The Second Life Premier of She's Got an Atomic Bomb directed by Cihan Kaan

(In this photo: She's Got an Atomic Bomb plays on the left side of this photo while Second Life members lounge in blue cushions enjoying the film. Photo courtesy of Cihan Kaan)

This ain't your momma's film screening!

The Blue Angel Poet's Dive located in Second Life, a virtual online community hosted the Premier of She's Got an Atomic Bomb (2005) directed by Cihan Kaan (aka Neon Clift) on August 27, 2008. Kaan is the author of a collection of short stories soon to be published by Up-Set Press. The film was released in 2007 as part of a DVD compilation exclusively available at Hot Topic stores: Twisted TV vol. 1 happily now its available on amazon.

Filmed in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn SGAB had a long underground run before being distributed on DVD. SL is the latest arena for the director to experiment with borderless and virtual film screening.

Synopsis:

A punk rock female enigma, infamous among members of the city for ruining their sewer system, attempts to build an A-Bomb with help from local Russian mafia and assorted decorated characters. Can she avoid the hi-jinx of two marauding Punks intent on stealing her secret? And even if they do will she inflict her personal justice upon the neighborhood?

SL audience members said:
The 1950's "aura" of it, the rock and roll, the explosion (or threat thereof), the "film noir" aspect, the femme fatale, the sassy takes-no-crap attitude... all very American touchstones made the film fun!

It's an interesting film culture which has made as much history by parodying itself as it has by actually being the thing it parodies.

Here is a link to a review of the film in The Indypendent:
"Drunk on Punk: She's Got an Atomic Bomb directed by Cihan Kaan"

Keep an eye out for this powerhouse writer/filmmaker!

Julie Agoos: Property

On Top of our Reading List:

Poet Julie Agoos (the inspiration for the poets who founded Up-Set Press) released her third collection of poetry Property (Ausable Press 2008):

Working within the frame of her native New England, Julie Agoos positions herself in her new book, Property, less as a first-person lyric speaker than as an acute listener to the layered history of small and large violences which ignite repeatedly in American life. Structured as a progression of poems which invoke the "genres" of oral history, gossip, legal transcript, and diary writing, Property arrives, in the long poem "Deposition," at the story of a particular, explosive, and horrific local crime.

Property's subject is historical and political: as she experiments from her unique lyric perspective with multiple ways of "telling"and explores through dramatic superimposition how the past inscribes and disturbs the present, Agoos interrogates our homegrown social and racial divides, and focuses emphatically on the ethics of living in a real and present world of ubiquitous war. Her images of natural beauty join a plain style derived from the rhythms of vernacular speech to challenge the complacenciesand consequences of her own American identity and belonging.

Born in Boston in 1956, Julie Agoos is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Above the Land (Yale University Press, 1987) and Calendar Year (The Sheep Meadow Press, 1996). She taught for eight years as a lecturer in the creative writing program at Princeton University, and, since 1994, in the English department and MFA program in poetry at Brooklyn College/CUNY, where she is an associate professor. She lives in Nyack, New York.

Julie Agoos at the Academy of American Poet's book reading (April 23, 2008). Up-Set Press loves her glowing beautiful face!

Book Release Party: Matthew Rotando

June 29, 2008

Up-Set Press released Matthew Rotando's poetry collection The Comeback's Exoskeleton. Book release party was held at New York City's famous Cornelia Street Cafe in the midst of a thunderstorm and the Pride March. In the midst of rain dances and rainbow festivities Matt Rotando read his surreal poetry to a full house. Stay tuned for an indepth interview with the poet. Until then enjoy some of the photos from the event:

Matt discusses the intricacies of his poetry with a word-enthusiast.


Matt cannot be boxed in (even if Zohra boxed him into a mirror for this shot).

The audience at the historic Cornelia Street Cafe.


Publisher Robert Booras and poet Matt pose for a shot outside the historic Cornelia Street Cafe.

After the reading, Matt's nephew uses his amazing abilities to peer directly into his uncle's brain. "Where does all this creativity come from?"

Up-Set Press family: artist Chanika Svetvilas (our Artist in Residence 2003) and writer Cihan Kaan (author of our upcoming release My Etnik Dreamworld)

You can purchase the book from Amazon.com or order it directly for a 15% discount from the press.