Staff Benda Bilili. Photo credit: Crammed Discs

Tonight the Walker Art Center will be screening the documentary Benda Bilili! for free, as part of its Target Free Thursday Nights series. This remarkable movie showcases an even more remarkable band: Staff Benda Bilili (loosely translated as “look beyond appearances”), a Congolese group comprised of four disabled musicians afflicted with polio since birth, as well as a rhythm section that features several ex-sheges (abandoned street kids in Kinshasa, Congo’s sprawling capital). Here’s a link to BBC Newsnight’s story on Staff Benda Bilili, hosted by Robin Denselow.

The Walker’s screening of Benda Bilili! tonight is even more significant following the unfortunate cancellation of the band’s U.S. tour due to difficulties with obtaining the band members’ visas (they were scheduled to headline the Cedar Cultural Center this upcoming Tuesday, the 27^th). This means that the closest we’ll come to seeing this invigorating band perform live (at least for the time being) is through Renaud Barret and Florent de la Talluye’s documentary, which charts the band’s origins (forming and rehearsing—and eventually recording their debut album—in the Kinshasa Zoo) and their rising prominence after the European and stateside release of their album Très Très Fort in 2009.

While it’s too bad we won’t be able to see Staff Benda Bilili perform on a Twin Cities stage anytime soon, at least the documentary ably conveys the excitement, eclecticism, and soaring spirit of their music. As Denselow reports in the BBC segment linked to above, Staff Benda Bilili want to be known for the beauty and vivacity of their music, not by their underdog story or their physical handicaps. Benda Bilili! certainly traces the band’s burgeoning (and inspiring) success, but more important in Barret and de la Talluye’s documentary is the joy of their music and the restorative power of art. The film rises to a daunting challenge: it’s as exciting, euphoric, and ultimately moving as Staff Benda Bilili’s music, and one of the best musical documentaries made in years.

In order to whet your appetite until the screening of Benda Bilili! tonight, here are a few more links to the band’s songs—“Polio,” “Je t’aime,” and “Kuluna.”

Bastrop Wildfire. Credit: Texas Parks & Wildlife Department

Following the wildfires that recently rampaged through Bastrop, Texas—leaving more than 1,550 homes destroyed in this small community—director Richard Linklater, actors Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey, and producer Ginger Sledge held a special fundraising premiere for their new film Bernie at Austin’s Paramount Theatre on Sunday, September 18. Co-presented by the Austin Film Society (along with numerous sponsors), the fire relief benefit screening—which was originally scheduled as a closed-door cast-and-crew screening—was held to support residents of Bastrop, where much of Bernie was filmed and where Linklater is a part-time resident. All proceeds from the film’s Austin public premiere benefited local organizations such as Friends of the Lost Pines State Parks, Bastrop County Emergency Food Pantry, and the Heart of the Pines Volunteer Fire Department.

In addition to living there part of the year, Linklater decided to shoot Bernie in Bastrop (standing in for the tiny East Texas town of Carthage) because of its distinct small-town Texas character. Linklater has labeled Bernie “a film from [Bastrop’s] community,” and said that the fundraising premiere was “the least we can do for this wonderful community that opened its doors to us during production.”

Linklater was himself evacuated during the fires and, while much of his property was damaged, all of his neighbors lost their homes to the blaze. He hopes proceeds from the Bernie premiere will help Bastrop residents rebuild their homes and their community, and also hopes to bring the film to his hometown for community screenings.

The Bastrop wildfires, already so destructive and tragic, posed another threat to Linklater fans and to the film community: several of Linklater’s own 35 millimeter film prints were housed at his Bastrop property and were damaged by the fire. In fact, Linklater had graciously agreed to supply his own 35mm film print of subUrbia for the Walker Art Center’s upcoming screening of the film on September 28^th, as part of the Walker’s “A Day in the Life” Linklater retrospective. Luckily, Linklater was able to ship his own print of subUrbia before the wildfires reached his house—meaning viewers at the Walker screening can appreciate this underrated 1996 satire in all of its glittering celluloid glory.

But the fact that Linklater’s personal 35mm print is one of few available for exhibition is cause for alarm; had his own print of subUrbia been lost to the Bastrop wildfires, we likely would have had to screen the movie on video—an avenue exhibitors resort to increasingly often as theaters gradually shift towards digital projection. This is a common fate for films nowadays, especially those which are not recent enough to be considered new releases, yet not old enough to be classified as beloved classics. Linklater’s own Tape, for example—another film in our retrospective (it will be screening here on October 5^th)—is currently unavailable on 35 millimeter through its distributor. (Though Tape was shot on digital video, its raw, corrosive DV look really comes through with the utmost power when transferred to and projected on film.)

In the grand scheme of things, the scarcity of well-restored 35 millimeter film prints may be a less heinous tragedy than the wildfires that have scorched Bastrop, but it’s still something for film lovers to lament. The very fact that both subUrbia and Tape were extraordinarily difficult to secure on 35 millimeter—despite the fact that they’re directed by one of the most well-known American independent directors—is a testament to the difficulties in restoring, preserving, and/or exhibiting film prints. Imagine, for example, if Slacker—Linklater’s landmark feature debut, enjoying its twenty-year anniversary this year—experienced such neglect and was condemned to a dreary 35 millimeter afterlife limited to a few shoddy exhibition prints. (Luckily, the fact that Slacker revolutionized American independent filmmaking means a 35mm print is readily available for its screening at the Walker on September 24^th—despite the fact that Slacker has perhaps the most convoluted distribution and ownership backstory of all of Linklater’s films. The new print is courtesy of the Sundance Collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive.)

The paucity of 35mm prints is an obstacle which film programmers and exhibitors deal with all the time, especially as theaters are turning increasingly towards digital projection in place of celluloid (a format which, cineastes will attest, offers an entirely unique experience). These difficulties are complicated immeasurably when distribution and ownership rights change hands over the years as companies shut down or merge. Such an indifference to restoring and preserving classic films on celluloid is not exactly new—it accounts for the sad fact that the majority of silent films (an estimated three-quarters) no longer exist on film or in any other format. It makes the destruction of prints that do exist doubly tragic; film enthusiasts may always be aware that the loss of a print to a disaster like the Bastrop wildfires may mean the disappearance of that film from 35mm available for exhibition.

We may be heartened, though, by Linklater’s attempts to support both the film community and his own physical community of Bastrop, Texas. While the fundraising premiere of Bernie provides crucial donations to a community in the process of rebuilding, his attempts to safeguard his own collection of 35mm prints ensure that at least one more well-preserved print will be available for theatrical audiences to enjoy—a seemingly small fact that will be especially reassuring when subUrbia is screened, in all of its celluloid glory, next Wednesday here at the Walker.

A full schedule of the Walker’s “Richard Linklater: A Day in the Life” retrospective may be found here.

The Austin Film Society’s official release regarding the special premiere of Bernie (with links to the organizations that received donations) may be found here.

Legendary underground filmmaker George Kuchar died of prostate Cancer on Tuesday. He was 69.

George was born 1 hour after his twin brother Mike in Manhattan NY in 1942, and he grew up in the Bronx. When he was 12, inspired by their father’s prolific porno collection, George and his twin brother Mike made their first film. Shot on 8mm with a camera they got for their birthday, the twins fell in love with filmmaking. George and Mike worked together through the 60′s (and some beyond) making 15 films together, but it all started as a tween with a camera.

George would eventually grow up, go to School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design), and after a stint as a commercial artist, turn back to filmmaking. Glowingly positive reviews of his early films, appearing in the Village Voice and the New York Herald Tribune made filmmaking a viable job option. In 1966 he directed Hold Me While I’m Naked, a semi-autobiographical breakthrough that remains among his best-known work, and with growing acclaim, he was offered a professor job at San Francisco Art Institute in 1971, where he taught through 2010. In addition to being a steady source of income, Kuchar’s professorship brought him close to hundreds of young artists and filmmakers who were ready to shoot and star in the plethora of low/no-budget movies he spearheaded. Working in every medium imaginable from 8mm and 16mm film to VHS to digital video, Kuchar was prolific, making over 200 works of varying lengths.

Although he was a contemporary of some of the most important avant garde filmmakers, Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, and Kenneth Anger, he seldom if ever used the term avant garde, and preferred to talk about how he’d made his films with no budget than how they stacked into the art world.  Kuchar’s work inspired filmmakers like David Lynch and John Waters, as well as generations of “avant-garde” filmmakers and video artists. His work is archived at VDB in Chicago, and a couple of his works (Hold Me While I’m Naked and The Curse of the Kurva) are a part of the Ruben Bentson Film/Video collection. 10 of his works are available on ubuweb, to wet your appetite. Hold Me While I’m Naked was shown as a part of a huge avant garde film retrospective in 2005, and a documentary on the Kuchar brothers, It Came from Kuchar, played in february 2010.

Great interview with George Kuchar, March 2009: