In 1997, the Chicago Underground Film Festival held its fourth annual edition on August 13-17 at the Theatre Building at 1225 W. Belmont Avenue. One way the festival promoted itself that year was it published a four-page pull-out section in the Chicago-based political magazine Lumpen, vol. 6 no. 4.
These pages included the entire festival schedule, which the Underground Film Journal has re-created below. In addition, scans of the original Lumpen pages appear at the bottom of this article. This program schedule did not include director names for the most part, but the Journal has included names that we could find through research.
In the Theatre Building, Cuff screened on two screens simultaneously. One theater screened films shot exclusively on film; while the other theater screened films shot exclusively on video. In addition, a Closing Night event of director John Waters‘ live performance piece “Shock Value” took place in the film theater and was simulcast into the video theater.
These pages included the entire festival schedule, which the Underground Film Journal has re-created below. In addition, scans of the original Lumpen pages appear at the bottom of this article. This program schedule did not include director names for the most part, but the Journal has included names that we could find through research.
In the Theatre Building, Cuff screened on two screens simultaneously. One theater screened films shot exclusively on film; while the other theater screened films shot exclusively on video. In addition, a Closing Night event of director John Waters‘ live performance piece “Shock Value” took place in the film theater and was simulcast into the video theater.
- 12/10/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The second annual Chicago Underground Film Festival was held in 1995, at multiple locations in the city, from Thursday, July 20 to Sunday, July 23.
The festival opened on July 20th at the International Cinema Museum with the film What About Me?, directed by Rachel Amodeo. Other highlights included a retrospective of the work of Kenneth Anger, who attended the fest and screened Fireworks (1947), Scorpio Rising (1963) and Kkk (Kustom Kar Kommandos) (1965) at the Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan, on Friday, July 21. Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin also attended and screened films on July 23; while the Reverend Ivan Stang of the Church of Subgenius screened films on July 22.
Also, Charles Pinion screened the world premiere of his feature film Red Spirit Lake, which was preceded by the short film The Operation, directed by Jacob Pander and Marne Lucas. Other short films that screened were Desktop and a preview of Monday 9:02 am, both directed by Tyler Hubby.
The festival opened on July 20th at the International Cinema Museum with the film What About Me?, directed by Rachel Amodeo. Other highlights included a retrospective of the work of Kenneth Anger, who attended the fest and screened Fireworks (1947), Scorpio Rising (1963) and Kkk (Kustom Kar Kommandos) (1965) at the Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan, on Friday, July 21. Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin also attended and screened films on July 23; while the Reverend Ivan Stang of the Church of Subgenius screened films on July 22.
Also, Charles Pinion screened the world premiere of his feature film Red Spirit Lake, which was preceded by the short film The Operation, directed by Jacob Pander and Marne Lucas. Other short films that screened were Desktop and a preview of Monday 9:02 am, both directed by Tyler Hubby.
- 7/23/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Charles Pinion's indie horror flick American Mummy is now available on Blu-ray through Wild Eye Releasing. ScreenAnarchy has three (3) copies to give away to our readers in the U.S. and we are also premiering the Red Band Trailer for this devilish little flick which features limb chopping and a fair amount of blood. A graduate student on an archaeological dig in a desert performs a ritual on a mummy wearing a fearsome mask, awakening the blood-hungry spirit of Tezcalipoca, Lord of the Smoking Mirror. To enter the contest all you have to do is answer our skill testing question and send your answer to us via e-mail. Ready? Turns out, Tezcalipoca was a real Aztec god. What animal was sacred to...
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[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 6/1/2017
- Screen Anarchy
Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival – 8 Nights & 3D Premiere Aztec Blood
Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival, already scheduled to run Friday, Nov. 6th – Thursday, Nov. 12th at the Eastern Hills Cinemas in Williamsville, New York, has added a night of programming to its schedule. The Us 3-D premiere of Aztec Blood (formerly American Mummy), a splatter flick directed by Charles Pinion in the vein of ...
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Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival, already scheduled to run Friday, Nov. 6th – Thursday, Nov. 12th at the Eastern Hills Cinemas in Williamsville, New York, has added a night of programming to its schedule. The Us 3-D premiere of Aztec Blood (formerly American Mummy), a splatter flick directed by Charles Pinion in the vein of ...
Hnn | Horrornews.net - Official News Site...
- 9/30/2015
- by Horrornews.net
- Horror News
Red Spirit Lake is psychotronic filmmaker Charles Pinion’s second feature film, shot entirely on video in the early ’90s and featuring several superstars of the Cinema of Transgression movement, such as Richard Kern and Tessa Hughes-Freeland.
The film — available on DVD from the filmmaker — is a wildly evolutionary step up from Pinion’s first feature, the raucous skater punk horror flick Twisted Issues. Below, we discuss Red Spirit Lake‘s production.
Underground Film Journal: Not to get ahead of ourselves, but it sounds like a lot of Killbillies eventually got transformed into We Await.
However, you must have been so soured on the Killbillies experience at the time that you wanted to move onto something completely different. But also, I would suppose that having been involved in at least attempting to mount a major production inspired you to make Red Spirit Lake more — well, it’s hard to find the right word for it,...
The film — available on DVD from the filmmaker — is a wildly evolutionary step up from Pinion’s first feature, the raucous skater punk horror flick Twisted Issues. Below, we discuss Red Spirit Lake‘s production.
Underground Film Journal: Not to get ahead of ourselves, but it sounds like a lot of Killbillies eventually got transformed into We Await.
However, you must have been so soured on the Killbillies experience at the time that you wanted to move onto something completely different. But also, I would suppose that having been involved in at least attempting to mount a major production inspired you to make Red Spirit Lake more — well, it’s hard to find the right word for it,...
- 6/9/2014
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
(Charles Pinion‘s Killbillies, which you’ll discover all about below, is one of the great unfinished underground movies. It’s complex, uncompleted production involved a multitude of talents, not least of which was Joey Ramone whose involvement got a write-up in the infamous Page Six gossip column. The scan of that article that you see here was provided to the Underground Film Journal by Killbillies co-producer and actress Marina Lutz. But, this is Charles’s story… and his on-set pictures. Click the article and all pictures to embiggen.)
Underground Film Journal: Ok, so Madball is done and you’re moving into another film project, Killbillies? What’s the story behind that?
Charles Pinion: Killbillies‘ basic notion came from my friend George Cavano, an artist/musician in Gainesville, Florida. (His piece, “A Violent Release of a Large Body of Water” plays over the opening titles of Red Spirit Lake.
Underground Film Journal: Ok, so Madball is done and you’re moving into another film project, Killbillies? What’s the story behind that?
Charles Pinion: Killbillies‘ basic notion came from my friend George Cavano, an artist/musician in Gainesville, Florida. (His piece, “A Violent Release of a Large Body of Water” plays over the opening titles of Red Spirit Lake.
- 5/9/2014
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Filmmaker Charles Pinion is most well-known for his garish video splatter movies, like Twisted Issues and We Await. However, embedded above is his one completed foray into working with celluloid, the subdued (for him) fever dream known as Madball. A naive, well-kept young man enters a nightmare world of odd, depraved creatures that make his — and maybe yours — brain bleed.
The making of Madball and how it falls into Pinion’s directing career can be read in Part Two of the Underground Film Journal’s epic interview with the filmmaker. But, the skinny of it is that after making his first feature film on video, Twisted Issues, in Gainesville, Florida, Pinion moved to New York City and made this little film experiment before moving back into features.
The film fits in nicely with the New York City underground film tradition of it’s time. The lo-fi quality seems to be...
The making of Madball and how it falls into Pinion’s directing career can be read in Part Two of the Underground Film Journal’s epic interview with the filmmaker. But, the skinny of it is that after making his first feature film on video, Twisted Issues, in Gainesville, Florida, Pinion moved to New York City and made this little film experiment before moving back into features.
The film fits in nicely with the New York City underground film tradition of it’s time. The lo-fi quality seems to be...
- 5/5/2014
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
(In Part One of this interview, we discussed the making of Charles Pinion’s first feature film on video, the skater punk rock splatter movie Twisted Issues. In Part Two below, the Underground Film Journal attempted to discuss his second feature video, Red Spirit Lake, but get diverted into Pinion’s brief foray into film.)
Underground Film Journal: It seems like you had a really good reaction to Twisted Issues that I’m sure helped inspire you to make another video feature. How did the release of Red Spirit Lake compare to the release of your first film?
Charles Pinion: Funny, it’s only through retrospect and in reading the comments of others that I had any notion that Twisted Issues was a “seminal work of the shot-on-video movement” (a pull-quote I used for some time from Timothy Thompsen, who did a zine called Lunatic Fringe). My goals, then and now,...
Underground Film Journal: It seems like you had a really good reaction to Twisted Issues that I’m sure helped inspire you to make another video feature. How did the release of Red Spirit Lake compare to the release of your first film?
Charles Pinion: Funny, it’s only through retrospect and in reading the comments of others that I had any notion that Twisted Issues was a “seminal work of the shot-on-video movement” (a pull-quote I used for some time from Timothy Thompsen, who did a zine called Lunatic Fringe). My goals, then and now,...
- 5/5/2014
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Charles Pinion exists at a unique transection of the modern underground film scene.
A pioneer of the Analog Video Feature Film movement. (That never materialized.) Interaction with the Cinema of Transgression, but not a part of it. Screened back-to-back features at the then-nascent Chicago Underground Film Festival.
He’s been there. He’s done that.
To date, he’s made just three feature films. (Although, hard at work on finishing up his fourth.) And all three — Twisted Issues, Red Spirit Lake and We Await — deserve to be freshly rediscovered and recontextualized. These films put out vibes that stretch out and can be felt in work by makers such as Calvin Lee Reeder, Bob Moricz, Waylon Bacon and others, whether they were specifically influenced by them or not.
All of Pinion’s films can be purchased on DVD from the filmmaker’s website. Gross. Surreal. Unsettling. If that’s your bag...
A pioneer of the Analog Video Feature Film movement. (That never materialized.) Interaction with the Cinema of Transgression, but not a part of it. Screened back-to-back features at the then-nascent Chicago Underground Film Festival.
He’s been there. He’s done that.
To date, he’s made just three feature films. (Although, hard at work on finishing up his fourth.) And all three — Twisted Issues, Red Spirit Lake and We Await — deserve to be freshly rediscovered and recontextualized. These films put out vibes that stretch out and can be felt in work by makers such as Calvin Lee Reeder, Bob Moricz, Waylon Bacon and others, whether they were specifically influenced by them or not.
All of Pinion’s films can be purchased on DVD from the filmmaker’s website. Gross. Surreal. Unsettling. If that’s your bag...
- 4/28/2014
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The 7th annual Sydney Underground Film Festival, which runs this year on September 5-8 at the Factory Theatre, opens with a real bang when they will screen cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s latest cinematic odyssey, The Dance of Reality. This is Jodorowsky’s first film in over twenty years and is an imaginative and playful quasi-autobiography.
The rest of the four-day celebration is packed with more film oddities and excursions into surreal and transgressive territory. One particular highlight that is not to be missed is Don Swaynos’ incredibly crowd-pleasing comedy Pictures of Superheroes, about a slacker cleaning woman’s descent into an absurd world she can’t escape. Read the Underground Film Journal’s review of Pictures of Superheroes here.
Other twisted fiction films screening include Drew Tobias’s sick and twisted See You Next Tuesday, Cody Calahan’s apocalyptic Antisocial and Lloyd Kaufman’s highly-anticipated sequel Return to Nuke ‘Em High: Vol.
The rest of the four-day celebration is packed with more film oddities and excursions into surreal and transgressive territory. One particular highlight that is not to be missed is Don Swaynos’ incredibly crowd-pleasing comedy Pictures of Superheroes, about a slacker cleaning woman’s descent into an absurd world she can’t escape. Read the Underground Film Journal’s review of Pictures of Superheroes here.
Other twisted fiction films screening include Drew Tobias’s sick and twisted See You Next Tuesday, Cody Calahan’s apocalyptic Antisocial and Lloyd Kaufman’s highly-anticipated sequel Return to Nuke ‘Em High: Vol.
- 8/15/2013
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The mighty and all-powerful Chicago Underground Film Festival has done the absolute unthinkable: Reached their 20th year of operation! How many underground festivals have accomplished that feat? None, until now! Well, “now” being March 6-10 at the fest’s new location: The Logan Theatre.
Obviously, there are a lot of people who have worked with the fest over the years to help make it last for exactly two fantastic decades, but, truly, there is one special person who has to be specially lauded for his tireless dedication to the advancement of underground film and its makers. Especially because Cuff hasn’t just been around for 20 years: It’s been fucking awesome for 20 years.
That person, of course, is Artistic Director Bryan Wendorf, who has been with the fest for the very first edition to it’s most recent, mind-blowing one. Year after year, Wendorf has guided Cuff into defining, challenging,...
Obviously, there are a lot of people who have worked with the fest over the years to help make it last for exactly two fantastic decades, but, truly, there is one special person who has to be specially lauded for his tireless dedication to the advancement of underground film and its makers. Especially because Cuff hasn’t just been around for 20 years: It’s been fucking awesome for 20 years.
That person, of course, is Artistic Director Bryan Wendorf, who has been with the fest for the very first edition to it’s most recent, mind-blowing one. Year after year, Wendorf has guided Cuff into defining, challenging,...
- 2/13/2013
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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