NEWS: Chris Gore's Footage Fetishes: Michigan's Banned Films

CULTURE: Chris Gore's Footage Fetishes: Michigan's Banned Films

The Ann Arbor Film Festival Report Part Two: In last week’s Footage Fetishes column entitled Michigan Uncensored, I told you about the Ann Arbor Film Festival and their battle over restrictions related to funding from the state which led to a lawsuit filed by the festival and headed up by the ACLU. Several films screened in recent years at the Ann Arbor Fest had been labeled “pornographic” by a local watchdog group named MCACA (Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs). But, what about the movies? What’s the deal with these “banned” films?



The festival did the smart thing and embraced their renegade status by selling t-shirts with the loveable Boobie Girl as well as creating their own brand of “censorship.” Well, this censorship was on that you could eat in the form of a chocolate bar. In addition, they offered for sale a collection of shorts in a limited edition DVD titled Banned in Michigan featuring many of the films named by this watchdog group as being “pornographic.” Nothing could be further from the truth – edgy, yes, but porn, absolutely not. In fact, the films screened at Ann Arbor tend to fall under the category of experimental work which are usually non-narrative, weird, sometimes incoherent and often bizarre, but always pushing the envelope when it comes to the medium itself. Personally, the kind of films I like.

All the proceeds from the sales of these items will benefit the fest, but rather than dwell on that, here’s a round up of the best--


Filmmakers Armen Evrensel, Bryan Boyce and Sarah J. Christman enjoy local brew from mason jar's at one of the festival parties.

Chests
Dolores Wilbur’s two minute short contains close-ups of two doughy male chests mashing against each other. That’s all. For two minutes. Oddly, not erotic in the least but her intention was to feature harmless aggression with undertones of sexual tension. Mission accomplished.

Soggy Penis Syndrome
The title says it all – this is a montage of grainy video of limp penises. Rosy Boyer inter-cuts this with a woman seemingly taunting the boys.

The Arousing Adventures of Sailor Boy
This cut-up film by Jenny Bisch, contains images of a young sailor on an innocent walk while the film is scratched, cut, colored with ink and otherwise defiled. The title may be provocative, but this is experimental work dealing with the form of the celluloid itself.

U
Yuri A. has created perhaps the ultimate collection of fecal imagery as his film both begins and ends with farts. In between, we are treated to a cornucopia of poop in all forms of color and consistencies. Recommended viewing if you ever needed to quickly clear out a roomful of people – this is better than yelling “Fire!”

Five F**king Fables
Signe Baumane’s seven-minute series of mini-animated stories, highlights some impossible sex acts that could only be imagined, and therefore, illustrated in cartoon fashion. You’ll witness a man getting head from a garden of flowers, a man using a straw on a woman’s vagina, a headless princess giving head, cute faeries committing suicide all rendered in loveable colored-pencil animation. It’s violently terrific.


A collage of images from Signe Baumane's Five F**king Fables.

Sharony!
Two young girls birth a doll found in their backyard from a strange amber egg. The li’l “thing” is cute and oddly contrasted with the video footage of two cute kids. Disturbing.

Pleasureland
Bryan Poyser’s powerful black & white 17-minute short contains a deeply disturbing story. We witness a man obsessed with renting porn from the video store. Upon renting one such title, a real-live and totally nude woman appears in his living room in front of him! She’s ready for action, yet tethered to the VCR by an RF cable. Once said “video” is complete, the woman is no longer there… all that remains is a pool of dark liquid that is impossible to get out of the carpet. And worse, the video is no longer in the VCR! Unable to return the video, his credit card rings up a mountain of late fees and he must pay for the missing tape. Our well-hung lead is quickly unconcerned about his credit card debt as his obsession mounts to the point where he’s having full-on orgies in his living room with all combinations one might imagine – girl-boy-girl-boy-boy, and so on. His sex addiction climaxes in a finale I won’t spoil for you. Pleasureland is weird, smart, funny and makes the best Asian horror films look tame by comparison. Seek this one out as you won’t be disappointed.


Sharony! (left) features a bizarre doll birthing; Pleasureland is the story of one man's addiction to a certain section of the video store.

With Me
A woman in her underwear lounges in bed and is unfazed when a ghostly image of herself appears next to her. What?! She takes this as an opportunity to, literally, go fuck herself. Clearly Austrian filmmaker Kersten Cmelka combined two separately shot scenes, yet the timing of the actions of, well, both women, is perfect.

No American Dream
A race through New York becomes a search for a at least one good fuck.

America’s Biggest Dick
Bryan Boyce’s hysterical mash-up takes not just the audio, but the lips from Al Pacino in Scarface and places them on Dick Fucking Cheney, as he’s identified in the video. The footage of Cheney from the Republican convention becomes pee-your-pants funny during Pacino’s rants about “America” and especially when the classic, “Say hello to my little friend” is uttered. Brilliantly funny.


Bryan Boyce's America's Biggest Dick is a mash-up featuring Dick Cheney.

Gore gone.

Chris_Gore is an author, a filmmaker, the creator of Film Threat, and is a proud member of the Michigan Mafia.

This year's A2 Film Fest is a perfect example of how to stand up and speak out against policy without being whiney.

They handled this with class and wit.

I was sorry I missed it. Again.

Censorship starts early these days. A hashbash town not showing what looks to be some interesting films by, we hope, just as interesting people. Slaves to The Man, I tell you.