The Michigan Daily-Tuesday, March 20, 1979-Page 7 arts & entertainment 16MM WINNERS: TAIPESTRI ES WALL "ANGINGS for your rooms Persian House 320 E. Liberty-769-8555 Festival comes to a BY OWEN GLEIBERMAN Compared to past festivals, it was an amazingly placid year. For one thing, there was no Pat Oleszhko show during intermission, and the art display in the Old Architecture showcase (perverted beer cans, xeroxed copies of a memo. 'involving John F. Kennedy's assassination) couldn't quite carry the * badly-needed ballast of subversiveness. But perhaps times are simply changing. Certainly, there seems less place for the far-out, the experimental, and the films that dare to be tedious. If young filmmakers have learned a great deal about their art, it seems they've grown somewhat conservative in their proficiency. Most of the ten films screened at the winners' night Sunday had the benefit of expert craftsman- ship, without being especially radical in temperament. And the notable lack of excitement among the Sunday audience was a bit disquieting: By the time the last film ended (1:20 a.m.), the Old A&D Auditorium was barely one-third full. OF COURSE, some regard sitting through six hours of movies as a severe test of one's endurance. But one of the things I love about the festival is the way it boosts your tolerance. After the 7:00 showing, I was ready for anything, and by the time 11:00 rolled around, the projectionist could have sneaked some slides from his latest vacation into the proceedings, and I'd have probably stared at the screen in utter conten- tment. Unfortunately for Sunday's audience, three of the winners averaged 80 minutes in length, so the total number of films screened was a mere ten. Con- sidering the potential diversity, the evening had a surprising amount of unity. Come Back Jonee, Reflec- toVision,and Grand Opera all pierced the heart of Americana, for purposes of satire, redemption, or both. And though seeing some proficient animations was no surprise, two of the winners (Aspargus, Rapid Eye Movements) were not only technically remarkable, but eerily, originally evocative. The grand prize winner was the evening's major disappointment. Made by a small team of filmmakers in Den- mark, Troubles in Paradise is a documentary about an army of Santa Clauses who, capitalizing on a wave of revolutionary fervor and the time of year (Christmas), attempt to foment protest over high unemployment rates and capitalism in general. There's a central irony to the situation - as in a scene where the Santas enter a depar- tment store and begin handing out mer- chandise to customers - that the film captures well: Even if the Santas break the law, legal authorities are bound to appear a bit heartless and petty dragging their culprits to jail. As one Santa asks an officer, "Why are you hurting Santa Claus? When you hurt him, you are hurting yourselves." BUT A SINGLE, pungent irony can be spread only so far. The Marxist sen- timents expressed are so thinly one- sided that they rob the film of spon- taneity; instead, it is cluttered with tid- bits of hollow symbolic detail, such as ubiquitous cutaways to store window mannequins, whose lifeless expressions are supposed to embody the shallowness of bourgeois values. Well- shot and edited, Troubles in Paradise was still short on freshness and originality. The opposite can be claimed for Punking Out, a half-hour documentary shot in crude,raw black-and-white. Focusing on New York's CBGB's, in- famous birthplace of the Dead Boys, Talking Heads, and other notable "new wave" ensembles (those words seem to have become meaningless unless you put quotes around them), Punking Out is certified proof that if you've got a hot enough subject, negligible filmmaking skills can still produce a sizzling documentary. The makers went to CBGBs in spring of 1977, asking things like "Are you a punk?", "What is the Blank Generation?", and other cretinous queries. What they got were a bunch of tough-talking kids who were set up to sound stupid, and ended up sounding a lot more on-the-ball than their questioners. The musical performan- ces, including footage of the Dead Boys, the Ramones, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids, are crudely recorded, but when you're watching Dead Boy Cheetah Chrome snarl like he wants to bite the strings off his guitar, who needs elaborate camera angles? WHEN THE media began picking up on the mushrooming punk scenes in London and New York, safety pins, fighting in clubs, and throwing up on old ladies in the airport were the passwords for punk's subversiveness and (sup- posed).artlessness. Now that all the kids are digging it, too, clips of Marky Ramone explaining why he sniffs glue look as affectionately anachronistic as those of the Beatles defending their "outrageous" haircuts. In Punking Out, only the music hasn't already been tur- ned into a joke. A band like Devo, on the other hand, seems to revel in being a joke. At least, that's the case if you look at the films they've made with Chuck Statler. Come Back Jonee pictures the ensemble on- stage in cowboy regalia and with plastic cactus scenery, doing "Come Back Jonee," their hard-hitting perver- sion of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." The film's garish lighting and fragmented editing add to its high- spirited insanity (some might say inanity), but the combination of Mark Mothersmaugh's robotic wail, the band's inhumanly stoic stare, and several off-the-wall cutaways to actual antique cowboys guffawing through a bowling match made for a likeably ,crazy three-minutes. I must repeat: The film was fun. ANOTHER quick and r.ather disquieting film was Mother Goose, a simple animation of several popular nursery rhymes. The catch? It presents the tales literally, so that we observe a giant actually grinding the bones of an Englishman, and the farmer's wife (in a scene more out of Father Hitchcock than Mother Goose) raising her carving knife to dismember the three blind mice. (Yes, there's blood and everything.) These ever-so-innocently told fables are worse than Mr. Mike's Least-Loved Bedtime Tales, because the black humor isn't tacked on; it's right there in the stories. My only regret is that the filmmaker (David Bishop) didn't include a few more tales, like, for instance, "Jack and Jill"; I've always wondered what a broken crown looks like.- Of the animations screened, Asparagus, by Suzan Pitt, was the most impressive, because it strayed farthest from conventional animation aesthetics without sacrificing structural unity. The film is a crazy-quilt of vibrant, colorful images, cohering around the figure of a faceless woman. We journey through a halfway-discernible narrative that juxtaposes despair and redemption, lifelessness and sexual vitality. The actual drawings were composed by a large team (the animation took four years to com- plete), but the result is a surrealist tableaux of stunning richness and con- tinuity, with bizarre images like that of a woman fellating (don't scream) an asparagus, that are spookily affecting. 'Also impressive was the animated Rapid Eye Movements, a technically quiet c. slick production involving seemingly random free-associations with Peter Max-like visuals. THE TWO runners-up for first prize were so similar in many areas that I wondered about the jury's criteria: Given that both were exceedingly "ex- perimental," and that most of the festival films (including the majority of winners) were not, could someone high up have felt obligated to throw a bone to the unconventional? Grand Opera, by frequent festival participant James Benning, was, like Benning's other films, not the most riveting piece of cinema I've ever seen, but strangely alluring nonetheless. But what of Floor Show, the other runner-up? From the beginning, direc- tor and co-star Richard Myers explains that this is (among other things) a movie about making a movie. He in- cludes a clip from Man With a Movie Camera, a turgid 1929 Russian ex- perimental film by Dziga Vertov, based on roughly the same theme. Only Myers' "remake" is even more un- bearably ponderous than the original. THE DIALOGUE (and subtitles) which sounds like it might have been written by Buckminster Fuller, aboun- ds in super-hypothetical explanations of the mysteries of the universe. Perhaps if Myers had simple de-personalized his film (like Vertov did), and given us his "fragments" scotch-taped together, the result wouldn't have been so tiresome. But Myers drags in all this ponderous baggage about the Agony of Making Cinema. In one section, he runs clips of Metropolis, Citizen Kane, and Potemkin (by implication, I suppose, Myers is in a class with Lang, Welles, and Eisenstein), including a shot of the words "cinema" being blown apart (translation: "My film is destroying the 'old' concept of cinema"). Floor Show starts to look like an enormous self-homage disguised by obscure cinematic syntax. The floor show isn't the movie's; it's all Myers'. James Benning's Grand Opera, the final film of the night, is exactly the sort of thing I love the festival for: weird, and likeable for its weirdness. Like his other films, Benning's latest work is a structuralist essay composed largely of long, unmoving takes picturing America's heartland. Not much hap- pens during a Benning film. But the guy makes the least boring boring films I've lose ever seen. NURSING BOARDS Grand Opera mixes a fragmentedFlexiblePrograms & Hours story (a single anecdote, really, about There is a di/Terenc standing beside a building that sud- denly explodes), slices of soap opera dialogue, American kitsch (huge pic-MP N tures of Elsie the Cow and family em-EA blazoned on some water tanks), and Benning's patented 10-minute takes, in Test Preparation peci lsts s which you find yourself discovering For Information Please Cal more about a piece of farmland or a deserted city avenue at 7:00 in the mor-"For Locat ning than you ever dreamt you'd see. OLRE80 31 a With its calm, slight pulses of insight, ersi e Grand Opera virtually ran away with the evening. y Acanlaw- without law school. After just three months of study at The Institute for Paralegal Training in exciting Philadelphia, you can have a stimulating and rewarding career in law or business - without law school. As a lawyer's assistant you will be performing many of the~duties traditionally handled only by attorneys. And at The Institute for Paralegal Training, you can pick one of seven different areas of law to study. Upon completion of your training, The Institute's unique Placement Service will find you a responsible and challenging job in a law firm, bank or corporation in the city of your choice. The Institute for Paralegal Training is the nation's first and most respected school for paralegal training. Since 1970, we've placed over 2,500 graduates in over 85 cities nationwide. If you're a senior of high academic standing and looking for an above average career, contact your Placement Office for an interview with our representative. We will visit your campus on: Thursday, March 22 Thei235 South 17th Street for Philadelphia, PA 19103 Paralegal (215) 732-6600 Training' 0 Approved by the American Bar Association. JK 4.. 9r w r T f4 SATYAJIT RAY'S 1965 Songs, not gongs (Continued from Page 6) CHARULATA The story of a neglected wife and her obvious husband. "Charulata is a Tagore-influenced film, and most of my recent films have dealt with the double nature of Indian life. The colonial forces have supposedly gone, but their mannerisms and habits still remain and exert considerable power and influence."-S. Ray, with subtitles. Wed: Antonioni's BLOW UP Thurs: Resnais' HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR Fri: Disney's DUMBO that the large tables, modestly priced refreshments, free admission, and en- thusiastic, often talented performers -add up to a pleasant, 'low-key way to celebrate the impending weekend. The lead-off act was Steffanie Por- tnoy, an LS&A freshman from South- field, who played guitar and sang about a half an hour's worth of folk-love Isongs. Her own compositions were generally very pleasant and in- distinguishable, for the most part, from the Joni Mitchell-type songs of this genre which one hears on the easy- listening stations. Her ear for an in- teresting melody serves her better than her talent for writing lyrics, but Stef- fanie obviously puts a lot into a perfor- mance and such acts are always in- teresting. THE NEW Jerusalem Artichokes - Roger Treat and Carl Willamson - followed with a. twenty-minute set of old-timey music capably performed on the fiddle and banjo. They were precise and chose a good selection of dance tunes, the only disappointment being that Willamson sang but one song, only teasing us with a fine vocal feel for traditional tunes. Throughout the two and a half hour evening, the pace was very relaxed, and the audience receptive and un- critical. It is very incongruous for auditions to be a part of low-key amateur nights, and this puts an em- phasis on talent which is contrary to the spirit of people entertaining each other. It's rare that tone deaf churls who can't sing a dial tone brave the stage, and when they do, well, someone has to represent the gnarl-throated of the world. The last half of Soundstage was highlighted - nay, dominated - by the folk duo of Katie Finn and Karen Taborn. Though they showed an over- weening preference for James Taylor and Carole King, Taborn's voice and Finn's polished six-string guitar work, together with smooth harmonies when appropriate, filled out a pleasant though rather protracted set. A man named Roger who tickled the reeds on harmonica took the stage and whined out a few solos before Finn and Taborn joined him for some blues num- bers. Future Soundstages will perhaps feature acts such as the University Jazz Band and the Sharon Hollow String Band, with a possibility for "theme" nights featuring blues, soft folk, old ,time, or classical. CINEMA GUILD TONIGHT AT 7:00 & 9:05 OLD ARCH. AUD. $1.50 A n Original Musical Play The Anita Bryant Follies by TOM SI ONDS Wednesday through Saturday March 21 to 24-8 p.m. CANTERBURY LOFT-332 S. Tickets $2 at the door-All Welcome State St. PATiI SMITH GROUP )411 .... ,. _.. ,.