The Trunk Space Blog

Trunk Space Presents:
SONIC ORPHANS
lost music 16MM films 1965-87
January 10th, 2011, 8pm

http://www.billdaniel.net/new

promo flyer for the show

Film Tramp Bill Daniel is back in the van on tour with a new program of recently unearthed16mm footage.
 
SONIC ORPHANS is a compilation reel of lost and found clips projected on 16mm; some silent, some that rock.
They are all rare and strange celluloid gems, many have been seen by almost no one and have never seen the light of youtube. Most of this footage is truly orphaned film— abandoned, lost, found, and now presented raw without editing.

Various youtube clips relating to our content:
Boy Problems

The Huns

The presentation includes a discussion of “orphan films” as they are called by archivists, and at some venues on tour, a one-night photo exhibit.
  
Featuring performances by: The Beatles, Avengers, Huns, Boy Problems, Sonic Youth, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Butthole Surfers, and Johnny Cash
 
Here is an unlikely collection of film that exists in an impossibly strange space between entertainment— (music films); and the stupefying bewilderment of “Useless Cinema”— (which is what I call the clips of silent outtakes, un-contextualized news, lab mistakes, abandoned student films…)
 
There is a flavor of goofy nostalgia to much of the footage, but the images are also haunting— rock and roll ghosts, still singing, pogoing, sneaking hits on cigarettes, making direct eye contact from 20, 40 years ago.
 
Each of the films has it’s own story, like if a stray dog at the pound could tell you how he got there. Part of the evening’s presentation is a telling of some of these stories, and a discussion on the relationship between underground music and film cultures.
 
***1965, Beatles in San Francisco— raw silent news footage I rescued from a closing film lab features eerie silent mop-top photo op, teenagers convulsing with Beatlemania, etc.

***A haunting early Johnny Cash kinoscope, and several other bizarre and unseen curios.

***Sonic Youth at an outdoor concert in Houston in 1986.
 
***1977, Silent performance footage of the Avengers, and lost takes from a student drama staring Penelope Houston. Shot by poet/punk portraitist Pamela Mosher (www.pamelamosher.com).
 
***Butthole Surfers performance shot while touring in ‘87. This footage was confiscated by the club for on-stage nudity, then inexplicably returned to me months later.
 
***1980, Two legendary punk/new wave Austin bands The Huns and Boy Problems filmed live at Rauls Club. Evidence of the fertile crossover between the Film dept at UT and the music scene at Raul’s club. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raul%27s_%28night_club%29)

Part of the thesis of this show is to present the kind of intimate cinema experience that is based on being there. None of this material is available on video or the internet.  One of my motivations is a reaction against the kind of ‘remote viewing’ that has become our primary way of viewing motion picture— on little computers, alone, while multi-tasking…This show is a communal, participatory experience… feeling the responses of the people sitting near you… the smell of dust burning on the projector bulb, like caveman story time around the fire.
 
This event will also feature a one-night photo exhibit—Images from the Austin scene ’80-’84 (www.texaspunkpioneers.com).
 
Filmmaker Bill Daniel has been documenting American subcultures starting with the Texas skate/punk scene in the early 1980s. His film on the history of hobo graffiti, “Who is Bozo Texino?” has screened in over 350 venues world wide. A confirmed tramp, Daniel tours continually, setting up screenings and one-night art shows across the US. He blames Black Flag for his van-based nomadicism.