UnionArts Welcomes:
May 14th One Night Only! - 8:00 PM - html flyer here!
Bill Daniel
####### WHO IS BOZO TEXINO? ########
Freight rider and van tramp, Bill Daniel is back on tour screening his 16-years-in-the-making, documentary film, "Who is Bozo Texino?" --- the secret history of hobo graffiti. This gritty black and white travelogue —shot entirely on film-- tells the mostly-factual account of the epic quest and unlikely discovery of railroading's most mysterious artist. screening:
Contact: orangevan@billdaniel.net (503) 939-6916 tour schedule and more info at: www.billdaniel.net
In 1987 Daniel and his trusty Bolex camera began hanging out in hobo jungles and riding freights across the West, looking for clues to the identity of a strange boxcar graffito. While gathering interviews and discovering clues to the identities of many of the most legendary boxcar artists, Daniel discovered a vast underground folkloric practice that has existed with little notice for over a century. Today these drawings live on as a new breed of hobos have taken to the rails and kept the tradition of "moniker chalking" alive. This artform provides unlikely common ground between mostly conservative railworkers and old school tramps and the kids whose approach includes spray cans and punk lifestyles.
Since completing the film in June 2005, Bill Daniel and his film have been on the road, wowing audiences of punks, geezers, folkies, foamers and graffiti toughs all over the nasty ol' usa. "Who is Bozo Texino?" premiered at Deitch Projects in New York and at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. It screened at Rotterdam and several other European festivals, and has been presented on tour in over 200 cities and universities in Canada and the US.
"Bill Daniel's homegrown epic is as kinetic and raggedly beautiful as the trains he hopped to make it. …a film about freedom as literal passage across the land. Corporations brand things to say they own them, but there are ways in which humans have marked things to say they can't be owned. ---Jem Cohen
" a hypnotic, rail-rattling tone poem of subversive wayfarer wisdom-- as revealed through the witty, artfull, unexpected delights of railroad graffiti." -- Sacramento News and Review
"Who Is Bozo Texino? is a great American movie, and its greatness is tied up very closely with its American-ness. With this brilliant experimental documentary, self-styled hobo film-maker Daniel places himself firmly in the bootprints of Jack London, Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie - a fine, long tradition of American artists who look for their inspiration to the marginal, the underclass, the vagabond and the outcast. Nominally a chronicle/survey/history of boxcar graffiti (a tradition as old as the railroad itself) and the men who create it, Who Is Bozo Texino? soon transcends its narrow subject-matter to become a gloriously rough-edged elegy for an America which is being swept away before our eyes.
Unlike the overwhelming majority of documentaries - even entertaining recent examples like Murderball, Dogtown and Z-Boys and Stoked - Daniel's film manages a near-perfect union of radical form and radical content, And it does so in consistently accessible style: at first you're intrigued by the stunning monochrome images captured by his self-effacing, sensitively-handled camera(s); by the startling kineticism of his fluent editing style; by the sheer range of voices, music and sound-effects we hear as he tracks down a series of grizzled hobos and wisdom-dispensing graffiti-'markers.'
Then you realize that, just as these men have always instinctively rejected authority and convention, Daniel has likewise embraced the unorthodox in his style of filmmaking - even down to his choice of title and running-time. Indeed, in less than an hour Daniel manages to say more about life, art, America and the simple joy of filmmaking than most directors manage in decades. --- Neil Young, Neil Young's Film Lounge
"I am not going to hold back any enthusiasm… it is the best movie I have ever seen." ---Josh from Edmonton
"Seasoned DIYers like film and video artists Vanessa Renwick and Bill Daniel whose "Lucky Bum Film Tour" has crossed the old-fashioned road show with avant-garde film to become a national subculture phenomenon." – - Randy Gragg, The Oregonian
"Daniel and Renwick makes some of the liveliest work on the microcinema circuit, wherein film, video art, and music collide with edgy, confrontational, unpredictable and often exuberant intensity" --- Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post On line reviews:
http://www.cinemad.iblamesociety.com/2007/01/bill-daniel.html http://www.fallofautumn.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=203&Itemid=66 http://northbankfred.com/p_bill.html http://www.sfbg.com/39/52/art_marks.html http://www.rvcaanp..com/blog/2007/03/forgive-us-our-tresspasses.html
Also screening: Britton S. Dakota by Vanessa Renwick, 2004, 7 min. Depression-era children are hypnotized by the camera in this re-discovered imagery from 1938. Score by Johnne Eschleman. Portland-based filmmaker Vanessa Renwick is Director of Affairs of the Oregon Dept. of Kick Ass. ( www.odoka.org)
March 29--Chico / Pageant Theater / 9pm / Bozo Texino
March 30--Sacramento / Fools Foundation / 7pm / Bozo Texino
April 3--Las Vegas / UNLV / Bozo Texino April 4--Flagstaff / The Applesauce Teahouse / Bozo Texino
April 5--Tucson / In front of Congress Hotel / Sunset Scavenger (the sailvan) April 6--Tucson / Outdoor show, old train station downtown / Bozo Texino
April 7---Marfa / The Dome / Bozo Texino
April 19 -- Shreveport, LA / Soundstage / 7:30 / Bozo Texino outdoor show
April 25-- Fairhope, AL / Dr. Music / Last Free Ride April 26--Mobile / Satori Sound / Last Free Ride
April 28--Pensacola / Sluggo's / 8pm / Bozo Texino + photo show w/ Mike Brodie April 29--Tallahassee / All Saints Cinema / 5pm / Bozo Texino
April 30--Gainesville / Warphaus / 8pm Texas Punk Pioneers photo show, 9pm Bozo Texino May 1--Jacksonville / San Marco Theatre / 9:00 Sunset Scavenger, 9:30 Last Free Ride
May 2--Athens Ga./ Athens Cine / Bozo Texino
May 3--Atlanta / Dumpster Dive / Bozo Texino
May 4--Winston-Salem / The Werehouse / 7pm & 9pm (2 shows) / Bozo Texino
May 5--Lynchburg / Warehouse / Bozo Texino May 6--Charlottesville / The Bridge / Last Free Ride + Sunset Scavenger
May 7--Baltimore / Cinema 1818 / Stephanie Barber Presents / Bozo Texino
May 8--Baltimore / Creative Alliance / Film Tramping touring workshop
May 9--Baltimore / Creative Alliance / Last Free Ride + Sunset Scavenger
May 13--Pittsburgh / Jefferson Presents at Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Ave. Sunset Scavenger 8:15, Last Free Ride 9pm + Sunset Scavenger 8:30
May 14--Athens OH / Union Arts 15 W. Union St. / 9pm / Bozo Texino
May 15--Bloomington IN / Boxcar Books / 310 S. Washington / dusk / Sunset Scavenger + Last Free Ride
May 16--St. Louis MO / The Royale / 3132 S. Kingshighway / Bozo Texino
May 25 --Moose Lodge / EM Franklin (next door to Lee's house) / Bozo Texino $6 / $4 Moose Members all shows $5 unless noted