Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the 2019 Bastard Film Encounter, a weekend-long event devoted to the screening and discussion of films which are “ill-conceived or received; embarrassing or beyond the bounds of acceptability; poor in conception or execution; undesirable to those who should be caring for them; proof of something that should have never happened.” Although noted cinephile and friend of the blog Brian Darr describes the BFRE as “legendary,” I must confess that I had never heard of it before organizer Stephanie Sapienza, a colleague at the University of Maryland, mentioned it to me a few months ago.
The first three iterations of this biennial affair were held in Raleigh, North Carolina. This year, though, it relocated to Baltimore, with most events and all screenings taking place at The Windup Space. I originally thought I wasn’t going to be able to attend, since we are right in the middle of trying to get our house on the market, but when I learned that a limited number of one-day passes were available, I leaped at the opportunity to snag one. The day began with a public domain film (which is actually available on YouTube) called Tip Over VNR presented by John Klacsmann from Anthology Film Archives as part of a program called “Teach Me, Teacher (Part I).” For me, it was an absolutely perfect way to start. The release of Pet Sematary has drawn my attention to the fact that since becoming a parent, I can’t even read about the death of a child in a movie review without feeling queasy, so it was fascinating to examine my reaction to a film comprised of nothing but fake children being crushed by furniture over and over again and contemplate (as Klacsmann suggested) what must have been going through the heads of the government officials who ran and recorded these simulations.
The rest of the program consisted of a film created to train Target employees to spot “hot” checks which featured an actor that presenter Dan Erdman was able to identify as a former wrestling heel from Minnesota, and a video found in a shopping mall 20 years ago which extolled a philosophy known as “informationalism.” The latter dominated the conversation which followed the films when a debate broke out over whether or not it was genuinely the copy of a copy of a copy that it looked like or some sort of art project. Nothing in the next block of screenings titled “Manly Pursuits” generated the same level of discussion, but the films were, if anything, even more interesting. I was particularly captivated by “A Hidden Index of Female Presence in a Vanishing Container,” which reminded me of the moment in The Tillman Story when I suddenly realized I was watching the creation of those weird video portraits they use in Sunday Night Football broadcasts, the origin of which I had never previously contemplated, and a video celebrating/roasting a Texas businessman which was presented by my fellow past chair of the American Library Association’s Film & Media Round Table Brian Boling.
In between the two morning programs, a number of bastards (as BFE attendees affectionately refer to one another) were invited on stage to show off talents including a Werner Herzog impression and a rendition of “Here Comes the Bride” on a fart piano (which is exactly what it sounds like), and we were treated to a slide show preview of a bike tour that one of the local participants was leading later in the weekend before lunch as well. Lunch itself arrived in the form of a taco bar provided by Golden West Cafe which, if you’re not familiar with Baltimore, is a pretty boss thing to come included for free with the price of registration. As were, by the way, the stylish t-shirts.
Anyway: the afternoon screenings kicked off with a program featuring what is apparently a BFE staple, footage depicting animals being used for medical research, and continued on with one called “Teach Me, Teacher (Part II: The #MeToo Edition),” which the schedule described as featuring “[f]ilms and videos meant to teach women something strange, obscure, or life-alteringly informational.” The latter included a “social media blackout,” whereby the audience was asked on behalf of the presenters to please not take pictures or discuss the details of the film being shown, a request that I absolutely will honor. I only mention it because I believe the existence of such a thing is a crucial part of BFE’s mission to facilitate free and open dialogue about film objects which aren’t typically and maybe even (in some cases) shouldn’t be studied and talked about.
The penultimate program of the day and last one I was able to stay for was called “Children of the Damned.” It started out with a clip from an absolutely fascinating BBC television production called Improvised Drama: An Enquiry Into Its Value in Education, which you can find on YouTube (we started at 13:18). The last two films were rough. The first, The Idiot Child, was an excerpt from Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Mechanics of the Brain, a documentary based on the work of Ivan Pavlov, presented by film studies scholar Marsha Gordon, and the second was a 1971 film called Who Should Survive? which made a fascinating, if disturbing, bookend with Tip Over VNR. Bret McCabe described it thusly in an article for Bmore Art:
The film was ostensibly made to start a conversation around medical ethics. The cultural shifts between then and now, however, are so profound that what once was normal vocabulary in medical science sounds absolutely appalling, and watching it now you might wonder why it was ever made. A better question: How should we think about it now?
The shorter version of Who Should Survive? that we viewed is available on YouTube here. The subject matter of the film is shocking and affecting, but it’s equally noteworthy for the disparate contexts in which it has been seen: its original screening at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was covered by the New York Times as an intellectual event, but according to presenter Martin Johnson it might be all but forgotten today were it not subsequently adopted by the pro-life movement as an emotional appeal to potential supporters of their cause. In the discussion period which followed the film Johnson argued that it should be included in the National Film Registry, a compelling notion that this librarian for one supports.
All in all, the Bastard Film Encounter was a great experience. I connected with a surprisingly large number of colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere who I haven’t seen in years, made a few new friends, and was reminded of some reasons I became interested in movies in the first place which I haven’t thought about in a long time. My major regret is that I wasn’t able to participate in the social aspects of BFE, such as the 16mm mashup dance party, closing night dinner and duckpin bowling outing, and Sunday brunch at the home of two Baltimore-based bastards. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be back in 2021, though, so: next time!
The Prodigal Cinephile 