I would imagine the audience was composed of a mix of devoted fans, curious viewers who had only seen Rejected, and a few people completely unfamiliar with work. I fall into the second category, and so I imagined that most of Hertzfeldt's work would be plain fun and involve stick figures doing and saying random things that would make me laugh. After viewing this program, I found that Hertzfeldt's style spans an impressive range, as do his talents as a storyteller, filmmaker, and visual artist. In Everything Will Be OK, and its second chapter, entitled I am so proud of you, moments in the story of main character Bill shift from sadly perfunctory to humorously charming. At the same time, I loved the lack of meaning in events that are supposed to be so meaningful: as Bill is about to die, he thinks about it as he would any other daily activity and ends up spouting out a word salad of sorts to his loved ones in the room. The timing of the humor in I am so proud of you lightens the somber tone without overshadowing the film's existentialist quality. This piece in particular made me think about how strange it is to be a human. And how strange it is to be sitting in front of a computer right now--I need to get going to the Dark Matter afterparty at the Yellow Barn. It's starting in a few minutes!

In the Q & A session, moderated by booking agent Gabe Levinson, a modest Hertzfeldt shared advice for future animators (work hard and do what you love), his intention with the humor in his films ("The humor is more like the sugar to help the medicine go down"), and talked a little about technique and the creative process. Hertzfeldt, whose tools are a pen, paper, and film cameras, lauded the joy of working with tangible materials: "You get the film back and its like Christmas," he said. When he shared that making new films takes a long time, I'm pretty sure he was referring more to the creative process than to his more "old-fashioned" technique, and in fact he says that digital would not help him create any faster anyway. Seeing the human touch so visibly in these films--whether through a crumpled piece of paper, the twitching curves of his animated drawings, or the black construction paper peepholes--adds, well, a human touch.

Out front, the crowds were a-waiting for the 9:30 program of animated shorts. More coming soon...

-Amanda

In a Darkness Swallowed, time is never constant: lines, shapes, and dots of organic matter, light, water, and darkness itself move in unsteady rhythms. Spaces between the notes of the soundtrack are sporadic and sounds vary from distorted tribal beats to hurried humming and whirring.

Experiencing this somewhat abstract expressionist film, I found my mind wandered in and out of focus--not because I was bored, but because viewing became a meditative experience. Coherent, verbal thoughts melted away during moments of frenetically quick time-lapsed shots or the languid panning of uncomfortably organic close-ups. Bromberg’s imagery tapped into what Gerry Fialka discussed in his lecture earlier this afternoon at Work Gallery. He mentioned a quote that said something like “Experimental film outs our inner dialogue.” It's as though experimental film can reach into the spaces between our more wordy and structured thoughts--like doing laundry, analyzing a situation, or responding to bodily needs and desires. Bromberg's film taps into these spaces, which we rarely vocalize, and carries the viewer into an alternate sense of time.

In the discussion afterwards, Bromberg shared some fascinating background on the making of Darkness Swallowed. She explained that when panning--such as with her husband's resin-based sculptures, which created the very organic forms--she could barely breathe because the movement of the camera on the tripod had to be so delicate. She had to remain incredibly still as she panned only a few inches, though it seemed like a greater distance on the film. She also touched upon her pacing of the film, stating that "It's about time slippage," and "My experience of the journey through the womb." She also emphasized that she wants viewers to have their freedom to see the film as they see it for themselves. I didn't catch any womb travel for myself, but the time slippage was inescapable for me--when the film finished, I couldn't figure out if ten hours or ten minutes had passed.

-Amanda

Cartoon fanatics will most likely stick around for the 9:30 program, "The Animated Forest," and at 10:00, "Canyon Cinema Presents" will dive into true cinematic art.

Then you could head on over to The Yellow Barn for "Dark Matter," a party group of three DJs equipped with cosmic jazz, afrobeat, soul, and film scores. Tonight they'll be screening a multi-projector film installation by Ted Kennedy, too.

And I bet you thought that's it for tonight? Nope. Not at all. Go to the State Theater for a midnight showing of The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle, the fake documentary about the Sex Pistols. And if you're keeping the rock n' roll (and rockin' filmmaker) spirit alive, you'll know where to go for the after-afterparty.

This was the case this sunny Thursday afternoon for "Remixing the Rules: Copyright and Fair Use." The four speakers were Craig Baldwin (Bay Area collage filmmaker), two lawyers from the State Bar of Michigan, and Mark Hosler of Negativland, an experimental band that got into a serious intellectual property mess in the ‘90s. I didn’t catch the entire event since I had just rolled into town, but the discussion centered around intellectual property and copyright law, the issue of measuring intellectual property as a commodity, and how to bring intellectual property laws into happy harmony in the global digital age. Hosler pointed out that with the internet, “We’ll have to accept the fact that you have no control over things the way we’re used to.” The lawyers noted that laws need to differentiate amateur and commercial work, so that a kid making silly videos in his basement can post on Youtube using a major label song and not be sued. On a similar vein, the ridiculous conflict between ASCAP and Girl Scouts over “Happy Birthday” was referenced, too. One of my favorite moments was hearing Hosler express his utter lack of faith in democracy and the legal system while sitting beside two lawyers (who kept their calm quite tactfully by the way). Oh, but also when he noted the irony of the fact that during their lawsuit over of a parody album of the group U2 they managed to land some “pro bono” help.

-Amanda

Out Night’s shorts program included a touching account of the father of a transsexual (The Bond by Michael T. Conner), a fun sexual exploration acted out by toy dolls (Operated by Invisible Hands by Nicole Brending), and a provocative triple-split-screen romance (Untitled Film Stills by Sam Icklow). In the Unexplored Territories program, I personally was most impressed by Danse Macabre (by Pedro Peres) and Let’s Get Married (Stephan Hillerbrand, Kirk Lynn & Mary Magsamen), two films on completely opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. Danse Macabre poetically reveals a quiet, sensuous beauty in what would otherwise be horrifying images of death, like blood rushing in water, a body twirling on a noose, and flames eating at the remains of human bones. In Let’s Get Married, a narrator proclaims absurd statements, all concluding with “peanut butter and jelly,” while three faces--blurred from the other side of a pane of glass--gobble up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches shaped like faces. Sometimes the sandwiches turn into masks with human mouths and tongues and their Wonderbread faces moved like PBJ puppets. Ridiculousness is fun.

Later I played chauffeur: I grabbed Don Hertzfeldt’s manager from the train station, and then picked up Don and his friend at the Weber Inn, and then dropped them all off at the Fleetwood Diner after sharing my nerdy enthusiasm for how great Ann Arbor is (oh, I forgot to tell them about Fleetwood's hippie hash). Back at the theatre, things were wrapping up, and eventually the die-hards headed to the aut/ BAR for some afterpartying with stiff drinks.

-Amanda