Mexican melodrama spoof "Uso Justo"

Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

Several years ago, when I put together the Illegal Art Exhibit, Craig Baldwin turned me on to "Uso Justo," a short film by Coleman Miller, and it was always one of my favorites in the show. Miller took a vintage Mexican melodrama and, by writing his own subtitles, turned it into an experimental film that it itself a sort of meta-commentary on experimental film. A terribly funny one at that.

Vimeo and Blip TV have the full thing. As far as I know, a higher res version is available only via Mr. Miller himself.

[#1 posted by EricT, July 23, 2009 3:47 PM]

Hah very funny

[#2 posted by Anonymous, July 23, 2009 4:15 PM]

Didn't Woody Allen do this back in '66? Yeah, this is reeeallly experimental...

[#3 posted by misterfricative, July 23, 2009 5:33 PM]

Yeah, nice one! I'm off to Vimeo stat....

Meanwhile if you like meta B/W subtitle mashups, you might also enjoy this -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVLJDDqSCEQ

[#4 posted by Anonymous, July 23, 2009 10:18 PM]

Except that Woody Allen just used the method to insert himself into every shot in "Zelig" rather than actually say something meaningful about film language.

DC

[#5 posted by Anonymous, July 24, 2009 3:04 AM]

The Woody Allen film is "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" (1966) that featured full substitution of dialog. "Zelig" was 1983 and was an innovation for it's time.

[#6 posted by Anonymous, July 24, 2009 3:26 AM]

"La mujer y la bestia" (just in case folks were wondering what the name of the source material was).

[#7 posted by Anonymous, July 24, 2009 9:09 AM]

sctv's dubbed cisco kid, anyone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4YDSHOhoX8

[#8 posted by devophill, July 29, 2009 1:21 PM]

This is kinda hard to watch if you speak a little Spanish.