Category Archives: Underground Film

Ready (Re’Search Wait’S), 2009-2010: A Film by Ryan Trecartin

by Cimaxion

Do you know who Ryan Trecartin is? You better. He’s making the wildest and best videos to be found online or in a gallery anywhere. This piece is about to open with six others to form an epic at the Museum of Modern Art P.S.1 in New York. It’s a warped and wicked view of corporate career life and behavior as practiced by characters whom I suspect would not even want to be considered normal. They spout company lingo and get it all twisted back inside of itself until it starts to sound like perfect sense and is just as valid as what you hear daily in the offices of any company. Trecartin is onto the fact that our economy has failed and millions of people are out of work because their jobs were bullshit to begin with. At minimum, 75% of jobs in corporate America are completely unnecessary. They are a busy-work scam based on particular rhythms and mannerisms and they produce nothing at all. The characters in this video revel in their uselessness. They gloat, the whine, they insult, they mock. They are amped up to be as irritating as possible. Their voices grate like demented cartoon characters. These videos are like the visions of a child computer in orbit that scans human beings and then tries to reproduce them but gets it wrong. These are digital creatures more than they are actual human characters.

Not to mention the fact that Trecartin’s intentionally clumsy and cheeseball imagery is simply gorgeous. The videos are extremely deceptive. They are so freely expressive as to be nearly psychotic. But always just enough under control to imply meanings with great subtlety. Right now these films of Ryan Trecartin represent the avant-garde’s leading edge.

Warhol and Maciunas: A Film by Jonas Mekas

by Cimaxion

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.

The Resurrection Movie: A Film Trailer by Michel Montecrossa

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

MATURE CONTENT AND NUDITY:

This is Michel Montecrossa’s peace and climate change musical. It tells a great passion story which is the love-tale of cyberrocker-astronaut Starlight and his mate Earthpower and how they change hellish mega city planet through their music into a free world. It’s full of rock & roll, motorcycles, leather jackets, keyboards, cowboy hats, sex drawings, mirror sunglasses, hip rocker women, New Age and science fiction. I don’t know who these people are, but they sure do look fun and they have some kind of wild movie going on here.  It features the poetry of Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and William Wordsworth!  My general take on it is that the film is a cry for individual expression and freedom in a time of unending war and conflict managed by the forces of homogenous corporate control.  Director Michel Montecrossa is described as a ‘prolific songwriter, orchestral composer, painter, writer, moviemaker, futurist architect and cyberartist.’  Wild people like this should make more films.

Propaganda Mussolini: A Film by Massimo Balloi

by Cimaxion

Italian filmmaker Massimo Balloi has made an abstract film that attempts to explain the descent of Italy into modern fascism. The rapid turn of Western democracies toward a virulent corporate fascism does in fact resemble the ideas put forth by Mussolini in the 1930s and 40s. But his effort was to mimic the efficiencies of the corporation in government. The new effort currently underway is to replace government control with corporate control. The danger is real and it is extreme. Even in the United States we see a Supreme Court allying itself with corporations. In Italy, you have a very basic corporate buffoon running the country as if it were a criminal enterprise. In the U.S. you have completely false liberals maneuvering a corporate front man into the Presidency so that every decision is made with a seemingly logical inclination toward the interests of the large corporations. We are now fighting entire wars based solely on decisions by corporations.

The twenty first century will not be the century of war against terrorists. It will be a century of war against corporations. They will gain an upper hand initially, but this will be short-lived. I say this because once you get inside these corporate structures you can observe how shockingly weak they are. BP is your perfect example. A single broken valve can weaken the entire stack of cards. These corporate entities can only flourish while people are asleep.

Broken English: A Film by Derek Jarman Featuring Marianne Faithfull

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

MATURE CONTENT:

This might be the most beautiful film you will see all year. It is the full version of ‘Broken English,’ starring Marianne Faithfull. It was made by Derek Jarman. It incorporates three of Faithfull’s songs. Jarman learned a great deal from American avant-garde filmmaker, Kenneth Anger. Interestingly, Marianne Faithfull also starred in an Anger film called ‘Lucifer Rising.’ The montage and superimposition going on in this film is simply stunning.  It’s full of dark pagan ritual, sex, violence, romance, adoration, and mystery. I think Jarman is one of the very few filmmakers who understood what Anger was doing in his work and tried to carry on from there.