Sunday, May 3, 2015

Episode #59 - Brian Darr (The End)



"I like being able to walk down the street and see all these hints of a movie that I've loved.'

From the ghostly fog of Vertigo to the vigilante ethos of Dirty Harry to the geometric paranoia of Zodiac, San Francisco has been a curious site for the movies. It's also an amazing land for cinephilia, and Brian Darr, a writer, programmer, and curator of the blog Hell on Frisco Bay, has made it his mission to trace how cinephilia continues to thrive through the city's repertory, experimental cinemas, and beyond. Brian traces his cinephilia from middle America to Thailand and back to San Francisco, slowly expanding his canon along the way. From there, the two discuss the way the city grew as an alternative to Hollywood, its use for both commercial and art filmmakers, and how the city grew such a reputation for celebrating the cinema of yesteryear. Finally, Brian brings in beat poet Christopher MacLaine's 1953 film The End, which presents both an apocalyptic discourse of living at the end of days, but also presents new ways of thinking and watching cinema.

0:00-2:16 Opening
3:02-51:32  Deep Focus -Brian Darr
52:40-54:56 Mubi Sponsorship - Blondes in the Jungle and Once Upon A Time in Anatolia
56:33 -1:15:10 Double Exposure - The End (Christopher MacLaine)
1:15:13-1:16:46 Close


Read Brian Darr at his blog, Hell on Frisco Bay. You can also read him at Senses of Cinema and Keyframe Daily.
Maclaine's The End is available on Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986. You can also watch the first 10 minutes here.

Notes and Links from the Conversation
-Danny Elfman's band, Oingo Boingo
-Truffaut's The Wild Child
-You can still see a_film_by partially online.
-The Oscar website run by Wesley Lovell is now called Cinema Sight
-Brian mentioned three other great cinephiles worth knowing: Zach Campbell, Ed Gonzalez, and Eric Henderson
-Brian on Apichatpong's Tropical Malady
-Watch Part I of Kevin Brownlow's Cinema Europe
-Le Video
-SF Theaters: The Pacific Film Archive, The Castro, The Stanford, The Red Vic
-2003 was Ozu's centennial, thus the retrospective. Here's an interview with Donald Ritchie at the time of the retrospective.
-Yvonne Rainer writes about The Clay in her memoir, Feelings are Facts: A Life.
-Brecht Andersch writes about Frank Stauffacher's "Art & Cinema" program: Part 1 + Part 2.
-Canyon Cinema
-A brief article on Niles, CA as the first Hollywood
-100 Years of the Pan Pacific International Expo
-Clips of Dark Passage showing San Francisco
-The lost apartment of Vertigo
-Medicine for Melancholy
-Watch Bruce Conner's The White Rose
-San Francisco Cinematheque
-Jodie Mack was previously discussed on the podcast in 2013.
-Brian writes about Scott Stark's The Realist
-More on Kerry Laitala
-The San Francisco Silent Film Festival
-Brian's writing on Kinugasa's Crossways
-William C. DeMille's Hollywood Saga
-Brian and Brecht's project tracing Christopher Maclaine's The End
-Venom and Eternity is available on Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928-1954
-Radical Light, which includes Brakhage's discussion of The End
-Fred Camper on the work of Christopher Maclaine
-Lawrence Jordan's Driving Demons

Theme Music: “Forward” by Northbound

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