Author: Fara

99 HOOKER + LIGHTS OUT + FORSTER +

Our semi-annual Live A/V eye-and-ear-popper unveils an all-star line-up of seven inter-media magicians, interlaced amongst an equal number of single-channel shorts. Headlining is the much-loved visual poet 99 Hooker, a sho’ nuff mad genius on a mission to unleash his beatnik-in-a-box-of-bits-and-bytes Moloch Scat Chant. Donovan (Lights Out) Drummond makes the/a scene as a direct liquid-lightshow descendant of the Belson/Abrams arc, complete with color wheels, clock faces, and the artful aid of Madam Varga and Lx Rudis‘ amazing audio FX. PLUS OC fave Thorsten Fleisch‘s Astrogolem, speculating on Tesla, Turing, and interdimensional demons, Francois Miron‘s optically-printed hallucination Quest, Moog Music‘s synth history Back to the Future Sounds, Kara Blake‘s wowzer on Dr. Who sound-designer Delia Derbyshire, and Russ Forster on the street and in the house with his Theremin Plays Theremin. Tallboy Tim Johnson trundles in his ’87 Atari rig for its so-called Psychedelia, as if our venerable Dream Machine weren’t enough! $13

KNIGHT: MANN’S SPARKS + MASH-UPS

Now in its eighth edition, Oakland‘s Drunken Film Fest remains committed to bringing the year’s most creative shorts, too often excluded by traditional industry-centered festivals, to where people are–in bars. Nested in a cozy alt-space with our own modest canteen, OC is honored to host this year’s opening event, a “special” West Bay pop-up promising a sumptuous spread of four resonant remixes of contemporary film, TV, and internet material…alternatively cool, clever, and critical. The centerpiece is Ryland Knight‘s 50-min. homage to the luscious imagery of feature auteur Michael Mann (ten of his titles sampled, from Thief to Blackhat), whose big-budget scenes are here married to the hypnotic dream-pop of Beach House‘s Depression Cherry–each track of the album supporting a pastiche from another of the ten Mann productions. The opening set is a witty threesome of rather different, “collage-y” pieces: Drew Durepos‘ evil-bird bricolage Animal Trials, Jordan Wong‘s Mountain Lodge–a send-up of inane online commodity fetishism, and Neozoon‘s A Little Lower than the Angels–a comic cut-up skewering religious propaganda. DFF director Arlin Golden is here in person to introduce the artist behind our evening’s anchor–Knight (Cherokee) is an East Bay writer/director and 2024 Sundance Native Lab Fellow. $10

AI Filmmaking Using Free Tools

You don’t need cameras or media to make films. You can use free AI tools to assist in writing scripts, getting ideas, as well as generating the shots themselves, even audio. Learn how with free tools online.

 Short Form Filmmaking for Social Media

TikTok, Instagram reels, Facebook and other websites emphasize the very short form video as the dominant mode of contemporary delivery. Learn how to optimize subject matter choice composition, framing, and editing and sound to create social media ready video content.