Brooke Wise's Aloha From Hell Is An Apt Short Film Festival To Conclude A Nightmarishly Long Year

text by Avery Wheless

As we wrap a year of the unpredictable and frightening, it’s clear that comedy serves as a good access point to observe the macabre in life. This is no new approach for curator Brooke Wise, who is notorious for utilizing humor while approaching complicated topics. Wise reasons, “You can get so much across with humor, especially with so much darkness happening at the moment, it’s the best tool we have.”

Luckily, Wise has blessed us once again with her fourth round of Aloha From Hell, a film festival calling together creatives of all kinds with proceeds benefiting Planned Parenthood LA in partnership with Depop.

Aloha from Hell is typically a Halloween festival, but in a year where schedule is neither here nor there, Wise delivers her satirical and spooky cinematic experience right in time for the holidays.

Unlike most film festivals, submissions are open to all creatives, musicians, artists, comedians, and more. The resulting selection features traditional filmmaking, experimental video, narrative and performance art— proving you don’t need to be an actual filmmaker to make a video.

This year features creatives such as Chloe Wise, Benny Drama, Mia Kerin, Kate Jean Hollowell, Mark Indelicato, Miles McMillan, Dinah Rankin, Ew Yuk! And musical guests, Okay Kaya and Kacy Hill. The festival’s common thread of uncanny and outlandish opens conversations through a visually experimental context, while addressing raw and diverse topics in regards to gender and sexuality.

Known for combining her curatorial work with raising funds for charitable organizations, Wise chose Planned Parenthood specifically for Aloha from Hell, as an open expression of gender and sexuality is rooted at the core of many of the showcased films. 

Reasoning that the best way to face all things scary is through a lens of playfulness, Aloha from Hell delivers just the right amount of the obscene, kooky and irreverent, brightening the quarantine and making us all feel a little less fucked up. 

Aloha From Hell will be screened virtually on December 22 from 5-8pm PST.

Art Of The Divine: Kilo Kish and Rikkí Wright In Conversation →

Film still from A Song About Love by Rikkí Wright

Film still from A Song About Love by Rikkí Wright

Rikkí Wright and Kilo Kish are two of the eight artists exhibiting in this year’s edition of Womxn in Windows, a socially distant group show that clearly presaged the conditions of our current moment in its first edition last year. Visitors are invited to walk along the storefronts of Chung King Road in Chinatown and watch short films through each window with scores that can be accessed via QR code. Founded and curated by Zehra Ahmed, this year’s artists were invited to exhibit work that examines the intertwined relationships between culture, religion, and society. These films remind us how womxn have relied on faith and on each other as well as on a desire for equality, understanding, and the power to make the right choices for ourselves. In both Wright and Kish’s films one observes an intimate relationship with the spiritual, however from highly contrasting perspectives and with completely unique aesthetics. Click here to read more.

Anatomy Of A Scene: Christiane F. and Her Band Of Misfits Run Through The Europa Center In Berlin

Christiane F. (Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo) is a 1981 German biographical drama film directed by Uli Edel that portrays the drug scene in West Berlin in the 1970s, based on the 1978 non-fiction book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (We Children from Zoo Station), transcribed and edited from tape recordings by Kai Hermann and Horst Rieck. The film features David Bowie as both himself and the soundtrack composer.

Watch "Dirty Girls" A Short Documentary About Teenage Angst In The 1990s

Shot in 1996 and edited in 2000, this is a short documentary about a group of 13-year-old riot grrrls in Los Angeles who were socially ostracized at their school by their peers and upperclassmen. Everyone in the schoolyard held strong opinions about these so-called "dirty girls," and meanwhile the "dirty girls" themselves aimed to get their message across by distributing their zine across campus. Directed by Michael Lucid. Music: "Batmobile" by Liz Phair.

Brooke Wise Teams Up With Comedy Central & Sexy Beast To Host Aloha From Hell Film Festival

This Halloween, curator Brooke Wise teamed up with Sexy Beast and Comedy Central on a special third installment of her short film festival, Aloha From Hell, with proceeds benefitting Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. All of the wild, comedic, satirical and spooky videos selected for the festival are under 5 minutes in length, chosen via open online submission, and crafted in response to this year’s theme: SHE DEVILS.

Watch PAISA: A New Short Film That Celebrates The Beauty Of Queer Brown Sensuality

Inspired by artist Dorian Wood's song of the same name, PAISA is an immersive fever dream that celebrates the beauty of queer brown sensuality, body positivity and individuality. Says Dorian: "We have been marginalized and painted into tight corners for far too long. But even in our darkest times, we make room to celebrate ourselves and others within our communities. With PAISA, I wanted to create a permanent reminder for us queer, trans and non-binary folks of color that our beauty stretches within and far beyond our times, in either direction. We embrace individuality and respect, even when the rest of the world struggles with these 'radical' concepts. We exist and we don't need for the rest of the world to get wise to our existence. We are sensual beings, in all forms and flavors. Even the sexual moments we share with those on the 'downlow', we find love and positivity there, and we acknowledge the fact that these secretive moments are taboo because of an oppressive morality that has decimated humans for decades. Sex positivity grounded in mindfulness and consent. We are wiser than this world gives us credit for. We are powerful and plentiful. We are forever."

Read Our Interview Of Chris Gentile Director Of Self Discovery For Social Survival On The Occasion Of The LA Premiere →

Surf Discovery for Social Survival is the surf/music feature film born from the collaboration of Chris Gentile from New York-based surf brand Pilgrim Surf + Supply and Keith Abrahmsson from the record label Mexican Summer. Together they started this ambitious project to connect surf, sound and sight and make a film that would satisfy most senses. World-renowned surfers including Stephanie Gilmore, Ryan Burch, Creed McTaggart and Ellis Ericson joined musicians Allah-Las, Peaking Lights, Connan Mockasin and MGMT ’s Andrew VanWyngarden on this surf journey starting from a secret spot in Mexico, to the southern atolls of the Maldive Islands, and ending in the cold waters of Iceland. Click here to read more.

Teo Hernández Presents "Shatter Appearances" @ Villa Vassilieff In Paris

Teo Hernández: Shatter appear­ances is the result of a long-term cura­to­rial research around this film­maker’s work and archive. Between 1968 and 1991, he pro­duced approx­i­mately 160 films, ranging in time and for­mats (8mm, Super-8 and 16mm). The exhi­bi­tion includes mate­rials not only from his per­sonal archive, but also from his close col­lab­o­ra­tors, friends and rel­a­tives. Centered around three themes (The Self Filmed, Bodily Vertigo; Intimate City), the goal is to empha­size his rad­ical inten­tion to pro­duce a tac­tile cinema informed by per­forming arts and con­tem­po­rary dance, in order to to invoke future bodies and real­i­ties. This pro­ject does not pro­pose a canon­ical inter­pre­ta­tion of his work, but rather offers the expe­ri­ence of some of Hernández’s con­cerns, obses­sions, and desires cir­cling iden­tity, the body and the city. Shatter Appearances will be on view through April 27 at Villa Vassilieff Chemin de Montparnasse 21 avenue du Maine, Paris. photographs by Aurélien Mole

Beatrice Gibson Presents "Crone Music" @ Camden Arts Center In London

Crone Music presents two new, interconnected films by British artist Beatrice Gibson, alongside an expanded events programme in Gallery 3 featuring the artists, poets, musicians and wider community with whom the films have been made. Borrowing its title from American composer Pauline Oliveros’ 1990 album of the same name, the exhibition seeks out an explicitly feminist lineage through which to recast the syncretic, collective and participatory nature of Gibson’s practice. Crone Music is on view through March 31 at Camden Arts Center Arkwright Road, London. photographs courtesy of Camden Arts Center

Read Our Interview of Cam Screenwriter Isa Mazzei & Star Madeline Brewer On The Occasion Of The Film's Premiere On Netflix →

For anyone who has painstakingly worked to build and curate their Instagram page, only to have it disabled unexpectedly, you know just how devastating the loss can be. For those whose accounts have been hacked, the consequences can be much worse. Thus is the case for Alice (played by Madeline Brewer), a young and ambitious camgirl on the rise, who is relentlessly creating new shows and characters to improve her ranking on freegirls.live, a fictional camming site, designed and created specifically for the film. When Alice’s account is hacked and hijacked by someone with an uncanny resemblance, she is forced to outwit her doppelgänger while watching her own identity, both online and irl, degrade rapidly. Aside from the psychic thrill that the narrative provides, this film offers a refreshing subversion to the standard tropes that come from the sexy, horror genre. From the ways that sex work is represented in the film, to the ways that the screenwriter, Isa Mazzei and director, Daniel Goldhaber challenge the standard director-authorship, this film provides a wealth of new templates to consider that are seemingly radical, yet unsurprisingly, quite logical. In Mazzei and Goldhaber’s Cam, the hyper-indulgent and semi-private world of camming is given life in a way that is instantly translatable by the genre. A surreal, thrill ride that seeps into your unconscious mind and humanizes the very real people that hitherto have been unjustly stigmatized by the film and media industry at large.

Click here to read the full interview.

Cam is available to stream as of today on Netflix.

Lorraine Nicholson's Tribeca-Nominated Life Boat Is Now Available Online

A group of students are brought together to play a real-life game called “Life Boat.” After the customary “get to know each other” exercise, their counselor Mr. Drexler (Stephen Dorff) poses a difficult question: if this classroom were a sinking ship, who in the group deserves to be saved?

Mr. Drexler’s tactics are far from textbook, which immediately becomes clear to our protagonist, Elsa (Elizabeth Gilpin). Mr. Drexler, a survivor of a similar program, gets caught up in the emotions of his exercise. As the game and stakes heighten, he successfully demonstrates his apathetic students’ real desire to save their lives. But at what cost? 

 

Watch The Online Premiere of Soil: An Exploration Of Manipulation, Dependency, and Objectification

Soil is the debut film by Mathilde Huron & Julian Feeld. It was shot on Fuji Super 16mm film in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of Southern France and scored by Pontus Berghe, ex-member of Thieves Like Us and current member of Thunder Tillman, with featured actors Joe Rezwin, Liza Journo & Sati Leonne Faulks.

A young filmmaker with mixed intentions sets out to document the friendship between a fifteen-year-old Parisian girl and a homeless alcoholic on the verge of death. Between documentary and fiction, Soil is an exploration of manipulation, dependency, and objectification. This experimental psycho-thriller — a mix of documentary and fiction — was screened in Paris, Tokyo and Los Angeles. 

A Special Screening of Becky Johnston's 1979 Featurette Sleepless Nights With Maripol @ MoMA

New Cinema cofounder (and Hollywood screenwriter) Becky Johnston recently described her little-seen featurette Sleepless Nights as “an East Village reinvention of the Otto Preminger movie Laura” that plays “fast and loose with the noir detective genre.” The film was screened at MoMA along with a short discussion between Johnston and Maripol on the making of the film and it's lasting cultural almost 40 years later. photographs by Annabel Graham

Watch The Trailer For Danny Sangra's New Film Goldbricks In Bloom On The Occasion Of The Film's Los Angeles Premiere

Goldbricks In Bloom, a new film by Danny Sangra, is a social satire that explores what it means to be an artist today by interweaving the story of a self-obsessed group of disenchanted young creatives with the mythic rise and fall of a New York painter. It stars Zosia Mamet, Jake Hoffman, Leo Fitzpatrick, Waris Ahluwalia and more. Today, the film is available on demand and there will be limited screenings in Los Angeles.

Watch The Trailer For Actually Huizenga's Latest Film "Heavenly Sin"

All that glitters is not gold, but Actually Huizenga's latest film, Heavenly Sin, is one shimmery, heart-art beast. Culture roles and fairytales intertwine for an experience that is lush, queasy and magical. Welcome to a world of arranged marriages, robbed sexuality, strange decadence, polluted religion and what happens when the fable has gone to seed. Heavenly Sin is an otherworldly document boasting the wholly unique thumbprint of Actually Huizenga, one of the most striking artists to have emerged in the arthouse & pop-rock arena in a very long time.

Pennies From Heaven: Read Our Interview With French Actress and Director Maïwenn →

Maïwenn is little known in the United States, but in France, she has made an indelible mark on the world of cinema. Most Americans remember her as the seductive, singing alien, Diva Plavalaguna, in Luc Besson’s cult classic, The Fifth Element. However, her future acting and directing endeavors have indisputably eclipsed this small role she played as a teenager. Her acting career started at a very young age, when she moved to Los Angeles and became a child actor. As a director, she has a remarkably intuitive gift for creating masterful scenes that are powder kegs of emotion – with the fuse often lit during the first frame of the movie. The pacing, the chemistry and the fluidity – there is a preternatural authenticity. Over the past ten years she has directed four feature films and one short. Her most recent films Polisse (2011) and Mon Roi (2016) – the latter of which will be released next week in theaters – have won her critical acclaim and a multitude of highly coveted nominations. These accolades include, but are not limited to, the Palme d’Or, the César for best film, best director, and best screenplay. Her film Polisse won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Click here to read more. 

Never Before Seen Photographs From The Set of Asthma on The Occasion of The Late Rene Ricard’s 70th Birthday

Rene was quite proud to have been cast as a dope dealer in Jake Hoffman’s film “Asthma." The moment he got the script he had plenty of ideas on how to tweak the language to turn his character even more real. This was a world he knew only too well. As far as outfits go, he had already thought it all out, so when the stylists came to the apartment he pulled out a gold embroidered cashmere jacket, mixed it with his usual black jeans, a little Hermes neck scarf, a black t-shirt and wore what he called his money shoes: loafers with big gold embroidered dollar signs. It was perfect. He knew how to look fabulous with just a few things. It was agreed on the spot that he had nailed it. The only thing missing was the bling. "A dope dealer has to have bling," he said., so he went about gathering as much bling as he could. The flashy look was important. "Did you ever see a proper dealer without bling?” he insisted. On the day of the shoot he called me a number of times, "You have to come down to the set. It’s so much fun, such nice people." When I got there, a loft in SoHo, Rene was having such a ball, flashing his jewels, showing the white convertible Rolls Royce with red leather seats parked on the sidewalk, telling funny stories and making the actors and crew laugh. And then there were the toy guns, which of course he had to play with, so Jake got to be "arrested" by Rene. Text and photographs by Rita Barros. Rene Ricard was an art critic, poet, artist and legend in New York. He wrote the first major article on Jean-Michel Basquiat, entitled "The Radiant Child." Shortly before his passing in 2014, Ricard played an extravagantly over-the-top drug dealer named Juan in Jake Hoffman's directorial debut Asthma, which is available to watch on Netflix and Amazon. This Saturday, July 23, 2016 would have been Ricard's 70th birthday. 

Watch Jan Švankmajer's Film 'Little Otik' and Support The Legendary Czech Filmmaker's Next and Last Film

Jan Švankmajer is making his final film, 'Insects'. To help raise funds for 'Insects', Jan is offering a premium rental of his classic 'Little Otik'. You can also watch 'Little Otik' for free by using the promo code LITTLEOTIK or by clicking here. If you want to contribute more to 'Insects', back the film on Indiegogo. A dark and comical deconstruction of our society based on an old Czech folktale, Little Otik is a story of a young couple desperate to have a baby. After a visit to a doctor that deems the classic methods of procreation impossible, the despairing protagonists switch focus to a child-resembling tree stump found in the garden. The monstrosity comes to life and its insatiable appetite gradually increases to the point where porridge and breast milk just won't do.

A Dark and Fluffy World: Read Our Interview With Galen Pehrson Before The Premiere of His Animated Film The Caged Pillows →

Watching one of Galen Pehrson’s films, like his most recent, The Caged Pillows, starring the likes of Jena Malone and James Franco, is like stepping into a psychedelic cartoon where you can’t help feeling a tinge of déjà vu – you’re not sure if it was a dream, a childhood memory, or an omen. It’s as though a mixture of real life memories and old movie scenes were plucked from your brain and rearranged into a brilliant new narrative. They’re the renderings of a world that most of us have inhabited for all our lives, but for Galen, who spent the first 12 years of his life in rural Nevada City, without access to cable TV or any other means of consuming pop culture, this world can be seen from a slightly outside perspective. Click here to read more. 

Support Bruce LaBruce's New Film "The Misandrists" On Kickstarter

"I’m making The Misandrists with limited resources because I feel it’s important to push my work forward as a filmmaker regardless of budgetary constraints or the prior censorship that certain kinds of more conventional financing may entail. Working with modest budgets has always allowed me the freedom to make challenging and provocative films that would otherwise be very difficult or impossible to finance. The film itself is about characters with radical leftists beliefs that question authority and the dominant ideology, so it seems very fitting that we are asking for broad-based, community support for the movie, a project to which everyone can feel they have contributed and had a part in making." Click here to learn more.