[Frameworks] new critical studies film course in car culture

[Ryder White]

How about "How It Feels To Be Run Over" (1900) by the Hepworth
Manufacturing Co? Potentially the earliest film to feature an automobile
(but I'm not putting that on the record).

RW

On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 8:13 PM, David Baker <dbaker1 at hvc.rr.com> wrote:

> Powerful automobile related imaginings occurred in the early sixties
> beginning with Disney's flying car flubber apotheosis in The Absent
> Minded Professor (1961)
>   followed by the anthropomorphic VW Herbie films beginning in 1963
> including The Love Bug (1968).
>   If you will allow television episodes, the 1965 single season sitcom
> "My Mother The Car" in which a man's mother is reincarnated as a 1928
> Porter Touring Car
> might be considered.
> The seriality in Andy Warhol's  "Car Crash Paintings" of 1963 might be
> thought of filmically.
> The first appearance of the Munster's Koach in the television sitcom
> The Munsters (1964-66) was a marvel merging hot rod hybridity and
> familial functionality,
> Grandpa Munster's vehicle
> called the Drag-u-la, from the episode called Hot Rod Herman was
> essentially a super charged coffin
> on wheels,it also appeared in the 1966 film
> Munster Go Home.
>
> A precursor to the Munster Koach might be found in an uproarious
> 1934 episode of The Little Rascals
> called "Hi' Neighbor" in which Spanky and his gang build a mad ad hoc
> fire truck
> to meet the challenge of an affluent newcomer's girlfriend wooing toy
> car.
>
> Not of the imagination but still interesting is a short film document
> on Youtube and elsewhere
> of the first Indy 500 race, May 30,1911
> complete with a "spectacular accident".
>
> The ecstatic (neon-lit?) cruising footage from Floyd Mutrux's Dusty
> and Sweets McGee (1971)
> photographed by William A. Fraker
> which is said to have influenced George Lucas's American Graffiti is a
> personal favorite.
>
> I can't fail to mention Kathryn Bigelow's The Loveless
> and the unforgettable RV roving vampires in her Near Dark.
>
> The car race in Rebel Without A Cause comes to mind.
>
> I recollect a video Fred Worden exhibited at Anthology several years
> ago bound entirely
> by travel in a moving automobile on a Thruway (the title escapes me).
>
> Ernie Gehr's Auto-collider series.
> (Additionally Ernie's digital interlaced masterpiece Crystal Palace
> (2002) was shot from the open
> window of a moving car.)
>
> Then there is Michael Bay's Transformers (2007) which I have not seen
> but understand involves  four wheeled transformational entities.
>
> -DB
>
> On Dec 14, 2012, at 2:57 PM, Bryan Konefsky wrote:
>
> >
> > Hello Frameworkers - I am in the early moments of developing a
> > critical studies course that looks at different ways the automobile
> > has been imagined in cinema.  To this end I'd love to hear from
> > ya'll with titles of films that you think might be useful to explore/
> > expand this idea and readings that might also dovetail themes that
> > might be explored.
> >
> > Do know that my pal Antoni Pinent recently turned me on to a great
> > text titled Car Fetish.
> >
> > OK, let's hear what ya got!
> > best,
> > --
> > Bryan Konefsky
> > director, Experiments in Cinema
> > el presidente, Basement Films
> > lecturer, Dept of Cinematic Arts UNM
> > visiting lecturer, UCSC
> > board of advisors, Ann Arbor Film Festival
> > _______________________________________________
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> > FrameWorks at jonasmekasfilms.com
> > https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
>
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