Scrappers in Louisiana

Ben Kolak here, writing while Brian cruises past Alligator, Mississippi.

Wednesday we screened at the stunning Manship Theater in Baton Rouge, LA, where we were disappointed to discover that their staff member in charge of Southern Circuit coordination had been made a victim of state budget cuts. Nonetheless, we were happy to meet a sizable, diverse and enthusiastic audience.


This visit to Louisiana has turned me into a Crawfishphile: whether in po boys, souffle or, my favorite, boiled, which our awesome host on our day off in New Orleans, Kristi Orange, got for us at the delectable Cajun Seafood. While in the big easy we were also able to catch an incredible performance by Tuba Skinny, who played their butts off at a benefit to raise legal fees for their anarchist buds who had gotten arrested while marching a few weeks ago, and even had their radical library shut down in retaliation. To quote from the show: "If you can't march freely in New Orleans, then where are you supposed to go?" On the advice of my favorite anarchist, Prof. David Graeber, let me recommend London.



The Arts Council of Central Louisiana really outdid themselves: on the evening of our screening in Alexandria, this town of 50,000 had an artwalk with dozens of exhibitors, a opening at the local arts complex featuring an edgy young illustrator from brooklyn, and even kept their sprawling art museum open late, free of charge. Huge thanks to our hosts the Holcombes, whose extensive collection of CenLa folk art would wow any fan of Chicago's Intuit or Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum.

Scrappers in Montgomery/Jackson

I’m writing on the road from Montgomery to Jackson, just crossing the Chunky River in the deep deep green of the Black Belt. Ben was kind enough to do another timelapse so you can see for yourself, also featuring some Spanish moss we picked up last week in Savannah so we could ride in style:


Scrappers #2.5 from scrap movie on Vimeo.


We had the pleasure of screening at the second theater on our tour, Montgomery’s 1941 art-deco Capri:



















The Capri Community Film Society is lucky to have a charismatic Director / Programmer / Fundraiser / Foreman Projector / House Manager / Ticket & Concession Salesman and all-around Crusading Knight Templar of Independent Cinema for Alabama wrapped up in Martin McCaffrey:


















If Martin has an analogue in Chicago, it’s in the shadowy figure of James Bond, walking encyclopedia of film projection, who physically keeps independent cinemas all over the nation running. And who, un-coincidentally, sold the Capri its 35mm and 16mm projectors, still going 20+ years later. A Montgomery ode to you, James:












Martin took us on an excellent, freewheeling tour of the… if I may?... psycho-geography of the city of Montgomery. Civil War, Civil Rights, integration, disintegration, revitalization. There were crosses on the lawn:













Space missions:













A fountain spewing pink water,
Interventions from the heirs of Hank Williams:













And, of course, plenty of information about the tragically lost histories of movie theaters in Montgomery, Alabama, and the USA.

The tour ended near the quixotic intersection of Jefferson Davis and Rosa Parks Avenues..











And did I mention that today is the 150^th anniversary of the first salvo of the Civil War?

About 25 friendly Montogomerians came out and talked with us afterward.Lest this sound small to your big city mind, Martin slipped us data to prove that Scrappers at the Capri out-grossed nearly all the nearby multiplex films for the night, including:

Soul Surfer / Insidious / Arthur / Hanna / Diary of a Wimpy Kid / Your Highness / Limitless / Source Code / The Lincoln Lawyer / Red Riding Hood / Rango / Sucker Punch / HOP / Big Mommas: Like Father Like Son / Battle: Los Angeles / Paul … and The King’s Speech

Southern Circuit for the win!

Since I'm a little late actually getting this post up, let me also thank Melissa and all the students, faculty and community members who came out to our screening at Millsaps College in Jackson. It might sound like I'm repeating myself at this point in the trip, but we had one of the lengthiest and best discussions so far -- traversing cinematography, economics, ethics, and the reasons why anyone should either make or watch documentary films. As well as some after-hours conversation with our gracious hosts Conner and Scott about the Jackson Volcano. Thanks to all, and keep it up!

Scrappers in Durham, NC

Friday evening Brian and I were greeted by a friendly University of Chicago alumni contingent before screening at Duke’s University's Center for Documentary Studies. Huge thanks to the CDS staff for their hospitality and gorgeous projection of the film! Was interesting to meet folks from a Durham reuse center and a Raleigh food bank that follows a gleaner model.

With the Research Triangle emerging as a center for organic food in the wake of tobacco buyouts, many of these fellow UChicagoans were interested in my work documenting John Edel’s vertical farm, as well as how we had spent the night before at Capt. John's Lamb Farm, where our pal Sean is putting his SAIC degree to good use as…a shepherd! Coming from that background, Sean was more than willing to allow us to do re-purpose his flock as a projection screen. Perhaps we've found another venue for the Southern Circuit?

Videoflock, NC from Ben Kolak on Vimeo.

Scrappers -- Savannah / East Tennessee State / Clemson

Whoa. The Southern Circuit just jumped from DC to AC ... or some equally cheesy metaphor for electricity getting stronger.


After our leisurely start in the Carolinas, we kicked up the pace and hit Savannah, GA, Johnson City, TN, and Clemson, SC in three days, in that order. A glance at a map will give you an idea what that entails. We’ve now conquered the rock-cut pass through the smoky, luminous Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians on Interstate 26 three times, rising and falling 3,600 feet. I feel like Napoleon in the Pyrenees, Alexander the Great at Mount Taurus, Arthur Conolly in the Hindu Kush... et cetera.

We’re just about to hit 3,000 miles logged on this trip, on the road somewhere near Welcome, SC.

Savannah saw Scrappers at the impeccably restored Lucas Theater, a 1920s movie palace whose praises you will see sung by other filmmakers all over this blog. But let me do it again: this screening was definitely the finest digital projection, largest screen, and classiest seating that this film has seen – or likely will see!



We pulled into Johnson City only days after it survived its first Zombie Attack:



Which could also explain this gnomic message high above the town:



Thanks to the students of ETSU and the residents of JCTN, we had the biggest audience and longest discussion on the Circuit so far. Ben and I were most excited to learn of the existence of nearby Elizabethton Metal & Herb:



Being a college town, I naively assumed this might be the name of a record store / head shop. Nope, it’s a local recycling center, catering to peddlers of scrap metal as well as to scrappers of an older variety in this part of Appalachia -- people who forage the woods for ginseng, other herbs, and rare morel mushrooms, referred to as “land fish”. Obviously, this kind of agricultural extension of the scrap economy appealed to us, and we hoped to visit and shoot interviews. Alas, three years ago E-town Herb & Metal was absorbed by metal giant Omnicorp, and has ceased the forest product-buying branch of its business.


Thanks Angela, Amanda, Rad, Shara, and Dan for all the good times and local knowledge. Let us know when it’s time to put that warehouse full of shiny new video equipment at your school to use through an artist’s residency program. You work on Little Chicago, we’ll handle the big one.


Another huge, eager, and surprising crowd at Clemson U. Just to name a few, we had students from Sexuality in Film, engineering, and geology. (I always thought this project had something to say to aspiring metallurgists – so thank you, Clemson Professors of Geology!) There were filmmakers from the indie scene in Greenville, Southern Circuit die-hards, somebody looking for the film “Snappers”, and I don’t know who else. We also heard some powerfully earnest testimonials from students to the value of Southern Circuit – the phrase “only cultural outlet” emerged more than once. Happy to be at your service, Palmetto State!

Scrappers in Charleston, South Carolina

Ben Kolak here, writing while Brian Ashby cruises down the lush Savannah Highway from Ashepoo to Coosawhatchie, under a clear blue sky. The drive from Asheville, NC to Charleston was impressive too, though all our batteries died before we got to the Halsey Institute:


Scrappers on Southern Circuit #1.5 from scrap movie on Vimeo.


Great turnout for our second screening, including our gracious host Kim Renton, who happens to share my intellectual crush on the Shaman of Hyde Park, JZ Smith. Huge thanks all around to Rebecca, Mark and all the folks at the Halsey and College of Charleston for their hospitality!


The film was followed by a fascinating discussion with some promising student filmmakers:


Scrappers on Southern Circuit #2 from scrap movie on Vimeo.


Comes as no surprise that our fellow Chicagoan Bill Murray pulls antics around Charleston like what I'd heard from my bud Lev about his Manhattan conduct, which Lev worked into his debut. Who is developing the Bill Murray/River Dogs/Divorce biopic and how can we get involved? Or I would love to see something about how Nick the Lounge Singer got banned from Upper Deck (which features PBR in cans, bottles and on draft! In the interest of scrappers, let me recommend the cans) for repeatedly offering to buy everyone at the bar drinks, then sneaking out without paying.

I happened upon this Charlestonite across from The Secret Order of Tents, perhaps utilizing Red Triangle's innovative and trademarked D.R.E.A.M. method? The friendly carpetbaggers next door at Hope and Union (whom I greatly appreciated and from the looks of the shop, so did some legit Charleston coffee fiends) could not contain themselves from reading the entire Red Triangle site aloud to the rest of their sunday morning clientele.


While on an epic bike ride over the Cooper River Bridge, my jaw dropped upon seeing the very first chinese-made battery powered scooters getting tested fresh off the barge on the infamous Sullivan's Island. What a beautiful, complicated place Charleston is, and what a privilege it was to be invited to share our film there!

Scrappers at Western Carolina

Greetings from the vicinity of Bat Cave, NC, outside of Charlotte, on the road from Asheville, NC to Charleston, SC.


As we kick off the Carolinas branch of the Southern Circuit, Ben Kolak and I are appropriately listening to the jagged, pseudo-satanic blues of James Blood Ulmer, a native of St. Matthews, SC.


We were on the road for almost a week before the Circuit, sharing our film Scrappers with audiences in Youngstown, OH and Pittsburgh, two similar but very different Rust Belt cities dealing with scrappers and scrapping in the post-working-class world, and teaching a guest class at Kenyon College. But those stories are for another day.


Thanks to the work of Lori Davis, we had an excellently attended first screening at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. The conversation that stuck out most was with a group of criminology students, who came to Scrappers as part of their studies on community policing. Here, why not listen to them:


Scrappers on Southern Circuit #1 from scrap movie on Vimeo.


We passed a day and night in Asheville, picking up post-consumer gems/junk for $1.10/lb at Asheville Goodwill Outlet -- including toys to be hacked into instruments by Alex Inglizian, one of the stars of our short Congress Conducts El at Cal's -- and checking out Severe and Profound with Denise Drury, curator at the WCU Fine Arts Museum.


Things got interesting when we started a conversation with a mysterious man in a Florida State sweatshirt. Our new friend was a mining equipment salesman and mechanic for a multinational firm headquartered in Finland, working on a high-grade quartz site 50 miles into the mountains outside Asheville. This product goes into circuits for the lightweight "smart" electronics on which we all now depend. He had worked in 78 countries, and is on his way tomorrow to Sierra Leone, taking a private helicopter to a mine with a golf course, bowling alley, and private security force, in one of the poorest countries in the world. The conversation, a fitting start to the Scrappers Southern Circuit, circled around how it was possible that one component of an iPhone could contain North Carolina quartz, South African palladium, Mexican reconstituted fiberglass, and on an on… all carted around the world numerous times by armies of informal prospectors, producers, recyclers… He told a muddled story about publishing his memoirs (it involved a bag stuffed with Indian rupees and a rickshaw hitting a cow in Bombay), finished his beer, and left.

Meet Brian Ashby and Ben Kolak

Welcome Brian Ashby and Ben Kolak to the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers! Their first screening is Thursday, March 30, 2011, at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.!

Brian Ashby studied Political Science at the University of Chicago, and has conducted research in India and Cambodia. He currently assists photographer Laura Letinsky and works in freelance photography and videography. This is his first film.

Ben Kolak produced the documentary THAX and co-produced Crime Fiction, which screened at the Slamdance, Vail and GenArt Film Festivals. He assists video artist Catherine Sullivan and produces video for clients including Brand New World and Catherine Edelman Gallery