2009 Revelation Perth International Film Festival: Official Lineup
2009 marks the twelfth year of the epic Revelation Perth International Film Festival in Australia, but this is also the second year it’s being run under the purview of film historian and writer Jack Sargeant, who returns as Program Director. Based on the lineup listed below, it’s a stunning encore. The festival runs July 2-12 and there are a ton of great films to check out.
I can only speak about one of those films from personal experience: Bad Lit’s 2008 Movie of the Year, Altamont Now, directed by Joshua von Brown. I’ve been beating the drum for this underground masterpiece for just about an entire year now and I’m glad the film’s hugely successful 2008 festival run has now spilled over into 2009 at such a great fest like Revelation. It’s only screening once, on July 11, so don’t miss it.
But there’s lots of other great films, too, that I wouldn’t miss were I in Perth. There’s Nina Paley’s festival hit, the animated musical Sita Sings the Blues; and Chusy Haney-Jardine’s Anywhere USA, which has been making the U.S. underground rounds. Plus, there’s some great sounding documentaries like The Seventh Python about “lost” Monty Python member Neil Innes; and Ben Steinbauer’s acclaimed Winnebago Man; as well as Josh Koury’s hit Harry Potter fan doc We Are Wizards.
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Solar Anus Cinema
Iraqi-born, Chicago-based filmmaker Usama Alshaibi has collected ten of his short films made between 2001 and 2008 for Solar Anus Cinema. This DVD shines a light on the transgressive director’s interest in the female form primarily through a series of highly stylized film portraits of women.
Nine out of the ten films included are short profiles of women that run just a few minutes long. The tenth film, the longer running narrative The Amateurs, I’ll deal with below. But, with the portraits, sometimes the object of them is Alshaibi’s wife, performance artist Kristie Alshaibi, but mostly he has convinced other women to pose, strut or writhe in front of his camera’s leering gaze.
The antecedent to Alshaibi’s transgressive work here is Richard Kern’s 1993 My Nightmare, an autobiographical fiction that has the director fantasizing about getting it on with a sexy nude photography model while in “real” life the model is repulsed by his come ons.
AFI Silver Theatre: Every Other Day Is Halloween
June 27
8:20 p.m.
AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center
Silver Spring, MD
Hosted by: Midsummer Night’s Scream II
Every Other Day Is Halloween is director C.W. Prather’s documentary about Count Gore De Vol, the beloved Washington, D.C. TV horror movie host. Portrayed by Dick Dyszel, De Vol was a major cult celebrity in the nation’s capital during the ’70s who fell victim to ’80s media consolidation. After being tossed off the air, De Vol turned to the Internet where he has led a renaissance of horror movie hosting. Also, the “Other” of the title refers to other characters Dyszel portrayed on TV, including Bozo the Clown and the sci-fi themed kids show host Captain 20.
You can read Bad Lit’s review of Every Other Day Is Halloween here. It’s a fantastic and inspiring documentary.
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Other Cinema: The End Of Analog
May 23
8:30 p.m.
ATA Gallery
San Francisco, CA
Hosted by: Other Cinema
The headliners for this exorcism of the ghosts living in the machines is Killer Banshee, an East Bay A/V art collective who will present a live performance of A Wake for Analog, which respectfully honors the now dead broadcasting medium with two video screens and a stereo field blasting out snippets from the vanished airwaves.
Plus, David Cox will present a visual history of video games; several examples of Machinima — animated films created from video games — will screen; Carl Diehl will premiere his Patrolling the Ether; Caspar Stracke’s Zuse Strip will screen; and Cyrus Tabar will present his Tunnel Vision installation. And more!
Random Image Gallery
