As interviewed by J. M. Magrini

Dave Krzysik is the founder of the Brainwash Short Film and Video Festival; he is also a talented filmmaker, musician, film producer, and successful businessman. Dave founded “Brainwash” thirteen years ago, and it continues to grow annually as one of the premier short film festivals in the United States (and abroad, as it’s known internationally!). The festival always boasts an impressive line-up of eclectic films, including Super-8, 16mm, 35mm, and video art productions. Although the film and video makers differ in style and the way that they approach their art, they share in common the technical ability and artistic talent to make great short movies and videos. In fact, Dave is often solicited by other film festivals seeking high-quality short films for their programs, and has been acknowledged for his efforts by such large trade publications as Film Threat, Variety, The International Film Association, and Release Print.

The Brainwash Film Festival screens yearly at a variety of outdoor venues, “replicating the ambiance of the old drive in movies,” as quoted from the New York Times, who portrayed Dave’s festival as “pirating a piece of old ‘Hollywood’ and challenging the role of public space in the process.” While conversing with Dave, I was immediately reminded of the “visionary” film-artist about whom Kenneth Anger wrote in his 1951 (Cahiers Du Cinema) essay, “Modesty and the Art of Film.” Dave may well be the filmmaker-visionary fulfilling Anger’s prophecy of the artist of the future, who in filming and screening his works, “rivals the silver rain of Hollywood,” liberating the art of cinema by interrogating it, reinterpreting it, and continually forcing the expansion of its boundaries.

The following interview (March 16, 2007) focuses a variety of topics, which should be of interest to filmmakers, video artists, and those drawn to media studies in general.

JM: What does Brainwash look for in movies?

DK: Brainwash likes eclectic and original movies of all genres. We concentrate on shorts, although do appreciate features and will screen them, also. There has to be something “Brainwashy” about them – innovative in style, story and/or medium. We screen movies for variety and interest, not so much for technical perfection.

JM: At Brainwash, it is not unusual to find both professional and novice filmmakers competing for prizes. You really make things interesting, keeping the creative-competitive juices of the contestants flowing! Including your film festival and television show, what do you see in the future of film, media-wise?

DK: Film? What’s film? Seriously, though, when I graduated from Art School in 1976, my major was filmmaking. There wasn’t even video, yet. Now Brainwash doesn’t get but a few VHS tape submissions. Most come on DVD, and we use miniDV tape for masters. Analog broadcast will be illegal in the US by 2009. What’s the world coming to?

JM: Well, then, what about film in movies?

DK: There was a great book in the 1960s (McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message) that talked about, among other things, the technology itself dictating the function of the art object(s), which would include film, tape, digital media, etc. We watch a DVD, but the source of the material could be from anywhere: MiniDV, Beta SP, 16mm film, or Super8mm (of, course!) film. Most Holywood features are still shot in 35mm Panavision. A lot on YouTube.com, Revver, BlipTV, etc., on the internet, getting millions of hits, comes from DVD’s but some from VHS tapes shot on VHS cams! So, wherever it comes from, it ends up on TV, on the internet, or on a screen through a video or film projector. However the artist sees fit to tell their story, to get a certain look and feel, to convey a mood, perhaps a time setting of an older or future era, makes it valid that they use the tools they choose or need to. Artist will add Academy leader and “mess up” their movie in computer editing with a filter to make it look like film when they produce it on a computer! Why? To produce that “suspension of disbelief” and make the audience feel it was actually made a certain way and that’s part of the movie’s “story” to convey.

JM: With great success, you’ve combined the creative aspects of filmmaking with the burdensome responsibilities of a film promoter. Usually, this reads as a recipe for disaster, and yet you’ve made it work. What can you tell filmmakers about walking, or perhaps blurring, the line between “art and business”?

DK: I think there are two important aspects to that: Luck and good work. Many great and good people I’ve heard with amazing success have attributed their beginnings or key aspects of their success to sheer luck: Warren Buffet – billionaire stock trader and recent multi billion dollar philanthropist; Richard Branson – founder/owner of Virgin Airlines, Virgin Records; Frank Zappa – premier rock and orchestral musician and I’m sure readers know others, also, who would testify to that. So what do we do in the meanwhile, waiting for that big lucky break in the sky? Good work. By that I mean, personally, I follow my passion, or, as the American philosopher Joseph Campbell said “Follow your bliss”. I love my work. But I don’t mean everyone has to or can work hard all the time. I advocate good work. I advocate artists to keep at it, stay involved and so don’t let it get you down, especially if you’re in between or feel at an end to your projects. And that takes discipline, so you have to learn that discipline if you want to succeed and walk that line.

JM: What have you done in your own movies to further the future of film?

DK: I think we’re all going backwards, here. I recently (in 2004) bought a great 3 chip Panasonic miniDV prosumer camera and went to Thailand and shot a movie written by a friend of mine, Joanne Cabatu, called “Bungalow Music”. But previously, I shot a slide show I had produced with xeroxed transparencies on a friend’s high 8 tape camera. The movie I currently have on our website http://BrainwashM.com to promote “Herded”, “Dust Bowl”, was shot in 16mm by a great photographer friend of mine, Doug Kiester, who shot everything on 4″x4″ and 8″x10″ film cameras for his photography. I’m finishing up the soundtrack for a movie “The Row” the visual of which a friend of mine sent from Texas on 16mm film. I shot and produced many several movies on 16mm in college and started on my father’s reg. 8mm film camera. I remember feeling bad because I went out to the Newport, Rhode Island Jazz festival from Detroit with the camera and shot a movie, but I got sand in it and messed it up. My dad had the whole kit, with a projector, editor and everything. He and my uncle used to drive us kids batty by constantly showing the same cartoons backwards, when we pretty much thought it was cool already the first three times. My dad shot over 50 home movies himself. I know because I went through them all and edited out everything I liked to make my first movie in high school. Then my friends took the outtakes when they came over and I was busy working on it to my dad’s work bench where he used to fix TVs and used his soldering gun and other tools to scratch and alter the film and we edited that together into another movie we called “Wierdness One”. I worked with one of the same friends, Mike Kuczajda, years later on an animation clip called “Hamp Gelp” on 16mm film. I projected the workprint and liked the look of the scratches the projector put on it, added some more of my own, used a magic marker to color some stuff in and then accidentally put some bleach on the piece of clear plastic sheet with the title in the beginning of the movie I was able to use because it made it look like a cloud in the background.

JM: So, what will be the place of Super-8 film in contemporary movies?

DK: In independent movies, on the internet, and festivals like Brainwash, it’s great, because S8mm film is still a high end medium and film is still a high resolution, accessible medium. Not only for the look and feel of film, but for animation, stop motion, time lapse and many other film effects, many artists can find the use of film more direct, rather than shooting something and trying to filter it or add an effect later. If you think film is expensive, try buying a computer that will do all that and learn to use it!

JM: Should we shut down our computers and become “film Luddites”?

DK: Well, certainly, there’s a great mix in all of this. The beauty of working in independent movies (in fact “Tarnation”, which surfaced mainstream for awhile, I believe had some good S8mm film footage in it), is that you get to use whatever you feel will get your point across, even if you found it somewhere else. Some friends of mine found a bunch of film reels in a dumpster discarded by a festival and had a “festival” showing of those movies! When Brainwash first started 13 years ago, we alternated between VHS and 16mm film reels. There weren’t any DVDs, Power Point presentations or minDV cameras! Who knows what will come next? Whatever it is, it may change the way the information is delivered, the way it looks and even the way we watch it, yet again, but artists will still have a need and find a way to integrate their mediums of production.

JM: In conclusion, I want to return to your work as a creative artist. I know that you scored and edited a short film with the late filmmaker, Scott Bartlett, and this film appears on the DVD Best of Brainwash Movie: Herded. I’ve seen the film several times, and it’s a stunning, masterful work of imagery and music.

Amazingly, Scott’s imagery is very reminiscent of Brakhage! I believe that it was purchased by Jonas Mekas for his New York Film archives. Please tell us about shooting the film and its score?

DK: “Find Your Place” is one of the few Jonas Mekas ever bought for the Anthology Film Library. It was a tough one in some aspects, the hardest being that Scott died literally during the final edit. The work itself went amazingly smooth as to the movie making. Isn’t that a master artist? His health terminal, his art effortless.

I met Scott Bartlett towards the end of 1989, and was so amazed. I had migrated from Detroit, MI, in some large part, from reading about a movie aesthetic of which he was a part, the American underground, which also included Jonas Mekas, George Kuchar, Larry Jordan, Harry Smith, Kenneth Anger, and others, to attend school at the San Francisco Art Institute, where several of them were teaching, in 1972. And here I was, 17 years later, collaborating with my iconic hero! I had also met a record producer, Cleve White, who was interested in and partially funded the project. So Scott handed me a movie on a VHS tape one day and said “Here’s a film I shot on a train with my Beaulieu 16 mm camera and cut to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’. I can’t get the rights to the music so I’d like you to put something on it for a score and then we’ll use it for our demo tape.” He handed me the tape and hesitated. He said “Well, gee, this is just a VHS tape, maybe I should get a master.” Already holding on to the tape, I had a thought that I should take it, that you never know what might happen, that one could get hit by a truck or something, and nothing would ever come of the movie, unless I just took it right then. So I did.

Cleve put up my band in a studio to record a song I had written with Mike Hoover called ‘Find Your Place’. He also had me working on another project, so the time was getting late. On a late Friday afternoon, I realized I was caught up with everything else and needed to sync up the sound with the picture. I managed to find a post house in San Francisco open with an editor willing to work late. He set up Scott’s movie and ‘Find Your Place’ for the sound and began to roll. The piece came out as one, in real time, with only about 20 seconds cut to complete the sync! I was done that night. Mike Hoover saw it on Sunday, normally a harsh critic, especially with his own work, and declared it good! A finished work of art! Now to show it to Scott.

I went to the Film Arts Foundation on Monday to ask for him, because I knew he hadn’t been well, so was not at home, and I was not sure if he was in the hospital or, if so, which one. I saw the Executive Director, Julie Mackaman, and asked if she knew where Scott was. She said “You hadn’t heard?” Realizing she meant he had passed away, I asked “When did he die?”. She said “Late Friday afternoon.”

The consummate artist, even in his last movie, as his work was smooth and even the timing of his untimely death was in step with the work and lives of those that he had tapped for his.

J. M. Magrini wishes to thank Dave Krzysik for taking time out of his schedule to answer these questions. Readers can learn more about the 2007 Brainwash Short Film and Video Festival, which happens July 6 & 7, by visiting www.BrainwashM.com.