Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. In Jing Wang’s musical score for Passaddhi, the nine-minute visual music short she created with visual artist Harvey Goldman, we hear […]
Editorial isssue 77-78: The Lives and Deaths of the Yuppie on the American Screen
By Daniel Lindvall. The essays in this issue examine the history of the yuppie on the American screen, from the cusp of the Reagan era to the current aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2009. The starting point is the contention that the yuppie remains a key character type of […]
Film Scratches: History Seen Backwards – The Rubric Timestamped (2014)
March 21, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. The Rubric Timestamped is a strange and richly poetic 9-minute film by Luke Szabados, a young American filmmaker. The first shot […]
Film Scratches: Receiving a Face – Scrapbook (2015)
March 21, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Scrapbook is a haunting and fascinating 19-minute short by Mike Hoolboom, based on footage shot in 1967 at Broadview, an Ohio […]
Protecting the Commons in 2017
March 8, 2017
Responding to Hate, Disenfranchisement, and the Loss of the Civil Sphere By Carol Vernallis. Many of us are terrified by the rise in Islamophobia and other racisms, misogyny and homophobia, threats to the environment and increased possibilities for nuclear war, the rise of surveillance and the limits on freedom of speech and […]
Film Scratches: Navigating the System – The Ensemble of Rules (2015)
February 19, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. The Ensemble of Rules, a feature film by Eliseo Ortiz about the process of becoming a naturalized US citizen, combines documentary […]
Film Scratches: Camera + Hormones = Snooping: Stop (2014)
February 19, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Stop, a 28-minute short by Lydia Janbay and Matt O’Connell, realistically recreates the look of a VHS home video circa 1995, […]
2017 D.C. Independent Film Festival
By Elias Savada. In the shadow of glee (for a few) or gloom (for the rest of us) that has been cast over the DC landscape with the arrival of the USA’s new administration, the 19th edition of the D.C. Independent Film Festival arrives this week for a short week’s […]
Film Scratches: Public Stories, Private Memories – Tip of My Tongue (2017)
February 6, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. When filmmaker Lynne Sachs turned 50, she had an impulse to look back and examine her life. (This impulse to take […]
Film Scratches: Channeling Visions Through Machinery – Robot Pavlov Sputnik (2014)
January 17, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Robot Pavlov Sputnik is a complex and gorgeous eight-minute animation by Oliver Hockenhull. The video derives inspiration (and a main layer […]