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  • COMING SOON – BFE. 5.0


    BFE.5: Bastard Film Encounter 2025

    Dates: October 8–11, 2025
    Location: Famously Hot Columbia, SC

    Get ready, film rebels! BFE.5: Bastards Out of Carolina is storming back, and we’re turning up the heat in Columbia, SC. This is your chance to celebrate the misfits, the renegades, the downright unruly films that give the middle finger to traditional film history.

    What’s a bastard film?
    Think of it as the black sheep of the film family. These films are cinema’s awkward misfits: poorly made, often ignored, and sometimes downright bizarre. At Bastards, we’ll give them the spotlight they never asked for, asking big questions about their worth, their weirdness, and why we can’t stop talking about them. 🎥✨

  • COMING SOON – BFE. 5.0

    COMING SOON – BFE. 5.0

    BFE.5: Bastard Film Encounter 2025 – Call for Proposals

    Dates: October 8–11, 2025
    Location: Famously Hot Columbia, SC

    Get ready, film rebels! BFE.5: Bastards Out of Carolina is storming back, and we’re turning up the heat in Columbia, SC. This is your chance to celebrate the misfits, the renegades, the downright unruly films that give the middle finger to traditional film history.

    What’s a bastard film?
    Think of it as the black sheep of the film family. These films are cinema’s awkward misfits: poorly made, often ignored, and sometimes downright bizarre. At Bastards, we’ll give them the spotlight they never asked for, asking big questions about their worth, their weirdness, and why we can’t stop talking about them. 🎥✨

    We want YOUR Bastard films!

    • Got a film that’s weird, wild, or wonderfully unhinged? We want to see it!
    • Proposals should be short and sweet (1 paragraph max) for a snappy 5-minute intro. (egg timers at the ready, we are strict on that)
    • Formats: 16mm, Super8, or Regular8 (projectors provided, or BYOP if you’re feeling fancy).

    Deadline: April 1, 2025 (no fooling!)
    Submit to: BastardsFilmEncounter2025Submission

    This isn’t your stuffy academic symposium—it’s a raucous celebration of film’s wild side. No papers, no pretension, just killer films, fiery discussions, and a whole lot of fun. Plus, there’s BBQ.

    Organized by your favorite film renegades:
    Lydia Pappas, Laura Major, Kimberly O’Quinn and the OG Bastards: Skip Elsheimer, Marsha Gordon, and Stephanie Sapienza.

    More info: bastardfilmencountersc@gmail.com

    Don’t miss out on the most gloriously unorthodox film event of the year. Bring your bastard films, your bold ideas, and your appetite for chaos. Let’s make BFE.5 legendary! 🎥🔥

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  • Bastard Film Encounter 2019: Call for Proposals

    We’re at it again: Same vibe, different city.

    We invite you to join us for BFE.4: a weekend of screening-intensive conversations about bastard films in beautiful Baltimore, Maryland.

    Dates: Thursday April 25th (6pm opening night dinner, followed by a reception, and keynote extravaganza) thru Saturday April 27th.

    Location: The Windup Space
    12 W North Ave, Baltimore, MD 21201

    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.

    Send inquiries to info@bastardfilmencounter.com. Proposals should be submitted using this online form by the Friday after Thanksgiving 2018 (November 23rd).

    Brought to you by your bastardly co-organizers:  Stephanie Sapienza, Snowden Becker, Marsha Gordon, Dino Everett, and Brian Frye.