Contortions of a mind in perpetual decline – Portraits of Andrea Palmer (2018)

„Portraits of Andrea Palmer“, the first feature film for both and directed in conjunction by a certain „C. Huston“ and film preservationist collective Vinegar Syndrome’s Joe Rubin (billed under his film board nom de guerre „J[ohn]. Lyons“), is in many ways an unusual venture – when measured against its date of production, even a deeply anachronistic one. For it is not merely a superficial hommage to the long-gone Golden Age of Porn that raged in American cinemas for some approximately 15 years from the very late 60’s to the mid-80’s, elicits it’s filmic (as in analogue filmmaking, granularity and a color cast unique to employed – 16mm here – stock) as well as organisitional (as in centered around, not working with unsimulated renditions of intercourse) structure, shares it’s curious interest in gloomy subject matter coupled with precise gaugings of female suffering, but actually possesses a profound understanding of it’s highly specific employment of filmed sex like few, if any, modern efforts. Weiterlesen…

The First Time (1978) or: How to separate sex from sex with Anthony Spinelli

Have you ever pondered about the question of how a film centered around authentic, thus outwardly far more equable renditions of intercourse can manage to tell encounter from encounter, to dinstinguish the metaphysical weight being thrown around so freely? Anthony Spinelli’s „The First Time“, the prolific director’s final offering in a longstanding streak of outré, highly avantgarde films preceding his second coming as careful constructor of more narratively inclined fare, seems to have been constructed entirely around this very idea and adds the further challenge of answering without ever sacrificing its carelessly understated tone. Weiterlesen…

Midnight Confessions #05: The Pink Ladies (1979)

You’re a kid Casanova, you’re no Joseph
It’s a labor of love fucking yourself to death
Orgasm addict, you’re an orgasm addict

(Buzzcocks – Orgasm Addict)

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Midnight Confessions #04: Mary! Mary! (1977)

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste, mm yeah

(The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil)

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Film and book (#15): Marco Siedelmann – Good Hot Stuff: The Life and Times of Gay Film Pioneer Jack Deveau (2019)

Our films are live Disney movies, if we hold them out of circulation for 5 to 6 years, they’re PINOCCHIO all over again – playing to a brand-new audience. The number of people interested in porno is probably fixed in relation to the population. This is literature of a kind – I don’t know how it’s recognized today, but we’ve created a large body of it – maybe it’s the Mickey Mouse of the year 2000!

(Jack Deveau)

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‚The pain of being a woman is too severe!‘ – The films of Roberta Findlay: Psychogeographic coping on Fire Island

I’ll find a place somewhere in the corner
I’m gonna waste the rest of my days
Just watching patiently from the window
Just waiting, seasons change

BRIAN ENO – I’ll Come Running

Just keep on like I do and pay no attention. You’ll find that people always will complain about the atmosphere, either too hot or too cold too bright or too dark, days too short or too long.

FRANK O’HARA – A True Account of Talking to The Sun on Fire Island

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‚The pain of being a woman is too severe!‘ – The films of Roberta Findlay: Mascara (1983)

Deep in the heart of a lonely city
I wandered sad and all alone
Then in the heart of a lonely city
I saw the girl that I want for my own

(John Leyton – Lonely City)

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‚The pain of being a woman is too severe!‘ – The films of Roberta Findlay: Fantasex (1976)

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality

(Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody)

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Midnight Confessions #03: Taboo II (1982)

You know that’s incest?
That’s why its so hot!

(Siblings Sherry and Junior McBride in everyday conversation)

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‚The pain of being a woman is too severe!‘ – The films of Roberta Findlay: From Holly with Love (1978)

„La photographie, c’est la vérité et la cinéma, c’est vingt-quatre fois la vérité par seconde.“ – in a nutshell: Cinema is truth at 24 frames a second – is an often quoted wise saying by French cinema stylite Jean-Luc Godard. Well, when speaking about Roberta Findlay’s cinema though his German counterpart Rainer Werner Fassbinder seems to have been closer to the truth for once. „Film ist Lüge, 25 mal in der Sekunde.“ – Film is a put-on, 25 times in each second. It might not always be as integral to the appeal as it is in „From Holly with Love“, but Findlay’s flow of imagery is a lie, a beguilement involving just about everything – her intentions, feelings, the undersold wisdom that lies buried in her work – and extending to externa of her filmography. Golden Age of Hollywood smuggling as a coping mechanism for being forced to work on projects she took no immediate interest in or even found distasteful, the elaborate (and even I have to admit it: screamingly funny) stand up comedy routine „An hour of self-deprecation with Roberta Findlay“ most of her rare public appearances have a tendency to evolve into sooner or later – it’s all part of the deal. Weiterlesen…