ARTHOUSE FILM NEWS - Cosmic Disco Detective Rene at Facets, Chicago 11/29/23

For the new kids who do not know who Jon Moritsugu is, here is the 1st paragraph of what the 2002 New York Underground Film Festival said about him & his feature (shot on Hi-8!!!) Scumrock : " Oh guys --listen up. Do not, we repeat, do not screw yourselves and miss out on this, because everyone who has half a brain and even a milligram of taste knows that Jon Moritsugu is a LIVING FUCKING UNDERGROUND MOVIE GOD and you should be so lucky to be able to prostate [sic] yourselves before his latest work of low-fi genius. An anti-digital video shot entirely on old analog hi8 gear and edited on linear VHS, Scumrock will bathe you in an unbelievably beautiful electronic fuzz both audial and visual but the feel is not New Wave 1982, it's New Wave 1962. With a laid-back pace and poker-faced seriousness Scumrock wraps delicious nuggets of bittersweet realness inside multiple layers of tart poseur irony and spicy postpunk attitude." Read the rest of the NYUFF intro to Moritsugu/S

Before I get to the link for Brian "The Film Panel Notetaker" Geldin's notes on the event, let me reflect for a moment on the rapid "re-habilitation" of the D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) approach to self-distribution. Five years & more ago DIY distribution was a very unusual thing undertaken by underground filmmakers such as Jon Moritsugu or the mostly "ethnic" minority/non-"white" audience targeted projects such as The Debut or Sankofa. This year the Independent Feature Project is doing a special screening series highlighting self-distributed movies that are not specially targeted to underground or minority audiences (although The Guatemalan Handshake is not being self-distributed at the moment as far as I know - aside from film festival & special event screenings, but the series' upcoming presentations: Head Trauma & Four Eyed Monsters are definitely DIY distro projects), the Independent Film Channel's website recently wrote a

The post here will tell you all about a Village Voice article not doing its proper research and calling the Pioneer Theater in NYC a sloppy operation. And the post goes on to praise the Pioneer & programmer Ray Privett for working well with filmmakers & honoring agreements in a timely manner, contrary to the picture painted by the Voice article. The East Village art house theater may have had significant problems in its operation in the past, but the Pioneer I encountered this year was a well oiled machine, easy to work with and very responsive. If all indie film theaters functioned like the Pioneer, the lives of a lot of real indie filmmakers & indie film fans may improve significantly. The Voice should be celebrating the Pioneer instead of publishing sloppy articles that unfairly criticize a valuable member of the US indie film scene. While many so-called indie film theaters in the nation are in reality outlets for indiewood product channeled through the Hollywood pipel

Think there is something horribly wrong with tens of thousands of humans being held in prison by the US without trials? Then find out more about exactly how fucked up the situation is at this GreenCine interview with filmmaker Michael Tucker. Here is the introduction to the interview: " If you're at a loss for what to make of the official US rhetoric on our momentum toward victory in Iraq , see the documentaries of Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein . They made Gunner Palace , one of the best docs on the war in Iraq from the point of view of US soldiers two years ago, and they returned to this month's Toronto International Film Festival with their new doc, The Prisoner, or: How I Tried to Kill Tony Blair , the war seen from the point of view of an Iraqi captured by the same American troops." The prisoner that the title of the film refers to is an Iraqi journalist who was imprisoned & ill-treated for months while his jailers - soldiers & other US authorities

And you thought Date Number One screenings were all done, didn't ya? Silly human. We are just getting started. Screening # 12 was just set up in DC for early Nov. & a couple of 1 week long runs are in the works, but before we get to all that, here is all the info. on screening # 11, at Capital City Microcinema/Kensington Row Bookshop. The new & improved version of the film will unspool (or, to be more accurate, digital info will convert to images & sound, whatever that process is called) for the first time at this screening (& I might have some of them brand new retail DVDs of the flick for sale at this event): DATE NUMBER ONE http://www.wilddiner.com/ a comedy about several first dates a movie by sujewa ekanayake Thu Oct 5, 2006 :: 7:30 PM :: $5 Capital City Microcinema at Kensington Row Bookshop 3786 Howard Ave., Kensington, MD 20895 301.949.9416 :: MapQuest :: Directions "Date Number One" is a comedy about several first dates. This 115 minute movie is

Read them here , features a conversation between Scott Macaulay of Filmmaker Mag & a head of Miramax. Thanks Brian! -Sujewa

The Potomac Video near Chevy Chase Circle (DC) is awesome. Pretty much any hard to find or rare indie/foreign movie I want, they have. Huge collection downstairs - a lot on VHS, & a lot on DVD. Last night I picked up two movies I've been wanting to check out for a while: John Cassavetes' Shadows & Andrew Bujalski's Funny Ha Ha . Watched Shadows first. As a historical artifact, it is fascinating. As entertainment - it is OK. But, like Citizen Kane, to some it must have been something awesome at its debut period. The music in Shadows was good, jazz. Also it was brave of Cassavetes to tackle an "interracial"* romance related storyline in his first feature, made in the mid to late 1950's, a conservative time that was also cooking up, in the basement, massive social changes that would erupt above ground & shake & re-arrange life in the US in the 1960's & after. The film foreshadows some of the conflicts & changes - the sexual revolution

The "star" of a small, self-distributed US indie feature gets VIP treatment in Chile. Here is a taste of Mutual Appreciation's lead actor Justin Rice's notes from his trip to Chile to accompany a screening of the film at a festival there: " Then it got surreal. I went to a lunch at the Bi-National Center, and sat at the head of a giant table complete with white tablecloth. As the waiters, who looked sharp in their tuxedos, poured glasses of wine and served up the four-course meal, I was introduced to various filmmakers, producers, festival programmers, and animators, most of whom were old, and all of whom were baffled that young people responded so well to the festival in general and to Mutual Appreciation in particular. A few weeks ago, the U.S. embassy asked me for a bio, and I wrote one that was meant, mostly, to be funny. Tounge, cheek, etc. They had translated this bio into Spanish, and read aloud to the assembled host. I had a little ear bug so I cou

Team Jumping Off Bridges is taking their movie across the country on a D.I.Y. tour. Read the latest update here , by the director of the movie Kat Candler. - Sujewa

I dig the technical "flaws" in movies such as Godard's Breathless & Moritsugu's Scumrock, but many of my important peers in the indie film biz do not & certainly not many of the US audience members who I want to make happy with my movie. So, as painful as it is, major changes are being made to Date Number One . So, the version of the movie that will be screened on 10/5 will be much more "slick" & much, much less "rough", and will be shorter - perhaps by as much as 10 minutes. Since the movie represents not just my dreams/wishes/ambitions but the dreams of investors & actors & other collaborators AND more importantly, there are certain basic audience expectations (including reviewer expectations) that must be met in order to get a certain number of ticket & DVD sales in the US at this point in time, sacrifices are being made. The new version of Date Number One will not have the scenes w/ the iris problem in Story 2 (where the

" The result? The first week at AMC Kabuki, "The Debut" outdrew every other screen at that theater -- $30,000 in admissions. The film also spurred $15,000 in merchandising sales, which Cajayon credits as essential to the film's success. It was the last four-walling he would have to do. He now has a rep, and splits with the house." Read all about it on this 2001 indieWIRE article . - Sujewa