Gina Jurlando

5 October 2014
Professor Kern
Source Annotations

New Punk Cinema: Rowing Against the Tradition of Film as a Commodity by Halim Cillov
This article gave a clear description of the core concepts of the New Punk Cinema Movement along with
a very brief description of the punk movement in music. New Punk Cinema holds the core beliefs that
film is more than just a commodity, and from a Marxist viewpoint, these films surpass their designated
essences as commodities and become a medium through which the directors can communicate with
the audience. Films from this movement reject traditional Hollywood values in their plots, production
techniques, distribution, and most importantly, representation of the characters. These films have more
socially and intellectually challenging contexts in themes, motifs, and plots, all while feeling original to
the directors. They challenge the viewer to understand the choices made by the director to understand
the film more fully. New Punk Cinema tried to convince filmmakers to produce more idiosyncratic films.
They believe there is no concrete formula for making a film and openly use themes, characters, and
stories that mainstream cinema avoided for decades. Characters are always treated as individuals
regardless of their position in norms of society. I will use this resource as background information in
explaining the concepts of the New Punk Cinema movement.
DIY Democracy: The Direct Action Politics of U.S. Punk Collectives by Dawson Barrett
This article was very useful in explaining how punk, at its core, is a form of direct action. It
explains how the punk movement had an elaborate network of counter-institutions that operated
against mainstream culture and economy. There were no established leaders of the punk movement,
meaning most punk collectives ran off communal and democratic group meetings, encouraging the do-
it-yourself attitude and acceptance of women, queer culture, and surprisingly, non-violence. By
explaining the participatory nature of DIY politics the article articulated the use of New Left principles
of consensus-based decision-making and voluntary participation. The most important parallel of the
article and the New Punk Cinema movement is that instead of trying to gain access to dominant
institutions, organizers instead built their own alternatives. This is the only article Ive read detailing the
anti-violent actions punks would take in the clubs ABC No Rio and 924 Gilman Street, so I hope to use
information on them to provide a juxtaposition of the mainstreams view of violent punks. I plan on
using this article to further explain the parallels between the structure of how establishments were
formed and how films were produced in the movement, focusing on the DIY aspects of both.

Genre-%!$?ing: Harmony Korines Cinema of Politics by Tom Austin OConnor
This article classifies Harmony Korines films into two distinct stage of his cinematic career thus
far, the first focusing on his screenplays directed by Larry Clark (Kids, Ken Park) and the second focusing
on the films he both writes and directs himself (Gummo, Julien Donkey-boy). The article posits that his
films satirise and disempower his characters tendencies towards nihilism and alienation. Pier Paolo
Pasolinis notion of the cinema of poetry is used to analyze Korines films. The most important point of
the article is that the author believes all of Korines films reject common-sense and normalizing
representation from the perspectives of non-dominant voices, the voices of young people, as well as its
focus on Korines portrayal of people with disabilities that the mainstream would refuse. By using the
articles analyses the films Kids, Gummo, and Julien Donkey-boy, I will continue to posit that Korines
portrayal of violent and disenfranchised use parallels the themes of New Punk Cinema.