This is a film by Jonas Mekas that features Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and George Maciunas who founded the New York art movement known as Fluxus. The film shows a Whitney Museum art opening in 1971 and an artists’ party in New York. Home movies become an artform in Mekas’ hands.
Category Archives: Independent Film
Those Dreams That On the Silent Night Intrude; The Secret Cinema of Jerzy Treblinka: A Film by Luca Gennari
This is a Super 8 film made on a single cartridge without post-production effects by Italian filmmaker Luca Gennari for the Straight Eight Festival at Cannes 2010. There’s a great reference to the brilliant Super 8 filmmaker Derek Jarman buried in here. This film glories in the history of abstract, surreal and neorealist cinema. But it fuses those things with a documentary realism. It ties the artistic workings and ramblings of a mysterious filmmaker to the darkness, horror and murder of the Twentieth Century. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again… Italy is involved in a cinema movement that is just as profound as the movements there in the 1940s, 50s, and sixties. The filmmakers in Italy who are today using the Web for their expression are the equals of Fellini and Rossellini.
Winning Short Films From Cannes à la Flip
Cannes à la Flip is a contest held at the Cannes Film Festival for short films made with Flip cameras.
The 2011 first place winner is ‘Kiteling’, by Romanian filmmaker Eva Pervolovici.
The second place winner is ‘One Night Avec La Mer’ by Colin L. Racicot:
The third place winner is ‘Youth’ by Ayse Altinok:
Doll Clothes: A Short Film by Cindy Sherman
Artist, photographer, filmmaker Cindy Sherman made this short stop-motion film, Doll Clothes, in 1975. I only just realized during my most recent viewing that she was actually continuing the conversation with Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.’
There’s a glitch in the YouTube video, so you’ll need to drag the slider a bit to get the movie started.
Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2’ (1912):
I found this via the Echo Park Film Center.
Star Trek: Phase II
Start Trek: Phase II is an amazingly expert series of fan films made by and starring James Cawley. Aside, from the new faces playing familiar roles, the show nails the original Star Trek look head on. I mean for goodness sake there’s an entire Enterprise bridge set that is perfect. Everything works! A lot of hard work goes into these films and they serve admirably as new Star Trek episodes. Fantastic.
Here’s the Phase II web site.
With thanks to Paul Gallagher at Dangerous Minds.
Luna Park: A Film by Luciana Botelho
Paris filmmaker Luciana Botelho travels and films her love of light and color. In this one, filmed in Lausanne, Switzerland, she turns carnival rides into a celebration of exploding light and pattern that seem to exist in their own realm apart from reality. Her interests seem to lie in the unnoticed beauty of everyday environments. Her camera observes with that sly calm that I admire in any artist. She steals moments of beauty from the unaware because they do not own the moments – she does.