Alex F 🇵🇸
@alexcfields
Followers
745
Following
539
Media
424
Statuses
3,798
Editor @toneglow Film Show, words @InRO , @ultradogme , and , mostly about experimental film. Union steward. they/them
Knoxville, TN
Joined September 2014
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
Arsenal
• 431716 Tweets
#PLdaGloboNão
• 384508 Tweets
Tottenham
• 292257 Tweets
Spurs
• 217699 Tweets
Man City
• 173182 Tweets
Premier League
• 146204 Tweets
Manchester City
• 102111 Tweets
Maynez
• 88751 Tweets
Champions League
• 85753 Tweets
Guardiola
• 78416 Tweets
#TOTMCI
• 75323 Tweets
Haaland
• 73810 Tweets
Ortega
• 73582 Tweets
WNBA
• 65111 Tweets
Aston Villa
• 58639 Tweets
#ابراهيم_المهيدب
• 52919 Tweets
Ange
• 49008 Tweets
Alito
• 48425 Tweets
Menem
• 43507 Tweets
Arda Güler
• 35002 Tweets
توتنهام
• 30457 Tweets
Foden
• 27240 Tweets
Harrison Butker
• 27071 Tweets
Arteta
• 26212 Tweets
Everton
• 23865 Tweets
Ederson
• 23174 Tweets
Doku
• 19998 Tweets
السيتي
• 19281 Tweets
#TierraDeNadie10
• 18946 Tweets
Alice Munro
• 18381 Tweets
ارسنال
• 17646 Tweets
Courtois
• 17553 Tweets
Valverde
• 15454 Tweets
Agatha All Along
• 15382 Tweets
Unai Emery
• 15107 Tweets
Rodrygo
• 13934 Tweets
Lunin
• 13928 Tweets
4 ANOS DE BOIADEIRA
• 12580 Tweets
Akanji
• 11293 Tweets
West Ham
• 10933 Tweets
Etihad
• 10298 Tweets
@Dansplainer
Hearing about a non-binary contestant winning Jeopardy and Ken getting their pronouns right = 🙂
Googling their name to find which episode to watch and seeing that the two most popular searches are looking for their deadname = 😞
4
6
1K
Scott MacDonald’s series of lengthy, annotated interviews with major experimental artists are invaluable for anyone interested in this stuff
10
26
364
@michaeldailey
@Dansplainer
To be clear I meant that if you type “Rowan Ward” the autocomplete suggests “original name” and “original name Jeopardy.” I’m sure many/most of the searches were relatively innocent, eg people wanting to find their previous appearance, but still…
3
0
189
Dozens of experimental films are available to watch online, for free, for the next two weeks (through May 18)
for the 19th edition of Experiments in Cinema.
I haven’t watched any yet so can’t share specific recommendations
4
47
180
Experimental filmmakers working today who are masterful with sound:
James Benning
Joshua Bonnetta
Kevin Jerome Everson
Laida Lertxundi
Ewelina Rosinska
Who else?
12
11
168
@BrandyLJensen
A scene clearly designed and included for viral marketing purposes and yet still the best 20 seconds of any 2023 movie so far
0
0
146
BECKY'S EYE (Willie Varela, 1977). This and a bunch of others are public on Varela's Vimeo, many are only 2-3 minutes long and they're lovely, huge Brakhage influence
2
14
148
Some experimental flower films to send your sweeties who love formalist cinema
(I meant to write up a blog post with links and files but I forgot)
6
9
129
Aspiring genre filmmakers should stop asking how Peele/Aster/Eggers/Villenueve do it and start asking how Michael Robinson, Peter Tscherkassky, Takashi Ito, Cecelia Condit, JG Solondz, Kalil Haddad, Christin Turner, Shana Moulton, Rainer Kohlberger, Simon Liu do it
Sci fi & horror are stuck in a tiny box repeating themselves with a huge realm of possibility outside. Most of the potentially regenerative ideas for narrative genre film are coming from the avant garde, most of the rest from those few narrative directors who care about the ag.
1
0
15
1
5
119
I maintain this list as a sort of personal canon of great 21st century experimental film.
Sharing in case it’s useful to others; always open to suggestions for films I should see.
1
7
90
What if the big experimental film festivals programmed fewer terrible digital graphics experiments and more films that are like, fun, or weird, or which actually look good. Has anyone asked this question before
5
2
83
@devi1mans
It’s wild how often people who hate great movies hate them for the exact scenes that make them great
0
0
82
Apropos of nothing, today seems like a good day to become a paid subscriber of one of the film publications that acknowledged and honored the Berlinale boycott:
@toneglow
@ultradogme
@InRO
@anothergaze
@ScreenSlate
1
27
78
Jayce Salloum’s films are among the best efforts I’ve seen to formally interrogate documentary representation, media narrative construction, and grassroots political militancy. Should be in the core modern doc/essay film canon. Free on his Vimeo.
3
11
78
Browsed my Letterboxd lists and noted some great 21st century experimental films with less than 200 logs. Maybe take a gander at some of these?
Please also share your own underseen favorites…
2
5
77
Too many filmmakers seem to think of film as essentially visual and sound as functional—an accompaniment, or a cue for mood and emotion, or a means to convey information.
This idea is so clearly wrongheaded but it looms over almost every festival and even many wide releases.
3
2
74
Any understanding of “cinema” or its “power” that sees film and its institutions as separate from the political stakes of the world and liberation struggles isn’t one worth believing in
2
11
74
Lovers of puns, wordplay, and clothbound books will want to check this out from Prismatic Ground—an adventure set entirely in a university library but using its collection to catalogue other universes, cities, seas
4
4
68
What if you canceled your subscription to Netflix or Apple TV or whatever and gave all that money to the kinds of publications and platforms you think should exist. What if you stopped watching mediocre streaming series and spent that time watching what artists make free on Vimeo
3
5
66
The experimental films at Ann Arbor Film Festival are available to watch online through March 29. I’ve watched most of them, and here are my highlights. Most are shorts. If you’ve been watching too feel free to respond and yours!
Thread…
3
8
62
Insane that Ken Jacobs is one of the biggest names in the avant garde and yet most of his best works are recent ones that almost nobody has seen (even though most are available online)
2
0
59
I was disappointed that the Cat Movies program on Criterion Channel didn’t include any avant-garde films, so I curated my own supplementary program, featuring canonical works alongside contemporary ones. All available to watch now and for a limited time!
4
30
55
The first half of the 70s had a run of films by white American directors which diagnosed race and class and culture with a subversiveness and formal daring today’s genre filmmakers can’t dream of: Hi Mom!, Sisters, Bone, The Crazies, Texas Chain Saw Massacre…bring this back pls
2
3
55
We can thank Stan Brakhage for (among a few other things) bringing us the films of Ernie Gehr
3
2
51
As much as I admire the programming and publishing work these two have done over the years…this ain’t it. Movements to stop genocide and movements to preserve space for art should be on the same side with the same enemies and that’s hard when figureheads of the latter do this
2
8
50
Brb programming some Brakhage films and making a poster that says Rachel Sennott is in them
this is so insanely awesome but also gotta hand it to depaul, what a brilliant ploy to try and swindle their film students into seeing a pedro costa film by just lying about viggo mortensen being in it lmao
6
11
202
1
0
51
I really do think it’s a missed opportunity for this program not to have any avant-garde films, easy way to get people to watch them with their guard down. Maybe I’ll make an a-g cat films. Off the top of my head I’ve got films by Joyce Wieland, Jim Jennings—who else?
A cat movies program with no Carolee Schneemann is pretty suspicious
0
1
17
19
3
50
Kevin Jerome Everson made films about eclipses (they’re good) and I wrote about them (hopefully also good)
2
6
50
Thinking a lot lately about experimental science film—whether documentary or mockumentary or science fiction or however you want to categorize.
Rosa Barba, Jessica Sarah Rinland, Deb Stratman, Jeanne Liotta, Laura Kraning, Joost Rekveld, who else?
17
0
48
When you’re telling an irl friend about some great experimental film and they ask where they can watch it and you’re like oh…uh, in my house, I guess?
2
0
48
Me when Letterboxd reviews tell you what song they played over a silent ag film
If you can’t watch Brakhage in silence then just don’t watch Brakhage. It’s ok, you don’t have to watch his stuff, no one is making you.
24
15
277
5
3
48
Here’s the three day fest I programmed for myself:
Anyone have suggestions for 16mm films to watch from the NYPL collection? Stuff that’s not out there in a good digital scan ideally since I’ll have limited time
10
0
4
3
0
47
Watching every Lebanese experimental film and formalist doc I can find this week as I’m writing a few of them, and overwhelmed by how much interesting work goes largely unseen and has no accessible writing about it. We need more people going deep on specific traditions/artists &
1
1
44
A lot of outlets seem happy to cover Berlinale despite the
@strikegermany
boycott but I haven’t seen anywhere covering the artists who actually stuck their necks out and pulled their work. Seems like someone should do this!
4
5
43
@la_meme_young
Lists of favorites made by people with similar taste are a great way to find stuff. Plenty of things I love that I would never have heard of if someone hadn’t put it on a list
1
0
39
Some modest contributions toward this project:
Wavelength (Snow)
Close Quarters (Jennings)
Ming Green (Markopoulos)
Fuses (Schneemann)
Oxhide II (Liu)
Table (Gehr)
Room Film 1973 (Gidal)
@_Sheehogue_
someone should make a LB list of great films set mainly in a single apartment (ironically this one has a lot of stuff outside of the apartment iirc)
3
0
2
8
1
42
Funny learning that people in your life think you’re pretentious, not because you watch like three hour landscape films and hand scratched animations, but because you watch…films not in English
2
0
43
When I first saw Fox Maxy’s MAAT several years ago, I thought it was messy and amateurish. That was a stupid opinion then and feels even stupider having seen their work since.
Help make up for my mistake; watch this film by the social media era’s best practitioner of diary film
3
0
43
ANTIGONE (Straub-Huillet, 1992), one of the greatest anti-war films
1
1
41
Every screening of this film in 3D brings new converts to the gospel of stereoscopy. Go ye into all the world, and preach…
(un)ready for my soul to be liquified. now seated for (in 3d!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!):
4
0
34
1
1
40
Inspired by group chat question: which pieces of film writing most influenced your taste or how you think about film?
These two were formative for me and I still think about both all the time.
@AcademicHack
’s website/LB/Patreon were also key in guiding me into a-g film.
4
0
40
A proper swan song that calls back to Oliveira’s first film from 84 (!) years earlier
As far as “final movies” for a great director go, which “great” director had the best swan song, and which had the worst?
44
1
74
0
0
38
I need all of the people QTing this saying it’s the only good 3D film to watch:
PROTOTYPE
A Primer in Sky Socialism
Laberint Sequences
Resident Evil Retribution
Charlie Victor Romeo
and all those 1953 films
GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE in 3D is the type of film you emerge from looking at the world differently. destroys all known filmic language and rebirths it anew, evolution taking place directly in front of your eyes. truly life-changing.
1
9
117
7
4
39
In case anyone wants to pregame for Monday’s eclipse, and get some practice staring at mediated views of celestial bodies
1
3
36
No Landscape Suicide 🧐
0
0
37
All film is a lie told by technology—those frames aren’t actually moving, the sound isn’t coming from the images—but 3D viewing reveals the trick that’s usually naturalized. You need glasses and not just the naked eye to make the image “correct.”
1
1
36
And now also a major Benning retrospective including this new one
Cinema du Réel competition lineup looks great…world premieres of new Everson, Rousseau, Komljen, and a 216 min Ben Russell among 33 others
2
0
14
0
2
36
Michael Snow from 1967-2002 but also, the 60s were not Godard’s prime that’s like his third best decade
1
0
36
I mostly write about the avant-garde but I’m almost equally obsessed with genre film. Any editors who need a critic to complain about the dull self-seriousness of contemporary horror and yearn for the good ol days when it was countercultural freak shit should commission me
As Berlinale digs its own grave, what better time to look to small-scale, regional, & niche film festivals.
@NevermoreFF
ran this weekend in person & its slate is streaming online until March 1.
@alexcfields
checked it out & penned words on select titles.
1
4
20
3
4
35
If, like me, you’re feeling the creeping excitement for
@prismaticground
next month, remember that a program of 30 films from previous years is available now on Criterion Channel. I especially recommend these:
0
1
35
Dear programmers: please consider ambitious and challenging works by artists like
@dogstarfran
and
@leo_pirondi
and
@JkstrHmstr
and
@Mahda941
and
@____linnea
. If you don’t get it maybe that’s a good thing
You could make room by dropping the music video with the cheesy AI avatar
What if the big experimental film festivals programmed fewer terrible digital graphics experiments and more films that are like, fun, or weird, or which actually look good. Has anyone asked this question before
5
2
83
7
6
34
still/here (Christopher Harris)
At Sea (Peter Hutton)
What the Water Said Nos 4-6 (David Gatten)
Erie (Kevin Jerome Everson)
Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack)
Stemple Pass (James Benning)
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun)
What are the best actually independent American films of the last 25 years? Not a prompt just looking for some to watch that aren’t all the same 5 mumblecore directors
32
4
92
2
0
34
@_SamWM_
@strikegermany
@InRO
@ultradogme
It’s almost like publications that operate on little to no budget as passion projects take better political positions than trade pubs
Tone Glow is joining the call to
@strikegermany
and will not be covering this year’s
@berlinale
. The institution is complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, in their destruction of Palestinian culture, and the murder of Palestinian journalists.
3
71
339
0
2
32
Getting back on my usual soapbox for a minute, why the fuck don’t narrative filmmakers steal ideas from experimental artists. Dune would be epic if it were shot like a Zhou Tao film instead of an AI copy of Leni Riefenstahl
3
4
34
I don’t think anyone should feel embarrassed about not having seen / read / heard / heard of something, but I do think people should feel embarassed if they don’t have the curiosity to want to
0
4
33
Ernie Gehr filmed Side/Walk/Shuttle, one of the greatest films of all time, by sneaking a handheld camera under his coast because the hotel wouldn’t give him permission to film
1
7
32
ROOM FILM 1973 (Peter Gidal). Recommended for your friends who hated SKINAMARINK.
3
1
33
Watched Asteroid City last night, don’t agree with the throwaway criticisms that Anderson is shallow and twee, but also don’t like it and been trying to articulate why. Best I’ve come up with is: he’s a liberal working in a formalist vein that only works for Marxists
4
1
32
@HeavenlyGrandpa
@judysquirrels
It happened to me. The agent knocked on my door on my thirtieth birthday and said I had six months to produce a marriage certificate or it was the monastic life for me. I’m typing this from cell as we prepare for midday prayers. Don’t let this be you kids.
0
0
31
When you haven’t seen a Dorsky and don’t know that you’re desperate to watch avant garde film
are there any movies that are like a poem?
196
17
330
2
1
31
Thinking again about writing something on fictitious uses of documentary form in experimental film, please suggest other examples
12
1
31
Raise your hand if you’ve recently had thoughts of starting your own publication
5
0
31
@michaeldailey
@Dansplainer
…an unpleasant reminder of how unaware culture is of the significance of names and pronouns. See also relatively well meaning people who will use different names for trans celebs when referring to them in the present or re: their work pre-transition
0
0
29
If you’re watching our gov’t support a genocide and unleash armies of police on young people who oppose it, and your reaction is to worry how people are going to vote in six months, then you can go all the way to hell
2
3
30
One of my favorite films from last year, Joost Rekveld’s MECHANISMS COMMON TO DISPARATE PHENOMENA, is available to watch online (for the first time) right now through Ann Arbor Film Festival.
0
3
30
I’ve wanted to write about Kevin Jerome Everson’s work for a long time, and I’m glad I ended up doing so with maybe his least typical works. Thinking through them is helpful in understanding all the rest!
Also they look cool
Eclipse day is here.
@alexcfields
took the opportunity to write about Kevin Jerome Everson's series of eclipse films. No special glasses required.
"Like an eclipse, cinema is a gathering of people to watch the movement of light through time and space."
1
8
34
2
6
30
Sometimes it feels silly when I think about how extremely few people care about this stuff, but I insist on believing it’s important that the most (formally or politically) radical films are seen and written about and talked about by as many people as possible
1
2
30
@PetreRaleigh
I’m not Indian and have only a very cursory understanding of Indian history and politics but even I could tell there are political issues with this. I mean the film ends with literal flag waiving
2
0
28
If ever a film were begging for one of these screenshot posts, it’s 50 FEET OF STRING (Leighton Pierce, 1995), which uses extremes of focus and perspective to create near-abstract visuals from household sights. Maybe better as a series of shots than as a film
2
4
29
Mixed feelings about the film comment berlinale strike piece. A good article that needed to be written, but its own argument is undermined by appearing in a publication which prominently covered the fest and not addressing that even in passing.
1
1
29
@zunguzungu
It’s a fundamentally liberal framework that thinks in terms of autonomous individuals acting or making ethical distinctions apart from the structures they inhabit. So abstracted as to be basically meaningless
0
4
28
James Benning is my favorite living filmmaker but I can’t see Breathless as more than a minor instance of the challenges he’s been posing to narrative and genre structures and viewer preconceptions for 50 years. Can someone defend all the 4-5 star ratings this is getting?
3
0
28
Half-formed thought here but what if our critiques of the miserable politics and non-support of artists at film and music festivals imply that we should do something different
1
4
26
Hey kids, if you wanna be cooler than the Criterion/MUBI crowd, Ann Arbor Film Festival is happening now and you can watch a bunch of experimental films online until the 29th, check it out
0
6
27
To my knowledge there are exactly three top tier giallo masterpieces not made by Argento, Bava, or Fulci:
The House with the Laughing Windows
The Perfume of the Lady in Black
A Short Night of Glass Dolls
5
2
27
I wrote this piece on Oxhide II—one of my favorite films of the 21st century—a while back and never submitted it anywhere. Glad it finally has a home on OVID, where you can also stream the film.
"Liu is a master of exact compositions that reveal their clever precision and simple beauty..." OVID's latest blog post by new contributor
@alexcfields
discusses Liu Jiayin's hybrid film OXHIDE II, starring her parents and some mouthwatering dumplings🥟
0
1
8
2
6
27
Rania Stephan’s found footage experiments are some of the most interesting Lebanese avant-garde works I’ve seen. Like most Lebanese filmmakers she’s interested in the idea of representation, especially of distance and displacement, and how images represent a region’s history.
1
2
26
If NYC is gonna keep all the 16mm retrospectives to themselves they could at least announce details early enough for the rest of us to make travel plans
1
0
27
I’d say we’re all pretty fucked regardless in terms of jobs and healthcare and so on, but it feels urgent that we build grassroots infrastructure for arts community and criticism if we want these things to exist in a few years
1
8
27
Seems to me any Marxist approach to art that doesn’t reckon with art as a material production in a particular historical-industrial setting *and* art as an ideological text is doomed to tremendous shortcomings. Gotta reconcile the two, not see them as competing claims
1
4
26
Now that I have 500 followers I’d like to have each of you celebrate with me by inviting 500 more experimental film lovers to follow me. This seems like a straightforward path to 250,000
3
1
26
Updated list (and now public on Letterboxd). Still always looking for more examples
Thinking again about writing something on fictitious uses of documentary form in experimental film, please suggest other examples
12
1
31
4
1
26
When people ask where they can see some new film I want to tell them to pitch a review somewhere and get a screener that way. The problem is there are realistically only a few places to pitch ag/festival film reviews and they all have regular writers. More publications please
2
0
25
“I don’t like 3D, it’s just a gimmick” -someone who has obviously never seen GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE or any film by Blake Williams
3
0
25
I don’t think any director is above harsh criticism and I always respect a hater but I can’t fathom calling De Palma or Cronenberg 3 star directors when they both make the kinds of films that provoke polarizing love or hate reactions. That’s the opposite of a 3 star director??
On second thought, we can close this shithole down whenever Elon’s ready.
33
69
2K
2
0
24
@HondaWang
This is really sound advice both practically and politically but also it’s funny because I come from the IS political tradition, have a rank and file union job, and wish I had pursued something I love in my 20s instead of taking politically motivated work
2
1
25
This is like the stupidest thing to happen in a Ruben Östlund film
The Tiny House Project “Talking about Israel and Palestine” invites everyone interested to engage in dialogue about the Middle East conflict and its impact. Shai Hoffmann and Ahmad Dakhnous will accompany the discussions.
Info on access and opening hours:
45
10
31
0
6
25
Erica’s work is some of the most consistently strong and beautiful on the recent experimental fest circuit, and she was generous enough to make one of her films available publicly for my experimental cats program. She (and UD) deserve your eyes and support!
Happy Birthday to the one and only
@EricaSheu
! 🎉
Why not celebrate by picking up a 3-film download pack in our shop?
For an extra $10 the filmmaker will mail you a special thank you risograph postcard!
Every purchase directly supports Erica Sheu & Ultra Dogme.
0
6
27
2
5
24
For anyone who is feeling deeply depressed and unsure what they have to live for, may I recommend becoming obsessed with a niche art form and writing about it for a small but appreciative audience
0
1
24
