Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Tuesday. March 21. 1972 Three views from the A A Film Festival ......-,.......... .......'.-....-.-'...~.,....,.... ~-......... ..*.* . . ..*.*.~.*.*. ~ ~ ~.* ....... 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- Program Information 662-6264 V OPEN 12:45 Shows at 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 P.M. SHOCKINGI FUNNY! VERY ADUL.T! The Of A Marriage! fR/WDS For the Student Body SALE * reg. to $24.00 CHaECKMeetAT bE 9' -.. .... ..... ... .... ..~...,.,........ ............'........ ........ 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 M ICH. U NION - ~ advertisement for the Professional Theatre Program in Sunday's issue. The correct program for next year is below. Please ig- nore the Sunday ad as it is totally incorrect. We regret the error and any inconvenience it may have caused. We. Ar5 8:00~ $25 7:00 $2.50 9:45 .5 2:00 $2.00 Sal., Apr. 8 8:00 $25 CIRCLE DESIRED PERFORMANCE . ----------mmmm m - -- -- - -- -- -- -- ---" " "" "m Number of t ickets desired. .. LI I. II 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 NAME ADDRESS............ 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