The second Select Media Festival, “an exploration of international movements in the digital underground of electronic media,” runs Friday through Wednesday, November 21 through 26, at the Gene Siskel Film Center and at High School, 1542 N. Milwaukee. Tickets are $8, $4 for Film Center members; a $50 pass is good for all screenings. For more information call 312-846-2800 or 773-837-0145. Films marked with an * are highly recommended.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22
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Heavily influenced by William S. Burroughs–especially his “Nova” trilogy and Towers Open Fire, his 1963 collaboration with British filmmaker Anthony Balch–this experimental narrative combines black-and-white digital video with stock footage from the Florida Moving Image Archive to conjure a cryptic tale of 1960s international espionage. A jaded arms dealer (Greg Shumann) travels to the socialist K-Zone Republic to participate in a golf tournament for a million-dollar prize; meanwhile a weary operative of the K-Zone’s Subversion Agency (Larry Robinson) ponders the contents of a smoking suitcase found in a field. Their deadpan voice-overs carry the story, marginalizing the dialogue; the sound track burbles with electronic music, audio glitches, signal tones, and other effects. Mark Boswell directed a script by R.M. Flanagan, adapted from Anton Kozlov’s novel El Respubliki K-Zona, but the montage is credited to “Dr. Benway.” 70 min. (JJ) (Gene Siskel Film Center, 4:30)
Digital Video Detournement
The Ghost and the Video
American slackerdom is alive and well in this funky but terminally monotonous 2002 video about Friends Forever, a hipster duo from Denver who perform wild drum-and-guitar sets from inside their parked Volkswagen bus. Video maker Ben Wolfinsohn follows them and their female roadie (who assists with the lights, costumes, prerecorded tapes, fog machine, bubble machine, etc) as they tour the west coast on the cheap; a second jaunt takes them to New York to play in front of the Troma Films office. Despite all the ground covered, the kids seem as cloistered as monks, and aside from their 15-minute explosions of rock ‘n’ roll chaos in various parking lots, they have little to say and plenty of time to say it in. 81 min. (JJ) (Gene Siskel Film Center, 5:15)
Flying in the No Fly Zone
