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“RECOVERY HOUSE” Now Showing (Monday-24hours only)

Accepted to the STRAIGHTJACKET GUERRILLA FILM FESTIVAL, the never released cult film “Recovery House” which Kelly Broich from Collapse Productions directs, and Eli Elliott stars in, makes it’s  debut today (MONDAY), and will screen ONLINE FOR FREE for a period of 24 hours. STRAIGHTJACKET is an online film festival created by Laura Grace Robles & Fabrizio Federico. 

“The mood of the festival is that of a no-holds barred electric circus where the films chosen will represent the cream of the Les Enfants Terribles of Cinema.”

Recovery House was shelved for some years due to director dissatisfaction and overall frustrations over stolen copies being distributed.

Director Kelly Broich explains:

“We filmed “Recovery House” on the spur of the moment without any thought and I wrote it as we went along over the course of a few weeks. We spent a long time editing the mess of footage and I came to conclusion that while it had its moments, it was deeply flawed from poor structure, to inconsistent lighting — sort of everything is wrong minus the acting. After it was whittled down to 45 minutes from 90, I decided I hated it and would never release it.

Somehow a copy of it was leaked and DVDs made and it’s become popular in the ‘stoner community.’ I’ve even heard reports of a Los Angeles ‘heroin house’ where about 30 junkies get high every night and watch it.

I’ve been told Joaquin Phoenix is a fan of it and has given screenings at his house.
I still hate it. It’s a failure. And now somehow a UK-based film festival is screening it. if you ever come across a DVD of it, please throw it in the garbage where it belongs.”
Kelly Broich

Nevertheless Eli Elliott who stars in the film submitted it to STRAIGHTJACKET,  a festival he surmised was the real deal (Broich begrudgingly agreed) and it was accepted.

Go to this link —  STRAIGHTJACKET GUERRILLA FILM FESTIVAL — and click on the FILMS tab, then look for RECOVERY HOUSE.

Let us know what you make of it.

StraightJacket Guerrilla Film Festival – ONLINE

The StraightJacket Guerrilla Film Festival starts today and runs through April 7th.

This is a unique film festival in that it is all taking place online. In a time where underground film festivals are either ceasing their existence, or else resorting to showing mainstream works and co-opting the term “underground”, StraightJacket looks to be likely the most relevant underground cinema fest of the year.

Each day brings a new batch of featured works, all for free viewing, on the site’s film page, with a 24 hour window for watching:

StraightJacket Guerilla Film Festival – Featured Films

SPECIAL NOTE: On Monday, April 4th, the film RECOVERY HOUSE will be making it’s long awaited premiere. This is a film created by original members of COLLAPSE PRODUCTIONS (Kelly Broich, Casey Broich) and it stars Absurdist Video Artist ELI ELLIOTT in his feature film acting debut. We will have a bigger write up on the film soon.

For now, enjoy the current selections screening at the above link.

Philosophy of StraighJacket Guerrilla Fest:

We esteem unhealthy film by supporting inventive distractions to help distort the reality of the strange & curious with psychedelic eyes. Film Anarchy. Mostly endorsed by the individual not the follower. In developing a path for future innovators approaching;

THE FUTURE OF CINEMA Lives on YouTube

Known or Unknown.

Allowing our film mistakes to be SPOTLIGHTED. The gift of anti-beauty as the new beautiful. WE are not concerned about your madness, we WELCOME it.  

 No film must go left or right, but ZIGZAG

straightjacketfest

 

Eli Elliott’s Social Cinema

The latest trend in online cinema has been what’s being referred to as “Social Cinema”. It refers to Instagram’s video uploads which are limited to 15 seconds. The most popular being a high budget TV-like series called “SHIELD 5” which involve episodes which are all 15 seconds long.

(Update – Instagram just announced they are increasing video length to 60 seconds within the next few months.)

Rather than complain about the new state of online cinema, a few have decided to dive in and subvert the trend.

Eli Elliott has been taking much of his previous work and giving it brand new life through 15 second Social Cinema films. He also has been creating new works under the tight structure that the time limit requires. The results are a flurry of new viewership and a recycling of older works no longer sustainable in the dying festival circuit, and viewed much less nowadays in the landfill which YouTube has become.

Ferguson Ulrich: Does Social Cinema make sense for an alternative film/video maker to partake in?

Eli Elliott: Yeah. You can complain about it and take the hoity-toity attitude just like everyone did when YouTube first came out. No one wanted to put their experimental films on YouTube because they thought they were “above it all.” Of course these same people now all have YouTube channels! It’s like where the fuck were all of you 10 years ago when the window was wide open to subvert this online platform with experimental/underground works?  Their avant garde attitude wasn’t experimental film forward thinking at all as they didn’t understand the digital environment and how to swim within it to maintain vibrancy in alternative cinema/film/videomaking.

FU: Are there many Social Cinema experimental works on Instagram currently?

EE: Collapse Productions have also been uploading their previous works, along with creating new social cinema films and they are all killer. Some others here and there, but surprisingly very few are subverting it. But as like before, a windows opened and not many are paying attention to it let alone climbing through it. I make it a point to upload one freshly and usually carefully edited piece a day and Collapse has been doing the same.

FU: What’s it say that we are at a point where “Social Cinema” is actually a thing and that 15 second films are being created?

EE: Yeah it’s the digital environment and the massively sped up situation we exist in. Remember it was only 10 years ago when YouTube set their video upload limit at ten minutes. Part of their reasoning was that the attention span of the viewer was thought to be tapped out at the 10 minute mark. So now we have gone from a 10 minute attention span tap-out, to a 15-60 second attention span limit!!!

FU: So now the latest is that Instagram is pushing the limit to a whopping 60 seconds!

EE: Yeah just when I was getting better at forming 15 second films they’re jacking it up to 60 seconds! But the 15 seconds actually made sense as far as viewership went. They get viewed easily, everyone has 15 seconds. But 60 second films will inevitably be viewed much less, as now even that seems a struggle for many in this day and age of Social Media aka “Social MindNumbia”.

FU: What’s your Instagram handle and how do people find your pieces and Collapse’s works on Instagram.

EE: It’s elliott_eli and Collapse is collapse_productions. I also created the hashtag #SocialCinemaBrut to separate the typical Social Cinema stuff and establish a sort of outsider Art Brut section for the experimental video works, the weirder things, and alt pieces, etc.

Here’s some SocialCinemaBrut works from Elliott:
https://www.instagram.com/elliott_eli/

MUSH by Kelly Broich

MUSH (2016, Kelly Broich with Eli Elliott. Photographed and Post by Brad Kaup. 22min.)

Invoking a combination of the pretentious foodie culture  with the cheap food reality that many Americans rely on, Kelly Broich’s latest piece takes the form of a cooking show where calories are simply separated between “solids” and “liquids”. This is apropos to the state of quick food culture where cheap pre-packaged meals from the dollar store hardly resemble real food, but rather are simply solid forms glued together with fillers and gums, marketed as “meals” be it a waffle and sausage breakfast or a turkey and tater tot dinner. It all goes down the same chute so why not just combine it all together and treat your taste buds to everything that the visually enticing  box covers promise?

It happens to be a coincidence that the latest documentary buzz is the recently released film “City of Gold” where Los Angeles food writer Jonathon Gold goes around L.A. in search of “the next great, cheap, aromatic meal.”  The Chicago Tribune writes: “The selling points here, as with any food documentaries, are the many close-ups of glorious-looking food bubbling on a stove.”

With MUSH we get the real deal of cheap food, which is “bubbling” in the bowls as Chef Pink Face (Broich) and his assistant Roy (Eli Elliott) mash the solids together with large bricks they find on the ground in the dilapidated shed where the performance takes place.

The dish is equally “aromatic” as the viewer visualizes the stench created as Roy slurps up samples from the resulted meal which is a combination of frozen pizza, waffles, Gatorade, clam chowder, chocolate milk, pork beans, whip cream, among other things.

For art gallery inquiries contact AVA’s facebook page.

Tourettes Without Regrets to Screen DOLL ABUSE

Oakland, CALIFORNIA –

Tourettes Without Regrets is an underground performance art show in Oakland, Ca. hosted by Jamie DeWolf. Every first Thursday they showcase experimental/subversive arts, and on May 7th DeWolf will show Kelly Broich’s film DOLL ABUSE, which screened a few weeks back at the San Francisco Underground Short Film Fest.

Here’s the FaceBook page for the program (D.A. was a late add and doesn’t appear to be listed as of yet).

Hopefully other Absurdist works will be featured in future T.W.R. events.

TORONTO screens The Absurdist Film Festival MARCH 29th (6pm Films)

FILMS START AT 6PM

(live music before)

As more requests for screenings roll in, Toronto will be the next to put on a show representing the latest in underground/experimental/subversive and Absurdist filmmaking.

Big thanks to Scott K for all the work in getting this show rolling so quickly.

SMILING BUDDHA in Toronto will be screening The Absurdist Film Festival on March 29th, Sunday 3pm – 7:30pm.

For venues or art galleries seeking to screen Absurdist films, see this post.

Absurdist Experimentals – Three Recent Pieces

Three experimental pieces have recently surfaced. The first is an absurdist work from Collapse called “It’s A Man”, next is a work from Eli Elliott titled “Teacher/Student”, and finally a bizarre video featuring, and called, “Doll Abuse”.

Please “like” our page on Farcebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

RANDY PROZAC (Goat Worship) Surfaces, Releases Statement

prozac2

The most active page on this site for several months now has been the comment section to a Randy Prozac (aka Goat Worship) post.

It has been alleged that Randy had actually died some months ago. A newspaper clipping of his demise surfaced, and a mysterious girl named Britney Morgue was said to have taken over his website, which thankfully has remained fully functional and even occasionally updated.

While rumors that he had possibly faked his own death and was perhaps institutionalized were also suggested, it seemed many were convinced that Prozac did indeed exit stage left. Sadly it appeared no more works would surface, and many were crossing their fingers, hoping that Britney would at least keep the remaining ship afloat.

Odd back and forth comments have become a daily occurrence in the last few months which only fueled the mystery further.

“honestly, when i come to the Internet, i expect to find The Truth, and to see this level of obfuscation is just terribly disappointing.

i expect to find much more openness and transparency from a website that has clowns masturbating in their own puke.

i don’t think i will ever have the same faith in comments again.”

Today though, it appears as if Randy has stepped forward. Not only does he declare he’s still here (alive), but in extremely rare form he tilts the mask up and takes a few moments to explain the origins and motivations of his massive collection of work, both as a member of the video art group Goat Worship and his solo absurdist video projects that have followed.

For those that don’t know (and unfortunately, not to mention shamefully, this includes many, so-called, underground and experimental film curators) Randy Prozac and his former project Goat Worship, have put out some of the strongest underground absurdist cinema in the past decade, which in turn Randy has archived while adding new works, all available to view on his website SentimentalCorp.org . The website alone is arguably one of the best personal film sites in internet existence with it’s self hosted videos, interesting-engaging and mysterious navigations, as well as NO youtubes, NO vimeos, and thank god no stupid ass “facebook/twitter/tumblr” I-“cons” for the delusions of social misery-media “glory”.

To put it another way, if people still cared about art, specifically current art in the subversive vein, Prozac would have been celebrated a lot more through alternative media, articles, interviews, and screening requests. But we live in a dark period where most of the celebrated subversives of the past now spend more time curating their persona on facebook rather than creating new works or seeking out true underground works of others.

It’s perhaps because of this black-out that Prozac’s sudden surfacing is a rarity, as well as a relief for his well being, even despite his new found flip off to still admirers of his work.

And having said this, his statement below signifies a moving on, sealing the Sentimental Corp lid, having come to terms with the motivational madness which fueled the fire. Future work from Randy seems uncertain, probably unlikely, but if his ‘mask back on’ last sentence gives a hint that something might be brewing, it would likely aim to be something completely different.

Here’s Randy:

to whom it may concern,

the materials i produced were a method and process to deal with pain. i personally have no interest in goat worship or any of the video materials i created, they were made only as a ‘means to an end’ and were never fully intended to be shared, but i did share them and they remain an attached stain on me even though the internal matters have since been processed and released..

i don’t believe that clinging to aspects of the past is a healthy pattern to develop, especially when trauma and pain were involved.. i don’t believe in holding onto pain, or embracing negativity.. i once did.. i once thought i needed it and it convinced me that i needed it.. but i don’t and to be honest i hate most of the people goat worship attracts because they are often parasites who revel in their own suffering and the pain of others. i understand because that was the state the materials were created in. rather than project it onto others directly i opted to create a controlled platform where i could spit out the poison.

i didn’t want the pain i went through to.. the hatred i felt.. i didn’t want it to simply remain within me.. to crystallize into a state of being and become permanent.. cementing me into oblivion with ‘me’ projecting how ‘it’s everyone else’s fault how i feel’.. i am accountable for how i act and react to my own emotions.

the world has too much selfish cruelty and too many people who’ve developed no sense of compassion. people who are mental/emotional sewer rats looking for any piece of rot to validate why they should remain in that fixed state of perpetual bitterness and automated loathing.. i am aware that i have expressed and endorsed hatred and misanthropy and that it was a reactionary aspect of myself, but it was not the core.. and as i said, it is the part of a person that holds onto all the manufactured reasons why i am justified in feeling my hate..because it makes a person feel the illusion of strength.. but it’s not a real strength.. letting go of it was.

i leave the materials (goat worship etc) online because maybe they can serve some function, perhaps those that resonate with that toxic state of being can see the process i went through in order to let go of it, although i doubt that, i know it would be easier to mock me, or to laugh like a heartless sociopath and feel nothing but juvenile emotional cancer. i know all about it and good luck with that.

the materials i produced were also a reflection of a sickness that i see, but that doesn’t make them any better than what they articulated through visual metaphor. i can only hope they don’t contribute more to the neutralization and desensitization of peoples hearts and minds, even though i know that they probably do.. i chose to make fun of my pain and that is what goat worship primarily was, i laughed at the hurt to reduce the impact of it within myself.. i would not want it to be viewed externally as a form of validation or celebration of the negative aspects of the self..even though it was that at the time, a transmutation occurred and i am still working through the residual radiation.

and that is what it was.. an ugly healing process and no healing process is pretty.

now i put the mask back on..

Love always,

Randy Prozac

STUCK FILMS – Absurdist Fetish Performance Art

stuckjb1

FROM MY RECENT glimpses around the interwebs it doesn’t seem as if “STUCK FILMS” have hit the trendy blogosphere worlds which seek to find the unusual and then mock it up, so the regular internet surfer can have a grin and reaffirm his or her, usually false sense of, “normalcy”.

Though the world of “stuck” does have it’s own Yahoo group and some decent playlists on YouTube exist, unless you were looking for them or had a stuck fetish, you’d probably miss the world of Stuck films. I came across them thinking I had stumbled on someone’s performance art (which I believe I did), but learned the main thrust of these films is more fetish, as I began noticing the same theme throughout the various performance videos, which basically entail, a human becoming STUCK in something.

It seems the most common form of stuck films to be that of, usually women’s feet becoming stuck in large homemade sticky glue rat trap like floors. Lifting and contorting and curling of the toes takes place as the stuck performer struggles to free themself. Yet it quickly becomes clear, they are STUCK.

The preferred performance, which I’ve learned from various comments from videos, is for the foot performer to struggle, be in angst and slight agony over her stuck situation, as opposed to pretending to enjoy the stuck experience (which many stuck foot novices make the mistake of in their early videos).

Another criticism, as illustrated in the video below and the comment that follows, is the commercialization of stuck art, using cheap glue rather than the preferred rat trap glue, thus trying to capitalize on fast and quick fetish commerce. See the comment that follows this video. UPDATE – this video was deleted from it’s original source, likely due to said criticisms. The comment below was from the original upload.


“Disappointing that a veteran of the stuck community would not use real glue. Would love to see Camilla glued in the rat trap stuff. I still have some of your drawings on old floppy discs back when this was starting out. Now that Sticky-Site is down I suggest you build up your web site with some of your art work (you are a good artist).”

But going well beyond the foot stuck scenarios, are full body stucks. These performances involve the majority of the torso becoming stuck in something. One performer which stands out is Jan Bailey. She (technically “he”, crossdresser it seems) will manage to maneuver into a tight spot, become stuck, and then struggle to get out. During the struggle phase, a number of actions may occur. Pants slipping down, arms flailing around, and again bringing in the feet, this time within a larger context, the toes may curl and contort as the struggle to un-stuck the whole body ensues.

Below we see Jan get stuck inside a ladder, and to make the situation seemingly worse (though not for the viewer), the pants fall down revealing tight white undies.

Stuck films in a way are somewhat of a mocking of standard performance art, though without the intention. The intention here is more fetish, and interesting ways to execute the fetish.

Nonetheless, many stuck pieces are better than much of the current “performance art”, perhaps because of the clear motive for execution, and the often pretentiousness of movement found in typical P.A. is absent here, and in it’s place is a more honest drive to execute the most solid stuck possible.

The audience is also clearly more in tune due to the fetish nature of the act, while even putting in requests for new stucks. This happens frequently with Jan and she obliges, welcoming the performance challenge.

See Jan Baileys stuck work here on her YT Channel – UPDATE – This is Jan’s new YouTube channel, as the old one seems to have been deleted. Most of Jan’s videos from the old account appear to be here, and hopefully new works will follow.