A recent Underground Film Journal article titled “Web Series Or Movie: Which Should You Make?” inspired a lively and spirited discussion on Facebook between several independent filmmakers that explored their personal ideas on the future of digital distribution. The provocative back-and-forth has been reprinted below. (With all the filmmakers’ permission.)
The dialogue was particularly kicked off by Australian indie filmmaker Dominic Deacon (Only the Young Die Good, Burlesque) and also included filmmakers Nathan Wrann (Burning Inside, Hunting Season), Bob Moricz (Felony Flats, Bumps), Robin Franzi (Susan for Now), Michael Galinsky (Battle for Brooklyn, Horns and Halos) and Journal editor Mike Everleth.
(Filmmaker comments below have not been edited except for some extremely minor format/style changes and typos. Otherwise, these are their exact words.)
Dominic Deacon
“No filmmaker claims their feature-length film is only seven minutes and nobody is making 90 minute webisodes. But, why the hell not? Easy answer: Nobody...
The dialogue was particularly kicked off by Australian indie filmmaker Dominic Deacon (Only the Young Die Good, Burlesque) and also included filmmakers Nathan Wrann (Burning Inside, Hunting Season), Bob Moricz (Felony Flats, Bumps), Robin Franzi (Susan for Now), Michael Galinsky (Battle for Brooklyn, Horns and Halos) and Journal editor Mike Everleth.
(Filmmaker comments below have not been edited except for some extremely minor format/style changes and typos. Otherwise, these are their exact words.)
Dominic Deacon
“No filmmaker claims their feature-length film is only seven minutes and nobody is making 90 minute webisodes. But, why the hell not? Easy answer: Nobody...
- 1/28/2014
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This Week’s Absolute Must Look is a series of film stills from Storm de Hirsch’s documentary about Jonas Mekas making his documentary of the performance of The Brig in 1964. So that’s what a filmmaker shooting with a film camera looks like!Aryan Kaganof had an unpleasant experience at a European film festival. Maybe it’s just me, but I think his comment to Bela Tarr is funny.Jason Kupfer has a snazzy new filmmaker website, which I’ve been meaning to link to for awhile, so I guess it’s new-ish.Dominic Deacon’s nunsploitation feature Bad Habits got reviewed on the site Scaryminds and received a 3 out of 5 on the sex and violence scale.The site Bad at Sports interviews filmmaker Jesse McLean.J.J. Murphy reviews Azazel Jacob’s feature Terri, marking it along the filmmaker’s inching closer to the mainstream. Or is there something...
- 1/22/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Only the Young Die Good is the latest film by Australian filmmaker Dominic Deacon. Although still in production, above is a collection of impressive preview clips from the first seven days of the movie’s shoot.
Set in 1940s Melbourne, the B&W film noir tells the sordid story of a private eye who is accused of murdering the philandering husband he was paid to spy on by the dead man’s wife. Typical of Deacon’s films, Only the Young Die Good features loads of sexy, scantily-clad women.
Deacon’s previous film, the trippy mystery Burlesque, was reviewed on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film in 2010.
For more info on Only the Young Die Good, please visit the film’s official website.
Set in 1940s Melbourne, the B&W film noir tells the sordid story of a private eye who is accused of murdering the philandering husband he was paid to spy on by the dead man’s wife. Typical of Deacon’s films, Only the Young Die Good features loads of sexy, scantily-clad women.
Deacon’s previous film, the trippy mystery Burlesque, was reviewed on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film in 2010.
For more info on Only the Young Die Good, please visit the film’s official website.
- 1/3/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Whether you know some folks on your shopping list who like contemplative dramas or violent revenge stories, there’s something for them below in this edition of the Underground Holiday Shopping Guide.
DramasMad World
Actor Cory Cataldo stepped behind the camera to direct his first feature film, a drama / black comedy hybrid that tackled the issue of bullying before the issue hit the mainstream. Now that Mad World is on DVD, the story of four high school outcasts on the shit end of the social climbing ladder seems even more relevant. Horrifying parental abuse, racism, drug use and other issues swirl together in this potent dramatic concoction.
Buy on Amazon!
Beneath Contempt
In a year stuffed with moody, emotional indie dramas, Benjamin Brewer‘s affecting Beneath Contempt has been, for the most part, unfairly overlooked. A young man is released from prison years after he killed his friends in a...
DramasMad World
Actor Cory Cataldo stepped behind the camera to direct his first feature film, a drama / black comedy hybrid that tackled the issue of bullying before the issue hit the mainstream. Now that Mad World is on DVD, the story of four high school outcasts on the shit end of the social climbing ladder seems even more relevant. Horrifying parental abuse, racism, drug use and other issues swirl together in this potent dramatic concoction.
Buy on Amazon!
Beneath Contempt
In a year stuffed with moody, emotional indie dramas, Benjamin Brewer‘s affecting Beneath Contempt has been, for the most part, unfairly overlooked. A young man is released from prison years after he killed his friends in a...
- 12/12/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
A trio of distinctly different films have been released on DVD:
Maximum Shame, dir. Carlos Atanes
Spain’s underground king of surrealism, Carlos Atanes, presents his densest, loopiest nightmare yet, Maximum Shame, a confounding puzzle of an enigma wrapped in video.
Atanes whisks viewers through a black hole that is swallowing the universe to a fetid cesspool ruled by a deranged, black leather clad queen who torments anyone unlucky enough to fall into her realm.
Maximum Shane is a cross between Alice in Wonderland and an S&M video, featuring a tour de force performance by Marina Gatell as the black queen.
Read the full review of Maximum Shame on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film.
Buy Maximum Shame at Amazon!
Watch the trailer:
Bad Habits, dir. Dominic Deacon
A heroin-addicted nun finds a dead man in her bathtub in Dominic Deacon’s heady mix of high sleaze and high art.
Maximum Shame, dir. Carlos Atanes
Spain’s underground king of surrealism, Carlos Atanes, presents his densest, loopiest nightmare yet, Maximum Shame, a confounding puzzle of an enigma wrapped in video.
Atanes whisks viewers through a black hole that is swallowing the universe to a fetid cesspool ruled by a deranged, black leather clad queen who torments anyone unlucky enough to fall into her realm.
Maximum Shane is a cross between Alice in Wonderland and an S&M video, featuring a tour de force performance by Marina Gatell as the black queen.
Read the full review of Maximum Shame on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film.
Buy Maximum Shame at Amazon!
Watch the trailer:
Bad Habits, dir. Dominic Deacon
A heroin-addicted nun finds a dead man in her bathtub in Dominic Deacon’s heady mix of high sleaze and high art.
- 11/9/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Here are two completely groovy film festivals to submit to:
Melbourne Underground Film Festival
The Melbourne Underground Film Festival, which will be holding its 12th annual edition in 2011. Yes, the festival is still going on, even with the harassment by the Australian government of the fest’s director, Richard Wolstencroft. Looking on the bright side, it’s a good PR slogan: The underground festival even the government doesn’t want you to see!
Muff has been pushing for a return to glory of Australian genre cinema for the past 11 years and now with the Aussie crime flick Animal Kingdom up for an Oscar this year, that push is starting to see some results. While Muff didn’t program that particular film itself last year, the official lineup shows they did have the world-wide horror hit El Monstro Del Mar! by Stuart Simpson and other Australian films of note such as...
Melbourne Underground Film Festival
The Melbourne Underground Film Festival, which will be holding its 12th annual edition in 2011. Yes, the festival is still going on, even with the harassment by the Australian government of the fest’s director, Richard Wolstencroft. Looking on the bright side, it’s a good PR slogan: The underground festival even the government doesn’t want you to see!
Muff has been pushing for a return to glory of Australian genre cinema for the past 11 years and now with the Aussie crime flick Animal Kingdom up for an Oscar this year, that push is starting to see some results. While Muff didn’t program that particular film itself last year, the official lineup shows they did have the world-wide horror hit El Monstro Del Mar! by Stuart Simpson and other Australian films of note such as...
- 1/29/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Before we get to the list this week, a special note: I got a very nice email this week from Jackie Keen, the wife of legendary British underground filmmaker Jeff Keen. I’ve written about Jeff a few times on Bad Lit, particularly about his troublesome situation. If you’re not familiar with Jeff’s incredible body of work, read that link and do yourself a favor and check out his official website.
This week’s Must Read is Craig Baldwin’s history and understanding of why San Francisco is such a mecca for found-footage filmmakers such as himself. The article, on the Moving Image Source website, is reprinted from the recent book Radical Light. Speaking of Radical Light, Reed Johnson of the L.A. Times previews the Los Angeles screening tour that’s accompanying the book. Also to celebrate Radical Light, Chuck Stephens of Blip Magazine reviews several films...
This week’s Must Read is Craig Baldwin’s history and understanding of why San Francisco is such a mecca for found-footage filmmakers such as himself. The article, on the Moving Image Source website, is reprinted from the recent book Radical Light. Speaking of Radical Light, Reed Johnson of the L.A. Times previews the Los Angeles screening tour that’s accompanying the book. Also to celebrate Radical Light, Chuck Stephens of Blip Magazine reviews several films...
- 1/16/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The act of writing is — for the most part — a lonely, solitary activity and not very cinematically engaging, both visually and emotionally. Yet, filmmakers keep making films about writers. The way successful films make writers and their occupation exciting is usually by surrounding them with active characters with intense personalities.
For example, the Coen brothers paired up Barton Fink with a serial killer and Stephen King pitted author Paul Sheldon against maniacal super fan Annie Wilkes in Misery. (Granted, Misery was a book first, but Rob Reiner and William Goldman transformed it into a pretty stellar, cinematic film.)
Australian underground filmmaker Dominic Deacon also picks a couple of psychos to bedevil his writer main character, Frank Bannister (Haydn Evans), in the twisty mind-warp thriller Burlesque, but his antagonists are far more sexier than Annie Wilkes or Madman Munt.
Deacon never actually shows Bannister writing, but we learn through dialogue that...
For example, the Coen brothers paired up Barton Fink with a serial killer and Stephen King pitted author Paul Sheldon against maniacal super fan Annie Wilkes in Misery. (Granted, Misery was a book first, but Rob Reiner and William Goldman transformed it into a pretty stellar, cinematic film.)
Australian underground filmmaker Dominic Deacon also picks a couple of psychos to bedevil his writer main character, Frank Bannister (Haydn Evans), in the twisty mind-warp thriller Burlesque, but his antagonists are far more sexier than Annie Wilkes or Madman Munt.
Deacon never actually shows Bannister writing, but we learn through dialogue that...
- 10/27/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Don’t ask how and don’t ask why, but the nunsploitation genre is making a major comeback in the cinema. And we’re all the richer for it.
There are two ways to approach the making of a film about revenge-seeking, death-dealing Catholic nuns. Given the ludicrousness of the entire premise to begin with, one could either treat the subject with real seriousness or go for the strictly goofy send-up route.
Despite the pun-ish title, directors Greg Hanson and Casey Regan successfully opt for the serious route. While there are a few good jokes scattered throughout the film, for the most part Thy Kill Be Done is a straight recreation of the ’70s urban gang exploitation genre.
With a suitably grainy film stock and funky score — both courtesy D.P. and music scorer Seth Applebaum — the film feels both modern and throwback as it begins in a church in an indeterminate year.
There are two ways to approach the making of a film about revenge-seeking, death-dealing Catholic nuns. Given the ludicrousness of the entire premise to begin with, one could either treat the subject with real seriousness or go for the strictly goofy send-up route.
Despite the pun-ish title, directors Greg Hanson and Casey Regan successfully opt for the serious route. While there are a few good jokes scattered throughout the film, for the most part Thy Kill Be Done is a straight recreation of the ’70s urban gang exploitation genre.
With a suitably grainy film stock and funky score — both courtesy D.P. and music scorer Seth Applebaum — the film feels both modern and throwback as it begins in a church in an indeterminate year.
- 10/5/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The 11th annual Melbourne Underground Film Festival wrapped on Aug. 29 with a secret, illegal screening of Bruce Labruce‘s gay porn zombie epic L.A. Zombie, which would win Labruce the Best Foreign Director Award.
The big winner this year, though was the debut feature film — and the official closing night film of Muff — by Joseph Sims, Bad Behavior. Although Stuart Simpson‘s El Monstro Del Mar! won the Best Film award, Bad Behavior took home six awards total, including Best Director, Best Male Actor, Best Screenplay and more. The film is a splatter movie about a group of teenagers running afoul of psychopaths. Australia’s The Age newspaper also recently profiled Sims.
Other Australian films taking home awards were Dominic Deacon‘s Burlesque winning Best Guerrilla Film, Road Train by Dean Francis taking the Special Jury Prize and Lanfranchi’s Memorial Discotheque by Richard Baron winning Best Documentary.
American films in addition to L.
The big winner this year, though was the debut feature film — and the official closing night film of Muff — by Joseph Sims, Bad Behavior. Although Stuart Simpson‘s El Monstro Del Mar! won the Best Film award, Bad Behavior took home six awards total, including Best Director, Best Male Actor, Best Screenplay and more. The film is a splatter movie about a group of teenagers running afoul of psychopaths. Australia’s The Age newspaper also recently profiled Sims.
Other Australian films taking home awards were Dominic Deacon‘s Burlesque winning Best Guerrilla Film, Road Train by Dean Francis taking the Special Jury Prize and Lanfranchi’s Memorial Discotheque by Richard Baron winning Best Documentary.
American films in addition to L.
- 9/1/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The Melbourne Underground Film Festival returns to terrorize Australia with a selection of outrageous genre films for its 11th annual edition that will be held on Aug. 20-28.
For years now, Muff Festival director Richard Wolstencroft has been bemoaning the state of Australian cinema — and rightfully so — for abandoning its history of popular genre entertainment and settling for a state-sponsored industry of wussy indie fare. Well, looking over this year’s Muff schedule from a distance, it appears that the fest has gathered its most impressive lineup of bold and risky genre fare yet.
There’s the deep sea terror of Stuart Simpson’s El monstro del mar!, the outback nightmare of Road Train by Dean Francis, the Bdsm fantasy world of David King’s Purge, the chaotically violent world of Bad Behavior by Joseph Sims, the sexy and disturbing Burlesque by Dominic Deacon; plus Richard Wolstencroft’s own documentary...
For years now, Muff Festival director Richard Wolstencroft has been bemoaning the state of Australian cinema — and rightfully so — for abandoning its history of popular genre entertainment and settling for a state-sponsored industry of wussy indie fare. Well, looking over this year’s Muff schedule from a distance, it appears that the fest has gathered its most impressive lineup of bold and risky genre fare yet.
There’s the deep sea terror of Stuart Simpson’s El monstro del mar!, the outback nightmare of Road Train by Dean Francis, the Bdsm fantasy world of David King’s Purge, the chaotically violent world of Bad Behavior by Joseph Sims, the sexy and disturbing Burlesque by Dominic Deacon; plus Richard Wolstencroft’s own documentary...
- 8/16/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The Melbourne Underground Film Festival is ready to pounce again — and this time with a vengeance! This will make it the 11th edition of what’s surely the most well-established, and kick ass, transgressive film festival in the world. The official dates of when Muff will terrorize the world again haven’t been set yet, but the fest is currently open and ready for submissions.
For submission form and details, visit the official Muff website. There’s only one deadline, too:
Final Deadline:
May 15
$45 (Aud)
$35 (Us)
$30 (Euro)
Muff had a fantastic year in 2009, so they’re looking to expand their offerings this year. Devilish plans are already underway securing locations that are friendly to a little nasty subverting of the Australian cinematic norm. But, that doesn’t mean you have to be Australian to submit. This is an international festival looking for deranged flicks from all over the globe.
Several...
For submission form and details, visit the official Muff website. There’s only one deadline, too:
Final Deadline:
May 15
$45 (Aud)
$35 (Us)
$30 (Euro)
Muff had a fantastic year in 2009, so they’re looking to expand their offerings this year. Devilish plans are already underway securing locations that are friendly to a little nasty subverting of the Australian cinematic norm. But, that doesn’t mean you have to be Australian to submit. This is an international festival looking for deranged flicks from all over the globe.
Several...
- 1/14/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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