"Pittsburgh City Paper" - April 2, 2014
Film Kitchen, monthly local film and video screening
By Bill O'Driscoll
A video essay on Chinese screen detective Charlie Chan is featured
A clever exploration of a problematic Hollywood icon highlights this installment of the series for local film and video. "Chan(geling)" is tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's 30-minute video essay on Chinese screen detective Charlie Chan, as played by Warner Oland in 16 hit films in the 1930s. White racism gave the Swedish-American Oland a role that might have gone to an Asian actor, what's perhaps surprising is how respectfully Chan is portrayed, even to the disadvantage of bigoted white folks onscreen. (Oland's other "asian" roles are more fraught.) The clips from nine Chan films are mostly delightful - save for the portrayals of black characters, whom tENT reminds us were then unbearably caricatured. ("Chan(geling)"'s bizarre soundtrack, which includes a W.C. Fields impersonator singing "Mama Told Me Not To Come" is eventually explained.) The April 8 Film Kitchen also includes an excerpt of "Chapter 96: The Try-Works," Andrew Nelson's video juxtaposing skateboarders and BMX bikers honing their skills with audio and images from the film version of Moby Dick. And Hayley Notter's "Heaven Can't Wait" is an early 2000s film, made by kids, that Film Kitchen curator Matthew Day says stood out at a screening of international and local avant-garde shorts. 8 p.m., April 8, Melwood. $5. 512-682-4111 (Bill O'Driscoll)
idioideo at verizon dot net
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Interviewer page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Interviewee page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE movie-making "Press: Criticism, Interviews, Reviews" home-page
to the "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - Sprocket Scientist" home-page
to the "FLICKER" home-page for the alternative cinematic experience
to find out more about why the S.P.C.S.M.E.F. (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Sea Monkeys by Experimental Filmmakers) is so important
for info on tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's tape/CD publishing label: WIdémoUTH
to see an underdeveloped site re the N.A.A.M.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Multi-Colored Peoples)