Jazzy for Joe

Set in Flushing, Queens, the story follows Sammy, Little Jimmy and Ernie — three small time crooks trying to find a chicken to cockfight.

The plot is currently unknown.

A look into the subconscious of the 20th century.

In El Adios Largos, artist-archivist Andrew Lampert undertakes a speculative, restoration of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye based on the premise that the film's negative has been lost and the sole surviving print is incorrect in every way: 16mm rather than 35mm, black and white instead of Technicolor, and dubbed into Spanish. (N.B. proper prints and a negative do exist, just not in Lampert's possession!) With dubious methods used to achieve authenticity, El Adios Largos is at once an uncanny aesthetic experience and a playful exploration of the philosophical conundrums involved for those working to preserve film history for generations to come.

Imageless cinemascope track negative trailer for a 1970 pornographic film. “Elected to the National Film Registry in 2007, HEAD/TAIL is the only imageless film that could still be banned in 31 states.” –Andrew Lampert

In 2008, Andrew Lampert, employed as the film archivist of Anthology Film Archives, endeavored to ask Jonas Mekas, its legendary and charismatic founder, one trivial or profound question a day. This is a selection.

A drama of relations between strangers. Vantage point is everything.

Lampert writes, "Chelsea thieves market, Sunday morning. Overloaded front table, sunglasses, cell phones, Viagra (sold by the pill, $10), assorted hot goods. Inaccessible back table, more of same, two 35mm film cans marked BENETTON. 'Excuse me, what's in those cans?' 'Twenty dollars.' 'Is there film in the cans?' 'Twenty dollars.' 'No, I want to know what is in the cans.' 'Twenty dollars.' Twenty dollars later, four giant 16mm reels, 2 hours of color double-perforated reversal footage, three female models. An entire mid-90s ad campaign shoot obviously orphaned or cast away footage now, curiously, in my hands. BENETTON is the first installment in the ongoing imperfect series produced from an all too perfect source."

Steve Dalachinsky, with the aid of Yuko Otomo and cinematographer Andrew Lampert, was given the chance to direct his dream film. This is not that, but rather the result of what they shot that day presented in real time as they filmed it. In the end, this is always what Lampert wanted the film to be; what Steve wanted is another story heard on the soundtrack of the images gathered within.

The story centres on an orphaned quartet (boy, two girls, a baby) washed ashore on a desert island in what just might be the Bahamas. There, they encounter a pile of branches that transforms into a dubious Jesus-esque bearded man, as well as a doppelganger family of naked black children.

A simple scene of three flags flapping over an electronic billboard advertising grocery specials conjures an indelible portrait of America.

Writes Lampert: "Little diary moments from my hard drive that show but do not tell who, what and where I was in my on and off time around 2008-2011. Don't blink or you might miss Steve Dalachinsky, Gelitin, Richard Foreman, John Zorn, my father, my nephew, Fidget the cat, Dani Leventhal, Liz Coffey, Tom Jarmusch, Metamkine, Willem Defoe and others, myself included. Very dramatic ending."

The piece begins with one woman reading the text in English while the other does an on-the-spot translation into German. Their roles periodically flip and at some points both are speaking entirely in English or in German. The women read a series of one-sentence instructions that tell the audience which of the screens they should be looking at. The first questions are very formal, like what one might have to fill out on a visa form, but as it progresses the inquiries become more intimate and suggestive.