08.27.06
Posted in Whatever, Cinema, 3D, Cinema History, History, World 3D Film Expo II, 2006 at 4:33 pm by Spencer
The second World 3D Film Expo begins in just a couple weeks, on Friday Sept. 8. As I’ve mentioned before, the ten-day festival packs some 25 features and even more shorts all in dual-projector “interlock” Polarized projection — pretty much the best (and only) way to see these films.
The festival is being held in Hollywood at the legendary Egyptian Theater, one of the grandest and most storied movie theaters in all the world. Built by Sid Grauman and developer Charles E. Toberman. It cost $800,000 and took 18 months. When it opened in October 1922, the sumptuous Egyptian Theater hosted the first classic Hollywood film premiere, for Douglas Fairbank’s Robin Hood. Graumann would not open his landmark Chinese Theater until 1927.
The architecture by Meyer and Holler includes a 150 foot open forecourt with columns and I dunno, you pretty much just have to see the pictures to believe it. The Egyptian, in disrepair, closed in 1992 and laid dormant and decaying for several years, which included the 1994 Northridge quake that caused significant damage.
American Cinemateque then stepped up to the plate and took over the space. A capital campaign was launched to finance a $12 million complete restoration, apparently even saving the organ.
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Posted in Whatever, Writings at 1:47 pm by Spencer
1/9/90
(from a letter never sent)
I picture you down there, in bed with a lizard. As its claws dig at your freshly tattooed arm — red, green, blue — a black wind pounds like Kong.
Shapes with rifles, somehow impervious to the 100 mph winds, walk the streets choosing corners and doorways to guard at random, and only for brief periods. Ghost automatons guarding mythic booty, while you clutch the reptile for comfort. The bed shifts at times from the from the force of the wind through the wall crannies and door gaps, jets of fine mist erupting from the key hole.
In the navy yard there is dim glowing and a thunderous hum.
Moloch condenses, solidifies, and his jugular visibly clenches as he rises. The wind and rain turn red and entrails fall like sleet.
The howling wind explodes through wood into the house, and you can see him towering in a blinding anti-corona, eyes a solar blue. The buildings all dissolve in the drenching rain gut blast and you see, beyond the horizon toward Virginia, another glowing dome of entrails and plasmic darkness, a rising humanoid.
The night splits in two.
The Molochs fuse; quantum leaping — an exponential growth; the earth itself is shrieking with exploding boils.
in the church, there is laughter
somewhere, inside a mountain, a
circle of priests smile
into their scanners, watching as the ÜberMoloch
blip drifts eastward hungrily toward the
rising sun.
The lizard, its head buried bloodily in your arm, screams as you wish pray you would could must lose consciousness, or better…
awake.
But you cannot.
I’ve been rummaging around in old folders, and discovered this piece of writing from 1990. In real life, the person in question had written after recently surviving a major hurricane along with his pet, a large iguana. During the storm I had seen footage on the nightly news of troops from a nearby naval base patrolling parts of his city.
Meanwhile, chaos was in the air in those days. Eight months after this was written, with the Soviet Union collapsing in the background, Iraq invaded Kuwait and the first Gulf War was on. As if in resonance, my personal life and creative community were also both in disarray at the time, and I was writing a lot. I did mail back to my friend in the end, but sent a different letter (without this journal excerpt). We lost touch sometime around or after the Gulf War, though I remember him fondly and still wish him well, wherever he may be.
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08.20.06
Posted in News of the World, Spooks, Covert Action, Politics, History at 4:44 pm by Spencer
As discussed in a previous post, Col. James Steele is currently Counselor to the U.S. Ambassador for Iraqi Security Forces. Some of these forces are known to be involved in death squad activity in Iraq. During the mid-1980s, Col. Steele was assigned to El Salvador, where he led the US Military Advisory Group, commanding special “counter-insurgent” forces at the brigade level.
According to a wide array of evidence, Col. Steele helped direct Salvadoran military death squads and torture, and was involved to some extent in Iran-Contra.
Following are number of bibliographic citations related to Col. Steele, courtesy of Namebase.org.
STEELE JAMES J (COL)
El Salvador 1985-1986
Nicaragua 1986
* Bainerman, J. The Crimes of a President. 1992 (21)
* Castillo, C. Harmon, D. Powderburns. 1994 (151, 164-5, 169-70)
* Christic Institute. Sheehan Affidavit. 1988-03-25 (223-5)
* Cockburn, A. & L. Dangerous Liaison. 1991 (256, 258)
* Cockburn, L. Out of Control. 1987 (223)
* Lobster Magazine (Britain) 1997-#33 (28)
* New Federalist 1994-10-24 (8)
* Parry, R. Lost History. 1997 (59)
* Prados, J. Presidents’ Secret Wars. 1988 (445-6, 451-2, 455)
* Progressive 1987-05 (21)
* Progressive 1988-03 (23)
* Rodriguez, F. Weisman,J. Shadow Warrior. 1989 (225-6, 231, 234-5)
* Sklar, H. Washington’s War on Nicaragua. 1988 (231, 273, 278, 324)
* Tarpley, W.G. Chaitkin,A. George Bush. 1992 (404, 409)
* Walsh, L. Final Iran-Contra Report. Volume III. 1993-12-03 (66-7, 70-1, 75-6)
* Washington Post 1986-10-18 (A14)
* Washington Post 1986-12-05 (A1, 24)
* Washington Post 1989-04-30 (A26, 27)
* Washington Post 1989-06-09 (A36)
* Washington Post 1990-09-30 (A6)
* Washington Post 1991-07-07 (A4)
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Posted in News of the World, What I'm Reading, Spooks, Covert Action, Politics at 1:38 pm by Spencer
As the headlines attest, death squad activity in Iraq is not only well-established but escalating. In recent months, hundreds have been killed in Baghdad alone while thousands are believed to have fallen victim throughout Iraq. In July this year, US forces in Baghdad began a well-publicized campaign against the death squads.
The prevailing, shall we say, “mainstream wisdom” about Iraqi death squads runs about as follows (from a July 25, 2006 CNN online report):
Most death squad killings appear to be sectarian, with Sunni Muslim gunmen targeting Shia neighborhoods, and Shiite attackers going after Sunnis. Victims are sometimes abducted by the dozens, their bodies often turning up later with signs of torture.
On Monday [July 24, 2006], three bodies were recovered across Baghdad. All had been shot in the head and showed signs of being brutalized.
Sunni leaders have accused Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government of allowing gunmen from Shiite militias to infiltrate Iraq’s police force, but U.S. troops have not found a “larger organization” behind the killings, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.
“It appears it’s very extremist elements from both sides out there operating, using murder and assassination as their means by which to further personal goals that they’re trying to achieve,” he said.
In July, about a month ago, the Pentagon launched a well-publicized counteroffensive against the death squads called, I shit you not, Operation Together Forward. As reported in the Washington Post recently:
The military calls the new battle for Baghdad “Operation Together Forward.” It began about two weeks ago [ca. mid-July 2006], with raids by U.S. and British special operations forces to capture or kill death squad leaders. So far, about 10 have been “taken out,” most of them members of the Mahdi Army, according to administration officials. The operations included a strike by British forces against a Mahdi Army lieutenant who had been terrorizing residents of Basra in southern Iraq.
But there’s a few stones in the proverbial shoe about the whole Iraqi death squad thing, namely a January 2005 Newsweek online article titled ‘The Salvador Option’: The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq. It never appeared in Newsweek’s newsstand edition, but the story was picked up by a few international news services and reproduced en masse throughout the blogosphere and, of course, the “leftie net”, where it’s an open and ongoing subject of discussion.
Unspecified but plural “sources” and “officials” inside the Pentagon told Newsweek that consideration was in the advanced stages over employing death squad tactics in Iraq taken from the Salvadoran and other death squad operations run by CIA and the Pentagon during the 1980s. Hence the nickname, The Salvador Option. The conservative elements were said to be strongly in favor and were discussing specifics.
Historically, death squads are special units within the military, secretly directed usually by the internal security service or the interior ministry. All are trained by and ultimately answer to the US usually via CIA, Special Forces, embassy officials with a “special portfolio,” and/or other covert personnel. Senior controllers in Washington DC are generally well — but deniably — briefed on the operations, which are sanctioned (again, secretly) at the highest levels of the US Administration. There is extensive available literature providing ample documentation of the Latin American death squads.
(As an aside, it perhaps bears mentioning that there are in fact some 380 troops and “special forces” from El Salvador’s 4th Cuscatlan Batalion in Iraq, according to 2005 numbers. Not that Salvadorans are the only ones capable of teaching or running death squads. After all, we trained them.)
That article appeared in January 2005. As it happens, a steady upward curve of death squad violence began to appear almost immediately thereafter. By November, only 10 months later, Z Magazine ran an article by Nicolas JS Davies, “The Dirty War in Iraq”, which summarized news accounts of dozens of death squad and similar incidents in Iraq, all within the prior 11 or 12 months. In June 2005, an Iraqi special correspondent for Knight Ridder, Yasser Salihee, who was writing increasingly damaging articles about Iraqi death squads, was shot once through the head by a sniper and killed while stopped at a US/Iraqi-manned checkpoint newly erected near his home.
Recently, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (yes, the former presidential candidate) added a memo to the Congressional Record concerning a letter he sent to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In the letter, dated April 5, 2006, Kucinich recites one of the most comprehensive checklists I’ve seen of Iraqi death squad related press revelations and related events within the US and Iraq militaries. He concludes by requesting “a copy of all records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams. I look forward to receiving your response.” I’m not sure of Rumsfeld’s response if any, but I can imagine.
I can’t vouch for everything in Kucinich’s letter to Rumsfeld, but what I do know jives with how he puts it. The letter makes a lengthy post, but I want it on hand and it’s posted without making endorsement or judgement of Kucinich per se (a discussion for another day). Over time I’ll try to add contextual links to the reports and sources cited.
Letter to Secretary Rumsfeld
Source: www.kucinich.us/floor_speeches/iq_rumsfeld_letter4may.php
Dennis Kucinich speaking from the Floor of the House - Extensions of Remarks
Congressional Record, May 4, 2006
“Mr. Speaker, [on April 5 2006] I sent the following letter to Secretary Rumsfeld requesting records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support, and train Iraqi death squads:”
Hon. Donald Rumsfeld,
Secretary of Defense,
The Pentagon, Washington, DC.
April 5, 2006
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld:
I am writing to request a copy of all records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams.
On January 8, 2005, Newsweek magazine first published a report that the Pentagon had a proposal to train elite Iraqi squads to quell the growing Sunni insurgency. The proposal has been called the “Salvador Option,” which references the U.S. military assistance program, initiated under the Carter Administration and subsequently pursued by the Reagan Administration, that funded and supported “nationalist” paramilitary forces who hunted down and assassinated rebel leaders and their supporters in El Salvador. This program in El Salvador was highly controversial and received much public backlash in the U.S., as tens of thousands of innocent civilians were assassinated and “disappeared,” including notable members of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Oscar Romero and the four American churchwomen. According to the Newsweek report, Pentagon conservatives wanted to resurrect the Salvadoran program in Iraq because they believed that despite the incredible cost in human lives and human rights, it was successful in eradicating guerrillas.
Mr. Secretary, at a news conference on January 11, 2005, you publicly stated that the idea of a Salvador option was “nonsense.” Yet mounting evidence suggests that the U.S. has in fact funded and trained Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams and these teams are now operating with horrific success across Iraq.
We know that the Pentagon received funding for training Iraqi paramilitaries.
About one year before the Newsweek report on the “Salvador Option,” it was reported in the American Prospect magazine on January 1, 2004 [“Phoenix Rising” by Robert Dreyfuss, American Prospect vol. 15, no. 1] that part of $3 billion of the $87 billion Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill to fund operations in Iraq, signed into law on November 6, 2003, was designated for the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. According to the Prospect article, experts predicted that creation of this paramilitary unit would “lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists.” The article further described how the bulk of the $3 billion program, disguised as an Air Force classified program, would be used to “support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revenge-minded Iraqi security force.” According to one of the article’s sources, John Pike, an expert of classified military budgets at www.globalsecurity.org, “the big money would be for standing up an Iraqi secret police to liquidate the resistance.”
We know that some of the Pentagon’s Iraq experts were involved in the Reagan Administration’s paramilitary program in El Salvador.
Colonel James Steele, Counselor to the U.S. Ambassador for Iraqi Security Forces, formerly led the U.S. Military Advisory Group in El Salvador from 1984-1986, where he developed special operating forces at brigade level during the height of the conflict. The role of these forces in El Salvador was to attack “insurgent” leadership, their supporters, sources of supply, and base camps. Currently Colonel Steele has been assigned to work with the new elite Iraqi counter-insurgency unit known as the Special Police Commandos, operating under Iraq’s Interior Ministry.
Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, was U.S. Ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005. From 1981 to 1985, he was ambassador to Honduras where he played a key role in coordinating U.S. covert aid to the Contras, anti-Sandinista militias who targeted civilians in Nicaragua. Additionally, he oversaw the U.S. backing of a military death squad in Honduras, Battalion 3-16, which specialized in torture and assassination. The U.S. had similar programs of supporting paramilitary groups set up Nicaragua and Honduras as its program in El Salvador. In a Democracy Now interview on January 10, 2005, Allan Nairn, who broke the story about U.S. support of death squads in El Salvador, suspected that Ambassador Negroponte would most likely be involved in the economic side of U.S. support to death squads in Iraq.
We know that a wave of abductions and executions, in the style of the death squads of El Salvador, and with ties to an official government sponsor, and to the U.S., has hit Iraq.
News reports over the past 10 months strongly suggest that the U.S. has trained and supported highly organized Iraqi commando brigades, and that some of those brigades have operated as death squads, abducting and assassinating thousands of Iraqis. Some news highlights:
- May 1, 2005 — Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S. is providing technical and logistical support to the Maghawir (Fearless Warrior) brigades, the Interior Ministry’s special commandos, according to Major General Rasheed Flayih Mohammed. Iraqi authorities plan to increase deployment of the 12,000-strong Maghawir (Fearless Warrior) brigades, which are composed of well-trained veterans who have worked closely with U.S. forces in Najaf, Fallujah and Mosul and include the Wolf, Scorpion, Tiger and Thunder brigades.
- May 16-20, 2005 — Los Angeles Times and New York Times reveal discovery of 46 bodies, all Iraqi men abducted and slain execution-style, in various locations: floating in the Tigris, dumped in ditches and garbage-strewn lots, and buried at a poultry farm.
- June 15, 2005 — Washington Post reports that U.S. forces had knowledge of secret and illegal abductions of hundreds of minority Arabs in Kirkuk. The abductions were by forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military.
- June 20, 2005 — Los Angeles Times reports that Saad Sultan, of Iraq Human Rights Ministry said that police and security forces attached to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, thousands of whom have been trained by American instructors, are responsible for abusing up to 60% of estimated 12,000 detainees in prison and military compounds. He says the units have used tactics reminiscent of Saddam’s secret intelligence squads.
- July 3, 2005 — Reuters News reports that the government of Iraq publicly acknowledged that the new security forces were using torture. Article further says that accounts are common of people being seized by armed men in the uniforms of the police, army or special units like Baghdad’s Wolf Brigade police commandos, and then disappearing without trace or being found dead.
- July 28, 2005 — Los Angeles Times reports that members of a California Army National Guard company, the Alpha Company, who were implicated in a detainee abuse scandal, trained and conducted joint operations with the Wolf Brigade, a commando unit criticized for human rights abuses. In an online Alpha Company newsletter, Captain Haviland wrote, “We have assigned 2nd Platoon to help them transition, and install some of our ‘Killer Company’ aggressive tactical spirit in them.” The article further states that despite the Wolf Brigade’s controversial reputation for human rights violations, it is regarded as the gold standard for Iraqi security forces by U.S. military officials.
- August 31, 2005 — BBC reports that on the night of August 24, a large force of the Volcano Brigade raided homes in Al-Hurriyah city in the Baghdad, kidnapping and then executing 76 citizens. The victims were all shot in the head after their hands and feet had been tied up. They suffered the harshest forms of torture, deformation and burning.
- November 16, 2005 — Reuters News reports the discovery of 173 malnourished men, some of whom were tortured, imprisoned in a secret jail run by Shi’ite militias tied to the Interior Ministry.
- November 17, 2005 — Newsday reports that in the past year, the U.S. military has helped build up Iraqi commandos under guidance from James Steele, a former Army Special Forces officer who led U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in El Salvador in the 1980s. The brigades built up over the past year include the Lion Brigade, Scorpion Brigade and Volcano Brigade.
- February 15, 2006 — Associated Press reports that the Interior Ministry has launched a probe into death squad allegations.
- February 19, 2006 — BBC reveals that morgues in Baghdad receive dozens of bodies picked up daily from rivers, sewage plants, waste burial sites, farms and desert areas. Most of the bodies are handcuffed and blindfolded civilians with a bullet or more in the forehead, indicating that they were executed. The handcuffs used on the victims are like those used by the Iraqi police.
- February 26, 2006 — The Independent reports that outgoing United Nations’ human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace, revealed that hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by the death squads working from the Ministry of Interior. He said that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the Baghdad mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes.
- March 9, 2006 — Los Angeles Times reports that Iraqi police officers who worked at the Interior Ministry’s illegal prison had received American training, and that U.S. trainers have also given extensive support to 27 brigades of heavily armed commandos accused of a series of abuses, including the death of 14 Sunni Arabs who were locked in an airtight van last summer.
- March 10, 2006 — Sidney Morning Herald reports that men wearing the uniforms of U.S.-trained security forces, which are controlled by the Interior Ministry, abducted 50 people in a daylight raid on a security agency. Masked men who are driving what appear to be new government-owned vehicles are carrying out many of the raids.
- March 27, 2006 — The Independent reports that while U.S. authorities have begun criticizing the Iraqi government over the “death squads,” many of the paramilitary groups accused of the abuse, such as the Wolf Brigade, the Scorpion Brigade and the Special Police Commandos were set up with the help of the American military. Furthermore, the militiamen were provided with U.S. advisers some of whom were veterans of Latin American counter-insurgency which also had led to allegations of death squads at the time.
Mr. Secretary, in light of this evidence of U.S. support for and the existence of death squads in Iraq, what is the basis for your January 11, 2005 statement, that the idea of a Salvador option in Iraq is “nonsense”?
I request a copy of all records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams. I look forward to receiving your response.
Sincerely,
Dennis J. Kucinich,
Member of Congress
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08.19.06
Posted in Cinema, Space is the Place, Spooks, Politics, History, Online Video at 12:56 pm by Spencer
Visiting The Memory Hole, I noticed they’ve posted digitized copies of A Point in Time, a 1972 hour-long top-secret documentary about the Corona spy satellite program. Produced by the CIA, it covers the entire history of the Corona program, and includes engineers’ footage as well as interviews. The film was not declassified until the mid-1990s (along with many other Corona materials) and while it was shown at a CIA-sponsored Corona history conference in 1995, it has remained almost completely unseen by the general public. This digital capture is from a VHS copy received directly from the National Archives.
The CIA documentary, which is public domain, as well as video proceedings from the 1995 conference, have been posted to Archive.org in Quicktime and MP4 (both streaming and static formats). Alas, the highest resolution offered is only 320 x 240, and there is no DVD-friendly MP2 copy. All the same, looks to be very worthwhile viewing — like time travelling to 1972 and getting a top-secret briefing. Pardon me, but is your shoe ringing?
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Posted in Whatever, Nifty Links at 10:13 pm by Spencer
(Anyone else ever read Interface by “Stephen Bury”?) It’s August in Seattle, things are on the move, everyone’s trying to cram in all their summer everythings. Me, I’ve been camping, settled in with some new 16mm movies, turned 40 over a champagne brunch and later got plastered at a glorious cook-out at soul siblings Mike & Viv’s that ultimately turned into a small double birthday party, and am running full tilt every day at work (cuz, being in Seattle, it’s our busy season).
So…time for a beer, a smoke, some Metafilter and random tangents. I’ll catch up later. Maybe.
Al Jazeera has a very interesting story about $100-150 kid-oriented laptops that appear to be powered, at least in part?, by a hand-crank. Setting aside the item’s provenance, the story is a good one and the guy’s idea is a great one. Namely, A) not only make some kind of computer with network capability available for as cheap as possible, but B) make it workable (and rugged enough) for an impoverished environment, while (most importantly) C) giving them intuitive apps and interfaces that are task-based and simple to use…including basic video and audio editing. It all really got me thinking.
Back on the home front, brothercake has cooked up a right interesting proof-of-concept CSS/Javascript “applet” called the Dungeon. It’s a maze you navigate by clicking buttons (currently), complete with simultaneously-shifting POV view and bird’s-eye view. It even functions acceptably over dial-up.
And the politics lately…oi gevalt. All I can say is, you watch, now begins the march to Iran and Qwan Yin preserve us all. As I told my old friend Lora, Queen of the Universe, recently I hope all these crazy-ass millenarian fundamentalist yayhoos, all these dumb-ass self-absorbed Jerry-Springer-grade dyfunctional Abrahamic religious lunatic brats do throw down all the Apocalyptic shit, with the mystical cows and the whatever, and watch them when nothing happens. No “Left Behind” shit with empty cars bumping into winos, no ascention of the Chosen People (or at least everyone’s secret giggle, the ascention of the 1,500 street prostitutes), no fist of God or sound of infinity. Only the quiet clacking of a loose-hanging board in the wind over the blood-dusted wreckage of the world. What then, brothers? If that’s not when the UFOs land (talk to the Mayans and the Dogon about that shit, man), and even if it is, what then? Seriously.
Right whatever, so anyway there is of course the epic Christian Science Monitor 11-part series about/by reporter Jill Carroll, who was abducted in Raq and held captive for two and a half months.
Appropriately enough, and not at all to make light of Ms. Carroll’s traumatic abduction (on the contrary), showing up this week on the University Bookstore’s shelves was the US hardcover edition of Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar by British national Moazzam Begg. He was given the full treatment we’ve read about, and after some semi-public international acrimony was ultimately released to Britain in 2005 “without explanation or apology,” in the words of the inside flap. As a voter in whose name this stuff is being done, I have my copy. Do you have yours yet?
And then there’s the George Grosz sketchbook (Manhattan Skyline and Mice, 1950-1951) over at Harvard. Late-nineteen-teens radical art has been rather apparent lately, which is good. There was the landmark Dada exhibit at the National Art Gallery which, I think, moved on to NYC somewheres. In July there was a “Daughters of Dada” exhibit at the Francis M. Naumann gallery, that I would give my eyeteeth to visit (or maybe a small toe for a catalog, if such a thing existed).
“…The American woman is the most intelligent woman in the world today—the only one that always knows what she wants, and therefore always gets it. Hasn’t she proved it by making her husband in his role of slave-banker look almost ridiculous in the eyes of the whole world? Not only has she intelligence but a wonderful beauty of line is hers possessed by no other woman of any race at the present time.
“And this wonderful intelligence, which makes the society of her equally brilliant sisters of sufficient interest to her without necessarily insisting on the male element protruding in her life, is helping the tendency of the world today to completely equalize the sexes, and the constant battle between them in which we have wasted our best energies in the past will cease.”
– Marcel Duchamp, 1915
(courtesy of the gmtPlus9 (-15) blog in Appleton, WI, and yes I’ve been to Appleton and yes I’m sorry…tho at least it is awful pretty in the fall.)
And how ’bout that Fidel, eh? I fist my chin at you, too, ya crazy old bastard. You sure had me fooled — I was certain you’d bought it.
Speaking of crazy olf bastards, the secret headquarters of Sun City Girls is closed for the annual August expedition. Hey, if it taking a month off is good enough for the president it’s good enough for Uncle Jim. I’m just sayin’.
And in that nexus, a surprising number of MP3s of old ’80s punk rock endeavors that my ol’ Hoosier pal Scott Colburn was involved with have been showing up on some of the punk MP3 blogs lately. Coincidentally, the appearance of The Blood Farmers EP (1985) on 7inchpunk.com came within a couple days me and Scott having talked about the record. Gorsh…
*Cough* (Interkosmos)
Ok, I’m done. Peace out.
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08.10.06
Posted in Cinema, What I'm Reading, Silent Films, DVDs, Cinema History, Experimental Film, Books at 8:57 pm by Spencer
Okay. A commercial plug, I know, but trust me on this one. As all good video store vultures know, the legendary Anthology Film Archives in NYC recently released the astonish 7 DVD collection, Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941. Some 155 amazing films are anthologized in volumes with a general theme. Almost even more impressive, sixty of the world’s greatest film archives contributed to the the box set’s 17 hour total running time, including MOMA, George Eastman House, Library of Congress, the Blackhawk Collection, BFI, the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, the Douris Collection, and of course the aforementioned Anthology Film Archives, among many others at least as impressive.
To call Unseen Cinema an essential release, a cultural landmark, one to skimp on the light bill for, is obviously an understatement. Fortunately, the whole thing is also an utter delight. I’d even hold it to the Anthology of American Folk Music. Early DW Griffith “primitives” and Edison trick films sit side-by-side with well-known Dada and 1960s experimental films, more obscure delicacies and underground legends and, best of all, a sizable percentage of “amateur” films like the highly advanced collage films of Joseph Cornell.
A densely-typeset 16-page overarching essay by the anthology’s curator Bruce Posner is included, but otherwise the packaging is minimal — titles, years when available, filmmakers’ names, composers, some administrivia.
Turns out there’s an Unseen Cinema companion book you can order, which I’ve not seen around nor heard of until I bought the set. At a measley $15 (sale price) I strongly encourage anyone with an interest in this sort of stuff to stop by the official Unseen Cinema web site and get one. Beats buying it for 35 in few years. Having received my copy, I can say it not only stands on its own with or without the amazing multi-DVD set, it’s one of the very best books published on the history of experimental film, period.
The Unseen Cinema series catalog is a dense 160 pages, softbound, illustrated, and in their words…
…features 30 essays, articles, and documents and 65 annotated photographs. Authors are scholars, critics, and filmmakers whose knowledge of the early avant-garde derives from either direct experience as a participant or years of scholarly research. Many hard-to-find photographs and sources detail the first decades of American experimental cinema in the United States and abroad.
See? I’m sayin’. I mean it includes an essay on “The Artistic Process” by Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker, for crying out loud.
What’s unusual is the sales site offers two pricing tiers for the book — the slightly more expensive one (the price I just quoted) which includes a small bump for Anthology Film Archives’ continuing preservation work, or a cheaper one 35% off retail but minus the 25% donation to support film preservation.
So mind you: if any one of youse stoops to paying the cheaper price, you’ll burn in hell for it.
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08.01.06
Posted in Cinema, Cinema History at 10:33 pm by Spencer
Over at Robbie’s Reels they’ve got the 16mm Timeline, a detailed capsule history of 80 years of 16mm collecting, beginning with A Child’s Birthday Party (1921), the first film to be shot on that gauge. This is one of those sites that not only tells you that was the first 16mm film, but also shows you a photo of a strip of it. It’s the best squirrel’s nest chronology of this that I’ve come across so far.
And by the way, were you aware “the first 15 years of live television in America survives to this day on 16 mm Kinescope film”?
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