ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alden Nagel is the founder and editor of Nut Hole Publishing, and also a writer. You can find him on Instagram: @aldenwnagelw
The Daniel J. Evans Library is a welcoming space, with original furniture, carpeted floors, and collections that include classic literature, handmade books, and even laserdiscs. I go there on a regular basis to stock up on DVDs, both because of the consistency of the library’s film collection, and how universally varied their collection is. Of all of the college libraries I’ve been at, I love it for reasons that go beyond my having gone to the school. I believe it is one of the highest caliber of college libraries I’ve ever had the pleasure of being at. Through my time there, I’ve discovered a number of inclusions in the collection that are absolutely rare, hyper-niche, intensely experimental or a maverick combination of these very ideas at their farthest maxims. The library has a stock film collection as well, which I have yet to handle. The farther you look into the library, and peer into what is has to offer, the more you are able to peer into the soul of the college’s educational model. These are three films I have found while attending.
Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America
1992, dir. Craig Baldwin, 44 min.
Craig Baldwin’s “pseudo-pseudo-documentary” presents a factually questionable chronicle of US intervention in Latin America in the form of the ultimate far-right conspiracy theory of a film. This combines various ideas about the JFK assassination, fruit companies’ militias, Posadist aliens, killer bees, and much, much more. As fast-paced, rambling, and inducing of fever dreams as the film is, there’s something to be admired about its general aesthetic and reuse of older found footage. Along with its score, this coagulates together for an absolute acid test of an viewing experience. Becoming truly reminiscent of late-night PBS programming from the late 20th century on phantasmagorical speedball ; advertisement clips of the documentary series Star Gazers are immediately brought to my mind.
Viewing this film can also be said to be a bit like — if your manically hegemony-inclined roommate who woke you up at 3AM while chain smoking DMT like they were cigarettes after breaking into your room while you were asleep. After bursting in they were shouting in rambles at a blot of a nonexistent black mold in your bedroom’s ceiling, spewing and spiraling in incoherent verse about how the Reptilian-Bezos-Musk-Soros conglomerate of power is actively performing vitaminizing, protracted techno-futuristic psychological warfare on local squirrel populations—and you cannot get them to calm down.
Watch this movie immediately.
Screaming Queens: The Riots At Compton’s Cafeteria
2005, dir. Susan Stryker & Victor Silverman, 57 min.
As an examination of the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco in the 1960s, this film is a wonderful historical document, with compelling retelling of what life was like, as told through the lived experience of trans women and drag queens. Yet, only a fraction of the film is focused on its titular subject matter, about the riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (a space where drag queens, LGBT folk, and sex workers would congregate with all other members of the general public, at all hours of the night). This erupted after a police raid on the establishment, as had been happening to other queer establishments in the neighborhood at the time.
The riot at Compton’s Cafeteria occurred in August of 1966. This was 58 years ago, but it was also three years before the much more recognized Stonewall Riots, which, have since become understood incorrectly as the first example of queer people banding together against police brutality and societal oppression with haste. Of course, both of these events would never have occurred without all due historical context. It is one of the most important pieces of queer history, one which is overshadowed by the historical loudness of the Stonewall Riots. As a document of this event, I cannot recommend this film more.
“On A Phantom Limb”
2009, dir. Nancy Andrews, 35 min.
This film examines the passage of a surgically created hybrid – part woman, part bird – on a perilous night that lasts months; through death, mutilation, purgatory, and the eventual return to the living, what lies beyond leaves her changed forever. The boundaries of reality and fantasy, documentary, and fiction are blurred in this reprise of the classic themes, dilemmas, and consequences of reanimation. It’s a sleepy, nocturnal experience, lacking much in the way of a coherent plot or arc in favor of a spiritual guide through the artist’s beliefs about these phantasmagorical experiences. It is a film that is both deeply surreal, approaching a stream-of-consciousness model, as well as the astutely gothic. The film consistently breaks the fourth wall, of course. It is fitting that this is here, because if there is a Evergreen State College-based style of art, it may well be very close to this.
On A Phantom Limb approaches that of a mesh of filmmaking styles, and a deeply relaxing watch as well. If you can find and access this, then do so. If I ever were to lead a film studies class, this may well be one I might present. Whether film can still be taught or not, is still up for debate—but a chest of knowledge can be found in Nancy Andrew’s beautiful film.