A blue-skinned man wearing a white clown suit and angel wings sketches obsessively, ignoring various supplicants who come before him. The bizarre symbolism actually makes sense if you know Alfred Eaker and Raymond Thunder-Sky.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHVquPrYqQI]
ALFRED EAKER (INTERVIEWER): Alfred, what inspired you to interview yourself? Some might say a self-interview smacks of self indulgence, narcissism.
ALFRED EAKER: Perhaps. I am sure to many it is and God knows those tiresome labels are attached to artists all the time, as if it is totally unacceptable. Yet, to use a stereotypical but dead-on example: a business person cutting throats and screwing their way to a top level is commendable and rarely pointed out as being narcissistic. Still, all artists are, to a degree, narcissistic and you have to be to continue doing the art. I do not believe in fair weather artists. Like Bill Ross recently said when I interviewed him, “The world is not set up for artists and one has to be stubborn to continue doing it.” So perhaps it is not so self-indulgent. Actually, a badly misquoted but good-intentioned interview in a local paper from a couple of months back inspired this, proving that most interviewers, God love ’em, are hacks and since I know I am not a hack and can trust myself… Also, real simply, Glen Gould. Gould, one of the genuine freaks in music, interviewed himself, quite well I might add.
A.E. (I): Gould was the Canadian pianist who….
A.E. … Did a total whack job on Bach’s Goldberg Variations in 1955, yes. That was the first of his many transgressions, for which he will be long loved. The same goes for Stokowski’s Bach transcriptions. Someone once described his transcriptions as high cholesterol Bach and I do have high cholesterol.
A.E. (I): You have quite the love of music?
A.E.: From Mahler onto Cab Calloway, Julie London, David Bowie, Velvet Underground and the Statler Brothers.
A.E (I): I do not wish to get sidetracked in a lengthy music discourse. You tend to talk longer and more enthusiastically about music than you do either painting or film.
A.E.: That’s because I am not a musician at all, so yes I suppose I do.
A.E (I): Let’s talk about film. You are an indie filmmaker and you came to it rather late.
A.E.: I would rather talk painting first, but alright. Yes, I started my first film, Jesus and her Gospel of Yes in 2002 . I have been painting since the 1980’s.
A.E. (I): The films sprang from performance art.
A.E.: From my BlueMahler character in several performance pieces that began in the 80’s. Blue is an odd hybrid of identifications I have made in my life.
A.E. (I): You mean influences, not identifications.
A.E.: No, I mean identifications. Over the years I have realized there are other voices, artists Continue reading ALFRED EAKER: INTERVIEW WITH MYSELF
We are pleased to debut James Mannan and Robbin Panet’s short film “Hallow’s Dance” on the web. Although there is a mild Halloween theme to the film, Hallow’s Dance should not be confused with a horror film. It is in fact a drama, with the only horror being moral horror at the treatment of Frank/Mom. Co-directed by Robbin Panet and James Mannan, it co-stars 366 scribe Alfred Eaker along with Jason Hignite, Chelsea Rogers, and Terry Dellinger. It contains very mild scenes of suggestive sexuality. The weird part is the short, experimental dream sequence which ends the film, which is shot in black and white with streaming beams of light, accompanied by a catchy organ tune. The short runs approximately 14 minutes.
At the producers’ request, this film will not be released to YouTube or other video hosting sites, and will be available here for one month only.
[Our license to display “Hallow’s Dance” has expired. We will inform you if this film is released, on DVD or otherwise, in the future.]
We are pleased to debut Alfred Eaker and Robbin Panet’s short film film “9” on the web. This is the movie they made for the 2009 48 Hour Film Festival. The rules of the contest festival are simple: every team has only 48 hours to complete the film, and each must incorporate three elements given by the festival : a character name, a line of dialogue, and a prop. Look for a character named “Professor Sherman Kane,” a ball, and the line “I’m not talking to you.”
Rather than making a straightforward short that looked like everyone else, “9” takes an experimental approach, becoming a sepia-hued exploration of domestic abuse through the generations, in a Western setting. The bizarre free-association poetry of John M. Bennet replaces traditional narration. It runs approximately seven and a half minutes.
Alfred’s description of the making of the film can be read in his Reflections on the 48 Hour Film Festival and the “9” Diary.
[Our license to display “9” has expired. We will inform you if this film is released, on DVD or otherwise, in the future.]
At the producers’ request, this film will not be released to YouTube or other video hosting sites, and will be available here for one month only. UPDATE: Because this film was reviewed and linked from Rogue Cinema, we are leaving the film up for another week, until October 12, 2009.
“Alfred Eaker’s Fringe Cinema” is a column published on Thursdays covering truly independent cinema: the stuff that’s so far under the public radar it may as well be underground. The folks making these films may be starving artists today, but they may be recognized as geniuses tomorrow. We hope to look like geniuses ourselves by being the first to cover them.
July 31st -Aug 2nd, the 48 hr Film Festival came to Indianapolis, sponsored by the Big Car Art Gallery. Jim Walker of Big Car curated the event. 30 Indiana film making teams signed up to participate, including the Liberty or Death Team of James Mannan and Robin Panet.
Jim and Robin approached me about six weeks ago, inviting me to participate in this year’s 48 Hour Film Festival. Since I assisted in last year’s event with them to do Hallow’s Dance, I was a tad reluctant to do all this again. However, they shrewdly threw out a couple of temptations when they told me they wanted to do something surreal, which is my forte, along with inviting me to write and direct with Robin. Jim would be producing. If I recall correctly, my response was something akin to “Oh, alright, goddammit.”
For those who don’t know the set up of the festival, it goes like this: the teams go in on Friday night at 7:30 pm and draw a genre out of the hat. Jim drew Horror, which was apt as this is Jim and Robin’s forte. Then, everyone is given the same character name, his profession, a line of dialogue, and a prop.
The character name was Professor Sherman Kane, the prop was a ball and the line of dialogue was “I’m not talking to you”. Now the teams leave, write their script, shoot it, edit and turn it in by 7:30 pm on Sunday night. Showing of films: Wednesday and Thursday evening at the IMA.
I would imagine the whole idea for said festival came from Roger Corman. The story is well known among film aficionados. Corman had finished The Raven 48 hours ahead of schedule, with the actors, including Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson, still on contract for the remainder of the shooting schedule. That night Corman went home, wrote a script called The Terror, came back the next day and shot it within the 48 period. The problem with this story is that The Terror is indeed a terror to Continue reading REFLECTIONS ON THE 48 HOUR FILM FESTIVAL & THE “9” DIARY.