B for BAD Cinema - 2008 screenings
Over the past decade, paracinema – a movement that has grown up around sleazy, excessive, or poorly executed B-movies – has seen a counter-cultural valorisation of all forms of cinematic trash or ‘badfilm.’ In many internet and print sources devoted to the celebration of paracinema, the term B-movie has (in contrast to its earlier studio-era sense) come to mean almost anything: disreputable and unworthy movies, low-budget exploitation movies, straight to TV or video movies, and even big-budget studio movies. B for BAD cinema seeks to negotiate some of the (aesthetic and moral) values and judgments inscribed in a B-movie culture in which films are deemed to be good-because-bad or bad-because-good.
In the lead-up to the B for BAD Cinema inaugural conference, Film & Television Studies presents a series of B-movie screenings.
- July 24
-
Adrian Martin presents:
Bluebeard
(Edgar G. Ulmer, 1944, USA)
Edgar G. Ulmer and The B Film Aesthetic: Valuing a Different Cinema
Room S704, Menzies Building, Clayton Campus, 4:00pm
- August 21
-
Julia Vassilieva presents:
'4'
(Ilya Khrzanovsky, 2004, Russia)
Since communism collapsed in the mid nineties, “4” directed by Ilya Khrzhanovsky and based on the screenplay by Vladimir Sorokin has become the first film to be censored in Russia. While the film has won a number of prestigious awards in the West, “4” has also provoked harsh criticism : “Though director Ilya Khrzhanovsky denies that his synopsis-proof first feature is a product of the Russian necrorealist movement – self-consciously inflammatory underground art, film and video that symbolises (or feasts upon) the putrefying corpse of the Soviet state – the startling “4” is nonetheless a howling orgy of decrepitude and decay.” (J.Win, Time Out London Issue 1831: September 21-28 2005) In her introductory talk “On the Political Power of Pro-filmic” Julia Vassilieva (Film and TV Studies, Monash University) examines the most controversial aspects of Khrzhanovky’s confronting footage.
Note change of venue: now in Room S704, Menzies Building, Clayton Campus, 4:00pm
- September 18
-
Con Verevis presents:
Flaming Creatures and Blonde Cobra
(Jack Smith, 1963, USA and Ken Jacobs, 1963, USA)
In 1963 Ken Jacobs constructed Blonde Cobra, a portrait of New York underground film-maker, actor, writer, photographer and performance artist, Jack Smith, out of abandoned footage from an earlier Smith project. A ‘ruinous remake’ of the 1940s Maria Montez vehicle Cobra Woman, Blonde Cobra invented a new film idiom — a ‘moldy’ art form devoted to spontaneous gestures and manic despair. Around the same time, Smith set to work on his aesthetic manifesto, “The Perfect Filmic Appositeness of Maria Montez,” and the notorious Flaming Creatures (both 1963).
Join Constantine Verevis (Film and TV Studies, Monash University) for an introduction to, and screening of, the surrealist ethnography of these underground classics: Blonde Cobra and Flaming Creatures.
Room S704, Menzies Building, Clayton Campus, 4:00pm
- October 9
-
Claire Perkins and Alexia Kannas present:
Mister Lonely
(Harmony Korine, 2007, UK/France/Ireland/USA)
Korine's sublime love story begins in Paris, where a young Michael Jackson impersonator meets a Marilyn Monroe. She invites him to her commune in Scotland, where she lives with Charlie Chaplin and their daughter, Shirley Temple and a host of other celebrity lookalikes. Never released in Australian cinemas, this screening provides a rare opportunity to see this important film.
Room S704, Menzies Building, Clayton Campus, 4:00pm
Maps to Venues
Menzies building (Building 11), Clayton campus:
The venue is room S704, on the South wing of the 7th floor of the Menzies Building on Monash University's Clayton campus.
Navigate using the interactive map below, or download Clayton campus map in PDF format.