"100 meters behind the future"

. . . a new work by eteam,

is a live film . . . shot, acted, directed, edited, screened, watched and deleted in real time. It’s a film about delay, the expansion of cinema and the paranoia that creeps in when the mash-up of several time zones and realities escapes the logical explanations of the captive audience.

The screening room is the front row of a van in which one or two people are being driven around while following the action in double view - through the windshield of the car and the screen of the device they hold in their hands. They simultaneously see what is happening right now and what has happened 10 seconds ago.

The project was part of the “For Real” program at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, 2012. Read more about the program here.

Video and more details re- eteam's project here.

Oak Cliff Film Fest Starts Tomorrow

. . . in Dallas. Website here; and you can download a printable schedule here, or build your own via the over-optimistically monikered "Festival Genius" here.

Led by the Aviation Cinemas team that took over operations at the Texas Theatre in Dec., 2010, the Oak Cliff Film Festival will showcase “brave and independent filmmaking of all stripes” from Oak Cliff, Dallas, Denton, Austin, and Fort Worth, as well as nationally and internationally.

Tickets are $10 per screening or all-fest badges for $95, plus a few events are free. The box office is at the Texas Theatre, but films will be shown at other locations including the Kessler, Bishop Arts Theater, the Belmont Hotel, Oil and Cotton, the Dallas Zoo, and more.

HiChristina!

. . . , that is, Fritz Donnelly and Christina Ewald, have organized 5 wacky, participatory happenings per week since March, 2009, in their Brooklyn, NY space. Looks like their movie will incorporate some of the hi-lites; should be fun and interesting, at least for people like me who participated in one of their events.

Barbiecam Does the Dallas VideoFest

Barbie turns out to be a pretty good shot, people seem glad to "talk to the glam", and you don't have to compress for the 'net. About her only shortcoming is, she doesn't see well in the dark. Here's her handiwork.

UPDATE: For photos of the Fest, see Roderick Cordova's FB albums here, here, here, here, and here (thanks, Roderick!)

VideoFest Tonite!

My submission to D Magazine 's Textures of Dallas" competition made it into the top 10, so I'll be there for the Q&A (screening at 7, Angelika Dallas).

I didn't have my own video-shooting phone at the time I made my entry, so had to borrow one; but I DO have my own handheld now: BARBIECAM! Compares favorably to the Canon 7D. She'll be in attendance.

Dallas VideoFest 2010 is Almost Here!

Opening night is this Thursday, September 23, and it runs through the weekend. The whole thing is at the Angelika Mockingbird. There will be 3 different channels of programming on 3 screens at all times.

So, time to start deciding what to see.

If you prefer to see more titles at a glance and don't mind clicking for each program blurb, see the online schedule for the Fest here. The Fest website also has trailers and other good stuff.

If you prefer not to have to click for the program blurbs, you can download a PDF of the complete schedule in chron order here. This is the "classic" version I've been putting together for some years, with the programs in chronological order WITH the blurbs right there. The PDF is also (yellow-) highlighted to indicate which programs sounded most interesting to me based on my own idiosyncratic preferences, what I've seen before, etc.

I haven't kept up with all the info coming out about particular programs (see the Fest's Facebook page), so please feel free to add info in comments to this post.

Hope to see you at the Fest!

UPDATE to share the benefit, such as it is, of some additional notes for an art-oriented friend:

On the chron schedule, in some cases I just highlighted the first letter – those also sounded interesting but maybe not quite as much, for me. Most of my guesses are based solely on written descriptions – I didn't have advance access to any Festival submissions this year – and I could easily change my mind.

Beyond that, I CAN say . . . I think more than one doc on Thursday will be very good – I'd pick one of those based on your interests.

On Friday, DON'T MISS the Alt Animation compilation. Re- Lethe, I've seen just one other Lewis Klahr piece – with my co-curator, Danette Dufilho, for the I Heart Video Art series – and it blew both our minds. And I've seen David Reilly's Please Say Something, and it's brilliant.

On Saturday, if you haven't already seen a lot of Ant Farm, the doc on them would be good. I think Bela will be educational for me; and I don't want to miss the Macbeth piece, although Shakespeare inspires not-so-great as well as great stuff, so you never know. I'm looking forward to the doc on Jeff Koons and The Girl with Black Balloons, and Mars.

Sunday, I'm curious about Webisodes. I think the Vid Garbage compilation shd be considered "do not miss" – in particular, I've seen Prim Limit (which is sort of a sequel to the eteam installation I wrangled for The Program 2008), and I think you'd really like it. I'm v. interested to see Erasing David. Curious about Memories of Overdevelopment. And I never miss The Texas Show, as a way to keep up with the Texas-based community.

All that said, there's usually something I failed to focus on that turns out to be wonderful.

FURTHER UPDATE: Just uploaded a slightly revised chron schedule with one correction and reflecting additional info from Bart about what he'd thought I'd like – here. His estimates re- my likes aren't 100%, but helpful.

David O'Reilly's "Please Say Something"

"[A] 10 minute short . . . contain[ing] 23 episodes of exactly 25 seconds each." O'Reilly's "TAGS: 30 Second Breakneck Heartbreak Uncut Turbodrama. Fatfree Ultraviolent Freezedried Shrinkwrapped Antiballet Timeline Easyopen Modern Unpunctuated Crass Clean Crisp High Definition Subversive Absurd Arrogant Loud Pretentious Sugarcoated Sincere Authentic Stories. Please Say Something, any answer will do." It's brilliant.

Please Say Something by David OReilly.

(Thanks again, Video Association!)

The Bechdel Test

(Thanks, Video Association!)

Want to See: "Rabbit Test"

Directed by Joan Rivers; with Billy Crystal, Alex Rocco, Roddy McDowall; (1978) 84 min.

"Joan Rivers' sole directorial effort, Rabbit Test features Billy Crystal (in his first starring role) as a nightschool teacher and long-suffering virgin who, after a night of passion, defies medical science to become the world's first pregnant man. Rivers' trademark brand of button-pushing comedy runs wild in this absurdist riot of raunchy humor and gleefully tasteless gags calibrated to offend, well, just about everybody. Includes cameos from a host of character actors and comedians including Imogene Coca, Alice Ghostley, Paul Lynde, and the director herself. It's inconceivably funny!"

(From BAM.)

Banksy's Film Debut

Exit Through the Gift Shop — billed as "the world's first street-art disaster movie":



Nice article on "The Best Banksy Controversies . . . So Far" on Flavorwire.

Seeing ≠ Believing

Pretty amazing:



(Thanks, Ben!) The "news" segment startng 30 secs. in was for a movie . . . I think.

"Taqwacore": the Birth of Punk Islam

I want to see this:



(Thanks, Julie!)

Best Thing I Saw Today:

This video was subjected to one of Rebecca Baron and Douglas Goodwin's Lossless experiments.

Roger Beebe's "Films for One to Eight Projectors"

This shows part of his set-up. At the McKinney Avenue Contemporary today (only); presented by the Video Association of Dallas. A few more pics here.

Teenager Hamlet

directed by Margaux Williamson; I want to see it. More youth, almost naked, in nature if not caves (see previous post). Here's the trailer:

SEE "In the Loop"

It's sorta like Dr. Strangelove, except it's a fictionalized yet only-too-plausible version of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Brilliant, hilarious, and fast; be alert, or miss half the fun.

Samples:

Malcolm Tucker: Right. Was it you?
Simon Foster: No, it wasn't. No. What?
Malcolm Tucker: You do know what I'm talking about, don't you?
Simon Foster: No. And... And... whatever it was, I almost certainly didn't do it.
Malcolm Tucker: Was it you, the baby from Eraserhead?
Toby Wright: No, no.
Malcolm Tucker: Then it must have been you, the woman from The Crying Game.
Judy: It wasn't me.

or (between a sorta Colin Powell-ish James Gandolfini and a sorta Hillary-ish Mimi Kennedy):

Lt. Gen. Miller: You're beautiful.
Karen Clarke: I'm sure you say that to all the girls.
Lt. Gen. Miller: Yes, I do . . . And some of the soldiers, too.
Karen Clarke: That's why you shouldn't run for office: bimbo eruptions.
Lt. Gen. Miller: Come on, don't believe that shit. I'm not gonna run for office. I'm just trying to do something different.
Karen Clarke: It's one of the reasons I like you. I know your passion about education and housing and . . .
Lt. Gen. Miller: Lingerie.
Karen Clarke: There you go.
Lt. Gen. Miller: Bestiality.
Karen Clarke: I'd forgotten about that. Are you still allergic to the dog?
Lt. Gen. Miller: Yes, yes, I wake up and my eyes are closed and my head is swollen and I look like a giant ball sac.
Karen Clarke: Oh, my God. You know, they do have modern medication for that sort of thing. Beautiful ball sac, though.
Lt. Gen. Miller: Thank you very much.

Gandolfini's facial simulation of his beautiful ball sac alone is worth the price of admission.

Trailer here; more at IMDB.

Hoffa

Unions, co-ops, etc.: they got made; most got broken (by bigger bros).

Saw Hoffa last nite; woke at 4am re-piecing it.

One of Mamet's lines worth quoting, re- the unionized: They'd rather some people die for your mistake, than that they lived, but that they lacked a leader.

Another interesting aspect: at least per this version, blue-collars had to be seriously bullied into helping themselves.

Their choices boiled down to, one feudal lord to whom you are mere fodder vs. another who kinda cares but who could be shafted at any moment by nexts-in-command who either don't care or aren't as competent. I pick (b).

('Spose Nicholson has insurance on his left eyebrow?)

David Lynch's Positivistic Relativism

Thinking about Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire . . . .

To oversimplify somewhat, it seems clear that each of those movies is a collection of versions of "reality," some of which are more "real" than others.

The main give-away to me was that some scenes are grossly clichéd in content or style, or over- or badly acted, while others aren't -- there seems to be a range. Also, some scenes clearly seem like fantasies in which certain elements from more "real" scenes are transformed and glamorized.

I want to say each of these movies is structured like a torus, although that's more hunch than something I've confirmed. But near the centers of both movies, we encounter one scene that seems perhaps more "real," at least in some respects, than the others: the center of the donut.

In Mulholland Drive, there's a scene near the center of the movie when the young blond actress auditions and meets The Director, an unprepossessing fellow who as I dimly recall (it's been year(s) since I've seen these movies and I saw each only once) was pretty much run over by his producer and investor(s). The Director and everything else in that scene seemed not at all glamorous but almost disappointingly pedestrian. It also seemed likely that the figure of The Director was meant to connect somehow to Lynch himself, or at least to his position in some version of reality. So I figured the info in that scene re- the other characters might be more "real." And that led me to suppose that the young blond actress really is struggling, and perhaps many of the more glamorized, melodramatic, or clichéd scenes were her fantasies.

There were also several versions of a blue something-or-other -- in one or more scenes, it was a very ordinary key, or a glamorized version of a key, or a box. And this "key" was itself a key to understanding that in someone's imagination (probably the blond's), an object in some fairly pedestrian, possibly more real scenario was being transformed into a similar object in some less real scenario (possibly serving metaphorically similar functions there?).

I found Inland Empire considerably more Byzantine, although maybe I was just more tired when I saw it -- but I saw similar patterns. Again, clearly, some scenes seemed more glamorized, melodramatic, clichéd (take that, Hollywood!) And again, somewhere near the center of the movie, there's a scene that seems closer to "reality." Jeremy Irons as The Director has a conversation with the guy doing the lighting. I'd never heard Lynch's voice at the time, but my sig. other said he thought the lighting guy's sounded like Lynch's. Irons was asking the lighting guy to change something, and the lighting guy kept getting it totally backward. (I hope I don't have to point out how hilarious and significant that concept is.)

In Inland Empire, the "key" object(s) is(are) red rather than blue: someone is stabbed (I think? or wounded -- again, it's been a few years) in the stomach; while in a more pedestrian, possibly more "real" version, someone accidentally shoots himself in the stomach with ketchup; also there's a red lamp, etc. (Sorry, didn't find any stills of these red "keys" online.)

So, the point.

I am a relativist. I don't believe there is any such thing as absolute truth. There can be no description of reality that perfectly represents it, at least not without perfectly and entirely replicating it.

But that doesn't mean some descriptions can't be more accurate, or at least more useful for certain purposes, than others.

If we throw up our hands and cry, it's all lies! we may be correct, but we're giving up on life.

Our task is to distinguish as best we can which fictions are more "real" than others, at least for our purposes; or more accurately, which work better, and for which purposes. (That is, as in science, which hypotheses provide greater predictive power.)

I'm thinking this is part of what Lynch is trying to shed light on (reference intended).

One-Eyed Filmmaker Conceals Camera in Prosthetic

"A one-eyed documentary filmmaker is preparing to work with a video camera concealed inside a prosthetic eye, hoping to secretly record people for a project commenting on the global spread of surveillance cameras.

"Canadian Rob Spence's eye was damaged in a childhood shooting accident and it was removed three years ago. Now, he is in the final stages of developing a camera to turn the handicap into an advantage.

* * * * *
"Spence said he plans to become a 'human surveillance machine' to explore privacy issues and whether people are 'sleepwalking into an Orwellian society.'

* * * * *
"His special equipment will consist of a camera, originally designed for colonoscopies, a battery and a wireless transmitter. It's a challenge to get everything to fit inside the prosthetic eye, but Spence has had help from top engineers . . . ."

More at boston.com.

(Thanks, Ben + Danny!)

David Lynch on Mobile Video

Esp. true of Lynch's films, which are packed with highly-symbolic visual details that would be invisible on a small screen (regardless of the resolution).