The crew that hooked up the Bay Area premiere of the fantastic blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite returns to put on another wildly diverse Oakland Underground Film Festival for 2010. Screenings run from Sept. 23 through Sept. 26 at the Grand Lake Theater on 3200 Grand Ave. and the Linden Street Brewery on 95 Linden St. Check the Oakland UFF site for details.
The Fest features indie and DIY film, video, and projection-art based in the O, with special emphasis on local filmmakers, social justice, urban life, the environment and non-traditional filmmaking. Films on tap in the 2010 fest include Elijah Drenner’s survey of exploitation film American Grindhouse and Stascha Bader’s Jamaican music doc Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae.
One of the intriguing docs in this year’s lineup is Betty M. Park’s Mamachas Del Ring. It depicts the pressures of hustling in Bolivia’s lucha libre circuit on indigenous champion female wrestler Carmen Rosa and her crew of petticoat-and-bowler-hat-bedecked maulers.
After the jump: trailers for Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae and American Grindhouse…
Here’s an excellent short rhythm session featuring some of the best British drummers of the ‘60s.
It’s a scene from Gonks Go Beat, a dorky British sci-fi/musical fantasy film from 1965, featuring furry little puppets called Gonks and directed by Robert Hartford-Davis. It basically retells Romeo & Juliet on an Earth that’s been split into the freak-populated Beatland and the more straightlaced Ballad Isle. Shot on chintzy cardboard sets, the film is mostly a showcase for the all-star R&B band the Graham Bond Organisation, which featured the undersung keyboardist/singer Bond backed by a pre-Cream Ginger Baker on drums and Jack Bruce on bass, along with guitarist John McLaughlin.
Here Baker joins Bobby Graham, Alan Grindley, John Kearns, Bobby Richards, Ronnie Verrell, Andy White, Ronnie Stephenson and Arthur Mullard to pound out the jams.
YouTube ‘60s obsessive Alquit4 notes:
The late Bobby Graham was a top English session man. He played on thousands of records including early Kinks and Pretty Things hits. The late Ronnie Verrell was the drummer for Animal in the Muppets.
The late Ronnie Stephenson played with many top jazz stars and was also did many pop sessions.
Andy White is best known for playing on the Beatles first single ‘Love Me Do’.
One of my favorite genres of exploitation films is Filipino action flicks. I’m thrilled that Mark Hartley who directed the fabulous documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild Untold Story Of Ozploitation has a brand new film screening at this years Fantastic Fest (which DM will be covering) called Machete Maidens Unleashed, an overview of legendary Z-movies from the Philippines.
During the classic grindhouse era of the ‘60s and ‘70s independent producers began turning out more and more exploitation features for less and less money. As the cycle wore on, there was a demand from audiences for more variety in settings and situations, and a demand from producers for lower budgets. Since it already had an infrastructure conducive to the making of inexpensive films, the Philippines fit the bill to a T. Labor was cheap, there were skilled technicians and equipment and, possibly best of all, the military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos looked upon the enterprise favorably, contributing everything from tactical assistance to military firepower. One interviewee refers to the Philippines at this time as the “wild east”, and that assessment certainly seems apt as we hear story after story of gunfights in hotel lobbies, rats the size of poodles and the most insane, irresponsible stunts imaginable. As shocking and lurid as many of the women-in-prison, jungle action, mad scientist and martial arts movies made in the Philippines were, the back stories may actually surpass the films in their shocking details. But when the films being discussed and shown in Hartley’s trademark montage style are as wildly entertaining as For Your Height Only, Mad Doctors Of Blood Island, The Twilight People, The Big Doll House and TNT Jackson, it may be a tie.
I will be interviewing Mark Hartley during Fantastic Fest (Sept. 23-30), so stay tuned.
Here’s a clip from the classic For Your Height Only (aka For Y’ur Height Only) featuring the 3 foot tall martial arts master Weng Weng, the Filipino James Bond.
In a promotional campaign for the new Resident Evil film, grotesque looking arms were strategically placed throughout the streets and buildings of Madrid to spook the living shit out of unsuspecting pedestrians. Funny and effective.
Austrian filmmaker Virgil Widrich and his crew truly turned it out in 2003 with Fast Film, an amazingly obsessed confluence of film history, paper-craft and pre-digital animation.
Born from the scraps of Widrich’s equally well-crafted short, Copy Shop, Fast Film imbues its surrealistic qualities with familiarity, humor, anxiety, dread and hints of sexuality.
After the jump: How this incredible film was made…
This coming Monday in Los Angeles, The International Documentary Association is presenting a special evening with satirist Harry Shearer at Cinefamily, showing clips from his new documentary on Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath:
One of the nation’s sharpest voices, comic or otherwise, turns his gimlet eye and informed mind on exposing the true facts around the flooding of New Orleans, on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Employing an oft-ignored trope in conventional media—science!—Shearer and his impressive assemblage of engineers and whistle-blowers carefully and persuasively show audiences how this tragedy could have been avoided (disaster, yes—natural, no) while also warning of the rebuild, in which the very same mistakes are being made. In this special Doc U session, the multi-talented Shearer will screen extended clips from the film, and reveal the passion and persistence that went into making it, in conversation with Eddie Schmidt, IDA’s Board President and himself an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker. This will be an honest, irreverent, eye-opening Q&A with a man who believed in a cause so much he independently set forth to spread the word to the public—keeping the true spirit of investigative journalism alive. For Shearer, a longtime New Orleans resident, this time it’s personal.
IDA’S DOC U: Harry Shearer Takes It “Uneasy”: Conversation & Clips From The New Feature Doc The Big Uneasy.Monday, September 20th | 7:30pm at Cinefamily. Buy tickets here.
“The Lord’s Prayer’ was recorded in 1974 as a B-side to “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” by Sister Janet Mead and became a huge hit, first in Australia and then internationally. It sold over 3 million copies.
The whole song is pretty cool, but the first 15 seconds is sublime. The bass and drum riff, distorted phased guitar and tambourines meld into a classic slice of vintage sounding sixties psychedelia. This nun rocks!
Describing her success as “a horrible time” in her life that shook the foundations of her faith, Sister Mead managed to overcome her dark night of the soul and continues to record and perform to this day.
This video is from Australian TV show Rage and it features some documentary footage of Sister Mead between gigs.
The Singing Nun
Jeanine Deckers (17 October 1933(1933-10-17) – 29 March 1985), known in English as The Singing Nun, was a Belgian nun, and a member (as Sister Luc Gabriel) of the Dominican Fichermont Convent in Belgium. She became internationally famous in 1963 as Sœur Sourire (Sister Smile) when she scored a hit with the song “Dominique”. Although she was deeply religious, she was also increasingly critical of some of the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine and eventually became an advocate of birth control. She also agreed with John Lennon’s statements about Jesus in 1966. In 1967, she recorded a song entitled “Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill” — a paean to contraception — under the name Luc Dominique. It was a commercial failure
In a last ditch bid to regain some commercial success, Deckers, once again billing herself as The Singing Nun, released a disco version of ‘Dominique”. It bombed. Her poorly managed financial world was in shambles. She was broke and deeply in debt. In 1985 she and her longtime companion, Anna Pecher, checked out with a combination of booze and alcohol. Where was God when she needed it most?
In her suicide note, Jeanine wrote:
“Am I a failure? I try to stay honest with myself. To look for the truth, and try to question everything in my life…
Ten years ago I would have said I was a loser.
Now I don’t think in terms of losing or winning…
Life is a continuum. You’re constantly on your way. One day I feel good, the next I feel bad. Altogether it’s bearable.
Would I do it all over again? That’s not a good question. You can’t.
You can’t do it all over again. Voila”
Watch a trailer for a new film that purports to tell the true tale of The Singing Nun after the jump…
This Friday, September 17th, John Schienfeld’s terrific new documentary, Who is Harry Nilsson? (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?) opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Sunset 5 for week (and maybe longer). The reviews have been stellar—and in my opinion, justly deserved—for this heartfelt and moving tribute to the great singer-songwriter.
With Brian Wilson, Jimmy Webb, Van Dyke Parks, Yoko Ono, Paul Williams, Mickey Dolenz, The Smothers Brothers, and Pythons Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle,
Above, a BBC In Concert appearance from from Harry Nilsson. Nilsson famously hated performing live and on television, but this 30 minute performance is remarkable, indeed. More from the For the Love of Harry blog:
Harry Nilsson’s finest hour on film. Taped for England’s BBC in 1971, this simple and effective set of performances has everything one could ask for when seeing the rarely seen Nilsson live - solo piano & acoustic renditions, tasteful effects, plenty of close ups, unreleased music and even live overdubbing (both audio & video). Special thanks to our friend Patrick from Germany who supplied us with this excellent - now complete - 34 minute video. This live studio performance finds Harry delivering slower, more moving renditions of some of his best work up to 1971. His somber reading of “Life Line” is simply heartbreaking. Harry performs as a live trio with himself on “Walk Right Back” and “Coconut,” where he uses lip syncing gorillas for visuals. The Citizen Kane rafters clip ending is priceless. Harry introduces two videos from The Point! (“Think About Your Troubles” and “Are You Sleeping”). There just isn’t a better, more visually pleasing representation of Harry Nilsson at work. Download the .avi video file HERE. If you want MP3s of the show (minus the two Point! audio/video files), you can get them HERE.
Songs: Mr. Richland’s Favorite Song/One, Gotta Get Up, Walk Right Back/Cathy’s Clown/Let The Good Times Roll. Life Line; Joy, Without Her. Coconut. 1941
You can watch my interview with director John Schienfeld, here.
