The Pictures

EVIL #1

2012-01-18T07:54:00.000-08:00

"Listen, if trouble means something that makes you catch your breath, if trouble means something that makes your blood run through your veins like soda water, mmm, Adam my man, give me trouble!" - Eve (Mae West)

because the face does not stop, it says the wrong things all the time, and of course this is not just a face or a head it's also an explosive device

2012-01-11T04:21:00.000-08:00

(Harmony Korine's Springbreakers)

(via psychovision.tv, en Francais)

Lucy Dyson

2012-01-08T08:08:00.000-08:00

from The Pictures #5

We first encountered the work of music video director, artist and animator Lucy Dyson when she moved into our flat a couple of years back, having travelled to London from her native Melbourne. In the past half decade she’s produced scores of music videos, working with acts like Gotye, The Drones, Still Corners and Lanu, and in a variety of mediums. But whether film, straight animation, collage or a mixture of all three, her work is marked by a talent to take these disparate elements, bring them together and animate them not just in the sense of making them move, but imbuing them with life, polemic and meaning rarely seen in the medium of music video.

Her video for Gotye’s Thankys For Your Time starts with mild satire, kitsch workplace elements that suggest lighthearted smalltalk complaint at the world of work. But as the video progresses, concentric circles of telephones and macabre dancing co-workers reveal something altogether darker and harder to dismiss. As the images on screen dance uncontrollably around our field of vision we enter a state of Kafkaish panic. Similarly, Pussy Got Your Tongue is a Hitchcock Blonde nightmare presented at first as harmless retro fetish. The bright colours and every day objects given mischevious rule on the screen often reveal a hidden darkness. In many of Lucy’s videos, the inanimate objects and cut-out characters take full control and gleefully steer us into discomfort.

Lucy has mixed film and animation throughout her work but has recently produced videos for fresh Sub Pop signings Still Corners and Australia’s Teeth & Tongue that are based almost entirely on film and video image. Wish by Still Corners was shot on 16mm Bolex, double exposure to allow singer Tessa Murray to wander as a ghost amongst her bandmates. The video for Teeth & Tongue’s Sad Sun kaleidoscoped colour-rich Canon 7D
video of singer Jess Cornelius across an animated group of yetis on a mountain quest.

Narrative features heavily in Lucy’s work, be it effectively simple as in Wish or with a sense of historical storytelling as in her Laika the space dog animation and the video for All India Radio’s Persist, which tells the sad tale of Topsy, a circus elephant condemned to death. Her narratives are imbued with a keen attention to detail
and particularly design that is found more often in cinema than music video.

The world of the videos is meticulous, cut out and built from Lucy’s far ranging and enthusiastic influences – encyclopedias, soviet ephemera, the space age, retro interior design, children’s partworks, Hammer Horror, advertising, How And Why books. Her videos explore feelings and issues using the visual grammar of these influences, revealing their ideas through the metaphors and implications of those influences when
placed in a modern context – the 50s housewives, the astronauts. There’s a naivety to these metaphors but Lucy’s work is all the more striking for it – for all the depth and complexity, her videos are no less entertaining, funny, bright or energetic and, in that sense, she is pushing the music video format forward into something more and more interesting.

THE PICTURES: How did you start out as an animator? Did you always intend to make music videos?

LUCY DYSON: When I finished highschool I really wanted to study painting, but my parents (an artist and highschool art teacher) persuaded me to do a BA in Media Arts instead, which was basically art school but with a focus on animation, video and sound art. I guess thinking it would possibly lead to a more lucrative career than a fine arts painting degree. So at uni I specialised in experimental animation. There was more of an emphasis on conceptual development than how well something was technically executed. I didn't initially set out to make music videos, I recall that during semester reviews at uni, if you presented a music video, and it had any "band shots" it would rarely be well received by the lecturers, but a confused video art piece would fare much better, and I'm not at all critical of my art school experience being that way, it pushed me to make considered and interesting work.

I started making music videos towards the end of my honours year at uni. I've always had a lot of musician friends, and that's pretty much how I got started. My early experiences shooting live action was that I didn't know what the hell I was doing, I didn't even know how to properly operate a video camera, these days I know the value of a good DoP.

Music videos do take up most of my time, but I don't feel like I've had a breakthrough with any of them. I don't see myself making a career exclusively from music video directing, but it works with my art practice at the moment. It would be great to be repped by the right company, work with a good producer and have more money to work with, but most of the time I'm too busy to be phased by these things. As long as I'm busy and there is interest in what I'm doing, I figure I'm on track.

TP: What would you say the influences on your visual style are? Would we be right to say that you reference movies a lot? And maybe aspects of interior design?

LD: I spend a lot of spare time collecting and poring over 1950s-70s Home Living magazines, then taking out all the elements I like the best and collaging a new room from these. I'm obsessed with mid 20th century interior design, but over the last few years, having moving from Melbourne to London and now Berlin, my own home interiors hardly reflect this. I've owned and have had to leave behind a lot of nice furniture. When I start collaging interior scenes together for my animations or art, I'm creating rooms I would love to live or work in. Which is often how I feel when watching Hitchcock films. I think I'm also influenced by Richard Hamilton's work and Dexter Dalwood's painted interiors, I love how they both play with perspective, I struggle with interior perspective, I usually tend to frame animation scenes as though they are being presented on a stage, I'm working on loosening up this approach, I'd like to make some future work exploring really warped interior spaces.

TP: Do you often work with collaborators? How important is collaboration?

LD: I love to collaborate when it comes to executing a concept. But I like to come up with initial ideas on my own, and then when I feel excited that I have a strong idea, I like to bring it to someone else, (usually more skilled than me in either animating or filming) and work out the logistics. I don't think I'm technically skilled enough to pull off everything myself, though when you have no money to work with you sometimes have to. I think it is important to learn from other people. I'm not a natural animator, I find animating really difficult, but I love it and I have been lucky to work with other people like Isobel Knowles and Joseph Jensen who are naturals. Like with any medium, if you're inspired enough to hone it, in the end your own hand is all over it and that gives it your touch, people can pick my work. I'm not too uptight about my own wonky animation style these days, I've worked hard and long on it, but it is so good to work with a really talented animator who with a deft hand, can bring naunce and emotions to characters and scenes.

TP: There's often a strong sense of narrative in the videos. Do you hear the song and find an appropriate story, or do you choose the story before finding a song to illustrate it?

LD: It depends on the song, with the Topsy animation, I had been researching that story before I was approached by the band (All India Radio) about making an animation for them, it was something I was thinking of making a short animated film
about. The band said they wanted something animal themed, and I thought the Tospy story was a good match for the sombre tone of the song (Persist), luckily they agreed, and it worked so well that US animals rights organisation Born Free, used it as the central focus for a campaign against circus animal cruelty. It also worked so well that when it was first screened at Melbourne International Film Festival a few years ago, unlike with every other music video screened in the program, when the video ended, not a single person clapped, I guess they were too sad too (I hope).

With Still Corners, the song itself (Wish) inspired the music video concept. The band had said from the start that they wanted the film clip to be shot on film, so with a bolex camera and a couple of rolls of 16mm as a starting point, I came up with the idea of shooting double exposures based on the specific lyrics from the song; "I had dreams I can remember and you've had them too". It was such a fun experiment, I don't think the narrative was very clear though, it wasn't obvious if they were all just sleeping and dreaming or actually dead, but we structured the edit that way on purpose.

I'm always filing away stories that I feel could be told in an interesting visual way,
but mostly they are sad stories, I'm drawn to pathos, when it comes to narrative.
Sometimes I adapt these stories for music video concepts, but it all really depends
on the song, and often what the artist wants. I've had a few treatments knocked back on the grounds that the concepts I've put forth are too sad for an indie-pop music video. I have a short list of stories I'm waiting to turn into short animated films.

TP: Do you have a favourite way to work?

LD: I like to mix it up as animating can be such a tedious and boring process, and I like experimenting, it's a given if you're making something with next to nothing. At the moment I'm really happy with the animation style Joe and I are developing, combining his animated illustrated characters in my collage scenes, my strengths lie in background art and directing and Joe's in character animating. This has been a great development, it looks slick and smooth, yet still retains the idiosyncratic qualities of my work.

TP: What's next?

LD: At the moment I'm working on a crazy animation for an ipad App, and Joe and I are also completing a music video we started last year, that was initially dropped due to time contraints, but has since been picked up again, we are really excited about it, it's all illustrated and a lot of work, it will be nice to see how people respond to it. There is also a mysterious experimental film clip featuring a wonderful LA actress, it's a love project, it's taking ages to pull together. Later this year hopefully Joe and I will get on with the short films I mentioned, we'll have a long
winter in our studio in Berlin, I'm looking forward to it. Also, I have a new video for Still Corners ready to drop anyday now, it's a bit sexy, and creepy, I can't wait to share it.

Lucy interviewed late 2011 / lucydyson.com

Coca Cola ♥

2011-11-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes set photos via Retronaut, many more here.

so who wants one?

2011-11-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

Issue 5 featuring
ANGELIQUE BOSIO
LAWN-DARTE & STEELE
EMMAALOUISE SMITH
TOM MOORE
DAVID WOJNAROWICZ
BRUCE LABRUCE
LUCY DYSON
ALICE SAINT

& REVIEWS, PICTURES, STUFF THAT WASN'T IN THE FREE DOWNLOAD

Available now direct, or this weekend (5th) from the usual and unusual stockists. Sells out fast, no hesitations!

LAWN-DARTE & STEELE

2011-10-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

from The Pictures #5, photo by LD&S

Becky Lawn-Darte: One day me and dang were sitting on my floor pulling out individual strands of my hair to attach to bread and I thought “we are obsessive”. We are obsessive and this is the best day of my life. The props are cult objects, the edits are weird conversations. We have a hard time letting go. After AB dang had probably huffed too many things and I was thinking about seriously stalking people. Tim & Vice could have gone on for a long time. Way longer than any of my real relationships. We get attached to shit is what I mean. By which I also mean there is a sequel.

Ambient Bummer, the doomed romance of Timothy Ziglar (Dang Steele) and Vice Magazine (Becky Lawn-Darte) is the second major picture from Lawn-Darte & Steele Productions, a duo of self described Manson Family Revivalists whose lo-fi distortion dramas are the best things we've seen grow out of the Columbus, Ohio art/film/music scene since one Bang Wash Productions (Becky L-D is half of Bang Wash too). Tim loves Vice, Vice loves Tim and together they live on warm beer in a crappy apartment where Vice dreams of travelling away on a v-a-c-a-y holiday. Desperate to make his girl's dreams come true, the solvent-addled Tim turns to lottery tickets and crime. How will their love survive?

The Pictures: How did you come to make films together?

Dang Steele: good question. i sort of had this crush on BANG WASH.

BLD: I think it started the first time we hung out. We were making a floor collage from disco glass and I left my glasses in Dang’s room. Then we were listening to ELO. Then we made movies. Our first one is called “strange magic”. It was kind of just like that. You did have kind of a crush on BANG WASH, though.

While Becky cut her film-making teeth with the legendary Bang Wash Productions, Dang was working up his own movie science experiments - see the likes of Gypsy Issue and The Big Wedding on youtube channel ‘danzotelevision’. The two first came together to produce RETINABALL!, a trip through mind altering spectacles that features a Ciccone Youth style take on Phil Collins’ Susudio, drug wine and an active volcano. The marriage of Lawn-Darte’s fuzzed out romance games and Steele’s knack for science, on a palette of kitsch special effects and nosebleeds was an immediate fit. The chemistry was obvious. Karina and Belmondo gone shitgaze.

It wasn’t to last. Steele’s relocation to San Francisco placed 2000 miles between the pair. Somewhere on Vimeo a sign was hung: ‘Lawn-Darte & Steele Productions (Now Defunct).’ Becky ventured out solo with horses in Romanticulticom IV, a comparatively angry film about selling work and being hit by a van to a scuzzy Righteous Brothers cover. Steele returned to his own work. But as Becky said, the the pair are nothing if not obsessive, and the internet has no care for distance. The two got talking movies again, and Tim and Vice were born over ethernet cables.

BLD: Our cursers hangout in a google document. Sometimes we just sit there. Sometimes reading the transcripts back I forget which one I am. We send pictures. We send songs. We video chat, but his camera is so blurry he looks like he’s wearing a him mask. It’s kind of sad in a good way, like the simplicity of it. We used to do most of our business over champagne brunches, which I miss quite a bit, though.

DS: i prefer the champagne brunches. i think its pretty good for being 2000 miles apart.

Very few scenes in Ambient Bummer feature Becky and Dang together but you might not have noticed if you didn’t already know. The film is a conversation and a love story in a classic Hollywood way, with each actor delivering their final monologues (read from a Motley Crue biography) in that old-time 50s style. Lawn-Darte and Steele play almost all the roles - the audience, the protagonists, the music and the police in wigs and costume. Still photos, collages, junk shop arrays, ambitiously handcrafted effects (see Vice’s stop-motion 2D tears or Tim’s hallucination of vacay seaside), hazy colouring,audience reaction shots, home-made Godard titles (FLOWERS ARE FOR GRAVES), chemistry how-to demonstrations - nothing in the film comes from outside of their pastel-graded world, including the DIY soundtrack.

BLD: the music in AB is my band when I'm singing, and Dang’s band when he is. Or when no one is. My band is called Albanian Mob Murder. We don't play out and we don't practice. We just drink and record. I sing and play the Xanax. The band started because I had some songs written that I wanted to record for the movies, but we got kind of fond of each other. Regs Tonti, the redhead in the movies does backing vocals. Jawsh is our main drummer, but we all play drums sometimes. Whichever of my ex-boyfriends I dislike the least plays the guitar, so you know... it changes. Oh right, there’s a 7 inch that exists that eastern-watts put out. I don’t have a copy, but the cover is me taking my pants off with a bad tambourine bruise.

DS: I dont really have a band. its just me. one day i got completely obsessed with hobos while staring at a wall, so i called it hobo seance. i kinda picture singing while standing in front of a barrel fire under a bridge. this is the future of my “band”.

Ambient Bummer is Spector heartbreak pop through filthy colour-correction filters. Tim and Vice pine for vacay and eachother, ever loyal when it all falls to pieces. In Vice’s solo protest for Tim’s freedom she’s Peggy Angel before her boyfriend came back; she’s Lesley Gore and this is her crashed party. Lawn-Darte and Steele are Danny Zuko and Sandy after the flying car and on a comedown. It’s feelings like this made us fall in love with their movies and we can’t wait for the sequel - 21st century rock’n’roll romance, with style and hearts they’re not afraid to use.

BECKY

TP: What are Steele’s best/worst qualities?
BLD: best: disguising narcissism
worst: sensitivity

TP: What is your favourite film?

BLD: I really liked our JCVD new years marathon. Also Point Break. They say that Keanu Reeves doesn’t look for the camera, he let’s the camera find him. We could all learn from that, except I am not really sure why anyone in a movie would be looking for the fucking camera.

TP: If you could take anyone to see one of your movies, who would it be?

BLD: Probably Dave E McManus. I don't know why but it it just seems right. Or Crispin glover. He’d probably bring some kind of weird snacks. Both good options, I think.

TP: What is the first thing you think when you wake up in the morning?

BLD: Well I usually put my credit card and ID in my bra in case I get mugged, but don’t always remember to take them out and put them back in my wallet. So sometimes the first thing I am trying to figure out is where in my apartment I took off my bra. Then I check all the paper that’s all over the wall by my bed for any notes I may have written myself while half asleep.

TP: What would be your perfect Vacay?

BLD: I’ve been thinking about cruises a lot. I think I would probably either love or hate them. I’d be making a movie, someone else would make the cocktails.

TP: What's your favourite scene in an LD&S movie?

BLD: Definitely the scene in RETINABALL! Where Dang and I are sitting around the volcano.We were surrounded by dry ice, but we still kept forgetting we were filming. You can tell because we are holding glasses of colored vinegar for the volcano and Dang's lips are blue because he kept accidentally drinking it. Later he made the music which was this perfect fake jukebox first date lovesong, and I edited the scene and turned him into a creepy talent agent drug pusher type. He wasn't mad. Everything was just about perfect.

TP: Politics?

BLD: None. Not because I am disillusioned or distrustful of the system or anything, but because I just don’t really care enough to stay up on it. I’m pretty self absorbed, you know.

TP: Would you rather have to spend a whole day acting, in public, as if you were the lead in a musical or be at a good party and have your parents turn up and hang out?

BLD: I actually wouldn't mind the musical thing. As long as I could bring a drummer. I'd probably just hangout in a laundromat all day. That's the perfect place for that kind of shit.

TP: Do you believe in ghosts?

BLD: Nah, and it's partially because I'm a materialist, but partially the
same answer as the politics question. Self-absorbed. Life is for the living.

DANG

TP: What are Lawn-Darte’s best/worst qualities?
DS: best: obsessing
worst: moving on

TP: What is your favourite film?

DS: In an imaginary world id say Electric Dreams. i saw it when i was a kid but only remember the theme song, so i just make it up in my head. its insanely romantic. surreal. soul shattering. Ive never seen Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence either.

TP: If you could take anyone to see one of your movies, who would it be?

DS: Becky. seriously. maybe the girl from Domino Dancing.

BLD: Ima punch that domino bitch if she’s a real person.

TP: What is the first thing you think when you wake up in the morning?

DS: i heard iggy pop does fifty pushups right when he gets up, thats why he looks so good. i dont even know if that story is true.

TP: What would be your perfect Vacay?

DS: wall papering my yacht followed by serious clam diving.

BLD: Remember when you wanted to get a gambling problem because you thought somehow you would get a yacht out of it? and you made a to-do list? I think having a fundraiser was on it. Eff cruises. My perfect Vacay is on Dang’s gambling yacht.

TP: What is your favourite scene from a LD&S production?

DS: aside from the telepathy. broken noses, endless skittles, car chases.

BLD: Yeah, I don’t take any pictures so in a weird way these movies are kind of my
fucked up photo albums.

TP: Politics?

DS: this party is lame. you wanna get outta here? im a photographer.

BLD: Oh yeah, and we’re shallow. Like disco shallow.

TP: Would you rather have to spend a whole day acting, in public, as if you were the lead in a musical or be at a good party and have your parents turn up and hang out?

DS: the reality of my public persona being an act already is somewhat crushingly sad. my mom would have cheap beer in a cooler that looks like a purse.

BLD: Let’s actually do this. Bring drums. And your mom.

TP: Do you believe in ghosts?

DS: when i get lonely enough.

BLD: Sell-out.

LD&S Blog

Poster: Mary Marie

2011-10-24T05:50:00.000-07:00

official site

FREE LILO

2011-10-22T04:45:00.000-07:00

orphans of the storm

2011-10-04T06:28:00.000-07:00

a million things to keep you up at night #26-30

2011-09-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

So You'd Like To Be A Star?

2011-09-18T04:01:00.000-07:00

He Didn't Want A Love Song

2011-09-14T02:22:00.000-07:00

by Battlekat (Dreamtrack Diamond Sound remix)

video edit & FX by Garry Sykes, footage from Voyage To The Planet Of Prehistoric Women.

Still Corners - Cuckoo

2011-08-20T04:28:00.000-07:00

here's the amazing new Still Corners video by Lucy Dyson - quite a few folks caught a preview of this at our Yes Way cinema last weekend, and it officially dropped yesterday. beautiful isn't the word. you can read a full interview with Lucy in the latest zine (link a couple of posts down)

Way Out

2011-08-14T16:39:00.001-07:00

good weekend! thanks to all who came to see movies, all who made them, and all at UTR for being amazing and putting on such a good show.

if you're here about the free zine, right click and save as this link here, right here (it's an 8 meg PDF).

you can get all our other zines for free if you do a bit of scanning around the blog too.

there'll be a physical edition shortly with some extras that aren't in the online version. and we'll have some new movie nights starting up provisionally around October (with bands and things too). details here or you can follow @picturesfilm on twitter.

very tired. sleep now.

PICTURES ZINE #5 - FREE DOWNLOAD

2011-08-12T05:52:00.000-07:00

(PDF, 8.1mb)

we did our very first Radiohead

New Zine / Yes Way

2011-08-08T05:34:00.001-07:00

(too) long-promised but finally almost here, that's the cover for Pictures Zine #5, David Wojnarowicz drawn beautifully by Tom Moore. the issue has interviews with Angelique Bosio, Lawn-Darte & Steele, Bruce LaBruce, Emmaalouise Smith & Lucy Dyson, plus a piece by Tom Moore on Wojnarowicz, awesome artwork, new releases, society pages and the usual. It'll be winging it's way to the usual locations (and a few new ones) over the coming weeks or you can contact us. Plus...

So we're completely thrilled to announce that we'll be presenting a pop-up cinema short film programme at this year's Yes Way, the ever fantastic Upset The Rhythm weekender which this year is at Peckham's Bussey Building (incidentally, one of the filming locations for this here masterwork). it's an amazing lineup on any or all three days, with our film bit running on the Saturday and Sunday. bring a date!

Pretty En Rose Pledge Drive

2011-07-28T04:02:00.001-07:00

Llik Your Idols/Advocate for Fagdom director Angelique Bosio (interviewed below and in our upcoming zine about her second feature) has spent the past year or so shooting a film about Parisian lingerie designer Fifi Chachnil, and is looking for funds to complete the project.

This pledge-based funding model (used so effectively recently by Summer Camp in funding their debut album) is a really interesting one, and one with huge implications for filmmakers if it does take off. The target is €4200, and there are plenty of goodies on offer for your euros. You can read about the project (in French) and consider your pledges here. Well worth your time and diminishing single european currency.

a million things to keep you up at night #21-25

2011-07-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

Video Is The Only Constant

2011-06-22T02:30:00.000-07:00

Sunday July 3rd our friends Video Is The Only Constant are holding their regular showcase of video, film and performance in the Mile End Victoria. 5pm-11, free entry, the lineup is looking great, and includes a trio of videos created for tracks from Shape Worship's 2010 self-titled EP. More info and links below:

here is the programme.

Video Is The Only Constant

Ambient Bummer

2011-06-22T02:29:00.000-07:00

ULTIMATE VACAY $$$

what if South Park has just ended?

2011-06-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

this is a blog post related to the mid-season finale of season 15 of South Park. it's not our usual sort of post I know but I had a few thoughts and wasn't sure where else to put them. this comes with a SEVERE SPOILER WARNING. do not read on, do not even be tempted to read on, if you enjoy the show and have yet to see Season 15, Episode 7, entitled You're Getting Old.

OK.

This past week there has been a flurry of internet rumour and speculation surrounding the mid-season finale of the most recent season of South Park, fuelled not least by reports of creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone's very public dismay at the continuation of the show, expressions of exhaustion and outspoken questioning of how both audience and network expect the show to continue. It has been mooted that, far from a mid-season break, this finale is the surprise ending to the series as a whole and that Parker and Stone will not complete their network commitments and choose instead to end South Park as of this episode. Whatever validity or lack of may exist in these rumours, on which we won't speculate, it raises an interesting question of where the show would stand if this was to be the ultimate end.

The episode centred around Stan's 10th birthday. From the point of his turning 10, the music that he used to listen to, the opinions he used to hold, the things he used to do with his friends all began to seem like purposeless, meaningless shit. He was diagnosed with 'being a cynical asshole' syndrome. He became weary of his friends, his surroundings and his life as it stood. The episode ended with a completely unexpected emotional montage in which Randy and his mother - usually one of the more comic, puerile relationships in the show - had a serious heart to heart and decided to divorce, related in a closing montage of Stan being ripped from his home and moving to a new place with a single parent, with a suitably sombre emotional soundtrack, equatable to the 'Goodbye To You' sequence in Buffy The Vampire Slayer perhaps.

That this would be an ending point for the series as a whole does make a certain amount of sense - we're not in "KING OF LIMBS 2 IS COMING IF ONLY YOU FIGURE OUT THE NUMBER SEQUENCE' territory here. It would represent the ultimate South Park controversy, a huge peak, to pack up and go out on an emotional high and deny an audience anything else at a time when its creators are resentful of the show and feel that most such peaks are behind them. It'd cost them money for breaking contract, but that's money that they could afford to pull off a move that would cement the show's infamy in TV history (a place already assured, yes, but all the more so in these circumstances). When the show started, and to some extent throughout its run, shock value has been prized above all else, and what better shock than to unexpectedly pull the plug, and on such a note?

It would fit South Park's internal logic to end on this note, a stunt not a million miles away from dropping a huge cliffhanger and then returning after 8 months with a 20 minute Terrence and Phillip adventure and no answers. It fits thematically too - this has always been a show with a heart, and that heart is rooted in childhood. The fact that it's everyman character (or one of two, the other being Kyle, but note that Matt Stone has had few writing credits this season) began to slip and then was wrenched out of childhood by catastrophic events in his life means the show cannot go back to that 'innocent' childhood state. Permanent story arcs that have arisen before for various reasons, such as the death of Kenny, and the boys auditioning replacements (a move that led to the fleshing out of much of the supporting cast - Butters, Token etc. - that reinvigorated the show in a lot of ways) that were ultimately reversed do not apply here. The fact that this is happening to Stan's family, a keystone of the show, has a certain weight that hasn't applied before. It could well be that this is a reinvigoration and that new storylines will stem from this point but that's not the track I'm going down here.

When you consider where those storylines could go, how they could develop the show beyond the point it's already reached, there isn't much room for development where there has been in earlier arcs. Recent disappointing episodes, such as the episode with the comedy robot who boils down all modern humour to a terrible event followed by 'awkward' suddenly make much more sense in light of the disillusionment of the show's creators. Going out on a sour note would not be to everyone's tastes, but might just be the right ending to go for.

South Park has always aspired to prove itself as something greater than a vulgar children's cartoon. It is well beyond the point of needing to prove that, it succeeded long ago, but there has always been an inherent urge to take things further. Parker and Stone wanted their huge moment when unveiling their representation of the prophet Mohammed. They were denied that moment, one with far greater reaching implications than anything they'd have done before, by the machinations of the network to which they are contracted. Presuming then that that desire to go through with something so huge has not dissipated, then why not do something that is within their grasp, curtailing a hugely popular show on a massively pessimistic (but somewhat realistic) note, with no prior notice or expectation. Parker & Stone have always been showmen, and this would be a very showmanly move to make.

Of course, anyone taking the whole thing as seriously as this may simply provide motivation to continue. As a fan I do hope this to be the case, and of course don't pretend to have any huge insight into the creative process of Parker or Stone. It felt though like the scenario above, should it not pan out in reality, was a potential path worth pausing to think on.

ROLL CALL

2011-05-25T11:57:00.001-07:00

we'll meet again...

2011-05-04T13:03:00.001-07:00

so it's been two and a half years and the real world was always gonna catch up some time. yes, sadly, outside commitments mean that as of this month there'll be no more regular Pictures Film Club at Bardens.

we're not dead, just sleeping, and it doesn't mean we can't go out with a bang.

Wednesday 11th we'll be screening one of our favourite things, let alone films, from the last few years, Adam Curtis' psych history collage
...IT FELT LIKE A KISS

plus we'll be closing with a double bill of Lynch's
ON THE AIR

and we've got a celebratory line-up of DIY No Future Shorts, music videos and murmurings from the first and finest contributors these past few years including
TOM MOORE
BECKY LAWN-DARTE
HESTIA PEPPE
SHAPE WORSHIP
CHARLES CHINTZER LAI
WAY THROUGH
& yet more TBC

plus
GAMES
PRIZES
and one last round of FREE POPCORN

Bardens Cafe
Stoke Newington Road, N16 7XJ
Wednesday May 11th at 7.30pm
FREE!

Get down early for the best seats!

(and keep your eyes peeled and keep in touch - Pictures zines, one off events and special screenings all coming your way)

a million different things to keep you up at night #16-20

2011-04-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

Poignant Defenestration Fatalities

2011-03-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

Publication Download Fest!

We're all sold out of all back issues of our Pictures zine, but hope is not lost.

Issue 4, the Documentary Issue featuring Frederick Wiseman, Ondi Timoner, Rita Ribas and loads more is now online in succinct PDF form here:
Issue 4 (11MB - right click, save as)

You can already get Issue #0 (6MB) and Issue #1 (10MB) too, for all your ancient history needs.

we still think twitter sucks

2011-03-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

twitter.com/picturesfilm

Bruce LaBruce: The Advocate for Fagdom

2011-03-11T03:38:00.000-08:00

Angelique (Llik Your Idols) Bosio's excellent new documentary Bruce LaBruce: The Advocate for Fagdom will follow a triumphant appearance at the Berlinale with a trio of screenings at the BFI as part of the 2011 Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

We're beyond psyched for these screenings, this is not to be missed - the film is a captivating collage of interviews, archive and LaBruce's films and art, woven together into a an insightful and entertaining biographical portrait of the man, his work and his dreams, and featuring the likes of John Waters, Gus Van Sant, Harmony Korine, Vaginal Davis, Jack Sargeant, Richard Kern and more. Bosio's previous film Llik Your Idols was the centrepiece of our first official Pictures night, and it's great to see her work progress and delve into new and emotional places.

"an illuminating portrait of one of queer cinema's most vital transgressors." - Michael Blyth, BFI

The screenings are as follows, and keep reading for the trailer and a quick Q&A with Angelique Bosio.

Friday 1st April - 18.40 in the BFI Studio
Saturday 2nd - 12.20 in the BFI Studio
Monday 4th - 18.10 in NFT1

Priority tickets are available now, and general tickets on sale March 18th via the BFI.

Angelique Bosio Q&A

TP: What drew you to making a film about Bruce LaBruce?

AB: The distributors of my previous documentary, "Llik Your Idols", offered me to direct a DVD bonus for the French edition of "Otto; or, Up With Dead People". I was a bit hesitant at first. Indeed, I didn't want to appear as a one trick pony since Bruce LaBruce was in my first documentary and since the subjects seemed at first quite similar. Nevertheless, I felt frustrated that I had had to cut the whole part specifically about him in the final cut of "Llik...". I guess that's what ended up convincing me to make this film. As the French edition of "Otto..." was canceled, I kept on working on this project but made it a full documentary.
I have to admit that I didn't know much about Bruce. I got more and more interested and passionate about the film and him as I was filming and discovering that he embodied a few issues that were so dear and important to me. And the person himself was so nice and generous that the 2 year adventure turned out to be quite a pleasure. I know it sounds cheesy but...

(photo by Richard Kern)

TP: What can people expect when they watch it?

AB: I hope they won't expect anything !
I mean I tried to make a film that could interest people that are not necessarily cinephiles, gay, queer, or into Bruce's work in the first place. To me, it raises questions that are linked to Bruce but that are not exclusive of what and who is not Bruce. It's not an experimental documentary when it comes to the form but the rather academic form helps me attract more people I think, trying to change their mind more softly or to make them wonder about subjects that are generally subjected to prejudices that we are hardly aware of.
Even when one has a very liberal speech on an every day basis, I believe they (even I) have deep rooted prejudices about some specific issues (relationships, religion, races, sexuality etc...). Here I tried to use elements that, put together at the right moment, would make us aware of the limits of our liberal minds.
So I guess people can expect to ask themselves at least one question. At least I hope so.
But what they shouldn't expect is a fiendish biography of Bruce.

TP: What was the best and worst thing (or things) about making the film?

AB: It's quite hard to reduce more than two years of my life/work with two opposite moments or feelings...
I guess doing something after "Llik Your Idols" was quite liberating. I felt I was growing up ! To be able to work with the people I had met along the years and to be able to count on them, to realize I had a crew actually, was fantastic. To travel and meet new people along the way that (for some) are going to stay in your life, it's great too. And the best moment for me was the evening I spent in Portland at the Union Jack watching pole dancers.
When it comes to the worst things... Well... I guess me and my producers weren't on the same page and it was sometimes really difficult to make things happen in a peaceful, easygoing and emulating atmosphere. Also I have a real job that I keep doing even when I am filming my documentaries. I am a production secretary / assistant, so the whole making of this film (and my third one at the same time) really drained me out of energy and physical life ! I have spent more than two years trying to keep my head out of the water so I think that's the worst part of it ! Now I'm fine and happy to show the film. It's a reward.

TP: How does it feel now it's out and being screened around the world?

AB: Like I said, the screenings are like the candies and lollipops you get after going to the dentists. It is an incredible opportunity for me to defend the issues raised in the film and discuss it with the people I meet at festivals, and to travel, simply.
I just hope I will get strong reactions from the audience and be able to really discuss things.

An older Angelique Bosio interview from The Pictures zine
Official Site

March CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

2011-02-28T12:02:00.000-08:00

all technical problems fixed, this month we've a brand new lineup of film goodness, plus we're re-showing the few that went wrong last month, so:

David Cronenberg's CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (1970)
details the wanderings of Tripod (Mlodzik), sometime director of a dermatological clinic called the House of Skin, who is searching for his mentor, the mad dermatologist Antoine Rouge. Rouge has disappeared following a catastrophic plague re...sulting from cosmetic products, which has killed the entire population of sexually mature women. Tripod joins a succession of organisations including Metaphysical Import-Export and the Oceanic Podiatry Group, and meets various individuals and groups of men who are trying to adjust themselves to a defeminized world. Written, shot and directed DIY style by the young Cronenberg

plus films with/by
HAPPY ENDINGS PRODUCTIONS*
TIMES NEW VIKING
SARGASSO SEA
CHARLES CHINTZER LAI
BRANDON REICHART & PELHAM JOHNSTON
TRASH KIT
GARRY SYKES
SAMUEL BECKETT & BUSTER KEATON

plus DAVID LYNCH'S ON THE AIR EPISODE TWO
it went down such a treat last month that we thought we'd let the series run on

plus
SCHWARZENEGGER BINGO
prizes to be won!

MUSIC & ZINES & POPCORN
FREE ENTRY AS PER

Wednesday 9th, Bardens Cafe, Dalston
Early seats are best seats
xo

*Happy Endings Productions are running a jingle contest, to accompany their new logo. Go here for details (quote 'Underground' to get an extended deadline til March 14th!)
http://www.youtube.com/user/happyendingstv?feature=mhum#p/u/3/0smMjEN8moI

a million things to keep you up at night #10-15

2011-02-23T06:30:00.000-08:00

PICTURES in the air

2011-01-31T04:30:00.000-08:00

PICTURES FEB '11:

'ON THE AIR' pilot episode (David Lynch & Mark Frost, 1992)
The team who brought us Twin Peaks went on to devise and produce a short lived sitcom. Set in the 1950s in the fictional ZBC television studios, the show follows the cast and crew (many of whom are played by TP alumni) of 'The Lester Guy Show' through chaos, calamities and incompetence as they struggle to put together their broadcast. We can't honestly say we've ever seen another sitcom like it. The series only made it to 7 episodes, only 3 of which were shown in the US. Brought to you in the glory of full Standard Definition, taped off the telly in the 90svision

&
an amazing programme of shorts, music videos, DIY movies and documentaries with and by...
NICOLA PROBERT
DAVE MARKEY
RITA RIBAS
CHARLES CHINTZER LAI
LUCY DYSON
LLOYD BOWEN
BUSTER KEATON
PLUG
EMMAALOUISE SMITH
TEETH & TONGUE
BUTTONHEAD
SAMUEL BECKETT

plus
DJs & soundtracks & Ludovico visuals

Free chance to win a torrent-tastic set of all 7 On The Air episodes, on the finest quality DVD-Rs our Tesco has to offer (we only offer the best), plus other prizes in SCHWARZENEGGER BINGO

Zines

Free Popcorn

Free Entry of course.

Wednesday Feb 2nd
7.30 for 8.00pm prompt start, be on time for the best seats

(though head down a couple of hours early if you fancy sampling Bardens' new food menu, om nom nom)

Trish Keenan RIP

2011-01-14T06:29:00.000-08:00

(photo from thedecibeltolls)

The Pictures has always been about music, almost as much as film, and especially that place where the two come together - this is why we have bands play our nights, this is why we always have one or two music videos in our monthly lineup, this is why we talk in such similar terms about filmmaking (especially our kind of filmmaking) and musicianship - they're really not a world apart.

Awful news came this morning that Trish Keenan, lead singer, multi-instrumentalist and founder member of the band Broadcast, has passed away from pneumonia, brought on by contracting swine flu while on tour. Anyone who has been to one of our nights and heard our between film playlists, or seen any of the silent movies we've selected contemporary soundtracks for, will know that Broadcast were always one of our very favourite bands, from their cinematic analogue synth soundscapes and beautifully crafted songs, hauntingly sung in Keenan's unique tones, to their innovative light-and-projections based live shows, expanded cinema at its best. Our thoughts and sincere condolences go out to all friends & family. We felt like we couldn't let this pass without expressing how genuinely gutted we are at this loss, and paying a small tribute to Keenan's unique presence and talent, a warm and welcome voice in our ears for many years now, and many more to come.

If you're not familiar with the band, take a little while out of your day and watch these videos, we promise you you won't regret it.

Ondi Timoner

2011-01-08T06:24:00.001-08:00

from The Pictures #4

has produced some of our favourite documentaries of the past decade. You’ll most likely know her from DiG! (2004), the odyssey of Anton Newcombe and The Brian Jonestown Massacre and their friendship and jealous feud with The Dandy Warhols as both bands struggle to make it (or struggle against making it), and from last year’s We Live In Public, the story of internet pioneer Josh Harris.

Harris was one of the first to cotton on to the potential of the internet, and set up a series of pre-broadband web TV channels, before launching an auspicious Big Brother style project called “Quiet: We Live In Public” in which 100 artist residents were denied all personal space save an open bunk, filmed around the clock on myriad webcams and able to watch eachother 24/7. The results were chaotic, fascinating and occasionally depraved, as self-control was abandoned, positions of authority were abused and the experiment began to disintegrate under it’s own conditions. Harris followed this by rigging his own house with hundreds of cameras and putting his daily routine and relationship with his girlfriend under constant surveillance, broadcast to the world via the internet, and allowing the world to interact and chat with the couple. Harris’s relationship collapsed under the strain, his fortunes soured, and eventually he fled the country to avoid his financial woes. Ondi’s film follows Harris from the glory days at the turn of the millennium to the present, ultimately asking powerful questions about our use of the internet and the extent to which we share our private lives online.

Ondi Timoner’s documentaries are very much about time, accompanying their subjects through years of their lives and witnessing these lives unfolding. Join Us (2007) follows the intimate story of a group of families as they grapple with the emotions and crises faced when attempting to leave a small-town cult and un-do years of brainwashing. The families are candid in revealing their experiences – their horror at their own blindness, their feelings of loss and loneliness, their compulsions to return - and Ondi’s camera is open and sympathetic, yet when meeting the cult leader, the Pastor of their church, the film does not assume a position of judgement, allowing the Pastor to voice his own seemingly heartfelt, if delusional, side of the story with equal emotion. The disappointment and confusion of the Pastor’s faithful wife is particularly affecting.

In spending such lengths of time with her subjects and immersing us in their world in such a direct and honest way, Ondi has created a series of unique and fascinating films, each one bringing to the fore the larger questions and implications of the story, while remaining at the same time intimate portraits, films about groups of people who are at turns lost, obsessive, misguided, driven, destructive and brilliant. We recently had the pleasure of speaking to Ondi about her own journeys and obsessions.

The Pictures: How did you get into filmmaking and what did you make of your early work, did you enjoy it?

Ondi Timoner: My early work? What do you mean, do you want to talk about the very beginning?

TP: Yes, I do.

OT: Starting at the very beginning. OK, well I was 19 and I asked my parents if I could have a you know little consumer video camera for Christmas or the holidays and they said yes and they gave me a camera that I ended up calling Flo, that was her name, and I took her on the road and first thing we did, me and my brother was go across the country and we interviewed people in toll booths and convenience stores about what makes them happy and what they fear the most and what they think of gays in the military cos those were sort of the questions of the day and I quickly learned that my camera was this bridge into worlds that I could never otherwise enter, and that it was in fact you know, a way to learn, and, in an extraordinary way that I had never had access to before and I’m not the kind of person that, I’m not like a book learner you know? I’m a, more of a people learner, I learn from other people and from interaction and, even at Yale where I was, at Yale at the time, I would get so much more out of the lectures you know than I would out of the books and so this camera became like this way in and by my senior year I only took classes where the teacher would agree to let me make a film instead of write a paper for my final project.

TP: Oh cool.

OT: So by the end of school I was making a film about women in prison called Voices From Inside Time for a class called Transgressive Women in American Culture and it was really quite, quite an incredible way to learn and so when you know I graduated, a lot of people graduate from Yale and go on to these very high paying jobs and everybody was kind of looking at me when I said I was gonna go be a documentary filmmaker but I felt like it was just the perfect yin-yang because I would go out into the world, say I went to the prison, I would have this access to speak to these women you know and really humanise them and find out why they were in there and that they loved their children and break down the stereotypes you know? And learn myself and be there for as long as it took and give myself over to the muse, and then I got to go to the edit bay, and Yale had no production facility so we did everything at this public access station, ha, and you know, thank god for the public access station but I would go to the edit bay and be in this quiet room, in all that I had learned and sorted out and figure out a way to communicate it for other people you know? So that they could learn and so it was like to me a perfect yin-yang and to this day you know the editing process is where the writing happens and you know I followed these films, these stories over a long period of time and it’s absolutely incredible to… to give, to basically work for 21, you know the first time on my movie Join Us I showed up at the cult treatment centre and shot for 21 hours that day, and I was blown away that these people who had just been through a mind control situation where their lives and their privacy and money and everything had been taken, their children had been beaten and yet they were opening up to me, and I just followed the muse you know and then you just, you put yourself in these situations where it’s not about you at all, it’s totally about life and capturing the serendipity of life and capturing the nuances of human experience and then, you know, then you go to the edit bay and it’s all about private time, quiet time, sorting it out and figuring it out and that’s where the revelations come a lot of the time, and so anyway it’s just been a beautiful process but I’m also moving into narrative films now.

I hate the word narrative, I’m sorry. Documentaries, my documentaries have narratives, ha, they have stories and they’re also dramatic so what I say is pre-scripted films with actors is what I’m moving into.

TP: Yes, fiction? So you mentioned that the films have very long stories and you have all the time to get to know the subjects, and I think that makes them really satisfying as well, that you can see everything unfold over such a long period… How do you tend to choose subjects, and is it always the case that the story goes on for a long time and you’re around for a long time, or does it sometimes cut short or… do you tend to try and find stories where there’ll be that length to it?

OT: No these stories find me. I can’t even take credit for finding them per se, I just have a strong intention, like for Dig I was really intent on exploring the intersection of art and commerce cos I’d made this film about this one woman in prison after the one I mentioned to you and that was called The Nature of the Beast and I had this woman’s life rights to go try and get it… I realised that people weren’t watching documentaries in the early ‘90s, and so I tried to get it to you know a larger audience by turning it into a TV movie or what have you, something to get 2 million housewives to write letters, and I quickly realised that you know the integrity of the story was being threatened by the industry, you know so here I am 21 years old and they’re like ‘this is a great story, you’re a producer, now get out of the way’, basically and so I started filming bands on the verge of getting signed to look at what would happen to me, and I was filming 10 bands over a year, that was my goal, and then I met Anton and he’s like ‘forget about those other bands, I’m taking over your documentary’ and I thought yeah right, and then he did, he did you know because I had my eyes open and he was, he was so compelling because he had such an antithetical relationship to the business and he was much more of a hyperbole than a lot of the other artists and musicians that were cowering in the shadows of the industry, do you know what I mean?

So he was quite, you know quite exciting, and then he actually said go meet the Dandy Warhols, we’re gonna start a revolution together, and I thought well I’ll go meet them and I did and they had no idea that he was planning to head up there to make a record with them and I thought well this is incredible, here they are, totally on the verge of getting a record out on Capital Records, ready to play the game, comfy cosy, totally stable band in Portland and this guy’s coming and they don’t even realise it, he’s coming to like start a revolution with them, haha, so…
So eventually really I realised that I could look at everything I was looking at with the 10 bands with these 2, and then the story just kept going you know, and it’s not like I chose it as much as I just sort of you know stuck with it, I have tenacity and a sense of you know, I have tenacity and a sense of where to show up.

TP: Do you see yourself as… How involved are you in what actually happens in the films, like do you see your role as kind of a journalist-investigator, or are you more of a participant, or do you think it’s somewhere in between?

OT: I believe I’m an Interloper, it’s like what my company’s called.

TP: Oh, I see!

OT: Yes, I’m in the group but I’m taking notes at the same time.

TP: I didn’t notice that, the name of the company.

OT: Heh.

TP: But you’re in, briefly, a couple of the films, I think you’re in..

OT: Yeah, I’m in the bunker.

TP: What was it like staying in Quiet? Were you there the whole time? It looked pretty crazy…

OT: It was somewhat like playing dress up or something, it felt like this totally artificial community where we were supposed to be, you know all of us together and friends and you know it just kind of felt really, I don’t know how to describe it. It didn’t feel real and it felt uncomfortable and then it also kind of felt fun sometimes, like cereal bars, I expressed in the movie, but it was uncomfortable to be around these people that you didn’t know who they were, what was gonna happen or what they really were thinking about, you know like that woman attacked the other woman and there were people there, there was not a feeling of security to the place.
It’s kind of amazing that it came out, that Josh got off as easy as he did.

TP: It looked like it had the potential to be pretty disturbing…

OT: Haha, it was, it was loud too, it was anything but quiet. He called it Quiet: We Live In Public and it was, you know, loud.

I was only there to direct it more than anything. I do believe that I should try to experience and be a part of what I’m filming to the extent that you know it’s good for the film, so I was there and I had a pod but I also had a hotel room and I also, you know, my thing was I had a walkie talkie and I had four camera people besides myself and I had a multiplex system where I ran the 110 surveillance cameras into one machine and then recorded to 12 different VCRs so I could record 12 different individual cameras and then one that I could do 9 screens or 4 screens so that was part of the art to me, was to record the pod situation or the virtual box situation as a metaphor for the virtual boxes that we’re all sort of in now and also use that as a way to monitor the place and know where the action was and be able to deploy real digital cameras with people behind them, you know what I mean?

TP: Going back to the way that the stories are very long and also that they have a lot of different film formats within them- I don’t know if that’s done in post, or if you experiment along the course of filming, but it gives a collage effect to the whole thing. Is that conscious and were there any particular influences on that style of filmmaking, or is it more just about experimenting with it as you go along?

OT: What was the original… experimenting with what? I think I missed…

TP: The look of the image, and the different formats that things are filmed on, like I don’t know if that’s done during filming or it’s a post-production thing.

OT: In all my films?

TP: Maybe not so much in Join Us, but in DiG certainly and in We Live In Public…

OT: Yeah, well in Dig, what happens is you end up filming over time and then technology changes, so you know I was filming on Hi-8 cameras and then me and my brother, back when my brother and I were following the bands in the early, mid ‘90s we had those kinds of cameras, then I remember the Hi-8 camera got stolen and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me probably because it forced me to upgrade to digital and thank god because the avid wouldn’t read Hi-8 and we always had to transfer the Hi-8s to digital, and when we transferred the Hi-8s to digital they went through sort of an effect where they started to look different and then you know we had Super-8 which we always loved to shoot and then we had 16mm and 35mm by the end, so there was just a lot of time going by and the ability and financial resources changing and technology changing and then at a certain point with Dig you know it’s all about putting it in a washing machine basically and making it look like it sort of fits together, like a quilt or something you know? And I love that, I think it’s totally appropriate because I think the goal of any film that, I mean certainly a documentary film and probably any film, but it’s easier with a pre-scripted actor film to create an environment that makes people feel like – people meaning the audience – feel like they’re there, they’re immersed you know. When you’re doing a documentary my whole thing about filming stories over time is that time provides the greatest narrative, and because suspense, even the slightest not knowing what’s gonna happen next, allows people to interact with a film in the way that a historical looking back film cannot do. Just does not happen. So that’s why... Hang on that’s my phone. Hold on OK?
…
OT (returns): …I had to talk to her, she’s my producer.

TP: Oh don’t worry about it. Umm…where were we? Talking about a quilt, and Dig, and….

OT: Quilt? Oh yeah yeah yeah. So it’s a very organic process of just kind of you know, whatever works. The form should follow the content. It’s very important that the film feel like what it is, so with We Live In Public it’s more of a silver bullet kind of film and even though some of the footage may look degraded cos it was recorded on a VHS, it’s still put inside a graphic motif that looks like today, it looks like our lives with the internet today and it feels like you know the music and the images and the graphics all feel like a combination of the cold steely technology and the kind of warmer humanity breaking through or trying to break through or how the virtual and physical worlds interact, you know I feel like all of that is in the look of We Live In Public, and so I’m quite proud of that and I feel like, or you know not proud but I’m happy that that’s how it turned out, then Join Us, same thing, Join Us feels very pastoral and is slower and quieter and it’s not as many formats because all that worked for that film was digital because it had to be extremely low impact because we were in on these therapy sessions, we were running into the cult leader’s house or we couldn’t really do anything more than that and then there was some surveillance when they go to the church, and then there’s Super 8 because it’s appropriate for them, you know?

But as soon as I put John Lennon – God in, on the credits, it was like no way, no way that the film could, the story could handle a big song, it needed like you know, it needed to have Iron and Wine and it needed to have Sufjan Stevens, whereas We Live In Public could have Jane’s Addiction and Nine Inch Nails and needed to have that, so, yeah, hope that makes sense.

TP: It does, and I think it’s a good parallel to draw between the music and the type of film it is cos in that type of documentary it can often feel quite musical, the image and film itself can feel quite musical, I mean especially in your films I think-

OT: Yeah, music’s really important, to me music’s the most powerful art form, hands down. It has the power to infiltrate your soul and your mind and your subconscious in a way that even film can’t do it in the same way, any visual medium can’t, you know it’s just, you’ll be able to listen to a song and the lyrics will go into your brain because of the beat, because of the rhythm of life and how that interacts and how the music actually is that, you know?

TP: Yeah, it’s really personal, it’s talking to you as you listen…

OT: Yeah and so you don’t even realise sometimes, you can be asleep and listening to music and wake up and have the lyrics in your head, that just doesn’t happen with any other art form, so it has the power of osmosis and it’s crucial to film.

TP: It is… I had three more questions, um, two of them fairly heavy, one nice

OT: Uh-oh.

TP: So… it seems like a lot of the subjects in the films are really driven people, but a lot of them in two directions at once, so they’re looking for very positive creative and producing very creative things, but often in a very self destructive way.

OT: Yeah.

TP: Like somebody in Join Us mentions their paths leading to death, I think the people in Dig talk about Anton’s house smelling of death.

OT: Yeah, well that’s cos he was on heroin you know?

TP: Yes, not so good.

OT: Haha.

TP: So is that dual path something that interests you in particular, or is it something that just tends to exist in the types of subjects that you look for?

OT: Um, you know… I’m not clear on why it is that I have been sort of swept up, I mean Josh Harris called me and asked me to document the bunker, Anton said he was taking over my film, you know with Join Us it was more of Bush won the election and I thought there was some kind of mind control in America and I ended up at a cult treatment centre and once again sort of a megalomaniac male, person who can’t help himself at the crux of the story. I don’t know why that is but I think the films are really all about us, and not only because these people are hyperboles of characters that have some relatability to all of us, you know whether it’s feeling like, it’s really man vs. system you know as a central conflict, even my film about prison and about this woman in prison it’s just kind of like, they’re all like that, and right now my first scripted film, pre-scripted film is about Robert Mapplethorpe and him like you know, busting through with this imagery that made people go crazy over here, freak out and say oh it’s pornography, is it art? And he couldn’t help himself. He was a catholic and he couldn’t help himself. I don’t know if that’s just what appeals to me but I wouldn’t make, really I wouldn’t have made for example the film about Josh if it wasn’t about us. We Live In Public is really only in existence because of Facebook because I saw the Facebook status updates and went holy shit, I get it now, I get why this is, as opposed to Josh being Bill Gates or something, he’s not. So it wasn’t like I was like let me make a film about this crazy man who sets up this bunker, who’s like a web pioneer, I didn’t think it was that important for the world to know about Josh Harris until I realised that he was this big huge walking cautionary tale and also had some visions that have, that he created, whether he knew it or not, a physical metaphor for life online that is, you know granted, a fun house mirror but still food for thought for all of us at this crucial time, and so yeah, I don’t know if I’ve answered your question but… there’s more information haha.

TP: Yeah, you kind of answered the next one as well, it was, I put it in different terms, but it was about how the kind of male, almost religious leaders tend to be these central characters and they do tend to get people following… I mean obviously the most literal example of that would be Join Us, but in Dig there’s that bit where they go up and somebody says “are you in a cult?” and they say “oh, I don’t know” and, yeah, I think you kind of answered that.

OT: Well there is this idea, it’s about what we’re willing to give up to have our lives matter, that’s what the films are all about, every single one of them. They’re not about those leaders because- I mean they are to some extent but the real, the real point of interaction between the audience and the material is around the person’s life themselves… Like, I make these films for all of us, not because I think those people are extraordinary, not because I’m obsessed with cult leaders, but what these kinds of charismatic leaders do and you know charismatic and conflicted and misguided and inspiring and you know gruesome characters do is they somehow compel people to give up their privacy, their freedom, their you know whatever the hell else they were doing to follow them you know? And it’s like what are we missing that we need that, and why, and what are we doing every time we go and post something on Facebook because that’s not one person but we’re giving stuff up all the time now, cos we need our lives to matter, we need to feel significant, we need to feel like we did something on this planet, even if it’s post a digital photo and have somebody say “you look so cute!” you know?

TP: It’s true.

OT: It’s like a phenomenon that I think is pretty compelling.

TP: You really don’t realise who stuff is going out to either, I got an e-mail this afternoon from someone working for a TV company saying that they’d read a story that I’d posted on a forum about two years ago about almost being mugged and fighting the guy off, and they wondered if I’d be up for being interviewed on camera and I thought how the hell did you track me down from a post on a forum two years ago? It never crossed my mind…

OT: It makes you wonder if Josh was right, that actually the computers are gaining consciousness. I’ve got to admit that I’ve wondered this myself now because I have this Google alert on my name and on We Live In Public and literally the internet generates these stories, it’s pretty wild, like they’ll come up with something from two years ago and re-post it and it’s like who’s doing that? I can’t imagine someone sitting there doing that you know?

TP: No, it’s strange. OK, the last question – what are you working on next?

OT: I’m leaving for the Sundance Lab on Tuesday to workshop my first feature film about- hold on I have to write one thing really quick… OK. So I’m taking my film, my first pre-scripted film that I intend to make, that I’m producing and directing and writing with another writer Bruce Goodrich who generated the project originally like 8 years ago, and we’ve been developing it ourselves for two years and me and Eliza Dushku are producing it together, and it got into the Sundance Lab which is an incredible workshop for directors that is just amazing, it’s highly competitive but it’s just incredible, they’re basically investing in my film school education and I’m going there and shooting a bunch of scenes and it’s gonna be awesome.

TP: Sounds like a lot of fun.

OT: Yeah, doing it on Tuesday, I’m going to Utah for three or four weeks, they’re flying me in and putting me up and we fly in actors and we shoot, we then work on the script and you know make a movie, so we’re doing that and that’s gonna help a lot and then also I’m completing a documentary right now about climate change and the climate change debate and that as the sort of debate around it and then Bjorn Lumberg the very controversial climate or political scientist-economist who is sort of at the centre of a lot of this climate change debate, and I’ve been shooting that for a year and that’s what I was on the phone about and we’ve got editors here, and I’ve got to get off this Skype thing and start paying attention to that, but that’s gonna come out in September, October, so another documentary. One last one for now and then my first pre-scripted actor film which I’m just absolutely thrilled and excited about doing. I really think that you know I’ve taken documentary about as far as I can right now, We Live In Public, and that it’s time for me as an artist to stretch my wings and tell stories in a different way and I think I can bring all the authenticity and all the knowledge that I gained from these incredible 17 or 18 years in documentary to really help me with the narrative films, or the pre-scripted films, and then motherhood, I’m mother to an incredible young man named Joaquin who is six years old, and it’s a full time job. So I’ve got three full time jobs, haha.

TP: Ha, that sounds exhausting.

OT: Yeah, it’s very exhausting but I live a very rich and full life, I’m honoured and glad and please send me a link to this when you have it done, I do have to run Garry but I wish you the best of luck.

TP: Thanks and bye.

Interloper Films

10 from '10

2010-12-16T15:46:00.000-08:00

10 films we've had the pleasure of screening this year, a rundown in no particular order, with accompanying future poster quotes and links. get a bag of popcorn and settle in.

Xiu Xiu - House Sparrow by Jason LaRay Keener

This is honestly one of the most original, and disturbing, uses of the music video format we've ever seen, its missing child distress theme matched only by Jason's resourcefulness and the technical imagination displayed in transforming his own neighbourhood into a surreal rolling news nightmare. The finest Reining Nails production yet.
watch

Marriage by Tom Moore & Garry Sykes

Two regular screeners at Pictures nights teamed up this year to move things on a level and produce one of the classic boy meats girl stories, their two distinct styles weaved into a marriage made in heaven.
watch

Heaven by Rita Ribas

Inspired by the death of her family dog, Rita made the film in Abney Park cemetery, a series of snapshot portraits of dogwalkers and their dogs. The owners speak from interviews about whether pets go to heaven and life after death, made all the more poignant by the Hackney beauty spot graveyard setting. As with all of Rita’s films there’s a sense of things passing from physical, familial presences into stories, memories and video.
watch

Romanticulticom IV by Becky Lawn-Darte

Becky strikes out from Bang Wash Productions to produce a romantic comedy about market forces and being hit by a van to a bleached out Righteous Brothers cover. A mystery that's like holding your head underwater in a bath of the sweetest summer syrup.
watch

Pilgrim, Your Heart is a Ball of Light by Molly Allis

Molly's politicised animation (where there's hats there's politics) is more alive than most films, a claustrophobic trip through paranoia town and out the other side, moving further and further towards some hopeful destinations.
watch

Plantagenet 3 - Theme From An Imaginary Western by Charles Chintzer Lai

Post apocalyptic mutant goths Andrew Milk, Rachel Aggs and Quiet Carriage shamble through the landscape and stumble on a mysterious sealed box - an impressively styled video from Charles (who also produces Upset The Rhythm TV and the Trash Kit Cadets video), the bleak tone perfectly fitting the imaginary western soundtrack.
watch

Favourite Songs from Musicals Trilogy 3: Mr. Banks Mashup by Jack Barraclough

The third and best part of Jack's 'Favourite Songs From Musicals' trilogy, hilarious and unexpectedly touching for all it's lo-fi foolish simplicity. The soundtrack from Mary Poppins really was excellent, and only improves with added ketchup gore.
watch

They Look Their Best From Above by Christina Millare

As well as spending much of the year co-curating screening nights as part of the excellent Video Is The Only Constant series, Christina showed this film, an ode to personal biology built around direct visuals, narrative asides and abstract images. Her overview on the qualities of breasts is witty and insightful, a unique perspective.
watch

The Midnight Pen Pal by Emmaalouise Smith

Emmaalouise shoots only on film, processing and editing her super 8 reels by hand to give them a unique sense of craft and authenticity. The Midnight Pen Pal centres around a short poem, the words matched by lyrical colours, kitsch grain and spliced memories. Emmaalouise also runs the Short Film Sessions programme at Rich Mix.
trailer

Still Corners - Wish by Lucy Dyson

Dreamy double exposure 16mm sees an apparition of singer Tessa walk through the band and around golden fields, inviting all to join her in ghostly bliss. The sun drenched clip stands as a whistful reminder that another summer has passed by, and to save some nostalgia for next year.
watch

10 - 10 = 0
to show your film at one of our nights in 2011, get in touch.

END OF 2010 PICTURES: TONIGHT

2010-12-01T03:08:00.000-08:00

WHAT TO DO WITH THURSDAY'S RAGS (#6-9)

2010-11-21T17:01:00.000-08:00

Umit!

2010-11-20T15:19:00.000-08:00

Rita Ribas

2010-11-16T13:21:00.000-08:00

makes mystery documentaries, short time capsules of clues and artefacts that unfold enigmatically through the duration of the films, arriving at the spectres of answers to their own intuitive questions. They’re full of ghosts and and family tales captured on video for posterity. They feel old in the sense that they feel wise, rooted in family history and old painted portraits and maxims from generations past. The films are about religion, ritual and affectionate details of living, death and memories and relations.

Rita’s first film Tia is about her Portugese grandmother, shot in her home as she lays in bed recovering from an unspecified operation, then goes through her house singing, reflecting, telling stories. There’s a sense of wonder in the house and in Tia, as she eats from a box of chocolates named for planets in the solar system or sings about suffering. You get the sense that these details we see and the tales she tells are at the surface of a much deeper pool of memories, and that the house is filled with old and hidden things. Tia opens a secret door and enters a dusty room where a locked case contains her mother’s wedding dress. She takes out the dress as if it’s the answer to the riddle of the film, and holds it to camera - a still portrait that feels more like a painting than a photograph. It has that much more weight.

Both Tia and Being Mother revolve around women in Rita’s family, and both films are composed of interviews and observations. Both films look at the details in the way their subjects live, picking out decorations and crockery, the routine of making tea. Being Mother begins with a wall mounted painting and then Rita’s mother discusses the purpose of her life. She jokes about being constantly busy. Both films are touchingly affectionate, light-hearted even, but at the same time in both there are hints of illness and inescapable reminders that time is passing away. The family dog needed an operation to remove a giant tumour. The father is prescribed pills. Rita’s mother talks about a ritual in which wax replicas are made of a person’s body parts where afflicted by disease or injury, and that the wax models are then kept so that their bearer is healed through faith. She presents a pair of wax hands, but whether these are esoteric curiosities she has come into, or that they belong to herself or her husband, is left open ended and unknown. We get the impressions of stories and of the past through pieces of evidence that speak only for their own existence and their being kept, held on to. Like the wedding dress, the hands feel like an answer, but it’s a subtle and intuitive one that completes the portrait of the film’s subject, and not a central point or big reveal.

The Fire is Rita’s longest film to date at 15 minutes, building on this technique in a much more ambitious way. Through fractured, non-linear footage of a family gathering at a farm in Rita’s Portugal home town, the film tells the story of a huge fire that tragically led to the death of a baby. The film opens again on an object – a lamp that has a small burn hole on its shade. Shots of the generations of the family are again suggestive of painted portraits – in The Fire, some of the family are filmed next to old family paintings (this paralleling of the film screen and canvas is revisited in Rita’s Still Films series of atmospheric landscapes). Photographs and heirlooms are picked out around the house. The rich sense of history lying in the individuals in Tia and Being Mother is multiplied into a whole extended family with pets and children and reminisces. Elderly relatives take turns at telling the story of the fire as children play outside. The film fades to black frequently so that often only their conversation or laughter is heard. The story can only be brought to life when all are assembled here. There is a strong sense of ritual – the family are very religious – in the atmosphere, storytelling and the invocation of the shared memory of that traumatic night. The documentary captures and evokes it perfectly.

Religion and belief are central to Heaven, Rita’s first film not to focus specifically on a single family, although it is equally funny, personal and emotional. It was inspired by the death of her family dog. The film was made in Abney Park cemetery, and is a series of snapshot portraits of dogwalkers and their dogs. The owners speak in voiceover from separately recorded interviews about whether they believe pets go to heaven, how they feel about their dogs. Almost all say they feel like the animals are family members, and their loss would be just as devastating. They meander off into reflections on lost loved ones and life after death, made all the more poignant by the Hackney beauty spot graveyard setting. As with all of Rita’s films there’s a sense of loss, things passing from physical, familial presences into stories, memories and video.

THE PICTURES: What drew you to filmmaking, and documentary filmmaking in particular? Would you say you have any strong influences?

RITA RIBAS: My earliest connection to filmmaking were my father's home-movies and slideshows. Whenever we went on holiday he would make these strange films that were more like experimental/art videos - they always focused on random details, and didn't make much narrative sense - but managed to capture the moments, that often go unnoticed, in a very special way. I guess this is where I started to form my appreciation for observing the world around me and understanding the camera's power to capture the sensations of atmosphere and memory.
Other influences: Werner Herzog (his choice of subjects and approach to documentary), Ulrich Seidl (his juxtaposition of real-life comedy and horror), Errol Morris (specially 'Gates of Heaven' and 'Vernon, Florida') and David Lynch (what would a documentary look like in his hands?). And one film that's recently stuck in my mind is Nikolaus Geyrhalter's documentary 'Our Daily Bread' (for its hypnotic depiction of industrial food production and surreal Kubrick-esque cinematography).

TP: How do you choose the subjects for your films? Do you have a concept in mind and then find a subject, or is it more organic than that?

RR: The film itself is rarely clear in my mind when I'm starting out. It's always a process of feeling in the dark. It starts with an interest in a subject, place or person (things I come across in my everyday, on travels or on the internet), and expands through observation and interaction. Often I only start to make out where the film is going and how it will be shaped after I start interviewing people. So in a way its a bit of a scary process but also very rewarding - I like feeling like a detective, connecting bits and pieces together to make a story - and learning along the way. There is a good quote by Errol Morris; "If you know exactly what you're going to say before you say it, why bother?"

TP: There's a lot of humour in your films, as well as a lot of quite touching elements. They're a lot more emotional, in a very personal way, than a lot of documentary films can be. Where do you think that comes from? Would you say that personal element is really important to your work?

RR: My films explore subjects that are close to me and represent my own perception of the world. I am less concerned with creating an accurate representation and more with evoking the subtleties of lived experience - the sensations and emotions - so this is quite a personal take on documentary and sometimes means 'reality' is treated in a malleable way. I think there's a lot that documentary can learn from fiction. The process of filmmaking is also very personal - discovering new places, meeting people and observing different ways of life - this is what I enjoy the most about making documentaries and I think it shows in the type of films I make.

TP: Your films started off quite small (i don't mean this in a negative way at all) and intimate and have expanded in scope. Was this your intention? Do you find it comes naturally? Where do you hope to take things in future?

RR: My work has definitely evolved - previously I made films that only involved my family, but now I've been engaging with other people - people I don't know. There is so much you can get away with when you're working with family - you know they'll forgive you! Those earlier films were almost like my 'training ground' - I felt safe to experiment with ideas and now I'm ready to go out into the world. But I don't want to loose that sense of intimacy - its something you have to work harder at when you don't initially know someone, but I think its something that comes across when you really care about your subject.

TP:What are you working on at the moment?

RR: I've just received funding from IdeasTap to make a short documentary in my hometown in Portugal. It's about people's devotion to a 'saint' that is not officially recognised by the Catholic church. I will be spending a lot of time in the small shrine where the saint's body is displayed and where people go to pray and to give offerings. Amongst many other things the shrine has received over 6,000 wedding dresses donated by people praying for happy marriages. I'm interested in why they feel the need to pray to the saint and what they get out of it, and I'm also interested in the atmosphere of the shrine.

www.ritaribas.com
From The Pictures #4

PICTURES 2010 06: we're back

2010-10-17T05:43:00.001-07:00

With the opening of the new Bardens Cafe (above the old Boudoir), our Underground Film Club is going above ground and following a far too extended summer break, we're rearing to go...

THIS MONTH (it's our second birthday but shhhh)

special feature documentary:
...INTO THE NIGHT with HARMONY KORINE and GASPAR NOE
(Bruce LaBruce, 2010, 45 mins)
See what happens when Gaspar Noe visits his friend Korine in Nashville, Tennessee and the two embark on a night of mayhem - visiting a firing range, bothering tourist boards, digging through junkyards and wandering through the Nashville scene. We meet and are treated to performances by all manners of musicians, comedians and local talent, including some familiar faces from Korine's films, but the real attraction is the hilarious rapport between the two enfant terrible directors - a great comedy double act if there ever was one.

As an added bonus, we're chucking in one or two rarely seen HARMONY KORINE SHORTS too.

live music!
SHAPE WORSHIP
A miasma of geometric colour.
"Dwelling in South London, he admits to an affinity with the hauntalogical / glowave that currently gets blogs writing themselves, but hopes it is less 80s in inspiration. He’s not wrong – as titles like ‘Old Garlands’ suggest, his music is darker than mere whimsical nostalgia to a life imagined in faded Polaroids." - theQuietus
http://aeo.noise.org.uk/

ZINE
This night marks the London launch of issue 4 of our zine, a documentary special featuring interviews with the legendary Frederick Wiseman, the lovely Ondi Timoner (DiG!, We Live In Public) and the amazing Rita Ribas, plus new releases, art, society pages etc.
FREE COPIES FOR FIRST 5 ATTENDEES, half price thereafter for tonight only!

DIY Movies, musicals and musings with and by
RITA RIBAS
JASON LARAY KEENER
BECKY LAWN-DARTE
MOLLY ALLIS
CHARLES CHINTZER LAI
HALO HALO
GARRY SYKES
TOM MOORE
XIU XIU
JACK BARRACLOUGH
& more

plus
FREE GAME with PRIZES TO BE WON
as ever, FREE POPCORN and the new cafe serves food too

Wednesday 3rd Nov, 7.30-11
BARDENS CAFE (above the old Bardens Boudoir), Stoke Newington Road, Dalston N16 7XJ
Doors at 7.30, films start at 8pm PROMPT
of course FREE ENTRY

feels good to be back kids.

a million things to keep you up at night #1-5

2010-09-07T06:06:00.000-07:00

Frederick Wiseman

2010-09-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

From The Pictures #4, available now / photo by Gretje Ferguson

“The end result has to feel like a gift to the public that they can receive without explanation.” – Executive Committee Member, La Danse

Frederick Wiseman is the greatest documentary maker in film history. If you don’t believe us, that only means you haven’t seen his films. In his almost 50-year career he has trained his film camera on institutions ranging from mental hospitals (Titicut Follies), welfare departments (Welfare), courts (Domestic Violence I & II) and hospices (Near Death) to New York Central Park (Central Park) and the Paris Opera Ballet (La Danse, UK released last month). In each film, through a series of stripped down, self explanatory scenes, he explores the minutae of life within an institution or system, taking in the activities, conflicts, distress and triumphs of the people who reside in and occupy the place. His films are marked by their complete lack of narration, title cards, interviews to camera or discernable characters, but are filled with situations, stories and drama and fragments of lives. In the same way the ballet dancers in La Danse are taught to place all significance on every minute movement of each individual muscle, each movement contributing to the dance as a whole, these fragments and scenes build up into a complex, immersive portrait of their subject. The presence of a filmmaker in any of these scenes is invisible, and the openness and intimacy on display is almost unmatched in documentary. No-one is acting up, nothing is staged, no complexities are removed for the sake of offering explanations to (patronising) the audience. The films feel honest and disarmingly real in a way that few documentaries (any film even) ever do. A film by Frederick Wiseman is a perfect document, taking the viewer inside the subject matter, letting us experience a place first hand as if we’re standing at his side.

In spite of his relative obscurity, Wiseman’s influence is widely felt. He is often called the godfather of documentary. The Wire/Treme co-creator David Simon describes himself as “working in the tradition of Frederick Wiseman”. Wiseman’s film about the marine corps, Basic Training, was taken, near shot for shot, as the basis for the first half of Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.

His first documentary was instantly banned. Titicut Follies (released 1967) is bleak, a study of an American hospital for the criminally insane, the title taken from the macabre annual talent show put on by the residents. The film opens at this talent show as a group of patients, on stage and in marching band uniforms, wave pom-poms and sing “Strike Up The Band” in nervous flat unison. Wiseman’s camera moves in to look at the faces of the singers and each man is revealed, conflict written on every fascinating face. One is a mixture of nerves and distraction, nodding to himself as he counts his choreographed dance moves, still practising the dance as he performs it. One is a dead ringer for Fred Astaire, putting his heart into it. The sunken eyes of another man beam with pride as the song concludes, he smiles, oddly childlike with his cap tipped backwards, and the singers take a bow. A suited man, presumably one of the wardens, takes the stage and tells a couple of jokes before the next act, to roaring laughter from the crowd. The film cuts to a patient, skin and bones, undressing for examination.

The talent show is a sorry sight no doubt, but the men performing are not shown up as a sideshow spectacle, nor are they our characters - this is not the beginning of their journey to rehabilitation, we learn nothing more about them. This film is not their story. We see the men as part of the institution, and we can both identify with them and feel repulsed in this moment but, denied any continuity or development and onto the next one, moments are all we have, moments collaged by Wiseman into a deep and lasting impression of the film’s real character – the institution itself. We’re not here to pass judgements or draw conclusions on individuals, we’re here to experience every intimate corner of the big picture. There’s no linear progression and no talking head justifications distract us. Through his alert and wide open eyes, Wiseman simply presents us with the reality of the situation as he observed it, and that is enough. His great talent is in making us feel that we’re right there with him. This is documentary in its purest form.

So we see the abusive guards, the overworked doctors determined to help, the inmates masturbating in corners, the scores of sick men wandering in circles around a gym hall, mumbling, shouting, ticking nervously to themselves, building in one seemingly endless scene into something unbearable. Wiseman’s films have a musical quality – the filmmaker handles all of the sound design, and the editing is very deliberate. Hundreds of hours are often lost to the cutting room floor as the director shapes the material into what he considers a fair and authentic representation of his experiences, each film the story of a place. In this way his films are diaries, not unlike those of Jonas Mekas, chronicling his observations of each place or institute and the people within.

For Titicut Follies, these observations were deemed unseemly by the nervous medical and judiciary authorities of the time. Their concerns over the privacy of the patients were matched by concerns (particularly on the part of the institute used in filming) that the material in the film would cause a public outcry. However, while kept from the public, the film was screened in elite academic circles and to professionals with interests in the field, themselves not immune from the feelings of shock and anger that Titicut Follies inspires. The film played a large part in the wide ranging reform of the mental health system in America and, in 1991, by now a historical document, Titicut Follies was eventually cleared for public broadcast.

The film, like all of Wiseman’s documentaries, has been screened in the United States on the publicly funded PBS channel, which is also a frequent funder of his work. From Titicut Follies onwards, all of his films have been rigidly independent, all rights owned by Zipporah Films, his own production company (who kindly granted us the use of their stills archive for this issue) who also sell DVDs and distribute prints of his work, the takings from which fund future films. This strict independence aside though, Wiseman refuses to be drawn on the potential political implications of his films, preferring to present them as self explanatory and leaving any inference to the viewer.

This is an unusual position given the impact of Titicut Follies and the definitive way that many of his films, from his second feature High School onwards, are presented. They are named as definite articles – Law and Order, Hospital, Juvenile Court, Domestic Violence – so that this High School stands for any high school in the country; this Hospital is a representative, almost scientific, example for study, analysis and conclusions to be drawn. Within this wide variety of places, themes and situations often recur – injustice, abuse of power, poverty, suffering and sickness. So in Juvenile Court we’re party to back room barrister discussions and offender’s family conferences. In Law and Order we see police authority misused. Muddled beaurocracies and deliquents in High School. Equally though there are insightful, determined teachers and energised students. There are comic OTT hippies freaking out and vomiting on their first acid trip. There are repentant criminals and tireless nurses and loving marriages, all seen as moments within any system put before the camera.

To see only the altruistic, protest side of the films is to misunderstand Wiseman’s grand project and to ignore the fact that for every Domestic Violence there’s a Model, for every Blind there’s a Central Park. Any sense of discomfort and outrage arising from the films occurs only because it exists to be filmed in the first place, living under and on the surface of any situation or system, waiting to be manifested by a documentary lens. To call Wiseman a political filmmaker would undermine the scope of his work. Just as each scene in his films builds the larger picture of an institution, each of Wiseman’s films is a piece of a much larger picture and a much larger project, to experience and observe civilisation in the late 20th and early 21st centuries by way of its institutions, its shared rituals and its rites of passage. In Near Death, the terminally ill say their last goodbyes. In Department Store, baby boomers flock in their optimistic thousands to buy their own little piece of progress. In Belfast, Maine, an entire town is put in front of the lens.

Often when audiences see his films for the first time they mistake the keen observation and quiet camerawork for something approaching objectivity. But watching Wiseman’s films in a linked light, the similarities and connections become all the more apparent, not just in the rhythms and style of filmmaking, but in the conversations and ideas picked up and noticed by the camera in every situation, in the values that he finds in each location. Seeing the films in this way, Frederick Wiseman is betrayed as the second character, after the institution, in all of his films. We experience his documentary through his eyes, his subjective observations. The fact that these observations are so nuanced, so insightful and relevant is testament to his skill and the harmony between the man and the medium. Wiseman is the silent storyteller, totally dedicated to his grand project. It’s why we call him the greatest documentary maker in film history. The man and the films are indistinguishable - Frederick Wiseman is documentary.

Re: Questions from British journalist

1. Having trained as a lawyer, what made you change course and become a filmmaker? Was it a longstanding interest, were you inspired by any particular contemporaries? Do you see parallels between documentary work and legal work?

I HATED LAW SCHOOL AND REACHED THE WITCHING AGE OF 30 AND DECIDED TO DO SOMETHING I LIKED. ABSOLUTELY NO PARALLELS FOR ME BETWEEN LAW AND FILM-MAKING.

2.Do you consider yourself a political filmmaker, in the sense that many of your films present places and situations that many people would not otherwise experience, and so would remain unaware of the issues affecting those places (Titticut Follies being perhaps the most obvious example of this)? To what extent do your personal views influence the context of the films?

I DISLIKE OVERT IDEOLOGICAL AND/OR DIDACTIC FILMMAKING. MY FILMS ARE COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE (WHAT ELSE COULD THEY BE?) BUT I TRY TO MAKE THEM FAIR REPRESENTATIONS OF MY EXPERIENCE AT THE PLACE WHICH IS THE SUBJECT OF THE FILM. I DISCOVER THE FILM IN THE EDITNG AND USUALLY ONLY TOWARD THE END OF THE EDITING.

3.Stylistically, your films are often labelled 'objective', 'cinema verite' and so on. Would you agree with this? How do you feel about the huge trend in modern documentary making for message-led films?

I BELIEVE IN THE WISDOM OF THE GREAT PHILOSOPHER SAMUEL GOLDWYN WHO SAID "IF YOU HAVE A MESSAGE SEND A TELEGRAM." THE POINT OF VIEW OF MY FILMS IS EXPRESSED INDIRECTLY THROUGH THE STRUCTURE.

4.You retain the rights to all of your films and use public funding to make them. Has this ever affected the content of the films, has there ever been an outside, funding related influence in the filmmaking process?

NO ONE SEES THE FILMS UNTIL THEY ARE COMPLETELY FINISHED. FUNDING IS ALWAYS DIFFICULT. I RETAIN THE RIGHTS.

5.How long does a film typically take? Is there usually an adjustment period for your subjects to become comfortable with the filming, or is it an instant thing? Is there anything you yourself particularly do to make people more comfortable with filming?

FUNDING MAY TAKE UP TO SIX MONTHS. IT VARIES FROM FILM TO FILM. PEOPLE ADJUST WITHIN NANO-SECONDS TO BEING FILMED. I AM ALWAYS VERY STRAIGHTFORWARD ABOUT HOW THE FILM WILL BE SHOT, EDITED AND DISTRIBUTED.

6.Have you ever had a negative response from potential subjects, even a dangerous reaction to your enquiries? Do you find that, in the modern, internet influenced world, with a lot of people projecting personalities onto social networking sites, image consciousness, that the people you film with are any more self conscious than they used to be, or make any more effort to project something other than their everyday selves?

IT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN WHEN I BEGAN 44 YEARS AGO.

7.Do you ever develop a relationship with your subjects that continues once the film is completed? Where does Frederick Wiseman's experience end and the film begin?

THE FILM DOES REPRESENT MY VIEWS OF THE PLACE AND IS MEANT TO BE A FAIR REPORT ON WHAT I HAVE LEARNED.

8.Many of your films, including your latest, are made on 16mm.Is this purely an aesthetic choice?

I LIKE FILM BETTER THAN HD. IF I CANNOT RAISE ENOUGH MONEY TO SHOOT ON FILM, I WILL USE HD.

9.What prompted your interest in the Paris Opera Ballet?

I LIKEALLET AND I LIKE LIVING IN PARIS. THE PARIS OPERA BALLET IS ONE OF THE GREAT BALLET COMPANIES OF THE WORLD.

10.What are you working on at the moment?

I JUST FINISHED A MOVIE ABOUT A BOXING GYM IN AUSTIN, TEXAS. "BOXING GYM" WILL HAVE ITS WORLD PREMIERE AT THE DIRECTOR'S FORTNIGHT AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL IN MAY.

NB: Wiseman clips are difficult to locate online, owing to his reliance on takings from Zipporah Films' releases of the DVDs to fund future productions (Zipporah is Wiseman's company). Visit www.zipporah.com for details of how to obtain Wiseman's work.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS and new ZINE

2010-08-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

14/08/10

Dear Picturegoers,

So, much as we don't want to even think about it, the football starting again is a surefire and horrible sign that autumn's on it's way. The massive upside of this though is that our little film night will be starting up again!

We have a month or so to go just yet, and all details will be revealed in time, but for now we're renewing our CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS for films and videos and any other visual weirdness for screening. Anything and everything you've made is most welcome, or if you have any friends might want to show their work, do send the link along. There's no deadline on this, as nights are ongoing, but for our first night you should probably have your stuff to us by mid September.

we've seen some amazing budding underground filmmakers these past couple of years, and are really looking forward to seeing more of what you've all got. get in touch (either by comment or e-mail)!

The other news is that our new zine is available now (direct from us) and will be in shops over the next couple of weeks. It's our Documentary Issue, has expanded a 4 whole pages on past issues, and features interviews with the legendary Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies), the lovely Ondi Timoner (DiG!, We Live In Public) and one of our favourite screenees/new documentary makers, Rita Ribas, plus info on new films, things to watch online, photos, society pages and more. It'll set you back 2 of your british pounds (plus postage if you're in another country), or look out for it in Rough Trade, Donlon Books and other shops over the next couple of weeks.

See you soon!
The Pictures xo

Garry Sykes

2010-08-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

By Max Renn. From The Pictures #2, August 2009

Garry's films are like home video artefacts, implicitly viewed from some future (or past) perspective. Dated lo-fi collages of found footage, home documentary and noise, their narrators speak in past (or future) tense and talk in eventualities, influences and paths taken that led to their present, off camera and invisible state. The films display an obsession with recording things that will fade and documenting disappearing moments, be they literal as in 21, contrasting photographs of his grandmother at age twenty-one with footage of his sister at the same age, or more figurative, mental states of optimism and youth that give way to compromise or are abandoned as time moves on. Parallels are often drawn between the characters and movie stars, stars that age and fade and are remembered by their blank younger portraits. The narrators of Karaoke and Camera Lucy are absent presences, talking of the times before they fell away and of the idealism they knew they'd lose.

The elements of the collage conspire to give the films the impression of memory. The soundtracks, noisy adn layered with static become elegaic and warm. Esoteric, fast cut images pinpoint details of locations and times while the larger picture remains evasive. The video itself is aesthetically cheap and constitutes a conscious recording. Garry also produces a poster to accompany each film, again highlighting each as an artefact, an object. The narratives are only related in fragments and incomplete consequences of some unseen relationship or encounter. These narratives are often dark, dealing in power plays that start as romance, acceptances of inevitabilities and defeats and addictions, seduced into losing control and failing to hold on to the very things the film is trying to document and preserve. A frequent reference point is Invasion Of The Body-snatchers. "Here lie some failed revolutions" says Alice Saint at the close of Karaoke, "buried by love".

But they are not necessarily despairing. The elements that compose the collages - dances, fireworks, parties, balloons and magic tricks - are celebratory as well as fleeting. The unstages sequences in the films are often affectionate home movies of friends, diary footage. The staged set pieces feature dancing and costume. Time passing is a constant feature, but even as the characters lose themselves, something is preserved in the images and their repetitions. The dream of city romance never dies even when most efforts towards it fail.

The narrator in Ecstasy, who had a dream about the future, relays a message from that time - that when everyone tells you things will go wrong, they go wrong. In instructing not to listen they voice a rare note of defiance within one of the films while so much else is submission. This defiance is always externally present, in the act of recording moments and in the characters and images as they dance into the dark.

THE PICTURES: What made you want to make films? When did you realise you could do it yourself?

GARRY SYKES: i wanted to be a photographer or writer or in a band, all that stuff, but i'm a mediocre photographer, i have difficulty writing at any length, nothing ever gets finished, and i can't really play any instrument or sing for shit, but making films, these kinds of films, maybe combines what i like about those other things, and just seems to fit. when i saw films by people like Vivienne Dick or Jonas Mekas, the whole thing suddenly seemed really accessible. i liked how you could say things in your own way, like there were lots of possiblities maybe.

TP: What influences your films?

GS: i like lots of those older underground filmmakers. i like how film is a lot like music, the way you can keep digging and find new things, there are always new things. i really like Harmony Korine, Bela Tarr, i like Godard a lot, especially the 60s films, like girls and politics. i like music a lot too, maybe that's more influential than films. maybe i'm just frustrated to be such a shitty musician. and just little things you pick up on that have resonance. all the moon landing stuff lately, and how sad it is we didn't go further. i'm starting a campaign for a manned mission to Mars.

TP: Why the interest in stars?

GS: i really want to have a star system! a better star system. a star system of my very own. i've always really liked the Hollywood star system, maybe when it was a bit more interesting, and Hollywood Babylon is one of my favourite books. and it does still throw up the odd Lindsay Lohan. like, i'm usually not affected at all by celebrity deaths, and haven't even listened to Michael Jackson much since being 15, but when he died it seemed really powerful. he was the most famous man in the world, up there with Mickey Mouse and Coca Cola, and before all the scandal and everything that was just for being an entertainer. that's worth something i think.

TP: How important is music to your filmmaking?

GS: it's really important, but usually the soundtrack is the last thing that gets added, and it's a case of asking a friend who makes music, and lots of my friends make really great music, so there's always something that'll work and then it becomes a part of things. except for Karaoke, we recorded a whole soundtrack for it with the actors and some friends and Daniel Jones producing it. it's a real shame a lot of it got cut out when i realised the film needed to be a lot shorter. we'd recorded three songs and everything but only one ended up in the final version. some people got to see the long version, with all the songs, but in the end i didn't like it. i'd really like to do more original soundtrack stuff in future. i want to make more musicals.

TP: What's next?

GS: there's a couple of things when this zine is finished. everything i've done so far has been a bit limite by the equipment to hand, just a crappy DV camera, which is fine, but it sort of puts a restriction on the number of people who can stand to watch. i'd really like to borrow a better camera from work or somewhere and make something that looks a bit better. i've got a couple of super 8 cameras i've been playing with too and maybe make some proper documentaries, and maybe something longer would be nice too, but maybe that's a couple of years away. there's definitely a lot of work to do.

www.gravenimages.org.uk

PICTURES EDINBURGH 2010

2010-08-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

Following last year's triumphant night at Edinburgh's Bowery, The Pictures is back in Edinburgh for festival time with a night of the deepest, dingiest underground cinema from now stretching back 100 years, and fresh new DIY movies from around the country and beyond, including high and lowlights of the past year of London nights.

Including short films, music videos, skits and visual weirdness by and/or featuring -

BUSTER KEATON * JASON LARAY KEENER * SOFIA COPPOLA * GARRY SYKES * GEORGE MELIES * RITA RIBAS * ANDY KAUFMAN * TOM MOORE * CRISPIN GLOVER * JACK BARRACLOUGH * ROSCOE 'FATTY' ARBUCKLE * REBECCA LOAR * STILL CORNERS * GEORGE KUCHAR and more

plus ***ZINE LAUNCH***
be first to read the new issue of our zine, a documentary special featuring an interview with legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman, plus Ondi Timoner (DiG!, We Live In Public) and Rita Ribas and loads more. Free zines for first 5 attendees!

plus ***GAMES***
with amazing prizes
**SLIDESHOWS**
& music & dancing til late

!FREE ENTRY!
SUNDAY 8th AUGUST
DOWNSTAIRS AT THE FOREST
3 BRISTO PLACE, EDINBURGH E1 1EY

Xiu Xiu - House Sparrow / Jason LaRay Keener

2010-07-31T14:41:00.000-07:00

this is excellent - Jason LaRay Keener's new video for the Xiu Xiu track House Sparrow, genuinely one of the most original and distinctive videos we've seen in a long time, disturbing and moving in equal measure. To say more would be to reveal too much, you really need to watch it here:

we interviewed Jason about his earlier shorts back in issue 3.

We Love Happy Endings

2010-07-07T12:20:00.001-07:00

From The Pictures #3

Happy Endings Productions Ltd. is the baby of Eva-Marie Elg (Emie), one fo the most versatile and ambitious filmmakers we know. Emie made her first film at home in Sweden at the age of 7. In 2003 she moved to London and quickly got to work writing, directing and producing a string of short films and animations that have screened at festivals (both in and out of competition) and events internationally.

Emie's first London film, ICHIAI (2003) cast a group of friends and acquaintances in an exploration of loneliness and distraction in a country that is at war half way round the world. She followed this with a short documentary, A Trail of Pictures (2005), that followed London street artist Ben Wilson, viewable on the 4Docs and BBC Film Network sites.

In 2006 she founded Happy Endings to release her own films and to produce work by other filmmakers, returning to writing and directing duties with Recognise Myself (2006), a film about memory, relationships and self that was nominated for Best International Short at festivals in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Finland and the USA, and won the Bronze Clip prize at the German Jugend Medien Festival. The fully fledged production company followed this up with Sleeping and Dreaming of Food (2008), Happy Ending's first foray into animation - a surreal and dreamy collaboration with comic artist Kolbeinn Karlsson - and their most ambitious project to date, Suburban Madness (2009).

Executive produced by Emie and directed by Phllip Figueroa, the documentary was filmed in Brazil and follows the patients of a psychiatric institute as they participate in the annual Rio carnival. Emie produced the project from London while the director was in the field, and the film had its premiere last year at Dalston's own Rio Cinema, receiving widespread praise. In the meantime, Happy Endings have found themselves at Cannes, produced a range of t-shirts, and Emie has been nominated for a major scholarship by the Stockholm Film Festival. To date entirely self funded, the work of Emie and Happy Endings is a testament to DIY spirit and determination which, going forward, Emie has in bundles.

THE PICTURES: When did you start Happy Endings Productions? What is your position within the group?

EMIE: I founded Happy Endings Productions Ltd. in 2006, the same year I was making the short film Recognise Myself. I am the owner and company director. We then collaborate with others in the field of film, art, music and theatre to develop projects within the company.

TP: Did you feel like establishing a group straight away was the way to go? Did you consider working solo, as Emie, before starting Happy Endings?

E: I started out making films on my own, without a company, but in 2006 I felt the time was right to take it to a new level and learn the business side of film-making. One of the things that motivates me the most about being an independent filmmaker is that it's not enough to write and make exceptional films, you also need to be a business/wo/man, promoter, accountant and many other roles. I love the idea of making film independently and Happy Endings is really just an extension of Emie. The two main reasons for starting up a limited company was to separate my money from the company's funds and to become eligible for more funding opportunities. Sayign that, all our projects so far have been self-funded, but I'm hoping to get into the routine of applying for funds before heading straight into production.

TP: Your output so far has been very varied. Do you have a particular style or aesthetic you prefer, or is working in different styles important to you?

E: I think it's important to try different things before people label you as a certain kind of director and you'll find yourself stuck in a genre. I like to surprise an audience with very different films and I admire other directors who take risks and work with different styles, genres and formats. It's normally during the writing process I often see images that I'll later try to capture and these images decide the style of the film. So the style tend to play a big part in my initial idea.

TP: Do you have a favourite out of the films you've produced so far?

E: I'm extremely proud of the documentary I produced, Suburban Madness, which dealt with a very controversial subject in the most colourful and amazing way. As for my favourite film, I'd like to say the short I wrote and spent the summer directing. I'm yet to see the rough cut though, so I can't be certain. The film, the way I see it in my mind, is the best I've ever made but won't know for sure until I see it edited. I quite like letting the editor put together a rough cut first, so that the first time I watch the film I'm completely open-minded to the edit but with my intiial vision of the story still intact. From this point the final cut can be perfected, but I find that watching every take and every phrase of teh editing can be very distracting and it makes you lose focus on the story you're trying to portray.

TP: Sleeping and Dreaming of Food was based on a comic...to what extent did you collaborate with the comic artist on the film? How did it all come about?

E: Kolbeinn Karlsso, the comic artist, and I first met in 1998 and we've stayed in touch throughout the years. As soon as I read his first comic I wanted to try to collaborate on a project and luckily he was dead up for it. So we started collaborating by sending things by post, e-mail and over the internet between Sweden and England. Kolbeinn involved the Swedish band Kallioinia to do the soundtrack and it worked out really well! Last week the film received an honorary mention at Uppsala International Short Film Festival in Sweden and the film will screen again at Stockholm Film Festival in November.

TP: Suburban Madness seems like a very big project. How did you become involved in it, and how did you work on it from such a distance? Will there be more screenings?

E: This project was born behind the counter at The Gate Cinema in Notthing Hill, where I worked for many years. Philipp Figueroa, the project's director, was a part-time projectionist and he told me about the Brazilian mental institution and that he wanted to go and make a film over there. Pretty much instantly I got involved as the UK producer. The whole crew, apart from the Brazilian producer, still photographer and sound guy are based in London so they all flew over in time for the carnival with another ex-colleague of ours, Carlos Fialho, who's from Portugal and has a background in journalism. Everyone chipped in to make this film, so hopefully we'll make our money back at some point. We held the premiere at The Rio Cinema here in Dalston and we've submitted the film to festivals, but no more screenings are confirmed as yet.

TP: And what about your new short? When will we be able to see it?

E: My latest short, The Theory, is in post-production but will hopefully be available before Christmas. We'll definitely have a premiere screening, so join our facebook group of ours and you'll get an invite. The film deals with the subject of loneliness amongst grown-ups. We follow a man in his '60s who's looking back at the mistakes he made to end up like this. We set the film in 1975 and late 50s, with great thanks to Nick at fantasticmundane who gathered the antiques and props for the set.

TP: In practical terms, how do you see Happy Endings developing. Like, have you found funding in the past, or are you on the verge of anything like that? Do you even think there's a point where that sort of DIY mode of production ends and 'proper' production beings, or is it all part of the same path?

E: In the past I've always been to impatient to apply for funding once I've got a script ready for pre-production, I rather jump straight into getting the film made. However, I'm currently one of ten directors nominated for a big Swedish scholarship called 1km Film at Stockholm Film Festival. Just the nomination in itself is big, but in the unlikely circumstance that I should in fact win this scholarship, I'd definitely take a big leap towards a more professional career where I might actually earn a minimum salary as a director. Then there's another massive leap to actually earning good money on making films, but that's not something that particularly interests me as a director. The bigger the industry around a production, the harder it is to stick to the original path you followed when you started out. Just look at Michael Moore, the inquisitive average man gone millionnaire filmmaker, who's now made a film about Capitalism, which is bordering on laughable. I hope he turns the camera to himself to make a point, if not it'll be as contradictive as an anti-fur protestor wearing leather. Saying that, I think it's important to hold onto your style, beliefs and origin when you move forward in your career. Especially when you're moving into big budgets. But there's no reason why anyone should earn more money than they can spend in a lifetime. In any business.

TP: So what are you working on next?

E: After the success we've had with Sleeping and Dreaming of Food, me and Kolbeinn are working on another project. This time we won't base it on one of his comics, but make an animation with an original story by Kolbeinn. He's developing the concept and he's told me it'll be a very grey, but also very colourful story. I'm excited to see what he comes up with.

www.happyendingsproductions.co.uk

So it goes

2010-06-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

It might've come to your attention that Bardens Boudoir, our amazing home for these past two years, is closing its cellar doors on July 1st.

The closing party is gonna be hosted by Upset The Rhythm (so it started, so it shall finish), with bands playing including The Human Race and Covergirl (Bloody Knees/Trash Kit et al supergroup). Make sure you get down there to mark what really is the end of an era for Dalston and the east. Nowhere else came close, we'll miss you terribly Bardens.

it's not all sad though. in other news:

- The Pictures zine #4 will be available early July from the usual outlets, a documentary special including interviews with Frederick Wiseman and Ondi Timoner among others - we're pretty convinced it's the best issue to date, really going for the next level of this kind of thing.

- The Pictures night is going on a UK (European?) tour this August! Details sketchy at present but keep your eyes peeled for dates in a town maybe vaguely within 100 miles of you. More on this as and when.

You know what a love letter is?

2010-05-29T13:40:00.001-07:00

It's a bullet from a fucking gun.

R.I.P.

TRASH HUMPERS

2010-05-19T13:03:00.000-07:00

from The Pictures #3 / illustration by Tom Moore

After almost a decade in soul searching cinematic limbo, Harmony Korine returned in 2007 with Mister Lonely. The film was an unexpected departure – at least on the surface – from the nihilistic, fragmented collages of films like Gummo and julien donkey-boy, films that made his name and established his reputation as a cinematic provocateur. Where the previous films were lo-fi and improvised, Mister Lonely was glossy technicolour, location sequences and complex effects. Where his older films were bleak, revelling in carnival grotesquery and desire to shock, Mister Lonely was occasionally hopeful, at times even sentimental. Reaction was mixed, and some wondered if a clean Korine had lost his bite.

Heads were turned, then, with the recent announcement that his latest feature, Trash Humpers, was already completed and would be released imminently. Shot on obsolete VHS and edited in a matter of weeks, the film was prominently billed as “a return” to Korine’s earlier aesthetic, even dubbed ‘Gummo 2’ by one French site. Following the exploits of a gang of elderly anarchists who smash up the scenery, harrass locals, tell offensive jokes, tap dance and, as the title suggests, fuck rubbish bins, the film (and initially, for want of screenings, the film’s high concept) was seen by some as a direct response to the vast scale of Mister Lonely – another intense reaction from an engrained reactionary, a film even more degraded, base and impudent than his early work.

However, just as Mister Lonely was less a departure from the philosophy of Gummo and julien donkey-boy than was at first apparent, Trash Humpers is more a small step forward than back, a minimal production that has more in common with its multi-million dollar predecessor than the films made a decade ago.

Both films have us join up to a gang of outsiders, celebrity impersonators or anti-social OAPs who have cut themselves off from their surroundings. The same could be argued for the earlier films, but there is much more of a sense in those films that the outcast characters belong to a similarly abjected community within the world of the film, a community within which they are accepted and play their roles. In contrast, the central character of Michael in Mister Lonely confesses his confused isolation in voiceovers. The trash humper Herv (the cameraman, played by Korine) delivers a monologue about the despair that lives in the routine of the community around him – going to work, raising families in their image, wasting time. The characters are speaking with the same voice, the same language and tones, undoubtedly the voice of the film’s author.

Michael seeks solace in impersonating Michael Jackson, “being someone else”, while the trash humpers find theirs in chaos and destruction, recorded in one long CKY-as-elderly-psychopaths home video. Between stunts they catch up with other subcultural crazies - a schoolboy preacher who sermonises while hammering a doll’s face, conjoined twin chefs (joined at the head). An alcoholic telling endless racist sexist jokes with no punchlines makes a guest appearance. Often the trash humpers murder their companions, though we only get to see the VHS grained corpses and are not a party to the killings.

The idea to construct the film as a found curiosity - a discarded VHS tape, a film as a time capsule – has echoes of Godard’s Weekend, and like in Weekend, is used more as a device of narrative and atmosphere than a pure concept. The home video looks crude, washed out and slightly decayed, coming across equal parts creepy and familiar. Tracking lines and VCR actions appear on screen, and are used stylistically as well as functionally. At one point, ‘REW’ appears and the tape seems to rewind, though only for a second or two, resuming in a new and unseen position that would not be found on a real tape. And VHS home videos were never played in cinemas. Their format was not intended to be blown up and projected on this scale. In doing this, Trash Humpers is every bit as much a ‘film’ as Mister Lonely.

The blown up VHS picture continually distorts, sometimes phasing in and out of abstraction, sometimes approaching poetic. The continual atonal laughter of the cameraman is unsettling verging on inhuman. The alien lives of the trash humpers are enthralling and repellant. Their infectious sense of freedom almost always gives way to dark manic episodes and woozy inertia. From the home video perspective we join in the revelrie and carnage and going too far. We’re made to laugh right out of our comfort zones and into a much darker place underneath the trash humper’s mask. The video stands as proof, a rememberance and evidence.

In Mister Lonely, Michael finds his utopia in a Highland commune for impersonators, far removed from the world, benign and in all ways fulfilling. Trash Humpers is another film about idealism and idealised worlds – idealism giving rise to rejection, building utopia by destroying. Michael’s dreams are shattered, but those of the trash humpers remain. There are no consequences for their actions within their home video world and it’s difficult to imagine any outside of it – they are totally self contained and self sufficient, and in a lot of ways very American.

Harmony Korine has jokingly described himself as “the most American director making movies today”, and this feels like something that has come to the fore in has last two features, much more so than his earlier, more European influenced work. Mister Lonely was about a man outside of his country, while Trash Humpers is about people who are very much at home, but the concerns in the films are identity and ideals and the search for both. In both films, the clarity of Korine’s voice shines through. The characters are pro-active and even motivational where in the older films they were observed. This nervous energy and compulsion to do something, anything, that brings a greater authenticity, a more intense and true experience into life – is no longer something that Korine just talks about in statement of intent interview questions, but something which, in recent years, has made its way into the fabric of his films as well.

it's a small world afterall

2010-04-23T02:29:00.001-07:00

The compilation of Andy Kaufman clips we screened at our night this week. Enjoy!

MOVIE STARS WHO WON'T SLEEP WITH ME by Alice Saint

2010-04-13T04:18:00.000-07:00

1: LiLo

(from zine issue 3)

When I found out that Lilo was sleeping with Samantha Ronson, I thought: there goes that last remaining barrier. Lindsay likes women. What possible excuse could Lindsay have for not liking me? And when they split up, I had that thought again: case closed. She likes women, and she's single, and she's clearly unhappy alone - the only thing standing between us is the fact that we haven't met yet. This sort of grand delusion could, in a man, seem sad, sinister, dangerous (apart from your garden variety miserable losers and misogynists, you've got crazed stalkers, violent criminals, and let's not forget the would be presidential assassin who did it all for love of Jodie Foster. (Which reminds me, Jodie Foster more than merits a why-won't-she-sleep-with-me column). But I decided that, in a woman like me, it could easily be disguised as whimsical charm. In the attempt to pass off my egotistical Lilomaniac disorder as a lovable quirk, I had three major things going for me. #1 I look, for the most part, nonthreatening. #2 I'm too lazy to take any stalkerlike action in the realm of real life (or anywhere else outside my own bedroom). And the clincher: #3 I didn't actually tell anyone about it.

I've now decided two things is enough. I'm coming clean about LL, and about all the other objects of my desire who couldn't possibly be less obscure. I'm going to tell you about them because the egotistical element of my condition has at least begun to wear off, and I have realised this:
- Lindsay Lohan et al are never going to sleep with me
- there is nothing I can do except whine
- whining is something I really, really can do.

I begin with Lindsay because she really does contain multitudes - she's younger than me, born in 1986, and yet she has been so many women already, and I've found a way, dutifully, painstakingly, to fall in love with each one. Even by the standards of movie stars, even by those of recovering child stars (and ex-child stars should have a why-won't-they-sleep-with-me subcategory of their own [hello again, Jodie]), LL moved in record time from exuberant redheaded strength to Firecrotch faux-trash to half-cracked late-Marilyn blonde (Oh, MM! If anyone deserves a spinoff, it surely must be the ranks and ranks of Dead Movie Stars Who Won't Sleep With Me).

She is so many of my fixations, incarnate. In my mind's eye all those iterations are entangled, messily mapped onto one another, most of all her open, resilient, beaming Mean Girls smile superimposed on those Vanity Fair shots - that breakable woman moving delicately, barely lifting her heavy lids, naked but hidden under layers of impersonation (of Monroe, of herself) or wrapped in wool as if she might freeze, even there on the hot beach. That quality of letting people see too little and too much of her at once is what most makes a movie star. It's why I usually can't fall for someone if she (of he, but they don't make male stars like they used to, so I'll save the boys for my Dead column) is too good an actor. So often with a real star you can look straight through the part and see the woman trapped inside; or she bursts through the script like a movie monster; or the character thins to nothing as the star becomes remote, chills you, endlessly retreats. Each of these can be magical, but none is acting. LL should have been disqualified from this column simply on grounds of competence, but like Marilyn she gets round it because although she really can act, she frequently doesn't (even on those now rare occasions when she appears in films), and those warring LL personae threaten to overwhelm all else.

LL is also one in a long line of my fantasy beloveds with well-documented daddy troubles. Why these should inspire such longings I can't say. Again, this rare small advantage of non-manhood saves me - not only can I make Lilo-in-lingerie my desktop image even at work with barely a disapproving glance, but I can admit to loving her partly for the woundedness without counting myself a predator looking for an easy mark. After all, these lost Hollywood Electras are by definition such a forbiddingly heteronormative bunch - LL's brief conversion notwithstanding - that they'd top the list of stars who don't want me without even trying. In any case, LL's public sufferings, though long years of victim-worship have trained me to appreciate them, to respond with tenderness and renewed devotion, can't stop me missing the old Lilo, the one whose faint image still flickers about every gossip page I see her smeared across. So many Lindsays and yet always one; she's torn to shreds and yet she rises up; she's overexposed and yet unfathomable: Rumsfeld might call her a known unknown. But, godless though I am, I should stop short of blasphemy. Her artifice is all the more beguiling because it isn't quite successful - you can't see where it begins and ends but you can certainly see what it does. Watching her fall, of course, had a force and intensity of its own, and made it easier to imagine she might change her mind and sleep with me after all, but I'd trade that mirage any day for one more movie starring freckled insouciant LL with that hair and the American teeth and the wide-open eyes.

2010 04 Pictures Night

2010-04-12T13:35:00.000-07:00

andy kaufman died for your sins / andy kaufman lives

***NOTE: WE'RE ON A TUESDAY THIS MONTH***

and on that Tuesday you will see:

ANDY KAUFMAN
best known as Latka in Taxi/for being played by Jim Carrey in Man On The Moon/for having an R.E.M. song written about him, Andy Kaufman was a stand-up comedian-cum-performance artist-cum-song and dance man whose impossible to categorise act has won him a huge and well deserved cult following over the years. His exploits are far too many to go into here but career highlights include holding the International Women's Wrestling championship (and touring the country challenging any who thought themselves woman enough to try and take it back), playing the bongos in Carnegie Hall, playing with Johnny Cash, and potentially faking his own death. Tonight we spend some time with the man behind the moon, with (very rare) sketches, shorts and best loved Kaufman performances as well as excerpts from the documentaries I'M FROM HOLLYWOOD and ANDY KAUFMAN MIDNIGHT SPECIAL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Kaufman

&

A TRIP TO THE MOON & other shorts by GEORGE MELIES
Another great enigma, arguably the first person to ever use a special effect on film, Melies was the celluloid magician, creating visual trickeries that really have lost none of their magic even though created as early as 1898. We pay tribute with a selection of classic shorts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Melies

&

CITIZENS OF THE UNIVERSE live
Shirani of The Super Shirani Nitemare Band returns with a new project, Citizens Of The Universe - moody, emotional and raw pop hooks with nods to Leonard Cohen, Lee & Nancy along the way.
http://www.myspace.com/herecomethecitizens

&

PORTALS by GIRL MOUNTAIN - video by Ambrose Yalley/LIVE SOUNDTRACK by Girl Mountain
The new Girl Mountain video Portals by Ambrose Yalley, with Mr. Mountain himself crafting a live soundtrack. This is a Pictures first, and something we hope to do a lot of. Promises noise and chaos.
http://www.myspace.com/girlmountain

&

CRACKED WORLD FOUNDATION
Festival warm-up show...incessant gabble and hiss & you're allowed to dance
http://www.myspace.com/crackedworldfoundation

&

DIY MOVIES BY
Lawn-Darte & Steele
http://lawndartesteele.blogspot.com/

Still Corners/Garry Sykes - premiere of the new STILL CORNERS video

&

our BODYCOUNT GAME bows out with a massacre (maybe) & cool prizes as per

&

PROJECTIONS
FREE POPCORN
ZINES

FREE ENTRY FREE ENTRY FREE ENTRY

Death By Stereo

2010-03-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

Don't Let A Mobile Phone Advert Ruin Your Movie

2010-03-19T05:33:00.000-07:00

Brent Stewart - The Dirty Ones

2010-03-15T04:23:00.000-07:00

WATCH HERE (embedding disabled by request)

2010 Pictures 3

2010-03-14T05:14:00.000-07:00

17/03/10 BARDENS BOUDOIR, DALSTON FREE ENTRY

(facebook event)

Planting one squarely in Mr. Burton's eye, tonight we take a look at those who've journeyed down rabbit holes and lived to tell the tale. Featuring:

LICK THE STAR (Sofia Coppola, 15mins)
The Lost In Translation director's first film takes us into a world of bitchy high school poison plots and hidden notes in the classroom. Great soundtrack for a short too - Free Kitten, Shonen Knife...

I, AN ACTRESS and HOLD ME WHEN I'M NAKED (George Kuchar, 25mins)
This is REAL underground film, from one of the two brothers Kuchar - camp, disturbing, hilarious and raw, these are two of the finest excerpts from over half a century of Wonderland exploration. A rare treat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Kuchar

live! COLUMBUS & CRUSOE
Coming to us from Lewisham where they reside with a ghost and a cat, Columbus & Crusoe meld perfect folk-tinged songwriting (think Bill Callahan, Silver Jews) with your modern city life, and share members with luminaries like Trash Kit, Holly & Jessika, The Madrigals...
http://www.myspace.com/columbusandcrusoe

POLICE STATE (Nick Zedd, 15 mins)
In Zedd's case Wonderland is a cell and the mad hatter's tea party spells only brutality in this abrasive short from one of the key figures (alongside the likes of Richard Kern) in the Cinema of Transgression.
http://www.nickzedd.com/

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (Cecil M. Hepworth, 10 mins)
The very first adaptation of Alice on the silver screen that has, you know, a plot and everything. We might take a look at one or two other past screen incarnations too.

THE ROUNDERS (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, 15 mins)
starring CHARLIE CHAPLIN & ROSCOE ARBUCKLE in a rare appearance together, soundtrack selection by The Ludovico Technique
http://www.ralphmag.org/fatty.html

plus DIY shorts by
RITA RIBAS
HANNAH FORBES BLACK
JACK BARRACLOUGH
& more

plus
our ever popular BODYCOUNT GAME, free to play and with cool prizes
COREY HAIM TRIBUTE

and the usual

ZINES
PROJECTIONS
FREE POPCORN
DJs til late

FREE ENTRY
FREE ENTRY
FREE ENTRY

miss march

Vivienne Dick

2010-03-04T09:43:00.000-08:00

From The Pictures #3

“I feel like we have to do a whole lot of these films, because this is, I want this to be my show. I want… I want everything I say to keep. Like my whole life now is trying to just talk, I just want to talk and get up on a stage and just talk and that’s my show. I want to take photographs too. I want people to take all these chances…”

Beate Nilsen, Guerillere Talks

As a filmmaker, Vivienne Dick is a child of the 60s underground. She took a chance on New York, like many before and since, relocating from her native Ireland in the late ‘70s. There exposed to the underground canon – Marie Menken, Maya Deren, Jack Smith – she found her vocation as a filmmaker, merging the legacy of the old guard with the emergent post-punk No Wave scene, a legendarily intense subculture of anarchists, perverts and revolutionaries that may have been New York’s last wail of defiance and innovation with any scale, the Last Scene.

Her films of the time stand as the epitome of the underground to that point. The bedroom settings, the drawl, the streets, the grain. Vivienne took these aesthetic qualities and made them her own, fashioning new statements from them about women, power, globalisation and identity. Her films are intrinsically political but in the most personal of ways. Both the filmmaker and her subjects care a great deal, are interested and interesting and want to share their positions.

Her first film Guerillere Talks (1978) laid out a manifesto for what was to come. Composed of seven screen test reels, each consisting of one Super 8 cartridge and featuring the likes of Anya Phillips, Ikue Mori, Pat Place and Lydia Lunch (then aged 19/20), the film gives each woman the space to breathe, act, perform, point a camera, smoke a cigarette, talk. Lydia prowls some urban wasteground, alternately speaking into a microphone – “it’s just no fun being a kid anymore!” – and hanging it between her legs as her cock. Beate Nilsen talks dreamily and a little sadly about her ideas and plans for future shows. All of Vivienne’s films are a lot about talking and about performance, communication of intimacies.

She stayed in New York and stayed with Super 8 for another four years, making a series of underground classics. She Had Her Gun All Ready (1978) is a claustrophobic trip through the city streets, following Lydia Lunch as she in turn stalks Pat Place. The relationship between the two women remains unexplained but frought with paranoia and power struggles, climaxing on a frantically shot rollercoaster ride, Vivienne’s camera sat one seat in front of Lydia, the image so shaken it too becomes a ride. Writing about the scene in The Village Voice, J Hoberman commented that he couldn’t remember the last time he saw a shot that was so fun and captured the spontanaeity of the medium so well. Maybe the final scene in Richard Linklater’s Slacker (a film that belongs in the same canon, surely influenced by the same people as Vivienne if not by Vivienne herself), that sees a group of friends jump and skip their way to the edge of a cliff and then throw their super 8 camera off the precipice. The two moments definitely share some intentions.

Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979) again stars Lydia Lunch in a psychodrama setup, thrown between different ages of her life, and Liberty’s Booty (1980) explored life in a brothel, returning to the Guerillere Talks style verite. In the older film we take the part of Vivienne’s camera, and the subjects are talking directly to us. In Liberty’s Booty, again we are the camera, but this time it’s more like we’re part of the group, a friend in the room immersed in the conversation and surroundings, searching through the details of the scene – ornaments, records, notes to self. Vivienne Dick films have real presence.

Liberty’s Booty also features scenes shot in Ireland, to whose shores Vivienne would return, first to make a satirical film about tourism, Visibility: Moderate (1981), then to live, leaving the New York scene but not the underground. Chris Kraus said that the underground no longer exists as a scene or place but instead is in the minds and attitudes of people who don’t know each other. The modern underground is a psychic collaborative project, communicating in images and responses sent out to be decoded by strangers. Vivienne did not leave the underground when she left New York, it remained with her.

Her Irish films of the mid-80s say a lot about a filmmaker living between places, reconciling them where she can and in doing so presenting a fresh perspective on her home country. She began using video and 16mm as well as Super 8 in films like Trailer (1983). Rothatch (1985) was made in an almost pastoral setting, but moves to expose the artifice and construction of the countryside. Like Dawn To Dusk (1983) takes place in a rural landscape, through which the alien figure of Lydia Lunch walks, NYC styled, a past time encroaching. Images: Ireland (1988), a compilation of footage of events and life in early ‘80s Ireland is Vivienne’s Jonas Mekas diary film – someone else who moved to New York and there discovered he is a filmmaker.

In the late ‘80s Vivienne took a chance on another move, to London, and made more films. London Suite (1989) has echoes of Guerillere Talks, being a collection of interviews with and stories told by friends in the city, while New York Conversations (1992) went further by returning to New York and recording meetings with old friends and collaborators after a decade away, exploring the changed rapport as much as the city. It’s easy to be nostalgaic for a scene, especially if you weren’t there at the time, but Vivienne’s work in Ireland and London showed that in the way we see and think of it today - all films and interviews - No Wave was as much Vivienne Dick as Vivienne Dick was No Wave.

Vivienne returned to Ireland in the 90s, teaching and raising a family and filmmaking. In 2002 she realised a film project displayed on multiple screens, Excluded By The Nature Of Things, which shows alternated poetic seasonal images as well as actors and animations and relationships. She followed this with more shorts, Saccade (2004) and Molecular Moments (2005), filmed again in New York. Chances previously taken and new corners turned, it will be exciting to see where she goes next.

For some time, Vivienne’s films have been largely unavailable – a library DVD was available through the Lux, but that was all. I first saw Vivienne’s films while at university, took them to heart, and had sought them unsuccessfully since – it meant contacting Vivienne herself and arranging a screening at our night to see some of them again. A new Lux DVD compiling 5 of Vivienne’s films (including A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy (1994), her portrait of her family, as well as earlier and later works) has just been released though, and we can hope for more screenings in future (we’d like more DVDs too please, Lux). The more that people see her films the more Vivienne Dick’s underground cinema will have high risk children of its own.

THE PICTURES: How did you first get started as a filmmaker? What made you want to pick up a camera?

VIVIENNE DICK: I started by wanting to take photos and bought a Pentax camera when I was working in Germany many years ago. Making films did not enter into the realms of possibility until I moved to NYC and started seeing independent film at Anthology Archives, and also saw how everyone around me was doing something creative - many with little experience or 'skill'.

TP: Were there any filmmakers that were an early influence on you?

VD: Yes, plenty - Maya Deren, Marie Menken, Jack Smith, Bruce Baillie, Storm de Hirsch, Ken Jacobs.. it was a revelation to see some of these films .. and in Ireland and France before that I had seen Godard, Warhol, Bergman and 'Fear Eats the Soul' by Fassbinder...

TP: How easy was it to survive as a filmmaker in the beginning, like in terms of finances, getting by? Do you feel like that's easier or more difficult these days?

VD: It was easy because I was working with Super 8. It was just a question of posting it off to the lab in New Jersey. I don't think it can be harder today - the technology has so much improved.. maybe the hard bit is going and doing it. It's a risk and you have to go for it. I think if you worry about what people might think about your work this can become a block.

TP: A lot of film movements, or things which are later labelled movements, come out of a sense of collective, of collaborative groups of people (the obvious example being the London Filmmakers Co-op, but more subtle groups that work on more subtle levels too maybe). Would you say this is true, or was true of yourself?

VD: yes I do think that. My work did not come out of a void.. I was fortunate to be in NY at the time I was there - that is the late seventies - when there was so much experimentation and play and creativity. That environment made it so much easier for me. Had I stayed on in London (or Dublin or Paris ), I would most likely not have made anything.

TP: Watching your films, there's a strong element of personal politics to them. How important do you think things like filmmaking are in affecting politics, zeitgeists? Would you say that underground film, taken as a broad project, has any of these aims, or that you do yourself?

VD: I think if you are making a film - no matter what kind - narrative or otherwise - if it is to have any power it has to be about something you are passionate about. Maybe the key thing about my work - or most of it - is that it is resolutely describing a world from a female perspective.

TP: In terms of your process, and the way your films have that definitely very personal, diary like aspect to them, is that something that you do constantly, filming all the time and then putting a piece together when you feel you have the right elements, or do you usually have a plan in mind and film specifically to that plan?

VD: It can happen both ways. Usually I have some idea or theme in mind. I don't film all the time.. in my case teaching has got in the way in recent years.. maybe I will have to change something. I needed a job for family reasons for a while.

TP: Would you say your filmmaking style and process has changed over time? I'm afraid I'm speaking from a position of slight ignorance here, as aside from the clips on the Lux site, your films aren't so easy to track down - though i see there's a new DVD which i'll look forward to seeing when payday comes... It does sound from the descriptions though that there are a lot of common ties maybe...

VD: I have become a better editor. I made an installation for 3 screens and one for 2. That was fun. And also working out how to get it in sync using a computer and two video cards. A lot of possibilities there.

TP: Similar question, your early films were very much about urban spaces, and then became more about rural spaces when you moved back to Ireland in the early 80s - now maybe there's more a mix of the two? (again, feel free to correct me if this is way off). i find this interesting as someone who was born by the sea, lived in the suburbs for a long time (with many excursions into the north east english countryside) and now lives in London, the urban spaces here i find much more interesting than i ever did the rural ones, but it does feel like it might not always be that way. How do you think, as a filmmaker, changes in surroundings have affected your work?

VD: I am usually influenced by where I am living and the films and contents change accordingly. I know what you mean about the rural city thing. I think the world is changing in that people in rural areas are far less cut off from current culture etc because of tv, internet and cheap air travel. It is not really the same of course as living in the city and I feel very comfortable in the city. In the end it is important wherever you are to be able to give yourself space, to be able to focus. There are always distractions which get in the way. To be honest I have always been torn between the two.. I grew up in a small place so I am comfortable in the West of Ireland.

TP: This is kind of a long meandering two part question, I'm sorry... I wanted to ask something about returning to New York too (New York Conversations) and how films in themselves, especially more personal ones, are about remembering and returning, since it's often remarked on how different New York is now compared to how it used to be. There are levels to this too - like, for someone like a reader of this zine, there's a good chance they've never been to that New York and would watch films from that period, or even further back, Warhol films maybe, and there'd be an element of nostalgia for a time they'd never been to. Is recording times and places in this way a concern of yours, something you set out to do? Do you consciously place importance on that time capsule, memory aspect of filmmaking?

VD: Yes and no. When I was filming in NYC in the seventies / eighties I was not thinking of making something for the future. I was situated right there and what was going on around me was very interesting to me and in retrospect there is all this documentary aspect to the material. I have always liked to mix documentary and fiction - and performance.

TP: And lastly...what are you up to at the moment? Is there anything on the horizon we should look out for?

VD: Well I have a retrospective on in a gallery in Cork - but it finishes on the 7th November. Also we are having an event to celebrate the show and its connections to New York etc. We are having Pat Place ( guitarist with the Contortions and Bush Tetras ) and Cynthia Sley ( singer songwriter Bush Tetras) coming to play and we will be showing a video of an early performance by The Contortions as well as a film by James Nares and Scott and Beth B etc Its up on the Crawford Gallery ( Cork) website. This is happening on Nov 5th at the gallery 8-11. The only other thing is the book/dvd which the Lux have. Five films on it and selling for £20.

Vivienne Dick at The Lux - essays, DVD etc.

Reining Nails: Jason LaRay Keener

2010-02-28T03:52:00.000-08:00

From The Pictures #3

Last year, Reining Nails released Catfish With Falcon Wings, a DVD EP compiling their film work to date. The films – four full shorts plus numerous ambient pieces and musical performances – are suburban American comedies, each a series of vignettes and sketches, monologues and one liners cut together to form A.D.D. collages of menace and black humour. The films, directed by Jason Laray Keener (with his frequent collaborator Jeremiah Leadbetter), are populated by menageries of offbeat characters wrapped in arguments, games or surreal and ultimately futile activities. A mother on a motorised lawnmower pulls her daughter along by a rope, forcing her to cut the grass with a manual mower. A man skips and exercises in the pouring rain. A boy sweeps a roof while his grandma shouts disapprovingly from below. A mother criticises her son for his lack of originality at playing the mouth organ.

These vignettes, often featuring antagonistic parents a little like those in a ‘40s farce, are interspersed with horror imagery and footage of animals that would not be out of place in a Herzog film – a turtle digging in what looks like mashed potato or a colony of ants swarming across a discarded rocking horse in Hallelujah! Gorilla Revival (2008), beetles trapped in glass in Hail Cracking Cobra Eggs (2007). There is an underlying sense of menace throughout, and often the images of horror are brought into the foreground. Out in the woods, a deformed beast chained to a stake in the ground wrestles to free itself. The Man With The Apple Shaped Boxing Gloves (2006) features a boy trapped in a rodent cage while another man kicks it. Reining Nails’ latest, Hollow Porcelain Fish Chamber (2009), has a toddler screaming for its mother who lies dead in the scrub by its side.

At times they are affectionate and absurd. Hail Cracking Cobra Eggs includes a low key family fashion show, the grandmother praising the beauty of the models. In Hollow Porcelain Fish Chamber a young woman dressed as a clown rolls in ecstasy among shotgun shells. Yet despite the range on display in the films, these moments that comprises them retain a certain signature feel. Whether beasts in the woods, animals at the zoo or models in the back room of a suburban house, the characters all feel like elements of the same spectrum, the world as seen by Keener and his collaborators.

The images and scenes move at a nervous speed, layered in collage with voiceovers, stills, superimpositions and music (also made by Keener – as Can of Zebras – and Leadbetter). The soundtrack is peppered with one liners and surreal anecdotes – “I think my venus flytrap is anorexic”; “When I was six my grandmother killed my parents and abducted my little sister. She didn’t bother with me.” These elements are drawn from a wide range of collaborators, including Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) and Todd Rohal (The Guatemalan Handshake). The camera is usually hand held and the image itself is often distorted, particularly in the found footage that appears in the films. Scenes often begin mid-argument, cutting on the sweep of a brush or a note on a musical instrument.

The detail and wit that go into each scene mean that each stand out as an episode within the whole, and as wholes each short containing enough ideas to fill a far longer film - an indication of great things to come from Keener’s first feature, which goes into production later this year.

THE PICTURES: What drew you to filmmaking? Where there any major influences that made you think this was something you could - and had to - do?

JASON LARAY KEENER: My step-brother and I were raised on horror films, especially slashers. When I was 12, my mother recommended we watch Halloween. So we rented it. The screen flashed up John Carpenter’s Halloween. Music by John Carpenter. Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Directed by John Carpenter. It was the first time I understood that a film is made by someone. It doesn’t just magically exist.

Pretty soon, I had a shrine to Halloween in my bedroom. My obsession went to the
extent that I recorded the audio from the film onto a cassette tape and would listen to it like a radio show when in the bathtub at my grandmother’s.

So when I was 12, I realized that a film is made and I realized that I had to make
them.

TP: Why the name 'Reining Nails'?

JLK: It’s ambiguous in meaning but not in mood, which I think is true of the films I like to make. My favorite art gives you plenty of room to project your own thoughts and ideas, but the creator dictates the mood.

TP: How much do the films reflect your life? Are any of the characters featured in the films real people filmed verite style?

JLK: The films are very personal at times, but never in a literal sense. I don’t think anyone is interested in hearing the Jason LaRay Keener story, and I’m not really interested in telling it. I’ll be honest and embarrassingly confess that I’m pretty emotionally unstable at times, which I’m sure that a lot of people have picked up on by now. I used to abuse caffeine pills and I probably have some form of hypomania. The shorts are really my thought process made tangible. There was one “real,” uninvented character in The Man with Apple-Shaped Boxing Gloves; there is a
shot near the end of a man in a parking lot waving his hands around, with pictures
superimposed over him. I saw that man at a Wal*Mart one night around 3 AM. He was
yelling to himself and making very angry gestures and all these employees and
customers were standing inside watching him. I went home, grabbed my camera, came back and filmed him ranting from afar. I wish I’d had the courage to get closer and record what he was saying, but you can appreciate my fear. It was a very interesting moment in my life. Mental illness is very fascinating to me, but more on an emotional level than an intellectual study of it.

If it wasn’t for my friends and family, there wouldn’t be any films. I am grateful for their time, support and haunting performances.

TP: What's your filmmaking process? Do you film ideas as and when they come up and then compile them, or do you have a definite set of scenes in mind before filming? How long does one of your films typically take?

JLK: Both methods, really. Sometimes I just pick up the camera and improvise with
my cast, and other times I write scenes out. But even with the written scenes, I always leave room to improvise and invent on the spot, and sometimes what I film strays very far from what I have written, and then sometimes what I edit strays very
far from what I have filmed. The shorts generally take one weekend to one month to actually shoot, but unfortunately it often takes much longer to accumulate scene ideas or else I’d be a lot more prolific.

TP: Having seen quite a few of your films over the past few years, it seems like a lot of the ideas have solidified and become more fluent, but there's still like a central core that runs throughout all of them. What do you think has changed in your films these past few years? What parts are important and central, and what has progressed?

JLK: The Man with Apple-Shaped Boxing Gloves was a lot more carefree and freestyle. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing, so I was just sort of developing a style naturally. I became more self-aware after that and put a great emphasis on refining that format. Now that they have been compiled onto Catfish with Falcon Wings, I’m ready to move in some new directions, but I’ll probably still try to make one of these shorts per year.

TP: On your site there's a lot of poetry and music as well as films. Do they all come from the same place, part of the same thing? Or do you think of them as separate?

JLK: The music and films are related in the sense that the music usually serves as the score for the films. I have more fun making music than I do shooting films, and I do like the more inherent abstract nature of instrumental music (or more often in my case: noise and sounds). Music is something I’d like to pursue more seriously in the future. It’s a dream of mine to release a legitimate album and maybe play at least one legitimate show some day but that’ll require undivided attention and a few
months. But one day in the next five years, I do hope to make it happen. My poetry has always been more of a brain exercise than something I’d seriously pursue. I must
confess I’ve never been able to really get into poetry, but I do enjoy writing it. It’s an interesting format to express some images that would be less successful on film and I’d like to begin writing more again.

TP: What are you working on next? Anything exciting we should look out for?

JLK: I’m shooting a feature in December called Natalie Natasha. I’ve been trying to
get it off the ground since 2006, and the time has come at last. I probably don’t seem like a likely candidate for a serious relationship film, but it’s as much a part of me as clowns masturbating in bullets. A documentary may or may not come next. Then I hope to shoot another feature I’m currently writing called Alan Morris, my first attempt to do something humorless.

www.canofzebras.com

these words are not premature, they may already be too late

2010-02-22T14:05:00.000-08:00

2010 PICTURES 2

2010-02-10T11:07:00.000-08:00

17/02/10 BARDENS BOUDOIR, DALSTON FREE ENTRY

(facebook event)

Our film club goes literary. Tonight we pay tribute to William S. Burroughs as he was captured on film, with a cut-up, folded in lineup to suit:

WILLIAM BURROUGHS
shorts, readings, excerpts and collages all featuring the King of Junk himself - including documentary evidence such as William Buys A Parrot, Nova Express, excerpts from The Commissioner Of Sewers (experimental video produced with Burroughs) and the classic documentary 'Burroughs', Doctor Benway operates, and more

EGG (MC) MUFFIN live
Dwelling in the fissures between meaning and gibberish, intention and chance, Egg (MC) Muffin stage a duel: a cacophony of cut-up fractured voices struggles against a battery of drums.

SPECIAL GUESTS

BUSTER KEATON'S COPS
One of his finest, see the stone faced man on the run from an army of police. Soundtrack selected by The Ludovico Technique.

D.I.Y. movies by/with...

MORAG KEIL

CHRISTINA MILLARE

cats! (we hereby pledge that there will be cats)

KARL LARSSON WALLEN

BOLDIZSAR CSERNAK-RISKO

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from the archive: More More Mumblecore (Aaron Katz)

2010-02-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

From The Pictures Issue 1, August 2008

Making a feature film for nothing has never been so possible. Getting together a group of friends, scavenging equipment and resources and getting your ideas produced, distributed and screened is well within the grasp of every aspiring filmmaker, requiring only the motivation to do so.

This is the ethos that unites the group of young American filmmakers whose films have been dubbed 'mumblecore'. The likes of Joe Swanberg, the Duplass brothers, Aaron Katz, Chad Hartigan and Ry Russo-Young produce films that echo their lives and reflect their experiences with honesty, insight and inventiveness. Their budgets don't exist, they cast their friends, they work with improvised scripts, and speak volumes about the concerns, issues, friendships and connections that make up their everyday lives.

The catch-all term 'mumblecore', coined at the SXSW festival (where many of the films are screened and where many of the filmmakers became accquainted) is misleading. The filmmakers are following their own individual paths. Ry Russo-Young's Orphans (starring the late Lily Wheelwright) plows inense emotional depths in its portrait of two sisters. The Duplass brothers' Baghead is a horror picture. Joe Swanberg's LOL and Hannah Takes The Stairs look at the confusion that technology brings into modern relationships, while Aaron Katz' Dance Party USA and Quiet City are meditative reflections on the awkward, stumbling connections made int he beginning stages of relationships.

What links the filmmakers, aside from their friendships and the myriad collaborations on eachother's projects, is their DIY spirit and attitude that there's no need to wait for money or recognition to come in before telling the stories they need to tell. That so long as there's passion, and a group of people who share that passion and can work towards making something of it, teh films can and will be made with whatever resources can be sought.

Quiet City follows a young woman who has travelled to New York to meet a friend, who she can't find. She meets a youg man and they hang out and get to know eachother and, through a series of touching and beautifully shot moments, trips, parties, subtle romance blooms. It's the detail and the honesty in the film that grab you, the familiarity and mellow mood. The Pictures spoke to its director, Aaron Katz.

The Pictures: What made you want to get into filmmaking? Were there any particular films or influences that prompted your interest?

Aaron Katz: Well I guess I started being interested in film around middle school. When I was very young I didn't watch any films, you know a lot of people have seen all these films from the '80s. I feel like there's all these films from the '80s that everyone's always referencing and there's so many of them because I didn't watch movies til I was maybe 10 or so, so that would have been in 1991, so I've still never seen Top Gun and I've still never seen The Goonies and things like this that everyone's seen, but then when I was about 10 I started watching movies, my family got a VCR and I started renting movies from the library, and the first things I remember watching were comedies, old comedies like the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton are still among my favourite things that I've ever seen, and Charlie Chaplin's good too, but I like Buster Keaton better. I love The General, that's great.

TP: At what point did you realise on a practical level that filmmaking was something that you could do yourself without having to wait for any money to come in, or embark on a long career path before you could get there?

AK: Well really Brendan McFadden, who has produced both of my films, was the one who convinced me that we could and should do it, should do Dance Party USA, which was my first film, for essentially nothing, and pretty much everyone who's worked on both movies went to North Carolina School of the Arts, and Brendan and I and some other people lived together and a bunch of them worked on Dance Party, and I'd written the script between my second and third year of college and I had felt like, you know I couldn't really make this on my own and needed to just wait and do it the right way, and I think film school made me feel like you needed all these things to make a movie, adn it wasn't until maybe halfway through my last year, my fourth year that Brendan started talking about what if we did this right after school, instead of thinking of all these things we needed and going out and getting them, thinking of what we had and figuring out how to make the movie with that, so that's what we started doing. We started thinking of friends who had a camera and people that we'd want to work with, and we ended up making it with a really small crew, just 7 people, and borrowed a lot of equipment, and then we shot it in Portland, Oregon, which is where I'm from, and we ended up, what equipment we couldn't borrow with friends, we ended up, Brendan and Mark, the other producer and I, all got accredited at the local cable access station and borrowed a lot of their lighting and sound equipment, ostensibly to make a cable access TV show and we ended up actually showing Dance Party on cable access to fulfil that part of the deal, and that's where we got a lot of our other equipment.

TP: On the practical side of things, how do you go about making your films? What sort of processes would you go through as far as getting from your script to realising it goes?

AK: I guess there's two aspects to that. The most important thing for me is finding the right people to be in it and finding people who, and within that the most important thing to me is finding people who can be truthful and sincere, so yeah I mean I, for both of those movies cast mostly people I knew, moreso with Quiet City, that was almost everyon I knew, but with Dance Party we had a little casting thing in Portland and cast some people that I didn't know, so that's one main thing, and the other is just figuring out how to do it, and for both of them we borrowed everything. For Quiet City we borrowed an HD camera, an HVX200 from this producer that we were friends with named Jay Van Hoy, we met him at a film festival and he produced Old Joy, the Kelly Reichart film and so we borrowed the camera from him and we had a friend who had som accessories for that camera working on something new right now that will be quite different because the scope of it is a little larger, it's kind of a detective movie, so we're, you know in both the cases of Quiet City and Dance Party we finances them with our own money, a couple of thousand dollars, almost, almost for free, but this one will require a bit more.

TP: If somebody was to say to you that something was a mumblecore film, what would you think they were talking about? What kind of film would you expect to see?

AK: Well I guess I'd expect something that was loose in style, truthful in approach to the story, that is to say it's not about big drama or people yelling at eachother, although I guess that could happen, but hopefully approaching human relationships in a truthful way, very natural, and usually more about the small moments in life. All those things I think are good. The term mumblecore itself is not oe which I like very much, it sounds stupid, or it sounds like it's going to be, and I take that people's negative impression of it might be that it's twenty-somethings whining about their fake problms instead of addressing the real issues of the world that are going on.

TP: I think when I first heard it I thought it was going to be musical...

AK: Yeah, it sounds like a music term. I think core is more often, I can't really think of a film genre that core is applied to.

TP: I quite liked that though, like maybe starting a band and making a film were similar.

AK: I think that, yeah, really moreso now you can start making films with people in a way that previously you couldn't, you know, it's a lot more like starting a band with people because you know, you have ideas that you want to do, and it's not preventatively expensive the way film has been up until pretty recently.

TP: Do you think you'd ever consider doing something without your riends, that was more a big production with name actors, maybe through a studio, or do you think there'll always be an element of that DIY attitude?

AK: Well I'd very much like to do something bigger at a studio, if I could choose the way everything would go, I would be able to make smaller movies that are just about a couple of people, but then there's also some projects I have ideas for that I think you'd need to do them on a bigger scale, but I'd still like to work with, I guess I'd like both, I'd like to have friends on those big movies and have stars in them, but also have some friends in them certainly and some people who've worked on the movies, but the one thing I most want to do, which is totally different from anything I've done before, even this next movie is... you actually might be more familiar with this, most Americans haven't heard of it, but do you know who George Macdonald Fraser is?

TP: I don't...

AK: He was a Scottish author, he worked on a series of books about this guy Flashman and he was basically a historical expert who, I don't know exactly what he did in life, but he was in teh army for a long time and got really interested in history, he basically knows everything about British history, and especially British colonial history in the 1800s, and anways, so it's set during, the first book is in 1839 and goes on through almost 1900 and it's about this guy Flashman who everyone believes is a real hero, but in fact he's truly a rogue and a coward and really is out for his own good, but circumstances always sort of... he's sort of like Blackadder, but maybe less silly than Blackadder, and the history elements are more real instead of just a setting for Rowan Atkinson to do whatever he's doing... So anyway, I love this series of books, and this one book takes place in the American West when he's on the run from the law and forced to flee out of New Orleans west because he can't get out of any ports, and it's got this great cast of characters, and I think it'd be a lot more fun to do, even though I haven't done anything like that before, it'd be really fun, it's sort of Barry Lyndon in the American West, but funny.

TP: How do you feel about the internet as a means of distribution, youtube and so on? Would you ever consider using that yourself?

AK: Possibly. I think the internet for me is like, I think watching short films on the internet can be good, but there's something about watching a whole feature on the internet, and I think the internet encourages impatience you know, and I don't know, I really like the experience, personally I like the experience of going to theatres myself and watching films, and that's the way I'd like for people to watch my films, is to go to a theatre with, that has other people in it, and everyone has this experience that's not interrupted and once you're there you're there, and even DVD, you know obviously you ca pause it and you know get a sandwich or whatever, I feel like there's a feeling that TV's sole purpose is to watch different visual entertainment or art or whatever, and it's not like when you're watching on a computer, it's like you're watching it in a little window and there's other programmes open and other things going on that I think is problematic and I really don't like watching, even like a full length TV show, a lot of TV shows you can watch for free on the internet, like I watched an episode of 30 Rock and it seemed like a good show but I didn't really enjoy the experience of watching it on the internet, I think I'd prefer to rent the DVDs or something.

TP: Yeah, you can't really take a date to your computer either.

AK: Exactly, yeah, and I think there is, even though you're watching something and it's something that's already created, the thing isn't interacting with you that you're watching, I think there is, like having that experience you know as you're saying like a date, an experience between two people watching a thing, and the internet is more like one person trying to get stuff done or watching something funny for two minutes. So it's not to say I don't like youtube videos...

TP: Would you consider the way you make films at the moment, and the way that other people who've been labelled mumblecore filmmakers make films, do you think there's a statement or ideology even behind that, or do you think it arose out of necessity?

AK: I think both. I think certainly myself and Andrew Bujalski and some of those people, although Andrew shoots on film so maybe he's a bad example, but Joe Swanberg and the Duplass brothers let's say, you know, we'd have had a lot harder time getting films made, or we couldn't have made these films in the '90s because we just couldn't have afforded to, but I think, you were saying that it's like a statement or this is how we want to make films, I really think that, hopefully I'd like to think that this is how I would have wanted to make films anyway had I not made films like this and got to make a bigger movie right away, but certainly now that I have made films this way, as I was saying before, I think it's really important to me that if I were to make bigger movies, this thing I'm working on now, it's still important to me that it's a collaborative effort with people who are friends, people who aren't just there to do a job, and even with bigger things like Flashman, although the subject matter is different, I still want to explore who this guy is like in a personal way and a truthful way, like it's funny, but it hopefully won't be funny because there's jokes, it's funny because this guy is who he is and it's hopefully a truthful exploration of this guy who's kind of a funny one, and who this larger than life character is, so I guess, yeah, that's the long way of answering your question.

(in the years since this interview - during which the term mumblecore has become something of an albatross, Katz has completed production on his latest film, Cold Weather, to premiere at SXSW 2010 - looks fantastic, can't wait)

Today is Wednesday 20th

2010-01-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

Adam Curtis - It Felt Like A Kiss

2010-01-23T03:52:00.001-08:00

...back on iPlayer. coming from the installation of the same name, it eschews Curtis' usual progressive narrative arguments and voiceover in favour of a bombardment of images of the past century, with an amazing soundtrack, all building to an ecstatic/terrifying/touching climax. a bit like a real life Ludovico Technique, this was hands down the best thing we saw last year and we can't recommend this highly enough, we really can't.

see it at Adam Curtis' blog, here.

2010 PICTURES 01

2010-01-12T08:10:00.000-08:00

20/01/10 BARDENS BOUDOIR, DALSTON 8pm FREE ENTRY

(facebook event)(facebook group)
Pictures Underground Film Club returns from hiatus, revitalised and up for anything, with the usual mix of movies, music, games and free popcorn. This month we're feeling musical:

APPLICANTS live!
'Disneyland with the death penalty', hot on the heels (very hot) of recording their debut album!

(myspace)

THE ORKLY KID (Trent Harris, 1985, 35 mins)
See a young Crispin Glover set about organising a TV talent show in his small town home, hell bent on bringing his Olivia Newton-John impersonation to the world. Harris (director of Rubin & Ed) has never widely released the short, part 3 of the Beaver trilogy, but we're bringing it to you tonight.

(Trent Harris official)

(wikipedia)

RUN, WALK! live!
bass and noise and dance and hailing from the Ancient Capital, 'like putting a firecracker up your jap's eye'. we had these guys over for a WTCDTD event last year and they blew everyone away. about to embark on a national tour, they're a band you'll be hearing a lot from in 2010.

(myspace)

DO NOT DO IT YOURSELF (Winston Case, 2009, 15 mins)
TIMES NEW VIKING play Velvet Underground songs and take us on a tour of Columbus, Ohio in a noisy as hell short documentary.
(TNV myspace)

TEETH!!! (DJ set)
Dalston's finest cretin boppers share some tunes

(myspace)

plus films by and featuring BUSTER KEATON, DICK DALE, TOM MOORE, SVETLANA and more!

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happy new decade

2010-01-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

we hope this is the one for you.

why not head over to erase.net to see what's in store for us as we enter the 1980s.

we only just saw this (we hope they don't mind us posting):

we're back at Bardens January 20th (submissions remain open til jan 12th)

Ry Russo-Young

2009-12-23T13:29:00.000-08:00

Article originally published in The Pictures Zine issue 2

It’s two years since the New York IFC’s “The New Talkies: Generation D.I.Y.” screenings, a programme that collected ten low budget features, all made by a group of loosely knit friends and accquaintances. The films were low key and naturalistic, dealing with everyday lives, youth and relationships. Though each was in itself a distinctive work, the friendships between the filmmakers - often working on eachother’s films - and their sharing of casts, crews and some stylistic features (many of which arose due to low budgets) led to talk of a new film movement. Owing to their understated, conversational aesthetic, the term “mumblecore” was coined to describe the films and their makers.

The class of 2007 has come a long way in the past two years. Budgets have increased and projects become more ambitious, and the mumblecore term shed once and for all. Ry Russo-Young, who directed sisterly drama Orphans and featured in Joe Swanberg’s mumblecore who’s who Hannah Takes The Stairs, has just released her second feature, You Won’t Miss Me, which premiered at Sundance to wide acclaim.

“I think it’s great that we are all still friends and care about eachother’s work,” she says in reference to the mumblecore years. “I think being grouped in with some fellow filmmaker friends didn’t really help or hurt me, it was just part of a moment in time that has now passed. There will be more moments like that. Seems like everyone is doing good, we all have many years ahead of us still to make films and progress, and I’m looking forward to being there.”

Orphans, released in 2007, always stood a little apart from the other films, whose plots generally focussed on romantic relationships. Instead, Orphans is a tale of two estranged sisters whose birthday party reunion prompts the unravelling of secrets and long held deceptions that threaten to destroy both siblings. Heightened by the strong performances of stars Lily Wheelwright and James Katherine Flynn, the film is often tense, claustrophobic and surreal, and always heartfelt. The games played by the two sisters, both mental and real, reflect Ry’s own childhood, much of which was spent inside her own head.

“I would constantly play what my parents called ‘imaginary games’, this would often involve costumes and elaborate stories of princesses being taken away and sent to orphanages, train rides and narrow escapes and rescues…school wasn’t easy for me, I was dyslexic and had a really hard time learning to read. The school I went to tried to kick me out on account of my not being able to read but my moms fought tooth and nail and hired a tutor to teach me. I studied with this lady Nita for years and learned how my brain worked. I learned to be very disciplined.”

Ry went about putting this discipline to good use, finding a love in acting. “When I discovered acting as a tween, I realised there was a socially acceptable term for what I had loved to do my whole life.” Taking parts in school plays, getting head shots, begging her mothers for an agent, she was determined to fully explore her passions and make them her life. A class in high school awoke her love of photography and she took a series of dramatised, episodic self portraits, damsels in distress (“when my photography teacher showed me Cindy Sherman I was deeply disappointed that somebody had my idea before me.”)

Before leaving for college her passions coalesced. “I made a film with my best friend from childhood, the same one I used to play imaginary games with as a kid, and all these things clicked. Acting, images, narrative and fantasy gelled into one medium that felt right in my bones.” Guided by her college tutor, “an Iranian filmmaker named Amir Naderi [who] made great big films in Iran and then came to America and started making lower budget films with tiny crews”, Ry began making her own films. Amir was a great influence on the young filmmaker. “He would recommend films for me to watch and then we’d meet and talk about them. He helped my develop my taste and confidence…when I had an idea for a movie about a boy who can’t read and enters a dream world with his teacher who is a ballerina, he pushed me to go out and make it for no money.”

Ry continued experimenting and working, releasing Marion in 2005. An eight minute short on three screens, the film wittily deconstructs the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho, showing three alternate versions of the event. The film won awards for Best Experimental Short at the 2005 Chicago and 2006 SXSW films festivals, setting the scene for the production of Orphans, which was made with the same spirit of experimentation. The film reflects different mental states by segueing between different formats and aspect ratios. It’s an idea that’s taken further in You Won’t Miss Me.

“The whole film is shot on five different formats,” Ry explains, “each format expresses the character’s psychological state. When she’s feeling very bad about herself we shot on a 1 chip flip camera that looks all pixelated and crappy. We also shot on Super 8, 16mm, HD and DV.” But crucial to the effectiveness of this mix of formats is the flow of the film, reflecting the flow of genuine feeling. “The formats are constantly changing and yet it all feels fluid, like the broken pieces of a mirror being slowly glued together. I love each medium for what it brings to the table.”

You Won’t Miss Me follows Shelly Brown, a 23 year old actress recently released from psychiatric care. She wanders through New York situations and social circles, from a psychiatrists office to coke fuelled loft parties. The film stars Stella Schnabel and “other notable New York personalities” – actors and non-actors, friends and accquaintances – and has been praised for its mixed aesthetic.

It’s an aesthetic that seems particularly suited to modern times, and one which is being explored on multiple fronts. See Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely or recent films by Lukas Moodysson. It is perhaps particularly suited to (and influenced by) recently available technology and the plethora of different media available both to view and to work in. Internet distribution is a big and growing part of this picture. “The internet is definitely becoming a viable form of distribution as more people go there for content,” says Ry, “I think we are going to see a lot more creativity and fluidity between internet and film content. We are going to see films more directly having a gaming and web based component to them.”

But this is just one of the fronts to keep an eye on for Ry’s work in future. The door from DIY to multiplex is not closed, and so it shouldn’t be. “I would cast known actors and work within the studio system and get more traditional funding. There are advantages and limitations to every budget and mode of filmmaking. Working in the way that I have has given me a lot of creative freedom but it’s not the only way to make a movie. I think you can still be creative and work within a system.”

But even as budgets and audiences grow, that D.I.Y., low budget, mumblecore – whatever – spirit, manifesto, remains, in Ry’s work as it does her contemporaries. Voices remain raised and ideas and feelings still hold true. “The manifesto is that you believe what you want to make is important, that it’s necessary and that it belongs in the world. Does cost reflect quality? I think most people can take a look around at Hollywood movies and say absolutely not. I think what is necessary is that we make sure that the films we do make (whatever their budget) are important, necessary and truthful.”

However high the budgets grow, it seems that Ry Russo-Young’s experimental nature and unique perspectives will stay firmly in place. Up next is a family ensemble feature in L.A., “kind of like The Ice Storm meets The Long Goodbye, it’s a very sexy movie.”

www.ryrussoyoung.com

two things that happened

2009-12-08T04:02:00.000-08:00

Tom Moore

2009-12-05T06:52:00.000-08:00

Article originally in The Pictures Zine #2

Sleeping Beauty carefully folds a note, 'I AM WAITING TO BE FOUND BY YOU X' and lays down surrounded by tissue paper roses, their petals stained red by her lips. Aeroplanes pass over her gothic palace. The credits appear.

Tom Moore's DV films are steeped in mythologies and haunted by fairytales. Each short, succinct scenario resonates with a very old kind of romance. Old Hollywood melodarma mixes with defiant punk rock sloganeering in a sleepy world inhabited by a reverie of costume characters. Circus people stranded in a town, a tentacled kid in a tree, a man wearing Jackie Curtis' eyes, all moving through the film's psychological space and owning it at the same time, projecting into it. It is of them and belongs to them. Though each film, character, is in itself a world, the films together constitute a larger world - carnivalesque, surreal and filled with icons.

The world of Tom's films is familiar from the mythologies that inform it, be it demonology (The Devil's Eyes), pulp crime (Ding Dongs) or, in one of his most personal films, his father's football career (Equalizer).

Like silent movies made by punks, the films move through deceptively simple narratives, whole images made up of parts invested with histories that tell the story of their characters, seen to in the detail and care put into each expressive makeshift costume or mise en scene. Tom's characters stand glamorous in despair and optimistic in shit. A murder is commited with a sword and not a gun. The tentacle kid faces parliament to protest his lovers' incarceration in bracelets. Each isolated character draws on their history and heroes for strength.

The films are about romance and heroism, or the search for these things though they seem elusive in modern times. They're about the hope to overcome, and the original, very old, notion where films equate to dreams.

THE PICTURES: What first drew you to filmmaking?

TOM: Well, I was writing songs that had stories in them and some of them you couldn't set to music and I always watched lots of films so there was this one story that I decided to make into a film which is The Devil's Eyes and it was, it went OK but there are certain things like, it's harder to say with films but when I started making music I heard Suicide's first album and it was really like wow, I could make music that's like this, I love this music. With films it's harder to pinpoit although there are some, like I saw some of the Warhol films and I saw fragments of Kenneth Anger ones and the Jack Smith films and it seems really, like, friends of mine who'd made films before, I'd acted in some of their films, I don't know, I know someone who's trying to make a film at the moment that I work with who is making, it's like they're making it as if she were a Hollywood studio and is looking for a cinematographer... Just seeing people make films that they were doing all on their own and they knew exactly what they wanted and every step that they took was something that they could do and something that they could do well and they came out with really beautiful films and you don't need to be like the head of this big organisation to do it. It's slightly more complicated than some things but it's really not a difficult thing to do once you know what you want.

TP: How would you describe your aesthetic? What are your influences?

TM: I'm interested in drama quite a lot but also other things. I was talking with a friend of mine abut my camera the other day, and my camera is actually quite a big influence in that it doesn't have a viewfinder, so all of the things have to be looked at on this tiny little screen, so everything that I shoot tends to be in closeup, which when I discovered that most of my films are in closeup and this is why I was a little embarassed, but aside from that, the aesthetic, that is heap, quite cheap but also I mean it's quite cheap in that the first thought is the best thought in a lot of ways and a lot of things that aren't thoughts are important, like just I hesitate to say what's natural, but a little bit what's natural and a little bit of what's not thought out. I really like drawing and so things tend to tend towards that, like movement and that kind of thing, caught up in this art practise and the kind of Warhol films fall into that, but I have a few films that don't really have any actions in, just a set of situations which follow on from watching those. And kind of themes, are a little bit to do with glorification. I like glorification and I like affirmation, affirmation of, even if it's like affirmation of tragedy, it's still something, it's making things real, I think it's important to me, making - I've been thinking about making longer films for a while now and adding things together, like The Devil's Eyes had a plot whereas I don't think any of the other films have a plot as such, there's just a series of things presented, situations that happen.

TP: How important is the DIY aspect to you? Would you consider working another way?

TM: I've thought about instructing more than actors before, like having someone shoot things and having another person do this and that and it's awfully complicated and the films really don't need to be that complicated because they're not, they're very simple...although I love big budget films. Yeah, see it would be great to have just a bunch of people do stuff for you as well. I don't know. I don't think I'm quite egomaniacal enough to deal with too many smart people at once. But I've had people build costumes for me before and I asked them to do it and it was really simple, they did it and it was really good, if I had like... If I had a team of like 30 people building hundreds of costumes that'd be awesome, and then loads of actors who could wear them that'd be really good, and ven the Jack Smith films have quite a large cast it seems, although they're all friends, I mean I have a handful of friends, but it's hard to get them together all at once.

TP: What's your filmmaking process?

TM: I tend to have like an image or an action in mind and then set about the easiest way to do that and then all the kind of moments of technique are just what happens as it progresses, like I don't really think about getting good shots until they're there or, like I hate editing, hate it because I don't know why. It just seems very unnatural. Maybe I should stop editing, maybe I should hire an editor...

TP: Where would you like to be in 5 years time?

TM: Really famous. Like really, really famous! But still don't what I'm doing really.

www.tommoore.eu
Photo by Ryan Van Winkle

Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb Sunday

2009-11-22T07:29:00.000-08:00

(whole film as a playlist)

Nicola Probert

2009-11-22T07:01:00.000-08:00

Article originally in The Pictures zine #2

Watching Nicola’s music videos, films and animations is like watching an expressive and engrossing argument. Thoughts and idea tracks fight for attention, different mediums struggle for dominance, images fight images. People emerge triumphant from abstract shapes only to be smothered by ink and paint and new ideas, ideas in turn superseded by the new patterns and images that grow organically from them. See the monochrome Ipso Facto multiplying and marching geometrically in constant momentum in her video for Six and Three Quarters, the Skip Theatre troupe swimming in a sketched lake and eaten by an animated crocodile in Lunch, or the paper hearts-tears in The Charlatan’s Mis-takes video that fly away with minds of their own. Working in numerous mediums from super-8 to paper cuttings, video to paint, live action and animation, Nicola imbues every element of her work with its own energy and its own consciousness. Every image is a new idea or opinion growing out of, complimenting or obliterating the one that came before, restless, multiplying, changing direction. Nothing is still.

These arguments, conflicts and variations in Nicola’s work bring to mind the music that her work often illustrates, like synaesthetic compositions on the screen. Her restive tone poems are born from her thoughts and then given the space to evolve of their own accord, to find their own way from beginning to end so that their narratives are unpredictable and their characters (both human and otherwise) intrigue. While their elements feel as familiar as a pop song, the films themselves set out to surprise and to explore. If the films portray arguments, then their outcome is ever undecided.

THE PICTURES: Of all the different mediums you use, do you have a particular favourite to work in?

NICOLA: i like working across mediums. for example transferring an idea from a sketch into something 3 dimensional and back again. i use words, sound and sketching as immediate formats to record and visualise ideas. these initial ideas develop and may end up in some form as part of an animation or a painting or a film.

THE PICTURES: Logistically, how do you go about making a video? Like the Charlatan's Mis-takes video, how did that one come together?

NICOLA: the process is organic and different every time. obviously for a music video, i start by listening to the track and the lyrics, the way they're delivered, the feeling/emotion, rhythm and approach of the song, visual responses to these elements form in my head, images or image sequences, characters or situations...

i sketch out these images, and experiment with different materials; ink; pencil; 3d; paint; photography...

this process defines the aesthetic, I find the colours and approach on paper which i have in my head. it's quite instinctive and not too deliberate.
for the Charlatans Mis-takes video i used some dancers who helped visualise some of the shapes and ideas physically and then a lot of time on this one was spent after the shoot, drawing and animating elements that layered over the bodies

THE PICTURES: What things inspire you? Is there anything that heavily influences you?

NICOLA: so many things - stories. atmospheres. characters. spaces. literature is a big source of inspiration - currently I'm reading Angela Carter and recently read Roald Dahl's Kiss Kiss collection, both of which had a big resonance. i get a lot of images / situations from dreams that make it into things in one way or another. myths, history, animals, the way painting can be used to create an impression of an atmosphere/energy.

i love jan svankmejer, he works with film and animation in a very physical way. - i think materials and the physicality of things are important. I like the approach of Billy Childish - trying not to try to do anything in particular.

THE PICTURES: Do you like working for yourself, as opposed to working for an ad agency or that kind of thing? What do you like about it?

NICOLA: very much. having the space and time to work on ideas, and create something which develops like a conversation as a body of work. i find it impossible to get excited about something whose beginning/goal is commerce. art for me is not about this, although obviously there are cross overs, and pop culture is a big part of this, but it doesn't begin there.

THE PICTURES: What’s next?

NICOLA: At the moment i'm directing some short films for the Tate on art and music. the series is set to be released in September through Tate Shots. This has been a really interesting project to work on.

i've got a couple of short films in development at the moment, one is a character study through a live action narrative, the other is animation based - that i'm planning to produce over the next few months. I am working on painting and drawings also which i hope to collect together in an exhibition later in the year.

http://www.nicolaprobert.com/

short film special

2009-11-18T02:59:00.001-08:00

music from

Johnny Saw Horses and Pets In Heaven. Hope to see you there!

Alexandra Roxo

2009-11-04T13:44:00.000-08:00

Article originally from The Pictures Zine #2

The term ‘psychodrama’ was often used in the 1940s to describe the films of Maya Deren – films in which a single protagonist travels through the film’s often surreal space as if in a dream, everything around them an extension of their consciousness, loaded with symbolism, weight and unsettling significance. While Deren’s ideas have been appropriated by everyone from student filmmakers to David Lynch, and have in themselves become a common (and often poorly thought out) part of film grammar, it is rare to find a modern day filmmaker who uses these techniques in such a pure, stripped down form and with such emotiveness that they feel fresh and moving and every bit as effective as a film by Maya Deren herself.

Alexandra Roxo has made two films in this vein – Out Of The Blue and The Heart Is What Remains. Both are exquisitely shot on Super-8, foregrounding all the grain and texture of film, and both are soundtracked by gorgeous minimal electronica. In both films a young woman finds herself in a picturesque graveyard and wanders in a state of captive trance, negotiating resonant obstacles and evocative traps in a bid for freedom. Horror is never far beneath the surface.

Out Of The Blue is the earlier of the two. Our heroine is bound to trees in a spider web as the blue filtered film throbs gently, slightly over exposed so that white creeps in from the edge of the frame. She frees herself and rushes, frantic, across the graveyard, stopping and weeping at the feet of an angelic statue. On the statue’s plinth she finds her prize, a pomegranite, which she takes, disrobing before biting into the fruit – an almost pastoral naturalism is a feature of both of Alexandra’s films to date. Red juice from the fruit’s flesh drips onto her body like blood and she rubs it, newly sexualised, wonder in her expression. The film begins to flash abstract and red, and our heroine has moved to another stage.

The Heart Is What Remains revisits some of the themes of Out Of The Blue, but with added depths and turns, and the addition of a lover to our heroine character. Both the film and characters are more mature. The story here is of a serious relationship, starting out in rich, warm colour. From a sleeping beauty kiss in a graveyard, the lovers begin to share their lives, bodies framed spooning nude. Dark imperfections creep in, the music becomes tense. The two sit opposite eachother at a table, bursting eggs with one hand and filling cups to overflowing with greasy yolk. Crockery is smashed. Our heroine drags a plastic bag from their house, her boyfriend’s body inside. Demonstrating Alexandra’s history in the theatre, the woman’s movements are specific and precise, nervous and almost choreographed, yet not quite in control - entranced. From here on she’s alone, cutting out his heart and taking it to the beach. In what might be a direct reference to Deren’s At Land, we see a closeup of her bare foot on the sand. She burns the heart, and others she’s collected. She walks slowly out to the panoramic sea which seagulls circle above.

The other definition of psychodrama, the psychiatrist’s term, is the use of roleplaying and immersive dramatism to resolve an issue, to reach a point of understanding. The amount of emotional investment in Alexandra’s films, and the complexities revealed by the most humble symbols, ensure that this is as true for the audience as the characters within and, you suspect, for the filmmaker. These are the most personal of films, all the more affecting for it, and well worthy of the best of the tradition.

THE PICTURES: What drew you to filmmaking and, particularly, to making films for yourself (as opposed to say working in a studio)? Were there any particular influences or inspirations?

ALEXANDRA: Having originally gone to school for acting, I decided after classical theatre studies that I wanted to create my own work. From there, I wrote two plays, “Reading Between The Lives: A Thousand Lonely Liberations” and “This Little Light Of Mine”, and directed one of them. As much as I love the theatre, I felt I needed to move into filmmaking because of its proximity to people and popular culture. Before picking up a motion picture camera, however, I decided I needed to work on photography for a few years. After developing a visual style, I spontaneously borrowed a Super 8 camera and went from there.

TP: Practically speaking, what’s your filmmaking process And once they’re finished, how do you go about putting them out there so an audience can see them?

AR: My films either start with a simple image or an idea and go from there. “Out Of The Blue” was completely spontaneous, and shot linearly with no editing. “The Heart Is What Remains” involved more preparation but no script. I had an idea and with the help of friends pulled it together. Since I shot the film I felt it essential that I storyboard for myself which was very helpful on set. On the feature I directed my process took a whole new direction as I was acting in almost every scene. Luckily for me, we had a monitor so I could play back the scenes. The only way I was able to handle acting and directing was due to the work that DP Magela Crosignani and myself had done as we spent a lot of time preparing before shooting the film so she knew exactly what I wanted.

I submit my films to carefully selected festivals and galleries which seem like they would be a good fit for my films. Festival submissions are very expensive and time consuming, so I‘ve had to pick the ones that suit my work the most.

TP: What do you like about working with Super 8? Would you ever consider video or another medium?

AR: I love working with Super 8. It has a texture and simplicity that allows a lot of spontaneity during shooting. I first picked up Super 8 because I knew it was user friendly and wouldn’t require an AC or anyone but myself. I had never worked with video until a month ago when I started shooting my first feature film. I would have loved to shoot it on film, but due to budget constraints I shot it on HD with film lenses, and I am quite pleased with the look. However, I look forward to the day I can make a feature film on film!

TP: The music in your films is lovely. Who makes it, and how important a part of film do you think music is?

AR: Up to this point the music in my films has been made by colleagues of mine. I am very fortunate to have many friends who are talented musically. The music in my film “Out Of The Blue” was made by my friend who goes by the name Poison Ring. He loops old tapes and records and comes up with the most amazing sounds. The music in “The Heart Is What Remains” was made by three different music projects: Dormant, Valet and Eluvium. All the music I use is an integral part of the film, the film and the music really become one unit in the end that I can’t separate.

TP: What are you working on next? Where would you hope to be in maybe 5 years time?

AR: Having just finished my first narrative film, a feature called “Mary Marie”, which I co-wrote, directed, and acted in, was a leap for me coming from more experimental work. In 5 years time I hope to have directed at least one or two other feature films that have shown around the world. I also enjoy working on my colleagues projects, and hope to have produced some of their films as well.

www.alexandraroxo.com

CINDERELLA'S BOOB JOB

2009-10-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

Article originally published in The Pictures Issue 2

“I’m afraid I don’t consider myself a filmmaker, or anything specific for that matter.” Parisian Angélique Bosio does not like being tied to labels. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, she made one of our favourite documentaries of the past few years. Llik Your Idols tells the story of the Cinema of Transgression, a moment in New York time when artists like Richard Kern, Nick Zedd and Lydia Lunch came together to form a loose movement of extreme filmmakers, their work inspired by poverty, nihilism, sex and drugs. At the heart of the film are a series of interviews with the main protagonists of the scene in which they paint a vivid portrait of their lives and loves in squalor and talk openly about that fertile period when some of the most shocking, gruesome and salacious scenes ever seen in underground film were committed to Super 8. Angélique’s open, almost naïve interview technique allows her subjects the ability to reminisce freely and undirected where a more experienced and routined filmmaker may have prompted the opposite effect.

“To be honest, I started work in the cinema abut 10 years ago now,” explains the quiet, unassuming young réalisatrice, “because I knew what I did not want to do – namely to work in music labels, publishing companies, galleries, banks etc. I didn’t know a thing about cinema, or not enough, therefore I felt absolutely free.” But if making Llik Your Idols was a labour of freedom, it was a far from easy process. She worked on it in what little time remained outside of what she calls her “official job” for the best part of 5 years in a production process fraught with difficulties.

“I started in the summer of 2002 and finished it in July 2007, then it ran festivals. The whole thing started quickly. I decided to work on the project in the spring of 2002, wrote a few e-mails, got a few answers, booked some tickets. I wasn’t even sure I was to meet with these people with I booked the tickets, it had to happen, that’s all. Then I got lucky, somebody gave me 1000 Euros and I went to New York in August.”

Angélique flew to New York and conducted the official interviews, getting on with her subjects “quite well” and returning over the following years to revisit, ask more questions, or interview new subjects, slowly but surely completing the jigsaw of the finished film. She befriended Jack Sargeant, author of Deathtripping, the Creation Cinema book about the scene, and modelled for Richard Kern. But as the project grew, funding became an issue, and it was here that the difficulties began.

photo by richard kern

“I tried to work with different production companies that would stop the shooting, waiting for financial support from a French TV channel, which never came of course. So I would alternate periods of shooting and periods of waiting, patiently.” Production continued on blind faith, and editing commenced in 2006 “at home with Aurelie Cauchy. Then another production company, and the editing was stopped.” The stop-start production process was almost enough to curtail the project altogether, but again naïve optimism won through and the film was eventually finished in 2007, “with people I’d rather not talk about,” That wasn’t all. Even with a completed project to hand, securing a release proved difficult - “a production company tried to block everything and it was a mess for another whole year.”

Finally in late 2007 the film hit festivals, and now, two years later, the DVD is available in several territories, with the European edition available October 20th, a welcome pay-off for Angélique, and one that more than compensates for the time and finance put in. “I will never earn any money out of this documentary,” she says, “on the contrary, I have lost some. But I had to do it anyway. I was not motivated by money, I really needed to create something. I never hoped that I would sell it.”

The finished film has proved a deserving hit with critics and the audience it has so far found, owing in part to its openness and accessibility, and has achieved another of its aims (that it has in common with this zine), to bring these works to new audiences. Unlike many documentaries on the subject of underground film, which are often abstracted to the point of being avant garde themselves, Llik Your Idols needs no foreknowledge. “I hope I don’t make films for myself,” she says. “I have tried to make Llik Your Idols a documentary that could interest people who wouldn’t know a thing about this scene. The idea is to spread the word.”

It’s an attitude in the film that chimes with Angélique’s overall outlook towards the creative process, particularly when coming up against production obstacles or negotiating such dark subject matter, as she did in this documentary and her upcoming portrait of Bruce LaBruce. She approaches her work and stays motivated by “being stupid, dreamy and pretending to be naïve…do I sound like Cinderella?” As seen in Llik Your Idols, this naïve, questioning, curious presence wading through stories of bondage, torture and hard drug abuse is more Lewis Carroll’s Alice. You get the sense that this kind of investigation, of involvement, is why she prefers documentary to fiction.

“I don’t think fiction is a natural penchant of mine,” she confirms. “I have had one single valid idea for a short film but gave up too easily when told there was a feature film doing the same thing already. Documentary, [though], allows me to work with music, play with the edit, travel, get into funny situations, meet some people. I can be the control freak I truly am and follow the tide at the same time.”

Angel’s investigations are about to yield two more documentary features, partly the result of a productive (in total contrast to her past experience) partnership with independent producers and distributors Le Chat Qui Fume – “amazing people to work with” – who have given her as free a reign as possible in their production. The first chronicles the work of controversial gay porn-art filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, and the second follows French designer lingerie icon Fifi Chachnil.

“I would like to spend more time trying to learn photography after I have finished them I think,” referring again to her reluctance to be any one thing for long. You suspect though that, even in a different medium, Angélique’s inquisitive world view will shine through. Any investigation is about making connections, and Angélique’s films to date show this particularly, her subjects as pieces of a large and slowly emerging picture. Richard Kern or Fifi Chachnil, “to me there’s a link between all these people.” In the five years of making Llik Your Idols, she proved she has the patience and the curiosity to never stop looking.

Sexploitative

2009-10-25T07:32:00.000-07:00

Here are the two excellent finalists from our Sexploitation filmmaking contest, as shown at last week's birthday party - LOVE, ACTUALLY! by Tom Moore and The Story Of My Conception by Jack Barraclough.

LOVE, ACTUALLY! (click on the photo to view, it's the first video embeddded on Tom's page)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US. A ton of thanks for everyone who came down to celebrate - next one is November 18th, hope to see you all there!

His Name Is Jonas

2009-10-08T04:57:00.000-07:00

(originally published in The Pictures zine Issue 1, mid 2008)

Since the 1950s, Jonas Mekas has lived the life of a film-maker, his ever present camera capturing every shade of the scenes he passes through, be they John Lennon's birthday party, Warhol's factory, late night cab journeys or walks in the park with a girl. In his diary films, Mekas brings out the poetry in living and shares with his audience the travels, thoughts and experiences of a man completely devoted to capturing the essence of life in moving images.

Over the decades Mekas has played a central role in the nurturing and development of underground, personal, experimental film - call it what you will. His film column in the Village Voice famously championed the likes of Warhol and Brakhage as the vanguard of a new film movement that he dubbed the New American Cinema. Mekas' Film Culture magazine was launched as an American response to the French Cahiers du Cinéma. By co-founding the Filmmakers Co-operative, Mekas and his contemporaries sought to create a community - a family as he calls it - to work on, produce, appear in and screen eachother's work. When questioned about his patronage and work in the avant garde film world of the '60s and beyond, Mekas likens his role to that of a midwife, working to care for and to nurse a film movement that is still proving its significance and influence today.

Mekas' work rate has not diminished over time. Last year he produced 365 films, one a day, which were distributed over the internet. They range from explorations of Scottish castles to conversations over the breakfast table, but his voice and filmmaking spirit are present in all of them.

The Pictures was lucky enough to get the opportunity to spend an evening with Jonas and his friends, crawling the bars and restaurants of Soho. By the time it came to sitting down for the interview, (many) drinks had been had and connections made, and perhaps it is not the most solid piece of journalism, but stands well as an artefact of the night. I should add that Jonas finished the interview with a joke, but my tape ran out and the joke was lost. His musings on romanticism, Youtube and the determination of a Capricorn, were caught in full...

THE PICTURES: About the filmmakers co-op, you had this idea of a new American Cinema...how did that work logistically? How did all these individual filmmakers find eachother, and how did you go about setting something like this up?

JONAS MEKAS: It was very easy, already getting together, creating a co-operative, New American Cinema group. That was in 59, 60, 61, 62. We got to know eachother at the screenings. There were various places in which we screened our films. Everybody was always there. If there was a screening for the avant garde, experimental, what they used to call independent, personal film, everybody was there. They knew, then they were there, so it was very easy to meet and to know eachother. It was our, you know, we were all interested in the same kind of, more or less, cinema, so we knew eachother. So when it came to the creation of teh filmmakers co-operative all we had to do was let everybody know, come on that day, and we were meeting to discuss the possibility of creating our own distribution centre, everybody was there, like a large family. And in those days it was not thousands, there were only a few, couple of dozen filmmakers, not thousands like now. Millions.

TP: When you were writing the Film Culture magazine, writing for the Village Voice, you championed what was considered, at the time, underground film-

JM: Passing information, yes yes.

TP: Do you think that kind of filmmaking still exists in modern times?

JM: Modern? Modern? What kind of expression is that?

TP: I mean, just, now. Now, do you think there is such a thing as underground film, or do you think underground film has become more a genre than an actual thing?

JM: Underground today is on the internet. Not in cinema, because film does not practically exist anymore, so it's video, video, it's all in certain. Underground today maybe is Youtube. If you look for some equivalent I would say Youtube.

TP: I think that's different though.

JM: Well of course, different medium, different dissemination.

TP: But everybody is far apart, nobody meets eachother the same way.

JM: Yes.

TP: Do you think it's an important thing, for people to get toether?

JM: They get together through the medium of the internet.

TP: But they never meet eachother.

JM: It's different, they don't have to meet eachother.

TP: Do you not think that's a little sad though?

JM: When you have one million of them, how can they get together? It's a different, completely different situation. You can always invite on your website, locate say a place in Soho in London and at a certain hour, time, be there, I'm there, I would like to meet you, those who are in close vicinity.

TP: That's true.

JM: I challenge you...

TP: There's no need to challenge me, I already tried.

JM: OK, OK, so you, now... so it's a different time, different medium, somewhere else and you cannot recreate the past. You could make find examples if you would go back to, OK, we are talking about what we did in the '60s, so now you go back to 40 and we are now 40 years, 50 years from there. Now go back 50 from the '60s and we are in 1910! In 1910 it was unimaginable, it was not what happened in the '60s, 65, so it was, I don't know maybe not such a big gap as 65 and 2008, but I mean 1905 and 1965 there was an immense gap, almost similar to this one.

TP: Speaking of 1910, the film we saw tonight, your "Birth of a Nation", it had a scene where you filmed Charlie Chaplin, and it seemed to me like maybe your films had something in common with Chaplin in that you had these cameras and you just figured out what to do with them by yourself, there was no 'I'm going to be a filmmaker so I have to stick to these rules', it's a case of working out what you want to do...

JM: I don't get what you're saying now.

TP: Well, when Charlie Chaplin started making films, all he had was a camera and himself and his friends and he figured out how to make films...

JM: OK.

TP: And when you were making films, you had a camera and you figured out what to do with it yourself, and along the lines various people have done that. Do you see any of that happening now, or do you think-

JM: Yes, people are still, only now it's a different instrument, now it's a video and different varieties of digital taping, little cameras, whatever, telephones, different means of capturing moving images, and it's happening and everybody's doing it, there's no... Only now that it's so easy and for Chaplin it was not so easy and cost a lot of money.

TP: I really liked that actually, where he was sort of kissing everyone from the balcony, it seemed like a nice reference... I wanted to ask, your films always seem a little bit romantic to me, like the way that you film people and the world, it's obvious you have quite an affection for it.

JM: Yeah but still they're real, what I film is reality, they're real, the camera is real, the lens is real, the recording's real, so it's reality. The idea of romanticism is in your head.

TP: Maybe romanticism is the wrong word, maybe optimism?

JM: Even that is only in your head because what I film is reality.

TP: That's true, but the way you film it...

JM: Haha, try to get out of that.

TP: It's subjective, it's not in my head, that's from your head.

JM: What I choose to film, you mean that the moments which I'm filming, the people during that moment are very, in a very romantic situation?

TP: No no, not a romantic situation. Let me try to phrase it in a different way. You make the things that you film look very beautiful.

JM: Beautiful? No, I don't make them beautiful. The camera catches what there is. I don't make, I don't ask them to put on make-up or behave one or other way, a sweet or beautiful way, I catch reality as it is!

TP: Maybe it is in my head...

JM: No, no, we are discussing a very important subject, because I have been, I have read many times people write this, I'm a romantic, da da da, but still, I film only what there is, I don't make it up. No directing there, only life as it is.

TP: But you choose what parts to film.

JM: Well, you have to choose, otherwise I'd have to film 24 hours non-stop. I don't do that, I just choose certain moments that say, moments to which I react that I feel like I should record for myself those moments. I don't say you're wrong but I'm trying to understand how this works, why people refer to it as romantic.

TP: I think because you film some people on a day out with their babies, or you film children learning to do things, or swimming in the sea...

JM: Yeah but that's all real, I'm filming life, daily, realistic. I'd even consider the possibility to call myself a realist, naturalist filmmaker.

TP: Yes, it's entirely realistic in that those things are real and do happen, but there are a lot of other things that happen.

JM: Yes but I'm not interested, I cannot cover all, I'm not interested in absolutely everything, you know I cannot film or be interested in everything, I would have to film 24 hours a day.

TP: But the parts that you do film seem to be the more optimistic parts. I mean, I haven't seen all of your films so can't say.

JM: Optimistic, that's a very very... I mean, what you mean probably is parts in which people are happy and they're celebrating and alive, they're singing or you know, there is no...

TP: Yes, they celebrate life, but not life as being happy, but you know the interesting parts, even if somebody's sad, it's interesting, they're not just sitting there moping.

JM: No, I'm not interested in recording miserable moments. That doesn't mean that I'm a romantic.

TP: I guess what I'm getting at is, a lot of people my age who've seen your older films, it's like what you were saying in the talk today about how you don't want to get nostalgic about anything. People look on these films as kind of nostalgic visions of a time they weren't born...

JM: Yes.

TP: Do you still see the same things now? When you made your 365 films, did you still look at the world the same way, do you still see the same things as interesting?

JM: Yes, in that respect there is no change. I don't see any change. I'm still recording those moments when people are happy, singing, dancing. I see no difference, no change, and actually maybe increased- No, no change. I want a copy of this. Can you send me a copy of this?

TP: Of course. I was going to ask about politics, and i know you said up front you've got no interest in specific politics in a sort of Godard way-

JM: I am and I am not. My understanding of what, to me there are positive politics and negative politics and I'm not interested in negative politics. Negative politics to me are all those politics that are now considered as politics. Positive politics are the politics of Buckminster Fuller, of the beat generation, of John Cage, of Fluxus and many scientists and poets, those that change our deep, they have contributed more to the change of style of living, of attitude to life, to what we are than all those others, the negative politicians, the real politicians are only contributing to it negatively.

TP: That sort of answered the question I was going to ask. I was going to say the films you make are very personal, and this reminds me of your films, you know the Truffaut quote about the films of the future will be filmed by one person and they will reflect their experience to the whole world but-

JM: But he said that at the time when that was happening. He was a little bit out of touch with what was happening, but that's OK, we can forgive him.

TP: I always found his films not that interesting...

JM: 100 Blows is a great, great movie still. If he would not have, he did not have to make anything else after that, and I don't care about all the other films that he made after that.

TP: I haven't actually seen that one...

JM: You haven't seen it?? That's why you don't like Truffaut. That's the only film that you should see and forget all the rest. And that film is a masterpiece.

TP: I'll make sure I do.

JM: Do that in the next 10 days.

TP: So your films are obviously made from a very personal point of view.

JM: Every film is.

TP: But the times you were filming in were very politically active times, and the times and people you were filming, there's inevitably an element of those politics in your films. Do you think that film in itself, and you've sort of already answered this, do you think it's passive and records what's going on, or do you think it's-

JM: Film, or a piece of videotape or film, and there is a camera, it's of course passive, but you use it. It's you who does something with it. Of course it's passive, but then you take it, put it in your camera, you point at something and you do something with it and than it's all you. The camera of course is always passive, but what you do with it...

TP: Do you think it can affect change?

JM: There is nothing in the whole universe, absolutely nothing and it has been proved by the scientists, I think all of them agree, that there is nothing under the sun that doesn't affect, that doesn't have an effect on anything else. Is there something?

SEBASTIAN MEKAS: Black holes.

JM: Black holes?

SM: When something enters

JM: Then it does not have an effect?

BENN NORTHOVER: But doesn't time come into the effect, it happens?

JM: Yeah, but we are so far away from black holes.

BN: Well, (inaudible) films...

JM: Forget it, we don't want to get into the black holes, which they are going to create in Geneva, the little ones...

TP: In terms of ways of getting films out there, I don't know if they're up there with your consent or what, but quite a few of your 365 films are up on Youtube.

JM: I don't know who puts them there and I don't care. Sometimes I notice they're putting parts of them there, they're not in their entirety, but they're there, and I don't know how the system of Youtube works, and in my case I don't care because I don't have millions of people buying my work, and I know that some commercial filmmakers are very concerned and they have forced now Youtube to, there is right now a big something going on about the copyright and how to stop this, and I'm not very interested, but it's going, something is happening, they want to prevent it, or get money from it, or stop it, take off, whatever. That's not my concern because I'm too small.

TP: Maybe it suits a certain type of filmmaker. I read an interview with Harmony Korine where he said he wanted to use Youtube.

JM: But unfortunately his films are not produced by himself, there are producers of his films and they would not do that, they want money back, so if he would produce himself, he could put it there, like I put everything there. I have no producers, I am the producer, Korine has a producer. But I like him.

TP: Is it true that you have hundreds of hours of footage produced with him?

JM: Not hundreds, but at least 50 hours of footage of Korine, maybe more.

BN: The last time we saw Harmony he was saying that you would release it together.

JM: The last time was like only a month ago, he was signing a book.

TP: What you're doing at the minute, I watched a lot of videos through Youtube, the progression in style is quite noticeable, especially I think that your literal voice comes through more, you speak more. How do you find that, and where do you see it going?

JM: I don't know yet, I don't know yet.

TP: Doing the 365 films in 365 days too was very impressive.

JM: And it was challenging. And I'm a Capricorn. When I put my mind on something I don't want to give up and I don't want to let people down, I want to, I'm sticking to it, so it was to do it and not to miss a single day, a Capricorn cannot miss a single day, and I had to do it, no matter what.

TP: Being a filmmaker, you've said that some people are artists and some people aren't and either you're born one or you're not...

JM: One cannot produce an art movement artificially, neither with money nor schools.

TP: But do someone who said they wanted to be a filmmaker, what would you think would be the most important qualities?

JM: Those who really really are artists, filmmakers, they don't say that, they don't say "I want to be", they just do, they know, they are, and that's the only thing they want to do. The same in music, the same in poetry. "I want to be a poet". You either are a poet, you are a filmmaker, you just do it and you don't say "I want to", you say "I am". "I want to", they won't say that. So those that say that, put a cross on them, finished. They are not filmmakers.

Illustrations by Katherine Hardy

http://www.jonasmekas.com/

SEXPLOITATION - filmmaking contest & our next London night

2009-10-04T10:34:00.001-07:00

The Pictures night is 1!

To celebrate our first birthday on October 21st, we're launching our first ever filmmaking contest.

Contact garrysykes@hotmail.com for entry address and details. Films can be anything on, around or in response to the theme - no restrictions at all except those in the rules. Get working, get in touch and get your entries in!

Entries will be screened and judged at our FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY!

Wednesday 21st October THE PICTURES FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY

Yes, we have made it to the tender age of one, and to celebrate we're having a sexy party!

Our hottest lineup is...

TRASHKIT live!
One of our favourite bands to play this past year come back, fresh from supporting No Age (!) to lead the dance with their fantastic pop tunage. With an album out soon on UTR, Trashkit have had an amazing year too.
myspace.com/trashkit

ANOTHER LIVE BAND TBC
really this time.

the results of our SEXPLOITATION filmmaking contest where you vote from for the prize winner from our shortlist, plus a screening of Russ Meyer's MONDO TOPLESS - one of the strangest films we've seen in a little while. Part Carry On style camp, part Nouvelle Vague-esque psuedo-documentary, part excuse for Russ Meyer to showcase his buxom friends on the screen. Contains much nudity - adults only!

DIY SHORTS from around and about and everywhere.

another round of our MYSTERY GAME, details to be revealed on the night

ZINES & FREE POPCORN

DJs and Dancing til late - it is afterall a party!

and because it's a party, FANCY DRESS is encouraged and requested - dress sexy! Prize for best costume!

back on a Wednesday October 21st at Bardens Boudoir,

FREE ENTRY!
Next Month: The Pictures cleans up its act...

Invisible Adversaries (Valie Export, 1976)

2009-10-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

Anna, an artist, is obsessed with the invasion of alien doubles bent on destruction.

"The film feels a little as if Godard were reincarnated as a woman and decided to make a feminist version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." - Amy Taubin

watch it on Ubuweb.

BANG WASH PRODUCTIONS

2009-10-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

(article originally in The Pictures Zine Issue 2)

Beth Murphy and Rebecca Loar – Bang Wash Productions – are interactive movie stars. Hailing from Columbus, Ohio via Godard’s Paris, the duo have so far shot, directed and starred in three short movies, with a fourth on the way. Through each, the two filmmakers are a constant presence, avatars in blonde wigs and mini-dresses, mirror images performing, equal and opposite, on either side of the screen. Bang Wash movies are about games, equations and patterns; rituals, language and colour.

Rabbit Vacuum One and Joy Divisions are list films (like list songs). The first tells a disjointed, nonsensical tale through the oration of punters in a bar – a series of cutup interviews ostensibly about a wild night at a gig. In the midst of the list of anecdotes, Beth and Rebecca illustrate, counterpoint and act out parts of the scenario using props and centred shots – foaming at the mouth, hair in buns, a gun, t-shirts that read ‘Hate Core Kids’. These staged sequences form the psychic space behind the storyteling, a mental picture game prompted by words and played out by the two women, the secret agents of the story, working for the film.

In the second, the mental space takes over and all is illustration. Disembodied voices relate experiences, half thoughts and memories of joy that are then playfully demonstrated by the film and the Beth/Rebecca avatars who show us empty boxes, equations on chalk boards, slogans on gym pants and arcade game rain. The two women know secrets and tease us with didactic clues.

Bang Wash’s third movie, The Scandalous Lamella, is the first to take us into these secret agent’s world. A narrative film – a lo-fi musical – follows the two women as they decorate a flat and become acquainted through paint charts and party games. The duo relax with wine. They play a board game: each pulls out a tooth and places it in a cup. The players roll the dice and move that number of spaces to find out which liquid to add to the tooth. Different liquids rot the tooth at different speeds. Whoever’s tooth disappears first wins. Tension builds. Sequences are interspersed with hand crafted title cards and, as the two eventually decide to play at murder, numbered visitors bringing poison. The colours of the film change, cycling through the paint chart. The games become ever more complex. We try to follow the poison’s path, we pick a winner. The soundtrack swells until the duo break into song.

Bang Wash films draw us in to their new wave games, with Beth and Rebecca as our twisted hosts. They lay down their challenges and ask whether we can resist to play.

1.How did the two of you meet, decide to make films, get started?

we both lived on furniture alley in washington beach, ohio. most people thought we were one person because we have similar bangs and chins. eventually we mistook each other for each other after drinking a lot of shots of bulliet at the bar. then we decided we wanted extra slashes after our name .

2.What's the significance of your characters within the films? Do they mean the same thing in each?

girls usually are blond, unless they are black or us. sometimes we are us. boys wear baseball caps.

3.What are your biggest influences? How much of an influence is music on your filmmaking?

abba, lacan, champagne, "home movies", "persona", donnie monaco. crucial bun does all of our music. crucial bun is us. we are signed to "try an hommelette today" records. "try an hommelette today" records is us. sometimes we cover "the better beach boys" songs. "the better beach boys" is us.

4.What's the process behind making the films? Like, taking Lamella as an example, and speaking logistically, what would be the stages of production?

one of us says something funny and then the other person says thats totally a movie. then we draw pictures on notecards at the bar. then we buy food coloring, pipe cleaners, jello, sequins, alize, korean food and fake nails. then we get the wigs because we don't like other people. sometimes we get cake. we have a shitcamHD450 that we ducktape to a tripod. sometimes you gotta use the old on/off trick on it.

5.What are you working on next?

we are finishing a closet splitscreen movie using manual special effects about two girls on house arrest. next we are summering in detroit for a romantic comedy about stalking with Candies. and we are getting lip tattoos for a party trick.

6. in our free time we literally enjoy jigsaw puzzles, fucking shit up, buying fools gold at giant eagle, laughing, telling people we are not related or that we are, putting things on them-shaped things, making lists of things we don't know the name of, hanging out with the puffy mope and the spikey mope (the puffy mope's punk rock girlfriend) and making fun of new york

7. our three favorite signs ever are: kids eat free $1 mimosas, world's largest miniature village & on this site in 1881 nothing happened.

8. we are looking for a sandwich man to drive us around.

9. the worst elvis impersonator? thanks for asking garry. we think he is an 8 year old boy in somalia who has never heard of elvis.

http://www.myspace.com/bangwash

Zine #2 Now Available

2009-10-04T08:23:00.001-07:00

The second issue of our mother zine is now available either by contacting us, coming along to one of our nights, or from Rough Trade East where there are still a few copies.

40 illustrated pages, colour and b&w, and including interviews with - Angelique Bosio (Llik Your Idols), Ry Russo-Young (Orphans, You Won't Miss Me), Nicola Probert, Tom Moore, Bang Wash Productions, Alexandra Roxo and Garry Sykes, plus fiction by Michael Reid and artwork by some of those featured.