by Andrew Hamlin

The critic Manny Farber once defined “termite art” as “burrowing into the nether world of privacy.” He said many other things along those lines. For Cinema Termite, though, I’m emphasizing netherworlds — some of them private worlds — away from what Farber called “the realm of celebrity and affluence.” In practice, it’s a loose affiliation of cult films, sub-cult films, interesting failures, failed interests, and obsessions including Westerns, anime, heist films, horror films, the avant-garde, and whatever shiny or sinister object catches the eye.

Cinema Termite screens Vanishing Point on Monday, August 19th, 6:30 pm (1971, directed by Richard C. Sarafian)

“I see a man in a white car/Move like a ghost on the skyline,” sang Yes, several years after this road-movie-as-American-temperature taking.  Apparently, the car in Vanishing Point was painted white because it would show up good on-screen!  Symbolism aside (or not), this film’s about speed, desperation, the vastness of the lower 48 landscape, the passion of a
blind DJ, and maybe, just maybe, a soul going free.