Quick! Hide the footage of you dressed as a lung in the school play…
By Andrew Peerless in Arts & Entertainment on Dec 16, 2004 4:25PM
When Sunday nights roll around, do you typically look for an $8 excuse to make fun of other people and fast food corporations, hear some comedy and even catch a DJ set? You’re undoubtedly disappointed most of the time, but this Sunday at 8:00 p.m., shimmy on over to the Empty Bottle for Milkhouse and Cine-Magic’s Found Film Festival (FFF).
The FFF screens snippets of home videos and instructional films collected from thrift stores, garage sales and the nation’s finest garbage collection venues, continuing the grand tradition laid out by 2003’s perversely adorable “it” band, the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players. While that band’s found slideshows featured bouncy pop accompaniment at the hands of a Rick Moranis lookalike and pint-sized drummer with pigtails, the FFF features running, comically-tinged commentary from curators Geoff Haas, Joe Pickett and/or Nick Prueher.
Chicagoist checked out the free preview (click “preview”) on the FFF Web site, and is reminded of those drivers’ education videos where carloads of teens on their way to a party in daddy’s convertible were inexplicably trapped on the railroad tracks while a (don’t you know I’m) loco-motive chug-a-lugged their way… and got closer. And closer. So disturbing… and yet so… awesome.
Love this kind of thing? Want to be embarrassed in front of throngs of hipsters coast to coast? Lucky for you, the FFF wants your most humiliating, mock-worthy video moments for inclusion in future shows. Chicagoist has scores of videos of its kinda spastic, “why is everyone always staring at me?” childhood, but would prefer to keep them for private screenings and moments when a dose of humility is required. For those of you that actually want America to laugh at what a tool you were (are?), simply fill out the submission form and keep your freakish fingers crossed.
If your appetite for the refuse of others is not yet satiated, sink your teeth into Found Magazine. And find yourself a good weekend.