If you want to see what these people are staring at, come to the Calgary Underground Film Festival tonight and tomorrow night!
CUFF celebrity Brenda Lieberman perusing the stage.
CUFF audience members totally tripping out on how awesome the movies are!
Eileen Yaghoobian was here to present her film, DIED YOUNG, STAYED PRETTY.
All photos by Graham Foy
This photo was not taken at the festival, however photos equally as good will be posted soon.
CUFF’s opening gala kicked off the sixth annual festival with Eileen Yaghoobian’s unique, informative and entertaining debut feature length documentary, DIED YOUNG, STAYED PRETTY.
The following interview was taken from Black Sheep Reviews
Joseph Belanger: Congratulations on your stunning debut. My first curiosity is how you ever thought to go underground and tackle this marginalized culture.
Eileen Yaghoobian: Thank you. A designer friend, Michael Humphries, had sent me a link to Gig Posters. I saw the posters and related to them because my second brother had just died and I was in this very dark place.
JB: I’m very sorry.
EY: Yes, both my brothers died young. I was in this dark place, dark apartment, and when I saw the imagery, like teddy bears with their arms cut off and this twisted stuff that they were using, I found it dark but funny. At the time I was relating to the imagery that was representing the bands and of course I loved the music. I always wanted to make a feature film so I just went for it; I didn’t wait for financing. I made this with my pocket money and I just did it.
JB: Either you have very deep pockets or this must have been a creatively affordable shoot.
EY: Budget is huge and I come from a very photographic background so it was key for me that it look a certain way. When I first started, I actually had a small crew, a director of photography and a boom guy. This was only for four days though. I shot listed and actually had a thirty page script based on this convention that I was going to in Seattle. I went to Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Kentucky, Texas, Calgary, Montreal. Three years of location filming, sometimes sleeping on floors.
JB: I found also that the film style embodies the spirit of its subjects. It isn’t necessarily an activist film but it has a guerilla style that fits perfectly with what is being discussed on screen. Was this your plan all along?
EY: As far as the cutting goes, I was very specific about this. I wanted to cut it as though I were cut and pasting a poster. I cut like that on purpose so that it would give you that energy that the world has. Rock has that energy. I did shoot with long shots so a lot of the shots we see are good as one take. So when I first cut the film it was like five hours long or something insane like that. But I didn’t want it to have that traditional documentary form though because I had to be true to the subject. I didn’t follow any specific structure but I just felt I had to be true to the construction of a poster and the rock world.
JB: Oddly enough, in terms of the subject, there isn’t a great deal of time in the film spent on the formal process of poster making. We see posters being made in the background but it is more about the inspiration rather than the mechanics.
EY: The process is in their worlds, in their studios, in their space. That’s just location filming really. You see it in the background; you see it in their conversation. It is there in the beginning of the film. You get it all in one chunk, from the mixing of the ink to the finished poster, as there is a conversation about the golden era of poster making – how it used to be this trite crap when it was heavy metal stuff but how the simplicity and the design were changed with punk. The imagery matched the music and that is a historical point for these guys.
JB: And these guys definitely share in a community as well. You get the impression that they’re very reclusive, almost to the point where I don’t expect some of them to leave their apartments. Still, they have found each and know each other.
EY: Mark Greenberg, the film’s composer, said to me when he first saw the cut, “Out of these dirty, murky places comes this shining art and community.” GigPosters.com is really the site that made that happen. Before the site, they were still obviously making these posters but no one knew who else existed. Then, in 2001, when Gig Posters began archiving all these posters, that’s when they began their community. Some of these posters are for unknown bands; some are just for local venues. Maybe 100 people would see the poster. Now there is a place to see the posters and there are even celebrities within their own ranks. It’s like their in a renaissance and I was there to capture it.
JB: And big brother is there to capitalize on it. There seems to be this fine line between artistic value and commerce common to all your subjects. They are creating from a counter culture place but they still have to eat. How do they manage?
EY: Some of them have 12 dollars in their bank account. Most of their money comes from after sales at gigs. Some of them are what they are. They don’t make much money and they live what they make. They are the poster boy, essentially. Some of them are professional designers and make the posters for no money just because they love it. This is what is really amazing about this scene. Despite the obvious corporate hold on the music, these people are still fans. They’re making posters in this archaic, primitive way because they’re fans of the music. It’s kind of lovely, right?
JB: Yes, it most certainly is and that is just one of the many unexpected messages to come out of DIED YOUNG STAYED PRETTY. They are all such different kinds of people too. They come from so many backgrounds and walks of life but find this commonality between them in the underground. After all of this, do you think of yourself now as an underground artist?
EY: What is that? One of the poster makers in the film, Brian Chippendale says, “The underground is waiting for the overground.” Maybe I’m underground because I’m waiting to make some fucking money. I’m not financing my next one out of my own pocket. This was totally DIY. No one knows who the hell I am. That’s underground.
Yaghoobian’s next project will be a narrative. Ordinarily, this would be a definite bid for a broad appeal but this one is a gothic love story so she might be playing to the underground for just a little longer than expected. Meanwhile, DIED YOUNG STAYED PRETTY is available to rent and own on DVD today.
Don’t miss Eileen Yaghoobian’s debut feature length documentary tomorrow night at 7:00PM at the plaza theatre! Tickets available for $8 at bird dog video and at the door. Director in attendance!
Died Young, Stayed Pretty is a candid look at the underground poster culture in North America. This unique documentary examines the creative spirit that drives these indie graphic artists. They pick through the dregs of America’s schizophrenic culture and piece them back together. What you end up with is a caricature of the black and bloated heart that pulses greed through the US economy. The artists push further into the pulp to grab the attention of passersby, plastering art that’s both vulgar and intensely visceral onto the gnarled surfaces of the urban landscape. The film gives us intimate look at some of the giants of this modern subculture. Outside of their own circle, they’re virtually unknown. But within their ranks they make up an army of bareknuckle brawlers, publicly arguing the aesthetic merits of octopus imagery and hairy 70s porn stars. They’ve created their own visual language for describing the spotty underbelly of western civilization and they’re not shy about throwing it in the face of polite society. Along the way, they manage to create posters that are strikingly obscene, unflinchingly blasphemous and often quite beautiful. Yaghoobian shows these artists for what they are: the vivisectionists of America’s morbidly obese consumer culture. (taken from www.diedyoungstayedpretty.com)
What’s better than Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and Jethro Tull performing live in an extravaganza themed as a circus?
nothing.
but the Calgary Underground Film Festival will be pretty awesome too, and since the rock and roll circus will never happen again you might as well come and see some great films.
Guy Maddin will be doing a lecture tomorrow at the University of Calgary, Craigie Hall Room 119 It is free and open to the public.
“Inspired by the aesthetics and melodramatic flourishes of silent cinema, Central European literature and the desolation of his native Winnipeg, Guy Maddin has fashioned a career like no other. The critically acclaimed filmmaker will speak about his autobiographical film-making, his cinéphilic obsessions, and his plans for world celluloid domination. A Super-8-cranking modern-day Eisenstein, filming plots that would make John Waters blush, Maddin embraces a cinema where expressionism, somnambulism and lurid sexual neuroses unite—and conquer!”
Also! Brand Upon the Brain! will be playing at 7 p.m. at The Uptown Theatre Admission: $12 General Admission, $10 Members/Students/Seniors.
Harmony Korine may or may not be attending this years Calgary Underground Film Festival. If you’re a fan of Korine’s, here is the end of an interview he did somewhere in Toronto where he speaks about one of his first encounters with life long pal, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, infamous Wu-Tang member and American hero (RIP).
Korine on Letterman:
Why America is great:
