Seizure: A Magnificent Cry for Art by David Vaipan

At the start, I'll say that this is one of the most magnificent films I have seen in years. David Vaipan has made this relentless and fully-committed scream of artistic intent, desire, confusion, effort and love. This is a film about being an artist. It is a film about fear and confidence. About effort, will and failure. Vaipan simply takes the entire history of art and all that it has given him and dumps it out on his desk and turns it all into his own material. All of art, music, film, literature and poetry become Vaipan's crayons and he uses them to tell his own personal story.

The film bombards with imagery. Just gaze in wonder at the crayon animated memoir that's presented like a little puppet theater show. It moves from birth to boarding schools to Wall Street and beyond with effortless skill. The drawings are amazing and funny. Just when you think you've seen plenty Vaipan moves into a stick figure run through the history of art and it just keeps coming at you. He cuts and chops and mixes and slides and just keeps streaming the grandeur of art at us like a force of nature. He's completely lost inside the world of inspiration. He sees the fear of getting lost in the pile - the fear of being ignored - and he literally revels in the fear itself. He makes the fear seem like something to seek. This is a grand and important statement from someone who I think is a young artist. The tools of his trade are digital and he uses them freely with a wild eagerness to explore that is extremely difficult to maintain. The unabashed use of video effects and computer equipment as if they are the oil paints and charcoals inside a painter's box is one of the hallmarks of the emerging American video art movement.

I can see the influence of Ryan Trecartin's work in this. There's a familiarity with digital layers that is of primary significance in this recent art. There's a hard-edged willingness to allow the digital processes to show through. It's sort of a freedom with the computer and video that means one doesn't have to make anything necessarily look the right way or look like something it isn't.

You have to really watch this film very closely and try to catch the pieces of the roaring mass of art thrown at you. Even the ending credits are a complete statement in themselves with the director drunkenly singing the Rolling Stones' 'Sympathy For the Devil' in the background.

So many people are part of this film. Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Jean Luc Godard, Maya Deren, Luis Bunuel, Stanley Kubrick, David Foster Wallace, Michael Snow, Agnes Varda, to name but a few.

I know that the intertitles and other things flash by too quickly to grasp and maybe that intimates something about the info-age and attention spans, it's why your lord Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, invented the pause button and that's also why the real Creator (one D. Vaipan) put this on the internet rather than wherever, because you have control.

See? That's one of the little treasure waiting for you in the end credits of this gigantic and raving epileptic fit of a film that should ultimately bring you close to tears and make you want to explode in all directions and actually truly and finally... make something!

Here is the artist's web site.

Jim Jarmusch Short Film: INT. Trailer. Night

This is Jim Jarmusch's short film contribution to a 2002 double feature film compilation project called 'Ten Minutes Older.'

Short Film: Plot Device

Seth Worley made this very fun and amusing tour through plot and genre as a sort of advertisement for Red Giant which provides filters used in video editing. A struggling video maker happens upon a 'plot device' and all sorts of trouble begins. Each segment has its own unique and appropriate look achieved through the use of Magic Bullet filters.

Wall - Ethos: A Film by Alessandro Cima

Brazilian artist Claudio Ethos works on his first Los Angeles art piece. I happened upon him down on Main Street and thought he was a worker about to paint over a painting of a face. I started shooting and after several minutes realized that he was the artist.

Demo Images From New Film by Alessandro Cima

These are low res screen captures from the rough cut of my new film.

The new film's initial demo version will have a title like 'One Dead Angel,' or 'Little Dead Angelino,' or 'One Last Angel,' or 'Black Angel Hood,' or 'Hidden Black Angel.' Or none of those. Don't know yet. Each image I slip into the film reshuffles the whole damn deck.

Secrets, identity, noir, Hollywood, vanishing, murder, beauty, romance, fear, chase, thriller, who done it (whodunit), LA, crime, forensics, art.

Those are pieces of my film demo 1.

Culture Shock, Level One – A Film by Bill Mousoulis

Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film posted a film by Bill Mousoulis called The Experimenting Angel. I liked it. So I've posted another of Mousoulis' films. It features Jennifer Levy who returns from a long absence to Australia and feels dislocated while visiting a city. She wonders why the people seem so 'deflated' as they wander through various public/corporate spaces like malls. The film captures something increasingly common worldwide which is that quiet, blank, but seemingly normal behavior encouraged by any structure designed and erected with a corporate idea behind it. We all know how we are expected to behave when we walk past a row of Gaps, Starbucks, Banana Republics and Wetzle's Pretzels. We obey. We perform the routine and go about our business making sure that we are perceived as correctly normal. We are guests in someone else's house, even in our public spaces. We behave like new guests, ingratiating ourselves to the dome camera in the ceiling. The cell phone is the absolute symbol of complete obeisance to the corporate superstructure looming above us. We are told to engage in meaningless chatter while we walk, drive, breathe, eat, date, watch movies, run, bike, and work. We are told to do this until it seems like normal and seems to make perfect sense. It is as logical as being told to drop a penny on the ground every third step for every day of your life. Steve Jobs tells you to leave him a penny on the ground every third step of every day of your life... and you damn well do it. You know how many times Steve Jobs uses a cell phone during an average day? None. Why? Because he's much smarter than you are.

Nightlife in a Puddle - A Film by Fabio Scacchioli

Fabio Scacchioli is an Italian filmmaker who turns ordinary shots on Super 8 film and video into magical and mystical pieces about memory and all that it does for us. I am always impressed by his work and how he finds the perfect moments to let glimmer through the haze to catch us unaware. I maintain that as we move further into the 21st century, we are developing a new cinema completely removed from the theatrical aspects of the last century's cinema. It is filmmakers who do not try to make films that look like American features who will make the new cinema. Filmmakers making films that look like American features are looking at forms as outmoded as 19th century theatrical works were during the age of the early silents. The new cinema is as natural and immediate a form of expression as writing or painting.

I know that Scacchioli is currently working on something new and I'm looking forward to seeing it. I've posted on CandlelightStories.com about Scacchioli's work before.

Glass Boulevard

Filmed in the dullest imaginable environment of shops along a major Los Angeles street at night when the shops were closed.

My Christmas film.

The music is a public domain recording of Artie Shaw and his orchestra playing 'There's Something in the Air' in 1936. The singer is Peg LaCentra. I found it at the Internet Archive.

Fire in My Belly by David Wojnarowicz

This is the film by David Wojnarowicz that the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery decided to remove from a recent exhibition because of some politically motivated protest focused on its brief images of a crucifix covered with ants.

Now other museums with slightly more educated staffs are showing the film.

An activist who hung an iPad round his neck to show the film while he walked around the Portrait Gallery has been banned from the gallery for life.

There's nothing wrong with making images that insult religion. There's nothing wrong with an artist or anyone else using a religious icon for purposes other than worship.

And there's nothing wrong with walking around the National Portrait Gallery with an iPad around your neck.

The Smithsonian is filled with idiots who have no strength - no courage - no conviction. No art.

Horror Short: Helping Hand

This is a graphic horror film. It's not intended for young children. If you are under 13, do not watch this before discussing it with your parents! Seriously. Also, you should probably not watch it if you are at risk from sudden fear, anxiety or shock.

A woman answers the phone late at night and does not recognize the voice on the other end.

This is my own contribution to the specific horror genre exemplified by the series of Saw movies. It also has some of the qualities of the moral warning fairy tales in which awful things happen to innocents because of relatively minor errors in judgment.

It's really fun to make a hardcore scary little movie for Halloween! I've wanted to make a horror film for quite a while and just never had the perfect opportunity. It's a very simple film but it can really give some people a bad scare.

I set out to make a horror short the way I might have done it as a twelve year old. In fact, the film pretty well sums up my thoughts on what horror films really are, how they build suspense and anticipation through a series of ordinary events and actions viewed as slightly askew.

Of course, horror should always have some kind of payoff.

This was filmed entirely without digital effects. It's all analog like the old days! Lots of fun. I love horror shorts and will try to make another one soon.

Enjoy and have a Happy Halloween!

Film: Prénom Ernesto

Marvelous movie! Prénom Ernesto was made by Gabriel Dib and it stars Ernesto Salles as Ernesto and Debora Gaspar as Anna K. It's in Portuguese and I don't understand more than several words of it but I don't have to. It's a wonderful film that is inspired and heavily influenced by the work of Jean-Luc Godard. The filming of traffic at the beginning of the film is a Godard signature, the gunshots on the soundtrack, the sudden on-screen titles and the quote from Godard that goes, 'All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.' That's essentially what this film is about. It's shot with that casual sense of people interacting with objects that Godard perfected in the early sixties. Dib has made a very careful and productive study of Godard's technique and uses it in a way that shows how fresh and modern it still is.

Bike Parked in Fake Snow

Looks just like a real bike parked in real snow. But it's a trick. A horrible trick.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.3

Samuel Beckett's Play, 'Krapp's Last Tape', Starring Harold Pinter

The late British playwright, Harold Pinter, stars in the Royal Court Theatre production of Samuel Beckett's play, Krapp's Last Tape. It's about a man listening to himself.

Thinking About Underground Film - Part 1

If you live in Los Angeles you've probably seen it many times: the caravan of white trucks parked along the block and around the corner, diesel generators roaring, cables strung along the gutters, piles of lights, rolls of cables, racks of costumes, makeup trailers, bored extras, bored crew members, bored motorcycle police, and fascinated passersby.

That's all you need to see to know that something mainstream - feature film, TV show, or commercial - is being made.

But what's an underground film?

Bad Lit, my favorite site devoted to underground film, has an article about the problem of defining something as slippery as 'underground film' in which several definitions are offered by different people. Mike Everleth, the site's editor, defines underground film this way:

"Essentially, I believe it is a film that is a personal statement by one person and a film that dissents radically in form, or in technique, or in content, or perhaps in all three. However, that dissension can take on any number of forms."

I agree with that, but would add the requirement of hostility. There should be an element of combativeness which attempts to counter a much larger established force. There must be some rebellion in the work. It can be very subtle - nearly imperceptible - but it's usually there somewhere. In fact, I think the hostility should even tend to include the general culture surrounding the filmmaker/s. Dissent, by itself, can be rather subdued, soft-spoken and shy. I think underground film requires a willingness not only to dissent but to kick apart.

While thinking about all this mainstream versus underground stuff, I went searching around on YouTube for something that might fit the discussion. I found this peculiar British documentary film about filmmaker Donald Cammell who co-directed, along with Nicolas Roeg, the 1968 film Performance. The film is one of those odd mixtures of underground and mainstream. It features Mick Jagger and involves a lot of mind-bending drugs, sex and criminal underworld shenanigans. It's actually impossible to forget once you have seen it.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

The documentary, Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance, describes a time when a group of intensely creative artists from various disciplines could operate on the fringes of the mainstream to create an essentially underground film with something resembling support from a mainstream production company. It's a scenario that does not exist today. If you watch all 7 parts of the film, you will be immersed in that strange hybrid world of the 'popular underground' that defines much of what was happening in the 1960s and 70s. Today, if it cannot be jammed into a mall and sold with Sour Patch Kids, it won't get any money. That holds as true for 'independent' films as it does for summer blockbusters.

Watching this documentary makes me wonder why so many filmmakers seem to have such trouble making the films they really want to make. After all, one can purchase a cheap camera and make exactly what one wants regardless of what one's career and money-earning responsibilities might be. Tormented filmmakers who are battling studois for creative freedom should simply make films with video cameras during their spare time. This would not only foster a healthy underground, but it would quite possibly prevent a few tragic endings.

Film: Velocity

Official selection at CINEME, 2003 Chicago International Animation Film Festival.

This is a short film that I started back in 2001. 9/11 happened and I put the film on hold for almost 2 years. When I returned to it I was able to finish it in several months of hard effort. I was working with Flash and my process was kind of awkward. The drawing is actually very crude. But the film came out decently. It got into a Chicago film festival in 2003 and it has remained in its Flash form on CandlelightStories.com ever since. It was recently shown by NewGrounds.com as part of their 'Treasure Hunt' festival of animation.

But getting the film out of the Flash ghetto and into video proved to be more work than I thought. So I've made a few little updates and improved some of the film effects a little. So now the film is actually closer to the film I was imagining back in 2001.