shopping cart      0 items in cart       subtotal:     $0.00 View Cart Check Out
annex express

Rock Reborn
Spend $50 or more at Insound and get a scorching new rock comp presented by Insound and Diesel. Features tracks from Blood Brothers, Rye Coalition, Ted Leo and more.
The Apes The Apes
OddEyeSee
The DC bong-rockers return with a new album of high octane, two chord Stooges-blasts. This time they add more 1967 Haight Asbury psychedelia to the fuzzed-out attack but, don't worry, it's still fiery, horny rock and roll.
buy it! (CD)
  hi. i'm the cranky sales clerk at insound. i'm rarely in a good mood.
i'll answer your questions about your orders or about the website and i'll recommend music for you.

CLICK HERE

Muddle
Issue #17
(zine) $1.50
Muddle
Issue #14
(zine) $1.00
CMJ New Music Monthly
issue no. 101 May 2002
(Zine + CD) $3.00
The Christal Methodists
Keep The Faith Baby 12
(12") $2.00
Rob Swift
Ablist
(12" EP) $3.99
Kind of Like Spitting
Bridges Worth Burning
(LP) $9.00
Forstella Ford
Insincerity Down to an Artform
(LP) $8.99
LU
Mood Elevator
(12") $4.99
Lollipop Train
Junior Electric Magazine
(LP) $8.99
Kandis
Airflow
(LP) $7.99

[ more ]
Enter your email address and get Insound's newsletter.
 
LEARN MORE

cva
05/18 - cass mccombs
a
05/18 - pink & brown
shame fantasy ii
man with the movie camera
black music
spirit flags
live at the metro dvd
05/20 - amon tobin
remixes and collaborations
home, volume v
methodology '74/'78: attic tapes
[ more ]
insound cinema
browse: # | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
search for

 

articles

Lost Fest Found: Adventures in Punk Rock Philly
by Michael Galinsky & Ed Halter

The Lost Film Festival was a revelation. After driving through the early April snow from New York to Philly, taking not a few wrong turns to find 4040 Space, the Lost Film Fest’s venue, we stumbled into the club around 1:00 pm for a screening that had started at 12:30 pm. The film was going and the room was pitch dark, but as our eyes adjusted we realized that there were hundreds of people packed into the makeshift theater , watching a projected video image on a jerry-rigged bedsheet screen. To a few jaded New Yawkers like us, the idea that over 500 people had arrived on a Sunday morning to see a two-hour shot-on-video movie was jaw-droppingly unbelievable.

The feature, "Edge of Quarrel", was more than a bit home-movie clunky, but like the rest of the audience, we just couldn’t help but get drawn in by the fucked-up charm of its melodramatic West-Side-Story-meets-Repo-Man plot. Set in Seattle and starring a number of local musicians like Rocky Votolato from Waxwing, John Pettibone from Undertow and Dann Gallucci from The Murder City Devils, the what-if story concerns a feud between straightedge kids and punk rockers and the film is filled with lots of in-jokes. It’s hard to imagine a better audience than the one at 4040 that day, totally filled with kids from the scene.

4040 Space, a retooled warehouse that usually serves as a music venue, stayed packed the entire day, even with lots of comings and goings. In between films there was a music performance by Lightning Bolt and even a fire-eating magician. And there were theatrics of other sorts as well. During the Q&A; following "Zegota, Wreck Your Life", a digital doc about the North Carolina band Zegota on tour, a kid from a Cambridge, MA band began accusing Zegoda of stealing his amp. The situation quickly escalated into a Jerry Springer style brawl that fell back from the stage into the audience. Pretty soon one of the Zegota guys was up on a chair reciting lines from French Situationist Guy Debord’s anti-capitalist manifesto "Society of the Spectacle," covered in bright-red fake blood. Sure, it was a tad pretentious in the end, but the staged confrontation completely shook up and confused the audience, breaking them out of their cinematized Sunday stupor and back into the here and now. Viva la punque-rocque!

All that revolutionary rhetoric sure made us hungry, and we hiked down to the local Abyssinian restaurant for lunch. When we returned, we discovered that we had missed "Ghetto Venue" a 13 minute short on 16mm about late West Philly punk club Stalag 13.

Amazingly enough, the fest’s completely packed line-up stayed on schedule for most of the day. It only veered off course after the Philly premiere of Esther Bell's digital feature "GodAss". The crowd was so smitten with the film that Bell and cast members George Crowley and David Ilku were forced to answer questions for well over her allotted half hour. Then, a gang of young lady filmmaker groupies surrounded Bell to buy copies of her tape and glean magic moments with the plucky director.

Ian MacKaye was on hand soon after to offer up some words before the Philly premiere of "Instrument", the amazing documentary of the band that Fugazi made with filmmaker Jem Cohen. Although it’s one of Ed’s favorite films, we couldn't stay for the Q&A; since we had to drive back to NYC. We hear it was lively and engaging.

At the end of the day, the Lost Film Festival was an inspiring and eye-opening event. We heard a lot of folks talk about a new resurgence in roots'-rockin DIY filmmaking, and even a new socially-engaged, political edge to the work. This was a notable trend many definitely saw, albeit in a more urbane, subdued manner, at NYUFF 2000. In the 90s, it seemed that indie filmmaking emerged as a new way for people to enter the film industry and make their careers. Now, underground events are exploring ways to make films with no interest in mass market appeal.

And more than a new tone in productions, there’s a new energy and commitment to getting the films out there and making more events happen. Within the past year, New York has sprouted so many new microcinema screening opportunities that you can see underground and avant-garde movies every night of the week on a regular basis. David Wilson is driving around right now showing his film Magic City along with a bunch of other films and live bands with his PunkNotRock Tour. Animator Martha Colburn just left for Europe for her second Continental tour. North Carolina’s stuff DoubleTake Documentary Festival sprouted its own upstart rival fest this year, the more political AnotherTake Festival. And Lost Film Fest itself plans at least two more events by this summer, one going head-to-head with the Republican National Convention.

Clearly, there’s something in the air. Over the next year, check back here, because we’re contacting the best underground film events and don’t think we’re not gonna be there.

To hell with the multiplex. Viva la revelation.

check out Mike & Ed's video coverage of the Lost Film Festival


  Past Articles

12.19.2001
FUGAZI “INSTRUMENT”

07.05.2001
Cinemad interviews KAREN BLACK

06.28.2001
Out of the Frying Pan

06.04.2001
ALBERT MAYSLES on Salesmen, the Stones and No Judgment.

05.03.2001
You Want A Revolution?

03.28.2001
GETTING THE SHORT OUT WITH PAUL HARRILL

03.22.2001
HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE NEW YORK UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL

02.06.2001
Exground FilmFest 13

01.22.2001
Scott MacDonald

01.22.2001
NEWS BLURB: Action films for the anarchy set!

01.19.2001
All Tomorrow's Movies: An Interview with Director Geretta/Geretta

12.01.2000
Re-MIX-ed: The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimenal Film/Video Festival

11.16.2000
I Flew with a Zombie Actress

10.30.2000
Interview with Richard Sandler

10.25.2000
Living in a Movie Theater: Craig Baldwin

10.11.2000
Brakhage meets Reggio

10.05.2000
Shooting Your Idols

09.21.2000
Telluride Dispatch

09.21.2000
The Man Behind Telluride

09.21.2000
Blowing 'Nurse Betty'

09.07.2000
CUFF Audiences 'Fucked in the Face'

09.07.2000
Shawn Durr: The Insound True Undie-Wood Story

08.24.2000
Futurespex: A Manifesto of Amateur Film

08.24.2000
Fear Not the Clown

08.24.2000
Hakuchi's Unparalleled Views of Reality

08.17.2000
An Evening with Filmmaker Jennifer Gentile (or at least some questions answered)

08.16.2000
10 Clowes Questions

08.10.2000
Home Movies: films by Kiarostami and Taiwanese women filmmakers

08.03.2000
It's Only A Movie: Cecil B. Demented

08.03.2000
An interview with RTMark

08.03.2000
Lost Again: Tragic Comedy at Lost Film Festival 4.0

08.02.2000
An Interview with Stom Sogo by Andrew Lampert
Or
An Interview on Andy Lampert by Stom Sogo


08.02.2000
Meet Merzbow

07.27.2000
Overqualified

07.27.2000
The Film as Chestnut Tree

07.27.2000
Ten minus one from Jennifer Reeder

07.20.2000
Ten Questions in July on Miranda July's Nest of Tens

07.20.2000
Amber tints and wispy ellipses: Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides

07.12.2000
X “XXX” Questions for Philly

07.06.2000
X Questions for Xan Price

07.05.2000
Godass Road Journal #2: The Lost Tour Scrolls

07.05.2000
Toby Halicki and Gone in 60 Seconds: A Man and His Movie

06.29.2000
Jesus' Son: The Lucky Junky

06.20.2000
Jack Smith

06.20.2000


06.14.2000
Jeff Krulik - Lot King

06.14.2000
Godass Road Journal #1

06.10.2000
Around The World In Williamsburg

05.23.2000
Timecode: 15 minutes and Fame and 78 minutes of Boredom

05.09.2000
I Worked An L.A. Guest List

05.01.2000
PunkNotRock Tour: Final Installment

04.27.2000
PunkNotRock Tour: New England Nites

04.24.2000
PunkNotRock Tour: Report from the DC Thing

04.20.2000
The Insound! True Hollywood Story: LA Independent Film Festival

04.12.2000
The Cinema of Transgression Manifesto

04.12.2000
Experimental Movies Today

04.11.2000
PunkNotRock Tour: Athens and Chapel Hill

04.06.2000
PunkNotRock Tour: second disptach

04.06.2000
Digital Villain - Interview with Philipp Virus

04.04.2000
Enter the Digital Dragon

04.03.2000
PunkNotRock Tour: Projecting the Future

03.27.2000
Film Anarchy

03.24.2000
NYUFF

03.11.2000
Films, Stop This!

02.28.2000
Xenomorphosis

02.26.2000
Even Herzog Started Small

02.26.2000
I Know What I Did Last Winter