Wholphin

SF360 Film+Club will be presenting Dispatches from Dimension X, a showcase of work by Wholphin favorite, Carson Mell, next Thursday, August 28th at Club Mezzanine in San Francisco.  

Take equal parts country-rock star, science-fiction writer, undersexed adolescent and uncomfortable malcontent and you’ve merely cracked the door into the world of Carson Mell. Carson will be in attendance to present his animated short films and music videos, and to read from his illustrated novel, Saguaro, about the life and times of ex-rock star Bobby Bird, the fictional protagonist of many of Carson’s short films, which can be seen on Wholphin 1, 3, 5 and the upcoming 7. 

After Carson appeared with screenings of Chonto at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, the requests came pouring in for more. So here’s your chance, as Elston Gunn of Ain’t It Cool News said, to “hop on the cusp of an American original.”

Tickets are $8 with an RSVP to sf360@sffs.org or $12 at the door. Doors open at 7PM. Screening starts at 7:30PM. Mezzanine is located at 444 Jessie Street in San Francisco. 

Due to tropical storm Fay, the Wholphin will be screening at Sweat Records in Miami will now take place on Monday, August 25th. The lineup for “Music Movie Monday” will still be a selection of shorts including a documentary about a band of Scottish 9-year-olds singing “Satan Rocks” at their county fair; an animated short about an aging rock star and his heroin-addicted carnival monkey; David Byrne covering old country songs in an abandoned storage facility; the effect of Terry Bozzio’s instructional drumming videos on Morrocan youth; and much much more. Stay after for a live crying competition!

Monday, August 25, 8PM
Sweat Records
5505 NE 2nd Ave.
Miami, FL 33137 

Los Angeles - Tomorrow Tuesday night - 8 pm - Ben Russell’s traveling 16mm bonanza - stark trees, Lightning Bolt, Richard Pryor, Dubai, live projection tricks and more - this is for YOU, young kids….

Trypps
Trypps
Trypps
Trypps
Trypps

Blasting out of Chicago, experimental filmmaker Ben Russell makes vibrant,
“tryppy” films as emotional as they are beautiful to sink in to. His Black
and White Trypps subjects range from elliptical trees in high contrast to a
crowd at a Lightning Bolt show to a Richard Pryor performance blown out
visually. Live at the theater, Russell will also perform The American War
(#10), a 16mm double-projection live performance involving film loops, mixer
feedback, a delay pedal, and a homemade light-sensitive synthesizer.

WARNING: This show contains visuals that may be harmful to those with
epilepsy.

August 19
8pm

Tickets - $13/$9 for Cinefamily members

The Cinefamily @ The Silent Movie Theatre
611 N. Fairfax Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 655-2510

Co-presented by Cinefamily and Cinemad

Cinefamily runs the great Silent Movie Theatre, with an incredible program
of new and retro films.
Cinefamily.org for full calendar

Cinemad is a zine created in 1998, covering avant-garde, experimental,
underground and other films that terms don’t fit.
A Cinemad anthology book and DVD is coming soon.
Iblamesociety.com for more info and interviews.

Japanese noise geniuses the Boredoms have always been the exact opposite of their name. Main mastermind Yamantaka Eye first did pure noise as a one-man band Hanatarash. I’ve heard that stands for “snot nosed,” as Eye often had allergy problems - which, plus medicine, would make him space out a lot. So I heard. Hanatarash is puuurrrre noise, in the realm of Merzbow and the Incapacitants, using pedals to blow out deafening feedback with strange underlying rhythms. Live he would let the sound max out as he smashed things. I’ve seen footage of him throwing big oil drums into the audience and smashing anything in site. Stories include him driving a back hoe into a club and knocking down a wall, and jumping around with a chainsaw until it hit his leg.

The Boredoms were the next step for Eye, a more traditional setup of a band but the team made unusual songs, with Eye not really singing in any language as much as the entire band making up their own musical and vocal sounds. They went from (less harsh) noise with song structures, eventually to more drifting ambience in longer songs, to various setups like tribal drum influences. Always completely fresh with each album, like you were being taught what sound could be.

So when the Boredoms organized 77 drummers to play on 7-7-07 last year - made perfect sense. Last week they upped it to 88 drummers, playing 88 minutes, on 8-8-08, with a group in Brooklyn and a group at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, which i went to.

Audibly, it was, of course, amazing. It sounds simple in a lot of ways, but you’ve just never heard that much drumming at one time. (Sorry USC, this even blew away your “Tusk” cover.) The waves of sound and beats were different depending on where you were in the crowd, and the echoes kept going. Beats seemed thought out, led by the Boredoms, and often you thought the drummers were directly in sync when different layers appeared coming from different areas of the circle.

Visually it was even better. The waves of drummers moving seemed more complex than you would have expected. Started slow, got going, then explosions of fury. The giant circle of drummers around the Boredoms on the center stage became a nice zoetrope of movement, sometimes in perfect unison, sometimes a wobbly set of dominos. It was blurry at times, and you were lulled into expecting what was next. But then all the sticks moving and the beats hitting you just stayed….pleasurable.

You Tube has many many cool videos, from the close up of a few drummers, also fascinating, to a wide shot of the circle. But its all small moments. Pro cameramen were running around, hopefully for a DVD release. No matter where you watched the performance from, you couldn’t have the same experience as others, side to side, front to back, always seeing half of the circle, and different parts of the Boredoms. All while Eye led as conductor, while hitting a homemade(?) eight-neck guitar with his stick. Noise is pretty structured after all.