Cinemad

Today's podcast is with the founders and film programmers of Light Industry, a microcinema in Brooklyn specializing in avant garde and unusual film. They are not only human databases of art film history, they know the hurdles of how to run a film festival and a screening space, putting on great shows. Thomas Beard speaks first, has a deeper voice. Ed Halter speaks second.

From their homes in Austin, TX, David and Nathan Zellner have been making weird and funny films since the 1990s. Their first two features PLASTIC UTOPIA and FRONTIER were extremely under the radar, even for film festivals. Then they went on a long run of making entertaining shorts starting around 2002, finding a cult comedy fan base. After playing Sundance every year since with shorts and their feature GOLIATH, they will be premièring their new feature KID-THING there next January. We talk about the glory of making a film on VHS in-camera, being featured extras in SALO, working with chickens, cats and sharks, and how they got back to their roots with SASQUATCH BIRTH JOURNAL 2.

What to say about Ken Jacobs? An avant-garde film legend from his early epic film STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH to his Nervous Magic Lantern live performances. Even at just 40 minutes, his new film SEEKING THE MONKEY KING is another epic, combining strong political statements with his incredible use of abstract 3D imagery, showing how a new technology (and tired fad) can be used to create great art in the right hands. Ken’s son, filmmaker Aza Jacobs, sits in and interviews him, covering his past and present work now spanning 50-plus years, his time with Hans Hofmann, Stan Brakhage and Nicolas Ray, and how Ken met Flo. http://www.starspangledtodeath.com/

Filmmaker James Fotopoulos helped me coin the term 'avant gutter' - too dirty for the art world, too existential for the genre film world. That was an immediate reaction - James' films have actually played at tons of film festivals and in museums and galleries over the past decade, having made more than 100 works of all lengths. He might even help connect the worlds without compromising style or tone.

You may know Bobcat from his long standup comedy career, his many acting roles from the 1980s and 90s, or that time he set a couch on fire. But Cinemad is more interested in the films he has written and/or directed over the past decade. Mixing a real underground, independent film vibe with some extreme plotlines, he provides a cutting insight to human nature that is hilarious but not all that absurd.

Cinemad podcast #2: Azazel Jacobs' award-winning film MOMMA'S MAN premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008, and quickly became one of the most lauded films of the year, winding up on many "best of" lists. Released in numerous international territories, it was distributed domestically by Kino International. Jacobs' short film KIRK AND KERRY was named Best Dramatic Short at the 1997 Slamdance Film Festival and became part of the Permanent Collection of the New York Public Library. He later teamed up with fellow filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo to make the micro-budget feature THE GOODTIMESKID, which found a small but loyal following, and was released by Benten Films. In 2009, he received a commission from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to create the short film I SEE. The son of avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, Jacobs was born in 1972 and raised in lower Manhattan surrounded by important and innovative artists. He went to undergraduate school at the film department of SUNY Purchase and received his Mast

Cinemad podcast #1: Nina Menkes. Called “Brilliant, one of the most provocative artists in film today” by The Los Angeles Times, Nina Menkes's radical and pioneering work synthesizes inner dream-worlds with harsh, outer realities. Her seven films are a body of work Sight and Sound has called “Controversial, intense and visually stunning.” We talk about her films, the notion of the avant-garde tag, her teenage witch school, violence in cinema, freaky animals and her new film, DISSOLUTION. Interviewed by Mike Plante.