[Fringe Fridays] Adolfas Mekas + David Avallone

It is unknown when I can return to a movie theatre, much less one of the small independent-experimental cinema venues, with my groovy suit jacket and large Tim Horton's green tea. In the meantime....  Fringe Fridays is back! Playing to an audience of one!

On pre-pandemic Friday nights, if I hadn't any prior engagements, I would shake off the work week with a "return to the self" if you like, sitting home and viewing the kind of cinema so near and dear to me: including (but not limited to) renegade Hollywood Renaissance-era productions, counterculture cinema, Experimental Film of the 1940s to the 60s and beyond, independent-underground films from the 1980s and 1990s, and documentaries: a step back to days when people had to view things projected onto blankets hung in musty basements as a cry for independence. And the inaugural Fringe Friday for the Spring 2021 Season "to an audience of one" was precisely what the doctor ordered. This madcap program was a perfect way to shake off a week of retraining and job searching. 

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Hallelujah The Hills 
(USA, 1963) Dir: Adolfas Mekas.
82 min B&W

Jonas Mekas was a more prolific filmmaker, and perhaps more "the voice" of the New American Cinema. But he co-founded the influential Film Culture magazine with his brother Adolfas, and based on this program offering a long overdue glimpse at his own films, it is clear that Adolfas Mekas (1925-2011) was a unique talent as well, harbouring a poetic blend of absurdity. After tonight's show, we can only say... more, please!

A self-confessed homage to the cinema that has influenced him (even abruptly lifting the classic "ice floe" sequence from Griffith's Way Down East) Adolfas Mekas' Hallelujah The Hills is justly regarded as a classic of the New American Cinema. This equally comedic and dreamlike tale is evocative of Buster Keaton slapstick, Marx Brothers anarchy, the playful lyricism of Vigo, Clair, and early Renoir, and the improvisatory feel of the French New Wave as two dorky would-be suitors, Jack (Peter Beard) and Leo (Marty Greenbaum) court the same woman, Vera. In a move predating Bunuel's That Obscure Object Of Desire by fourteen years, Vera is played by two women (Sheila Finn, Peggy Stefans): each representing how (respectively) Jack and Leo "envision" her.  The exquisite black-and-white cinematography is by filmmaker-illustrator Ed Emshwiller (Thanatopsis), who also acts (credited as "Emsh") as Gideon, the one who Vera marries in the film's opening, and thereby sets the boys off on a voyage... somewhere... playing their little war games- these young men are still little boys. The fragmented narrative radically blends the present with the pair's past ill-advised attempts at wooing Vera -each over a seven-year period, one in summer, another in winter, each with a montage that will recall the breakfast sequence from Citizen Kane- become more pathetic with each new season. No wonder they lost Vera. Filmmaker Jerome Hill and underground superstar Taylor Mead appear as convicts in the jaw-dropping finale that nicely sums it all up. The gimmick of the "two Vera"s doesn't quite work, but this is a delight all the same, which will reward with further viewings. Beneath the exuberant innocence, one is tempted to read a somber semi-autobiographical parable of the Mekas brothers' wartime experiences. A tour de force for writer-director-editor Mekas, although I can't help but wonder if the line of dialogue "I haven't seen a movie for ten days" was suggested by brother Jonas. It sounds just like something from his Movie Journal column. The lovely New England winter setting added a perfect "you are there" feeling to viewing the film, while under a blanket as the winds howled outside.

Added Attractions!

An Interview With Ambassador From Lapland
(USA, 1967) Dir: Adolfas Mekas.
4 min colour

A hilarious four-minute short in the guise of a Time-Life newsreel, with stock footage, cartoon segments and Adolfas Mekas as a dictator spouting rhetoric, all with quite a prescient Vietnam subtext that mainstream cinema was still catching up to. It's just long enough to crack its big joke, and it's a doozy!

Hallelujah The Villa
(Italy, 2006) Dir: David Avallone.
27 min colour

This has a lot more going on than the typical format of a DVD extra. This 27-minute opus apes the same goofy style of its inspiration, as director-interviewer David Avallone tracks down the elusive Adolfas Mekas for an interview at his beautiful Italian coastal property "which the film paid for". Lots of fun, with Mekas savouring a glass of wine, recounting its making, and his lack of pity towards "the two schmucks" in the film. 

More next time!

Playing To An Audience Of One: FRINGE FRIDAYS

ABOVE: David Holzman's Diary (Jim McBride)

Because Susan and I recently celebrated twenty years of living in the same place, I've been thinking a lot about how things were two decades ago, when we had begun our new lives together. (What is it about our collective psyche that honours anniversaries ending in fives or zeros? Are those in threes and sevens no less valid?)

At that time, I had just graduated from college, earning a diploma in broadcasting, yet was working full-time in a warehouse for a (now defunct) retail chain. Shortly after we moved in together, I was transferred to the head office distribution centre, and was very unhappy there. In the last semester of school, my mother had a stroke which took away most of her vocabulary. These things compounded anxiety about what the future would bring. We were both yearning to change our career paths. I wanted to find a job in my field of study, and Susan was looking to get back into design.

And yet, amidst all this internal conflict, this was also a ripe time for discovery. We had silently made a pact, that if we were limited in changing our professional lives, we would do everything to make our personal lives rich with culture. We would explore the city with our newfound jazz crowd, see foreign films at rep cinemas, and spend her Sundays off going to galleries or similar things. And more relevant to this blog, this was also the time that I first had cable since moving back to the big city. As a result, I quickly obtained a lot more culture from the Bravo and Showcase channels (which would encompass most of my television watching for two or three years).

One could hardly keep up with all of the movies, documentaries, concerts and episodes of “TV too good for TV” that comprised Bravo's schedule 24-7. Every night, Showcase featured the “Showcase Revue”, often foreign or independent films, hosted first by Chas Lawter and Linda Griffiths, later by Cameron Bailey and Valerie Buhagiar. Each station further offered a generous dollop of homegrown programming to fill their “CanCon” requirements. (And in our current environment, where we live under the illusion that everything is a click away, it boggles the mind to think how hard it is now to find a lot of the TV and films they aired just twenty years ago. Quick- find me some Wojeck.)

For this viewer, these two channels were especially significant on Friday nights. The “Fridays without borders” monicker used by one station could easily have applied to both. Movies from Hollywood Renaissance holdouts who still struggled to do their things in a changing sea of commerce; independent cinema from a time before that term became a catchphrase (or a commodity); obscure British genre films; these were just some of the staples to fill their Friday night schedules well into the wee hours. Because these specific films spoke most to my bohemian sensibilities (and still do), they offered a perfect way for me to shake off the work week, step back into my own skin, and seek enlightenment in other ways.

ABOVE: Milestones (Robert Kramer)

This is why, when I think back to those days, memories of these Friday nights soon appear. These thoughts also persist because I find myself in a similar quandary: wondering once again where I go from here. I've spent too long toiling on others' dreams; my subjection has clouded my own pursuits and desires.  It's time to re-visit and re-shape my own, and to once again embrace the things that define me as a human being. No one is opening a door. I'll carve my own entrance.

This school of thought is partially why I've decided to get back into publishing within the next few months. Plus, this mindset has also indirectly inspired my desire to recapture the spirit of those old Friday nights. This little eclectic screening room of my own plays to an audience of one: something I've called "Fringe Fridays".

On the Friday nights that I'm not out galavanting, I've been symbolically shedding the other skin by visiting the cinema that speaks most personally to me at present. Fringe Fridays include (but are not limited to) renegade Hollywood Renaissance-era productions, counterculture cinema, Experimental Film of the 1940s to the 60s and beyond, independent-underground films from the 1980s and 1990s, and documentaries: a step back to days when people had to view things projected onto blankets hung in musty basements as a cry for independence.

Fringe Fridays isn't just a screening series: it's a return to the self, a state of mind. 

It's also the name of a brand new regular feature in the new ESR: a reportage of what we find on those nights. Stay tuned!