Oak Street Films

Passion Flower will be screened alongside Ann Law’s performance of her Passion Flower Project dance piece at the Bud Frank Theater on the cumpus of ETSU. Tickets are $15, and can be reserved by contacting Jen Kintner with the phrase “Passion Flower” in the subject line.

For more information about this performance / screening, please contact Elizabeth Worthington.

I’ve received a fair number of responses since my call to local actors went out a while back, but I still need to build up my list a bit more before I can make an informed decision on whom I should schedule for an audition.

Again, this call is open not only to experienced actors, but to practically anyone who thinks he or she might want to give acting a try.

For more information (including some details about the project in question, what I’m looking for, and how to proceed if you’re interested), please see this page.

I suppose it’s no coincidence that the term neo-noir only applies to films made after 1960 or so (the end of true film noir is often popularly seen as coinciding with Orson Welles’ stunning 1958 film Touch of Evil); the social and political climate which gave birth to the classic films noirs–the Great Depression and World War II being the most recognizable historical signposts of that era–had by that time begun to shift to one of revolution and anti-establishment protest. Noir had always been about the moral and existential quandaries born of a world seemingly poised to destroy itself.  By the time the 1960’s had headed back to the dressing room and the 1970’s had slouched onto the stage, a new kind of malaise had infected the popular consciousness, and it’s one from which we still suffer today: namely, cynicism and a general sense of collective self-disgust. The political, ethical, and psychological inclinations of a Polonsky or a Tourneur had in some fundamental way lost their social currency, and it is for this reason that film noir ceased to be a common cinematic type–not, as a more cursory examination of film history might lead one to believe, because of a sudden shift in film aesthetics. The “revolution” of the 1960’s had failed, and so irony (the handmaiden of cynicism) became a dominant artistic mode. It is within this unfortunate set of historical circumstances that Buzz Kulik’s Shamus is situated.

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When Ann Law shot me an email last Fall to ask if I’d be interested in documenting the installation of her tattoo, I had no idea that doing so would turn out to be one of the most transformative experiences of both my professional and personal lives. I knew that she had been fighting Breast Cancer, but initially I had no idea that this tattoo business was in any way related to her illness; I thought that in saying “yes,” I’d simply be doing a favor for a friend and longtime collaborator. Once she and I had talked a bit and the enormity of her choice had begun to sink in, I began to realize that this was a unique opportunity to produce a very interesting and meaningful piece of work. It was only after that film had been completed that I began to realize just how much I enjoyed making documentaries, and that I was suddenly on a new and fruitful creative path.

After several months and several more documentaries, it’s finally time to begin sharing these discoveries with an audience.

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I’m hoping this third-generation re-design of the site will answer some of the more nagging, longstanding deficiencies of its previous iterations. One of the biggest problems has been the lack of content relating to the movies I make to earn a living (as opposed to the movies I make purely out of my love for Auntie Kino); it’s hard to make an impression on potential clients, collaborators, or contractors when there’s nothing on one’s Web site which relates directly to the the type of work a client might want to talk about. So I’ve finally broken down and decided to build a page called services as part of a new effort to remedy that problem.

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