When we met Mike Kuchar in the early seventies:

 

Mike Kuchar

This post comes from my friend Fred Harden who was one one the original people who set up the Melbourne Filmmkaer's Co-op. 

I will also add some comments into this post with some of my own reminiscences of that time as Mike visited Monique and me when we lived at Canning Street, North Carlton. I think that was in 1973 when the world was wonderful, our lives were full of expectation. I'm sure those days were much better than the days we're living through now.

I really enjoyed meeting Mike Kuchar. He had a lovely personal style, very gentle, great wit and most elegant.

I also found the Kuchar programme which we presented at the Co-op to be ground breaking, a great gift from the US Underground. That programme was organised by the people at the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op and sent on to us, as they also did with a programme by Pier Farri. We were very lucky to have Pier visit us while he was in Melbourne for his season.

Anyway, here's what Fred wrote about it all in 2019. Many thanks Fred.

fredharden

On December 6, 2019

Mike Kuchar

Mike Kuchar came to present his and identical twin brother George's films at the Coop. We introduced him to a few of our filmmaker friends - the Super 8 movie shows a night at Michael Lee (and Magda's) house and recording a video interview.

Until I find the small poster we used for the Mike and George Kuchar film screenings,  ( I gave ACMI a copy) I don’t have the accurate 1972 date for this.

It was one of the Sydney Film Coop screenings, organised by Albie Thoms and I think they paid for an airfare and we shared some costs for George (and Mike?) to come to Australia  and speak at the screenings. Mike came alone, and he stayed at, then manager of the Melbourne Co-op John Matthews, shared house in South Yarra.

There were only a couple of screenings of the hour (or so?) long program of their films, one at Spring Street and another at Melbourne Uni (I think). We introduced him to a few of our filmmaker friends – the Super 8 movie below shows a night at Michael Lee (and Magda’s) house.

At the time I had an AKAI 1/4 inch portapak and we made a taped interview with Mike sitting in the kitchen of the South Yarra house, over toast and jam. I still have the tape reel if it can be transferred.

I can’t make out a microphone on the table here, so it may have been just the on-camera mic, so who knows what the sound would be like. But I did a few of these ‘conversations’ and remember the sound in a quiet environment being good.  But Kuchar’s voice was quiet, a gentle man. I can’t remember where these tapes were shown, maybe once at the Cantrill’s Maze screenings.

They often seemed part of performance pieces, we had a couple of large monitors that I used to lug around. The videotapes were really just another way of archiving our ‘film’ lives.

John must have taken Mike out of town, as there is a sequence where Mike was editing a 16mm film of John playing one of his didgeridoos, intercut with flashing sunlight through a windmill vanes. The flat rocky landscape suggested it was near Woodstock (that I wrote about here) So maybe Kuchar stayed overnight there. I may have even loaned them my car as I sometimes did.

At the end of the film there’s some images of Mike using the editing room we had at the Spring Street Coop.  It was fairly basic, some rewinds, a small 16mm viewer, a  4 gang-synchroniser, tape splicers,  some Super 8 splicers and benches and a trim bin. The images at the end of the film, were from the screen of the 16mm viewer as I advanced it with one hand and filmed with the Beaulieu in the other. Again it’s one of the lowres scans from the Reflecta+ so watch it small in HD.

 

This is a good introduction to the Kuchar’s films and helps explain the low-fi attraction. The robot being ‘born’ from between the woman’s legs in Sins of the Fleshapoids remains a moment that has lingered.

Okay so now I'll put in my two-bobs-worth!

The three films which made an enduring impression upon me were:

 "The Craven Sluck" 

"The Secret of Wendel Samson" 

"Sins of the Fleshapoids"

I've found a version of "The Craven Sluck". 

I loved it so much at the time.

 

This film is available via "Daily Motion" as Part One and Part Two:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22gx1f

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22gx36

At this moment I can't find a link for free view of 

The Secret of Wendel Samson: 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0207085/

 

Here's a link for  Sins of the Fleshapoids

https://archive.org/details/1965MikeKucharSinsOfTheFleshapoids

pt

MY LIFE AS A TURKEY, a film for any of my friends who may not have seen it yet!

Well, the truth is I love crazy films.

I love films which go out on an edge.

I love docos based on natural history.

This one has everything for me.

And guess what?

I can share it with every one for free!

All you have to do it to give it a few moments of your time...

Here it is on Daily Motion:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvccpd

It's also on Vimeo but I think the Daily Motion version is better HD quality.

Have fun!

https://dai.ly/xv

My Life as a Turkey from ASECIC_VIMEO on Vimeo.

JENNIFER TODD REEVES: FEMINISM, ECOLOGY AND CARBON ALTERNATIVE

 THE TIME WE KILLED

Jennifer Todd Reeves

Towards the end of this summer, in search of intriguing places for collecting some shots that I am taking with my mobile phone for a long time now since my last useful pocket cam broke, I have stopped many times at the several same nearby points to examine immediate devastating effects of carbonization of the environment (in the immediate vicinity of my apartment in Split; Croatia).

Together with some personal reasons and feelings that I do not want to discuss openly, that carbo situation make me rethink of “carbon cinema” phenomena and some respectable authors that were “possessed” with analog (S8 - 16 mm) filming around hospitals and factories chimneys, unkempt parks, septic flats, unclean dumps and other (sub)urban rusty places so inspired for catching that strange, dirty but at the same time beautiful and subliminally unexplainable effect on analog film rolls. This was one of the agendas I wanted to discuss with recently deceased underground New York director (“Cinema of Transgression” founder) Nick Zedd (1958-1922) during our 2020/21 fb chats, but he was close to death and so cynical that I felt it would be better not to ask him about anything serious enough at the time.

Nick Zedd/s movie still

Deeper roots of “carbon cinema” are visible in Walter Ruttmann`s (1887-1941) “Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis” from 1927, as in some early silent films from Lumiere brothers. Information about the futuristic cyberpunk universe of the Netflix series “Altered Carbon” (visually stunning as it is colorful, due to the vision and skill of the show's Directors of Photography) as an commercial start point for digital transformation of an ecological phenomenon into a completely new dimension turned me back to the one old VHS tape that I have copied and digitized about 15 years ago during my postgraduate students years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqPoV9q4ck

Berlin - Symphony of a Metropolis (1927) | by Walther Ruttmann

The movie is “The Time We Killed” (2004) by Jennifer Todd Reeves (1971; Sri Lanka), New York-based independent filmmaker and professor of film at Bard College, The Cooper Union, Millennium Film Workshop and the School of Visual Arts. As Wikipedia states: “Reeves's 16mm films are often experimental and deal with a range of issues, including mental health, politics, sexuality, feminism and the environment. Reeves began making her own films in 1990 and is known to provide her own writing, cinematography, editing and sound design in her works. Her films also feature collaborations with composers such as Marc Ribot, Skúli Sverrisson, Elliott Sharp, Zeena Parkins, Anthony Burr and Eyvind Kang. Reeves has produced many films over the years, the most noteworthy being “The Time We Killed” (2004) and “When It Was Blue” (2008).

Jennifer Reeves - The Time We Killed (excerpt)

After a long time, thanks to an online exchange with a friend, I managed to get hold of a copy of the new digital remaster of the film "The Time We Killed", and subsequently arranged this “FotAT” blog post with Peter and David. Jennifer Reeves has not released any new work for more than eight years, and according to relevant sources the last more complex project she was working on was: “double-projection film titled “Light Work Mood Disorder”, a work which pairs found footage of educational films with X-rays of the body.” She degraded the film with a solution made from dissolved pills which were intended to treat a number of physical and mental conditions. The resulting damage to the film is akin to the adverse effects of overmedication.

COLOR NEUTRAL a film by Jenn Reeves (excerpt) (2014)

But, as her fb page informing her returning short work "Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome (2022, 6 min) went into public display this summer with premiere at the "Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival" in Portugal.

Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome (2022, 6 min, Image and Sound by Jennifer Reeves) still 1

From my personal point of view, the films of Jennifer Todd Reeves, thanks to their brutal force of manifesting existential traumas while eliminating (to the bone) all possible doubts about the honesty of those confessions connected with her own situation (by using carbonated video diary method), strongly confirmed the suffering of a woman deprived of any kind of later hypocritical need, ballast extra attention or protective power over the other people as a compensation for the manifestations of someone perverted spirit.

On that destructive basis my own negative experience with delicate relationships with women in crisis was formed several times. I have been under attack for years from my immediate environment, including clinical-psychiatric and general medical wrong assessments and social degradations of all kinds.

Colorful Carbonated Tree in front of the entrance of the building I am living in Split

In the seemingly dark world of the "psyche renegade", as confirmed by the documentary improvisational experimental film practice of Jennifer Todd Reeves, other people burdened with their own bad episodes must not be dragged in to be branded as guilty for someone else's personal condition, but they must be integrated as potential “analysts of the positive that's left”.

Potential pathological image of oneself as a martyr and whistleblower for corrupt health and other institutions must be rejected. That's why I like Jennifer's movies. Her intentions are clean and deeply human.

And, as Peter Tammer noticed in his e-mail while we were preparing this post: "I do appreciate the great strength of character of Jennifer Reeves and her skill in making this disturbingly honest self-portrait film."

Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome (2022, 6 min, Image and Sound by Jennifer Reeves) still 2

Perhaps I would not have insisted so much on the analysis of the personal film drive related to the exploitation of the carbon effect and the ecological devastation of the environment that such works point to, which brought the work of Jennifer Todd Reeves closer to me again, if I had not been simultaneously working on the realization of the medium-length segmented. a project of my own "Low Temperature Hydrogen Peroxide Gas Plasma" (2022). which is available in its entirety and in its constituent parts on my YouTube channel.

Darko Duilo - Low Temperature Hydrogen Peroxide Gas Plasma (medium length borderline) (2022)

I hope some of you will express some interest in “carbon cinema” archives and, of course:

“PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO OVERLOAD THAT WITH RETRO ANALOG SHIT TREATMENT OF FILM STRIPS AND LENS”.

Let us at least keep this blog as clean as it is possible.

Greetings from Split, Croatia...

Darko Duilo

...

"THE STREAM" a new film from Tom Cowan

 "The Stream" 

A mix of thoughts about the passage of time - prompted by the passage

of water running under our house and how in time, before and after,

people would experience the stream in different and parallel ways.

Hence the subtitle: "Maybe in a Thousand Years".

Not far below this fireplace runs a river.

                                                              THE STREAM.mp4 from Tom Cowan on Vimeo.

My last video  'RE-CALL', was a dream about parallel time 

also starring our house.

                                                                                Tom.

A new work from Wheeler Winston Dixon

“Sooner or later, we will have to recognize that the Earth has rights, too. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.” – Evo Morales .

                            The Earth Without Us from Wheeler Winston Dixon on Vimeo.

This video was created using footage and soundtracks in the Public Domain, or released as CC0 Public Domain materials, and is made entirely from recycled, repurposed and refashioned images and sounds. Copyright © 2022 Wheeler Winston Dixon. All rights reserved

Forward this email to your friends and family so that they can watch the video too.

SOMETHING ELSE FROM MY OLD TOWN OF SPLIT

LOCAL VISIONS AND GLOBAL FIGURES IN VIRTUAL FUSION

In a recent email to my dear friend from my "Facebook days", M. Woods, I briefly described Peter's invitation to continue maintaining this unique blog together with David: "It is nice, little, selective in a way, virtual space with well enough correspondents (it means more than several but not many).. slow one so to say if comparing with various concepts of slow cinema…” 

I hope that I will be able (for the first few modest personal contributions and with the help from the other “Friends of the Armchair Traveller” maintainers - David, Peter, Bill - to present the previously announced material about web project of online interviews with some of the most interesting proactive actors of global experimental cinema DIY scene which was conceived by the independent international (Italy, Greece, USA) association of artist named “PVH” and led by Pasquale Palladino, Angelina Voskopoulou and Matt Helme.

Then, one of my future posts will be given in a form of a “late salute” to the  master modernist Italo-American artist Aldo Tambellini`s work and, to mention just one more idea, I would like to present, in short and with a lot of visual material added, “Disassociative Productions”, visual production company headed by M. Woods as an operative collective that “designs bad trips to open your eyes and see how close you are”.

For this first post since Peter authorized me as the one of the maintainers of the blog I decide to publish some photos taken during this last few days in Split while most of tourists are leaving this town and local people are working what they can to resocialize on all the levels of society and sort out impressions after the end of another exhausting summer season of European integration (soon also monetary) in the midst of which the prices of bread, milk and dairy products started to rise suddenly and frantically.

"Separate, nourish and beautify" - inscription on the garbage container.

Harbor at dusk.

Thinking...

Before watching my new short video experiment created exclusively for "Friends of the Armchair Traveller" please let me recommend to all of you some of my "new sensations", works by several You Tube regulars with fresh, simple and joyful ideas which, I hope, if I manage to organize some new presentations of experimental cinematography in Split and its surroundings, will be found on my VJ playlists on those desired occasions:

Peter Shapiro (https://www.youtube.com/user/peetyweety)

Randy Arnold (https://www.youtube.com/user/maxwellbanjo/videos)

Greg R. Norton (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2KuMVQgN_nTVmwQrPGxGzg)

AND NOW

FOR "FRIENDS OF THE ARMCHAIR TRAVELER" EXCLUSIVELY: 
DARKO DUILO - "SEXUAL LONELINESS OF JESUS CHRIST" (2022)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll9n68GOuwE

Thanks for watching... And a few photos more:

I hope you like my first self uploaded post for "Friends of the Armchair Traveller" and I hope for some more from me soon...

Thank you very much Peter, David and Bill...

And all the rest...

Sincerely yours...

Darko Duilo

...

Headspace Overload!

Over the past few months my friend Richard has been experimenting with his new camera, filming the wildlife he encounters on the walks and rides near his home in MITCHAM, suburban Melbourne.

This image will give you an idea of some of the lovely creatures which can be found in his neighbourhood.

 

Silvereye

Many emails have passed between us over the past few months concerning new cameras, editing platforms, upscaling , all the pros and cons. Richard bought his new camera kit specifically to follow and develop his photographic and filming interests. I've been buying things like Topaz Photo Enhance AI, dabbling with Photoshop, and every new item either of us purchases requires us to come to terms with new procedures, a steep learning curve.

One of Richard's objectives was to own a camera which would give super results for filming wildlife. His suburb is a nature wonderland rich in birdlife from the tiniest creatures like the Silvereye and Pardalote up to Magpies, Rosellas, Lorikeets etc., maybe even Eagles. As yet Richard has not sent me any pics of a Wedge Tailed Eagle patrolling his locale.

 Grey Fantail  (fanning)

Rainbow Lorikeet

Here's a link to the Yarran Dheran Nature Reserve

where Richard finds these lovely creatures

https://goo.gl/maps/UBuXynHpg1Di2JS1A

Richard has formed a connection with other birdwatchers in his local area and he described an exchange he had with a chap named Neil in which the word "arty" came up. That led to a long discussion between us concerning the many putdowns reserved for works which people do not like or understand and which they want to disparage as much as they can, so terms like "arty farty" and "pretentious" are frequently employed. My take on this argument is that there is no art without some sort of pretension, great art often aspires to the sublime, therefore such art remains open to the ridicule of people who think it is too arty or precious. They seem to prefer everything to be just practical, plain or ordinary except when it comes to their desire for exotic clothes, sleek cars, expensive hairstyles or in the case of our AFL sporting heroes, elaborate tattoos covering vast areas of their natural skin.

Over the years Richard and I have shared busy interactions on so many topics of common interest, probably a bit more than he can handle. Being retired I have heaps of spare time while others may not! I’ve always thought Richard to be indefatigable but it seems that recently I've sent him too many emails and posts.

 

Peter, here it is. Unedited… I don’t mind if you correct anything which doesn’t read well. Pretty close to stream-of-consciousness from me, it’s prob a bit long and rambly. Anyway, I'll hand it over as is to do as you wish.

I’ve been having some problems getting around to many things you sent recently because I just don't have enough time. I guess the simplest way to summarise all this is to say, I’m busy and some of these works just don’t fit in my headspace.

That’s the guts of it.

First I have calls on my time from my family and work, and these take up a considerable amount of my daily activities. This includes trivial things as well as serious sharing of literature and films. Saturday evenings are reserved for viewing films both modern and classical as a family event. All are avid readers and we give the local library a lot of business.

Then I have my own internet activities which are mainly reserved for evenings and into the the night, among which is a constant flow from the Armchair Traveller including postings and emails which cover every subject under the sun, and even beyond!

So when you send me something from some strange person I barely know and will probably never meet, meaning no disrespect for his work at all, I might feel "Why do I want to take this on?" There's more than enough going on in my head and I just can't keep loading up.

As I think I mentioned in my brain dump, I guess I’m mostly drawn to the things with which I have most connection. Which is why I WILL consider some of the things you send me… eventually!

OKAY, so that email was from a few weeks back! It’s clear that Richard has many things which fill up his life and like many of us he’s inundated with items seeking to drag his attention.

Headspace overload!

Then Richard sent me a few more pics and flicks from his outings with his new camera:

Grey Fantail, Mullum Mullum Valley

 

(Wonderings of a novice urban twitcher)

As you can see from that clip on a few moments from the Grey Fantail's athletic feeding habit, Richard selected a camera with long lenses and a lovely slow-motion capability, otherwise he would struggle to capture anything useful about the activity of this speedy tiny creature.

But there are also many other species in Richard's suburban locale:

Superb Fairy Wren

Common Bronzewing

Despite all the activities Richard had listed above we've had numerous discussions about film directors like Godard, his films "Vivre Sa Vie" and "Breathless" which were mentioned in a recent blog on this site. Richard was tossing up between these two films and finally decided to share "Breathless" with his family for their Saturday evening movie of the week. That screening provided many interesting responses:

- “ah now I know why I hate the French so much” (haha - yes, the main bloke was VERY unlikeable to this mostly female audience)

- “I got through it knowing it was ‘educational’ (in terms of film art history and culture)

- “the French are just obsessed by sex!”

- “I thought it was predictable and so overdone… until I remembered that it was           from 1960 and that all of these techniques were probably unheard of back then,       so that was good”

Then Richard sent me the following email over the weekend:

 

In the past week with a few ‘downtime’ hours to spare, I rediscovered this list I’d earmarked from who knows where or when. What a delight! From the creative quirks of stop-motion tribute docos, to the surprise-twists of a Russian mother-and-son narrative (which made me fall-in-love with down-the-barrel filming again… now considering my own mirror-box rig to achieve the effect!), I’d suggest that at least half of these will spark some some interest amongst any weary Armchair Traveller and friends.

https://www.monsterchildren.com/12-documentary-shorts-everyone-should-watch/

One that really hit a chord with me was this short, “A View from the Window”. And here’s why.

I’ve avoided docos for years. They’ve all become too depressing, many too clever for their own good at simply articulating the problems of the world, in fact, in this list, ’American Psychosis’ fits this mould perfectly. I have enough to deal with in life, I have enough ideas and opinions to cram into one tiny mind, and more than enough devastation to deal with in the media-torrent of bad news. I don’t want or need more. But this! THIS piece takes me back to what I first loved about docos — even as a child in primary school watching a fairly inconsequential observational doco called ‘A City Awakens’ – this possibility of cracking open a window into another world I hadn’t previously considered. Simple, understated, quietly observed, a crack of light out of my own headspace to somewhere I hadn’t thought before, a crack of light in a tortured world.

A local Melbourne poet I love wrote about the rebellion of finding beauty in a world falling to pieces (pic attached). Very much how I feel. In fact this is what inspires me in any creative work I do. And it’s what I most enjoyed about this short, this view, this window into another world. Kudo Chris Filippone.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch6Tz2IJddg/

Enjoy the list.

RL