"San Francisco Bay Guardian" - december 16, 1998
(edited from their on-line edition)
Cinemix '98
The year in review by our critics and local filmmakers and programmers.
Many of the best films I saw in 1998 haven't made it to San Francisco yet, including my favorite film of the year, Abel Ferrara's insane, crack-drizzled, and much-hated masterpiece The Blackout; plus Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flowers of Shanghai, Philippe Grandrieux's Sombre, and Tsai Ming-liang's The Hole.
The local film events I most enjoyed were tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's appearances and the premiere of Jim VanBebber's Charlie's Family. In the filth department, nothing quite topped the evil stoner rhythms of Rob Black's Miscreants. Nineteen ninety-eight also marked the triumphant return of Sleazoid Express editor Bill Landis's astonishing new film zine, Metasex. And even though we lost the Geneva Drive-In, the Mini-Adult staggers on.
- JOEL SHEPARD Film/Video Curator Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
However they're described -- as avant-garde, underground, or experimental -- radical outsiders made many stunning and memorable contributions to the increasingly commercialized clutter of "independent" films released (or rediscovered) in 1998. Some of my favorites: Sadie Benning's live-action cartoon psychic investigation of an androgynous 11-year-old girl, Flat Is Beautiful; Ken Jacobs's ecstatic Nervous-System performance reworking Laurel and Hardy footage, Ontic Antics; Anne Robertson's riveting Super-8mm foray into the edge of loss and madness, Emily Died (Five Year Diary, Reel 80); tENTATIVELY A CONVENIENCE's anarchic and formally subversive regurgitation of generic industry found-footage Bob Cobbing/Movie Trivia/Hypnopedagogy; Nathaniel Dorsky's magnificent apotheosis of sensual and poetic montage, Variations; Janie Geiser's mysterious, dreamlike real-object-animated world of an imagined past, Immer Zu; Jacalyn White's ground-breaking (but little known) 1981 Super-8mm portrait of her mother's sexual self-identity, In Mother's Way; Shohei Imamura's offbeat but masterful blend of violence, compassion, and the absurd, The Eel; and Steve Fagin's rollicking postmodern celebration-exploration of Cuban culture, TropiCola.
- STEVE ANKER Director San Francisco Cinematheque
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)