In Production

Peaches' slice-'em-up and mental health reimagined and redefined

There are midnight movies series, and then there is Midnight Mass, Peaches Christ’s long-running vaudeville-burlesque-drag extravaganza at the Bridge. Peaches, aka Joshua Grannell, doesn’t simply screen campy cult faves but produces a themed show. Yet even that’s not enough to slake this gal’s creative thirst: Peaches has also written, directed and starred in a trio of infamous funny-scary short films that made their debut at Midnight Mass. A fourth, Grindhouse, doesn’t include Ms. Christ, and has always struck its director as the most fertile premise to expand into a feature. "The short film was just an attempt at an idea; it’s not a fully realized film," Grannell explains. "What would happen if a woman inherits a failing single-screen theater and she begins making her own art-horror films? What the public doesn’t know is she’s murdering the people in the movies." Grannell chuckles. "She sees these people as being her actors. She’s just not being honest about she’s using them."

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary, political film

The 6th Screen

SWAG: Free feature films on the web

Acronyms and abbreviations occupy an ever increasing part of our modern lives. Some of us spend at least a small amount of time pretending we understand them (IMHO) and feeling proud we can actually use them in crossword puzzles (IMHO, the New York Times, Sunday September 14). But this one—SWAG—goes way back. In fact, according to Wikipedia, it’s actually a backronym. Which means it existed as a real word first and then collectively we made up a series of words for the letters. Originally, it was defined as a small bundle of stuff, and really it still is: Stuff We All Get (of course, this is how the "S" is represented in polite circles).

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, documentary, dvd, web

The 6th Screen

SWAG: Free feature films on the web

Acronyms and abbreviations occupy an ever increasing part of our modern lives. Some of us spend at least a small amount of time pretending we understand them (IMHO) and feeling proud we can actually use them in crossword puzzles (IMHO, the New York Times, Sunday September 14). But this one—SWAG—goes way back. In fact, according to Wikipedia, it’s actually a backronym. Which means it existed as a real word first and then collectively we made up a series of words for the letters. Originally, it was defined as a small bundle of stuff, and really it still is: Stuff We All Get (of course, this is how the "S" is represented in polite circles).

Every glitzy film festival is full of SWAG. One day I will need that expensive rejuvenation crème, thank you Cannes. And the web is packed full of it, too. In the online video world, several burgeoning business models live side by side, vying for our attention on boring panel conversations. Several of these involve paying for content (iTunes Movie store), but others don’t. And on those sites that don’t, the SWAG is just getting better and better.

Here are some browser-based legal zones for free online feature film viewing pleasure. No installation required.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, documentary, dvd, web

Report

SF DocFest announces program

SF Indiefest announced the program for its seventh San Francisco International Documentary Film Festival (SF DocFest) this past Tuesday at the Roxie, and it has the potential to be every bit as raucous as other festivals under the organization’s umbrella. As expected, dry social commentary is not the rule: The festival opens with Abel Ferrara’s Chelsea on the Rocks, described as "a freewheeling personal journey inside the walls, history and mythology of Manhattan’s celebrated bohemian landmark, The Chelsea Hotel," featuring interviews with a few of the notables who’ve spent time there—Milos Forman, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper and R. Crumb—as well as re-enactments of some of the Chelsea’s most storied moments. The second opening feature is Kassim the Dream, about a Ugandan child-soldier-turned-U.S. boxing champion, directed by Kief Davidson. The party that follows is, it’s said, at a "secret, underground location" to be disclosed night-of at the Roxie to festival-goers.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary

Insider

"Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer"

It’s a constant source of delight on the festival scene—and will no doubt continue to be in the immediate future, with our own SF Docfest just around the corner—how many good documentaries are made about the most unlikely subjects. But every once in a while a subject itself proves so natural a focus that you think, “A documentary had to be made about this,” and wonder why no one thought of it earlier. I don’t mean obvious Big Issues like global warming or Iraq (two subjects that have inspired so many worthwhile docs you could program entire film festivals or class curriculums around them), but rather small slices-of-life or individual personalities who turn out to have a LOT of drama going on when you look closer. Who knew?

topics: documentary, music, reviews

In Production

Adventures in Mendocino's swine country and Jerusalem's lone gay bar

"Horror films can hold a lot of crazy ideas and political ideas and no one blinks," says author Robert Mailer Anderson, "and that serves our purposes now, coming from a lefty background and the green state of San Francisco." Best known for his novel Boonville, Anderson is the co-writer and producer of Pig Hunt, a funny, grisly, over-the-top frightfest about a group of city pals on a backwoods outing gone wrong. The movie’s crammed with all the usual goodies: motorcycles, lesbians, shotguns, Grade A weed and a 3,000-pound boar with a really bad disposition. We caught up with Anderson by phone in Toronto, where he was completing the final edits and color corrections following the movie’s premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival and also meeting with distributors in town for the festival. "They want to market it as a slasher film, but I think it’s for anyone who ever bought a truck or a six-pack or hunted," Anderson declares. "We’ll get the horror crowd, and they’ll like it, but this is a bigger part of America."

topics: authors, bay area, cult cinema, directors, documentary, film festivals, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, horror

Take Two

The cosmic dance-floor of Arthur Russell

"His ambition was to write Buddhist bubblegum music."
—Allen Ginsberg

"He had to be the funkiest white boy I ever saw."
—James Brown backup singer Lola Love

"He’s one of the greatest songwriters ever, greater than the Beatles."
—Ernie Brooks, musician, formerly of the Modern Lovers

These assessments of Arthur Russell—none of them hyperbolic when measured against his musical genius and personal charisma—are made in Wild Combination, Matt Wolf’s finely tuned biodoc of the composer/vocalist/cellist. Born in Iowa farm country in 1952, Russell and his cello arrived in New York in the early ’70s by way of a Buddhist commune in San Francisco.

[This article appeared originally in Film Comment, May-June, 2008, and is reprinted with permission from the author.]

topics: avant-garde, bay area, documentary, music