MicroCinema Scene

Two guys and two girls share an introspective night in Joe Burke’s comedy-drama Coop’s Night In.

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In the near future, two young girls goof around with a virtual reality game harboring sinister origins in Ramiro Hernandez’s Replay.

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Once upon a time “microcinema” meant the garage and basement and parking lot venues used to show underground movies; soon it grew to include the movies themselves. I began writing for the Microcinema Scene website at its inception several years ago and became involved in a film festival that grew out of Canada and blossomed in South Dakota and last year landed in the outskirts of Chicago. In the past I had judged and MCd and taught workshops, but this year I was mostly going to enjoy myself.

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Crackling noir short features an up-and-coming exec who gets mugged in the parking garage by a crook who, it turns out, grew up in the same neighborhood.  How this dynamic unfolds over a tense span of minutes is the crux of Mitchell Cohen’s effective Peter’s Price.

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A comedian with a hot online following is served up a dish of cold reality when an old girlfriend appears in Knock Knock, the latest dramatic short from director Amir Motlagh.

I am a fan of Motlagh’s work, and believe he is one of a group of talented young microcinema directors (S. Tyler Wilson and Matt Meindl among them) whose artistic vision will hopefully eventually be brought to a wider audience, perhaps through the completion of a first feature.

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Coming to microcinema at the end of a long trail that included involvement in comix and minicomics and ‘zines, it has always struck me as odd that there has not been more crossover between these two aspects of DIY culture.  Microcosm Publishing’s Joe Biel takes a stab at correcting that oversight with A Hundred Dollars and a T-shirt, his engaging documentary of the ‘zine movement.

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Don’t miss Part One or Part Two of John Oak Dalton’s adventures in b-moviedom.

SATURDAY MAY 31, 2003:  THE AFTERGLOW

With two of the main actors, Bob and Hunter, making their way home, the Polonia Brothers, Jon McBride, and I began to watch all of the footage, seeing the scenes we had shot over the last few days unfold before our eyes.  Everything was there (a blessing, as John Polonia had an alarming tendency to leave the lens cap on), and not only that, it looked great.  Over several hours I began to see in my mind how the film would piece together, and I thought, even if it gets panned from coast to coast and in every dusty corner of the Internet, I am still proud of what we did.

That evening I was treated to a great dinner at a nice restaurant with the extended Polonia family.  There I saw a poster for the local “Rattlesnake Festival,” where denizens swarm the hills to capture and bring back rattlers to the baseball diamond in the center of town. Prizes are awarded for the biggest capture, and anti-venom and pork fritters are easily on hand.  For myself, I would then apply a well-swung axe; but the fun-loving Pennsylvanians turn the snakes loose again.  For the first time I thought I understood what in their formative years made the Polonia Brothers what they are today.

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(Editors Note: Don’t miss Part One of John Oak Dalton’s experiences in b-moviedom. If you haven’t read it yet, click here.)

THURSDAY MAY 29, 2003:  “SURVIVOR:  WELLSBORO”

For the first time I heard words that I wrote coming out of an actor’s mouth, and it’s a weird feeling…from my laptop in the cornfields of rural Indiana to an L.A. actresses’ mouth in a van bumping down a road in Pennsylvania.  It is basically a funny little scene where Billy D’Amato is driving to the cabin and talking about the differences between shooting documentaries and shooting porno movies.  Unfortunately the first scene I would hear of mine mouthed by a professional actor had the word “cornhole” in it.  At the end Mark Polonia turns to me as I’m crouching out of the camera line in the back seat and says, “Well, you’ve seen your first scene comes to life!” and John Polonia cheerfully chimes in with, “We haven’t even started raping the script yet!”

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[Editors Note: In 2003, indie screenwriter (and MicroCinema Scene co-founder) John Oak Dalton watched a movie called Blood Red Planet and was introduced to the strange world of legendary cult filmmakers - The Polonia Brothers. Little did he know that this low-budget space epic would lead to a collaboration that continues to this day. He has since gone on to write several movies for the Brothers and in 2003, travelled to Wellsboro, Pennsylvania for the production of Among Us - a movie about Bigfoot!]
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I’ve always been a fan of Joe Sherlock’s retro-styled features, marked by funny storytelling and rickety “let’s put on a show” production values, but anyone unfamiliar with his work who wants to watch a horror anthology called Trailer Park Double Wide Trilogy of Terror pretty much will know what they are in for.

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