Elaine’s Bunion – The Alpena Master
This strange cinema brut masterpiece comes to us from the naive auteur known as The Alpena Master. Raised in a forgotten tribe in the northern woods of Michigan, hundreds of miles from the nearest art house, this self-taught cinematographer brings us a meditation on mankind’s vacillation between Gnostic fatalism (represented by the forces of good and evil, in the guise of The Gorgonette Sisters, who contest for superiority throughout eternity, beating each other with large, malformed hands) and enlightened humanism (represented by a Hegelian discourse on technology, progress, and a better future for a malformed foot). Some critics have dismissed the work of The Alpena Master as unintegrated but in this work, at least, the emphasis on two physical extremities (hands and feet) triangulate nicely with the extremism of the nonchalance with which such complex subject matter has been treated.
This strange cinema brut masterpiece comes to us from the naive auteur known as The Alpena Master. Raised in a forgotten tribe in the northern woods of Michigan, hundreds of miles from the nearest art house, this self-taught cinematographer brings us a meditation on mankind’s vacillation between Gnostic fatalism (represented by the forces of good and evil, in the guise of The Gorgonette Sisters, who contest for superiority throughout eternity, beating each other with large, malformed hands) and enlightened humanism (represented by a Hegelian discourse on technology, progress, and a better future for a malformed foot). Some critics have dismissed the work of The Alpena Master as unintegrated but in this work, at least, the emphasis on two physical extremities (hands and feet) triangulate nicely with the extremism of the nonchalance with which such complex subject matter has been treated.