Amateur Hour

While I may have let my own personal brand languish here for the last several months, I feel like I should probably use whatever diminishing presence this site can claim to plug something of actual interest. Today – April 27, 2016 – marks what would have been the hundredth birthday of the great amateur filmmaker Ephraim Horowitz (I’m technically stretching it here – it’s 11:22 PM CT as I write this in Chicago, so Horowitz has passed the first full day of his second century in his native NYC). For a few more minutes, you can watch Horowitz’s autobiographical opus 4/27/16, which obviously refers to his birth year of 1916, on 4/27/16; you’re in for a long wait otherwise. As of this afternoon, this can be accomplished via Fandor, where you can also see several other of Horowitz’s films. I’ve always been skeptical that streaming services of this sort could deliver any real variety in their programming, but if Fandor is seriously going to be incorporating amateur film into their library, than I’d consider that at least as worthy of your attention as the recent TCM / Criterion shenanigans.

If you’re in New York, you would attend this screening and presentation by the contributors to the Amateur Cinema Project on May 4, which will include 4/27/16 and other amateur classics, many of them affiliated with the Amateur Cinema League, whose logo please find reproduced above.

UPDATE: For an actually substantive overview of Horowitz and his work, see this piece on Fandor that I managed to miss until now.