Video Film Review #308; The Super 8 Show: Beyond Home Movies

Video and film was made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the arts. By the members of. Since the early days of the 20th century America has been a nation of avid moviegoers worshipping stars and consuming fantasies that were manufactured in Hollywood in the boom years that followed World War Two. Movie consumption was given a new twist. The availability of inexpensive easy to use 8 millimeter cameras brought moviemaking into the home. Suddenly the American middle class was in a position. Create its own stars and fantasy to documented children. Vacations and family recall. A new form of focus. The eight millimeter home movie was born. It was inevitable that the eight millimeter format would be put to more ambitious ends.

Among the first were the films of George and my crew John and teenage twins who lived in the Bronx and made exuberant parodies of Hollywood melodrama and starring their friends and neighbors. Originally screened for be news damage your film societies the two towers films were discovered in 1962 and soon became a popular aspect of the burgeoning underground film scene. The cars made soundtracks to accompany their films but most serious 8 millimeter

movies were silent and non-narrative in one thousand seventy four Kodak introduced the first sync sound Super 8 cameras. The possibility of making low budget talkies together with the immediacy portability and relative automation that Super 8 offered attracted a new wave of film artists and narrative. Admittedly experimental narrative came back strong. One of the key members of this Super 8 underground is Eric Mitchell who made his first Super 8 talkie kidnapped in 1978. I know I'm not John. It's a home movie but it has I don't know. People seem to be so frightened especially young people to make a movie and it seemed to me that. You could almost not make a bad movie to try to figure out the limitation of what you know and what you can get on the field at a time when making movies that's really what I was trying to do with this film is that trying not to fail tried

to show the truth through the moment or to be true to the demanding attention. There was no story was going to be what happens when six or seven terrorists are us holed up in an apartment and one of the talk about which was basically taken from the better might have set up where they eventually I'm sure it had to stand in the parking of themself and talk about things. And there was a relationship between Ereka Meinhof and arrest and drugs obviously began to seem like he was a sort of a wimp and she was a very strong character sort of that group. I lost a guy who wrote characters in the film. Over women who are sort of. Let's say leading that group that's not a party. Eventually this kind of thing because the idea of the terrorists end up making a movie about 64 that is built at the time and what they would be talking about if they were in the apartment movie was structured around the Super

8 cartridge which lasts about three minutes. I decided to shoot. A limited amount of cartridges just enough to make an hour movie and I would be the film stringing the world of Super 8 one after the other pretty much in a way that the only war films were made which means that to show the leader or show that you are are not attempting to edit them all. I am also in the films I made the time to act in the film and directed them together. We never tried to hide the fact that nobody knew the outlines we showed very clearly that the script was tacked on the wall that they really knew that sometimes they would be diverting between the script and their own particular your services a separate time for the film was shot and missing that was it. I think you're right.

I think you're really you're really you're really. Good. Deal. I think you're reading they think you're really. I think your neck near the you. Know just the way you are just the way you are just beautiful. You're beautiful you're very humid. You just. You're just fabulous you really fabulous to go pick me up you really fabulous fabulous. I know you're very very very beautiful. I mean every day radiation your body just stinks of cellulite. It really weak so sad I. Feel like a cross between. Free time I gave myself. A lot. So again I brought in the camera and by this time I wanted to change the subject and I want to change it to change the whole thing. So I decided to.

New York first of all it's hard to devise a story around New York which would make between New York the time we made a movie and post war on itself 1950 to 1960. Course part time the title was rightly was. I'm. Trying to. Do. A flag as I have to use that word in a bigger production such as lead. We try to even though with a super 8 film to make it look as lush and sophisticated as those films of course sometime it came out of cheaper which was part of the year and part of the fun of it which. Goes back to the idea of making a separate without having other goal telling you what to do because you couldn't. That comes with the film projector very funny because it doesn't have that told sterile

background then preconceived ideas and big production so you end up finding that by trying to make this big movie this little camera stuff you're a lot of things and into the frame which you never expected to be there which And a very very fresh and being very amusing and honest. First there was Monica. She was a rich time blonde too bored to stay home. She had to go out every night looking for one. Remember having him. We never actually met but I can imagine. There she was roaming the streets of Rome looking for kicks. She never had know he was an American GI stationed in Italy trying

to pass the time the best he could. Oh I guess he had better luck than me. Not that I and then him but still you had his chance. Maybe because he was better looking. Maybe because he wore a uniform. The whole sense of it was so dramatic so hand up movie was overly political told that it wasn't really meant to be a political movie it was more meant to be a parent you're. All wrong. But I realize that the advantage of the system was basically that you could very quickly come up with

an idea very quickly without having to try to talk to other people. Finding out where they live whether they want to give you money get your own money and make your own movie. Don't worry about the other side which gave it a genuine strength and which was very valid. We decided to find a place which we could call our own and we where we could show our movies and movies of us. When making the time. Which was going to continue cinema. We found a store fronts a marketplace which was really the perfect location since that particular area of town was really booming with young people coming there. There was a definite attraction being able to own your own cinema and make your own movies and visit your own set up for distribution and production. But the set up ended up falling apart because there was a sort of. What was very difficult to make money basically movies made money back but you could really live on the king of movies at a time. So this thing collapsed.

Many of the filmmakers who got their start at the new cinema were associated with New York's guard rock scene using members of local punk bands as a ready made pool of dramatic talent. These filmmakers produced movies that parallel the music's energy iconography and pragmatic. Anyone can do it is that it. Vivian Dix she had her gun already which premiered at the new cinema in 1079 and stars two musicians packed place and Lydia Lunch as women who are locked in a mysterious psychic struggle. Their battle begins on the Lower East Side and continues on the IMT and ends up in Coney Island. With

a. Group. A.

Many filmmakers discovered Super 8 lends itself readily to spontaneous on the street filming manwell Delenda an artist who has worked in 16 millimeter in video uses Super 8 as a tourist might to document the city and incidentally make a record of his own graffiti within the urban landscape. OK the first time I came to New York I and I saw graffiti trying and I was afraid. But first of all when I found out it was Puerto Rican and blacks. I mean there would be whites. Doing that but the fact that I. Thought it was like a third was a reaction against not not having surface to speak I mean that most media surface are dominated by whites. They would just take over you know the walls of subways to get to make a statement even though it was a real seal the adolescent statement which is just sign your name and the name of your gang or whatever. So I decided that you know I really wanted to. Start doing.

Forms of graffiti that they had been doing just to inspire them and see if they would you know they would find new ways of vandalizing. Buildings. The way I got the idea to do that you know to attack posters as opposed to say attack subway was or whatever it is. I started seeing all this you know people who just walk around and tear part of posters and produce really incredible Victoria affects on the subway. I just kind of turning part of a poster and you would see two posters but all you would also see kind of the white paper kind of you know you know creating real nice kind of Jackson Pollock effect with a lot of. Force so I started carrying around a knife. So that I could. Just. Cut slit and then you know I could that I could grab onto so I could start tearing up our then you know one day started just cutting up and cutting out and they would look real nice but then I realized that I could keep all those eyes so I started this collection of you know like this you know every time I would see like a horse

head or a pig's head or whatever you know I would just like cut it out put out all the ice and. Collect them and then kind of land in attacking one particular area you know just carry my own you know Elmer's glue. You know. Regular tools. And transform the faces of Winston posters you know with the eyes and mouths and all the other organs I had collected in previous and. Even they started working out real nice. So I you know I started first they should and I would just like go on streets and start doing them and sign and not Museum or schizo politics or some kind of disguise myself as a tourist with a Super 8 camera trying to make it almost like visible and it really works I mean I was shooting people away from the. Sun. Or walking towards people and stopping to sit with the face and hands or moving the camera zooming in and then people just wouldn't. You know wouldn't react as if I had had a bigger piece of equipment I had looked like if I was from a TV station it was it was

just like these crazy turrets was trying to get you know. Crazy shots of. Her so they would just you know take it home you know with you know since at home recently you know they were their image wasn't in danger. Well all right. It was Army. Right I'm right. And. Let them. Go off. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Powerful is a documentary. Now I want to do it in a documentary you normally try to render the camera as neutral as. Cam is not supposed to interfere with events that is recorded. Otherwise we're not having like an objective.

View of what's what. Now I want to push that. Limits and use a camera for. Almost every other purpose except recording you know neutral or objective. Facts. So I wasn't like the first thing I came to my mind with but I would. Start harassing people. So you know you start walking toward somebody was like standing there I mean is this area lunch time it's almost like a migraine right. Like tons of people all of a wrist exactly the same thing. That's. Looking just like. You. You're right. And they are very good. They don't like to get out having much interaction with each other and. So that kind of you know I think I got away with enormous. Pride like I would. Just like. You know. Start walking. You know words like it will. Be what. I once thought you know if they would like you know open up I would just kind of stuck out like you know trip over them and like I would fall down and I would like you know push them away. What was that most of the time they were just like. You know. Open up. That I. Didn't ask but. On doing that you were feeling the presence of the camera and it

would be moving this way because a camera was tied. Right so even though you couldn't see the camera. In the shot you could see it in the reactions of people. Metal in hard drive swallow. Them switch where really good like. That goes. But none of this guy's right and I was you know he was like looking for stuff in a garbage can so I would just like buy a slice of pizza right and I would like to plant all these pieces of pizza in different garbage cans and just wait with my Super 8 camera you know for the guy to come to find out the pizza. And so you know it was like real nice because they were like real like real spend time music I would find it hard and. You know I was like at least forms who would like to tell you you know eating it like.

Truly you know delighted of what he had found like a piece of hot food. Particularly in the grand central area theres all these people who are nice. Its like they are just released from mental institutions. So they really. Are losing a seat in political terms I mean they start talking and at first it was it would just sound like. He's just you know this crazy stuff but you really listen to what the actually putting together all these you know conspiracy theories and all these things about. You know things that just happen to the U.N. and these stories that me about like really listen I think I want to tell this just you know I got burnt. I got badly burnt you are. Right about that because. A doctor. And. A former painter Erica Backman has been filming exclusively in Super 8 since

1977. She works against the limitations of the format to create movies with elaborate props and complicated special effects and dense soundtracks. Her films defy easy categorization. They have more in common with performance art and psychological tests than they do with home movies. I stopped painting in. 1974. I wanted to use film as an art form and I didn't want to be intimidated by the cost. So I chose to work in Super 8. Camera that I started to use allowed me to do. Rewinds which was very close to painting at the time. Transparent images except that they extended in action rather than being just colors and and overlays of material which is what I was using. I developed a style using action and gesture and. Props. And music. That. Dealt with narrative and actors. But didn't use them. So I got I developed.

A method of making. Constructions. For these constructions were a replacement for narrative narratives and dialogue. In making a film before I can. Actually shoot I have to go through a whole process of organizing so I make the storyboards. These are all extremely rough sketches. Of the whole film from beginning to end. I throw away a whole lot of ideas. That don't seem to work for the whole film so they start off in this general way and then I get more specific in the film and it was very very important very clear because of that I just dealt with objects and construction of objects in one's memory. What we have here it's the very beginning of the film. Where. The boy is.

Actually in the narrative in the film The boy is hiding from people that are coming to take him out of the house. In. His life. And. The people are represented by one figure a military. Person. Who. Finds him with a flashlight. And. We see. Him. You see the boy getting closer and closer and zooming in on his hand with the flashlight. Directing us closer and closer to the beckoning of this person. And. The person is beckoning him into. The search for in his mind the officer is telling him to look for something before he leaves. Okay come closer and closer to it. Then he turns around and runs. And he runs from. This figure who has a kind of threat to him and runs back to his

house to find what he's looking. For. Misguided as he is in his search he goes for. The most common. Element which is his toy his favorite toy. He pulls up a rocking horse and all the time he's sort of fixated by this object he thinks that this is what he's looking for any dwells on it in the film for a long time and finally discarded because it's not what you want. And the way he discards it is by a kind of negative image with a horse. In and out of hand it was very interesting because like

what I did was I shot my main character searching putting his hands into a box and then coming out and putting a shield up. And each time he put the shield up stop the camera. I marked. On a sheet of paper what frame I was on and I had him freeze and resume action and back down into the box and again at the shield and freeze I cut you out of that. Then I rewound the film and only device so the objects pushed in the same space. I mean I wasn't working with full scale boxing. That went from 2 feet in front of the camera back to about six or seven feet from the camera and then I cut the string and dropped on the floor and I pushed him back and

point on the frame where he had been dropped the box and I was able to get something that was really well planned. A lab doing it on your machine but I did it in the space of about 5 hours. See it's just really hard for me to talk about limitations because everything. Is so Merced and separate that I don't. Even really recognize when you start shooting you don't feel like in 6 million years that there's like Congress of dollars going to the. Shark. If they really want to make a movie you can always make a movie that's what I think that's a great is about things it's not. It's. You can't. Lie to yourself in a way that you know. The most interesting oben garde filmmakers do emerge during the late 1970s that work either partially or entirely with Super 8 Some of going on the 60 million but the reasons of cost flexibility and availability superrich is likely to remain the starting point and cutting a Hallmark card filmmaking for many years to come.