Photo by Sophie BeeIn the display window of a used record store, you can see covers for albums that don’t exist. They bear titles like Flaming Creatures or Heaven and Earth Magic, familiar to aficionados of experimental film, alongside lurid designs by local artist Tom Carey. This exhibit can mean only one thing: the film festival has come to Ann Arbor. Just down the block is the Michigan Theater, which has been operating since 1928. For one week every spring, its spacious main auditorium and cozy screening room host an intimidating array of avant-garde programming. The selections are eclectic in subject matter, submitted from all over the world, and interspersed with recently restored prints of older works. This practice means that no presentation is predictable. The only constant that carries across the festival is the artists’ collective push against the traditional boundaries of their medium.An example of this ethos...
- 4/8/2016
- by Alice Stoehr
- MUBI
Thundercrack!
Directed by Curt McDowell
Written by George Kuchar
USA, 1975
When one looks at the underground cult film scene of the 1960s and 1970s, the names Mike Kuchar and George Kuchar definitely come to mind. Twin-brothers who have spent the majority of their lives making short films, Mike and George utilized over-the-top titles and experimental storylines, all of the home movie variety shot on a rather “stylized” no-budget that Ed Wood would’ve been jealous of. Mike Kuchar’s work seemed to be inspired by pop genre films with a dash or two of wild fantasy: his best known film (well, best known in regards to the underground) is Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965), a trippy sci-fi/fantasy whatsit, all shot in color 16mm inside various rooms with limited art direction, utilizing dubbed-in narration and on-screen dialogue represented by optical cartoon-like speech-bubbles, and cribbing some music cues of Bernard Herrmann’s...
Directed by Curt McDowell
Written by George Kuchar
USA, 1975
When one looks at the underground cult film scene of the 1960s and 1970s, the names Mike Kuchar and George Kuchar definitely come to mind. Twin-brothers who have spent the majority of their lives making short films, Mike and George utilized over-the-top titles and experimental storylines, all of the home movie variety shot on a rather “stylized” no-budget that Ed Wood would’ve been jealous of. Mike Kuchar’s work seemed to be inspired by pop genre films with a dash or two of wild fantasy: his best known film (well, best known in regards to the underground) is Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965), a trippy sci-fi/fantasy whatsit, all shot in color 16mm inside various rooms with limited art direction, utilizing dubbed-in narration and on-screen dialogue represented by optical cartoon-like speech-bubbles, and cribbing some music cues of Bernard Herrmann’s...
- 1/20/2016
- by Christopher Koenig
- SoundOnSight
Curt McDowell and George Kuchar's comedy epic of oversexed sensationalists running amuck while trapped in a storm-battered house goes beyond strange. It's a legit experimental film but -- gasp! -- also 2.5 hours of hardcore porn and other forms of giddy depravity. A movie guaranteed to make conservative heads explode -- read with caution, please! Thundercrack! Blu-ray Synapse Films 1975 / B&W /1:33 flat full frame / 160 min. / Street Date December 8, 2015 / 39.95 Starring Marion Eaton, Melinda McDowell, George Kuchar, Mookie Blodgett, Ken Scudder, Bernie Boyle, Mark Ellinger, Laurie Hendricks, John Thomas. Cinematography & Film Editor Curt McDowell Makeup Mr. Dominic Original Music Mark Ellinger Written by Mark Ellinger, George Kuchar, Curt McDowell Produced by Charles Thomas, John Thomas Directed by Curt McDowell
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
*Not your usual Savant review.* As a student in the 1970s I worked as an usher at a couple of Filmex exhibitions at Grauman's Chinese. I then volunteered...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
*Not your usual Savant review.* As a student in the 1970s I worked as an usher at a couple of Filmex exhibitions at Grauman's Chinese. I then volunteered...
- 12/19/2015
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
"At least one eternal truth can be abstracted from Dw Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation," proposes Dave Kehr in the New York Times: "people can be very, very advanced in some areas, and very, very backward in others…. Even now, in Kino International's fine new Blu-ray edition, The Birth of a Nation continues to thrill and confound, to exalt and appall in equal measure. Griffith's racial caricatures were crude in 1915; seen today, as the film approaches its 100th anniversary, these images may seem more ludicrous than dangerous (watermelon plays a major role), but in reminding us of how far we have come, they remind us how far we have yet to go. Paradoxically, the overriding theme of The Birth of a Nation is one of unification, of the harmonizing of diverse elements — social and regional, political and personal, North and South, male and female — into an original...
- 11/26/2011
- MUBI
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