All our films and animations!
It’s not the bikes that I like so much. It’s the super 8! A perfect little piece of humorous filmmaking that really does somehow capture a kind of coolness and easy rebellion that I thought was long gone. There’s some absolutely gorgeous photography going on here. And who ever sees someone lighting up a cigarette with so much perfection as in this film! You just don’t see that anywhere anymore ever.
Marc Bencivenga made this and he apparently did it with a fifty-year-old super 8 camera.
A film for artist Wendell Mc Shine’s upcoming show, The Offering. There’s just something about good drawings in a book with crinkly paper.
Katy Perry sang this song for Sesame Street and then some nasty parents complained about her showing too much cleavage for the little tot audience and so the piece was banned from the TV show! Oh no! What’s going on with parents? Maybe they’re turning into boobs. Don’t kids like boobs anymore? I did when I was a little guy. It ain’t called the boob tube for nothing. What’s the problem? She just wants to play. I’ll play with her. It’s actually a rather good music video.
Kids, if you have a parent who’s afraid of boobs you’ve got real problems ahead. Beware and seriously consider changing who you hang out with.
Jeff Alu is a photographer making films who I met at the Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago. Cool guy. He’s also made this perfectly dream-like dream sequence that’s a part of his in-production film, 12 Dreams. I look forward to seeing all twelve! We had a brief discussion at the opening night of the film festival about the cameras we use and the filming of dream sequences. I said I thought they were kind of difficult, but Jeff clearly stated that no, I was wrong, they are easy! Well, they are easy for him and I like what he ends up with. The Fellini thing comes through clearly. Alu is onto it somehow. The pillow fight is extraordinary and I think the inclusion of the tabletop city model is brilliant.
During the film festival week in downtown L.A. they played Alu’s film on a video monitor in one of the galleries at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. I love watching gallery films and Fellini’s Death look great there.
Here’s another great film from Marvin Tiberious in Italy. ‘Nobody really talks about it, but we are moving peoples.’ That’s what he says in the film. It is one of the most beautiful thing’s I’ve ever seen on YouTube. He draws and speaks. The film shows how natural it is for people to move around and to not want to offer up their lives fighting for some spot of land.
Well I’m just very pleased about this. The Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles has given my film, Yellow Plastic Raygun, the award for Best Experimental Film. I was having quite a nice week attending various parties and screenings at the festival. Its use of multiple locations in the heart of downtown Los Angeles gives one a real sense of taking part in the life of the city and being involved with something that’s helping to foster the exploding art and film scene in downtown. Most of the short films were screened in the new Civic Center Theater at the intersection of First and Main Streets, in the shadow of the famous City Hall tower that has appeared in so many crime shows and film noir classics. I attended the screening of my own film this past Saturday evening and was amazed at seeing it large since I had put so much work into it on small monitors. What’s great about the Downtown Film Festival is that it shows a wide range of filmmaking styles, crew sizes and budgets. They show films made with lots of production resources right alongside films made by individual artists working with inexpensive HD cameras and even cell phone cameras. I am very proud to have won this and I look forward to more great festivals in downtown Los Angeles from the people who put this together.