJECT MATTER WHICH WILL SHOCK AND CONFUSE YOU. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION DO NOT PARTAKE OF THE FEATURE, BUT GO TO THE BAR INSTEAD AND AWAIT THE DANCING

all this plus Bingo, Free Popcorn, Happy Hour all night.
7pm-2am, Bardens Boudoir, Stoke Newington High Street N16.
FREE ENTRY

SEND US YOUR FILMS
submissions are always open for films, short and long, to be screened on our nights. we screen anything, in any genre, so long as it's good and made with passion. get in touch for info.

we are your cheapest date"

more soon

Norbert Freese, The Argument against History, pen and ink, 2002.

{source}

Norbert Freese; Diary Entry; Ink drawing, acrylic paint and print fragments on paper; 2004.

{source: Printworks}

Norbert Freese; Music, After the Rain; pen and ink, 2002.

{source}

Norbert Freese, A Letter to Charles Bargue, Ink drawing and old master print fragments on old master print, 2004.

{source: Printworks}

Norbert Freese, The Episode: Migration, Ink drawing and collage, 2004.

{source: Printworks}

Norbert Freese, A Letter to Jonas Mekas Regarding a Dream About a Film, Ink drawing and photograph fragments on paper, 2004.

{source: Printworks}

Norbert Freese, Speechless, pen and ink, 2000.

{source}

Este fin de semana disfruté nuevamente de su libro más famoso The Americans, con prólogo de Jack Kerouac. Para quienes no lo conozcan (me refiero al genial fotógrafo y cineasta suizo), aclararé en primer lugar que Robert Frank (Zurich, 1924) comenzó su formación artística con el fotógrafo y grafista Hermann Segesser. El 20 de febrero de 1947 abandona Europa y se traslada a Nueva York. Un año después viajará a Perú y Bolivia. En 1953 conoce a Walker Evans y trabaja como periodista gráfico. A finales de los cincuenta recorrerá Florida con Jack Kerouac. En 1990 la National Gallery of Art (Washington) funda la Robert Frank Collection, y nueve años más tarde obtuvo el Cornell Capa Award. La obra de Frank bien puede subdividirse en varios grandes apartados. El primero, a mi modo de ver, que sustenta todo lo demás, es su mirada y su interpretación de fotógrafo. Robert Frank ha visto sus fotografías expuestas muchas veces sobre la pared, pero su primer contenedor fueron los libros, libros de una concepción tan singular como excepcional. El más célebre entre ellos, (el que volví a devorar ayer domingo), fue realizado entre 1953 y 1957, y es de mayor calado biográfico, The Lines of my Hand, es de 1972. Frank hizo su mejor trabajo artístico cuando abandonó la fotografía profesional, un abandono al que no debió ser ajeno su amigo Walker Evans. Las fotografías de Frank --cuya materialidad "pobre" y a la vez directa-- tiene bastante poco que ver con la "limpieza" satinada de la fotografía contemporánea, retratan un modo de la realidad que hace ver al espectador más allá de su presencia concreta. No hacen en modo alguno sociología banal ni propaganda, sino que dan a entender y a conocer argumentos inapelables y a la vez plurales de significado. Sus protagonistas casi exclusivos son las personas, sobre las que el propio Frank ha escrito: "Cuando la gente contempla mis retratos, me gustaría que sintieran como si les apeteciese leer dos veces las líneas de un poema".

Si The Americans fue prologado por Kerouac: "Esa sensación de locura en América cuando el sol calienta en las calles, la música viene de un 'jukebox' o del funeral cercano, eso es lo que Robert Frank ha captado en sus tremendas fotografías... Después de verlas terminas no sabiendo que es más triste, si un 'jukebox' o un ataúd..."; en The Lines of my Hand fue él mismo el que redactó una serie de textos breves --muy influidos por la poética de la generación beat, que Frank compartió con Kerouac, con Allen Ginsberg, y con otros escritores del momento-. Los textos interrogan, a veces, a la fotografía misma y a su sistema de representación, pero las más de las veces afectan a la propia vida del fotógrafo y a las de quienes comparecen ante su objetivo. El segundo gran apartado es el cinematográfico, en el que ha contribuido, por una parte, a la formulación de la estética underground de los años sesenta y del New American Cinema, de Jonas Mekas y compañía --con filmes narrativamente inconexos y personajes próximos a la locura-- y, por otra, se ha interesado permanentemente por el mundo de la música rock, realizando películas para los Rolling Stones y para la última reaparición de Patti Smith, por ejemplo. Por último, creo no equivocarme al considerar que el progresivo intercambio material y de sus obras, desde la toma directa al collage, desde el uso de la Polaroid a las series visuales o verbales está profundamente entretejido con una voluntad de frenar y adelantar el tiempo, de quebrar una afirmación propia: "La foto lo envejece todo en el acto... La fotografía palidece..." Mr. Arriflex

Para ver más obras de RF, pinche en el siguiente enlace: Robert Frank

Movie Pitch Idea: A shot by shot remake of Gus Van Sant's Psycho. If there's any big name Hollywood producers out there, look me up.

Another Movie Pitch Idea: An eight hour reconstructed 'making of' Andy Warhol's Empire. A single fixed camera shot, detailing Warhol and Jonas Mekas hanging out, reading magazines, eating Campbell's soup while waiting to swap out film magazines. In the background is the Empire State Building. A guaranteed blockbuster.

Algunos hablan del final de la Historia.
Hay otros que dicen que nos encontramos en los últimos días del cine.
¡No creáis ni a los unos ni a los otros!
Y la industria del cine, y los museos del cine celebran a lo largo y ancho del mundo el centenario del cine; y hablan de los millones de dólares que sus cines han ingresado; y discuten de sus Hollywoods y de sus estrellas, pero ninguno hace mención a la vanguardia, a los independientes, a nuestro cine. Yo he visto los programas, los catálogos de los museos, y los archivos, y las cinematecas por todo el mundo. Yo sé de qué cine están hablando.
Pero quiero aprovechar esta ocasión para decir lo siguiente: en estos tiempos de la enormidad, de las películas para el gran espectáculo, de producciones de cientos de millones de dólares, quiero tomar la palabra a favor de lo pequeño, de los actos invisibles del espíritu humano, tan sutiles, tan pequeños que mueren en cuanto se les coloca bajo la luz solar.
Quiero brindar por las pequeñas formas cinematográficas, las formas líricas, los poemas, las acuarelas, los ensayos, los bocetos, las postales, los arabescos, la letrillas y las bagatelas, y los pequeños cantos en 8 mm.
En estos tiempos en los que todo el mundo ansía tener éxito y vender, yo quiero brindar por aquellos que sacrifican el éxito social por la búsqueda de lo invisible, de lo personal, cosas que no reportan dinero, ni pan, ni tampoco le hacen entrar en la Historia Contemporánea, en la Historia del Arte o en cualquier otra Historia.
Yo apuesto por el arte que hacemos los unos por los otros por amistad, por sí mismo.
Yo me planto en mitad de la Autopista de la Información y me río, porque el batir de las alas de una mariposa sobre una pequeña flor, en alguna parte, basta, yo lo sé, para cambiar a fondo el curso de la Historia.
El pequeño y dulce traqueteo de una cámara Súper 8 en el sudeste de Manhattan y el mundo entero ya no será el mismo.
La verdadera historia del cine es la historia invisible, la historia de amigos que se encuentran, que hacen lo que aman.
Para nosotros el cine comienza con cada nuevo susurro del proyector.
Con cada nuevo susurro de nuestras cámaras, nuestros corazones se abrazan,
amigos míos.

[Brief glimpses of beauty. The King size!]

365 días al año.

Woo Hoo! PRAXIS was chosen as an official selection to this year's Washington DC Independent Festival. Here's the press release:

18TH FEBRUARY 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

LOCAL FILMMAKER ALEX PACHECO'S DEBUT FEATURE 'PRAXIS' TO PREMIERE AT THE WASHINGTON DC INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL, SATURDAY MARCH 8, 2008 @ 9:30PM.
(GWU JACK MORTON AUDITORIUM, 805 21st Street NW,Corner of 21st and H St NW.)

COULD 'PRAXIS' BE THE MOST IMPORTANT 'INDIE' FILM MADE IN DC?
When most Washingtonians are asked about filmmakers from DC, not a whole lot of names come to mind: Jeff Krulik of HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT fame, Eduardo Sanchez of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. It's not a very long list. The majority of local films are either documentaries, shorts, or student work.

This is where the debut feature film 'PRAXIS' from DC Filmmaker, Alex Pacheco, stands out. It was shot on film, not video. It's decisive, and difficult to categorize: Experimental, Art House, Dramatic, Narrative, Gay/Straight, Surreal, Fantastic, Sci-Fi, Existential. It's not the typical 'indie' film, with snappy dialogue or a story centered around people with animal suits. In fact, PRAXIS is more in tune with the work of Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr, and Pacheco's previous films have been compared to the likes of David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, and Luis Buñuel. "I'm more interested in the subtle,unspoken connections, the visual experience - that a film can invite you in to make your own assumptions." Pacheco declares. PRAXIS is a story that is told through the visuals and cinematography, versus dialogue.

Produced completely outside of Hollywood by a small, dedicated group of volunteers and talented local crew, the film features powerful acting from Tom Macy, (Brian) a graduate of the School for Film and Television in NYC, and Andrew Roth (Joe), an accomplished method actor also from New York. PRAXIS also features an innovatory music score from DC music virtuoso Bob Massey, of The Gena Rowlands Band, Nitrate Hymnal, and Telograph Melts fames.

PRAXIS is an incredibly ambitious film - A young writer named Brian suffers a mental breakdown, and is forced to come to terms with his own identity and the meaning of the universe. Pacheco says,"It basically can be summed up to one line,
'If you could be anywhere, where would you be?' This is what Brian is questioning, and the possibilities are endless."

Matt Borlik from THE WASHINGTON CITY PAPER describes PRAXIS as:
"...A bold first step into the foray of feature filmmaking." (June 8th,2007)

In January of 2008, PRAXIS was chosen as an Official Selection of the CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL, a festival known for showcasing daring and edgy experimental work. PRAXIS is also slated to screen at NEW FILMMAKERS/ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES in NewYork later this spring. Anthology Film Archives was started by one of the grandmasters of American indie/experimental film, JONAS MEKAS, which Pacheco finds,"...a true honor."

This year marks the Tenth Anniversary of the DC Independent Film Festival, and Pacheco's previous short UNFORTUNATE MAN screened at the 2002 DCIFF. In June 1999, UNFORTUNATE MAN had an unprecedented DC premiere at the Hirshhorn Museum: roughly 700 people showed up to a theatre that could only hold 250.

PRAXIS is proof that an incredibly beautiful feature film can be produced within the nation's capital, regardless of physical location, albeit New York, L.A., Park City, or even Adams Morgan.

FOR INFO OR TO REQUEST A SCREENER/PRESS KIT, CONTACT:
ALEX PACHECO, DAMAGED FILMS LLC, 1629 COLUMBIA RD NW #533 WDC 20009
TEL. 202.489.5481c / alex@damagedfilms.com
OFFICIAL SITE: http://praxis.damagedfilms.com / www.damagedfilms.com

FOR INFO ABOUT THE WASHINGTON DC INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL, contact:
Laura Hart, Public Relations Director Phone: (301) 277 – 8069
Email: dciff.laura@gmail.com / www.dciff.org

Jonathan Rosenbaum: [...] there's a way in which institutional acceptance and promotion can take the teeth out of certain kinds of art that have something to do with protest.

Jonas Mekas: What art do you have in mind? The avant-garde of the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties had nothing to do with protest.

JR: You don't think Flaming Creatures had anything to do with protest--

JM: No, absolutely no. He [Jack Smith] was floating in that kind of reality. He was obsessed with that reality; he had to do it, and he did it with his friends. It had nothing to do with politics; it was his world, the life that he lived.

JR: Don't you think that world and life was formed in relation to something else?

JM: Later, once it was shown, it became political. But the creation of it did not come from any political necessity. On the other hand, if you listen to Jack's soundtrack in Blonde Cobra, you can see that he himself, as a human being, did not like the type of civilization he saw around him when he walked down the street, obviously. So he created his own world that had nothing to do with what was going on around him in the offices or stores or Park Avenues.

JR: Your own films are full of things about politics.

JM: Indirectly, everything is political; everything under the sun can be interpreted politically. But the motivations for making it are not political in that sense; they're personal.

JR: But don't you think that whatever uses art is put to have political consequences?

JM: Consequences, sure. With a knife you can cut bread or stab somebody in the heart.

JR: I'm disturbed about the way that an extreme right-winger like Paul Schrader can accommodate Michael Snow's film to his own social philosophy.

JM: Do you think you can make a film that can appeal only to Democrats or Republicans?

JR: Well, no. But I am saying that art conceived as social and political protest is received less warmly here than it might have been at another time.

JM: That's because in this country, it is very difficult for us to understand what's going on in another country, oppressed by dictatorship or devastated by political confusions. It's very difficult to identify with and really have some feeling for it. It has nothing to do with this time; it's any time.

JR: And yet if you think of the Sixties and the impact a film like La Chinoise had.... I remember Columbia students who saw it over and over again in New York at the Kips Bay only a few weeks before they helped to take over the Columbia campus-- which happened, in turn, right before the May Events in Paris, which were inspired in part by what happened in Columbia. There was a way in which both news and certain feelings about things were able to travel very quickly.

JM: There was something very similar in the air in Paris and New York. But if you bring in a film from some South American country today, you won't get the same response.

JR: I'm both intrigued and a little appalled by the local responses to Tarkovsky's The Stalker, wich opened recently at Film Forum. Everyone who deals with the film, including everyone who likes it, says it's a film about the Soviet Union, and I certainly wouldn't quarrel with that. But nobody is saying or apparently even conceiving of the possibility that the film could be addressing what's happening now in America as well, the way that people are living and thinking at this moment. Nobody seems to want to make that connection, which is precisely what makes the film vital and meaningful. People assume it's "political" because it describes repression and cowardice elsewhere, not because it relates to their own lives. This is what I see as the problem: European work which could actually address the conditions of people's lives--and here again I include Straub-Huillet--is never being read as such; it's invariably translated into something else.

JM: Maybe it's the style and sensibility of the Tarkovsky film. Godard had a style and sensibility that appealed to a certain anarchist and youthful minds here. He didn't appeal to the masses--let's face it. Masses do not know Godard's name. His form did it. It was his form, his style, his temperament--not the content of his films--that inspired students of Columbia. But I don't think Tarkovsky has that kind of electricity that Godard has. No one has; Godard is unique. Tarkovsky's content is very noble--but it remains only content.

JR: Not for me. The really interesting aspect of The Stalker is how much it resembles a structural film--almost any random five minutes has the shape and structure of the whole--while describing the way that we all live and think and lie to ourselves. These two qualities actually support one another--one could even say that they make the film equally unbearable to confront, in a way.

What I'm basically objecting to is critics who wrote about both film and politics, but who avoid connecting them in ways that might be challenging--such as linking them up with their own lives, for example.

JM: When Amy Taubin writes about a film and interprets it politically, there is nothing sillier.

JR: Even when Peter Biskind or J. Hoberman or Annette Michelseon write about film or politics, they often tend to keep each category squeaky-clean, without any serious threat of mutual embrace. My criticism of Millennium Film Journal is that it's not a magazine that wants to change the world; it wants to keep the world exactly the way it is.

JM: My objection is that it's not readable! Actually, I have two objections. The main one is, if you haven't seen the film about which someone in Millennium is writing, there is no way of knowing what it is-- there is no perspective, no judgment, no comparison; it's all descriptive. Equal space and treatment is given to everything. It's academic, but not on a high level--it's like a student's class assignment.

JR: How would you compare its film coverage to that of October?

JM: October is in a different class. It's one of the most important film magazines that we have, because it brings the best in its own area of interest. You may reject the whole direction, but at least it is a direction. And the pieces are always of a high quality. When it does a special issue to Fassbinder after 20 issues, then it's strayed from that direction--but that's a real anomaly. And I hope that it won't happen again, because it destroys what that magazine has achieved.

JR: I couldn't agree more.

Robert Haller: May I ask a question? I wonder what the two of you think about why institutions and artists do things. Very specifically, Emile d'Antoino is someone you probably think is a political filmmaker, and someone who's even interested in social change. But I don't think Emile is interested in social change. I think he's interested in articulating his feelings and ideas about what is happening in society. But I don't think he's under any illusion that he's going to chance society.

JR: Well, one criticism that's been made of a lot of New York work generally--including, say, Yvonne Rainer's as well as Emile d'Antonio's--is that it's about politics without being political. And this differentiates it from some European work. One argument I make about Straub and Huillet is that they really want to change the world. Now you can say that's utopian, and maybe the only way they might change the world at all is if one person's consciousness gets changed in a certain direction, then it could lead to other changes. So it's not a plan for a whole social revolution. But it's a beginning.

JM: Do you really think that they want to change the world more than Brakhage or [Peter] Kubelka? Do you really believe so?

JR: I don't know. Maybe they want to change the world in reverse directions.

JM: Certainly Brakhage has affected things politically more through changing the vision of what and how one sees things.

JR: That's what Straub and Huillet do as well. But what kind of implications do you see in Brakhage's work and the effect it has on people.

JM: It's obvious that some believe at this point it's more important to restructure the government, the social system, and for them that's the political action. And there are others who feel that's very superficial, that won't work unless you change human beings some other ways--and that's their action, that we have to work on sensibilities and certain feelings and emotions, and that's a deeper change than just the system. Of course, if you change the system, you try to impose something--I think the Soviets are doing that from the other end. The Poland of politics. Disaster. And the other way, which Brakhage wants and many others, what some religious leaders try--that doesn't work so easily either.

But these are only two attitudes, and they're both political actions coming from a very deep engagement in how one sees the world, how one judges where things are weakest and how they should be strengthened. At this point, I support more Brakhage's direction than those who think of changing the system. From my observation of my short life, I think that Brakhage's direction at this point is more correct. Therefore, his politics are more vital to humanity than those of...I don't want to mention who.

JR: Where my formulation of the problem differs from yours is that I don't see it as an either/or proposition at all. To me, there's no way one can change a political structure without changing your own consciousness. Although I do understand that there's a way in which developing the self in certain can be a movement away from trying to change social and political structures.

JM: I have no doubt that Straub and Brakhage would agree that the most important change is the inner change. From what I heard Straub say at the Collective last spring, I didn't hear anything which would imply that he's a political filmmaker in any other, different way. I think he just wants the same things Brakhage wants.

(...)

Je veut célébrer les petites formes cinématographiques, les formes lyriques, les poèmes, les aquarelles, les études, les esquisses, les cartes postales, les arabesques, les triolets, les bagatelles et les petits chants en 8mm.

En ces temps où tout le monde veut réussir et vendre, je veux célébrer ceux qui sacrifient leur réussite sociale quotidienne à la recherche de l'invisible, du personnel, choses qui ne rapportent pas d'argent, pas de pain, et ne font pas entrer dans l'histoire contemporaine - dans l'histoire de l'art ou tout autre histoire.

Je suis pour l'art que l'on fait les uns pour les autres par amitié, pour soi-même. Je me dresse au milieu de l'autoroute de l'information et je ris - parce que le battement d'ailes d'un papillon sur une petite fleur quelque part suffit, je le sais, à changer en profondeur le cours entier de l'histoire. Le doux petit bourdonnement d'une caméra super 8 dans le sud-est de Manhattan- et le monde ne sera plus jamais le même."

Jonas Mekas, manifeste contre le centenaire du cinéma.
intervention à l'American center de Paris du 11 fevrier 1996.
Disponible en ligne: http://www.maison-du-film-court.org/

In Avignon, at the Cloister
of St. Louis,
reading the mystic,
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto