coin festival clean up

MOVIE #1,412 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 03.04.24 As I’ve been reviewing the early 2000s davidlynch.com short films, I realized something: what is a short film? Or more pointedly: what is a FILM? Most of these Lynch works are, or feel like, tossed off ideas, shot on a whim with low-resolution digital cameras. But on some level, they are considered “canon” inasmuch as they all have Letterboxd and IMDB entries, etc. It made me think of the great, late Mark Baumer, a far lesser known artist who was insanely prolific in his far-too-short 33 years on this planet. (To learn more about Mark, check out my review of the documentary about him, Barefoot, or better yet: watch it for free on Tubi.) Mark was primarily known as a writer and a poet, as well as an “adventurer” and environmental activist. But I think — and I am going to attempt to make the case for this — that he was also a notable filmmaker in his own right.

So, starting today, I will be mining the internet for the 100s if not 1000s of Mark Baumer short films. Most of these would be considered ‘vlogs’ if not out-and-out youtube poop level postings. But what always strikes me about Mark is how even at his most slight, these uploads feel brimming with artistic intent. I want to establish the canon for Mark Baumer, the absurdist filmmaker/off-kilter documentarian and video diarist.

And so beginning from three sources — Mark’s YouTube, Vimeo and — gulp — Vine pages/archives — I will be chronologically digesting and cataloging each entry as a standalone piece of art. I’ll be preserving them offline, creating “movie poster art” and writing a short synopsis/critique for each. Every other Monday I plan to post at least one of these on this site (obviously, if I only did a single film bi-weekly, this project would take me 40 years or more to complete, so I will probably aim for 10 short films starting on the 18th).

Mark’s likely magnum opus is his final work: his series of 100 vlogs chronicling his attempt to walk across America barefoot, which tragically ended with him being struck and killed by an SUV in Florida in January of 2017 (his death was covered by multiple mainstream news outlets in detail, including The New Yorker). This is a great place to start for the uninitiated I feel, and I’ve compiled all of them into a public playlist that runs chronologically.

But I want to start at the beginning, with this: his very first upload to YouTube on September 21st, 2007. We see Mark clad in an old school Cubs jacket and green ball cap covering up a bunch of coins on a bed with a comforter as he yells, “all clean!” before announcing that he should clean up for real. There’s a tinge of remorse in voice, but for what? The unseen “coin festival” which preceded it? The fact that said “coin festival” led to such a mess? As we will come to see, oftentimes more questions arise then could ever be answered. And like the assembly of any festival of any kind, it implies that at some point in the future, it must be disassembled, cleaned up.


"coin festival clean up" (Mark Baumer, 2007)


[art I purchased directly from Mark hanging in my office along with a card he sent me]

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Mark Baumer (December 19, 1983 – January 21, 2017) was an American writer, adventurer, and environmental activist. I am attempting to form a canon around his work as a filmmaker. This was released on September 21, 2007.