Checking in with underground youth culture in Shreveport sometimes reveals spiky miners tunneling their way to freedom. Meet 20 year-old Alec Holland, a videographer-musician who is producing house concerts and documenting the scene: "As far as filmmakers that have influenced me," says Holland, "they are: Chan-Wook Park, Takashi Miike, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wong Kar Wai, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Gaspar Noe, David Cronenberg, David Fincher, Vincent Gallo, Spike Jonze, Jonathan Glazer, and the list goes on."
Yes, eclectic and emblematic of a cinema junkie. What does he do with that background?
The concert videos Holland is shooting capture the anarchic energy and murky details of late punk culture. From the well formed, local mathematical riot act called statues cry bleeding ("postmark you a landmine") to Austin's artful Tuxedo Killers ("Don't rape the okapi), Holland captures non-commercial music. Performances are recorded with a fish-eye lens bolted to his videocam. Nor is he an icy documentarian. "I like to dance, to jump around and have fun," he says. The camera yaws across the stage, picking up detail like a Hoover. The atonal hawkiness of Attractive and Popular, a group from Lafayette, LA, is matched by Holland's style. His prettiest video captures River City Tanlines, of Memphis, in an outdoor concert at Big D's BBQ.
His own band, a duo of enormous noisality (drum loops and feedback spurt from an iPod) and sense of humor (no Rock Star pretensions, just a contemporary version of Waiting for Godot), is called Dale Cooper. Thus you may guess what 90's TV show and director has had an inordinate influence on the lad: Twin Peaks and David Lynch.
As you might well imagine, his film life started with a skate board and a buddy who attended an art school, Caddo Magnet High. "Inspirations for my work in video started when I was around 13 years old with a student I'm sure you remember well: Nick Chaney," he recently wrote. "I had been a lover of film since before then, but I hadn't had a chance to do anything creatively. My first camera was a terrible RCA VHS-C. Terrible effects, terrible quality, terrible everything. Nick and I didn't mind, though, and we'd run around filming ridiculous crap and skating and what not. We wouldn't even edit. We'd try to edit within the camera, filming our credit sequences off of a crappy blinking computer monitor with the "invert" option on.
I became wiser as the years went by. I started editing on PC and Nick picked up a JVC mini-dv camera. During the years in which I hung around Nick, I watched a ton of skate videos. This is probably where the interest in wide-angle lenses came from. Skaters will use this lens because they can skate along-side a skater and can film without having to look into the viewfinder, all-the-while knowing that they are capturing the entire image and motion." The fish-eye view gives adds considerable stamp and scope to his rough documentaries.
Projects awaiting Holland include "Putting out a split 7" record (recordings on vinyl being one of his affinity groups) with a band from California called Hoy Pinoy."
Additionally, "I use my house - Cooper Manor - as a venue for shows and small gatherings. The door i usually set at $5.00 a person and all money goes to the out-of-town bands. Two main advantages of this is that I get to play with, visit with, and film bands that I love; and if I wasn't doing this, a lot of kids wouldn't get a chance to see these bands due to no one being able to book them. I have about 6 shows or so booked here for the next two months, so I'll be busy."
Attractive And Popular - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f5Xhu12LUI
Daniel Francis Doyle - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3eV50_7onU
River City Tanlines at Bog D's -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s3SoOlA9gQ
Dale Cooper - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ouBxfUulNU
Tuxedo Killers - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR8coFG3K4g
statuescrybleeding (last show) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWp37ZGNwVg
statuescrybleeding (other great footage) -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-_KOU9VUkQ
Also, listen to Dale Cooper songs Calamari Wrestlah and the hilarious Gleaming the Cube at myspace.com/dalecooperblows
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