In 1983, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, along with Media Study/Buffalo, created a touring retrospective of avant-garde films, primarily feature-length ones and a few shorts, which they called “The American New Wave 1958-1967.” To accompany the tour, a hefty catalog was produced that included notes on the films, essays by film historians and critics, writings by major underground film figures and more.
The retrospective was created at a time when financially viable independent filmmaking was on the rise, such as films made by John Sayles, Wayne Wang and Susan Seidelman. According to the co-curators of the retrospective, Melinda Ward and Bruce Jenkins, the objective of the tour was to:
provide a more adequate picture than conventional history affords us of a rare period of American cinematic invention and thereby prepare a coherent critical and historical context for the reception of the new work by the current generation of independent filmmakers.
The retrospective was created at a time when financially viable independent filmmaking was on the rise, such as films made by John Sayles, Wayne Wang and Susan Seidelman. According to the co-curators of the retrospective, Melinda Ward and Bruce Jenkins, the objective of the tour was to:
provide a more adequate picture than conventional history affords us of a rare period of American cinematic invention and thereby prepare a coherent critical and historical context for the reception of the new work by the current generation of independent filmmakers.
- 11/25/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
An experimental film by an Irish playwright, shot in New York with a silent comedian at the twilight of his career? Samuel Beckett’s inquiry into the nature of movies (and existence?) befuddled viewers not versed in film theory; Ross Lipman’s retrospective documentary about its making asks all the questions and gets some good answers.
First there’s the film itself, called just Film from 1965. By that year our high school textbooks had already enshrined Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as a key item for introducing kids to modern theater, existentialism, etc. … the California school system was pretty progressive in those days. But Beckett had a yen to say something in the film medium, and his publisher Barney Rosset helped him put a movie together. The Milestone Cinematheque presents the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s restoration of Film on its own disc, accompanied by a videotaped TV production...
First there’s the film itself, called just Film from 1965. By that year our high school textbooks had already enshrined Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as a key item for introducing kids to modern theater, existentialism, etc. … the California school system was pretty progressive in those days. But Beckett had a yen to say something in the film medium, and his publisher Barney Rosset helped him put a movie together. The Milestone Cinematheque presents the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s restoration of Film on its own disc, accompanied by a videotaped TV production...
- 3/18/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
"The Quiet One" is a 1948 docu-drama (part doc, part scripted) by Sidney Meyers that chronicles the rehabilitation of a lonely, emotionally-scarred African American boy, following his father’s death and his mother’s abandonment, growing up in Harlem, NY, and the efforts by the people of the Wiltwyck School for Boys - an institution for children from broken homes or juvenile delinquents – to help rehabilitate him. It's a powerful documentary-style (though scripted) account, offering a provocative glimpse at the Wiltwyck School for Boys in the 1940s - a walk through vintage American education, which, interestingly, despite the central subject, never...
- 2/10/2016
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
"The Quiet One" is a 1948 scripted docu-drama by Sidney Meyers that chronicles the rehabilitation of a lonely, emotionally-scarred African American boy, suffering his father’s death and his mother’s abandonment, growing up in Harlem, NY, and the efforts by the people of the The Wiltwyck School for Boys - an institution for children from broken homes or juvenile delinquents – to help rehabilitate him. It's a powerful documentary-style (though scripted) account, offering a provocative glimpse at the Wiltwyck School for Boys in the 1940s, a walk through vintage American education, which, interestingly, despite the central subject, never actually...
- 7/8/2014
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Fund This ‘Notfilm’: About the 1965 Film ‘Film’ Written by Samuel Beckett and Starring Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton appeared in some very weird movies following the advent of sound pictures. There’s that Mexican sci-fi comedy Boom in the Moon I mentioned on Fsr a while back. There’s the Eastman Kodak industrial film The Triumph of Lester Snapwell, in which he plays a clumsy photographer who travels through time so he can experience an easy-use Instamatic camera. And of course all those crazy ’60s beach movies, where he performed silly slapstick involving bikinis, boobs and a politically incorrect portrayal of a Native American. But his oddest has to be Film, the 1965 short he reluctantly starred in, which was scripted by absurdist playwright Samuel Beckett (his only original written directly for the screen), helmed by theatre director Alan Schneider, produced by controversial publisher Barney Rosset, edited by Oscar-nominated documentarian Sidney Meyers (The Quiet One; The Savage Eye) and shot by legendary cinematographer Boris Kaufman (L’Atalante; On the Waterfront). Almost 50 years since its...
- 11/23/2013
- by Christopher Campbell
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
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