At last! A review of my zine in Broken Pencil! I guess I gave up after about a year of poking through BP (which is always worthwhile, narcissistic satisfaction or no). And then I came up in a google alert… today. A year after the review went up online. I guess google doesn’t like its old friend BP enough to drop by for a robot crawl on a reasonable basis.

Then again, the zine world works at its own pace, doesn’t it?  Like, ZFC is over a year and a half old, and no second issue.

Anyway, someone liked the zine.  I guess I should make another one…

My favourite reaction, when I tell people I’ve got a zine, is when they say, “Send me a link!” and I say “What link?  It’s a hardcopy.  As in, print.”  And they boggle a little.  Now it’s up in pdf on the web, so I guess that’s moot at this point.

You can buy the zine or download it HERE.

-Flick Harrison

I used to spend a lot of time doing behind-the-scenes documentaries on feature films.  Since I was working mostly for low-budget independents, the BTS stuff often dropped off the priority list – no one actually used the footage after I handed them the tapes.

But there’s a notable exception: Barry Levy’s The 40,000, which is a full-length documentary produced with footage I shot for his feature film Spook.  It’s about the 40,000 Canadians who served in Vietnam, either by being drafted for their dual citizenship (!) or by volunteering.  Spook is the dramatized version, and The 40,000 is the doc which illuminates the film.

I was fascinated while shooting, and now I’m transported back to that time by seeing the doc.  The real vietnam vet who narrates much of the doc has had his identity obscured to protect him.

Music Video for The Strange Magic, from their new album “Songs to Burn.”

Shot at the Railway Club and Lamplighter Pub in Vancouver. The amazing archival footage comes from Archive.org.

Check them out at:

http://www.myspace.com/theradiowaves

This could be interesting. After spotting it on Craigslist, then followed to facebook and finally to the international website, I have NO IDEA hat to make of them.  Sounds like a cool network: there are “cells” in various cities around the world.
Here’s the posting:

VanKino

“Kino” is the Greek word for “movement” and means “film” or “the cinema” in Russian, German and other languages. Born in Montréal in 1998, Kino began as a challenge, made by founding filmmaker Christian Laurence to his friends, to make one short film per month until the year 2000. However, at the end of this period no one wanted to stop and, in fact, Kino had formed into a movement that encouraged filmmakers in groups scattered across Montréal and Europe to “do well with nothing; do even better with a little,” and—most importantly—to “do it right now!”

Now VANKINO is part of a network that spans over 50 groups on five continents, with upstarts in other parts of Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Brazil, Finland, Bénin, Sénégal, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia. The international Kino network thrives by facilitating travel among the groups (we think of it as a filmmaker exchange program) and compiling our films so that they are screened across many Kino groups and as part of Kino programs in other film festivals internationally. In particular, we collaborate internationally to hold “Kabarets,” which are extravaganzas of filmmaking that last only 48 hours and culminate in public screenings of the pieces that were produced.

VANKINO is 100% run by volunteers who share the same vision. The donations will be used to reimburse promotion expenses and the future purchase of screening equipment for the organization.

VanKino has its monthly screenings of local and international short movies on the first Sunday of each month at 1181 Davie Street at 5pm.

Come to show your short movies or just have a drink and enjoy the show!

The Rules!

1. Movies must be 5 minutes or less (let organizers know if your movie is more than 5 minutes)

2. Include the secret ingredient (optional)

3. Must be a new movie

4. Must be signed VanKino 01 at the end of it. Watch the movies posted to see what it looks like (the film makers own their movies, of course)

Note: Bring a data file of your movie if you want it to be included in the next VanKino DVD!

Meanwhile, here’s this CALL FOR ENTRIES from the Bike Film Festival:

Bicycle Film Festival | Trailer from casagrafica on Vimeo.

NINTH ANNUAL BICYCLE FILM FESTIVAL
Deadline For Entries Is March 7

http://www.bicyclefilmfestival.com

We are looking for films with a strong theme or character of bicycles. This includes all mediums and styles such as animation, experimental, narrative, documentary and music videos.
The BFF is held in over 17 cities around the world including Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Milan, and London. In 2008 the total BFF attendance was over 110,000 people.

BFF is a celebration through film, art and music. Past BFFs has been have included works from legendary artists such as Jonas Mekas, Michel Gondry, Mike Mills and Jorgen Leth.  The emerging artist is showcased as well.

The Bike Film Fest will be the most fun yet in 2009.

For more information and entry forms, visit the BFF website: http://www.bicyclefilmfestival.com

Thanks
Brendt Barbur

There’s a survey you should check out at the site of this Experimental Media Congress in Toronto, April 2010.

It’s a part of the Images Festival in Toronto, and

“This gathering aims to serve as a continuation of the conversations that
took place at the Fourth Experimental Film Congress held in Toronto in
1989. That massive and contentious event, which is well known to many on
this list, attempted to bring together the broad international film
community for a dialogue on the state of the avant-garde.”

Anyone interested in attending, or who feels confident their time spent answering questions is worthwhile for the ripple effect on the worldwide experimental scene… go check it out.

The congress promises to re-open some debates that have been ongoing for decades, regarding canonization of avante-garde artists and institutionalization of marginalized authorities – if ya know what I mean.

I can only assume Zero for Conduct (i.e. me) will be there, rousing some sort of rabble.

Check out Al Razutis’ articles and manifesto pages that hint at the schism caused by the previous conference in 1989, with prominent filmmakers boycotting and avoiding while others considered the event a big success.

I saw the call on FRAMEWORKS which is an extremely long-lived, wide-ranging and international email discussion group about experimental filmmaking.

It was posted by:

Scott Miller Berry
(on behalf of the local organizing & host committee)

INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA CONGRESS
7 to 10 April, 2010
Toronto, Canada
http://www.experimentalcongress.org

Posting this music doc about Go Four 3 to inaugurate my new blog (on WordPress instead of Blogger, self-hosted.  Google sux.  The transfer took a loooong time but well worth it.).

I’m That Fool. from patrick carroll on Vimeo.

-Flick Harrison

(get it!)

I still need to get a waxer – this issue feels a little too perfect for me, I only did one drawing and the rest was laid out in Indesign.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Interviews with

Reg Harkema on Leslie, My Name is Evil
Jeff Carter on Inside Passage
Tom Scholte on Crime
plus Waiting for Sancho and more!

I created it to try and rekindle some kind of underground film thing in Vancouver that I think is, well, just a bit TOO underground. This year’s Vancouver International Film Festival was the kicker for me, I finally felt like taking part again, having worked on two of the films screening, and a recent visit to a Zine fair / comics show at the Vancouver Art Gallery reminded me that it is really all about just getting it done.

An outsider might not see the connections between these films – but “Waiting For Sancho” was colour-corrected by myself, after “Leslie, My Name is Evil’s” Reg Harkema hooked me up with Mark Peransen. Mark used the same post sound mixer, Mark Benoit, as Tom Scholte used for “Crime”, and Jeff Carter, the sound recordist / designer for “Crime” was the filmmaker of “Inside Passage” – for which I also created a title shot.

This is the kind of intimate network that makes film thrive. And I love hanging around the fest with a bag full of Zero for Conducts, spreading the word on stuff I dig.

Zero for Conduct is available in hardcopy or as a pdf download.

To get the zine harcopy:

location

Canada $2.50 USA $3.00 International $4.00

Check it out at Bella Luna’s website

BELLALUNA’S FUTURISTI :

In the spirit of the turn of the century Italian Futurists, an ensemble of like-minded artists of various mediums with a hunger for excitement and change, Directors Gerald Vanderwoude (UBC) and Susan Bertoia (BellaLuna Productions) have assembled a prodigious ensemble of performers, designers and artists to re-create, pay tribute to and experiment with an art form that had an incredible impact on the shape of art and life as we know it.

It should be noted that the Futurist theatre was the public expression of a movement that involved every aspect of life. Not simply a Theatre movement, or a style, it was the megaphone of a changing society. The world was experiencing a great deal of technological advances at an astounding rate; futurism was the industrial revolution personified of the art world.
While the paintings and sculptures of the Futurists are better remembered due to their lasting tangible nature, very little is known about the theatre, because many of the theatre scripts were created without the possibility of production. For example, FRANCESCO CANGIULLO’s Detonation that has as the protagonist a bullet fired on a cold deserted night after an uncomfortable silence. This scene is easily imagined today as a film short (by filmmaker Flick Harrison), a form that was just beginning at the time when it was written.
The influence of this new way of presenting reality and absurdity is seen in playwrights like Beckett and continues to inspire artists with its rebellious, even revolutionary style. In 1909, the theatre was a very traditional and studied craft that was not to be altered… We can thank the Italian Futurists for breaking the mold.