Friday, November 12, 2004, 9:55:16 AM, one spoke:

M> i have a student writing a paper on "punk cinema"  --   and i know
M> nothing about it . . . from what i've been able to pick up, punk
M> cinema would be something like garage band rock and roll, movies
M> made on a shoestring, perhaps with no real distribution, and
M> expressing a posture of personal rebellion . . .  but my student
M> uses the term to include lots of films that are much more slick
M> than this, including--remarkably--REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, with its
M> nearly 5 million dollar budget and an oscar nomination for its lead
M> actor . . . for her the term seems almost identical what we're now
M> calling "independent cinema" . . . i'm therefore at a loss for how
M> to respond to her work

M> if anyone can give me either some basic commentary on this term and
M> concept . . . or reliable bibliographical leads, i'd be very grateful

Well, words can mean anything one would like, when you're a student
;-) but stretching the term to mean something not intimately connected
with punk culture just seems ... wrong.

That is, it would be a reasonable term for, say, Jarman's _Jubilee_,
or Hazan & Mingay's _Rude Boy_, or Rick Schmidt's _Emerald Cities_, or
Marc Huestis' _Whatever Happened to Susan Jane?_ -- that is,
independent features set in that subculture, with the collaboration of
people living in that subculture -- or films made by people who are
themselves part of that subculture (Greta Snider's _Portland_ and
_Hard-Core Home Movie_, the "NY Underground" axis (Amos Poe, Scott and
Beth B, Nick Zedd, Richard Kern) or their equivalents in the SF scene
(names eluding me at the moment, sorry, but in SF in particular lots
of the first wave of punks came out of the art and film schools, so
there were a fair number of ultra-lowbudget films that were screened
at gigs and quickly forgotten); not counting the obvious documentaries
from _The Decline of Western Civilization_ onwards. You could make a
case for Alex Cox's _Repo Man_ but I'd be dubious about _Sid and
Nancy_ ;-). But just "any film about scuzz" doesn't seem particularly
helpful.

Looks like there's an article in the Winter 2004 Cinema Journal titled
"Punk Cinema" but I haven't seen it.

--
Jim Flannery
[log in to unmask]
http://www.newgrangemedia.com/pii

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