This is Part Three in a series about Chicago’s Experimental Film Coalition; and covers their annual experimental film festival. You can read Part One here and Part Two here.
In addition to their monthly screenings, the Coalition founded what was initially called either the Festival of Experimental Film or the Experimental Film Festival. The first one was most likely in 1984. By 1987 it was called the Onion City Film Festival, which it has been called ever since. The Coalition ran Onion City annually until 2001 when it was taken over by Chicago Filmmakers, and continues to run to this day.
1984
Of the first Experimental Film Festival, the dates it ran and the exact list of films that screened are not known as of this writing. However, filmmaker Paul Glabicki lists that his film, Film-Wipe-Film won a Jury Award.
1985
For the second Experimental Film Festival, again the dates and films screened are not known.
In addition to their monthly screenings, the Coalition founded what was initially called either the Festival of Experimental Film or the Experimental Film Festival. The first one was most likely in 1984. By 1987 it was called the Onion City Film Festival, which it has been called ever since. The Coalition ran Onion City annually until 2001 when it was taken over by Chicago Filmmakers, and continues to run to this day.
1984
Of the first Experimental Film Festival, the dates it ran and the exact list of films that screened are not known as of this writing. However, filmmaker Paul Glabicki lists that his film, Film-Wipe-Film won a Jury Award.
1985
For the second Experimental Film Festival, again the dates and films screened are not known.
- 12/31/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
June 24
7:00 p.m.
The Bonnafont Gallery
946a Greenwich St.
(between Taylor and Jones)
San Francisco, CA 94133
Hosted by: The Bonnafont Gallery
Dominic Angerame has made over forty films since 1969. This mini-retrospective screening of his work will include more than 25% of his total output. All films will be projected in 16mm and there is no admission charge.
Films included in the lineup are: Continuum; Deconstruction Sight; Premoniton; In the Course of Human
Events and Line of Fire. Plus, there were will be screenings of several of Angerame’s erotic films, such as Battle Stations — A Navel Adventure; Voyeuristic Tenden-cies; Pixiescope, Waifen Maiden and his newest film The Soul of Things.
In addition to making films, Angerame serves as the Executive Director of the legendary San Francisco film distributor Canyon Cinema. Back in March, he sent out an open letter laying out Canyon’s current economic problems, mostly brought on by...
7:00 p.m.
The Bonnafont Gallery
946a Greenwich St.
(between Taylor and Jones)
San Francisco, CA 94133
Hosted by: The Bonnafont Gallery
Dominic Angerame has made over forty films since 1969. This mini-retrospective screening of his work will include more than 25% of his total output. All films will be projected in 16mm and there is no admission charge.
Films included in the lineup are: Continuum; Deconstruction Sight; Premoniton; In the Course of Human
Events and Line of Fire. Plus, there were will be screenings of several of Angerame’s erotic films, such as Battle Stations — A Navel Adventure; Voyeuristic Tenden-cies; Pixiescope, Waifen Maiden and his newest film The Soul of Things.
In addition to making films, Angerame serves as the Executive Director of the legendary San Francisco film distributor Canyon Cinema. Back in March, he sent out an open letter laying out Canyon’s current economic problems, mostly brought on by...
- 6/21/2011
- by screenings
- Underground Film Journal
The 18th annual Chicago Underground Film Festival is ready to have another monumental year at the Gene Siskel Film Center on June 2-9, featuring a killer lineup with new films from some true underground legends.
First, Usama Alshaibi will screen his latest, most visually stunning and conceptually innovative feature Profane, about a spiritually confused Muslim sex worker trying to recapture her lost jinn — a demon of smokeless fire — on streets of the Windy City.
Then, documentary filmmakers Jeff Krulik and John Heyn return to their hard rockin’ roots with Heavy Metal Picnic, which relives one of the most notorious ’80s weekend parties in the history of Maryland and the world — the Full Moon Jamboree, which if you can remember it means you weren’t there. Plus, Hmp will be screened with Heyn and Krulik’s underground classic Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
Also in the documentary vein, are Marie Losier‘s...
First, Usama Alshaibi will screen his latest, most visually stunning and conceptually innovative feature Profane, about a spiritually confused Muslim sex worker trying to recapture her lost jinn — a demon of smokeless fire — on streets of the Windy City.
Then, documentary filmmakers Jeff Krulik and John Heyn return to their hard rockin’ roots with Heavy Metal Picnic, which relives one of the most notorious ’80s weekend parties in the history of Maryland and the world — the Full Moon Jamboree, which if you can remember it means you weren’t there. Plus, Hmp will be screened with Heyn and Krulik’s underground classic Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
Also in the documentary vein, are Marie Losier‘s...
- 5/13/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Reprinted in full below is an open letter written by Dominic Angerame, the Executive Director of the legendary San Francisco film distributor Canyon Cinema. The organization has suffered financial difficulties over the past couple of years due to the increasing proliferation of digital projection over traditional film projection that Canyon traffics in.
At this stage in the game, though, Canyon’s money problems have hit crisis mode and, as Angerame lays out, they will be completely out of funds within two years.
While Angerame does make a plea for immediate help in the form of donations (see the bottom), the bulk of the letter asks the larger film community for suggestions on how Canyon can proceed into the future as film rentals are likely to continue to drop off.
If you want to send help, ideas or want to become a major benefactor — as the Film-makers’ Coop found to help...
At this stage in the game, though, Canyon’s money problems have hit crisis mode and, as Angerame lays out, they will be completely out of funds within two years.
While Angerame does make a plea for immediate help in the form of donations (see the bottom), the bulk of the letter asks the larger film community for suggestions on how Canyon can proceed into the future as film rentals are likely to continue to drop off.
If you want to send help, ideas or want to become a major benefactor — as the Film-makers’ Coop found to help...
- 3/31/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
To name Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, Shirley Clarke, Bruce Conner, Oskar Fischinger, Nathaniel Dorsky, Ernie Gehr, Ken Jacobs and Lewis Klahr is to merely scratch the surface of the inestimable wealth stored in the Canyon Cinema collection of 16mm and 35mm prints and DVDs. In the early 60s, George Lucas, still in his teens, would drive out to Canyon, California to watch informal screenings in Bruce Baillie's backyard before Canyon Cinema, Inc was founded as a distribution company in 1967. It's since grown to around 320 members worldwide and the collection currently boasts more than 3200 films and DVDs. And it's in trouble.
Executive Director Dominic Angerame has sent "a very serious letter," an open plea for help to the film community in which he outlines the scenario — an overall decline in rentals, sales, distribution fees, bank interest and occasional donations — that has led to the very real possibility that Canyon may...
Executive Director Dominic Angerame has sent "a very serious letter," an open plea for help to the film community in which he outlines the scenario — an overall decline in rentals, sales, distribution fees, bank interest and occasional donations — that has led to the very real possibility that Canyon may...
- 3/31/2011
- MUBI
There’s very little in this world that gets me more excited than when an underground film festival adopts WordPress as a Cms for their website. Even more exciting is when the world’s oldest underground fest does it, as the Chicago Underground Film Festival has recently. Awesome looking site, guys! Gazelluloid is an experimental cinema blog that’s been around almost a year, but I just discovered it. The site posts up tons of great short films with no commentary. You should go bookmark it. There’s another brand new experimental film blog out there, too: cori e comete. However, you have to read Italian to get the full effect. The blog name translates to “choruses and comets.” There’s a new experimental and avant-garde screening space in North America: CinemaSpace at the Segal Centre in Montreal. Lots of great screenings are scheduled already. CineSpace is being run by Daïchi Saïto and Malena Szlam.
- 2/6/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Jan. 16
7:30 p.m.
Egyptian Theater
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Hosted by: L.A. Filmforum
This is one of several screenings happening around Los Angeles in support of the recently published book Radical Light: Alternative Film And Video In The San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, edited by Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid.
This particular event will run about 78 minutes and include nine short films by Bay Area experimental filmmakers such as Greta Snider, Dominic Angerame, Gunvor Nelson, Jay Rosenblatt and more. The full lineup of films is below and all prints are provided by the legendary S.F. distributor Canyon Cinema.
Curators Steve Anker and Kathy Geritz, as well as filmmakers Timoleon Wilkins and Cauleen Smith, who have films in the program, will be in attendance for a post-screening discussion.
For some background on these two particular time periods represented at this screening, here are descriptions from the L.
7:30 p.m.
Egyptian Theater
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Hosted by: L.A. Filmforum
This is one of several screenings happening around Los Angeles in support of the recently published book Radical Light: Alternative Film And Video In The San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, edited by Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid.
This particular event will run about 78 minutes and include nine short films by Bay Area experimental filmmakers such as Greta Snider, Dominic Angerame, Gunvor Nelson, Jay Rosenblatt and more. The full lineup of films is below and all prints are provided by the legendary S.F. distributor Canyon Cinema.
Curators Steve Anker and Kathy Geritz, as well as filmmakers Timoleon Wilkins and Cauleen Smith, who have films in the program, will be in attendance for a post-screening discussion.
For some background on these two particular time periods represented at this screening, here are descriptions from the L.
- 1/14/2011
- by screenings
- Underground Film Journal
Dec. 4
8:00 p.m.
Millennium Film Workshop
66 East 4th St.
New York, New York 10003
Hosted by: Film-Makers’ Cooperative
Once again, the Millennium Film Workshop is hosting its annual December benefit screening and party to help benefit its fellow cinema institution, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.
The Coop had a rough 2009 after being kicked out of its longtime home at the Clocktower Gallery, but soon settled nicely into its new location at 475 Park Ave. thanks solely to the generosity of real estate maven Charles S. Cohen.
While hopefully serious disastrous situations like that aren’t regular occurances, small cultural organizations these days need as much help as they can get, so if you’re in NYC think about going to support this phenomenal, scrappy and important institution.
I don’t have specific titles of films that will be screening at this event, there will be a program of recent films and videos deposited...
8:00 p.m.
Millennium Film Workshop
66 East 4th St.
New York, New York 10003
Hosted by: Film-Makers’ Cooperative
Once again, the Millennium Film Workshop is hosting its annual December benefit screening and party to help benefit its fellow cinema institution, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.
The Coop had a rough 2009 after being kicked out of its longtime home at the Clocktower Gallery, but soon settled nicely into its new location at 475 Park Ave. thanks solely to the generosity of real estate maven Charles S. Cohen.
While hopefully serious disastrous situations like that aren’t regular occurances, small cultural organizations these days need as much help as they can get, so if you’re in NYC think about going to support this phenomenal, scrappy and important institution.
I don’t have specific titles of films that will be screening at this event, there will be a program of recent films and videos deposited...
- 12/3/2010
- by screenings
- Underground Film Journal
0204 A Useful Life (Federico Veiroj, Uruguay)
Should we be worried, or at the very least troubled and sad, that the amount of melancholy homages to dying film theaters keep coming? (Or perhaps even sadder, the films either die at the box office or aren’t even picked up for distribution, some kind of horrible irony.) Federico Veiroj’s wonderfully trim and sensitive record of working at a place—and that place happens to be a cinema—is another elegiac entry in a micro-genre being slowly carved out by such filmmakers as Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye, Dragon Inn) and Lisandro Alonso (Fantomas) which explore the soon-to-be-abandoned spaces that will soon be inhabited only by the ghosts of cinema. Distinctly ungeeky in its cinephilia, A Useful Life, like the aforementioned films, upends the sentimental nostalgia of so many homage a cinema by being itself rather than a love letter to something else. The director’s personality is felt,...
Should we be worried, or at the very least troubled and sad, that the amount of melancholy homages to dying film theaters keep coming? (Or perhaps even sadder, the films either die at the box office or aren’t even picked up for distribution, some kind of horrible irony.) Federico Veiroj’s wonderfully trim and sensitive record of working at a place—and that place happens to be a cinema—is another elegiac entry in a micro-genre being slowly carved out by such filmmakers as Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye, Dragon Inn) and Lisandro Alonso (Fantomas) which explore the soon-to-be-abandoned spaces that will soon be inhabited only by the ghosts of cinema. Distinctly ungeeky in its cinephilia, A Useful Life, like the aforementioned films, upends the sentimental nostalgia of so many homage a cinema by being itself rather than a love letter to something else. The director’s personality is felt,...
- 9/13/2010
- MUBI
This week’s Must Read is an excellent profile of one of Bad Lit’s favorite fimmakers Usama Alshaibi, written by Ed M. Koziarski for the Chicago Reader. The article really captures Alshaibi’s growth as a film artist and his unique background that eventually led him to make the still-in-production documentary American Arab. Plus, a radio interview with Alshaibi for Wjjg. Second Must Read is Electric Sheep’s long, engaging interview with Peter Whitehead, who returns to film with Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts. Plus, the Sheep analyzes the new non-political U.S. war film genre. At long last, the great experimental media journal Incite! returns with its always insightful “back & forth” interview series. This time Penny Lane has tea and a very long and insightful chat with political animator Jacqueline Goss. Well, this is still relevant today and in the U.S.: Landscape Suicide...
- 8/8/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Wavelengths 1: Soul of the City
As the pace of the contemporary urban experience grows faster and the world becomes increasingly fractured, artists are documenting the vestiges and layers revealed in flux; global updates on the city symphony.
Tomonari Nishikawa’s Tokyo-Ebisu (Japan) is a 16mm in-camera patchwork constructed from multiple viewpoints from the platforms of Tokyo’s busiest railway line, Yamanote, and a masking technique which exposes 1/30th of a frame 30 times in order to capture an image of spectral apparitions. The Soul of Things (U.S.A) from Dominic Angerame presents luscious chiaroscuro images of the construction and destruction of modern structures exposing their inner soul. From Thom Andersen, director of Los Angeles Plays Itself, Get Out of the Car (U.S.A.) is a city symphony exploring Los Angeles’ gentrification through a thoughtful montage of façades and a playful excursus through its musical history. Callum Cooper’s Victoria,...
As the pace of the contemporary urban experience grows faster and the world becomes increasingly fractured, artists are documenting the vestiges and layers revealed in flux; global updates on the city symphony.
Tomonari Nishikawa’s Tokyo-Ebisu (Japan) is a 16mm in-camera patchwork constructed from multiple viewpoints from the platforms of Tokyo’s busiest railway line, Yamanote, and a masking technique which exposes 1/30th of a frame 30 times in order to capture an image of spectral apparitions. The Soul of Things (U.S.A) from Dominic Angerame presents luscious chiaroscuro images of the construction and destruction of modern structures exposing their inner soul. From Thom Andersen, director of Los Angeles Plays Itself, Get Out of the Car (U.S.A.) is a city symphony exploring Los Angeles’ gentrification through a thoughtful montage of façades and a playful excursus through its musical history. Callum Cooper’s Victoria,...
- 8/4/2010
- by tiffreviews
- TIFFReviews
The 22nd annual Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival is set to run in Chicago on June 17-20. That’s four nights of some of the best short-form experimental video from all over the world.
The festival opens with a real bang this year as it screens the 2010 Cannes Palme d’Or prize winner, A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, directed Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who actually studied filmmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Other opening films are by Daïchi Saïto, Michael Robinson, Sharon Lockhart and more.
Throughout the fest there are also new works by several longtime experimental filmmakers, including Kenneth Anger, Dominic Angerame and Lewis Klar; as well as films by media artists such as Stephanie Barber, Deborah Stratman, Thorsten Fleisch and Robert Todd. Plus, on the 20th, there will be a special tribute screening to the late JoAnn Elam, Chick Strand, and Callie...
The festival opens with a real bang this year as it screens the 2010 Cannes Palme d’Or prize winner, A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, directed Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who actually studied filmmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Other opening films are by Daïchi Saïto, Michael Robinson, Sharon Lockhart and more.
Throughout the fest there are also new works by several longtime experimental filmmakers, including Kenneth Anger, Dominic Angerame and Lewis Klar; as well as films by media artists such as Stephanie Barber, Deborah Stratman, Thorsten Fleisch and Robert Todd. Plus, on the 20th, there will be a special tribute screening to the late JoAnn Elam, Chick Strand, and Callie...
- 6/15/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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