Friday, October 13th

We bookended the day with two different examinations of sex and violence in experimental film. The first was our only round-table discussion of the day, which focused on that very topic, in large parts inspired by the viewing of Frans Zwartjes relatively gore-free, but nevertheless sinister and oppression-themed masterwork of the night before, Pentimento. The last bookend was our final program of the night, Dirty and Narcissistic Secrets, a collection of all manner of cinematic subversions of "normative" portrayals of identity, sexuality, and rancid cocks.

In between these two entirely engaging parts of the festival were several very impressive film programs. Shortly following the day's opening discussion, we all stayed in the Tivoli's creepy Gothic/Industrial wine cellar-like basement for a special viewing of Frank Biesendorfer's 8mm filmic diary, Introspection Part 2, a single element of what sounds like an ongoing life-project that Biesendorfer seems to be working towards wholly on gut impulse: a sustained documentation and subtle reconfiguration of his home and family life which he may plan to eventually turn into some sort of epic-length masterpiece of personal cinema. Observing his work and talking with Frank, one genuinely accepts this exciting possibility as a hoped-for inevitability.

Upon coming up from our lair, we moved back into the main house at Starz for a relatively brief but quite excellent program of 16mm works including an unusual hand-worked film by Jon Behrens contrasting starkly illuminated figures and hand made direct-to-film abstractions. The overall effect was creepy enough to properly prepare us for the following film, Brittany Gravely's Blood of the Earthworm, a half hour of sweeping cultural and political criticism wrapped in a self-consciously free associative, pop ADD anti-horror veneer that remained refreshingly free of cheap irony. Besides being one of the very funniest films of the festival thus far, it was also oddly touching.
Following this great start to the day were a couple of programs that I unfortunately had to miss but heard nothing but good things about since. Apparently Peter Rose's work, which dealt with a lot of text, left quite an impression on many of the viewers.

After what I imagine was another great program, Architectural Acuity, I got back in gear with the abovementioned skinarama program, which kicked off with some found poetry readings by me, followed by Jason Wade's dead-on reimagining of the phallus as a "site" of carnivalesque playfulness and outlandish self-abuse/glorification in My Rancid Cock. It helped that Wade had musical bud in tow, Jon Neilson, to supply some truly epic live distorted tape sounds to accompany the good vibes coming off the gourd in front. "Help me cum!" A more paranoid and overtly body-anxious examination of dicks came next, with Steve McIntyre's Steak Baby. A low budg horror comedy cum (heehee) masculine nightmare, Steak Baby was hilarious and simple enough to be relatively direct if not for all the beautiful little moments of completely wtf humor, including a robot mannacin meat deliverer and a temperamental stuffed cat.

The following film was a not terribly dissapointing mistake, in that we received the wrong Dirt. Originally, Piero Heliczer's avant-garde classic was to show, but instead we got an experimental dance/rape fantasy movie of the same name. It turned out to be nicely fitting with the mood of the program and an interesting counterpoint to the fantasy that came after, Jose Rodriguez-Soltero's narcissistic day dream of longing for gratification. At first the main character finds pleasure in himself but by the end, the filmmaker hints at possibile fulfillment for the individual at the "hands" of another.

Though not nearly as sexually complicated as the previous films, current science professor and former Factory type A. Keewatin Dewdney's Malanga was a triumph in editing alternating scenes of the same character reading and dancing to begin crossing the effects of hearing and seeing. Very mathy and very 60s!

Two films by Paul Bartel closed out the set and though Progretti possibly mystified a lot of people as to its scheduling, the last film, Bartel's cinematic manipulation satire, The Secret Cinema, was a funny and goofy presentation of his and maybe our latent fears of having one's life constructed without our knowledge and of the duplicity of friends in a film-within-a-film world. Sorta creepy, but quite funny as well.

After finally getting out of our silver-screened shrine, we all met over at Globeville Studios for a very swinging art party featuring film projections and drum circles, not to mention the dope cheap beer! If there's anything cooler than sitting around with a bunch of movie dorks it's talking to them while drunk. Plenty of cigarettes were smoked, bonding was done, and hopefully someone got laid, but we've yet to see an experimental film come out of it so who's to say?

-JT Rogstad

[Pics: Blood of the Earthworm by Brittany Gravely & My Rancid Cock by Jason Wade.]