Watch this Great Austin-made Horror Short From 1964
The Texas Archive Of The Moving Image was founded in 2002 by the University Of Texas Professor Dr. Caroline Frick with the intention of preserving, archive and educate the public about Texas film. TAMI has rescued hundreds of hours of film from basements, school warehouses & elsewhere. Along the way they have uncovered some special treasures. […]
Jack Benny’s Comic Legacy is Alive & … Well!
To those of you who are fortunate enough to be in Austin on Monday December 8, don’t miss the free-for-all History Of Television show. We do these every other month and this month we pay a long overdue tribute to a man who, pretty much more than anybody else, created the sitcom as we know […]
Happy 90th Birthday to Illustrator Jack Davis
Jack Davis’ caricature style is instantly recognizable. He has been a highly prolific illustrator for most of his 90 years. He has done EC horror comics, Mad Magazine, many magazine covers and also some pretty significant movie posters. Enjoy this small gallery of some of Jack Davis’ poster work.
Watch Maya Deren’s Unfinished 1943 Occult Movie
Maya Deren was an experimental filmmaker probably best known for her dreamlike first film MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON and the unforgettable documentary DIVINE HORSEMEN: THE LIVING GODS OF HAITI. Here are the shots taken for an unfinished film called WITCH’S CRADLE (1943). The silence, repetition of takes, and slates between shots add an element of […]
We’re Thankful for A/V Geeks: Here are 5 Reasons Why
I saw my first A/V Geeks show in the rec room of a Durham church in 1992 or so. Skip Elsheimer had two projectors and was overlaying the two images on one screen as I recall. It was an interesting experiment and Skip was even more interesting to talk to. It turned out that the […]
Selected Shorts: Louis Black Presents THE SUNSHINE MAKERS
Austin Chronicle editor (and AFS founding board member) Louis Black contributed a pretty special Selected Short a few weeks back, so we asked him for another and he obliged with this jaunty little number.Here’s Louis:This 1935 commercial for Borden’s Milk is the only really interesting film I’ve ever seen from Van Beuren Animation Studios but it […]
Cool Movie Resource: The Spaghetti Western Database
For those who have an interest in the seemingly boundless subject of European Westerns, the Spaghetti Western Database is an invaluable resource. Spaghetti Westerns (or Euro-westerns or Westerns All’Italiana) are among the most interesting subjects of genre film study. The sociological and artistic climate which produced these often violent, often poetic films is mirrored in the […]
AFS Viewfinders Podcast Episode 1: Jerry Lewis: Total Filmmaker with Special Guest Bryan Connolly
This week we sat down with “Destroy All Movies” author and Jerry Lewis Club founder Bryan Connolly to talk about the phenomenon of Jerry Lewis, the many modes of Jerry (Malfunctioning Jerry, anyone?) and the peculiar directorial style of Jerry Lewis. Then we get into who the present and future hope for screen comedy might […]
The Humor & Humanity of Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols has died and all the news services are headlining that Nichols directed THE GRADUATE. That would seem to be a bit of an undersell job – considering Nichols also made WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, CATCH 22, CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, SILKWOOD, HEARTBURN, WORKING GIRL, POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, THE BIRDCAGE and many others. Nichols’ […]
Happy Birthday Dick Cavett
Today is Dick Cavett’s 78th birthday. From 1968 through 1982, with a brief hiatus for changing networks, Dick Cavett was the best talk show host on TV. He started as a comic and a comedy writer for other talk show hosts, and eventually got his own show. The other talk show hosts of the day […]
Selected Shorts: Experimental Response Cinema’s Ekrem Serdar Presents the Omnipotent Voice
We asked Ekrem Serdar of Austin’s own Experimental Response Cinema to share one of his favorite short films with us. Here it is: Featuring a “director” of such omnipotent powers that Kubrick would seethe in jealousy, John Smith’s THE GIRL CHEWING GUM(1976) is a classic and comedic* crowd-pleaser that I return to whenever I […]
John Boorman on Lee Marvin – “A Spiritual Warrior”
John Boorman on Lee Marvin: “For me somehow he was the essence of America – big, wild & dangerous.” “It was an intense and inspiring collaboration. And scary. He taught me a lot about film acting and indeed, filmmaking. Scary because he was always pressing for the truth, the essence of a scene. And he […]
