Straub/Huillet's Not Reconciled - video essay with Richard Brody of the ...

Vito Acconci Lecture

Full lecture via USC Roski School of Fine Arts

Cinemad podcast #9: Vanessa Renwick

podcast #9: Vanessa Renwick:

Filmmaker Vanessa Renwick takes the term "do-it-yourself" seriously. She has made films since the early 1980s, and we mean made them: writing, filming, editing, and even processing the film by hand. 30 years and films and videos later, she has created portraits of people, life and landscapes, with great images and strong ideas, both fun and insightful. We talk about her movies and longtime hometown of Portland, but more about hitchhiking and wolves.

all podcasts are available here for streaming or download, and on iTunes for free under Cinemad.
Bookended by "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" by The Cramps
Vanessa's official website: www.odoka.org


DVD of her work coming soon:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/841274803/north-south-east-west-dvd-films-by-vanessa-renwick

The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) - Pier Paolo Pasolini

Been reading about adaptations lately and I found this on YouTube. Now I will have to stop reading.

Ai Weiwei: Sunflower seeds

The most impressive use of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern that I have seen.

W.M. Hunt presents "The Unseen Eye"

Renowned collector W.M. Hunt discusses the Museum's current exhibition, 'The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection'. The exhibit, one of the largest in Eastman House.

I was fortunate to have Mr. Hunt select 6 of my photographs for an exhibit at the Center for Photography at Woodstock in 2005.

TateShots: Tony Oursler

There is a playfulness to how he works which is something to try for.

Expanded Cinema:Activating the Space of Reception

Expanded Cinema: Activating the Space of Reception.
Works identified as Expanded Cinema often open up questions surrounding the spectator's construction of time/space relations, activating the spaces of cinema and narrative as well as other contexts of media reception. In doing so it offers an alternative and challenging perspective on filmmaking, visual arts practices and the narratives of social space, everyday life and cultural communication.

Derek Jarman "The last of England"

I was reading about this film in William Verrone's Adaptation and the Avant-Garde: Alternative Perspectives on Adaptation Theory and Practice

Pipilotti Rist on her working methods

Pipilotti Rist on her working methods

Susan Sontag and Agnès Varda Interview (1969)

At the seventh annual New York Film Festival in 1969. Interview by Newsweek film critic Jack Kroll.

No longer appropriate? via the Art Newspaper

Really interesting article on how Sherrie Levine and Jeff Koons stopped or changed their appropriation practices.

No longer appropriate?: Artists who “appropriate” the work of others are increasingly coming into conflict as a slew of recent cases involving artists including Shepard Fairey, Ryan McGinley and Thierry Guetta (“Mr Brainwash”) demonstrates. Now, in the Court of Appeals for...

TateShots: Maurice Sendak

I had this in the queue before the news of Mr. Sendak's passing. I didn't like much of the movie "Where the wild things are" but appreciated his letting go of the book to allow for the adaptation.

Free Radicals - A History of Experimental Film (Excpert)

Christian Marclay -Telephones (1995)

Before the Clock there was Telephones ... and he has a full YouTube channel

Tacita Dean Film at the Tate Modern 2011 negative cutting

For all my friends who love the smell of emulsion and the feel of celluloid.

Peter Mays Oral History Excerpt

Peter Mays discusses the making of Star Curtain (1966).

Links to Star Curtain Tantra below

Nan Goldin I'll Be Your Mirror Documentary Part One

Barbara Hammer on Maya Deren

Ms. Hammer traces the influence of Maya Deren to her own work.

On Throwing a Film Festival - via LUX

On Throwing a Film Festival - Blog - LUX

"Personally I disagree with all attempts to ‘raise the level of public taste’.  I think we have our work cut out satisfying the demand for entertainment at a high level that already exists.  "

Margaret Tait 

If Movies Didn’t Play Forward: Toni Dove, R. Luke Dubois Make Gestural Live Cinema

via Peter Kirn

If Movies Didn’t Play Forward: Toni Dove, R. Luke Dubois Make Gestural Live Cinema:
What if film, rather than being projected from start to finish and proceeding in a straight line, could be reconstructed and performed? Every live visual performance involving video has more or less asked that question. But not every performance tries to convey a narrative in the process.

IFFR Critics Talk 28-01-2011 | The Dorsky Tapes

Diane Arbus (documentary, 1972)

Is Photography Over?: SFMOMA Overlapping use of still and moving images

In Person: P. Adams Sitney on the rarity of real film screenings

Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet: THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH

From Real Musicians in Fiction Films via girish

Video below

Straub/Huillet’s The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) is surely one of the richest, most thought-provoking fiction-documentary hybrids in the history of cinema. The film documents by means of documents — notated scores, letters, engravings, drawings, maps — not all of them “authentic” (e.g. Anna’s diary, which forms the core of the voiceover narration). The documentary quality is enhanced by the way in which the filmmakers respect the wholeness and integrity of the musical performances by recording and filming them in their entirety, without cuts, a practice that defies industry norms in both cinema and music.

The result of these sustained, single-take musical performances by actual musicians — prime among them the recently deceased Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt, who plays Bach — is the way in which our concentration becomes sharpened and focused on the smallest details of music-making: its labors, its gestures, its accidents.

Straub commented on this in a 1968 interview with Filmkritik magazine:

They say when people saw Le déjeuner de bébé or L’arroseur arrosé by Lumière, they didn’t cry out: Oh! bébé is moving, or l’arroseur is moving. They said, the leaves are moving in the trees. The bébé who moved they had already seen in the magic lantern. What was new for them was precisely that the leaves were moving. The “leaves” in the Bach film are the fingers and hands of the musicians and the unbelievable gestures of Leonhardt…

Q&A Nathaniel Dorsky & Gavin Smith Views from the Avant-Garde, New York Film Festival

Pier Paolo Pasolini DOCUMENTARY

I think this was included on the DVD set of Salo.

Posthaste Perennial Pattern by Jodie Mack Via Vimeo

Scorsese On Fellini On Charlie Rose

William Klein: I had no real respect for good technique because I didn't know what it was

Klein profile in the Guardian

William Klein "Out Of Necessity" | Icontent | Douglas Sloan Director

William Klein Regis Dialogue with Paulina del Paso

Hull by Tara Nelson (excerpt)

One Minute volume 6 - Call for entries

One Minute volume 6 - Call for entries
Deadline June 15th 2012

One Minute volume 6 - the sixth in the series of programmes of artists' moving image, curated by artist Kerry Baldry. which will be screened at GLIMMER 2012 - The 10th Hull International Short Film Festival in October. For more information on the previous touring programmes see http://kerrybaldry.com/#/one-minute/4540180591. Please email for further information: kerrybaldry1@yahoo.com

Craig Baldwin - Dystopian Outcomes of Media Revolutions Past

Jennifer Reeves: The girl's nervy via YouTube

PRAXIS-3: 7 scenes by Dietmar Brehm

One of the filmmakers I was most pleased to be introduced to during the 2011 NYFF Views from the Avant Garde was Dietmar Brehm. Praxis 8 was screened at the festival and just this morning I have just found some online video available of his Praxis project which I enjoyed being able to watch.

via LightCone.org

PRAXIS-3 7 scenes by Dietmar BREHM
2008 / Beta SP / coul / son / 22' 00

Norman McLaren and Chuck Jones - 1965 - The Dot and the Line

Considering FCPX, a year later via DocumentaryTech

Considering FCPX, a year later:
Apple’s Final Cut Pro X was met with a lot of upset when it was launched announced a year ago (and launched in June 2011) at a price point significantly lower than previous Final Cut Pros, and with largely reconstituted features that resembled Apple’s amateur editing program so much it was mocked as “iMovie Pro.”
eBay pricing on sealed packages of Final Cut Pro 7 shot up, as a fine vintage would leap in value. Pro editors cursed Apple and tried to make sense of the new program. Apple responded by doing upgrades that slowly began to restore some features deleted from FCP7.
Now that the dust has settled, where do we stand?

Sack Barrow (exceprt) by Ben Rivers via Vimeo

I saw this at the NYFF Views from the Avant Garde in 2011. A compelling intimate portrait of the "end of the line" for a local factory.

2012 Biennial: Ed Halter and Thomas Beard on Laida Lertxundi

Amos Vogel, 1921-2012 via Movie Journal by jhoberman

Amos Vogel, 1921-2012:


A heroic cinephile and major figure in the creation of America’s post-World War II film culture, Amos Vogel died yesterday in his adopted hometown New York.

Documentary Film and New Technologies viat MIT

MIT TechTV – Communications Forum - Documentary Film and New Technologies

Paolo Gioli’s Filmarilyn

I saw some of his work at the 2010 NYFF Views from the Avant Garde and have been looking to see everything I can. An essay from David Bordwell can be found here. Interesting interview with Paolo Gioli by Claudia D'Alonzo here

Ernie Gehr - side/walk/shuttle

The Curzon Memories Project via FilmStudesForFree

FILM: Twin Peeks Jean-Luc Godard and Stan Brakhage via Art Forum

FILM: Twin Peeks: Amy Taubin on Jean-Luc Godard and Stan Brakhage at MoMA



Godard (extract)Histoire(s) du cinema



Stan Brakhage - The Dante Quartet

Deborah Stratman Lecture via PSU ART & SOCIAL PRACTICE

Ben Rivers Interview at Picture This

Wim Wenders' DVD Picks via Criterion Collection

One Minute Volume 5: Launch of Moving Image Review & Art Journal

Congratulations to Kerry Baldry for getting her curated series One Minute Volumes 1-4 included in the Moving Image Review.

One Minute Volume 5: Launch of Moving Image Review & Art Journal: The launch of the Moving Image Review & Art Journal takes place on Thursday 10th May at Chelsea College of Art and Design.

Guy Maddin: Night Mayor via National Film Board of Canada

“Les Astronautes” by Walerian Borowczyk and Chris Marker

Kenneth Anger, Martin Scorsese, Todd Haynes, and Copyright via Columbia Univ Press Blog

Columbia University Press » Blog Archive » Kenneth Anger, Martin <b>...</b>: Amidst all of the creative uses of copyrighted material reused in video art, there is one well-known example of a piece of experimental video that was suppressed by copyright holders: Todd Haynes's 1987 film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter ...

MINIATURES by stephanie barber

Always happy to see Ms. Barber's work. Saw this at the 2011 NYFF Views from the Avant Garde

Molly Dineen on making documentaries via The Economist

Video: Tracking Debris from the Tohoku Tsunami

If Nathaniel Dorsky was a satellite ...

Martha Rolser: Feature from Centro José Guerrero in Granada

"We live in a forest of signs"

The future of protest video via The Economist

Tools of the trade. Wonder if Witness would train the "Tea Party" to witness ...

“Ephemeral Evidence” Profiles: Rebecca Davis via CultureBot

“Ephemeral Evidence” Profiles: Rebecca Davis:

Photo by Tasja Keetman

In a Culturebot manifesto laying out the fundamental differences between visual art performance and contemporary performance, Andy Horwitz suggests that visual art performance is essentially predicated on object making (or the rejection thereof), while contemporary performance is based in time and the notion of creating experience.  He argues that visual art performance is more often than not created in isolation, where concept and execution are easily separated (the artist’s intellect and the assistant’s labor), while the contemporary performance experience is most likely collaborative (lighting, sound, decors, music, digital media – each represented by their own designers). 

Nathaniel Dorsky in conversation with Ed Halter

Voyager from Penny Lane via Disposable Film Festival

The Startlingly Beautiful Films of Nathaniel Dorsky via NYT

Unseen Guide’s Silent Journeys to Lyric Nature

“I went out with a camera,” Mr. Dorsky said, in describing his entry into filmmaking, “and tried to discover things.”

Saw his work at both NYFF/Views 10 & 11.  His book "Devotional Cinema" is worth a read.  Wish it was on my Kindle!

Watch the First Five Minutes of Jonas Mekas’s Mars Bar Movie

Additional Person Overrates Werner Herzog via ArtFagCity

Additional Person Overrates Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog's 'Hearsay of the Soul', installation view

The fact of the matter is, Herzog gives us extraordinarily little of his own.And that’s a disappointment. Herzog is a great filmmaker, known for his ability to improvise large portions of his scripts, and motivate his colleagues. The touch of his hand is precisely why so many have been moved by his films. None of that was on view at the Whitney.

Lewis Klahr's trinket dreamscape via Globe and Mail

Lewis Klahr's trinket dreamscape - Globe and Mail: Nice article of Lewis' The Pettifogger which I saw at Views 2011.

Globe and Mail

Lewis Klahr's trinket dreamscape Globe and Mail Klahr – who came into prominence in the late 1970s and '80s when found footage became the in-thing in experimental film circles – records each ambient sound in a room, accentuating the fact that it's coming from a TV or stereo. and more »

podcast #7: Light Industry by Cinemad

podcast #7: Light Industry:

Cinemad: Light Industry by Cinemad

also available on iTunes under Cinemad

Today's podcast is with the founders and film programmers of Light Industry, a microcinema in Brooklyn specializing in avant garde and unusual film. They are not only human databases of art film history, they know the hurdles of how to run a film festival and a screening space, putting on great shows.

A Simple Representation of What Is: Rudy Burckhardt

A Simple Representation of What Is: Rudy Burckhardt:

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Criterion's forthcoming Hollis Frampton Odyssey is not the only must-buy avant-garde DVD of the month, as Microcinema recently made available their three-disc career-spanning release of Rudy Burckhardt's films.  The following is intended as a minute glimpse into Burckhardt's long and robust oeuvre...
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When criticism is no laughing matter

TT: When criticism is no laughing matter:  "critics tend as a general rule to do their most memorable writing about works of art that they dislike"

Stanley Kubrick: Master of Contradictions

Stanley Kubrick: Master of Contradictions:

Who are the great American film directors? More to the point, who do we think are the great American film directors? Well, there’s Ford, of course, the Zeus of the American pantheon, by turns comic, epic, maudlin and humane. Then there’s Welles, the ill-fated genius, abused by producers but beloved of critics. Spielberg, even in his seventh decade, is still the boy wonder; Scorsese the mad scientist. Griffith is the wise forefather, deeply flawed but idolized nonetheless, while Hawks is ageless, just as sly and self-assured as he was at the time of “The Big Sleep” (1946).
Kubrick, however, beats them all.

Video Distribution and Meaning: Panel Discussion @ Momenta

Video Distribution and Meaning: Panel Discussion @ Momenta, this Sunday, April 1: This is not an April Fool's set-up, I promise.


Momenta has exhibited over 80 artists who make video since 1991, many of whom were virtually unknown at the time but who have gone on to very prominent careers (including Janet Biggs, Omer Fast, Rico Gatson, Laurel Nakadate, and Michael Smith, just to name a few).

The topic of our discussion: video distribution and its formal impact on meaning, the steady growth of video as a collectible item, and how the mode of distribution affects the perception of the work.

Watching the Internet: An Interview with Jose M. Alvarez-Monzoncillo (Part Two)

Watching the Internet: An Interview with Jose M. Alvarez-Monzoncillo (Part Two):


What aspects of the Long Tail theory do you find convincing as a means of explaining what kinds of content will thrive in a networked culture? What do you see as the limitations of this model?

I don't believe the Long Tail exists, neither socially nor economically. The Net has permitted the emergence of a certain unsatisfied demand, but it is very small. The physical barriers to analogue distribution are greater on the Net. Added to that, the most difficult barriers to break down are the social, cultural and psychological ones. For example, World Cinema in the United States: before it was not possible to see these films because they weren't distributed, but even with the Net, the viewing of them has not increased. This is spite of them being free in many cases (P2P or Megaloud).

Stanley Kubrick’s First Film: Day of the Fight

Stanley Kubrick’s First Film: Day of the Fight: This is Stanley Kubrick’s first film. In 1951, he was taking photographs for Look magazine but decided he could make a short documentary film for less money than the average production cost. Working with high school friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick filmed a boxer’s preparation for a big fight. It’s a concise and effective documentary with [...]

Canadian Blood on the Ice: Hockey on celluloid from Face Off to Goon

Canadian Blood on the Ice: Hockey on celluloid from Face Off to Goon:

The Stanley Cup playoffs start tonight!

Richard Prince on the Whitney Biennial

Richard Prince on the Whitney Biennial: .
"After lunch I went over to the Whitney. For some reason I wanted to see the biennial. I'm not sure why. Before checking it out I went up to the fifth floor. That's where they hang work that's in the permanent collection. I'm glad I did. There was a gorgeous late fifties Lee Krasner painting hanging in a room of it's own. After staring, I walked down to the fourth floor and it looked like people were exercising on a huge black rubber matt that took up the entire floor. There were maybe fifteen people following the commands of a woman who was talking into a microphone... telling the fifteen people what to do. I think the fifteen people following the commands were people who had walked off the street. They kind of just "joined in". I've heard this type of activity in the art world is called "relational aesthetics"... or something like that... It felt like I was interrupting the "relation". I quickly got out of there. I walked down to the third floor and in the back there was a room filled with an artist's junk. There seems to be a room filled with an aritst's junk in every biennial I've ever been to. I'm not sure why this artist's junk was there. I walked around the corner and there were fifty Dana Shultz paintings on the wall. At least I think they were Shultz's paintings. (I walked by pretty fast). I skipped the second floor and went down to the lobby. What happened to the bookstore? There was none. There were some catalogues thrown out on tables that looked "remaindered"... what was there looked like a bake sale. I walked out of the Whitney having spent less than twenty minutes... fifteen of those standing in front of the Krasner."

- Richard Prince on the Whitney Biennial

“Gerhard Richter Painting” Is Mostly Gerhard Richter Painting

“Gerhard Richter Painting” Is Mostly Gerhard Richter Painting:

Left: Gerhard Richter, painting. Right: A Gerhard Richter painting. Still from Gerhard Richter Painting.

How do you make a documentary about abstract painting? When your subject strives for the indescribable, the normal tools of narration and interview become glaringly imperfect ..

On Liberation Cinema and Raymundo Gleyser

On Liberation Cinema and Raymundo Gleyser:

Raymundo (2003) by Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina

This is a documentary film about the life and work of Raymundo Gleyzer, Argentine filmmaker, kidnapped and murdered by that country’s military dictatorship in 1976.

Through Raymundo’s life, we follow the story of Latin American revolutionary cinema and the liberation struggles of the 60’s and 70’s. Raymundo was one of the major architects of the militant cinema, yet after his  "disappearance" he fell into oblivion.

Daily Briefing. Pasolini's "Gospel" on Notebook | MUBI

Daily Briefing. Pasolini's "Gospel" on Notebook | MUBI: Remember?, an experimental video essay in which Oberzan and his older brother faithfully reenact home movies they made together 20 years earlier, is the best work of its kind since Mark Rappaport's From the Journals of Jean Seberg, with ...

The Future of Online Art Sales: Q&A With Christie’s Live Director – artmarketblog.com

The Future of Online Art Sales: Q&A With Christie’s Live Director – artmarketblog.com:
The Future of Online Art Sales: Q&A With Christie’s Live Director – artmarketblog.com




What are the characteristics of the main buyers of fine art online?
Our online bidders are an extremely diverse group, including everyone from longtime clients to beginning collectors to some of the trade’s most respected dealers. Many buyers choose online participation due to the convenience of the channel as well as anonymity associated with remote bidding alongside the excitement of the virtual saleroom .

500 WORDS: James Benning

500 WORDS: James Benning: James Benning talks about Two Cabins

Q&A: Film-maker Andrew Kötting

theartsdesk Q&A: Film-maker Andrew Kötting - The Arts Desk:

The Arts Desk

theartsdesk Q&A: Film-maker Andrew Kötting The Arts Desk Archival voice recordings and self-consciously declamatory titles enigmatise the raw home-movie footage, which Kötting edited with the ghost of the experimental film-maker Stan Brakhage looking over his shoulder. Kötting has made more formal movies, ... and more »

Underground Film Festival Director Roundtable: What Is Underground?

Underground Film Festival Director Roundtable: What Is Underground?:

After Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film published an editorial last week entitled “Do Underground Film Festivals Have to Screen Only Underground Films?, Bryan Wendorf, the Artistic Director of the Chicago Underground Film Festival, initiated a conversation on Facebook amongst a few of his fellow festival directors around the world.

Philip Roth Tells Artist to Stop the Show - artnet Magazine

Philip Roth Tells Artist to Stop the Show - artnet Magazine

A Visit to Lithuania

A Visit to Lithuania:

Storytelling: The Film with the Tedious Plot

Storytelling: The Film with the Tedious Plot:

I don’t think the actual topic has anything to do with success or failure of a movie or TV show and everything to do with how the story is told.

Storytelling is the most important thing in a movie, and a proper story in Hollywood pays dividends. Good storytelling is basically what all books on writing will ever tell you – good characters you can connect with, drama and suspense, resolutions and so on. But I’m not just talking about the film itself, good storytelling also spreads to the world surrounding the film – the trailer and the audience. Hollywood knows this, but they have been resting on their laurels for a long time.

[Image credit: (c)Clare Young 2012]

See it on Scoop.it, via Story and Narrative