FILM DIARY
FAKE MOCKUMENTARY: An Anti-Art Art Film - JUNK FILM AESTHETIC
Introduction to Junk Film
The junk film aesthetic represents a deliberate rejection of conventional filmmaking standards, embracing technical "imperfections" and discarded methodologies as artistic choices rather than flaws. This approach values authenticity over polish, immediacy over perfection, and conceptual integrity over technical conformity. What appears chaotic or unrefined actually contains sophisticated theoretical underpinnings that challenge mainstream cinematic consumption.
Social theory can preoccupy the anti-art art film aesthetic by describing the junk film's role upon intellectualizing the junk film aesthetic literature according to the junk film manifesto (see junk film manifesto). When comparing the heterogeneous nature of the returning video, it is now a junk film synthesis of non-convention.
Among the counterfeit film street culture, the departure from junk film contains its anti-art art film pseudo-structure with a minimal deconstruction of fake documentary, leaving an open-ended, unspecific number of alternatives to becoming the unfinished product that is the fake mockumentary and anti-art art film. Parallel to such unlimiting boundaries of its observational film structure, by becoming a hybrid of stylized documentary and video art, it is thus fake mockumentary we see unfolding in the unintentional performance of sustainment of actions by documenting body endurance all in one take (see fake mockumentary manifesto).
Body Endurance and Performance Elements
The intersection of body endurance and fake mockumentary creates particularly compelling works. Filmmakers like Ryan Trecartin and Cecelia Condit have explored this territory through extended single-take performances that test physical limitations while maintaining the documentary aesthetic. These works often feature the body as both subject and medium, with performers engaging in repetitive actions or placing themselves in situations of genuine physical strain, all captured with an observational camera stance that refuses to intervene or provide relief.
The fake mockumentary manifesto is labeled by a series of obstructions that must attempt to be broken at some point to remain a fake attempt to fake something that's fake to fake what's fake to disguise the truth of reality using real street superstars who are the fake actors being themselves to fakely act their way through a discovery of mock performance with body endurance by blurring theater acting and performance art into the development of the fake mockumentary manifesto. Movie making absent of the script but not without the d-guard portal (the protective barrier between audience perception and filmmaker intent) of the mockumentary deconstruction as the attempt to create a legacy to a new film genre like the fake mockumentary, anti-art art film also known as another form of after-neo-dada film expression as well as the Acid Pop Film (read acid dream experimental video art film manifesto). Subsequently, a social and cultural disruption of reform is demonstrated for such anti-art art film based works maintaining a pretense of reality with improvisation or pantomime presented many times as silent films opposed to institutionalized film that follows a script.
On the one hand, it is more directly inscribed blurring the lines of these circuits of film genre with the new punk cinema movement connecting experimental film and anti-art art film by the communication of visual poetry as the avant-garde film volta of abstract expressionism action painting the moving painting with media-based artistic tools with whichever ideology does this anti-art art form explanation for another cinematic form of representations apart from plot or story from commercial movie conventions. Named in the junk film aesthetic are such as instructional video and computer screen recordings, both stylized documentary.
Neo-Punk Cinema and Influential Practitioners
Neo-punk cinema innovations reveal the close and conflictual contemporary exploitation of such film trends among riot grrrl and punk feminism depicting interpretation to be compartmentalized but too new for film genre during the boom era of Pink 8 style guerrilla film manifestos according to its digital and analogue film artifact type (see pink 8 manifesto). That of unhealthy aims to continue film structure without film form by not settling for continuity. Anti-art art film references the junk film aesthetic in particular accordance to the Pink 8 manifesto maintaining the feature film objective, rejection of green screen and inclusion of filming with camera phones and toys.
Filmmakers like Jonas Mekas, Barbara Hammer, and more recently Harmony Korine have pushed these boundaries by creating works that deliberately embrace technical "mistakes" as aesthetic choices. Their approaches reclaim the discarded, forgotten, and deliberately damaged as artistic expression rather than technical failure.
Digital Transformation of Junk Film
The proliferation of digital technologies has radically transformed the junk film aesthetic. Smartphone filmmaking has democratized production, allowing anyone to create within this aesthetic framework. Social media platforms have become distribution channels for micro-junk films, with TikTok and Instagram Reels often unconsciously employing junk film techniques through filters, glitches, and jarring edits. The intentional degradation of digital image quality through compression artifacts, datamoshing, and deliberately corrupted files has become a contemporary extension of analog junk film practices, creating new vocabularies of digital imperfection.
Outside the fake mockumentary manifesto that is also a Pink 8 style, it exists as a justification for film genre not to be taken over by mockumentary the way fake documentary has taken over the deconstruction of the minimal mockumentary selection.
Future Directions
The junk film aesthetic continues to evolve as both a critique of and alternative to mainstream cinema. As high-definition and technically flawless imagery becomes increasingly accessible, the deliberate choice to create "imperfect" works gains greater conceptual weight. The future of junk film likely lies in its ability to maintain critical distance from commercial aesthetics while continuing to develop its own internal language. As distribution platforms become more diverse and audience expectations more flexible, junk film may move from marginal practice to influential counter-cinema, challenging not just how films are made but how they are received, interpreted, and valued within broader cultural contexts.
Entry: JESUS PRACTICE - Dissection of Fake Mockumentary Consciousness
April 30, 2025
dear acid junk film diary,
today i watched BIRTHDAY GURL's "JESUS PRACTICE" again. beauty found in mistakes—chaotic perfection of junk aesthetics. the PINK 8 guerrilla approach bleeds through screen like forgotten memories. LAURA GRACE ROBLES manifesto of fake mockumentary blurs lines between stylized documentary and video art. mistakes are perfect and beautiful and beauty found within ugliness and koas.
10:17 AM: outside my window suburban decay mirrors SAM MANDELBAUM's cross-dressed JESUS LEE LANE MC BERRNIN MC BEE character. identity fractures in gender performance—unscripted sustainment actions testing body endurance. one camera. one take. no interruptions. this is why junk film matters.
42 minutes. silent guerrilla film. DIY junk film street culture compiling punk cinema. gender role plays cross-dresser named after jewish son of god—divine archetypal reference of christian symbolism. traveling quest for identity.
the unpolished real:
- rotten bananas
- pill bottles
- counterfeit cash as props becoming divine symbols through degradation
vicious fittings of fixed pork props. one cue to next. object-improvised sequence of actions. performance of sustainment testing body's endurance. nude performance in public space nominates counterfeit materials. continuous rolling camera mandatory factor—no interruptions or cuts.
jesus role-playing his own subconscious. androgynous christ-figure tucked away in suburban disintegration. chain-smoking sensuality performing oddly erotic front-yard nudity. BIRTHDAY GURL camera never flinches from improvised identity crisis. mentally ill highly concerned androgynous young—actually artist in film.
the anti-thesis of rejected autonomy as solace christ sister child. ego desperate seeking altered reality of fake/real/unreal. realistically cannot be portrayed by real actor's lack of dialogue. unprepared confrontation with imaginary lonesome as socially alienated curious bi-sexual.
am i not also performing identity through fragmentation? scribbling these thoughts like unedited film sequence—brain shooting continuous footage without cuts.
SAM confronts subconscious with gender role playing. super romantic Disappearance of male porn star. tucked away in rundown suburbia chain smoking domesticatedly as perfect nude sensuality. odd sex drama in front yard calls him to wander encapsulated time. jesus imagines synthesizing male and female image—actually explores transgender symptoms of having no gender. fruitarian in parallel reality between future repletion among past and essence of present time. nostalgic as the now dictating dream state of vividness.
SAM's bare-lesbian-irrational-OCD toothbrushing performance haunts my thoughts. transgressive boundary between homosexuality and family values through christian rebellion. brushing teeth in bed in machismo chin and butt cheek day dreaming routine. gazing into mirror holding broken glass. torn grandmother's dress. questions revolving conversations between christian rebellion to find misunderstandings of biblical text. self worth measured by either homosexuality or family values. socially declined lost self from social anxiety.
midnight thoughts: jesus looses time reacting randomly to disorganized cell count. not distracted enough for vaccine of becoming famous porn star advancing naked ass crack habit for female scarecrow dolls. stroking meat in poured pink paint covering entire body by unmet sexual desires within nonnative story.
pink bismol paint spills across jesus as makeshift porn star ritual. one-eyed female scarecrow cannot play electric guitar but dissonant lo-fi avant-garde organ distorts reality anyway. secret voices into open ends of music—unflinching and illiquid avant garde playing of organ with filters and effects to manipulate lo-fi mood. jewish son of god recalling strumming to help one-eyed bride in day dream of distortion. twig drumsticks on trash objects creating impossible rhythms.
pink leaking bismol paint spills over water base of pink hue and dark interior. masturbation continues to action in order to perform not orgasm. like mechanical walking robot boy the Christ son of god hallucinating away from whatever his christian mother cursed him with by naming him Jesus. christmas starlights holding freshly painted genitals and one-eyed Jesus monster dragging along crack of wheels celebrating long-awaited one eye separation from nutted naggers as gay experiment.
i too am navigating "unflinching and illiquid" existence. my own identity performance feels equally unscripted with each random reaction to disorganized thoughts.
related notes on other BIRTHDAY GURL film "Foxy Balls Donkey Sugar" operate within same junk film aesthetic—must document another day. DIY street culture of fake mockumentary establishes quoutendatent subjects without traditional storytelling.
junk film reflections continue tomorrow. must document more thoughts on BIRTHDAY GURL's fake mockumentary manifesto.
in chaotic clarity, [unreadable signature smeared in pink paint]
FOXY THE SERIAL OF FAKE MOCKUMENTARIES
FOXY JUNK FILM DIARY
Subject: DON'T KEEP STARING - Cyber Alienation Chronicles
Documented: May 1, 2025
technojunk observation log 47:
3:47 AM: FOXY POOPS CORN ROBOTS AT NITE ON HER CRACK POP poping corn robots at nite in paint! webcams blink red through apartment windows. they watch her. always watching her.
what new drug is she on? audience keeps asking. is this art film? deconstructed cinema vérité or mentally unstable breakdown captured in low resolution?
fast blurry self-awakening documented. debauchery in cyber space where extraterrestrial hypnosis convincing her that FOXY = her fake internet existence. not real. digital phantom bleeding through reality cracks.
dream pattern analysis #17: reoccurring dream intensifying for subject. webcams surround her alienated life spaces. dressing room. personal steam room. local grocery store frozen foods aisle. hidden video callers from unknown dimensions follow her through discount bin surveillance equipment. cheap pixelated voyeurism.
...HYPNOTIC TRANS STATE DETECTED...
survival requires three objectives for subject: (1) chain-smoking marlboro reds until fingers stain yellow-brown matching apartment walls (2) two-way mirror gazing—who watches the watcher watching themselves being watched? (3) video moaning into empty chat rooms where anonymous usernames flash green then disappear
technology OMNI-PRESENT in her fragmented consciousness. psychical alienation accelerating within subject. freedom dissolving through digitalization. technology overmastering human element. necessary to "humanize" technology through anthropological deconstruction. must overcome by embracing not rejecting this fake mockumentary junk film.
FOXY whispers through static: "your webcam addiction is the only authentic part of you"
who is she without digital validation? meat puppet performing for invisible audience? is she the corn robot popping at night? is she the crack where FOXY materializes?
observation continues tomorrow. battery warning flashing red. like webcam lights. like subject's bloodshot eyes. like emergency exit signs leading nowhere.
transmission terminated, [observer signature replaced with low-resolution webcam screenshot]
"Foxy" is a series of sixteen different short fake mockumentary films that Robles began filming in 2010 and completed between 2014-2015. Through creating these sixteen distinct Foxy films, she discovered an interesting paradox in her work: what she initially believed she was recording as fake documentary material revealed a deeper layer of artistic deception.
Robles had become fascinated with the concept that everything captured by her camera was a simulation of documentary - appearing to document reality while actually staging it. However, as the project evolved, she realized that what she was creating wasn't simply fake documentary but specifically fake mockumentary - a genre that deliberately plays with the boundaries between staged fiction and documentary aesthetics.
The distinction became important to her artistic process: while she had hoped everything she filmed was fake documentary, the more accurate explanation for her work was that it existed in the realm of fake mockumentary - a meta-commentary on both documentary filmmaking and the mockumentary genre itself. This realization transformed her understanding of the entire Foxy series and its artistic significance.
INTERVIEW WITH THE VIDEO ARTIST
Dexter Mock Duck: Ms. Robles, explain to us how you've unearthed fake mockumentary as inspired by Fabrizio's Pink 8 film manifesto?
Laura Grace Robles: A similar philosophy exists in both his and my Pink 8 film manifestos. We both pay respect to the DIY punk mentality and anarchistic views—ensuring Pink 8 cannot be learned in film school, particularly for filmmakers lacking resources but driven to create even without conventional equipment, as I once was. Like the Pink 8 ideology and its relationship to perfection, I believe when film mistakes are allowed, there is no higher perfection. My approach transforms video art into an experimental film hybrid, deliberately possessed by an aim to fail—making films that break boundaries in the way Fabrizio and I understand that continuity itself is wrong. The junk film aesthetic celebrates these "mistakes" as integral to the artistic expression rather than flaws to be corrected.
Dexter Mock Duck: Who is your competition?
Laura Grace Robles: At the heart of punk cinema's anarchistic ways, I don't compete to make films better than others. My films are simply different. I don't make films to satisfy critics beyond my own judgment, so I guess I compete primarily with myself. Punk is free from the unfortunate souls who believe there's no hope for understanding life as an individual who thinks apart from the normality of expectation and predictability. Thinking this way humbles my imagination and allows me to work with fewer tricks and more sincerity. The fake mockumentary approach liberates me from conventional filmmaking constraints, allowing the anti-art art film to emerge through deliberately unpolished aesthetics.
Dexter Mock Duck: How has your style evolved?
Laura Grace Robles: Only a street superstar could elevate hope for an uneducated commoner to blur the lines between acting and performance art—creating mock performers like the fake actors in my films. Now I'm exploring feature filmmaking rather than just the short films I was accustomed to making. This opportunity can be faithfully explored through commitment to either the Pink 8 style or by embracing a new manifesto, while maintaining the junk film aesthetic across an epic body of work. My evolution includes documentary deconstruction where body endurance performances are captured in single takes, transforming the unintentional into artistic statement through the fake mockumentary form.
Dexter Mock Duck: How are you confronted by film language?
Laura Grace Robles: I am absolutely confronted by challenges in my work. The film industry's rigid expectations about what constitutes "legitimate" cinema constantly push against my methodology. I face financial constraints that force creative solutions—using consumer-grade equipment, found locations, and non-actors. The distribution system remains hostile to experimental work like mine, relegating junk film to underground circuits and specialized festivals. Even within experimental communities, there's resistance to accepting fake mockumentary as a valid form distinct from both traditional documentary and conventional mockumentary. My most significant challenge is communicating the intentionality behind what appears unintentional—helping audiences understand that the "mistakes" in my films are deliberate artistic choices rather than technical failures. Despite these challenges, I MUST CREATE THE FILM PARADOX—a synthesis of non-convention that transforms these very constraints into the raw material of artistic expression.
Dexter Mock Duck: What is a fake mockumentary to you in one word?
Laura Grace Robles: A fake mockumentary is a dream—a dream state where subconscious records of reality are played back through a cyber fantasy of tantalizing behaviors, where the video artist improvises an unintended act of body endurance maintaining a pretense of reality while blurring the lines between performance art and acting.
FOXY RACE CALL
The Night Rocker flees through corridors of paranoid ideation constructed from megalomaniacal architectures—her existence consumed by the infinite recursion of self-witnessing within the crepuscular hours between dusk's dying light and dawn's nascent illumination—yet this perpetual narcissistic vigilance proves insufficient justification for her containment as sonorous video-moaner.
This therapeutic transmutation encompasses one primary metamorphic phase: the alchemical transduction of digitized vocalization streams into datasets of auditory experimentation, incorporating quotidian talismanic objects requested by virtual interlocutors—plastic coronets, smoking paraphernalia, chromatic lip pigments—all recontextualized as semiotic hieroglyphs.
This thirty-eight minute and two-second durational anti-artifact manifests as intuitive somatic cartography—the video-shaman's improvisational navigation of unintended corporeal endurance, temporalizing the body's unpredictable phenomenological expressions that sustain beyond intentionality. The performer-as-medium transcends prescribed corporeal limitations through pantomimic cranial dramaturgy, dissolving the ontological boundaries between performative art and theatrical embodiment, liberating the artist from narrative determinism and into the realm of pure becoming.
