Bastard Film Encounter 2019: Call for Proposals

The Bastard Film Encounter is an ‘anti-symposium,’ wherein a group of collectors, archivists, filmmakers get together and screen the ‘bastard films’ they’ve acquired, purchased, or otherwise encountered personally or professionally.

What is a bastard film? It’s the terribly-behaved cousin of the orphan film. As Andy Uhrich stated, ‘If Orphans is metaphorically about finding a home for films lost in the wilds of traditional film history, the BFE considers moving images that refuse to come in from the cold.’ An instructional film on dental extraction. Home movies depicting hunters getting drunk with the carcasses of their recent kills. A 1953 film called Techniques for Electroshock Therapy (1953). Racist promotional videos produced by a local movie theater in the 1940s. An ’80s soap opera pilot set in a Dallas airport.

These films 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. But they did happen, and Bastards is, if nothing else, a cathartic group therapy session to work out the effects of our encounters. We will bring these misbegotten moving images out of the closet and begin to address what they really are, how they are kept and ignored (and if they really should be), if and why they might matter, and what role they might play in archives and in cultural studies involving film, video, and sound.

The inaugural BFE schedules are available at: http://bastardfilmencounter.com/

Proposals are invited for brief (5 minute—we’re enforcing this!) introductions to films (16mm, super8, and regular8 projectors will be on hand/videos of any format/or feel free to byop). Please indicate format and length of screening material with your proposal. This event is not about reading a paper. It is about providing five minutes or less of context followed by post-screening discussion.