I am pretty sure that everyone has at least a short movie in the works.
Film Section: EXPERIMENTS IN OBSERVATION
By Lily Hatchett
We are the only ones that can watch and save, and watch again. Curiosity is driving the camera. It is all about people doing things. And somehow, there is always "stuff" undone and new "stuff" to think up to do. The new tools are magnificent. Considering how much power of thought we have all been emanating, perhaps it is time to consider creating a more benign future.
Meanwhile, filmmakers are keeping an eye on things. Curiosity about others is said to be a manifestation of a higher level of intellect. With film and video we find ourselves peeking into reality and fiction brought to us thanks to the ultimate sponsor: electricity.
The Art and Crimes of Ron English, by Pedro Carvajal, is a documentary about billboard-liberation and culture-jamming.
Let me preface this story with a sigh of relief and a couple of ha, ha, ha’s. Behold a beautiful sight: Funny Art…yes, folks, here it is…Gonzo Billboard Hijacking as Art Form! Relief, yes, thankfully, there are artists that take "going all out, stepping over the edge, risking disapproval and arrest" as their artistic imperative. When this imperative is carried out with extreme skill, wit and agility, we find ourselves facing the sublime, in the true sense of the word.
Watching Ron English, we see a master at work. First it starts with a walk and a smirk. An accessible sign, a good idea, and a dash back to the studio, where the idea has to be immediately hand painted with acrylic on photo backdrop paper. Hand-painted, yes, but slick to a Madison Ave. caliber. And he is fast!
Finished and dry in record time, the next step is to apply the Ron English Billboard to its designated location. Ron prefers to do this by day, during working hours. Looking like guys on the job, he and his cohorts go about the task of putting up a billboard. Poised and ready to paste and run, the "Let’s Get Drunk and Kill God" billboard (done on a dare) evoked killer rage in the onlookers, and run they did. "It’s called criminal mischief, it’s a second degree felony," says Ron…but it is a way to give the art to everyone.
Ron has covered the full spectrum of topics, from politics to surrealism. He calls his art Popaganda, (www.popaganda.com), the idea is to hit and reinvent all the major icons of popular culture. Go to his website, check out this movie at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004.
Everywhere, we have people doing things, and filmmakers that keep track. There is a short documentary by Gina Levy and Eric Johnson, Foo-Foo Dust. I first saw it at Sundance ‘04; it offered a deep view into an extreme universe, a place where middle-class Americans destroy themselves with such gusto. It is a story of mother and son drug addiction in San Francisco. Her art-school dreams were nullified by crack. His primary education came from heroin and the streets. They want to have their story told. They are besieged but not destroyed. The camera, obligingly, is observing from an invisible safe distance created by the chasm of life choices. Not surprising that Foo-Foo Dust won best doc short at the 2003 IFP LA, considering the depth of this rare glimpse. This is not an easy watch, but you will not forget it. Films like Foo-Foo Dust or Eric Eason’s feature; Manito should be mandatory viewing for pre-teens, as they show the devastating results of making some of life’s worst possible choices.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have people that just wanna have as much fun as possible. Smart, affluent Americans getting their Freak On. Banished from a Northern California beach to the desert outside of Reno, for reasons of pyromania, the Burning Man party has been raging once a year for over fifteen years. If you don’t know about this phenomenon, just google Burning Man and you will find more than you asked for.
Here we find the subset of intelligencia that parties creatively, likes to dress or undress with extreme variety, have crazy-fun, make art-cars, dance and groove with the vibe, and get it done on a grand scale. A legacy for our time from the Age of Aquarius, this party is hot. Confessions of a Burning Man, produced and directed by Paul Barnett and Unsu Lee, takes five first-timers for the ten-day phenomenon. We are given an overview of the event. Everything is created on location and struck at the end, except, of course, the stuff that gets ritually burned down. Yes, there is a Burning Man, a "Temple of Tears" flambeau, a parade of flaming art cars, fire dancers, and the mandatory fire canons. Ten days of documenting the Flaming Art Oasis in the Nevada desert, dusted off from filming Burning Man, Lee and Barnett finished an earlier feature, Happily Even After. It will be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004.
The possibility of a more benign future needs to start with a clear view of the present. Since the dawn of filmmaking, documentaries and historic or social comment narratives have informed and changed people’s minds. International filmmakers who have devoted their work toward justice and respect by looking into our similarities, our differences, the resolvable, and the unresolved, have an open forum in the United Nations Association Film Festival.
UNAFF will consider a 30 year-old film as well as a hand-held short fresh off the Mac. Founded in 1998 by Jasmina Bojic and the Stanford Film Society, the UNAFF is an independent grass-roots non-profit organization founded on conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The response has been enormous. UNAFF received the Earl W. Ames for innovatively combining new technologies with traditional media. The demand for national screenings created the UNAFF Traveling Festival, coming to New York City in September. Do not miss the film, Robert Capa in Love and War, about a pioneer world documentarian. Upcoming in the Bay Area, the seventh annual festival will take place on October 20-24, 2004. Please go to www.unaff.org for details.
As a relentless fan of rock documentaries, I have high on my radar a tasty doc-in-progress about the real Hardcore scene. Steve Blush can be found in his element booking his most excellent R�ck C�ndy Wednesday nights at Don Hill’s. Steve has been the DJ and promoter of choice since the Carmelita Social Club days. By booking the most extreme, least respectable bands like GG Allen, The Butthole Surfers, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, etc, Steve has taken us on a hardcore road trip that has us "…sucking the exhaust of the industry Tour Buses…while driving cross country with bands in vans. Back then, underground meant that you were not successful…perhaps that’s what it means again…hardcore sometimes had such an ugly way about it, it’s not surprising that people didn’t embrace it…unlike Iggy Pop or the Velvet Underground, hipsters did not like this stuff…hardcore was a bunch of kids".
Steve wrote the book. He promoted American Hardcore (Feral House Publishing) like a rock band; van tour, booking from city to city, crashing on couches. To his surprise, the book has been selling well enough to help finance the documentary. Steve and Paul Rachman of the Slamdance Film Festival have teamed up on the production/direction of American Hardcore to be ready next year. They are compiling their footage the classical way; van tour, crashing on couches. They are also looking for any footage shot by the fans. They are hoping to unearth "…home footage shot by the hardcore kids, stuff never seen, the basement videotapes…" Let’s get the word out. Check out Americanhardcorefilm.com. You can find Steve on a roadtrip near you.
