{"id":2355,"date":"2010-11-12T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T15:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=2355"},"modified":"2014-09-06T14:55:33","modified_gmt":"2014-09-06T20:55:33","slug":"iow-when-we-were-freaky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=2355","title":{"rendered":"IOW: When We Were Freaky"},"content":{"rendered":"

November 2, 2000<\/strong>, seems like such a long time ago. On that evening, what would be the last instance of \u201cfreaky\u201d cinema activity took place at The Highdive<\/strong> and <\/em>the New Art Theater<\/strong> and <\/em>informally at Boltini <\/strong>lounge. It had been a magical, meteoric climb from the ranks of unknown grassroots events to a desired stop on the Nineties festival circuit for indie filmmakers and their work, but a few months after its fourth closing night the Freaky Film Festival<\/strong> would vanish despite talk of transplanting it to Seattle <\/strong>or Portland<\/strong>. With one co-founder splitsville and the other settled in the C-U but otherwise willing to move on, the freakin\u2019 coffin lid had been nailed shut without much resistance.<\/p>\n

Ten full years later, we\u2019ve witnessed the coincidentally named Freeky Creek Short Film Festival<\/strong>, which could <\/em>carry on the Freaky spirit although its scope is limited due to the smallish environs of host Sleepy Creek Vineyards<\/strong>. We also just received a coincidentally timed overture to assist with the next IMC Film Festival<\/strong>, which we once tagged as a worthy successor to Freaky although its purposeful political leanings dampen any sense of \u201cfun time\u201d as was characteristic of Freaky, even when it played key pieces from the end-of-millennium zeitgeist like 30 FRAMES A SECOND: THE WTO IN SEATTLE<\/strong>. We\u2019re ecstatic that our community is trying once again to develop avenues for championing the non-mainstream cinema, but we can\u2019t help but exhale a big heavy sigh <\/em>as no one is replicating the Freaky formula quite yet.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As mentioned last week on C-U Blogfidential<\/strong>, we felt the Freeky Creek atmosphere did <\/em>echo the \u201cinsider\u201d excitement of attending the original Freaky due to what it projected even more overtly than the movies themselves \u2013 a sense of the forbidden. Your humble editor made the connection most distinctly while watching a Freeky Creek film that truly felt like a throwback to the indie, gritty Nineties underground, TEA TIME<\/strong> directed by Eric Deutschman<\/strong><\/a>, while its high number of animated entries including our new favorite local film, BEDTIME FOR TIMMY<\/strong>, inspired us to think of our friend and former Urbana <\/strong>resident Johnnie May<\/strong>, who spent endless hours creating strange little shorts like the following:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Shot on Super 8 like TEA TIME<\/strong> but almost by necessity given the single-frame technique required to photograph stop-motion animation, ISOLATION <\/strong>tells the tale of a forlorn soul with a ping-pong head who lives in an askew Tim Burton<\/strong> world and discovers a heavy metal doppelg\u00e4nger <\/em>neighbor through a crack in the wall. Several other examples of May\u2019s C-U work, which involved much hovering over a table top in a basement (hence, Tabletop Studios<\/strong><\/a>) can be found on his YouTube<\/strong> channel<\/a>, including the first FIGHTING GUY<\/strong> \u2013 proving without a doubt that pipe cleaner people do <\/em>kick major ass \u2013 and the lovably lo-fi music videos for \u201cDrive On<\/strong>\u201d by The Signalmen<\/strong> and \u201cCompletely Dresden<\/strong>\u201d by Hushtower<\/strong>. These and others, including the conspicuously absent CASTLE ASSHOLE \u201999<\/strong>, played the original Freaky when they were brand new and, to this day, their raw handmade nature qualifies them as possibly the most unique body of local film that we\u2019re aware of. Auteur <\/em>filmmaking couldn\u2019t happen more naturally to a nicer guy than Johnnie May.<\/p>\n

By the very nature of this post, we see how cinema that was formerly the exclusive province of societies, film schools, and the festival circuit can easily be accessed via the Internet or distributed via high-quality DVD, even if catering to marginal audiences with peculiar tastes. Case in point is the industrious Freaky favorite and long-time Super 8 advocate Danny Plotnick<\/strong><\/a>, whose offbeat works appeared consistently on the underground circuit through the late Eighties and Nineties. Some of it can be watched<\/a> alongside his more recent Vlogging and shorts (including the sublime Internet favorite, OUT OF PRINT<\/strong>) on YouTube as well as enjoyed on the recent Microcinema <\/strong>DVD release<\/a>, WARTS & ALL: THE FILMS OF DANNY PLOTNICK<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

This promo is heavy with cuts from two Plotnick mind-benders which played the original Freaky in 1997 and warped your humble editor\u2019s sense of what \u201cmade\u201d an independent film, with their shaky cinematography, obvious post-produced sound, and sense of otherness due to that wondrous Super 8 sheen: DEATH SLED II: STEEL BELTED ROMEOS<\/strong>, with the Penn Jillette<\/strong>-ish heavy pestering drivers at an intersection, and PILLOW TALK<\/strong>, with the woman yelling maniacally at neighbors through the walls in her \u00fcber<\/em>-dank apartment. The cheeky black-and-white sub\/dom comedy short on view, SWINGERS\u2019 SERENADE<\/strong>, also played Freaky in 1999 along with the sock-monkey-on-the-town opus I, SOCKY<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As much as the medium and the methods for making movies have changed over time, the modus operandi<\/em> for pairing them up and putting them on public display remains the same \u2013 to offer audiences the unseen and unusual, often for the first time locally, regionally, or world-wide. Our longing for the Freaky Film Festival mystique here at the Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters<\/strong> comes not from burdening ourselves with nostalgia for those four long-gone events but hoping that we will once again feel that tingly \u201chell, yes<\/em>\u201d sensation while sitting in on the current guard such as the IMC Film Festival and the Freeky Creek Short Film Festival. It is our sincerest hope that those events can grow and develop distinct identities that will attract the best our current underground brethren have to offer. At such a time when we feel sufficiently freaky<\/em>, dearest readers, we\u2019ll be sure to let you know but until then, we’ll merely be as happy as clams.<\/p>\n

~ Jason Pankoke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the \u201cImages of the Week\u201d Dept.: Let\u2019s now take a quick look at the work of Johnnie May and Danny Plotnick that typifies the wide-ranging variety once presented at Champaign-Urbana’s Freaky Film Festival from 1997 to 2000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,14,19,13,31,20],"tags":[540,543,310,420,149,242,243,539,542,541],"class_list":["post-2355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alums-done-good","category-area-festivals","category-images-du-cu","category-public-events","category-the-old-school","category-videos-du-c-u","tag-danny-plotnick","tag-eric-deutschman","tag-freaky-film-festival","tag-freeky-creek-short-film-festival","tag-imc-film-festival","tag-isolation","tag-johnnie-may","tag-tabletop-studios","tag-tea-time","tag-warts-all"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}