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

25 years later, the hardcore punk rockers continue to inspire artists & activists. I learned about the DIY ethic from the DC punk/indie rock scene of the early 90's, which came out of the (and were mostly some of the same key people) earlier DC harDCore scene of the 80's. Find out about those DC bands (Minor Threat, D.O.A., G.I., Iron Cross, etc. in the 80's & in the post-harDCore 90's: Fugazi, Blue Tip, The Nation of Ulysses, etc.) at the Dischord Records website. Read all about the new doc about the US hardcore scene, 1980 - 86, titled AMERICAN HARDCORE, at this Filmmaker Magazine interview. More on this flick coming soon. - Sujewa

One of the repeated items in my movie Date Number One is a discussion about a Sri Lankan-French merchant colony in Medieval Japan. When I wrote the script in '04 I knew of no ancient/pre-2oth century contact between the French and the Sri Lankans. But tonight I found, in a book titled The Heritage of The Bhikkhu, originally published in 1946 in Sinhala & translated to English in 1974, by the monk Walpola Rahula, the following sentence on page 58, chapter: The Dutch Period: "In 1672 a French fleet arrived in Ceylon. King Rajasimha II , who learned that the French were against the Dutch, permitted them to build a fortress near the harbor of Trincomalee, with the hope of getting their help to defeat the Dutch." So, if Rahula is correct, then there was significant contact between the French & the Sri Lankans (Ceylon is a former name for Sri Lanka). This contact did not happen in Medieval Japan, but, a French FLEET & a FORTRESS in 1672 Sri Lanka, that is very sign

Yeah, it's pretty difficult to make my low budget superdelicious comedy/romantic comedy movies w/ out actors. Luckily for me, DC's got a thing called Stonehenge - mass auditions for indie films. The next Stonehenge is happening on Sat 9/30. Here is the intro to the event from their web site : " Stonehenge Basics: What? Stonehenge is a one-day event held twice a year in Washington DC. If you're an actor, think of it as a mass audition like the League auditions. You'll be able to perform a monologue in front of 20 or more production companies looking to produce films in the next six months. If you're a filmmaker, think of Stonehenge as a mass casting tool, showing you over 100 actors whom you might call back to read for a specific part. If you're a National Film Challenge team looking for actors, this is a great way to find them. The goal of Stonehenge is to be simple, effective, and inexpensive (free for actors, a small fee for companies). Past Stonehen

Not really sure how this happened but it is very cool. The New York Times web site has a relatively empty page (for now maybe, perhaps over time stuff will be added to it) for my film Date Number One . Well, at least someone there knows about the movie. Not a bad thing at all. Here's the link for the DNO on NYT site page . Enjoy :) - Sujewa

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