Thursday, September 04, 2008

22 CENTS
My nephew and his wife live in Alaska, got an email from him that the Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin and her preggers teenage daughter Bristol Palin are very sweet. My nephews oldest son is good friends with Bristol´s boyfriend Levi Johnston, who is a very light skinned black boy in the Wentworth Miller mulatto tradition. I bet the mainstream press haven´t picked up on that little item yet. But give them time,I´m sure they will.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

MARY SHELLY´S SHALLAC
Only in Berlin kids, only in Berlin! Today i saw three, count em three! beedy eyed, in-bred Frankenstein monsters while riding my bike running errands . Two were quite young, and one was middle aged with the requisite brain surgery scar tissue. The only thing that was missing were the bolts in the neck and the elevator shoes----scary.

Monday, September 01, 2008

L´IMPORTANT CÉST DA`IMER
Exhausted from spending the last four days August 28-31st at the Sun Screens Summer experimental film festival at Kino Arsenal in Potsdamer Platz. Lovely Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Nanna Heidenreich and their glorious hardworking crew put on this wonderful highly ambitious end of summer event, which was very successful.
It all reminds me of the Get That Gnut, Filmy Films & Electronic Cinema Festy that i created and curated at the Re-Solution Gallery with Lawence Elbert(Days of Pentacost) in Hollywood back in the mid 1990s. There were no experimental film festivals in LA at the time so we were grave digging from scratch with absolutely no budget. Looking back i sure must have been a certified loonster to take on such a big project. What we were doing at the time was so novel, that we got a lot of good press and huge crowds. I kept the programming fairly simple only having screenings in the evening and keeping all the programs brief. Even with short subjects, it is a necessity to make sure that nothing lasts longer then 30 minutes tops. People in LA have notoriously short attention spans bordering on ADD.
I also invited academics who don´t get enough attention from the academy to give consise lectures. I provided them with the themes, and told each one that if they were verbose and went past their alloted time, I´d humiliate them by kicking them off the podium with the old vaudeville hook. That threat kept them all in line and focused, plus i was providing them with an expanded audience outside of their usual university grift.
Perhaps with the help of Anna Muelter i can re-adapt the concept for Berlin and do a traveling Get That Gnut that takes audience groups to different artists and filmmakers flats for screenings. Tim Blue has also expressed an interest in doing something along these lines. But getting back to Sun Screens. The opening night was exciting with a book and dvd launch for Christine Noll Brinckmann. I especially loved seeing her shorts West Village Meat Market from 1979 and Dress Rehearsal & Karola 2 from 1981. I was impressed with a a young Karola Gramann of Uberhausen and The Asta Nielsen Foundation wearing jelly shoes, and looking somewhat Annie Hall-ish. Sitting next to me in the theatre was cute young film scholar Christiane F. Weber, who wasn´t even born when these movies were made.
The next evenings highlight was a program of works by my Cheap collegue Tim Blue along with his friend Paul Rowley. Tim & Paul have been co-conspirators for many years and cross polinate each others work. Paul is from Ireland and is the darling of the Irish Arts Counsel, and his movies and film installations have garnered lots of recognition internationally.
Saturday as part of the big Benefit for Kino Arsenal my monthly silent film survey, Rising Stars, Falling Stars morphed into a spectacular gala, with a special magical rooftop garden presentation that made the top of the Sony Center come alive. As i was getting my face beat, members of the public were invited to become junior papparazzo and take poloroids of me that were auctioned off to the highest bidder. I couldn´t believe that my pics sold more then Isabella Rossellini´s Berlinale ID badge. Later all the Cheapies including, Mark Siegel, Daniel Hendrickson, the Blue Bros. Tim & Kjohnny and the divine Susanne Sachße, who is starring in a new movie directed by lesbian feminist Maria Beatty contributed to the live soundtrack of Germaine Dulac´s La Souriante Madame Beudet.
Seen mixing it up under the spell of a moonlit night: Maggie Schneider who did the installations in the foyer of the Arsenal, artist Marie Cusre, filmmaking gamine Marie Losier who closed the festival with a screening and discussion of her hilarious shorts The Touch Re-Touched, the Passion of Joean of Arc, Lunch Break on the Xerox Machine, and Manuelle Labor featuring Guy Maddin´s hands. Director and actor Lajos Talamonti with documentary theatre kingpin Hans Werner Krösinger, tranny legendina Zazie De Paris,experimental writer/musician Mario Mentrup, video artist Judith Hopf, Cynthia Beatt the 80s Berlin filmmaking legend and best friend with actress Tilda Swinton, Angela Melitapoulos, Heinz Emigholt, The Florians: Wüst and Zeyfang, the poet Ines, Ute Aurand & Johannes, Wilhelm Hein & Annette Frick, Erika Claus the Canadian Cultural Attache, French it boy Christophe Chemin, whose big solo show Jeder Für Sich Und Gott Gegen Alle will open on Sept 12th at Rise Gallery on Hertzbergstrasse 27 in Neukölln,Anna Muelter, the lovesexy Brückner Brothers: Florian, Franz Xaver and Maxmillian,super duper preciously spiessig Turkish ganymede filmmaker/artist Köken Ergun, who many a gay blade on the prowl during the festival thought was attractive until they heard him speak during his cinema talk after the screening of his hauty pro consumerist, capitalist shorts. Sitting with the patrician Mr. Ergun who use to be an assistant to Robert Wilson, was twee British DAAD guest curator Ian White, stylish Mijke Harmsen, the jugend & musik programming chief of the Hebbel Am Ufer, young raw foods celebrity chef Boris Lauser, Arsenal founders The Gregors, professor Jennifer Doyle with date Senol Senturk, Steffan Geene of bbooks, Evelyn Russler and Isabel Spengler who screened their hilarious new kinky experimental sex film,cute Arsenal booty pie assistant Garrett Woltemath, the Neu Köln Sabinas, Piero Bonnehomme of the Piero Kollezione, my gorgeous NYU student Mila Geisler, Angie Baby,Ruth Schoenegge the talented film editor of Berlin Stories series from 2001 and DJ Olga Damnitz from Hanover.