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This essay accompanies “In the Moment of Match-Strike,” Issue 6 of Notebook magazine, dedicated to expressions of youth in cinema.A Place Called Lovely.On Christmas day in 1988, a fifteen-year-old from Milwaukee received a toy camera from their dad. The Fisher-Price Pxl-2000, or Pixelvision, was the first camcorder marketed to children and teenagers, and it left young Sadie Benning unimpressed: “This is a piece of shit. It's black-and-white. It's for kids. He’d told me I was getting this surprise. I was expecting a camcorder.”1Launched in 1987 at Manhattan’s International Toy Fair, Pixelvision’s main innovation was to record sound and image directly onto audio cassettes, making it cheaper and easier to shoot than a regular camcorder. Fisher-Price stopped production after only a year. The camera that was initially sold in toy shops was ultimately destined for the yard sale. And yet, on the road to the growing scrap heap of obsolete media,...

Like 8mm films of 1960s “happenings” or videos of 1970s performance art, “J.R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius” chronicles a cultural footnote that perhaps should be filed under the heading You Had to Be There. The satirical-absurdist “religion” founded by some Texans actually caught fire among hipsters in the 1980s, influencing some of that era’s more interesting work in various media while providing a pre-Burning Man, pre-internet “secret club” to cerebral misfits of all stripes.

Sandy K. Boone’s documentary is likely to be lost on the not-previously converted, as what seemed the height of snark in the Reagan Era hasn’t dated all that well — nor is its appeal apparent as excerpted and recalled here. But those who remember the gospel of “slack” will make this diverting-enough documentary an in-demand work at genre festivals, as a streaming item and in other forums.

In...

Looking back today at the legacy of Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) as a pioneer of American independent filmmaking, we like to think that he paved the way for us to enjoy our current freedom as spectators. When he was arrested for screening Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures” in New York City in March 1964, along with Ken Jacobs and Florence Karpf, we tend to suppose that this was eventually to ensure that we wouldn’t be penalized for watching the film today.

But maybe we haven’t advanced quite as far in our freedom and sophistication as we like to suppose. Such, at any rate, was my thought when I found myself censored on Facebook last week and banned from posting anything there for 24 hours when I tried to post the following two images:

I assume it was the second image rather than the first that led to the censorship, but given...

New York City has a rich history of short-lived, unorthodox screening venues and societies that have buoyed the underground film movement along from its beginning. For some examples, in the 1960s, there was Jonas Mekas‘s Film-makers’ Cinematheque; while the late ’70s had Eric Mitchell and James Nares’s New Cinema.

In 1998, Brian L. Frye was a transplant from San Francisco looking to open a new microcinema in NYC, having been inspired by Craig Baldwin‘s Other Cinema at Artists Television Access and David Sherman and Rebecca Barten’s Total Mobile Home. Despite not having a venue to call his own, Frye came to an agreement with the alternative performance space Collective Unconscious at 145 Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side to screen films on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. (Collective Unconscious formed in 1993 originally at 28 Avenue B, until a fire a year later forced them to relocate to Ludlow Street.

The second annual Chicago Underground Film Festival was held in 1995, at multiple locations in the city, from Thursday, July 20 to Sunday, July 23.

The festival opened on July 20th at the International Cinema Museum with the film What About Me?, directed by Rachel Amodeo. Other highlights included a retrospective of the work of Kenneth Anger, who attended the fest and screened Fireworks (1947), Scorpio Rising (1963) and Kkk (Kustom Kar Kommandos) (1965) at the Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan, on Friday, July 21. Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin also attended and screened films on July 23; while the Reverend Ivan Stang of the Church of Subgenius screened films on July 22.

Also, Charles Pinion screened the world premiere of his feature film Red Spirit Lake, which was preceded by the short film The Operation, directed by Jacob Pander and Marne Lucas. Other short films that screened were Desktop and a preview of Monday 9:02 am, both directed by Tyler Hubby.

Two new Muslim Voices musicals created by the Brooklyn Children’s Theatre will premiere during the month of Ramadan. Together, they will tell stories of what it means to be American and celebrate the recognition of Eid as a public school holiday. These musicals allow non-Muslim and Muslim children alike to experience the culture and everyday experiences of their classmates and neighbors, to learn about the local New York City history, and develop confidence in their own voices and identities. The world premiere of two new musicals that bring Muslim and non-Muslim audiences together around a celebration of diversity and representation.

Brooklyn Children’s Theatre (Bct) is an after school musical theatre program serving over 1000 children in Brooklyn. Professional writers and composers create mini-musicals specifically for Bct’s students to ensure that every child has the opportunity to grow as an artist and a person. We believe that theatre should be for Every child,...

The Brooklyn Children’s Theatre (Bct) is an after school musical theatre program serving over 1000 children in Brooklyn, New York. Bct was commissioned by the Doris Duke Foundation of Islamic Art to create four original musicals with Muslim protagonists for children to perform in. Two of these musicals will be premiering on December 9, 2016.

Fast Friends is about children fasting for the first time during Ramadan. Fast Friends was written by Amy White Graves and Steve Saari, with contributions from Aizzah Fatima.

Sailimai And The Four Riddles was written by By Scott Evan Davis, Kareem Fahmy, Aizzah Fatima & Chris Heller & the Summer 2016 Muslim Voices Playwriting class. Sailimai And The Four Riddles is based on an Islamic Chinese folk tale: Sailimai must look to her Muslim values to solve a riddle and save her father.

Amy White Graves, Executive Director of Bct states “When we started this project in the summer of...

Peter Labuza is celebrating the third anniversary of the launch of his excellent podcast, The Cinephiliacs, with a conversation with one of cinema's great talkers, James Gray, director of, for example, We Own the Night (2007), Two Lovers (2008) and The Immigrant (2013). Among the many topics covered in 85'44" is Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (1957). More interviews: Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen, Bruno Dumont, Craig Baldwin, Debra Granik, Carolee Schneemann, Mia Hansen-Løve, Frank V. Ross, David Thorpe and Ana Lily Amirpour. » - David Hudson...

Peter Labuza is celebrating the third anniversary of the launch of his excellent podcast, The Cinephiliacs, with a conversation with one of cinema's great talkers, James Gray, director of, for example, We Own the Night (2007), Two Lovers (2008) and The Immigrant (2013). Among the many topics covered in 85'44" is Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (1957). More interviews: Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen, Bruno Dumont, Craig Baldwin, Debra Granik, Carolee Schneemann, Mia Hansen-Løve, Frank V. Ross, David Thorpe and Ana Lily Amirpour. » - David Hudson...

Mono No Aware continues its hardcore commitment to keeping the practice of expanded cinema alive with their 8th annual edition that will run on December 5-6 in Brooklyn, NY at LightSpace Studios.

This is two nights of creative, live cinematic performances utilizing only analog equipment and materials that will never be repeated again in the universe.

Some of the performances include returning champion Joel Schlemowitz, who will be creating a 3-D experience using overhead projectors; and the wonderful Winnipeg underground film scene is represented by Scott Fitzpatrick, who will be turning the book Victorian Frames, Borders and Cuts into a 16mm triple projection.

For all of Mono No Aware’s amazing performances, they are so unique that we are listing them copied and pasted directly from the festival’s website below. But, for even more information, such as screening venues, please visit their official website.

December 5

Starts 9:00 p.m.

Easily the most inspired film-geek retro idea to land in New York since Anthology's one-eyed-auteur series in 2009, this Halloween-angled suite revisits classic horror indies directed by erstwhile industrial filmmakers — and buttresses them with the ephemeral junk the filmmakers manufactured in their day jobs. Right away we're reawakened to the fact that the vast majority of films shot in the 20th century — an indisputable lion's share of cinema history — were disposable non-theatrical shorts assembled for industrial, educational, promotional, corporate, or even religious training purposes.

It's the kind of forgotten effluvia that found-footage impresarios like Craig Baldwin have lived on, and they can have a creepy, dislocated aura, absurdly ungraceful ...

The 5th annual Strange Beauty Film Festival will feature three nights — and one afternoon — of gorgeous short films by local filmmakers and from filmmakers around the world on June 12-14 at the Manbites Dog Theater in Durham, North Carolina.

The Opening Night selection on June 12 will feature local films such as Shambhavi Kaul’s Mount Song, Alina Taalman’s The Descening Package and D.L. Anderson’s Bili Rubin; aswell as films from Rochester, NY; Chicago, Il; and as far away as London and Watford, England.

Some films to look out for throughout the rest of the festival include Fall 1+2 by Canadian filmmaker Aaron Zeghers; Lori Felker‘s award-winning Scattered in the Wind; and Frontier Journals 03: Aztec Baldwin Collage by acclaimed documentarian Georg Koszulinski that features the legendary Craig Baldwin.

Also, the Closing Night program on June 14 will feature Strange Beauty’s Aural Fixation, a program of experimental soundscapes curated by Jenny Morgan.

Collage narrative filmmaker Craig Baldwin arrives for the November 3, 1999 San Francisco screening of his feature film Spectres of the Spectrum at the Castro Theater, caught on video by Peter Hinds. The above video also includes brief clips from the film, one response during a post-screening Q&A session with Baldwin, and Baldwin’s post-screening exit where he runs into a devoted fan on the street.

While the Underground Film Journal doesn’t know the exact release schedule for Spectres of the Spectrum, guessing from the high energy of the crowd and of Baldwin, this does appear to be the hometown premiere of the film. However, it’s most likely the film previously screened outside of San Francisco.

We also wish there was more of Baldwin’s Q&A session included in the video, but the snippet that does appear is an excellent capsulization of how the filmmaker discusses his process.

Arab spring compilation wins Jihlava’s main award; Best Czech film for HBO-backed doc

Belgium-based Peter Snowdon’s The Uprising, a compilation of amateur footage from the Arab spring, was awarded the Opus Bonum - Best International Documentary Film Award at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in the Czech Republic last night (Oct 28).

The winner was picked by a single juror, Us director-curator Craig Baldwin who described The Uprising as “a film which, in turn, saddened me, frightened me, outraged me, inspired me, and ultimately made me truly proud to be a part of the democratic project and the struggle for human dignity.”

The Uprising, which was produced by Brussels-based Rien à voir production with the UK’s Third Films of Duane Hopkins and Samm Haillay as co-producers, had its world premiere in Jihlava.

In the Czech Joy sidebar competition, the Best Czech Documentary Film Award went to Petr Hátle’s The Great Night which was co-produced...

Underground filmmaker Carlos Atanes has recently published the screenplay of one of his films that he has never been able to complete: Aleister Crowley in the Mouth of Hell.

For over a decade, Atanes has tried numerous times to mount a production based on Crowley, the legendary cult figure and mystic. His latest attempt — begun in 2007 — followed Crowley on a mystical trip through the Egyptian underworld where he battles the demon Choronzon and encounters several significant people from his real life, such as Hanni Jaegger, Fernando Pessoa, Leila Wadell, Victor Neuburg and Raoul Loveday.

That project, instead of a completed film, is presented as the unproduced screenplay Aleister Crowley in the Mouth of Hell and is now available on Amazon.Crowley continues to be a subject of great interest to underground filmmakers, being a source of inspiration to classic filmmakers like Kenneth Anger and Harry Smith; figuring as a major...

This week’s Must Read is a rarity: Underground icon Damon Packard being interviewed in a major newspaper, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, on the occasion of his genius new film Foxfur screening at Craig Baldwin’s Other Cinema last night.And, you know it, it’s also not every day an underground film is profiled in the New York Times, so super congrats to director Adam Rehmeier and particularly Rodleen Getsic for this Nyt piece about the controversial nature of their The Bunny Game.Here’s a new “Must Bookmark” blog: A movie journal site by Melanie Wilmink, formerly of the $100 Film Festival, where she now hopes to open up discussion generated by indie films — and she’s doing a fantastic job so far!Also to bookmark: Eric Krasner has a blog regarding his in-progress documentary on legendary Yiddish comedian Mickey Katz.The Huffington Post reports on the totally...

Cinemad’s Mike Plante sits down for a raucous, free-wheeling, free-associatin’ interview with cinema’s greatest mad tinkerer, Craig Baldwin. It’s a real trip!

Crashing topics from Baldwin’s childhood film influences to his collage narrative filmmaking process to advice on how to run a successful microcinema to the future of the Artists Television Access space and more will careen around the inside of your brain until it melts out of your ears like goo.

Listen and learn, people!

Classic Stage Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director Brian Kulick and Executive Director Greg Reiner, will present its sold-out Open Rehearsal Series with Monday Night Antony amp Cleopatra, featuring a company of seasoned actors and directors as they explore the text over three consecutive Monday nights beginning April 16 with Stephanie Roth Haberle and Sam Tsoutsouvas, directed by Brian Kulick followed by Laila Robbins as Cleopatra on April 23, directed by Craig Baldwin and finally on April 30, Kim Cattrall as Cleopatra and Anthony Heald as Antony, directed by Brian Kulick. While all three evenings are sold-out, a waiting list will form each evening at 7 pm in the lobby.

"When I wrote 120 Malay Movies I tried to watch all of the 34 movies that P Ramlee directed. I almost succeeded." Amir Muhammad (The Last Communist, Malaysian Gods) would eventually see 33; Sitora Harimau Jadian (1964) seems to have been lost. He tells us the story of how he came upon what amounts to P Ramlee's own novelization of Sitora Harimau Jadian, "describing what happens in his movie, scene by scene. The book is slim, only 124 pages, and I'm glad it was also fleshed out with pictures from the movie (which might be the only chance we will ever get to 'see' it)." He gives us a sample and then announces that he's republishing the book, which will be out next month and already has a fan page.

Another book. Today's review of Geoff Dyer's Zona comes from Nathan Rogers-Hancock at Cinespect.

Reading. Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel) once managed a...

It’s the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival and they’re preparing an all-out blowout on March 27 to April 1 to celebrate! The fest is crammed to the gills with the latest and greatest in experimental and avant-garde film, in addition to a celebration of classic work from Ann Arbors past.

Filmmaker Bruce Baillie was there at the first Aaff — and numerous times since. He’s back this year with a major retrospective of his entire career that spans three separate programs. Baillie, who’ll be in attendance of course, will present a brand-new restored version of his epic pseudo-Western Quick Billy, plus screenings of his classic short movies such as Castro Street, Yellow Horse, Quixote, To Parsifal and more.

There’s also a program dedicated to the films of the late Robert Nelson, including Bleu Shut and Special Warning, as well as sprinklings of underground classics throughout...

This Week’s Must Look At: The artist book Don’t Kill the Weatherman by Martha Colburn has an online photograph preview and it looks stunning! I love Martha’s animation, but it always moves so quickly that it’s tough to savor the actual art. But, now I can! The above borrowed image is from frames from the film Spiders in Love: An Arachnogasmic Musical, the first Colburn film I ever saw way back in 2000. (If you go to the photo set, you can find details on how to purchase this limited edition.)Craig Baldwin has published issue #22 of Otherzine. You can read the whole thing here. But, two highlights are: An interview with Dominic Gagnon, who is seeking to save “censored” online videos; and curator Brenda Contreras reviews Sylvia Schedelbauer’s found footage film, Sounding Glass.This one’s for Canyon Cinema members only: But if you are one,...

March 3

8:30 p.m.

Ata Gallery

992 Valencia (@ 21st)

San Francisco, CA

Hosted by: Other Cinema

Craig Baldwin’s Other Cinema returns for its 2012 Spring Season with a vengeance.With the the recent Sopa scare that threatened the long-standing tradition of the appropriation of other people’s media in new contexts, this screening is taking full advantage of humanity’s god-given right to remix!

The centerpiece for the evening is Soda_Jerk’s Hollywood Burn, an epic remix of hundreds of Hollywood media sources to tell the story of a band of video pirates fighting against the copyright commandments delivered by Moses. Watch the trailer for this masterful manipulation of treasured media memories.

In addition, there will be a screening of Rodney Ascher’s The S From Hell, a documentary about the infamous Screen Gems logo. Plus, Kirby Ferguson’s popular Everything Is a Remix videos; an Animal Charm party platter; and more surprises.

New On DVDMaximum Shame

Movies don’t get much cultier than Carlos Atanes‘ post-apocalyptic S&M musical. Filmed in a dirty warehouse filling in for the edge of the universe just as said universe is about to fall into a massive black hole, Maximum Shame plays out like an oblique chess match with a demented black leather clad Queen (the phenomenal Marina Gatell) forcing the other players to sit in barbed wire cardboard boxes and shovel pounds of spaghetti into their mouths. Atanes, already Spain’s underground master, really pulls out the stops on this happy mess of madness.

Buy on Amazon!

The Films of Bob Moricz

If you’re looking to give a special someone something absolutely out of this world and one-of-a-kind, then you can’t go wrong with a Bob Moricz hand-produced “Bobbywood” production or two. Or go for a full 6-pack of reality-warping DVDs! Whether it...

Wow, the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis gave a really incredible write-up on Ernie Gehr and his films, and includes a lovely slideshow of film stills. (Isn’t Serene Velocity one of the best names for a movie ever?)Superstar blogger Mark Evanier has been writing obsessively about the Lambeth Walk song for the past week or so. One of those posts, though, was all about the classic Len Lye experimental film using that music.Jonas Mekas has a new documentary, entitled My Mars Bar Movie — about an actual bar in NYC, not the candy bar — which opened the first ever Greenpoint Film Festival. The Local East Village website has a write up on the film and the screening.By the way: Did you know the “real” Jonas Mekas is now putting his videos on YouTube? I didn’t, but he is.Rick Trembles gives Peter Watkins’ controversial, Academy Award...

The International Film Festival Rotterdam has announced that, as part of its Hidden Histories program, it'll be screening work by Ai Weiwei, "six long films which he refers himself to as 'social documentaries' and four documentary art videos. There is a remarkable difference between Ai's sometimes highly conceptual art videos and his social documentaries. For the latter, he acts — before and behind the camera — as a committed research journalist, persistent to bring injustice in the open." Ai Weiwei was, of course, arrested in Beijing earlier this year, imprisoned for 81 days and released in June, though he's still not allowed to leave Beijing. Hidden Histories will feature new work by other Chinese documentary filmmakers as well, including He Yuan, Yu Guangyi and Xu Tong. The 41st edition of the Iffr runs from January 25 through February 5.

More events. Craig Baldwin for the San Francisco Cinematheque on this evening's program: "The selection of...

The 10th annual Lausanne Underground Film Festival is a truly epic film event with an immense lineup of the strangest, sexiest, most grotesque, oddball and downright freakish movies from all over the world — from modern underground treats to classic cult movies of yesteryear.

The fest officially begins on Oct. 15 with a special live performance by the legendary Diamanda Galas. But the film festivities run from Oct. 17-23, starting with the grand opening of an exhibition and retrospective of the films by Ericka Beckman.

The full film lineup, which is presented below, is a massive mix of underground greatness, but here are some of the highlights:

Gross-Out Flicks:

Chop, dir. Trent Haaga.

The Taint, dir. Drew Bolduc and Dan Nelson.

Calibre 9, dir. Jean-Christian Tassy.

The Bunny Game, dir. Adam Rehmeier

Trippy Movies:

Profane, dir. Usama Alshaibi

The Oregonian, dir. Calvin Lee Reeder

Hellacious Acres: The Case of John Glass, dir.

Craig Baldwin's Mock Up On Mu is the first example I've seen of his brand of Bruce Conner-influenced experimental cut-up narratives. I get the impression this one differs from most in featuring original material amid the found footage: this is only partially successful, and I wonder if it was necessary. The archive film has such iconic quality, culled as it is from Hollywood movies, documentaries, educational films etc., all bringing their payload of memories and associations to the story, so that no newly-shot material can compete. Also, Baldwin, an exponent of "film povera," or "poor cinema," can't afford production values even on a par with the Prc Z-movies he quotes and misquotes. Still, the fact that all the actors in the specially staged scenes are unconvincingly dubbed is a nice touch: it helps make them feel as contrived and out-of-time as the rest of his jumble of footage.

Dear periodical collectors: Keep your stash away from filmmaker Lewis Klahr, who mines old magazines and comic books to re-purpose for his art. The Wexner Center for the Arts produced the above, embedded video visit to Klahr’s home studio where he discusses and shows off his methods of producing his acclaimed short films. However, part of that method includes digging through piles of reference material and cutting out the retro images to collage in his animation. The video also includes lengthy excerpts from films such as Pony Glass (starring Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen), Altair and more.

Personally, I’m always fascinated by collage filmmakers like Klahr and Craig Baldwin because it’s tough to wrap one’s head around the process of finding what material belongs in which film. Klahr gives us a brief glimpse of this, showing off several cut-outs that may or may not end up...

Is there something major going on in film tonight? Who knows? So, enjoy these links about movies that don’t get all the attention!

The big news this week is that the last lab in the UK has just stopped printing 16mm film. That’s right: It is now impossible to get your 16mm film printed in England! Thanks, Deluxe! Filmmaker Tacita Dean writes an impassioned, personal article about this devastating blow to the film world for the Guardian.(By the way, the image above was taken by documentary filmmaker Lynne Sachs and is of Craig Baldwin’s 16mm film archive.)At Africa Is a Country, Sean Jacobs interviews South African filmmaker Dylan Valley about the documentary The Uprising of Hangberg, which Valley co-directed with Bad Lit fave Aryan Kaganof. The film documents the South African police crackdown of a small village full of “alleged” squatters. Heavy emphasis on “alleged.

Before we get to the list this week, a special note: I got a very nice email this week from Jackie Keen, the wife of legendary British underground filmmaker Jeff Keen. I’ve written about Jeff a few times on Bad Lit, particularly about his troublesome situation. If you’re not familiar with Jeff’s incredible body of work, read that link and do yourself a favor and check out his official website.

This week’s Must Read is Craig Baldwin’s history and understanding of why San Francisco is such a mecca for found-footage filmmakers such as himself. The article, on the Moving Image Source website, is reprinted from the recent book Radical Light. Speaking of Radical Light, Reed Johnson of the L.A. Times previews the Los Angeles screening tour that’s accompanying the book. Also to celebrate Radical Light, Chuck Stephens of Blip Magazine reviews several films...

UnionDocs, the Williamsburg, Brooklyn non-profit group devoted to bringing innovative non-fiction projects to the masses, has been chosen as one of “Seven Groups to Watch” by New York’s Alliance for the Arts. All seven arts organizations will be feted at a Friends of the Arts party on Jan. 24 at Christie’s auction house in Rockefeller Plaza.

The Alliance for the Arts is an advocacy group helping to promote NYC as the art and culture capital of the world. To that end, they’re celebrating seven diverse arts organizations that help “invigorate New York’s cultural scene with new energy and direction.”

Founded and run by Christopher Allen, UnionDocs hosts regular screenings of both modern and classic non-fiction films as well as holding progressive workshops and seminars for media makers. Some upcoming events include a 16mm and 8mm filmmaking workshop hosted by Mono No Aware, a night of short films from the Film-makers’ Cooperative,...

Travel back to a time when cars had fins, men wore hats, ladies wore pearls and the future was now. Actually, only using minimal sci-fi imagery, Alessandro Cima has created a cool retro futuristic blend of classic cinema and modern images for his funky short film Yellow Plastic Raygun, embedded above.

Although there’s no clear plot through the use of found images — for example, the way Craig Baldwin might use similar material — there’s still a sense of story to Cima’s film as the classy and classic images eventually give way to more chaotic material. It’s as if the future previously promised by the media all turned to disaster. The clean, livable cities collapse into rubble and the natural world is destroyed in the name of progress.

Maybe the future is out of our reach only because we’ve willed it to be. Once we dreamed of...

Things are looking good for the links program. Really a nice mix this week, too:

This week’s must read article is j. j. murphy’s awesome think piece Indie Film in the Cross Fire, in which he smacks down the slowly creeping idea that filmmakers had better adjust the conception of their films in order to be more “market friendly” in order to survive. And, yes, I’ve written several pieces on Bad Lit about filmmakers doing better online marketing — but Don’T Put Your Marketing Before Your Films! Devour murphy’s piece, then click through to the “Straight Talk” article he links to. In that vein, No-Fi filmmaker Bob Moricz explains exactly why he makes No-Fi films. I’d also really like to thank Jacob W. for picking up and extending the conversation around the Anthology Film Archive’s Essential Cinema collection that was curated in the ’70s.

As part of the former Ussr, Estonia was geographically closer to (supposedly) democratic Finland than the communist powers in Moscow. When Finland began to broadcast television, they showed not only their own programs, but American ones as well. The north coastal Estonian city of Tallinn was only 80 km from Helsinki, and as much as the Soviets tried, they couldn’t stop the signal. Disco and Atomic War is director Jaak Kimli’s tribute to the innovation and drive of his people not to be kept behind the Iron Curtain, and the incredible power of popular culture. Using a combination of found footage, archival film, and staged scenes, Kimli has created a doc very much in the style of American experimental filmmaker Craig Baldwin. Kimli relates how he wrote letters to his cousin recounting the television series Dallas, and how his cousin would go from house to house in her village,...

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about that Douglas Rushkoff video interview I embedded the other day, the one in which he counters the myth that all online content is “free.” However, prior to discussing the issue of “free,” Rushkoff also mentioned how the Internet has evolved over the past 20 years or so from a free-form place of personal expression to a highly-structured, commodified marketplace.

In many ways, Bad Lit follows exactly the evolution that Rushkoff maps out, from being a goofy HTML-based hobby of self-expression to a very rigid website that delivers advertising to its visitors. (And by “rigid” I mean in navigational structure and in that I only write about one topic anymore.)

But, on the other hand, as Internet technology has improved over the years, the ability for underground filmmakers to share their works of personal expression with a large and nearly infinite audience has increased dramatically.

If you weren’t at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on Jan. 27, 2010, you missed out on what was one of the most epic underground film screenings and Q&A sessions in history. During this marathon 4-hour session, two titans of filmmaking — Clu Gulager and Damon Packard — screened and discussed their work, including Packard’s Reflections of Evil and Gulager’s Fucking Tulsa. Unfortunately, the event went straight to Packard’s head, as evidenced in the above clip from Packard’s Q&A.

Read More:American Cinematheque: Hollywood Outlaws: Clu Gulager and Damon PackardFucking TulsaOn DVD: Craig Baldwin’s Mock Up On MuOther Cinema: Animal Charm...

Feb. 15

8:00 p.m.

Glasslands Gallery

289 Kent Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11211

Hosted by: Sarah Jacobson Film Grant

This special event honoring the late, great Sarah Jacobson is both a celebration of her pioneering work as a Diy filmmaker and a fundraiser for the Sarah Jacobson Film Grant, which awards money to independent women filmmakers.

There will be screenings of some of Sarah’s early short films, plus samples from winning filmmakers who were awarded the grant in previous years. There will also be short video tributes from Sarah’s fans and friends, such as Kathleen Hanna, Allison Anders, Tamra Davis, Michelle Handelman, George Kuchar, Sam Green, and Craig Baldwin. Lastly, Barbara Hammer and Sarah’s mother Ruth will introduce a screening of Sarah’s punk classic Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore.

Sarah Jacobson was a tireless advocate of Diy filmmaking, having produced, directed and self-distributed two feature films, I...

Feb. 11

8:00 p.m.

Echo Park Film Center

1200 N. Alvarado Street (@ Sunset Blvd)

Los Angeles, CA

Hosted by: Other Cinema

San Francisco underground filmmaker Craig Baldwin will attend this special screening of his latest magnum opus, the genuinely epic collage narrative Mock Up on Mu.

Mock Up on Mu has more going on in it per square inch than any other film ever made. It is also the most in-depth futuristic history of the weird state of California. L. Ron Hubbard (Damon Packard) is planning to build a resort on the moon called Mu, but to initiate the project he must dispatch Agent C (Michelle Silva) to convince an amnesiac Jack Parsons (Kalman Spelletich) and Lockheed Martin (Stoney Burke) to build a rocket launchpad in Las Vegas.

The film combines new footage shot by Baldwin with an immense library of found footage from the filmmaker’s massive private stash, some...

Jan. 27

7:30 p.m.

Egyptian Theater

6712 Hollywood Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA

Hosted by: American Cinematheque

Prepare for a night of intense weirdness and cruelty with films directed by underground filmmaking legend Damon Packard and veteran character actor Clu Gulager. Screening will be Packard’s magnum opus strangus, Reflections of Evil, as well as the world premiere of Clu Gulager’s Fucking Tulsa; plus two of Gulager’s older shorts, John and Norma Novak and A Day With the Boys.

Packard and Gulager will be in attendance to answer questions — oh, and there will be questions — between the films. Also in attendance will be Gulager’s sons Tom and John; plus John’s wife Diane Avala Goldner.

Reflections of Evil is a feature-length head trip about an obese watch salesman (Packard) who is haunted by the ghost of his dead junkie sister and who wanders the streets of Los Angeles in an angry,...

In his underground favorites Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Across America and Spectres Of The Spectrum, filmmaker/collagist Craig Baldwin has combined archival footage, low-budget B-movie recreations, and only somewhat tongue-in-cheek paranoid ramblings into amusing, oddly persuasive alternate histories of the United States. Baldwin’s Mock Up On Mu deals from the same deck. Beginning on Earth’s moon in the year 2019, Mock Up On Mu looks back at nearly a century of Americana—or, more specifically, Californiana—through intertwined, lightly fictionalized versions of the lives of demagogic pulp author L. Ron Hubbard, notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, New Age guru ...

Incite! is billed as the Journal of Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics, so it’s a kindred spirit to Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film. Incite! exists as an online journal as well as having a actual 147-page printed edition. While I’ve browsed, and enjoyed, the Incite! website, editor Brett Kashmere was also kind enough to send me a copy of the first paperback version that I recently read every single word of.

The articles for the first issue of Incite! are on the longish side, so, for me personally, they make for better reading on paper, which is why I was so thrilled to get a copy. (My aching eyes thank me every time I go do something off-line.) My own favorite pieces are the substantial interviews with Canadian experimental filmmaker Karl Lemieux and the San Francisco legend Craig Baldwin. Incite No. 1 has been out for awhile, but...

DVDs may be sooner or later drummed out of existence -- by online downloads, at first, I'd guess, reducing movie "releases" to nothing more than press announcements of availability -- but for now they're still "things" you can buy or rent, physical manifestations of the art form, not just the opportunity for access. In the process, they're continuing as our default B-movie distribution stream, offering up indies and foreign films and unforeseen archivals that had a snowball's hellbound chance at finding theatrical screentime. These are still not eligible for any year-end toasts, absurdly enough, and so here's my list of the best of the year's straight-to-digi-vid, for which the only qualification is being entirely overlooked, this year or ever, by our theatrical distribution wimps, and being new to U.S. home video of any stripe.

15. "Absurdistan"

(Veit Helmer, Germany/Russia/Azerbaijan, 2008)

A bawdy Caucasus folktale, Helmer's nutty yarn visits a...

Bearing a snarky, double-take title and a premise like a glazed pig on a platter, Grant Heslov's "The Men Who Stare at Goats" can't help but get us salivating -- be it Chayefskyian satire or schizoid paranormal headtrip or Coenesque destiny farce, we'll gobble it down, especially if it is, as this movie is, based on reported fact. American military new age telekinetic absurdism! The brown-acid substance of reporter Jon Ronson's book by the same name is the dizzying crucible at hand -- too ludicrous and all true to resist, and yet so much the sum of its chortlesome vignettes that filming it would require either the cargo-cult undergroundism of a Craig Baldwin or the imposed narrative arc of an over-punctuated Hollywood biopic. Regrettably, Heslov and screenwriter Peter Straughan and producer/star George Clooney have opted for the latter. Which is to say, the madness has been dressed for dinner,...

Following two seasons working on Criminal Minds as criminal profiler Jason Gideon, Mandy Patinkin left the show in 2007 due to creative differences.  Since then, he has graced the stage with his performances, opting to focus more on comedy and musicals.  In fact, he recently appeared in Reno, Nevada's Pioneer Center for Performing Arts, where he ended his little tour before heading back to the theater.  Most recently, it was announced that Patinkin will be taking on a Shakespearean role in his next project.

Mandy Patinkin will be playing Prospero in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, which will be shown at the Classic Stage Company beginning Thursday, September 3.

The 55-year-old former Criminal Minds star debuted in 1980 on Broadway with Andrew Lloyd Weber's Evita, playing Che.  He later won his first Tony Award for the role, and four years later was again recognized with a nomination for his starring role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical,...

NEW YORK -- Normally, you wouldn't think people would pay to see home movies. But the three ''home'' movies that comprise the latest Film Forum program should prove to be the exception to the rule.

Starting out the new year, these short, shorter and shortest films have little in common except for their format. Though the use of collage and narration is used in all three shorts, each film is wholly unique.

The three-movie program makes its theatrical premiere at Film Forum on Wednesday, and considering the usual impact of facing another year, this trio of flicks should fit right in with everyone's reflective mood.

The headliner, and most complexly conceived film, is Craig Baldwin's ''Tribulation 99: Alien Anomolies Under America.'' This 50-minute piece is as far out as its title suggests, and just as intriguing.

Concocting a wild, semi-hallucinatory scenario, Baldwin attempts to convince the mesmerized viewer that the coming apocalypse has been masterminded by the Quetzals -- aliens from a parallel planet to Earth. Stationed somewhere beneath the South Pole, they have apparently been responsible for everything from Castro to the JFK assassination to killer bees. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

Through a brilliant and hilarious use of sci-fi and monster-movie clips, Baldwin makes life on Earth look like a bad B movie. He may not be that far off the mark. By cross-referencing actual events in our history with their counterpart movie monsters, Baldwin actually hopes to seriously attack the evil political infra-structures around the world that threaten to ultimately destroy us.

He tackles such subjects as the CIA, Eugene Hasenfus, Bush, Reagan, Ollie North, U.S. imperialism, Noriega, the invasion of Granada and more, but then uses the symbolic images of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Giant Behemoth, Godzilla and Blacula to make his points.

The truth of the matter is that we get so caught up in Baldwin's imagery that the message takes a back seat. It's the movie clips that fascinate us. Sci-fi and monster movie fans in particular will go nuts just trying to keep track of all the wonderfully bad flicks referred to in this highly entertaining collage.

Baldwin wants to comment on the woes of the world, but instead ''Tribulation 99'' serves best as a great reel of trailers. His message may come over subliminally, but it's hard to tell. In either event it's a lot of fun.

The other two films on the program are Jack Farrell's ''Life in the Time of the Roosevelts'' and Bruce Weber's ''Backyard Movie.'' Farrell's low-key 28-minute film utilizes old home and historical footage to comment on past and present life in his New York Catskills hometown of Livingston Manor. It is a charming, yet uneven, accounting.

Weber's ''Backyard Movie'' is a nine-minute gem that recently was a short hit at the New York Film Festival. In it Weber humorously recalls his adolescence and the factors that contributed to his sexual makeup. It is narrated in on-screen script lettering and is one of the most enjoyable ''home'' movies you're likely to see.

TRIBULATION 99: ALIEN ANOMOLIES UNDER AMERICA

Drift Distribution

Writer-director Craig Baldwin

LIFE IN THE TIME OF THE ROOSEVELTS

Writer-director Jack Farrell

Narrator: Lennie Calandrino

BACKYARD MOVIE

Zeitgeist Films

Writer-director Bruce Weber

Producer Nan Bush

Total running time -- 87 minutes

No MPAA rating

(c) The Hollywood Reporter...