Advanced Garbage Film

Looking at the fittingly-named Advanced Garbage Film, we see a slop of drawing, scratching, and any number of direct cinema interventions on what looks like camera footage of a projection of different handmade films. The camera zooms in and out of these images while the extra-photographic layers on top remain. It’s psychedelic but not too heavy. The film has a sketchy, literally “experimental” feel to it. A search connects the film to the legacy of abstract graphic works made at CalArts, as it was shown in a fifteen-program retrospective of CalArts films at the Centre Pompidou in 2007. After CalArts, Luttrell started the company Cynosure Films which did optical effects for films like Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law. -Herb Shellenberger