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Three projects directed by women, three directed or co-directed by those who identify as gender-diverse.

Telefilm Canada on Thursday (August 13) announced 10 Indigenous feature projects that will receive support with an annual $4m through the Indigenous Stream.

Three of the projects are directed by women and three directed or co-directed by those who identify as gender-diverse. The projects range in subject matter from drama to thriller, sci-fi and documentary.

In its fourth year, Telefilm received more than double the amount of applications through the Indigenous Stream compared to its inaugural year. All submissions are evaluated by an external all-Indigenous jury.

“We...

The seventh annual Montreal Underground Film Festival features four nights — and one matinee — of experimental short films from all over the world, plus two feature films. The fun takes place May 17-20 with the opening night event being held at Sala Rossa before the rest of the fest moves to Peut-être Vintage.

The opening batch of short films includes Winnipeg filmmaker Aaron Zeghers‘ The Story of Thomas Edison, plus films by fellow Winnipegger Scott Fitzpatrick, Simon Lacroix, Erin Weisgerber, Charles Fairbanks and many more.

Several other Winnipeggers have films throughout the rest of the fest, including Heidi Phillips‘ The Last Harvest and Noam Gonick’s Hirsch. Representing the U.S. are Neil Ira Needleman‘s Prelude & Erotiloop, Tony Gault‘s Ghost of Yesterday and Ben Popp‘s Lazslo Lassu.

The two feature-length films both screen on the last day of the fest, including Larry Wessel‘s epic documentary on Boyd Rice,...

Considering I’m completely sick of the Internet tradition of doing fake posts on April Fools Day, don’t fear: All the links below are very real.

This Week’s Must Read is a group of links as it was a major weekend in the underground film scene with both the Boston Underground and Ann Arbor film festivals running concurrently, so lots of news about them. First, Under the Gun conducted an in-depth interview with two great Buff workers — and good Bad Lit friends — Nicole McConvery and Bryan McKay.Then, local paper the Boston Globe had a really nice Buff preview article, discussing many of the films screening.All Things Horror reviewed Buff’s opening night film, Don Coscarelli’s John Dies at the End, calling it “the perfect project falling in the right creator’s hands.”The official Buff blog had regular dispatches of its goings-on.Over at the Ann Arbor Film Festival,...

If it’s mid-summer, then it’s time for filmmakers to start thinking about their 2012 film festival runs. Yep, several fests are already opening up their submission process. A few weeks ago, Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film reported that the 50th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival was already looking for films. And now, two more unique fests have sent out their initial calls for 2012 already.

Boston Underground Film Festival

First up, the indomitable Boston Underground Film Festival will be celebrating their 14th raucous year in operation in late March of 2012 and they’re looking for outrageous, transgressive flicks to fill their programming slate.

Buff typically screens a ton of short films and several features. To get a feel for what types of films they’re looking for, check out last year’s lineup, which included lovely movies such as Usama Alshaibi‘s Muslim S&M meditation Profane, Jason Eisener...

Hey, Happy! is the 2001 feature film debut of Winnipeg filmmaker Noam Gonick. It was the opening night film of the 2001 New York Underground Film Festival.

Described as an “astro camp” comedy, the movie follows the exploits of Sabu (Jérémie Yuen), the DJ of an outdoor rave party, who hopes to land his 2,000th male conquest before the impending end of the world. The object of Sabu’s desire is Happy (Craig Aftanis), a simpleton who communicates with aliens through the radio he hangs around his neck at all times.

However, hoping to get to Happy before Sabu can is Spanky (Clayton Godson), an evil, rage-filled hairdresser.

The actor Clayton Godson is more popularly known as Lexi Tronic, the transsexual star of Kink, a Canadian documentary TV series. Tronic also starred in the explicit Guy Maddin short film The Little White Cloud That Cried.

Meanwhile, Gonick also directed the profile piece Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight.

Mike Everleth, editor of Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film, was recently interviewed by film journalist Kenton Smith for Uptown Magazine, a weekly arts & news publication based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Mike was questioned about the extensive experimental film scene based in Winnipeg, which he writes about with some regularity on Bad Lit. Winnipeg filmmakers such as Jaimz Asmundson, Clint Enns, Leslie Supnet, Heidi Phillips, Deco Dawson, Noam Gonick and more have all been reviewed and have had their films embedded on Bad Lit. Plus, the site regularly reports on Winnipeg-based film festivals such as Wndx and Plastic Paper.

Although Winnipeg is usually described as a “small” city, it does have an unusually large and intense concentration of experimental filmmakers that one might be more accustomed to finding in large U.S. cities like NYC, San Francisco and Chicago.

It’s a fairly long interview, so go check it out!

Looking for a cheap laugh?

As the Video on Demand wars heats up, Amazon has started really ramping up their own online offerings. Yes, they still sell DVDs, but now they sell tons of movies that you can watch either on your computer monitor or download to a mobile device.

While, of course, Amazon is banking its VOD business on getting top Hollywood content, lots of smaller distributors are allowing their releases to be available on VOD in addition to selling DVDs on the site as well. Plus, Amazon’s longtime CreateSpace DVD on Demand business is also allowing for VOD, directly giving filmmakers some VOD power after they’ve been locked out of iTunes, Netflix and/or Hulu.

Renting feature length movies on Amazon usually runs about $1.99 to $2.99, so if you’re looking for a quick cheap laugh, these quirky, oddball little movies might satisfy your needs.

Gamers, dir.

Calgary’s $100 Film Festival is a celebration of film. Not “film” as a concept, but of actual celluloid. This year, their 19th, is three nights of strictly 8mm and 16mm films — No Video! — screening at the historic Plaza Theatre on March 3-5.

Each night starts off with a real bang: A unique live film and music performance by local musicians and filmmakers. Thursday features the combination of blues musician Erin Ross and a film by Farrah Alladin and Nathan Taylor; Friday is experimental indie band Axis of Conversation and a film by Alex Mitchell; and Friday is musician Kris Ip Ryzak and a film by Ben Tsui.

Also on Friday, mixed in with the regular lineup of films, is a mini-retrospective of Montreal-based experimental filmmaker Alexandre Larose, featuring four of his films — Artifices, 930, Ville Marie and Brouillard. Then, after all films have screened for the night, Larose will host a...

Calgary’s $100 Film Festival has announced the films selected to screen at their 19th annual event that will run on March 3-5 at the Plaza Theatre. The lineup includes 45 films by 39 filmmakers, including a retrospective of the work of Montreal-based Alexandre Larose.

What’s extra special about the $100 Fest is that, in this increasingly digital age, this event remains a steadfast celebration of celluloid. All films screening over the three days will be on film, either Super 8 or 16mm. In addition, Larose, whose work involves manipulating camera equipment and hand film processing, will be in attendance for an artist talk and an advanced workshop on optical printing.

Several of the movies screening have been reviewed previously on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film and are highly recommended for those interested in attending the fest. They include Naomi Uman & Lee Lynch’s wonderfully disorienting Tin Woodman’s Home Movie...

Grim Prairie Tales: Doreen Girard and Irene Bindi Talk about The Kult Mania of Their Expanded Cinema Performance Winter Night

– Interview by Kier-La Janisse –

On Sunday December 12th, Austin will be host to a unique cinematic experience dreamt up by a handful of multidisciplinary lo-fi artists from the weirdest and coldest English-speaking place on earth: Winnipeg, Canada. Winter Night is a program that utilizes live music, live manipulation of 16mm and slide projectors, and Winnipeg’s rich history of Diy crafts, Aboriginal magic, heavy metal, and random violent outbursts to create an anthology of stories sure to make your spine tingle.

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Doreen, how did you become interested in slides as your primary visual medium, and what are the advantages or limitations of working with slides?

Doreen: A number of my friends are filmmakers, and I started working with slides as a way of overcoming my own technical shortcomings in terms of making film.

“Ho Ho … What the hell is this?”

If that’s the type of reaction you want to get out of somebody — or everybody! — on your Christmas list, then pick something out of this collection of bizarro movies, gross-out flicks and mind-bending reads.

The New Underground Classics

Altamont Now, dir. Joshua von Brown

Chosen as Bad Lit’s 2008 Movie of the Year, this balls-out, punk-rockin’ apocalypse comes firing at you like a nuclear missile. (Seriously, it was filmed in an actual missile silo.) Part social commentary, part fame whore busting, part punk rock musical — and all freakin’ hilarious! (Review)

Every Other Day Is Halloween, dir. C.W. Prather

Screw Santa. Who you’ll really want to see on Christmas is Count Gore De Vol, Washington D.C.’s beloved TV horror host who for years thrilled late night viewers with scares and laughs before taking his act online for the whole world to enjoy.

(I apologize in advance for the course language in my lead paragraph. But, I’m just that excited.)

If the first issue of Incite! kicked ass — and it did — then the second issue, which was just released, kicks major ass.

Subtitled The Journal of Experimental Media and Radical Aesthetics, the second, compact but bursting with ideas, edition focuses specifically on notions of remixing media and the function of archives to fuel new artists’ work. Editor Brett Kashmere, who already did a phenomenal job on the first issue, tops himself here with a much more cohesive set of articles.

What’s most engaging about Incite! is that it straddles the aesthetics of serious art journal and fan magazine. What really comes out through the pieces is just how passionate the authors are about their subjects, whether it’s one filmmaker interviewing another filmmaker that they admire, or the dissection of a particular filmmaker’s work,...

Over the last five years, it’s nice to have watched the Wndx Festival of Film and Video Art in Winnipeg grow into such a terrific powerhouse of showcasing the best Canadian avant-garde and experimental media. It’s fifth killer edition will run on Sept. 30 — Oct. 3.

There’s one great non-Canadian exception this year, though. Wndx honors the life and work of the legendary Brooklyn-bred underground filmmaker George Kuchar. There will be three retrospectives of his films, chronicling his career from his early ’60s Hollywood-inspired pastiches to his more recent autobiographical videos.

Also screening as part of the Kuchar celebration will be Jennifer M. Kroot’s hit documentary It Came From Kuchar about George and his twin filmmaking brother Mike. Of course, George will be there in person attending the festival and on Sunday, Oct. 3, he will join Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin for a panel discussion that’s not to be missed.

Heterosexual sports meets gay pride in Noam Gonick‘s short video No Safe Words, which is embedded above. This work was originally meant to be seen as a multichannel installation piece, but I think it plays just fine as a single video playing on a computer monitor. Presented as a generic sports promotional video complete with fast-paced music, screaming announcers, bold graphics and multiple screens, No Safe Words reveals a darker, totalitarian bent to such “fun” activities such as half-naked men being bound and waterboarded.

The first torture sequence in which one of the players has his jersey ripped off, then is held down while being bound and having alcohol poured all over his body reminded me of the infamous mustard hazing scene in Kenneth Anger‘s seminal Scorpio Rising. In that scene, during a Halloween party, a man is held down, stripped and mustard poured all over his genitals.

Incite! is billed as the Journal of Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics, so it’s a kindred spirit to Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film. Incite! exists as an online journal as well as having a actual 147-page printed edition. While I’ve browsed, and enjoyed, the Incite! website, editor Brett Kashmere was also kind enough to send me a copy of the first paperback version that I recently read every single word of.

The articles for the first issue of Incite! are on the longish side, so, for me personally, they make for better reading on paper, which is why I was so thrilled to get a copy. (My aching eyes thank me every time I go do something off-line.) My own favorite pieces are the substantial interviews with Canadian experimental filmmaker Karl Lemieux and the San Francisco legend Craig Baldwin. Incite No. 1 has been out for awhile, but...

Corus Entertainment announced the identity of its Corus Made with Pay Fund recipients. Of course, the recepients in question are actually 34 upcoming Canadian films.

By reading the press release, we can come to the conclusion that the high-profile upcoming films among the 34 recipients are:

King Leary, the novel from acclaimed screenwriter and author Paul Quarrington and Verite Films Inc., which follows the final adventure of old-timer Percival Leary, a one-time hockey legend, as he heads to Toronto to become the face of a marketing campaign. Quarrington’s previous works include Galveston, which was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Whale Music, winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 1989 and King Leary, winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal.Author and screenwriter Miriam Toews’ The Flying Troutmans brings her hilarious and heartwarming novel about a family’s road trip across Canada to life in collaboration with screenwriter Semi Chellas...