Bob Dylan has always been in the enviable position of being taken seriously even when he is just messing around. God he must be fun to hang out with. I think he is one of the funniest human beings I have ever seen. He carries on here as if beginning an interview but he’s really drawing the interviewer with total focus and determination. He then proudly holds up one of the worst drawings I’ve ever seen in the long history art. But have you ever seen someone answer questions this way? I like the way in part 2 he predicts the sudden change in music about to happen when the kids who don’t like all the machine music of the eighties make something new in four or five years. He was predicting the emergence of the alternative scene and bands like Nirvana I think.

The film seems almost out of time. It could have been filmed fifty years ago. The gently swaying palms of Los Angeles fit between buildings easily but seem to have a romantic life in this film. The music, a piece for theremin and string quartet by Herbert A. Deutsch, fits the imagery in Jennifer Sharpe’s film to perfection. This kind of filmmaking, done with a small camera and then edited and colored in a relatively simple digital editor, is very close to the simplicity of the poet working in a notepad or the artist sketching from her window. Sharpe’s films are deeply felt poetic expressions that seem to exist in the only possible form that they could have. She turns her video images into something close to painting, extending time and finding mystery in simple movements. She has a very gentle approach but with strength in her observation and emotional ability, sort of like a butterfly with steel wings.

You can find out more about Jennifer Sharpe’s digital videos and paintings at her web site.

It’s all very confused and mysterious. In 1972, the Rolling Stones hired photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank to make a film about their American tour. He made something wonderful called ‘Cocksucker Blues,’ which immediately angered the Stones because it actually showed them to be the ultra coolest and baddest band in the world. They sued him to keep the film out of circulation. Go figure. Why would you sue a guy for making the one absolute piece of evidence that you are what you say you are: ‘The greatest rock & roll band in the world?’ Well I don’t know the answer. Drugs and addled minds perhaps. This short film is actual footage taken by Frank on Super 8 cameras. It’s been edited by someone called Videodrumz on YouTube and put together with ‘Rocks Off’ from the ‘Exile on Main Street’ album. It’s good. It works. The footage is absolutely recognizable as Frank’s.

Michel Montecrossa’s latest video examines the desperation behind the rioting in Great Britain. His direct and heartfelt approach works to cut through all the recent bullshit about the rioters being simple thugs with nothing more on their minds than robbery and destruction. Riots are open wounds that erupt after enormous damage has already been done to a population. The seething pressure is always there for a long time before exploding in everyone’s faces. By definition, riots involve damage and robbery. What else would there be to do at a riot? Riots are anger and desperate hopelessness that cannot be controlled. Yes, of course one must punish people who burn down buildings. But one must also have the intellect and social responsibility to seriously look at why children and adults would feel so awful that the only thing they can think of doing is burning down a city. That is serious rebellion and it is going to spread. The world is under incredible economic pressure and the people who suffer understand that governments tied to extreme wealth and corporate interests are responsible. Populations are going off like bombs. The uprisings in the Middle East are directly connected to the uprisings London because both groups of people have become aware that the same corporations control what happens in both places. The dictators and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are kept there because they provide certain corporations with efficiency in the region. Assad is exterminating people in Syria because it is convenient for Western companies and politicians that he do so. The Western governments have wanted globalization and now they’ve got it. Globalization of uprisings and riots. One must remember that the riots in Great Britain were started by a policeman who killed a young man. A policeman who chose, just like the policemen in Syria, to point his gun and fire a bullet into the body of a human being. A violent reaction to such an act should be expected in most cases.

Michelmontecrossa.com

ADULT CONTENT – NUDITY

When I look for films on the web I always hate it when I find well-produced films on sites like Vimeo that are made by filmmakers who treat their films as business cards leading to bigger things. When I make a film I make it for that little box on the white web page. I work like madman on those films and play them on the web because that is why they are made. This filmmaker submitted work this week to my Vimeo short films group and I was stunned by it.

The filmmaker, Cosmotropia de Xam, makes these beautiful haunting films for a European band called Mater Suspiria Vision. The films have a deep involvement with cinema and exist for themselves. They include transformed shots from 70s horror and exploitation films, but they are reborn in a totally unique and individual art form that stands on its own. Gorgeous. Captivating. This filmmaker is well aware of the great underground work in film going back fifty years. These films have depth and illusion. They seek the magic and the demons. Really fine work.

Many more films by Cosmotropia de Xam can be seen on Vimeo.

Michel Montecrossa continues his underground assault on currently active oppressors, liars and cheats who simply don’t know how to live properly. I like this guy, Montecrossa. He’s hitting something that is sorely lacking these days and he keeps hitting it cheerfully and with conviction. He digs himself and what he does and that is good because it puts irony in the dumpster where it belongs. You know, of all the basic forms of humor, irony is actually the most depressingly childish. Here is Montecrossa countering the bullshit from Rupert Murdoch and keeping it simple.

Here’s an excellent BBC documentary on the origins of punk, hip hop and disco in the New York City of the 1970s. It was a hard time in the city but it held a wild energy that kept pressing up and inventing new things. What hit me about this film is how good Patti Smith really is.

New York since then, however, seems to have signed an unlimited contract with the Gap as a retail outlet. I think anyone with a streak of punkishness in them moves out to Los Angeles.

I found this via the excellent curatorial efforts of Rob Smart on Facebook.

German musician and filmmaker Michel Montecrossa sings a song of rage and protest aimed at banks and their governments who seek to eliminate entire populations in favor of a very small group of super-wealthy. The first decades of the 21st century are proving not to be about some ridiculous war on terror, but instead they are seeing the beginning of a conflict between large corporate interests and enormous populations. The uprisings in the Middle East have nothing to do with the dictators there. Those uprisings are against the corporations that do business with the dictators.

I like Mr. Montecrossa’s hard and direct approach. He is a wild man and he’s making some very interesting things. I posted earlier about his ‘Resurrection’ movie.

Spanish filmmaker Diego Barrera uses Christian symbolism and New Age crystals to mount a mystical vision trip the takes inspiration from the film works of Alejandro Jodorowski.  I believe it is a music video for a group called ‘Mater Susperia Vision.’

MATURE CONTENT:

This might be the most beautiful film you will see all year. It is the full version of ‘Broken English,’ starring Marianne Faithfull. It was made by Derek Jarman. It incorporates three of Faithfull’s songs. Jarman learned a great deal from American avant-garde filmmaker, Kenneth Anger. Interestingly, Marianne Faithfull also starred in an Anger film called ‘Lucifer Rising.’ The montage and superimposition going on in this film is simply stunning.  It’s full of dark pagan ritual, sex, violence, romance, adoration, and mystery. I think Jarman is one of the very few filmmakers who understood what Anger was doing in his work and tried to carry on from there.