What's new from Jeremiah Kipp? Three little videos in the midst of our Covid pandemic.

TrustMovies tries to follow the work of (mostly) experimental filmmaker Jeremiah Kipp (shown at right) from time to time and is usually happy to have seen whatever Mr. Kipp is giving us. This is true once again, as the filmmaker produces three new videos designed for our current Covid-19 times. 

It appears that Kipp has not directed this time out, as each of these little videos have been filmed by the participants themselves during the lockdown -- though I would suspect Kipp has given all his casts some tips for fast and fundamental filmmaking.

In any case, the results are very worth watching -- particularly two of the three. Two videos are filmed poetry; one works beautifully, the other not so much. 

The first six-minute outing offers 14 actors -- some very good, a couple not so -- tackling Edgar Allan Poe's The Bells, which turns out to make quite a fine symbol and example of what we're all currently going through. Further, Poe's sonorous, repetitive, often quite beautiful words prove fine fodder for these actors, each of whom brings her or his own special voice and ability to the poem. If you've forgotten about Mr. Poe and his often in-critical-favor-then-out-of-favor work, this will remind you again how lovely and moving -- hell, even timely -- he can be.

The second poem (and three-minute film) is Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda, a poet I much admire but whose work -- based on what we see here, at least -- I would rather read on my own. While Poe really lends himself to actors and acting, Neruda, I think, does not, and the result actually breaks up the poetry, along with its meaning and its beauty.

The third and longest (eight minutes) movie is called JUMPER and it's something of a lulu. Written by Susannah Nolan, it describes the time of a birth of a baby and the few days that follow, as the babe's mother, father, relatives and friends all join in to recall this fraught period. A slow-burn horror told and acted exceedingly well by all involved and expertly edited by Jessica Green, Jumper's a strange and memorable little trip.

You can view all three of these films at their Vimeo link (no password required) by clicking on each title below: 

The Bells 

Jumper

Neruda's Sonnet XVII 

What a gal: BARBARA RUBIN AND THE EXPLODING NEW YORK UNDERGROUND explores a special time, place and culture

Barbara Rubin. That's a name TrustMovies hadn't even heard of prior to viewing Chuck Smith's charming and disarming new documentary about this young woman, who, at age 16, thanks to circumstances, smart choices and a little luck, found herself working with Jonas Mekas to help to organize and become a kind of moving force in the experimental film culture that rose to prominence in the 1960s.

It was not only experimental film that Ms Rubin fostered and even created; she brought together titans of poetry, performance art, music and more. Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol and Lou Reed owe an awful lot to this energetic and talented gal.

BARBARA RUBIN AND THE EXPLODING NY UNDERGROUND explores the early life (and early problems, as well) of the titular young woman briefly and succinctly, letting us see from almost the beginning what an unusual person she was. People who knew her describe her as a "mystic," and before you pooh-pooh this word (as I usually do), you may find (as did I) by the end of this fairly short documentary that you, too, are ready to apply the term to this unusual woman.

Filmmaker Smith (shown above) may not have given us the "all" of Ms Rubin, such a surprising and event-filled life did she lead, but what we see and hear should be enough to make us more than aware of what a singular force she was in the 1960s and, to maybe a lesser extent in the 70s.

How Rubin (shown above and below with Andy Warhol) was mentored by Mekas but soon went out on her own at age 18 to create an experimental film -- Christmas on Earth (originally to have been titled Cocks, Cunts and Christmas on Earth) -- that was both sexually explicit and genuinely experimental and that evidently still remains powerful enough to shock audiences. (The tidbits shown here certainly entice, but I would love to see the entire film.)

Her very close relationship with gay poet Allen Ginsberg (she wanted to bear his children) was pivotal to her life, and yet how (which we see and hear about here) and why (which we never quite understand) she suddenly embraced Orthodox Jewish religion and culture seems genuinely amazing, adding luster to that "mystical" theory. One friend opines that Rubin simply overlaid her love of Buddhism onto Orthodox Judaism. (The doc's Jewish orphanage moment should make a believer out of you, I suspect.)

Whatever Rubin did, she seems to have done it fully and with no qualms nor half measures. From her oddball letter to Walt Disney to her becoming perhaps the first woman to explore and open the Kabbalah to women, Rubin broke that mold for what a woman could do, just as she had done in the experimental film world -- which was a male-only place for the most part (as was the film world in general).

How her life ended (at age 35) seems both shocking and unnecessary. But then, there is so little known about the details of her time as a very fertile wife  -- take that, Mr. Ginsberg! -- in an Orthodox Jewish community in the south of France, who is to say her contribution here was any more or less important than that to the world of experimental film?

The various talking heads we hear from include film critics Amy Taubin and J Hoberman, the late Mr. Mekas himself, and most trenchant and insightful of all, author and assistant professor Ara Osterweil, clearly too young to have known Rubin but definitely deeply affected by the woman & her work.

From Juno Films and running just 78 minutes, after opening a couple of weeks previous at the IFC Center in New York City, the documentary screens at at the Roxy, San Francisco, on Wednesday, June 12, and hits the Los Angeles area on Friday, June 14, at Laemmle's Music Hall and then expands to Laemmle's Royal, Playhouse 7, Town Center 5, and Claremont 5 on June 17. Click here to find any further playdates, cities and theaters that may have been recently added.

Is Shane Carruth's UPSTREAM COLOR experimental or simply VERY independent?

Either way, it is certainly far out of the mainstream. As much as I enjoyed the 40-year-old filmmaker Shane Carruth's earlier movie, Primer (he's made only two), I have to admit that I didn't understand some of it. But so thoroughly did I enjoy it and also enjoyed being occasionally baffled by it, that after finishing the film, I simply wanted to watch it all over again. Primer has a relatively simple premise: the building and possibly using of a very homemade but amazing machine. A time machine? A tele-transporter? We never exactly know. Whatever it is, it's something that is of vital importance to the quartet of guys working on it, and probably to the world.

After viewing Carruth's new work, UPSTREAM COLOR, I didn't particularly want to watch it again. (The filmmaker -- who writes, directs, edits, composes the music and handles a number of other chores -- is pictured on poster, top, at right and occasionally below.) I may eventually give it a second viewing, but not for awhile. With this film, Carruth has taken a giant leap forward in terms of film-making prowess (the movie is gorgeous to look at, where Primer was merely there) and he offers us a premise and story much more complex and multi-stranded.

What Carruth accomplishes better than any other filmmaker I can think of, however, is in telling his tale quickly and highly suggestively. He uses suggestion and slick editing in a manner so that we barely see what is happening. Yet he enables us to follow along, if haltingly, and understand enough to keep going. Of all the independent filmmakers working today, he is the one who most challenges his audience but still manages to remain (if sometimes barely) accessible.

Is this bracing? Aye, aye, aye! Is it frustrating? Even more so. Forget about genre (it jumps one to another and back) and motivation (make it up as you go along, just as the actors probably had to). The plot? Compared to Primer, this one is all over the place: strange and powerful larvae, kidnapping (a brief one) followed by mind control and robbery, pigs and piglets (above), a maybe-love story, and then a kind of banding together and at long last... justice. Or not.

Carruth has cast himself in the leading male role (above), but he doesn't even appear for half an hour into this 96-minute movie (New York magazine's David Edelstein claims to have caught sight of Carruth briefly during that first half hour, but then Edelstein has already seen the movie twice). In any case, as an actor the guy is quite watchable, with a thin, angular body and a face to match.

In the leading lady role, up-and-comer Amy Seimetz (above and below) is impressive. With a face that commands attention even when it's doing almost nothing, Seimetz manages to bring a weird versatility to immobility.

So many of Carruth's ideas and visual notions seem so new and genuinely, meaningfully odd that when he resorts to something a little old-hat (like the sight of the "worms" noticeably crawling underneath the skin, which causes our heroine to try to cut them out of herself), it's a bit disappointing because we've been-there/done-that a few times already.

For all of the movie's buoyant suggestiveness, it packs almost no emotional punch. It's all allusive style. But what style! It is experimental, yes, but not, I think, so much so that most dyed-in-the-wool film buffs would have trouble following. The question is more will they be glad to have done so by the time the movie reaches its conclusion?

Upstream Color (the title of which may refer to the flowers (above) that somehow bloom from the aforementioned larvae and its spawn), an erbp Film release, opens this Friday, April 5, exclusively in Manhattan at the IFC Center, and will expand to 10 more cities on April 12, with further openings nationwide in late April and early May. (To see all currently scheduled screenings, click here.) On May 7, the film will be available on VOD, retail DVD/Blu-ray, iTunes, Amazon, and all other transactional digital outlets.

Get ready to shake, rattle and roll: Castaing-Taylor and Paravel's LEVIATHAN

OK. TrustMovies admits that experimental cinema is often not his cup of tea. But he tries to see some of it, occasionally, just to keep alert to the new. Once in awhile -- as with Denis Côté's recent Bestiaire, or a few years back, Il Divo, in which the Paolo Sorrentino under-stood just how experimental he could be and still create an actual movie -- the result can be shocking and ravishing and unique. In LEVIATHAN, the new and quite experimental documentary from Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel (shown below, with Ms Paravel on the left), the result is a near-non-stop "assault on the senses," as my screening companion put it.

As usual, I found some interesting moments along the way, and some zowie film tech-niques that, even as I write this, are likely already being incorpor-ated into more main-stream movies, probably those of the horror genre. (Like Psycho, this film has its own shower sequence: see below) Well, terrific, for this is where I think experimental film proves most useful. When viewed on its own as a single entity, for me at least, it tends to be repetitive and tiresome. Yet bits and pieces of what it discovers will find their way into other movies and will be used in a manner that can be understood and appreciated by us doltish masses (some of us, anyway), thus furthering the art of the motion picture.

That said, Leviathan is one of the most unremittingly grueling experiences, visually and aurally, that I’ve ever had in a movie theater seat. So much so, it became a badge of honor not to leave that seat for any reason: not to use the bathroom, not to seek the solace of the noisy Manhattan streets outside, not to do anything but just sit there and drink it in until those final credits rolled (which were rather difficult to read; someone could have chosen a clearer typeface). But I did it – and I am proud!

The film takes place on a large fishing vessel in the North Atlantic, where we see a "catch" being made, though it takes a long time to even know where we are or what is going on. Slowly (very) and noisily (very, very) things are revealed. The filmmakers' style is to put us so very up-close-and-personal to the crew, the machinery, the fish and all else that we almost feel like a cog in the machine.

There is almost no intelligible dialog, either, only a man or two mumbling now and again. Instead there are crashes (of the waves, and the machines), clunks (as the huge net of fish bangs back and forth), and other ambient sounds -- but more loudly than you will have heard them previously.

Yet I question the filmmakers’ choice of shooting methods – deliberately refusing to pull the camera back to give us a stronger sense of where we are. They do pull back occasionally (see those birds, below) but not nearly often enough. I understand that part of the point is to confuse us and make us feel vulnerable and frightened, like those poor fish (it'll be awhile before you want to dine off ocean life again). But enough, already.

It takes only a very short time to achieve this in-the-middle-of-it-all effect, yet the filmmakers go on and on. There is about 40 minutes of content here -- if that -- stretched to double time. And then they bore us to distraction with an interminable shot of Mr. Tatoo in the ship's galley. Sure, we're getting one of those long shots we've been craving, but to no purpose that I can ascertain. (Still, I hope that Hellman’s mayonnaise product-placement on the dining table netted them enough money to make their next movie.)

Leviathan, an endurance test of major proportions, makes Castaing-Taylor's earlier bleating-sheep-and-depressed-cowboys documen-tary, Sweetgrass, seem like a James Bond adventure. The movie, from Cinema Guild and running 87 minutes, opens this Friday, March 1, in New York City at the IFC Center. The exclusive Los Angeles engagement of the film begins Friday, May 10th at Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters shown.

Frank Rinaldi's retro SUNDOWNING -- an experimental sci-fi, sleep-inducing thriller -- gets a 3-day run at Anthology Film Archives

The first thing that hit TrustMovies, after watching SUNDOWNING -- the unusual "experimental" film from Chicago-based Frank Rinaldi -- was how oddly retro the entire movie seemed. From its fashions to its often tightly-focused frame, from its "story" (a mere wisp of a thing) to its "effects," which take us back to that much-loved photographic process we used to call posterization -- made use of often in the 1960s-70s, which plays interesting tricks with color and color reversals (see below).

This may very well be intentional on the part of Mr. Rinaldi (the filmmaker is shown below) in order to give his film a kind of timeless -- this-could-be-taking-place-anywhere, past, present or future -- quality. And it works works pretty well in that regard. I only wish more things worked well in the movie, which I gather is trying to combine experimental film with a sort of sci-fi thriller.

I don't usually read any press materials given me about the film in question until after I've watched it. This way I can approach it fresh. After viewing Sundowning and feeling somewhat negative about the experience, I did want to learn more, in case I had perhaps completely missed the boat regarding what the filmmaker was up to. According to the press materials sent out by Anthology Film Archives (AFA), Rinaldi's work "navigates the boundaries between character-driven narrative and experimental filmmak-ing"... while "investigating how non-linear techni-ques and devices can be incorporated into storytelling and conversely how storytelling can facilitate experimental agendas. SUNDOWNING is influenced by neo- and hyper-realist films, but also draws from elements of Technicolor imagery, science fiction, and experimental film and video art." Good enough.

All of the above is understandable and probably commendable. It's the execution that's noticeably lacking. AFA also gives us a rather complete plot analysis, explaining certain things that are not explained within the film. It doesn't matter much, however, because, the plot is so thin and hugely attenuated that within a few minutes, I'm afraid many viewers will be champing at the bit to get on with it.

At the film's beginning, a young Caucasian woman (played by Shannon Fitzpatrick, above), clearly ill, is being looked after by a young Asian woman (Susan Chau, below, right), who is attempting to bring down the former's fever. Who are these people? Clearly the Asian is some sort of caregiver/taker. Later, the formerly sick girl catches sight of herself in the mirror, and... what? Is this surprise? Recall (certainly not total)? Confusion? We don't know.

We do some flower arranging via a TV program, some Yoga moves (above) and then some rock dancing. (Suddenly, with the dancing, there is no sound track. Is this the experimental part comencing, perhaps?) And then we're tucked into bed for the night, followed by an act on the caretaker's part that can only be seen as suspicious, if not hostile. A title card flashes on the screen: END OF DAY 256.

The camera often stays in tight on its subject(s), but there is almost no dialog and no character development here, There's not a hell of a lot of character to begin with: just two women, one active, the other passive, neither of whom exhibits any expression. At around the 40-minute mark, another title card tells us END OF DAY 357. Butterflies, above, are introduced in a big way -- reading about them, seeing them on TV -- and we we think: Ah, metamorphosis! No, not really. At times the sound disappears again, and we begin to wonder: intentional or some kind of glitch?

At the 50-minute mark, things begin to change. Why, we have no idea, and what happens after this (we're at DAY 422 by now) seems suspiciously like bad and/or unbelievable plotting. At least, at this point, events are more frequent. During the first half, things are so slow, repetitive, paltry and boring that sleep seems a possible option. Yet these new events add up to little: a bit of past history that anyone might have experienced, discovering things that probably ought to have been discovered days and days previous, and going back to a learned activity that may not be all that healthy, especially if you like to play with razor blades. Then suddenly we get a blast of books/ pages/words: "Destruction + Reproduction = Construction." Something like that. Though, were it "Abduction + Liposuction = Nip&tuction," I wouldn't have cared.

Now come the visual effects, a more or less riot of images and colors, the best of which has Shannon's maybe-boyfriend putting color all over his face as though it were shaving cream. This begins a section that goes on for almost the remainder of the film and resembles those light shows and special-effect sequences that filmmakers like to throw at us, but usually blending them a bit better into the plot line. Finally we're at end of day 519, which is nearly a year and a half by my count. And we still do not know what is really going on. The movie ends as enigmatically as it began and middled, with yet another title card which I not only figured was coming but even knew what it would say. Shot in Singapore, the credits inform us, the movie might easily have been shot just about anywhere. But maybe there was a tax break offered here.

So, does Sundowning "navigate the boundaries between character-driven narrative and experimental film-making"? Does it "investigate how non-linear techniques and devices can be incorporated into storytelling and conversely how storytelling can facilitate experimental agendas"? Sure, but so do many sci-fi or thriller movies. They use the latest visual techniques and any kind of new ideas they can find or steal, as they try to create something new. Mr Rinaldi takes a rather tired story concept and squeezes it out ultra slowly, and then piles on the visual and non-linear stuff at his conclusion. What's really different about this film is that it moves so slowly and takes so long to tell us so little. But maybe that's why it's experimental. If you want to learn more about the technical aspects of Sundowning, do read this piece that appeared some time back in the Kodak magazine In Camera.

The movie opens this Friday for a three-day run at Anthology Film Archives, as part of its Show and Tell series. Click here for tickets, and here for directions.

Andrea Callard TALKING LANDSCAPE: Early Media Work, 1974-1984 at Maysles Cinema

TrustMovies often prefers to know little or nothing about a film before he views it -- just sit, then watch and listen. Sometimes, though, it's good to have a bit of background. That's probably the case with the work of Andrea Callard, shown at right, whom I knew literally nothing of, prior to sitting and viewing TALKING LANDSCAPE: Early Media Work, 1974-1984. On the basis of what I saw in this 73-minute compilation of Ms Callard's film work, I'd call her -- gheesh! I hate using this phrase 'cause it seems to turn a lot of film-goers off -- an artist and experimental filmmaker.
But there: I said it. Now deal with it.

What we get in this diverse, alternately fast-moving and draggy program (at times I wanted to call out, "Mommy -- is it almost over?") runs the gamut from seemingly irony-free (and therefore quite ironic) humor in the initial section to a short dissertation with visuals on New York's most popular tree, the Ailanthus, complete with a history of the tree, where it comes from (China's involved, as well its silkworms and silk). This section is simply terrific. From there we see a bit of ladder climbing, watch some very odd round objects perched precariously on a window ledge which are later used as billiard balls, try stepping into a pair of rubber go-aheads, hear a song about shoes and clover, and get a rather bizarre visual treatise on plants and florescent lighting.

Because the earliest of these works date back nearly forty years, that grey/blond hair we see at top was brunette at the time (see the photo above) and Andrea herself was an attractive young woman who seems prone to try just about anything -- if only to discover what might come of it.

The enjoyment of all this is a matter of personal taste -- and to mine, some stuff works a lot better than others. Toward the end Callard gives us two very different short programs, each, I think, worth the entire, larger program. In one of these she assembles a slide show of photos (see above, and the two below) taken in various countries, each slide captioned rather oddly. After we see this once, the artist repeats this slide show a second time, and whether or not it is slightly speeded up, I am not sure, but this time, I realized that those "captions" actually work together to make a statement of sorts. But then Callard shows us this a third time, which for me was once too many.

The final piece is the deal-maker, however: the history of and then a simple tour of (via some excellent photos taken at the time) of the now-legendary exhibition called The Time Square Show, organized by Callard, in which a raft of artists, from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Keith Haring, displayed their work in what had recently been a multi-floor massage parlor. This is indeed something to see, and I should think lovers of modern art will go ape-shit at the unique opportunity the filmmaker provides. As Callard tells us quietly at the finale, this is not everything from that exhibition, "But we're working on it."

Talking Landscape opens this Monday, February 13, for a week's run at the Maysles Cinema, as part of the cinema's bi-monthly series known as Documentary in Bloom. Click here to learn more about the Maysles Cinema and here to purchase tickets for this interesting "one-woman film show."

Boy, do we need it now! Travis Wilkerson's AN INJURY TO ONE finally comes to DVD

With unions in such decline/eclipse/
disarray/do they even still exist?, how wonderful to have AN INJURY TO ONE, that fine, 53-minute documentary from Travis Wilkerson, finally available on DVD -- and in a form that the general public, should it be at all interested, can finally sample. Available now from Icarus Films for sale at the relatively reasonable price of $25 (up until now, it had been available only to institutions at a price of nearly $400), Icarus has remastered the film for its new DVD release. Neither Netflix nor Blockbuster appears to have ordered the movie (no surprise: it's very progressive), so rental would seem to be off the menu. Maybe some enterprising company will work out a streaming option.

What Mr Wilkerson, pictured at right, has done in his 2002 film is give us, beginning with the late 1800s, a real history of Montana (with the emphasis on the town of Butte), copper mining, the Anaconda company (was ever a firm better-named?) and the union that sprang up and grew to something wonderful, until.... When I call this real history, I mean that it is told us via the viewpoint of the losers: what happened to them and why.

The film begins with this preamble: "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few who make up the employing class enjoy all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system and live in harmony with the earth." Ah, yes: Good luck -- as much now, as back in the times that the film so well presents.

This filmmaker is given to the heavy use of intertitles (printed text edited into the midst of the action), excellent archival footage, present-day photos, traditional songs of the miners, along with a notable and fast-paced narration to tell his story -- and a sad and horrible one it is. We learn of the oppressed miners under the foot of Anaconda, the union they organize, the nasty fight the mining company engages in, and the mythic labor organizer Frank Little (below) who comes to town to organize and reanimate the miners. What happens is all too typical of wars waged by the upper class against the lower -- and it is for this reason that the film resonates so strongly today, nearly a decade after it was made and almost a century after the events it depicts.

Wilkerson has been called (by Film Comment) the anti-Ken Burns, and it's easy to understand why. He packs in immense amounts of information -- so much that you may want to watch the film again, immediately after you've seen it -- in such a short time that it can leave you reeling. Even so, I question his use of those intertitles, at least in the manner that he has chosen to do it. That preamble mentioned above seems to go on and on because Wilkerson likes to show just a word or two or three in a single frame.  Does he imagine that we will retain the message better than we would if he handed us, say, half a sentence at a time?  I don't think we do, and so this becomes some kind of unnecessary "artiness."

Otherwise, the film is exemplary in the way it weaves everything from Anaconda copper and World War One to  Dashiel Hammet's Pinkerton experience, Lillian Hellman and the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s (what we learn here about Joe McCarthy should surprise some people: shades of Ronald Reagan's early "liberal" days!) to the environmental disaster that the town of Butte and its surroundings have today become.

Only at its conclusion does Wilkerson push unduly. As the person responsible for the direction, script, photography (not the archival, obviously), editing, sound and even the narration, we certainly owe him a huge debt of gratitude, but I could have done without the sentence about "the geese trying to tell us something, directing us to the scene of the crime." We don't need that bit of silliness (or if we do, let me introduce you to Werner Herzog's albino alligators). No: this dark history has already spoken -- sadly, savagely, brilliantly -- for itself.

An Injury to One "streets" today, Tuesday, October 25. Progressives, documentary lovers, and fans of accessible experimental film should not miss it.