Chicago Underground Film Festival and Filmmakers Summit 2008

Peter earned the nickname 'City Wasp' because of his flashy yellow shirt and black suspenders. It is unfortunate that with the exception of a few sunflowers hardly anybody knows this old man with his conspicuous hearing aide. Because when 'City Wasp' roams the streets of Chicago at night, cars fall from the sky and unite as a hooting, tooting city orchestra. Anyone who has witnessed the maestro's display, can only say : Good bless America.

“INTO THE WILD, directed by Sean Penn (2007, 148 min.) condensed to 5 seconds plus credits. Special thanks to Nichol McGrane.” – K.L.

“Marginalized by film historians and largely overlooked during his lifetime, the late Curtis Harrington (1928-2007) was a key figure in the West Coast experimental film scene and among the most wholly original directors to work in the Hollywood studio system. An ardent cinephile since his earliest years, Harrington began his film career as an errand boy at Paramount and eventually became a successful A-list director at Universal in the 1960s. An early protégé of Maya Deren and a close friend of Kenneth Anger and Gregory Markopoulos, Harrington’s first works were poetic trance films that revealed his careful eye and distinctive style. This series pays tribute to an artist who never lost sight of his youthful ideals and produced a dazzling body of work ripe for rediscovery.” – Harvard Film Archives Courtesy of the estate of Curtis Harrington. These films have been preserved by and come from the collection of the Academy Film Archive.

“Guy Maddin flies to Kansas City, Missouri, in a vain attempt to save cinema as it continues to die from contempt and neglect.” – B.M.

Part 1 Shroud of Security “One hundred feet of un-shot 16mm (Kodak-7289, 800ASA) film was cut into 6 equal parts. Each piece was boxed separately and passed along to airline passengers to be placed in their check-in luggage. As they traveled, the boxes were separately subjected to x-ray checks 0, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 times. 23 carriers, an innumerable quantity of anonymous security personnel, and the cumulative radiation render the emulsion of Shroud of Security virtually transparent. Violet's soundtrack accords the agitated grain a pulverized soundtrack.” – J.S. Part 2. Government Radiation “For this second x-ray experiment, the first step was to film the US Capitol on 100 feet of 16mm film (Kodak-7205, 250 ASA). Then, using a process similar to that of Shroud of Security, the film was cut into 6 equal parts and passed through US Government security X-Ray machines in Washington DC 0, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128 times. The result is a gradual effacing of the image. Sound by Violet.” – J.S.

“The emulsion of a film loop and its optical soundtrack are scratched nearly completely from its surface by a "modified" record needle, whose sound we hear. This process is followed in progressive steps. While the source material speaks of mining, digging, and drilling, the film emulsion screeches and screams.” – J.S.

In this all-female video remake of Deliverance, based both on Boorman's film and Dickey's novel, a cast of experimental filmmakers-academics (Peggy Ahwesh, Su Friedrich, Jacqueline Goss, Meredith Root and the director) play characters that are both faithful to their respective male counterparts and also barely fictionalized versions of themselves—urban artists looking to unplug in the unspoiled wilderness. The filmmakers follow John Boorman's original closely as the gender inversion examines the differing role of women in relation to nature and violence, comments upon the extreme sport of filmmaking itself and the industry's endless demand for product, and to call attention to the fact that it is, after all, only women who can, biologically, truly deliver, all on a stretch of river coincidentally called Beaverkill. "Like a generation of viewers, I was profoundly affected by Deliverance. But I have always been troubled by the hegemonic structures of gender proposed by Boorman and Dickey. Hence, my version is played by women: myself, Peggy Ahwesh, Jackie Goss, Su Friedrich, and Meredith Root, all experimental filmmakers who work as academics. While faithful to our respective male characters, we also play ourselves. Provocative questions arise through these filters of similarity and difference. My film's title, Deliver, refers to the re-birthing experience of surviving extreme physical challenges, the product-obsessed nature of the film industry, and, of course, the fact that it is only women who can, biologically, truly deliver. Unlike the Deep South setting of Deliverance, Deliver takes place in the Catskill Mountains. The group goes canoeing down a river, which is, believe it or not, called the Beaverkill. We are confronted by two local women armed with a shotgun, and one of us is sodomized. This is the moment when a seemingly simple exercise in gender inversion becomes complicated. In the original, the iconic male hillbillies' hostility toward bourgeois men is based largely on land entitlement. Few women can claim that history of entitlement, and the Catskills are not hillbilly country. Most importantly, there is the false notion that women do not pose a sexual threat to one another. What, then, motivates this rape? At what point do we read it as an unconvincing imitation of a 'real' rape? The lines between bathos and pathos become dangerously blurred. It is the aim of this film to pose critical questions about the gendering of nature, homosocial sexual violence, and the act of filmmaking itself." - J.M.

“After nearly seven years of constant construction on my street, the road in front of my house was ripped up once again early one summer morning. A few days after they'd paved over the damage, Dig-Safe Marks magically appeared, signaling the start of yet another round of terror for the neighborhood, here vividly brought to life in unsparing terms.” – R.T.

“Real decade-old love notes make up the physical landscape where a hundred fleeting moments run into a thick river of heart guts.” – M.M.