(The Elaborate) Empire of Ache (1996, 9 minutes) Directed by Lisa Hammer, Starring Dame Darcy. Artwork by Dame Darcy
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UNDERGROUND ODDITIES:
(THE ELABORATE) EMPIRE OF ACHE
"Several issues ago, I raved about Lisa Hammer's underground feature, PUS$BUCKET. Since then, she's released several short films, including NOT FAREWELL, SWEET FLESH and JORINDA AND JORINGEL (based on a Brothers Grimm tale). Her latest is this gorgeously lensed, 10-minute, cinematic fantasy, brimming with delirious high style. Illustrator Dame Darcy (Meat Cake) stars as Clara One-arm, an overwrought young woman who's trapped in her room and tormented by a trio of puppets, a ghost from her past, and a crazed nurse (Kathryn Briggs Hoyer) with a monstrous needle. Wishing to escape her fate, she listens to a talking plateful of meat--and just wait until you meet her saviors, Queen Burr and her back-up band, consisting of Big Billy and Melon-E. Wow! All of this is shot like some psychotic's vision of a '20s silent movie, complete with tinted stock, beautifully expressionistic sets, and an appropriately eerie soundtrack by Cannes nominated composer Doc Hammer. at the forefront, Darcy transforms herself into a genuinely deranged heroin. Looking like a cross between Mary Pickford and Courtney Love, she fearlessly mugs for the camera and sucks us into her dementia--as does Lisa Hammer, who proves she's one of the most imaginative directors on the NYC indie scene. Brimming with humor and madness, this is a dream made flesh, as well as one of my favorite new short films."
-Steve Puchalski, Shock Cinema
(THE ELABORATE) EMPIRE OF ACHE
"Several issues ago, I raved about Lisa Hammer's underground feature, PUS$BUCKET. Since then, she's released several short films, including NOT FAREWELL, SWEET FLESH and JORINDA AND JORINGEL (based on a Brothers Grimm tale). Her latest is this gorgeously lensed, 10-minute, cinematic fantasy, brimming with delirious high style. Illustrator Dame Darcy (Meat Cake) stars as Clara One-arm, an overwrought young woman who's trapped in her room and tormented by a trio of puppets, a ghost from her past, and a crazed nurse (Kathryn Briggs Hoyer) with a monstrous needle. Wishing to escape her fate, she listens to a talking plateful of meat--and just wait until you meet her saviors, Queen Burr and her back-up band, consisting of Big Billy and Melon-E. Wow! All of this is shot like some psychotic's vision of a '20s silent movie, complete with tinted stock, beautifully expressionistic sets, and an appropriately eerie soundtrack by Cannes nominated composer Doc Hammer. at the forefront, Darcy transforms herself into a genuinely deranged heroin. Looking like a cross between Mary Pickford and Courtney Love, she fearlessly mugs for the camera and sucks us into her dementia--as does Lisa Hammer, who proves she's one of the most imaginative directors on the NYC indie scene. Brimming with humor and madness, this is a dream made flesh, as well as one of my favorite new short films."
-Steve Puchalski, Shock Cinema
Dame Darcy as Clara One-Arm
Ariel Olivieri as Clara's Ghost
Kathryn Briggs Hobbs as The Nurse
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The Great Escape
Meat-O
Clara's Ghost haunts her
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Roxanna Alvarez as Queen Burr
Clara One-Arm scared of The Nurse
The Hootenanny with Melon-E and Big Billy (Christian S. Anderson)
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BEHIND THE SCENES: EMPIRE OF ACHE
Filming Big Billy with my super-8 cameraIn the dead heat of summer in the basement of a thrift store in the East Village.
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The jamboree Hootenanny on breakIn the dead heat of summer in the basement of a thrift store in the East Village.
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Doc Hammer doing Dame Darcy's makeupIn the dead heat of summer in the basement of a thrift store in the East Village.
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This 9 minute film was shot on a hot summer day in the basement of a vintage clothing store that Queen Burr worked at. We shot it in 5 hours and used 7 cartridges of super-8 tri-x b&w film. The film was storyboarded very well to avoid wasting one frame of film. It was shot with a Nikon R-10 super-8 camera which has a great lense, and also the added feature of in-camera dissolves, supers and backwards motion. None of the camera effects were attained with optical printing or video editing. In fact, the film was cut on a half-broken super-8 viewer and splicer, then sent off to be sound striped.
The costumes and props were assembled by 4 artists, including myself, out of materials found in the garbage and in the basement of the store. The costumes were cut out of sheets: each actor was laid down on the sheet, their outline was drawn, then cut out. The costume was painted and then stapled around each actor's body, as we had no seamstresses or time to sew. The character of Melon-E (Large headed puppet with violin) was played by two people : a really tall mailman kneeling on the floor and an eight year old girl. They had to coordinate their arm movements, as one held the violin, and the other moved the bow, and they could not see out of their puppet head! Big Billy's head had a malfunction: my design was to have a puppet head with functional party blowers coming out of the top. We taped the party blowers on after creating holes in the head. We then ran tubing down the head to be placed into Christian's mouth, so as he played the drum and danced around, he could blow through the tube and all of the blowers would expand and contract and his hair would pulsate with party blowers (You can see them in these pictures.) We tested them before shooting and they worked like a charm. But after hours of shooting in 90-something heat, the tape melted and the head started to collapse, so we had to scrap the idea, shoot very quickly, and get out of the basement before they closed up shop!
After the half-broken super-8 equipment finally broke, the rest of the film was cut at Millennium on E. 4th St, NYC for a very low price. The edited cut was sent to Yale film lab to have a print made. Since they only print on color film, I happily agreed to let them process my b & w edited film on color film stock, which created a sepiatone look.
The timing for the soundtrack was determined by multiplying frames per foot by frames per second. Then the film print was sent to a company in California to be sound striped. Unfortunately, the person who did the soundstriping (the only person left in the US who even does it anymore, apparently) had just suffered a terrible heart attack and was in poor condition. He generously did the job anyway, but his health prevented him from doing a thorough job and when the film returned, the soundstripe couldn't be used. The sound, when recorded onto the stripe, was warbly and inconsistant. Not knowing that the soundstripe was at fault, I went crazy trying to repair my super-8 recordable projector. I marched all over town trying to find the cheapest way to get the projector sound heads serviced, and decided to buy a de-magnetizer and do it myself. I finally realized that the problem was with the sound-stripe because when I passed it through a projector at Millennium, the actual soundstripe PEELED off of the film print as it was being projected! Having 2 days to submit it to the Masters of super-8 tour, I was forced to run the soundtrack on a cassette simultaneously with the film at each screening. It was a total disaster!
The costumes and props were assembled by 4 artists, including myself, out of materials found in the garbage and in the basement of the store. The costumes were cut out of sheets: each actor was laid down on the sheet, their outline was drawn, then cut out. The costume was painted and then stapled around each actor's body, as we had no seamstresses or time to sew. The character of Melon-E (Large headed puppet with violin) was played by two people : a really tall mailman kneeling on the floor and an eight year old girl. They had to coordinate their arm movements, as one held the violin, and the other moved the bow, and they could not see out of their puppet head! Big Billy's head had a malfunction: my design was to have a puppet head with functional party blowers coming out of the top. We taped the party blowers on after creating holes in the head. We then ran tubing down the head to be placed into Christian's mouth, so as he played the drum and danced around, he could blow through the tube and all of the blowers would expand and contract and his hair would pulsate with party blowers (You can see them in these pictures.) We tested them before shooting and they worked like a charm. But after hours of shooting in 90-something heat, the tape melted and the head started to collapse, so we had to scrap the idea, shoot very quickly, and get out of the basement before they closed up shop!
After the half-broken super-8 equipment finally broke, the rest of the film was cut at Millennium on E. 4th St, NYC for a very low price. The edited cut was sent to Yale film lab to have a print made. Since they only print on color film, I happily agreed to let them process my b & w edited film on color film stock, which created a sepiatone look.
The timing for the soundtrack was determined by multiplying frames per foot by frames per second. Then the film print was sent to a company in California to be sound striped. Unfortunately, the person who did the soundstriping (the only person left in the US who even does it anymore, apparently) had just suffered a terrible heart attack and was in poor condition. He generously did the job anyway, but his health prevented him from doing a thorough job and when the film returned, the soundstripe couldn't be used. The sound, when recorded onto the stripe, was warbly and inconsistant. Not knowing that the soundstripe was at fault, I went crazy trying to repair my super-8 recordable projector. I marched all over town trying to find the cheapest way to get the projector sound heads serviced, and decided to buy a de-magnetizer and do it myself. I finally realized that the problem was with the sound-stripe because when I passed it through a projector at Millennium, the actual soundstripe PEELED off of the film print as it was being projected! Having 2 days to submit it to the Masters of super-8 tour, I was forced to run the soundtrack on a cassette simultaneously with the film at each screening. It was a total disaster!
Empire of Ache Acquired by Getty Museum
Lisa Hammer's surreal silent film "Empire of Ache" ~ acquired by the Getty Museum ~ In the feminist film collection curated by Miranda July.
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You can watch it now or own a copy on VHX. http://lisahammer.vhx.tv
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