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In his anthology film “Coffee and Cigarettes” (2003), Jim Jarmusch employs awkwardness as his principal storytelling tool. Across eleven episodes, rather vignettes, the characters participate in an uncomfortable dance over the marriage of coffee and cigarettes. The veil of discomfort reveals underlying social tension, class dynamics, and existential truths. Jarmusch meticulously crafts each scene to resonate a state of unease. The film being dissected into various episodes of raw human interaction enhances the prevailing predicament of emotional limbo, as each segment introduces a new set of characters and their distinct peculiarities and encounters that never quite resolve themselves. The mundane mise-en-scene of the contrastive black & white shots composed of the humble pair of coffee cups and ashtray adds to the tension between the characters.

The awkwardness in these interactions is deliberately choreographed. In the vignette, “Somewhere in California”, musicians Tom Waits and Iggy Pop engage in a discomforting conversation, riddled with concealed ego and insecurities.

Photos (l-r) Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Halston, Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger by Dustin Pittman in New York After Dark (Rizzoli) at Eerdmans Photo: Anne Katrin Titze, featuring work by Dustin Pittman

In the second instalment of our conversation with renowned photographer Dustin Pittman and music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, we start out with the New York music scene at Cbgb and Hurrah, then go on to Andy Warhol superstars Candy Darling, Taylor Mead, Jackie Curtis, Sylvia Miles (in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy), Lana Jokel, and Bob Colacello. Dustin also had a distinguished career working with directors such as Alan J Pakula on The Sterile Cuckoo (starring Liza Minnelli), Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, Miloš Forman’s Ragtime, and is seen at a party with Bernadette Peters in James Ivory’s adaptation of Tama Janowitz’s The Slaves Of New York.

Dustin Pittman (in Edie Sedgwick...

Just how polished does a career-spanning documentary about the anarchic underground filmmaker behind “Greaser’s Palace” and “Putney Swope” need to be? If you’ve seen any of Robert Downey’s films, the answer is obviously: not very. You might even say, the scrappier the better. So goes the thinking behind “Sr.,” a loose seemingly seat-of-your-pants portrait of the antiestablishment director (perhaps best known for siring “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr.) that sneaks up on ya, emotionally speaking, seeing as how it doubles as a kind of farewell exercise between the two generations (plus grandson Exton) in the months before Downey succumbed to Parkinson’s Disease.

“Oddly, it’s sort of what your family does. You guys make art of your lives,” analyzes Junior’s therapist fairly late in the process, not long before dad’s passing. There’s no question that’s what’s really going on in an...

Drawings by Jeff CashvanMovie-lovers!Welcome back to The Deuce Notebook, a collaboration between Mubi Notebook and The Deuce Film Series, our monthly event at Nitehawk Williamsburg that excavates the facts and fantasies of cinema's most infamous block in the world: 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. For each screening, my co-hosts and I pick a flick that we think embodies the era of all-night movie grinding and present the theater at which it premiered.We’ve had the extreme pleasure of screening Paul Morrissey’s outrageously fun horror treats Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, and we are Thrilled to learn of the new release of Dracula by Severin Films, and the upcoming restoration of Frankenstein by Vinegar Syndrome—so, we thought we’d share some thoughts on two of our favorite movies.And… once again, our 'famous' raffle - this month, a little different: four winners will...

Since the abrupt cancellation of nearly all live events globally, it’s been encouraging to see how quickly people involved in the arts and entertainment communities have pivoted to recording, posting, and sharing work on social and streaming platforms. We’ve had livestreams of concerts, intimate performances (such as Rolling Stone‘s own “In My Room” series), and pseudo-variety shows cobbled together from people’s living rooms (and bathtubs).

But most of these have been palliative: A way for artists to share, emote, and connect while required to stay put.

Adolfas Mekas made his mark in American independent filmmaking with this avant-garde comedy that shook up film festivals circa 1963. Although it is said to have inspired Andy Warhol, it’s its own animal entirely, eighty minutes of cinematic frivolity that’s too sincere to be a parody of the filmic conventions it so happily celebrates.

Hallelujah the Hills

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1963 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 82 min. / Street Date October 30, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Peter Beard, Sheila Finn, Martin Greenbaum, Peggy Steffans, Jerome Raphael, Blanche Dee, Jerome Hill, Taylor Mead, Ed Emshwiller.

Cinematography: Ed Emshwiller

Film Editor: Louis Brigante, Adolfas Mekas

Costumes: Bathsheba

Original Music: Meyer Kupferman

Produced by David C. Stone

Written and Directed by Adolfas Mekas

Trying to describe Adolfas Mekas’ Hallelujah the Hills is a real chore. It is avant-garde in a way that no longer seems all that ‘avant,’ yet its impact in 1963 was very strongly felt in independent filmmaking everywhere.

The New York Underground Film Festival that the avant-garde, experimental and degenerate film world is familiar with began in 1994 and lasted until it’s 15th edition in 2008.

However, the Underground Film Journal has recently uncovered that there was a previous New York Underground Film Festival — in 1970! This event is totally unconnected to the ’90-’00s era festival and featured a weeklong series of screenings in mid-October of that year, from October 12 to 19.

The festival was held “upstairs” at the notorious art world hangout spot Max’s Kansas City, located at 213 Park Avenue South. Most nights featured screenings of work by a singular filmmaker; while Saturday, Oct. 17 had a “Matinee” of Shorts” by several filmmakers.

Beyond the list of filmmakers who screened work, there is very little information about the 1970 Nyuff. Most of what the Journal knows about the festival comes from participant Anton Perich, who shared with us the promotional poster that you see above.

Candy and Daddy by Anton Perich (1972)

Starring: Candy Darling, Taylor Mead and Craig Vandenburgh

After living as a poet and a painter in Paris, France in the mid-1960s, Croatian-born artist Anton Perich moved to New York City where he found part-time work as a busboy at the notorious hangout spot Max’s Kansas City. There, he met and hung out with several of Andy Warhol’s “Superstars,” such as Andrea Feldman, Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling.

Documenting the scene at Max’s, Perich took photographs and Super 8mm films, but he would become most well-known in the early ’70s as a pioneering underground videomaker.

In the book Your Fifteen Minutes Are Up by Catherine O’Sullivan Shorr, Perich notes that he didn’t speak English upon arriving in NYC, but he formed a bond with actor Taylor Mead, with whom he could speak French.

According to a...

Pictures like Midnight Cowboy pulled everyone my age group into the movies, while the entire older generation likely stopped going to movies altogether. John Schlesinger’s masterpiece can boast a number of firsts, and deserves the high praise it receives from every angle — this was the epitome of progressive filmmaking circa 1969.

Midnight Cowboy

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 925

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen/ 113 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 29, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes, Ruth White, Jennifer Salt, Anthony Holland, Bob Balaban, Viva, Ultra Violet, Taylor Mead, Paul Morrissey, Pat Ast, Marlene Clark, Sandy Duncan, M. Emmet Walsh.

Cinematography: Adam Holender

Film Editor: Hugh A. Robertson

Production Design: John Robert Lloyd

Original Music: John Barry

Written by Waldo Salt, based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy

Produced by Jerome Hellman, Kenneth Utt

Directed by John Schlesigner

Midnight Cowboy is perhaps the...

In 1983, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, along with Media Study/Buffalo, created a touring retrospective of avant-garde films, primarily feature-length ones and a few shorts, which they called “The American New Wave 1958-1967.” To accompany the tour, a hefty catalog was produced that included notes on the films, essays by film historians and critics, writings by major underground film figures and more.

The retrospective was created at a time when financially viable independent filmmaking was on the rise, such as films made by John Sayles, Wayne Wang and Susan Seidelman. According to the co-curators of the retrospective, Melinda Ward and Bruce Jenkins, the objective of the tour was to:

provide a more adequate picture than conventional history affords us of a rare period of American cinematic invention and thereby prepare a coherent critical and historical context for the reception of the new work by the current generation of independent filmmakers.

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” Andy Warhol famously said, but the legendary artist probably didn’t expect that such a sentiment would apply to his own screen tests, which have endured over the decades as a curious, intimate look at the inner workings of his creative process.

Filmed during the ’60s-era heyday of his Warhol Factory, the black and white screen tests feature a slew of Warhol regulars — from Ondine to Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed to Bob Dylan — and other famous faces of the day, all lensed on Warhol’s own Bolex camera. Nearly 500 of the screen tests were filmed, though Warhol did not use or exhibit all of them. Favorites were arranged into various compilations that were then screened by Warhol for assorted audiences, though they’ve continued to inspire and delight fans for decades past their original filming.

Read More: Quad Cinema Reborn:...

Multiple Maniacs

Blu-ray

1970 / Black and White /96 Min. / 1:66 / Street Date March 21, 2017

Starring: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole.

Cinematography: John Waters

Film Editor: John Waters

Written by John Waters

Produced by John Waters

Directed by John Waters

Andy Warhol was nothing if not a multi-media maven. Along with his ubiquitous silkscreens and sculpture, he embraced movie-making beginning as early as 1963 with such literal-minded efforts as Haircut (a haircut) and Taylor Mead’s Ass (one hour of exactly what you think) and pretty much closed shop with 1968’s Lonesome Cowboys, a 109 minute western satire that, of all his films, came closest to approximating a traditional tinseltown production.

Essentially Warhol was parodying the Hollywood studio system, rounding up his acolytes and hangers-on, from supermodels to pushers, and casting them as regular performers in a series of deadpan documentaries. Meanwhile in the wilds of Baltimore, Warhol fan John Waters...

The documentary shorts presented at the Tribeca Film Festival included both human stories and New York’s past. The films delved into themes of chaos, survival, and a glimpse into a life of the city that forever evolves but a time past that cannot be forgotten. After the screening, the filmmakers joined in for a Q&A.

About the Film: "Joe's Violin"

A 91-year-old Holocaust survivor donates his violin to an instrument drive, changing the life of a 12-year-old schoolgirl from the Bronx and unexpectedly, his own.

About the Director: Kahane Cooperman is the director/producer of "Joe's Violin." She has also directed several other documentaries. She is currently the showrunner/executive producer of "The New Yorker Presents." Prior to that role, she was a co-executive producer of ‘The Daily Show’ with Jon Stewart. She began her career at Maysles Films.

Kahane Cooperman talks about "Joe’s Violin"

Cooperman began by introducing the two subjects of her film who were seated in the audience, the violin owner Joseph Feingold and Brianna.

“The way I got this idea was very simple. My car radio was on and I tuned on the classical radio station Wqxr and I heard a promo for their instrument drive; it said donate your instruments and the instruments are going to New York City school kids. They mentioned the donations they already had gotten and one of the instruments was Joseph’s violin. I just thought, 'I wonder if there's a story there with this violin and if the student who gets the violin will know the story.' I got in touch with the radio station and they allowed me the privilege of pursuing the story and this film is what unfolded. It was a very moving experience. I do love music but I don't play an instrument. I think music is incredibly powerful but I'm also moved by the idea of how a small gesture can make you dream and change someone’s life. Somehow the idea of this was very compelling to me and that it might play out in the context of this one instrument shared by two people who were born 80 years apart.

About the Film: "Mulberry"

This cinematic portrait of Little Italy explores how a working class neighborhood of tenement buildings transformed into the third most expensive zip code in the United States. Part funny, part sad, the film investigates how gentrification and rent control are affecting the neighborhood’s long-term residents.

About the Director: Paul Stone

Brooklynite Paul Stone started his directing career in the edit room at Ridley Scott & Associates. In "Tales of Time Square," Paul recreated 1980’s Time Square. The footage was often mistaken for stock and went on to be screened at over 50 festivals in the U.S. and abroad. His previous short ‘Man Under’ (Tff 2015) explored the rise in NYC subway suicides.

Paul Stone talks about "Mulberry"

“I saw my neighborhood disappearing, changing. I have no problem with gentrification, but it’s gotten to a point of hyper gentrification. Little Italy in New York is known for its soul and its people, and it was rapidly disappearing. I wanted to tell the story about who inspired me in terms of my friends and that Little Italy is still alive and well, and that there are still a lot of characters left.

About the Film: "Starring Austin Pendleton"

Austin Pendleton is that quintessential character actor you might recognize. We follow Austin as he reflects on his life and craft, while his A-list peers discuss his vast influence, dogged determination, and what it means to be an original in today's celebrity-obsessed world.

About the Directors Gene Gallerano and David H. Holmes

David H. Holmes has studied and acted under the direction of Mr. Pendleton. His film and television credits include ‘Birdman’, ‘Law and Order’, ‘Girls’, ‘Mr. Robot’, and ‘The Following’. Gene Gallerano is the co-founder of The Neboya Collective, and has produced and starred in works including, Occupy’, ‘Texas’, ‘Fireworks’, and ‘The Talk Men’, which he also directed.

Holmes and Gallerano talk about "Starring Austin Pendleton"

The directors met ten years ago in an Off-Broadway show and studied with Austin Pendleton for about five years. They consider him a big mentor. “We look up to him a lot and we wanted to make sure in the end that we could look him in the eye. He was very happy we made the film. At the Tribeca Talks the other day it was the first time Austin saw it. Someone asked him if he had any input into the film and he said no because then you start manipulating it and controlling it; particularly his stutter, he said I would have told them ‘cut that’.” He wasn’t preventing us from making art.”

About the Film: "Taylor and Ultra on the 60s, The Factory and Being a Warhol Superstar"

Warhol superstar Ultra Violet (Isabelle Colin Dufresne) and Lower East Side icon Taylor Mead (poet/actor/artist) share their stories of Manhattan in the 1960s.

About the Director: Brian Bayerl

Brian Bayerl's documentary work includes ‘8: The Mormon Proposition’ (Sundance 2010), and ‘For Once in My Life’ (SXSW Audience Award Winner 2010). This is his third collaboration with producer Michael Huter, including ‘Datuna: Portrait of America’ (London's Raindance Winner 2015) and Full Circle.

Brian Bayerl talks about "Taylor and Ultra on the 60s, The Factory and Being a Warhol Superstar"

“Our producer came across photographs of Robert Indiana, Andy Warhol, Taylor Mead and Ultra Violet and a lot of other figures of the sixties Pop Art. When documenting those photographs we met Taylor Mead and Ultra Violet and instantly fell in love with them; they were just so captivating and charismatic and fun that over the next four years we had opportunities to interview them and gather footage. When we lost both of them, we were approached by the Warhol Museum about putting something together and that's exactly what we wanted to do. We put this film together as an homage to both of them.”

About the film "Dead Ringer"

There are only four outdoor phone booths left in all of New York City—this is a late night conversation with one of them.

About the Directors: Alex Kliment, Dana O’Keefe, and Michael Tucker

Alex Kliment is a filmmaker and musician from New York. He is also a talking head. Dana O'Keefe is a filmmaker based in New York and Stockholm. Michael Tucker is a documentary filmmaker who lives in upstate New York.

Alex Kliment, Dana O’Keefe, and Michael Tucker talk about "Dead Ringer"

“Our film started with learning about the statistic that there were only four outdoor telephone booths left in New York City. The city's replacing them with Wi-Fi hotspots, We thought, ‘What's a fun way to dramatize the changing urban landscape that also reflects a lot of other changes of the human landscape and how we relate to each other. We thought about how to impersonate and put ourselves in the mind of a pay phone. This film was an opportunity to visit with very tragic heroes of our sidewalk -- the payphones of New York City.”

Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting at Purchase College Suny, and presents international seminars on screenwriting and film. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com, http://su-city-pictures.com/wpblog...

Certainly one of the more wildly memorable midnight movies during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival was Jim Hosking’s wonderfully depraved The Greasy Strangler, which follows disco-loving Big Ronnie (Michael St. Michaels), his awkward son, Brayden (Sky Elobar), and a mysterious woman named Janet (Elizabeth De Razzo) vying for their affections.

Daily Dead had the opportunity to speak with the trio about their experiences working together on The Greasy Strangler and to be honest, the conversation took a bunch of hysterical left turns along the way. Read on to hear more from the cast of The Greasy Strangler and be sure to keep your eyes peeled for more on this one as fans of cult cinema definitely will want to check it out for themselves.

I must say, when you start off Sundance and you see that first Midnight movie, you want something that's going to be completely unexpected and totally wild,...

The questions posed by Masha Tupitsyn’s work to date—Love Sounds completes a trilogy that began with Laconia and Love Dog, a pair of books drawn from her writing on Twitter and Tumblr—have generally been variations on “how do we talk about love?” So: How do we talk with love? How do we talk through love? How do we talk around love? How do we talk away from love? How do we talk in love? With Love Sounds, she’s taken these questions, and many more, and used them to grope, like a good archivist, through the thicket of love in English-language cinema. The slightly more than twenty-four hours she has emerged with are offered generously for interpretation, a process helped along by the eight categories, rendered as white text on a black ground, that both structure the work and provide its only images. In the time since...

The questions posed by Masha Tupitsyn’s work to date—Love Sounds completes a trilogy that began with Laconia and Love Dog, a pair of books drawn from her writing on Twitter and Tumblr—have generally been variations on “how do we talk about love?” So: How do we talk with love? How do we talk through love? How do we talk around love? How do we talk away from love? How do we talk in love? With Love Sounds, she’s taken these questions, and many more, and used them to grope, like a good archivist, through the thicket of love in English-language cinema. The slightly more than twenty-four hours she has emerged with are offered generously for interpretation, a process helped along by the eight categories, rendered as white text on a black ground, that both structure the work and provide its only images. In the time since...

It's a shock to go back and watch "Midnight Cowboy" 45 years after its debut (on May 25, 1969) and see how raw and otherworldly it looks. After all, the X-rated Best Picture Oscar-winner has been so thoroughly assimilated into American pop culture that even kiddie entertainments like the Muppets have copied from it.

The tale of the unlikely friendship between naïve Texas gigolo Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and frail Bronx con man Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), "Midnight Cowboy" was initially considered so risqué that it's the only X-rated movie ever to win the Academy's top prize (though after it won, the ratings board reconsidered and gave the film an R). Still, the film featured two lead performances and a few individual scenes that were so iconic that homages (and parodies) have popped up virtually everywhere. (Most often imitated is the scene where Ratso, limping across a busy Manhattan street, is nearly...

It's a Monday night with occasional downpours, but the steamy weather and the chance to view Andy Warhol's rarely screened tribute to the underground legend, poet, and actor Taylor Meade's posterior has the crowd, composed mainly of artsy gayboys, both young and old, lining up en masse in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art.

 A murmur of true excitement, amidst the chatter about organic art exhibits and mild flirtations, greets the ear as the flip-floppers are ushered into the Sculpture Garden. Instantly, stylized composure is disposed of as there's a mad rush for seats with an unobstructed view. Those who lose out on the "Musical Chairs Grab" wind up sitting on steps, which actually proffer a better sight line.

This highly social event, by the way, was organized into being by several bright-eyed cultural-mavens-in-the-making. Sophie Cavoulacos, the Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Film (Moma), has...

Review by Sam Moffitt

I love anything about Andy Warhol! I must say that right out of the gate, I love Andy Warhol! I have followed Warhol since the Sixties. Growing up near St. Louis, Missouri in the Sixties my family had a subscription to Life Magazine and they seemed to always be running articles about Op Art, Pop Art, the emerging youth and drug cultures and underground films made by people like the Kuchar Brothers, Jonas Mekas, Taylor Mead and Andy Warhol. It seemed like Warhol was in the news constantly, especially the question of whether his stuff was really art or even had any real value.

I read avidly about his ‘Factory’. in New York and his crew of strange underground people who helped him turn out art works, like….well like a factory!

I have three documentaries about Warhol himself, and have read every book by and about him I could find.

New York – It’s not technically a plot spoiler when there’s zero plot. So it’s fair game to reveal that the long-unfinished, unscripted 1968 Andy Warhol feature, San Diego Surf, is almost 90 minutes of preamble to Taylor Mead getting a golden shower from the Factory’s pretty-boy surfer, Tom Hompertz. “We middle-class people really suffer watching you surfers out there,” groans Mead, who plays a restless married man yearning to put his bourgeois golfing days behind him and acquire SoCal surf-culture status. “Can’t you just piss on us?” Given that the middle class were well-

read more...

Taylor Mead, the love child of Bette Davis and Peter Lorre, is one of the truly great comic geniuses of underground films, theater, poetry, cabaret, and cable TV of the Sixties and beyond. He was and is still quite hilarious, even if just stumbling down an East Village Street by himself, his traipse being a sort of Danse Macabre as envisioned by Pee Wee Herman.

An Andy Warhol Superstar, possibly best known for his hysterical “gunslinger” in Lonesome Cowboys, Mead’s brilliance never shined brighter than when he took on the title role in Michael McClure’s outrageous off-off-Broadway play, Spider Rabbit, in which he essayed a bunny who adored eating human brains.

But Taylor didn’t need a lead role to be unforgettable. In Rosa von Praunheim’s documentary Tally Brown New York, the constantly morphing star stole his scenes from Ms. Brown, who was no slouch herself when it came to commanding attention.

Robert Downey Sr.’s films are ribald, socially-conscious, highly experimental works that make Richard Lester’s oeuvre seem polite and Godard’s plot-heavy. Though he achieved cult success with 1969’s Putney Swope, some of Downey’s other, more radical works from the period are arguably more interesting, and their revival by way of an Eclipse box set is exceptional news. Up All Night With Robert Downey Sr. brings together five early films which show the director at his unhinged best, and if nothing else should prove a hedge against Downey becoming a mere footnote to his more famous son’s career.

A part of New York’s avant-garde film scene in the 60s, Downey screened his works alongside underground icons Shirley Clarke, Bruce Conner and Kenneth Anger. What he shared with his contemporaries was a patent disregard for convention and an ability to make films on the cheap. He cast his friends and family,...

"The Doomsday Fest, 'Exploring our collective fascination with the Apocalypse in film, art and culture' since 2009, will be held this weekend at 92YTribeca," notes the L's Mark Asch. Adds Alt Screen at the top its roundup on Steve De Jarnett's Miracle Mile (1989): "Invigoratingly curated, and full of good-natured and intelligent deliberation, its worth a trip into the wormhole. Costumes are encouraged." Whether or not you can make it, prepare for the End of Days with Catherine Grant's handy study guide, "Links of Doom and Disaster! Apocalyptic Film and Moving Image Studies." The animation above, by the way, is the work of Eyal Gever.

The Legend of Taylor Mead will be celebrated all weekend, starting tonight, at the Harvard Film Archive.

The Wages of Fear: The Films of Henri-Georges Clouzot is on at the Tiff Bell Lightbox in Toronto through November 29. Blake Williams has an overview at Ioncinema.

The National Film Preservation Foundation and the Film Foundation have announced the recipients of their annual Avant-Garde Masters Grants, which goes towards preserving classic experimental, avant-garde and underground films.

This year, $50,000 will be given to five different film preservation and archival organizations to preserve 10 avant-garde films from the ’60s and the ’70s. The most significant recipient of grant funds is Ohio State University who will be preserving five early works by Lillian Schwartz, a pioneer in early computer animation.

Pictured above is a film still courtesy of Ohio State from Schwartz’s Olympiad (1971), one of the films being preserved. The other four are Pixillation (1970), Enigma (1972), Mutations (1972), and Papillons (1973). While computer animation is ubiquitous today, Schwartz led early efforts to use computer languages to create artistic animated forms.

According to Dan Streible, acting director of Nyu’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program:

Lillian Schwartz worked alongside At&T research scientists...

Filmmaker Bob Moricz has reported that legendary underground film actor Bob Cowan has passed away. While Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film hasn’t completely confirmed the report, it appears that Cowan died on Tuesday, June 23, in his home in Toronto, Canada. He is survived by his wife Jane.

Cowan was a regular performer and collaborator with the filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar, and is most well-known as starring as the robot Xar in the classic film Sins of the Fleshapoids. (Pictured) But, more than just acting in the movie, Cowan also served as the film’s narrator and assembled its memorable music score.

In the ’60s and ’70s, Cowan was one of a few underground film acting “superstars,” along with performers such as Taylor Mead, Jack Smith, Gerard Malanga, Mario Montez and Donna Kerness.

Other Kuchar films Cowan appeared in were George’s Lust for Ecstasy and The...

"Ralf Huettner's sleeper hit Vincent Wants to Sea was the surprise best picture winner at the 61st German Film Awards, Germany's version of the Oscars." Scott Roxborough from Berlin for the Hollywood Reporter: "Florian David Fitz, who's better known as a TV performer here, won best actor for his starring performance in Vincent as a Tourette's sufferer who, once in his life, wants to see the ocean."

The Lolas, as these awards are called, have three categories for Best Film: Gold, which has gone to Vincent; Silver, which goes this year to Yasemin Samdereli's immigration comedy Almanya, also picking up the screenplay award (which Samdereli shares with her sister, Nesrin); and Bronze, presented to If Not Us, Who?, Andres Veiel's retelling of the love story between Gudrun Ensslin and Bernward Vesper and their breakup when Ensslin enters into her fateful relationship with Andreas Baader.

Tom Tykwer wins Best Director for Three,...

The sleepy East Hampton art scene will get a major jolt tomorrow when Eric Firestone opens his gallery with "Warhol, From Dylan to Duchamp," featuring 150 behind-the-scenes photos of Warhol at work. The real showstoppers are two dozen never-before-seen shots of Andy in a 10-gallon hat filming his 1968 wild, gay Western, "Lonesome Cowboys," in the Arizona desert. Expected at the opening are Warhol superstars Taylor Mead, Viva and Jane Holzer, Lou Reed, fashion designer Betsey Johnson, plus lensmen Michael Halsband, Anton Perich and Patrick McMullan.

Hollywood icon Dennis Hopper, who passed away on May 29 at the age of 74, had a brief flirtation with the underground film scene of the 1960s mostly due to his personal relationship with the artist Andy Warhol. Embedded above is a homemade video of a screening of the Screen Test that Hopper filmed for Warhol accompanied by a live performance by Dean and Britta. The screening occurred in 2009 in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.

In the early ’60s, although he had appeared in films like Giant, alongside James Dean, Hopper was primarily a TV actor who also performed in off-Broadway productions in NYC. During this time, the actor very wisely began buying paintings by artists in the then burgeoning Pop Art movement, including work by Pop’s biggest star Andy Warhol.

In addition to painting, Warhol was also beginning to move into filmmaking, first producing very static films such as Sleep, Eat,...