Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Tuesday. March 21. 1972
Three views
from
the
A A Film
Festival
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By BRUCE SHLAIN
The Ann Arbor film festival
has come and gone, leaving in
its wake, I would suppose, a
sizable number of grieving
mourners. For this year's fes-
tival, at least as represented by
the three winner's programs
Sunday night, was largely dis-
appointing, and produced very
little of a spectacular nature.
Four cr five of the films. how-
ever, were sufficiently unique to
mnake it worthwhile to wade
through a few reels of bIzarre
vacuousness.
There imettogvn
in thee bad fils i thefact
that the accent in all of the
movies was on things visual, in-
whih s al-ooft en ms
larning to"pak" visually a Ia
Kubrick is most certainly a
ofthe "entrssan dmnstrated
any real control over their cam-
Somte of the strictly visual ef-
tects were amusing in a relax-
ing, unpretentious sort of way.
Animated Paintings and Pulse
were both inventive anrd inter-
esting. Animated Paintings con-
site of sna constantly metamor-
ing by turns into weird shapes-,
strange animaals, and. even a
submarine sandwich,
girls' trip to Florida to visit
their grandmother (Bubietta),
narrated in sing-song innocence
by one of the girls.
Both define the world In
terms of wide-eyed fantasy.
Markson used a fish-eye lens to
give things a bit of an exagger-
ated perspective, helping to es-
tablish the freshness of the girls'
perceptions. But if it seems
strange to seriously look at the
world through the eyes of a
four-year-old girl, then you
should seriously consider look-
ing at it through a cockroach's.
Ross Albert's Sparkle City opens
with a view of the underside of
akitchen faucet which fills the
screen. After all, this is how
things must look to the every-
ly the magnified cockroach, te
hero of the story, inspects the
scene, surveying a spoon here, a
pan there, checking out the ter-
rain in search of a morsel of
food. All the while a TV is blar-
ing in the next room - a news
report Is talking about extra-
terrestrial life, saying that if
there is life on other planets and
they are more advanced than
us, then they must be closer to
the Creator. Of course, this
sounds like balderdash to us
humans, the idea of anyone be-
ing closer to the Creator than
us just because they're more ad-
vanced. But then why are we
killing cockroaches? Because
we're more advanced?
Just as the question begins to
form itself, the faceless numan
of the story come plodding into
By RICHARD GLATZER
There is a huge difference be-
tween the Ann Arbor Film Fes-
tival in theory and the Ann Ar-
bor Film Festival in practice.
The original conception Is a fine
one. Here is a place for non-
professional filmmakers to dis-
play their wares, a place for
those of us with a spare hour
or two to sift through all the
sand, hoping for a nugget of
gold.
The actual festival, however,
is another thing altogether. Over
the year, the event has evolved
into a cliquish and very intimi-
dating affair. On the one biand
are the AA freaks who come out
to the Architecture Auditorium
to smoke dope, suck lemon
drops, drinkie, and every
scereen. What! You didn't like
the festival? What! You prefer
commercial movies? And you
say you're only twenty?
On the other hand are the
film technicians and academi-
cians who insist the avant-garde
is simply inaccessible, to us, the
masses. One Ann Arbor film fig-
ure once went so far as to say
that only those who have stud-
ied photography for years are
capaable of truly appreciating
these movies. (Orson Welles has
said he learned everything he
needed to know about photogra--
phy In eight hours.) The net
effect is to cause those of is
who usually find the festival
seventy-five per cent unadlul-.
terated boredom to idoubt our-
winners, though I ided ha
the films were deficient, not me.
the wos estiva offerings Ive
work, Our Trip to Bubietta in
Miami Beach, set the tone for
the evening. The film follows
the philosophy that, "Out of the
POCK ET BI L LIA RDS
"ITS WORTH LEARNING"
Free Inst-ructions
Thursday 7-9 P.M.
mouths of babes oftimes come
gems," by showing two little
girls' adventures at an amuse-
ment park and on a Florida
beach while their Grandma
looks on. Photographed mostly
through a fish-eye lens, with a
soundtrack of one of the girls'
singing and stream-of -con-
sciousness patter, Bubietta is as
avant-garde as Juvenile Jury
and just as boring.
The rest of the festival dis-
played an equal lack of innova-
tion, a major deficiency for an
event that reputedly shows us
what's new in cinema. I'd seen
almost everything before, either
in past festivals or on the com-
mercial screen. All of the festi-
aleast one film: the psychedel-
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V OPEN 12:45
Shows at 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 P.M.
SHOCKINGI
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By PETER MUSN
First the bad news: if you
missed0 thehewinners ad high-
Film Festival (AAFF) $unday
night yqu missed 1%'/ hours of
good films, Now the good news:
you also missed 4 hours of dreck.
With a couple of exceptions the
good films got no money and the
bad films took the prizes, in
best AAFF tradition. I'm not
objecting to the AAFF; far from
'it; it's extremely Imnportant for
aateu apacinematographers t
What I do object to is the institu-
Pulse was similar, although tion; the exclusion-non recogni-
net in scolor, concentrating on tion--of films that are well made
sketches of animals which but do not conform to a stereo-
merge into other animnals and type of underground films.
icluded some fairly innovative Teeaegnrly5tpso
mindblowng ith eomeric films shown: visual effects film;
h hbrnp stosanan documentaries parody / satries;
a film which the judges saw fit Sensitivismo films. The el Sen-
to award $200. It is nothing but stvsoflscnito epe
e dlss arrg o d lik reading potry in allegedly dra-
endless tattoo of psychedelia on the camera; symbolist films
the eyes until one acquires a aeheA F sreutonfr
wel afor film-ae r tais porn, though they now are dis-
daes nrdilm a erS atinguished by the film-within-a-
Laclr ndth udes Nt- e film - people talking about the
ing able to define the criterion flpol ai h im
under which the film was given fim epemkn th flm
an award, I choose not to be- etc .-and political commentary.
ratethejudgs. et t sufic to For the most part they are tedi-
say that tey musdace t ous, pretentious, and unusually
different drummer. Even Thb- pointless. But above all, heavy.
film, a simply drawn three-mm-. How heavy? Well,,ln the hernia
ute cartoon in which a woman class there was Deathstyles ($300
quickly goes down the drain in prize). People In 19th Century
her bathtub, was more desery- cotumes; a silver-tinted couple
Two films, Our Trip to Bubi- pogo stick; the guy in a traffic
Quiet inSparl Ciy were su- ahtso the Kennedy assasia
cessful in that their approaches. tion (John's) with an offtrack
in terms of "cinematic view- voice: "Perpetual orgasm ...
poinit" were entirely unique. Our When did you first masturbate
Trip, made by one of last year's .. ." This was by far the worst
winners, Morley Markeson, is a movie I've ever seen; only three
whimsical account of two small Darvons could save It.
.
Easyout, Saint Fournoy Lobos
Fetus ($10 eprize), Confessions
($50); Serpent ($300), and Bible-
stones Presents the Ropetones
($100), which were only better
than Deathstyles in terms of
stopwatch judgment-the shorter
the film the better It is because
It subjects you to less cinematic
masturbation. -
In all of these films there :s
a type of intellectual blackmail
-if you don't like it, if you find
don' understand ita or it's to
curturally revolutionary, or it's
avant garde. Sure, there may be
some symbolic content, but by
the law of averages if you expose
number frames you'll eventually
get some emotional response; in
the case of Deathstyles It was
Of the.- remaining categories
ad docuentaries ar uasually
the best, partly because they
tend to be shorter. The visual
effects films also .have a built
in advantage inasmuch as they
lntend~ to titilate the eye, so as
long as they do that they've ful-.
fildteir goal. Of course this
can go to extremes of thought-
lessness and total lack of artistic
composition, as with Raindance
(00. It started . with a car-
toon of Indians. Then a repeat
of tecartoonf. Thencartoon
right. After more repetition it
dissolves into some lines and
dots. Then green.r The r. Back
tinued for fifteen minutes, which
had the audience booing and
shouting during the film.
Two of the best films of the
festival, Frogs (awarded $300 in
a sudden attack of good taste)
1972 UNDERGRAD
ART SHOW -
3rd Fl oor -
aCkham Galleries
MONDAY tkru SATURDAY
8 A.M.- 11 P.M.
Until April 1st
This ad compliments of
Quarry Photo Inc.
and est f Yor Life, were both
documentaries. Frogs not only
gave some insight Into fro fan-
potential of the topic. "Best"
was a documentary of Sun City,
Arizona, a medicare metropolis,
but only another good, solid, doc-
umentary-nothing special.
The other documentaries suf-
fered from a common assump-
tion that merely showing some-
thing gives insight. Co Co Puffs
($300) showed 17 minutes of a
drum lsson BercTrip to Bubiet-
romping around as their off-
track voices said cute kid things.
So what? If you're going to
See MUNSING, Page 10
THE UNIVERSI TY OF MICHIGAN
GILBERT & SULLIVAN SOCIETY
A PR IL 5-8
Lydia Mendelssohn TheatreA
a
9
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TODAY-Tuesday-Ma rch 21
H EAR at 4:00 P.M.
Prfessor0 Luther Harshbarger
Chairman, Department of Religious Studies, Penn State
on
in
200 Lane Hall Auditorium, 2nd Floor
State Street
"the pluralistic scholraship in religious studies can be an intel-
their own mcommitent a~nd ormult beliefsn *thebas o
learning about other religions as welt as their own, while at the
same time, they are testing their ethical insights and beliefs in
relationships to the specific policies of the institutions in which
they are located . . . There are just too many important things
to be done in the world to perrmit outmoded forms of scholarship,
accretions of ritual piety and organization which have lost their
meaninq to impede discernment of the real occasions in the
modern world for thought and action." Luther Harshbarger
The Office of Religious Affairs
The Program in Religious Studies
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