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Camera Threat“Don’t try to hold onto the wave that’s breaking against your foot. So long as you stand in the stream, fresh waves will always keep breaking against it.”—Widow Begbick in Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Man Equals Man’A preface for the unfamiliar. Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival is a small, strange and very special film festival situated in the northernmost place in England, the quite lovely Berwick-upon-Tweed, a small, much contested coastal town on the Scottish border that is home to a set of impressive defensive walls, Britain’s earliest barracks building, some nice pubs and a few good fish and chip shops that close at 5pm. Inaugurated in 2005, the town’s film festival—a five day affair that consists of a mixture of short films and features exhibited in the town’s single cinema, performances elsewhere, and installations placed in historic sites along the town...

The 2nd annual South Texas Underground Film Festival, running Oct. 3-6 in Corpus Christi, Texas, is a massive celebration of international alternative cinema, including plenty from Texas filmmakers, of course.

The fest opened on the 3rd with the drop-dead hilarious comedy Pictures of Superheroes by Austin filmmaker Don Swaynos.

But, there’s still plenty more to see throughout the jam-packed weekend wherein films screen from morning until, well, early into the next morning.

The film that’s absolutely not to be missed is the screening on the 6th at 10:30 a.m. of Savage Witches, the amazing celebration of the art of filmmaking by British directors Daniel Fawcett & Clara Pais. A colorful spectacle of multiple filmmaking styles, Savage Witches is a real joy to experience.

Also to be on the lookout for are on the 5th at 11:00 a.m. is the new rockin’ documentary Mondo Fuzz: Twilight of the...

Film Southasia, Festival of South Asian Documentaries has announced its selection for 2013 edition. Fifteen Indian documentaries will be screened at the festival that will take place from 3-6 October in Kathmandu, Nepal. Film Southasia (Fsa) is a biennial festival that was set up in 1997 with the goal of popularizing the documentary.

Selected Indian films:

A Prayer For Aliyah by Zorawar Shukla

Algorithms by Ian McDonald

Big In Bollywood by Kenny Meehan and Bill Bowles

Celluloid Man by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur

Char…No Man’s Island by Sourav Sarangi

Elemental by Gayatri Roshan, Emmanuel Vaughn Lee

Fire In The Blood by Dylan Mohan Gray

Gaur in My Garden by Rita Banerji

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread by Satchith Paulose

Immoral Daughters by Nakul Singh Sawhney

Invoking Justice by Deepa Dhanraj

Salma by Kim Longinotto

Sama by Shazia Khan

The Human Factor by Rudradeep Bhattacharjee

Voice of God by Bernd Lützeler...

The 15th annual Antimatter Film Festival is grinding out, as it always does, an incredible program of avant-garde and experimental short films and features from all over the world. The visual smorgasbord is assaulting Victoria, British Columbia on Oct. 12-20.

Some of the features include Matt McCormick‘s lyrical travelogue road trip The Great Northwest, Sabine Gruffat‘s Detroit & Dubai contrast and comparison I Have Always Been a Dreamer and Ben Rivers‘ acclaimed pastoral odyssey Two Years at Sea.

On the short film front, there’s Salise Hughes‘ vanishing Erasable Cities, Deborah Stratman‘s reworked silent film Village, silenced, Matt McCormick‘s meditation on abandoned spaces Future So Bright, Jem Cohen‘s portrait doc Crossing Paths With Luce Vigo, Lyn Elliot‘s stop-motion Another Dress, Another Button, Alyssa Timon‘s A Dog Wearing Glasses; and tons more.

Plus, there’s the special “Home Movie Day” tribute to Victoria, BC on Oct.

Entering into its third year, Crossroads is the San Francisco Cinematheque‘s celebration of the best modern avant-garde and experimental film. Curated by Cinematheque Artistic Director Steve Polta, it will run on May 18-20 at the Victoria Theatre at 2961 16th Street (at Mission).

Some of the special programs this year include a tribute and retrospective to Cinematheque co-founder Chick Strand featuring three of her experimental works, Kristallnacht (1979), Soft Fiction (1979) and Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966); plus, a screening of the complete works (so far) of young filmmaker Laida Lerxtundi, whose work explores “how filmic moments can be imbued with emotional resonance;” as well as a program of live expanded cinema performances by Kerry Laitala, Greg Pope and Gerritt Wittmer & Paul Knowles.

The rest of the fest consists of screening blocks of short experimental films, including Ken Jacob‘s latest, Seeking the Monkey King, plus new work by Jesse McLean, Paul Clipson,...

The 18th annual Chicago Underground Film Festival is ready to have another monumental year at the Gene Siskel Film Center on June 2-9, featuring a killer lineup with new films from some true underground legends.

First, Usama Alshaibi will screen his latest, most visually stunning and conceptually innovative feature Profane, about a spiritually confused Muslim sex worker trying to recapture her lost jinn — a demon of smokeless fire — on streets of the Windy City.

Then, documentary filmmakers Jeff Krulik and John Heyn return to their hard rockin’ roots with Heavy Metal Picnic, which relives one of the most notorious ’80s weekend parties in the history of Maryland and the world — the Full Moon Jamboree, which if you can remember it means you weren’t there. Plus, Hmp will be screened with Heyn and Krulik’s underground classic Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

Also in the documentary vein, are Marie Losier‘s...