Greetings, everybody…

Just going to throw up here a couple of quick notes this week. First, MICRO-FILM passed it’s 10th anniversary last week on Thursday, October 29. While we didn’t throw a party or marshal any spectacular product release, we do have a modest series of upcoming occurrences in the works that will put the proper perspective on MF’s history and where it will and won’t go from here.

That will include not only the oft-delayed MICRO-FILM 8 but a pair of small limited-edition “retro” publications that will be coming out in early 2010, C-U Confidential ‘99 and MICRO-FILM 2000. Stay tuned for more news here as well as C-U Blogfidential for more updates!

Finally, you may notice at some point between now and Christmas that the MICRO-FILM main site and Weblog may go down for several days at a time. We will be doing some re-design and updating on these sites as well as the C-U contingent.

If you are a film/entertainment writer interested in contributing material for upcoming releases, contact us at microfilm.magazine [at] gmail [dot] com. MICRO-FILM is a non-paying gig, so please consider this before making contact.

~ Jason Pankoke

Greetings again, everybody…

Never thought that I’d have the ability to wax philosophic from the confines of a drinking-and-dining establishment in downtown Champaign, Illinois, that is not the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters, but, here we are!

The following is a slightly shortened rumination that I sent along to the fine folks on the C-U Confidential mailing list, so now I’m sharing it across all our forums to let you know what your humble editor is thinking in terms of the MICRO-FILM past - all 10 years of it! Not necessarily the most glamorous or productive history, especially given our recent times under the radar, but I respect everything that everyone has done for the MICRO-FILM cause since 1999, along with all the crazy independent cinema that I’ve had the fortune to cover since we started.

Please feel free to record your thoughts at the conclusion of this post!

~ Jason Pankoke

~~~~~

MICRO-FILM: 1999-2009 ~ or ~ So, now what do we do?

This is a conspicuous time here at the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters.

Very conspicuous … especially, the 10th time around.

Yes, indeed, on October 29, 2009, we reached the point in time marking a full decade after the publication of the very first issue of MICRO-FILM, the Magazine of Personal Cinema in Action. While not technically the first time for MF in print, it was the first time that MF had been realized the way that we thought was appropriate – as a legitimate publication for media artisans and non-Hollywood film fans alike.

So now, we hit the milestone after an unfortunate stretch of silence – at least, depending on where one looks and how one listens. MICRO-FILM 7 is the last print issue to date, arriving in late October 2005 with enfant terrible Lars von Trier on the cover, and the companion MICRO-FILM News Blog has been mostly devoid of blogged news during the last 18 months. What, then, is to celebrate here?

It is because we have kept alive the MICRO-FILM mystique with C-U Blogfidential and C-U Confidential. Having always been a part of MF, the C-Us helped bring the coverage down to an immediate, personal level. Through sheer stubbornness – and the lack of having anything physical and timely for Roger Ebert’s Film Festival in 2007 – we went back to print with CUZine and have since released it on an annual schedule. In fact, the promise and prominence of the C-Us in MICRO-FILM Country has yet to be fully realized … in our opinion, not by a long shot.

Introducing the C-Us as their own entity was the beginning of an effort to create indie media about indie media with a refreshed state of mind. The C-U quotient really was – and still is – the soul of MICRO-FILM. Does this mean that MF itself can have a second life in a digital age which has matured tremendously since its nascent, pre-2000 era?

We don’t know that answer right now. The main reason why? Bring up your browser and type “independent film” in Google. There is your answer – (arguably) too much repetitive information on the subject, a very difficult density in which to build (or re-establish) a marketing and readership push that will make our spin stand out above most others.

This will not stop us from exploring how we can develop the C-Us as we’ve seen in recent years – particularly with the slow but sure upswing of local production – that “thinking locally” instead of globally (even though, of course, we hope that local productions will be prosperous far and wide) might be the more productive way to channel our efforts. During the next few months, you will learn about our upcoming issues, bonus publications, additional products, expanded Web features, increased presence on social networks, and (promise!) a brief reprieve for MICRO-FILM, but our continuation can only be prolonged by what happens outside of MFHQ. It starts with all of you.

We’ve asked you to pass along our news and announcements to your friends, colleagues, and collaborators. Have you done it in the past? Will you please do it from here on out? This is the first, no-cost step in how you can help anchor the future of the C-Us and MICRO-FILM.

The next step is for all of you to keep tabs at the following URL, and not just immediately after the occasions when we pipe up via The CineMicroGraph. Read early, link to us often, synthesize via conversations within your circles, show your support when we release products, join with us publicly when we take our act to the streets, the coffee houses, the academic auditoriums, and the watering holes:

http://www.micro-film-magazine.com/cublog/

The third step, of course, is for the ballsiest of you to spring forth and engage in the world which we trumpet 24/7 – the creation of independent cinema and, by extension, independent art. Take advantage of the inside knowledge we offer to you with run with it. It’s your choice to step up to the front lines instead of perennially watching from the sidelines.

It’s been an enlightening ride even though our visibility outside of MICRO-FILM Country has been dimmed during the last few years. Please ask yourselves to trust us a little longer, look at what we do a little deeper, and encourage us (if not join us) to reach ever so higher with our stubborn creativeness. For the last 10 years, we’ve been doing the same for all of you.

Jason Pankoke
October 18, 2009

Hello from the icy, gusty, frosty, foggy, drenched Midwest! We’re checking in to say “Happy Holidays” and wish everyone a bright and productive 2009, during which We the People need to achieve improvement in our world and save the American face. More than ever, art and media speaks out internationally so it is a cue for independent filmmakers everywhere to use their tools creatively for the greater good as well as their own artistic whims. Let Hollywood whip up the fluff as they may.

The next 12 months will also be an active and sobering time for MICRO-FILM. It has been a while since we’ve been able to keep MF going on a constant basis and the course we are taking will not exactly be normal given a highly volatile publishing environment that has swallowed up many a beloved title. It is sad, frustrating, and even a bit embarrasing for a country that supposedly values its wide range of voices, but both the survivors and victims in the independent press can win using adaptation and intellect.

Right now, we’re looking to eradicate back-door SPAM problems that have been plaguing the News Blog, and once that’s done we’ll resume regular posting. We also can announce that MICRO-FILM 8 will be published in April 2009 alongside the third issue of C-U Confidential. More details on both will be released at winter’s end!

~ Jason Pankoke

It’s a cliche, which we’re not particularly fond of ’round here at the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters, but with these less than stellar economic times - buoyed somewhat by an election cycle that has brought about more hope than sustained dismay - we certainly have to be thankful for what and whom we have in our lives. We hope that you will have a peaceful Thanksgiving this week with your family and friends. Cheers to all!

As to all the quiet here on this Midwestern front as of late … we’ll be posting some important news during the next few weeks about the future of MICRO-FILM. It may be inevitable, but the pathway towards conclusion is not exactly what you’d expect.

~ Jason Pankoke

SUGAR
Golden, Jolley, Reynolds

by Jeff McCoy

Your outer breath stops and you experience stark reality;
   your immaculate naked awareness clear.
At that instant you must recognize it as yourself. – The Bardo Thodol

With a quote as enigmatic as its title, SUGAR opens with its silent, nameless protagonist (Samara Golden) cowering in a refrigerator. Venturing out into her squalid, debris-strewn apartment, she removes the grating from a crawlspace and drags out a corpse which may belong to the former tenant Anthony. Answering machine messages from concerned individuals – mother, landlord, creditors – indicate that Anthony was on a downward spiral before his (apparent) disappearance. As the apartment’s new occupant clears out detritus, she begins to uncover disturbing clues that Anthony’s spirit may be lingering. Is Anthony dead, and if so, did the young woman kill him? Is she insane? Or has Anthony’s own insanity seeped into the apartment itself, infecting its new tenant?

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ROCKET SCIENCE
Duly Noted, Inc./B&W Films

by L. Rob Hubbard

A confession upfront – high school coming-of-age stories are not my favorite film genre. ROCKET SCIENCE is such a film, despite a title that infers something along the lines of OCTOBER SKY or other NASA-related subjects. Instead, it concentrates on the suffering of a young misfit with a stuttering problem (Reece Daniel Thompson) who is recruited by a pushy student (Anna Kendrick) into joining the school’s debate team, seeming to commit a good amount of the sins of the genre and of “hip” indie comedy at first glance.

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EVILMAKER DOUBLE FEATURE
Pipedreams Entertainment

by Jason Pankoke

Poverty-row programmers of the contemporary sort, John Bowker’s THE EVILMAKER and ABOMINATION: THE EVILMAKER II appeared amidst the early flood of shot-on-video, no budget horror movies a while back, landing on labels that didn’t give them much of a push. The fine B-movie folks at Tempe Video have elected to hustle this mildly entertaining duo back into the marketplace with a spruced-up double-feature DVD, which the undemanding will find packs enough old-fashioned titillation and thrills to make it worth the peek.

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JANE WHITE IS SICK & TWISTED
D & K Enterprises

by Damian Duffy

There is a scene towards the end of JANE WHITE IS SICK & TWISTED in which the eponymous heroine attempts suicide. The brief hope that this shrieking caricature of a human being may come to a merciful end is the one shining moment in this otherwise execrable … thing.

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SUFFERING THE LEGITIMACY OF AESTHETICS
J.M. Magrini

by L. Rob Hubbard

SUFFERING THE LEGITIMACY OF AESTHETICS is an experimental film which its filmmaker synopsizes as “a film that explores art as a legitimate species of autonomous knowledge.” Um, yeah.

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PREMUTOS: LORD OF THE LIVING DEAD
IMAS Filmproduction

by Dr. Squid 

If you’re picking up something that A. sports LORD OF THE LIVING DEAD as its subtitle, B. is from Germany, and C. is made by a director with a name like Olaf Ittenbach, you’re betting it’s going to be chock full of blood and gore. To illustrate how proudly this horror flick delivers the goods, just before the end credits roll the total body count is displayed: 139. Damn!

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Tripod Films’ Journey from Comedy to Horror
The making of DRAWING BLOOD and WITCHCRAFT 13

by Michael Wolinski and Jeffrey Wolinski

Ever since a young age, we’ve had a passion to shoot films, create art, and express our deepest emotions and thoughts through cinema. We both attended film school, Michael at Southern Illinois University and Jeffrey at the University of Illinois, and although some say that film school is a waste, we learned a great deal. We were influenced by films shown to us in class that we would have never seen otherwise. We also learned what type of filmmakers we wanted to be by the time we finished school. We did not want to end up like the teachers who had only shot exercises for their classes, or the many arrogant students who acted like they knew everything and should already be in Hollywood, eating with Mr. Spielberg at The Ivy and adopting kids.

The thrill of being an independent filmmaker is that you are able to go out and shoot any type of film you want. When we started planning to shoot our first production, we went for what we thought came naturally – comedy – and dove right into THE AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL, in which we took chances with sight gags, language, and uncomfortable high school situations, turning them all upside down. From an artistic standpoint we were fulfilled, and the project went on to play dozens of domestic and international film festivals.

Since THE AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL played all these events and won numerous awards, we thought that was all that it took. In no time, we were going to be making bigger films with name actors and actually raising and earning money for what we loved to do. We were on such a high from all the adulations that we went out and made a second comedy feature, MY BROTHER’S LIGHT, which did not have as much of an impact even though it was also an incredibly fulfilling piece. Now, we just had to wait for the calls to come in.

Needless to say, this did not happen. Eight years later, neither one of these award-winning, critically acclaimed independent features have seen distribution. Why? How could this be? Well, as all distribution companies will say, “A comedy is a tough sell if you don’t have a big ‘name’ in it. Do you have anything else?” You can believe in a project all you want but, if no one sees it, what is the point?

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THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS VS. A MUMMY
Illini Film & Video

by Jeff McCoy

Please click here to read the review on our sister site, C-U Blogfidential!

BRAINWARP
THE REMOVERS
King Robot Films

by Tim Mitchell

A person really has to love comic books to make fun of them. That certainly seems to be the case with Jon Schnepp and Eric Hoffman in their masterpiece, BRAINWARP. The title character, played with a twinkle in his eye by screenwriter Hoffman, is billed as the dumbest super-villain. For example, Brainwarp briefly considers cutting off his own hand so he won’t leave any fingerprints. He trudges through life messing up crime after crime, usually accompanied by his even dumber sidekick, LaFoot (Bill Chott). Apparently a born-again Christian, LaFoot dreams of the Virgin Mary and believes he can assist Brainwarp by quoting scripture.

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PUEBLO SIN SUERTE
Boomshadow Pictures, Inc.

by L. Rob Hubbard
and Jason Pankoke

1  Set in an unnamed west Texas town, PUEBLO SIN SUERTE is a moody, low-budget noir that ultimately promises far more than it actually delivers, just like all of the characters that inhabit this town. The film is set into motion by the murder of two women drifters, attracting the attention of numerous unsavory characters – basically, most of the town’s population – including one Sheriff Ross Sullivan (Webb Wilder), a disgraced lawman who sees this case as his big chance to make his name.

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DEAD & BREAKFAST
Ambush Entertainment

by Jeff McCoy

Of all the mixed genres, the true horror-comedy is one of the hardest to pull off well. As opposed to a horror parody like SCARY MOVIE, a horror-comedy usually follows the familiar plots and unwritten rules of the horror genre, tweaking things just so and giving viewers the unique experience of both laughing and cringing at the same time. While clearly influenced by the work of Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, and Stuart Gordon, yet not in the same league as SHAUN OF THE DEAD and other cult classics, DEAD & BREAKFAST is still the funniest movie I’ve seen in quite a while – even with its own, shall we say, special sense of humor – and that’s good enough for me.

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